There is no secret, you just do the next thing you need to do.

Getting started is the hardest part.

The more things you get done the more you realize that you feel way less stressed out after you check things off your list.

Make a list, get the most urgent things or the easiest things done first. Do things that can't be done again first. Doing something that you won't have to do again means you have one source of stress eliminated for good.

Save gaming and watching stuff until the end of the day. Only take a day off if you've accomplished certain goals.

Time spent being depressed is worthless time. You'll never look back at it with any fondness or value. Keep doing stuff while you are depressed. Do the hard stuff while you are depressed. The time is mentally/spiritually valueless so grind out unpleasant tasks, you aren't going to feel better or worse during these unpleasant times but when you come out of them you won't have even more and worse problems to deal with.

Stop making excuses. Go to class every day. It's the easiest way to raise your grade, whatever bullshit excuse you make to not go is just a bullshit excuse.

Better sleep and diet might be good for you but they aren't going to make you more productive. An iron will doesn't give a shit about weather it's well rested or fed, it just gets the next thing it must get done.

I think maybe your whole dialog is backwards.

You are basing your whole plan on the basic premise that you are "You" right now.

And your goal is to change "You".

Turn that around.

You are not "You" right now. This is not "normal". This is not who you really are. It's just the form you currently exist in.

As you move forward, you are not "changing" yourself into someone new, you are, instead, sluffing off all the shit and habits and ways of being that are not You.

Because here's the thing...

Yer gonna fuck up. Yer gonna slip. Maybe you have decided to never eat ice cream again. Well, one day you WILL eat it, and your internal dialog is going to be, "Fuck. I haven't changed. I'm just the same asshole I always was, and I have failed to change, and blah blah blah..."

Now turn it around.

"Damn. Why did I eat ice cream? That's not me! Sheesh. Glad I'm not going to do that again."

You wont BE different, unless you ARE different.

Sure, it's an elaborate self-deception of "fake it til you make it", but the fact is that our internal dialogue is the ONLY thing that makes change happen.

If you are grabbing a new coat and putting it on, and trying to make yourself fit into it, you are going to be frustrated.

If, instead, you see your current habits as uncomfortable clothes you are wearing, then take them off. Leave em on the floor.

And when you have the inevitable little slip-ups on your journey, you ask yourself, "Why did I pick up that shitty shirt from the floor, and put it on again? Phooey! I'm taking this off and never putting it back on again! YAY! Now I feel MUCH better about myself! I have looked the problem in the eye, recognized that it is not a part of what I want any more, and pointed myself in the right direction to move away from that habit/whatever. I'm back on the right track again, right away!"

Change the script. You are not changing into something else. You are getting rid of all the shit that isn't you, and getting down to your core awesomeness.

Best of luck with it. You deserve it.

If you haven't seen it, my post on flow may touch on some of this. Let me preface this by saying you should be proud that you're even thinking about this -- I know I was easily 10 years older than you before I started figuring this out. Also, thanks for thinking of me!

The first thing is to not expect yourself to feel any different about the tasks that you have to do. In other words, there's no way to magically make yourself want to do certain things more, nor are you likely to feel better about them. At least not at first. It's about building habits, and fuck motivation. Motivation is the hot girl from the club who makes you think she's interested before she gets bored and moves on. Discipline and habit-forming is the girl who comes over to take care of you when you're sick. There are times when I'm literally saying in my head over and over some mantra of "I hate this and don't want to do it," while doing it. That for me is helpful - it means I can put more energy into doing it than into trying to make myself happy about it. I think we get off track (or at least I know I do) by thinking we can change how we feel about something in order to make it easier to do. I don't think that's true; the feelings come second. First you just have to decide you're going to do it even though you don't want to, and even though you may not be happy while doing it. This Zenpencils comic (using a quote by one of your countrymen) is also good.

Some people find scheduling helpful, and it definitely can be in terms of building those habits. I think at the end of the day it's about accountability - what's keeping you from slacking off? Having other people can help; it both makes the task less unpleasant and can be a strong motivator in and of itself. When I first started lifting weights in law school, I never would've worked half as hard as I did if I hadn't had someone to go with me. We weren't even super close friends or anything: I'm a hippy, anti-establishment, vaguely-pacifist guy, he is a Mormon who had recently become an officer in the Marine Corps. But we kept each other on schedule, and the result was that over the course of 1.5 years I gained close to 50 lbs. of muscle (I was that underweight when we started). Nowadays, knowing my kung fu school is there training gives me a big boost in forcing myself to come in, and it makes training much more enjoyable than it would be if I were just sitting on my own.

The other thing I'll mention is that you need to have a balance between short- and long-term goals. Long-term goals are why you start, but then you need to put those out of your mind. Or at least I do much of the time. I think that's been one of my problems with drawing - I can see what a good picture looks like, so all I see in the meantime is the difference. This gets into what I wrote about in the post I linked above: the need to find short-term goals and work on them, but have them be in service to the larger one. It also makes things less overwhelming. If you're training to run a marathon, you shouldn't spend all your time thinking about the marathon; it just gets too abstract. Instead, think about building up to running 2 miles. Then 3, then 4, etc. Eventually you're there.

