Getting down to work means getting down to work—with the word “work” being the operative word. Here’s one of many elementary motivational strategies which show you how to get into the work quickly and start being productive without falling prey to window gazing.

One of the ways of getting more done is to jump into a project whenever you have some spare time and work on the project—even if you can do only a little. These short bursts of effort can make for substantial progress in a project and are an effective part of the time management arsenal. But what is often difficult—and this applies regardless of the time available—is actually getting “into” the work.

We know that once the work begins to flow, once we get into our stride, we can make a lot of progress. But just how do we get into our stride in the first place? We’ve all had the experience of sitting down to work in the morning, filled with good intentions, only to find ourselves staring at a blank sheet of paper for a few minutes… which stretches into another few minutes… and then after a bit of cursory doodling we find we’ve been at work for almost an hour and achieved nothing.

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When trying to achieve something, we usually think of moving ahead quickly. We think of moving in a straight line. This is not always the best way to get where we want to go.

When we are faced with trying to get something done we usually try to take the most direct route. After all, common sense tells us the fastest route is the most direct.  For instance, say we are starting out on a journey.  We need to get from A to D, so we try to plan a route that goes directly to D. But what happens if we don’t know the direct route to D?  In that case, we have to get out a map and plan the route before setting off. 

This takes time and, no matter how good the map is, we still can’t be sure if that route is the best.  It’s only once we’ve traveled the route that we know whether or not it really is the best.  We may start on a journey and then find that there are things we couldn’t see on the map.  If we are in a car, for instance, we might find that the route we’ve chosen is extremely busy with traffic.  We might make slow progress.  In this case we might find that the direct route is not particularly fast after all.

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Many people think of success in terms of winning, and of being the best. This is not necessarily so—and thinking so can be damaging to our personal development.

One of the things that can hold us back from success is a misunderstanding of the word “success” itself. It’s a subjective word which has strong connotations of perfection—which is in itself a subjective word—and of being the “best” at something. It also conjures up images related to “winning”. When we think of success we tend to think of someone holding a cup aloft after beating everyone in a tennis or golf tournament.

But is this really success?

Not necessarily.

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Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
Dale Carnegie

The reason that most people don’t succeed is that they give up after having a failure. They think that to fail means exactly that—to fail—when actually a failure is not a failure until it’s been accepted as such. You only fail when you quit, when you stop trying and can’t be bothered to try again.

Actually, failure is one of the best things that can happen to you—as long as you look at it in the right way. If you take failure to mean that you really have failed, then that is what it is—or becomes. But if you just take failure as a normal part of life, as a thing to go through before you achieve something worthwhile, then it no longer is failure. It just becomes a learning experience.

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Following your dreams is possible, but only when you stop listening to other people so much.

We hear the exhortation to “Follow Your Dreams” all the time. Read any type of material which covers the subject of success and you’ll probably find yourself reading lots of stuff telling you to keep your dreams alive and don’t be deflected from your course. This will often be coupled with a heavy dose of writing about manifestation, about how you need to visualize your dream so that the universe will bestow your dream upon you as a gift.

All this is well enough. Dreams are good things to have, and without them we can find we have nothing to aim for. And when we’re truly aimless, our enjoyment of life is at a minimum. Without purpose, our life really does become an empty shell.

So it really is important to have dreams. It really is important to have something to aim for, something to give us a purpose. However, what is rarely, if ever, made a point of is the word in that sentence “Follow Your Dreams”, that really matters. On reading that sentence, most people will latch on to that word “dreams” and then start to think about a dream, an ambition, a goal. But the word that has just as much importance—if not more importance— as the word “dreams” is the word “your”. And it’s a word that is often missed or ignored.

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