Self Help and Personal Development | Steves Goal

No, I’m not joking. I honestly believe that the vast majority of people’s failures come because the project that failed was not given enough attention. Whilst it is possible to multitask and see benefits, I suspect that this generally only occurs when the tasks do not conflict, are short and happen within a confined time frame.

Multi-tasking works in those situations where each component task is either less demanding or demanding in a way that doesn’t encroach on the skills required for the other components. Once you begin to create longer term plans multi-tasking isn’t usually possible with any level of efficiency.

So, what is the solution?

Well, I think the key to understanding the failure of projects in multitasking is in the word itself. Multitasking means multiple tasks, a task being a low expenditure actiivty with a direct payoff on completion. It is not called multigoaling. How daft does that sound, the very word multigoaling suggests that it would be a foolish thing to pursue.

As timescales get longer and deadlines get further away from our current time, they become less real and as a result it is much harder to focus. Now, I know many of you will have been screaming at the start of this article that success simply requires focus and that is why multi tasking doesn’t work for long term goals. You would be right - I am a strong advocate of what I used to refer to as single tasking or single handling.

I now think that single handling is the most appropriate phrase. Tasks can and should be multitasked wherever possible as tasks by their definition are never long term and don’t tax our resources or drain our focus the way goals will.

So, I’m no longer against multitasking of tasks - but goals should always be single handled. If you can break your workday up into singlehandled events and multitasks I think you might see a much better success ratio than if you abandon one philosphy or the other. I’ve definately found that delegating my activities into the right segement has helped improve me efficiency no end!

Hi all, sorry that Stevesgoal hasn’t been updated in a while. Firstly I was at a castle in Scotland for a family wedding, and then everything just went crazy. I havn’t even had Internet access for the past week. Anyway, things should be more back to normal now, and I hope to have some more super-useful advice on all things self-improvement soon!

Moving. Yep. In case you didn’t guess, motivation as word has strong links to motion. Often, it is the act of doing something that brings about motivation. Whilst you could see that as circular logic, with motivation being required to self motivate, the truth is rather more promising.

If we agree for a moment that motivation comes from action or motion then the next most important thing to deciede is if the motivator required to kickstart your motivation needs to be the same type of motion/action or not. If it were the same, then motivation would end up being a virtous or vicious cycle, depending on your initial success.

Luckily this is not the case. I have found such simple things as going for a long walk, deep breathing and swimming are often enough to provide the motivation kickstart I require. Having said that, there is some truth also, to the idea of motivation as a cycle. If you take on too much to begin with and then fail, you are much more likely to fall into a despondant mood and give up.

So, for me at least, the key is to take some physical action, such as swimming and then once motivated, tackle a very small part of the task to ensure that I have a high chance of creating a sort of feedback loop of success that keeps me motivated. Why not try it yourself?

Ok, I gave it a go. I tried to leverage the “power of intention” / “law of attraction” thing for the past month as part of my Steveslab feature. I don’t like theorecticl stuff but I do enjoy testing and I just had to know if the latest cash cow doing the self improvement circuit was of any real use, or it it was a way to fill up space and sell products.

My conclusion - the law of attraction, as stated by many, is nothing more than a pile of rubbish. In my previous entry I mentioned a study done at PEAR, and the pioneering research into human intention and how it can effect entropy. However, I don’t feel that this scales up, at least in the way the law of attraction predicts.

In brief, the law of attraction states that whatever you focus on will come your way. I beleive that. What I don’t believe in, and why I did this experiment, is the notion that there is some sort of cosmic force that will then work to deliver on things that the most committed focus on. The whole thing is too vague and ill defined to win me over anyway. From a more objective point of view, I just don’t believe that this new definition of the law of attraction is correct.

What I do beleive is that the law of attraction is a very real, very effective force that can change your life. Its nothing paranormal though, its just that the concentration that you invested results in you spotting opportunities that would normally slip you by. For me, it is as simple as that.

Steveslabe casefile 1. Closed.

Stevesgoal is generally a very down to earth self improvement blog, avoiding most of the more esoteric adventures that other personal developmenet sites seem to go on. My new feature - “Steveslab” is about as far out as this site will get, testing my theories and then reporting back on the results.

One thing that has always interested me is the power of intetion - in other words, does the desire for something to be done or something to happen have any actual effect on the outcome? From my perspective there must be some effect even if it is only caused by psychological factors. We all know, or should be now, that a happy positive outlook is much more likely to lead to success than a negative one, if for nothing else than that negative people tend to sabotage their own success.

The other component that could be ascribed to the power of intention is some sort of actual universal phenomena, described by many as the “law of attraction” which says that what we concentrate on comes into our lives. This obviously presupposes some sort of paranormal phenomena, although I dislike the term and would call it outside the known physical reality - paranomal conjures up too much ghosty type stuff for my liking.

Anyway, its hard to say if this second componenet, the non psychological one, has any real bearing. Up until recently I would have said that this compenent was not real and any percieved results were due to wishful thinking. However, after a recent foray onto the Princeton website (Princeton.edu) and reading over the latest research from PEAR - the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab, I am unsure what to think.

They have been conducting experiments which measure a persons ability to effect entropy. Entropy is the natural rate of change or decay of a system as it falls into disorder. All system tend towards greater entropy or chaos as they age, at least thats how the theory goes. The PEAR team measure entropy by using a random number generator based on radioactive decay, not a pseudo computer random generator and tested people’s ability to alter the output of the generator.

Whilst on an individual level the results were nothing amazing, when taken as a whole, over a number of years the experiment has revealed a very distinct bias in entropy that can be caused by the humna mind. Now, I don’t know if this due to some flaw in the logic of the experimnet, a poor analysis of the statistical data or due to some explainable phenomena, but if it is not, then this is the clearest proof ever that people’s intentions do effect their physical relationship.

As such I think we should all reconsider the importance of positive thinking and visualisation in our lives. I hope to have some sort of small experiment for Steveslab to try fairly soon!