How to do more in less time by leading yourself powerfully?

And fun, and also without fear. So that's what I do. So let me just start with, you know, how I started my journey. Why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. Many years ago, what happened that I, I was doing so many things, but you know, I was looking busy but practically doing nothing. And what happened that on paper it looks like I'm very busy, but in reality there was no result. I was just kind of postponing things away. If you look at my to-do list, I mean, I'm talking about 4, 5, 6 years ago. I was getting scared just to take a look at my to-do list and goal list. And I was thinking, why am I doing, you know, why am I just being lazy? And that wasn't only me. When almost everyone I met, they had the same problem, and I was kind of stuck, and I was just procrastinator. And the thing is, I was— I used to make some deadlines. Okay, I need you to do this thing and that thing by that time. But inside, I was hating deadlines. I was watching TV. accessing internet. You know, it's just like from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to Insta, then WhatsApp, and again Facebook, then Gmail, Twitter, and the loop continues. And I was practically avoiding things. Then I realized that this is not what I really want to do. And I have been the— I'm an NLP master practitioner, and hypnotherapist. So this one problem, you know, I could not solve for myself. And I was helping people out, but in fact, I used to get results, no doubt about that. You know, my clients were being productive, but that wasn't, you know, long-lasting. And I thought I need to do something about it. And the thing is, I wasted so many weeks and months. And after a few weeks and few months, I, I thought, oh my God, what have I done with my life? And the life is very, you know, it's finite. You know, you got very— so my— I mean, our life is, you know, very limited. We got to do so many things in our life, so many things. I mean, I look at some people And I feel like, you know, we have only one life to live and we should not waste it. So then I started getting involved into how to lead ourselves effectively, how to do more things, and how to do more things in less time, to be honest. But then on one day, I was invited by a company to conduct a training session for the shop floor workers about, you know, reducing the absenteeism. And the company is in the remote village in the southern part of Gujarat, and the shop floor workers were just next to illiterate. They can't even write their names, and I had to train them to be more productive and how to be present and how not to be absent. And that was a kind of a big challenge for me. And I thought, what am I supposed to say to those shop floor workers who are just completely illiterate and they don't give a damn about the work? You know, they hate the work. And I was thinking to just decline that offer. But then I thought, there should be a solution for that. There should be. And I investigated, I did the research, and I done the session. I gave a 3-hour speech to the workers, and I'm going to cover what I covered during that training session. And they were transformed. I mean, they actually promised to the organization that they will always be present. And after 4 months and 6 months and 8 months, I did the follow-up and indeed they were present. I'll check it with another example. You know, why I'm, you know, doing what I'm doing right now is many years ago, uh, I met one person, you know, who is a, is a very big industrialist. He's having, uh, Textile company. He's also a lawyer. He's also a chartered accountant, and I happen to meet him after about eight years or so. So I ask him, "How are you doing?" He say, "I'm fine." I say, "So what's the update? You know, have you started new business?" And he say, "You know what, Mayur? You know we we are meeting after eight years, and." I wasted last 8 years. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, I'm only— I'm 50 years old, and after 5 years I'll be 55. And after 55, we probably are not too energetic. We lose enthusiasm. We actually lose energy to work faster. So practically, I got only 5 years. to do whatever I want to do, but I wasted 8 years, which I don't want. I mean, I don't want to waste my next 5 years. I said, what do you mean by you wasted 8 years? He said that I was laid back. I, you know, grew up my business. I started my business. But the thing is, so he told me, he told me that, Mayur, wherever you go, just share my example with people that do not waste time. He said that I wasted eight years. I was just thinking, okay, just let me just chill out. Let me go on slowly. But like I said before, time is finite, and you're going to leave this planet at any time. Obviously, I personally wish that everyone should live longer, but it's not in our hand. You know, it's definite that we're going to leave, but we don't know when. So we we got very limited amount of time to do so many things. Then that guy told me that, Mayur, do everything faster, right? And things changed then after. Things changed. I did a lot of research on why willpower doesn't work. You know, we go on from one motivational video to another motivational video. We jump from one technique to another technique. But the thing is, this one problem of laziness You know, it's just a very big problem. There's