I suffer a great deal from the second part of that last paragraph.  I can easily be overcome by the fear of failure that it will prevent me from even starting, from making even the smallest amount of progress on a project.   It’s a funny thing, because that fear can be completely replaced with amazing focus, long nights and constant thoughts about the next task you can knock off that list as soon as you make even the smallest amount of progress.  Just seeing a small amount of progress being made can swing your attitude from one end of the spectrum to the other.  Gary Vaynerchuk has a great video that really put this concept into words for me,  Better Than Zero.  it doesn’t always have to be about the big win right?

One of my own personal tricks when working on a project that i’m having trouble getting motivated on is to re factor some of the code I’ve already written, it’s a small amount of effort that has a big impact on boosting my motivation.  Refactoring cleans things up, get’s your head into writing code and generally in my case motivates me to write a whole bunch of new code using some of the patterns I may have re factored to while getting myself in the mood as it were

So how do you get yourself out of these types of ruts?  Got any tips or tricks for getting yourself into the zone?

1. 37 Signals Backpack – I had pages split up into categories then would use lists on the page to store the links to the sites, didn’t work very well because it required a huge amount of manual work
2. Delicious – The obvious and one of the most popular solutions, I don’t know why but I don’t like it, I’ve never been able to integrate it into my computer use habits.
3. Google Reader – Using the “Note in reader” bookmarklet and tags in google reader this has been the best solution I’ve come across so far (but the tagging can get messy)
4. Gmail – For a long time I would simply send myself an email and then move it to a bookmarks folder, didn’t really like this solution either
5. Posterous – Just signed up for an account here, it’s got a great bookmarklet as well but not sure about tags just yet as I’ve barely started using it!

I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled on the 100 Push ups Training Program, but it immediately caught my attention as something I could integrate into my existing exercise program (note: my current exercise program consists of nothing more then waking up every morning). The frequency and pace of the program seemed like something I could handle so I’m going to get started. You basically go through a steadily increasing routine of pushups, 3 times a week for 6 weeks, I think it’s an achievable goal and I have a plan for sticking to it.

One of my favourite blogger’s Leo Babauta of Zen Habits offers some great advice on staying motivated to achieve a goal, basically the idea is that to hold myself accountable to this goal I’ll post a weekly update on my progress through the program.

Here’s to the gun party at the end!

1) What went well this month?
2) What didn’t go well this month?
3) What can we try next month?

This is an agile philosophy that we use on the month and week level at work depending on the situation. You can learn a lot from these meetings and I find that there is a lot of valuable input and insight that comes from them.

Last week after a particularly bad day at work, I asked myself those same 3 questions during the drive home, I answered myself in my head sort of like an interview. After I was done not only did I feel a lot better about a day that started poorly and got worse, but there were some things I realized I could have done better and those were the “What can I try next time” items.

I think this is a valuable process one can conduct with themselves, on a bad day like me, after a bad meeting perhaps, maybe something went well that you want to learn from. I don’t think the situation much matters but it seems like the exercise in itself can provide you with more information about yourself and you ability to handle situations and your ability to learn from them.

Do you have any special tricks or routines you use for dealing with situations where you feel you could have done something better?

These external forces can come at you from many different avenues.  Work, family, kids… all the usual suspects.  Everyone needs something from you now so how do you deal with it?

Prioritize
You can’t possibly do everything for everyone all the time, it doesn’t work and if you think you can do it you are truly more optimistic then I am!  I used to think that saying yes to everyone regardless of the outcome would make them happy, and it always did… in the short term.  When faced with a stressful situation I tend to break up stuff I have to do into mini lists.  A list with the 3 most important things I have to do next on it.  This list becomes my guiding light until those 3 tasks (and hopefully the stress and pressure) are gone.

Stop, think and then react
Often times when you are faced with a screaming client, boss or 2 year old your immediate reaction is to do something immediately, and to be honest that is probably what the person on the other end is expecting from you as well.  Over the years my ability to react has gotten slower (age maybe?) I don’t always make the best off the cuff decisions.  Over the last 6 months at my job we have instituted a Stop, Think, React culture.  It’s amazing how much of a difference these 3 simple steps can make in a pressure situation, understanding and information are the key’s to good decision making so why deny yourself the opportunity to explore those options when you need them the most?

These are just some of my thoughts on handling pressure and stress, what other kinds of things do you do to make sure you can handle those high pressure situations?

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