An oddly insightful post came up on facebook today from that Humans of New York page

“My English is not good. Spoken English is very difficult. But I want to study at Columbia so I am trying to improve. I decided to come to America because of Forrest Gump. I’ve watched the movie five times. I like Forrest very much. Forrest is very simple. He picks one thing, and he keeps going. When I was young, I thought Forrest was stupid. But now I have a different view. I think people are too complicated. They complain about everything. Forrest never complains. Forrest chooses one thing and he keeps going. I watched the movie last month to encourage me. My life is hard because people don’t ever know what I’m saying. But I just think of Forrest. Forrest figured everything out because he just kept going.”

The guy has a point.

Not much to add to previous posters, but maybe this: the only person who can change your life is you. Say to yourself, "If it's going to be, it's up to me."

And look at how you spend your time. Gaming? Watching screens? There's two hours you'll never get back.

The real difficulty for most people is possibly being curious/interested about something enough to get up and do it.

"Working hard" is the act of putting in more time or effort than you are comfortable with. It is unsustainable. People will call you a "hard worker" if they are admirable of the effort you are putting forth but if you think of yourself as a "hard worker" you will look for opportunities to take it easy. Thinking of yourself as "working hard" puts you on one side of a divide where everyone who is "taking it easy" is resented by you. This is not a productive mental state.

A long, long time ago

There was an old man with his children

Living in a mountain village

They lived a very happy life

With only one big problem

They had to climb over a big mountain to go to the field every day

So one day, the old man decided to move the mountain

With his children they began chipping away pieces of rocks

Every day at the foot of the mountain

Wise men passed by and asked him

How can you possibly think you can move the mountain?

The old man said, "Probably I won't

But you see, I have children

My children will have children

And they will continue

And the mountain will be moved"

You will never improve yourself, your situation, or your future by "working hard." You must work consistently,, you must work persistently, and you must work efficiently. It is not about beating yourself up or forcing more from yourself, it is about establishing a rewarding and easy to follow routine that builds upon incremental improvement.

I will second Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way primarily because it's digestible. I suspect every generation needs their version of What Color is Your Parachute and of the various and sundry pop psychology pieces pretending profundity it's the least offensive. One of Holiday's tricks is to write a list of goals for tomorrow in big letters on a post-it note before bed. The size of font and size of paper limits the task to the achievable.

But primarily, you need to break things down into what can be managed. Give yourself a list of goals, then assign a REASONABLE timeframe to each one. Then break down what each goal will take individually ("get hired" breaks down into "write a killer resume" "achieve a few new skills" "get three letters of recommendation") and those goals until you have something concrete and actionable you can take care of. Arrange those in order and put a REASONABLE timeframe on each one of those.

You'll notice that you have tasks and subtasks and subtasks of subtasks - turtles all the way down. You'll notice you have a schedule for each one of these things, and that there are interdependencies. But you'll also notice that big, unapproachable tasks like "get a job" now have a to-do list that you can work on, every single day, until they're done.

I got out of New Mexico, got into college and built a car from the framerails up using this process. My method was a notebook full of checklists. Lo and behold I became an engineer and realized that I had independently discovered the Gannt chart, the process by which large organizations complete large projects. As a teenager, I improved my life and built a car using redneck Gannt charts. As an adult, I helped redesign an airport, helped build three courthouses and helped construct a two billion dollar wastewater treatment system using real Gannt charts.

It's the granularity.

You set yourself a timeline (2 months) and a goal (turn your life around). That's insurmountable. Your approach - "work harder" - is nebulous. Boringly enough, you major problem is project management, the least appreciated task in the history of employment. But the pyramids were not built by someone saying "we need to push more rocks." The Great Wall of China is not there because they wanted to "keep the Mongols out more." Dividing a large task into smaller tasks and arranging them in such a way that they can be accomplished without heroic effort is the core competency of... civilization. It is the root of all planning. And it is entirely within your abilities.

Do what you can do. Do it every day. Do it with the intent to be that much closer to your goal tomorrow. And judge yourself by whether or not you accomplished today what you set out to accomplish today.

Turn your life around NOW. Recognize that future self is tomorrow self to the nth power and that compound interest isn't just for banking. We're all "just guys" (even the girls among us!) but if you raise the bar just a tiniest fraction every day you will find yourself high-jumping skyscrapers.

There are lots of tips and tricks that will help, and it can be valuable to learn them, but the real secret is that there's no secret. No shortcuts. Hard work is hard, and it usually sucks when you are doing it, and no tricks will get you around that. There is no correct mindset that makes things effortless. There is no preparation that automates this process for you. Take the energy you're using to look for the easiest way to do something and spend most of it just starting. Just do the thing. No amount of processes, tips, tricks, mindsets, or anything else will help you if you don't begin and end them with ACTION toward what you want.