no one solution for that. And I was thinking, what to do about that? My confidence failed, my willpower failed. Now I would like to ask you one question. If you got a pen and paper with you, I would like to ask you one question, which is, what does it cost you day to day Regarding how you're feeling. What does it cost you? I mean, how the laziness, you know, is costing you a lot. I mean, the pain of regret is more powerful than the pleasure of the present moment. The thing is, we, we actually feel regret after some time, weeks or months or years, but you better feel it right now. So the question is, what does it cost you day to day regarding how you're feeling right now if you avoid doing what you're doing already? And second question is, what success is it keeping you from? Right? You must have, have any goal in your mind. You must— you want to achieve something. But what success is it keeping you from? Right, so you got your own answer. Maybe you want to earn certain amount of money, maybe you want to go on a holiday, maybe you want to build a business or whatever. It can be writing a book, it can be starting a new business or anything, but just what success is it keeping you from? So keep your answers with you. Let's take a look at this, you know, almost every single day so that you understand that how wasting your time is costing you a lot. Right now, the thing is, what will happen? Let's say if you just avoid doing what you already should do, how much does it cost? It costs your self-respect. First of all, it costs your self-respect because you know if you don't achieve much, people don't recognize you. It's actually what I mean one of the needs that we want to get recognized. We want to get appreciated, but. People don't give us respect if we just don't make much money, if you don't achieve something worthwhile. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to talk about some motivational mumbo-jumbo in this entire webinar or telecast, but just do the introspection that if you don't do anything in your life, in your life right now, do you think you're gonna gain respect from your family or friends or Some other people? I don't think you will. You will lose respect from your peers. You will also lose calmness. You, you feel anxious, you feel angry if you don't achieve something worthwhile in your life. And you will also lose stability in your life. And so it costs you a lot. Think about that. This is exactly the same question I asked when I gave that training to the soft floor workers who were illiterate people. And I asked them, I said, what would happen if you just be absent for so many days? What would happen if you just stop doing your job? And I asked them to think for 5 minutes. And in the meantime, I was just keep asking those questions. that what would happen if you just don't do any work? The answer was no money, no respect, no respect from the spouse, no respect from children, no respect from the neighbors, no respect from the peers, and obviously the financial insecurity, right? So I think everybody should understand the cost of Inaction. Remember the cost of inaction. Now, now come back to my time that I was also doing the same thing. I was thinking, okay, just relax, you know, just be happy. I was avoid being uncomfortable, and even during my free time, I was not very happy. I was thinking, okay, let me take a break now. Okay, and then even during the break time, somewhere at the back of my mind, you know, I was making strategies. When I was making strategies, I was making plans, but in reality, I was not doing anything. And that was not good. I was not even calm during my break time. I was not even calm and in control even on my days off. And I thought I don't want you to live like that. I just want you to enjoy happiness. I just want you to enjoy the calmness. I just want you to relax. I could not even relax. You know, I was not doing anything, but I was not feeling relaxed. Now let me ask you another question. What would you be— what would your life be like if you are free from procrastination? Right? If you are not lazy, if you avoid laziness, how your life will become? Think about that. Okay? Now you feel great. You feel less stress, right? And Mayur says it will change a lot of things in my life. More positivity, obviously. More money. Why not, right? More money. And also more free time. More independence, actually. Right, you can become famous. You gain the lost confidence, right? Exactly. So that's the outcome of being productive. And I, I, I was just feeling like, I was feeling that I, I used to wake up in the morning with enthusiasm. Okay, I want to do so many things. In fact, many of us are making plans before they go to bed in the night. They say, okay, we want to do this and that tomorrow. Yes, I'm ready to, you know, take action. And when they wake up in the morning, they say, oh yeah, okay, let's get up and start. And in my daily life, you know, what I do as a coaching is I help business people out. They make plans, they know what to do, they start their office before they reach the office. They just turn on the phone and start talking to their colleagues and vendors and customers, you know, early in the morning and during the driving. And as soon as they reach to the office, they say, okay, let's bang on. But after some time, they lose focus, right? They get distracted, right? And