With that out of the way, here are the things that have helped me:

- GTD (Getting Things Done). It's almost a lifestyle. You don't have to read the book, you can find a decent tutorial online for it. Basically you just create an organized system into which you put everything in your life that you find yourself devoting energy toward remembering or thinking about. If that sounds overwhelming and like overkill, just remember that the alternative is keeping it all in your own head all of the time. It is implementation-agnostic. I currently use Remember The Milk, Google Calendar, and a physical inbox on my kitchen counter.

- Stoicism. There are lots of good books on this. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday is an easy read. The original works by Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus are pretty good too. On the Shortness of Life is awesome, and short too. You can also get it for free on audiobook. I would put Jocko Podcast into this category as well. Stoicism can be good at teaching you how to stare down impossible odds with a fierce grin as you charge into battle.

- Mindfulness. Mindfulness is in vogue right now, and it's starting to mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. Maybe a better word would be "paying attention". If you can clearly see and accept yourself and your environment, as they are, right now, with no judgements or distractions, it's a lot easier to enact meaningful changes. Said inversely, if you can't see your own biases and emotions with regard to some subject, they influence, no, completely control your actions with that subject, which makes it hard to enact meaningful changes, because you're playing out an unconscious pattern.

This is gonna quote and mirror cgod a bit, then kind of go in it's own direction.

Getting started is the hardest part.

This is gospel, right here. Take it one step further. Stopping is easy. Restarting is harder than starting in the first place. Once you get going, DO. NOT. STOP. You can slow down. You can take a break. You can focus on something different for a bit. But always, always have the expectation of work in your mind. The longer you stay at idle and keep yourself in an idle mindset, the harder and harder it's gonna be to start again.

Time spent being depressed is worthless time.

Time spent being negative anything, when you're not working, is worthless time. Don't stop working because you're depressed. Don't stop working because you feel overwhelmed. Don't stop working because you're angry at your boss or your teacher or your co-workers. These are all excuses. You're gonna be depressed, overwhelmed, angry, whatever anyway, so work it off. There's actually a good chance that working will help alleviate your mood because it'll take your mind off of things.

My Own Shit

You asked . . .

How do I make big goals that much more appealing than the small-minded ones?

Break Shit Down a Bit - True story. I cannot eat a personal sized pizza by myself if it's not been cut. I've actually tried. Take the same pizza though, cut it into four slices, and suddenly, I can down that shit no problem at all. Work is very similar. If you have a task at hand, break it down into understandable parts, each with their own start and finish. Do each part to completion, then start on with the next. What was once a single four hour job is now four one hour jobs, and let me tell you, it's a lot easier to do four one hour jobs than it is to do one four hour job.

Apply this philosophy to EVERYTHING. School. Career advancement. Personal life. Finances. Physical health. Set realistic goals. Smash them. Set more realistic goals. Smash them again. Turn into the mother fucking Hulk of getting shit done.

Be Satisfied With the Work You Do, But Never Be Satisfied With Yourself - Imagine yourself making a wooden chair. Imagine how your first chair is gonna turn out. It might be uneven, have rough cuts, and a shit sanding job. Halfway through making your first chair, you're already gonna know it's gonna turn out to be crap. Finish it anyway. Getting it done is important. Learning the steps is important. By building the chair, you begin to understand the chair and the wood its made of and the tools you used to make it. Now imagine yourself building another one of the exact same chair, and another, and another. You'll become familiar with how the chair is put together and find quicker ways of getting things done. You'll get better at measuring, sanding, cutting. You'll know your tools and what makes them good and what makes them difficult to use. Know your process inside and out and always be satisfied with the chairs that you make, but never be satisfied with the job that you do. Improve. Improve. Improve. Once again, apply this philosophy to everything important.

Look at Your Work Like You're a Teacher - Remember when you were teaching that one guy Russian? Shit was hard, huh? Suddenly you were looking at your native tongue in a whole new light and you were questioning your abilities to teach it. Know what you were doing? You were familiarizing yourself with your own language in a whole new way. This whole philosophy applies to work. Go back to the chair. When you're building a chair for the first, second, fifteenth, and twentieth time, talk yourself through it. "I'm holding the sander this way because x. I'm cutting the wood this way because x." This will make you look at your work in a new light and also make sure you understand what you're doing and why. By doing this, you're familiarizing yourself with it, allowing you to be more efficient and effective at what you do.

Give Yourself a Hard Time, But Go Easy on Yourself - You're gonna make mistakes. Take them personally. Be disappointed in yourself. Vow to learn from them and improve yourself to keep from making the same mistakes again. Don't hate yourself though. Your mistakes are your way of knowing there's room for growth and in that room for growth you can fit the entire world. Embrace the world. Embrace your personal growth. If you're too hard on yourself though, suddenly your perception changes from growth being about how great you can be and starts becoming something you're afraid of.

One last thing? You're full of doubt and worry and shit and that's cool. I'm full of doubt and worry and shit too. That's part of being human. Know what else is part of being human? We're all amazing. I'm amazing. You're amazing. Every last person on this God given planet is fucking amazing. Part of your amazingness is hidden in your ability to work. Find your amazingness. Embrace it. Bring it out in the open. Be fucking awesome. Then give it back to the world.