they think, okay, where is my to-do list? And they, they lose it. And it's lunchtime, and they haven't done anything significant yet, right? And at four o'clock, they say, "Oh my God! The day is going to get over. Now what?" And at the end of the day, nothing significant is done. Nothing. And they again say, "Oh, no problem. We got another day tomorrow." And tomorrow they wake up, and the same cycle continues. And at the end of the week, they wait for the days off. I mean weekend. But I just wonder why people celebrate weekend without any significant achievement. I just don't understand that. Still people do that. At the end of the month, people wait for the salary. People, I mean business people wait for the checks to come. But nothing significant. End of the year comes. From first of December, they say, "Oh, now I'm going to make my yearly plan." Okay, I'm going to decide what I'm going to doing next year. But nothing happens. Nothing happens. And that's what I do. Now, then I realized that why we are so lazy. And I did the research from the field of neuro linguistic programming, hypnosis, psychology. Even animal training, even the game developer, you know, science. I also teach at my local university in the Department of Human Resource Development, and I teach the subjects of psychology and organizational behavior and industrial psychology, and those subjects help me out to deal with my own problems. Of laziness. But why we are lazy? We, we have a reptilian brain in our, in our mind. It's a small reptilian brain. The reptilian brain, you know, is there for the last millions of years. And the reptilian brain, it only seeks for the immediate reward. It doesn't look at the long-term goal. It doesn't. I mean, we make some yearly plans. I mean, I, I asked many people that, do you make your yearly plan? You set any yearly goals? And they, they say, yes, we do. And they say, okay, we know what we're supposed to do on 1st of January. And you know what happened? They don't even wake up early on the 1st of January because they're saying, oh, we woke up till late night to celebrate 31st, so we could not wake up. And what happens? Nothing happens on first January. So, I mean, people can't visualize what's going to happen after one year or six months. They can't see because our reptilian brain is seeking for some immediate reward only. You must have heard about that. You know, let's say if you are working and someone says, "Okay, would you like to have a pizza right now, or would you like to work now?" And most of the people say let's go for pizza. Try this with small children, right? Ask them to choose one option. Number one is do the homework right now or take a chocolate right now. And obviously they will choose chocolate over homework because the chocolate gives them immediate reward, right? It gives them immediate satisfaction. Even if you ask, even if you convince them to give chocolate after finishing the homework, they will not even wait. They say, no, give me the chocolate right now, I will do the homework. Because doing the homework, it requires efforts, it requires, you know, hard work, and they don't see the reward of homework right now, but they see this, they can visualize the reward Of chocolate right at this moment. They know that if I eat chocolate now, I will feel good. And so that is the problem. People actually are not— people are not motivated to take action right now. Now let me share with you how our reptile brain works. Let me give you an analogy. Just imagine a horse and a rider. A rider has taken horse to a different village, and the rider is taking horse back to the house, but it's going to get darker in next half an hour. Rider and horse are on their way, but then horse is taking look at apples. Horses like apples, and horse is seeing a lot of apples. And horse wants to eat that apple. Horse doesn't know that it's going to get darker after half an hour or 45 minutes. It doesn't know. It doesn't care, by the way. It doesn't even know the consequences, right? So what are the options a rider has? Right, what are the options a rider— because the horse wants to eat the apple right now, but the rider is worried that if, if the horse starts eating apple right now Is going to be late, and they won't be able to go back home. So tell me, what could be the answer? What the horse should be doing? Oh, sorry! What the rider should be doing? Okay, let me make you understand. The horse is our reptile brain. It wants immediate reward, and the rider is our rational brain, our logical mind. The rider is thinking logically, right? So number one is— number one mistake, actually— the rider will try to convince the horse, right? Look, don't eat apple right now, we're going to be late, why don't you understand? But do you think the horse is going to understand that? Not really, right? It's just like, you know, like I shared with you a few minutes ago, that the children want chocolate right now. The host doesn't understand that. So that's the bad thing to do, right? You can't persuade your brain to delay the gratification, to delay the result. It's not gonna happen. And this is the reason why the willpower fails. Because you try to persuade your reptile brain. The reptile brain doesn't care for the long-term result. It wants the result right now. The horse is looking at the apple right now, and it wants to eat apple right now. That's it. So that's the one thing, one technique which will fail. The second technique, which my friend Mayur Pandey said, that keep riding to reach house. So which is the rider is trying to Physically push the horse, right? And that's also equivalent to willpower. You're trying to push, come on, let's go, let's go. But do you think the horse is going to understand that? Not really, not really. So what would happen? The technique— I mean, again, the willpower will fail. You can't push your mind to work harder. The same happens when you watch motivational videos. Do you know what happens? That, you know, you watch motivational video and then you feel pumped up. Okay, let's go. But after 15, 20 minutes or an hour, you're back to the same position an hour ago. You're not improved. So how many motivational videos are you going to watch to keep you— keep your willpower alive? You can't spend entire day, and that doesn't work. People look at some motivational course, people look at some, you know, motivate or listen to some motivational audio and video. But those things don't work because the rider is trying to push the horse to move forward, but the horse says, no, I want the reward right now. Now the third thing, yes, one say hang apple in front of horse, throw some stick and continue riding. Perfect. That's the right answer, right? Or we can say that we can carry some apples. The rider sits on the horse, right? And the rider is throwing the apple towards the— on the way to the house. So horse keeps riding to catch the apple, and that's how they reach to the house, because house is the place where all luxury is there, where all comfort is there. Right, but the horse did not even realize that. Horse did not think, okay, let's go home and then we can relax and then we can enjoy what we want. We can eat whatever we want to eat. Horse doesn't think like that. Just same as our reptile brain, our subconscious mind doesn't even care about the long-term vision. It doesn't see that. It doesn't see that if we work right now, if we feel uncomfortable right now, we can have a better future ahead. We can relax afterwards. It doesn't think like that. Okay, they just want to feel comfortable right now, so that— and that's why they avoid discomfort at the present moment. But the thing is, if you become uncomfortable right now, you will feel uncomfortable in the future for the results you did not get. So another thing, you know, people do, which I, you know, which I used to do the same, you're punishing yourself. Punishing yourself. Like, one of my friends shared me a website. I don't remember the name. Sorry. He said that, you know, make a to-do list, and if you can't do those things at the end— until the end of the day, you have to donate certain money to a charity or the least favorite political party. And I was thinking Okay, let's do it then. And I actually did that, and I uploaded my to-do list on that website, and I thought, okay, let's do it, otherwise I will lose money. That's really painful because the money was going to the, uh, least favorite political party. I didn't want that, uh, but then after I started cheating myself, I started cheating myself, and I I was not, you know, being honest to donate my money. So that did not work, you know, that did not last longer because we don't want to punish ourselves. We try to cheat. Now, now we are moving to the next part. If you really want to know that your life is messed up, you gotta be aware of it first. You got to know that you're broke, right? You have to know, you have to understand, you have to accept that you have lost, right? You cannot just say, oh, I have tried. Either you got it or you didn't get it, okay? You can't say— I mean, this is the mindset you got to develop because I used to feel like, okay, I'm at least trying, at least trying. That's stupid. But we gotta be aware that where we are right now, we gotta be aware. We should be knowing where exactly we are in order to figure out where we want to be. So you need to understand that you are lazy. And many years ago, when I say to one of my clients, and, uh, he said that he was looking forward to learn NLP. And I asked him, why do you want to learn NLP? Because that's the question I ask to every single person who wants to learn NLP. And he said, I just want to learn. And I said, but why? He said, no, I just want to learn. I said, but what do you want to do? He said, I want to do this and that and blah blah blah, you know, so many things. Then I said, okay, so you know what you do, so why don't you do it? Why don't you do it? As one of the meta-models of NLP, it says, what is stopping you? And he was clueless, and he looked at me and said, nothing is stopping me. So Why don't you do it? Go on and do it. And he said, but why? I want you to learn. I said, but you need to understand that you know what to do. You, you are at a certain place right now, right? But you are lazy. You are not taking action. That's the issue with you. And he got offended. And I know that many people got offended. And if you call them lazy, And I felt the same, same thing when I called people lazy and they said, oh, how can you call people lazy? Right? You got no sense, you know, how to talk to people. I said, what? Is there a crime to call a spade a spade? Right? So the thing is, we need to be aware. I had the same feeling, by the way. I was refusing to believe that I am unproductive. I refuse to believe that I'm useless. I refuse to believe that I just wasted my time. You got to accept with the brutal honesty that there's something wrong, right? Because in order to fix something in your life, you got to understand that something is broken. You can't fix something which is not broken. Now, uh, there are some key, you know, causes for procrastination, why people are lazy. Number one is lack of drive. They don't feel the urge to do something. Then let me make you understand first that you got only one life to live. Maybe you can just avoid doing what you want to do. That's perfectly fine. But the thing is, you got to know why you're doing whatever you're doing. This is the basic problem. Now, every single business or a job is actually solving a certain problem, is actually giving certain pleasure to people, it's making people's life better. Every single job or business in the world Is making people's life better. Let's say for me, Patuk, he is a very good trainer and the coaching, he is making people's life better. Even if you are selling water pound, you might be saying what water pound is making, how water pound can make people's life better. The thing is people don't go to eat water pound just to eat water pound. They, you know, they are hungry and they're looking for some food, and that's why they go to warapong. And the food is the necessity, isn't it? Is the necessity. Also, let's take a look at some tea stall. People don't need caffeine that much, but you know what happens at tea stall or coffee shops? People come together. People do some informal communication and it brings them closer. The tea brings the people closer, and that's. Hi ji, hello. Yeah, so the thing is, if you have been to Cafe Coffee Cafe Day, I don't know if if I pronounce rightly Cafe Coffee Day Coffee Cafe. I don't know, but the tagline is. A lot happens over a cup of coffee. They are not selling coffee, they are helping people to come closer, right? If you are selling a computer, you are making people's life easy, and that should actually create the drive to work, right? Another thing is people see the work as the work, but guess what? With your worth, You can solve certain problem of certain people. You can make people's life easier or better. Don't look at the work as a work because we can't avoid work. This is the, this is the ultimate thing. You can't avoid working, which is most people are doing. They think, okay, we are not going to do anything today. That's perfect. People have a downtime, understand that, but it cannot be for a week or so. The thing is, work is actually, you know, we must hold on to it. Work is worship, right? Service to man is service to God. And in fact, we are helping people to solve problems with our work. So don't take work as work, take work as an opportunity to help others, To serve others, to make people's life easy. The second cause for laziness is distraction. People get distracted, right? And obviously we are living in the digital age. I made about a video a few weeks ago that why you should not be hungry for information. Yesterday I've been to a conference and, and there was a speaker, he said that read a lot of books. And I agree, we need to read a lot of books, we need to upgrade ourselves, understandable. But the thing is, the information most of the time, you know, is distracting us. You need to know what you need to know. Guess what happens when you go to India? You have a set agenda, then you know you got to spend a certain amount of time on Facebook or email. But guess what happens? You go to Facebook and then Facebook is full of stories, right? And really interesting stories, by the way. I just wonder why people, you know, like the photo of a girl, you know, catching a balloon and I don't understand that. But the thing is, people get distracted. They scroll down and down and down and down, and after 10 minutes they realize, oh God, I lost 10 minutes, right? They set the agenda, okay, let's spend 10 minutes to reply to certain emails. But guess what happens? You check email, then look at some promotional emails. You got a headline that says save 30%. From blah blah blah, you get tempted. You see, oh, let me save 20%, 30%, right? Win ₹200 if you click here, and you open that mail. Sometimes you look at some promotional mails from many people, right? You look at the headline, catchy headline that says, how I made $2,000 in one week. and you can too. And you get tempted, you see, oh, let me check it, right? The secret recipe of McDonald's and KFC, they don't want you to know, and you immediately click on it, you want to check it, right? And then someone— you see a headline— sorry, a blog— sorry, headline of a blog that's saying how you can work for a company for 2 hours doing the data entry work and make $1,000 in one night. You can't stop yourself. That's distraction. We get distracted, and that's the big cause for procrastination. See what happens when you sit for— sit to do some work. It takes some time to go into the flow state, right, to do the work with concentration. If you get distracted, it takes a lot of amount of time and energy to come back into that flow state again. Remember, when I work, I tell my family members or whoever I work with, I say, don't disturb me for a certain amount of time. I actually put my phone away for a certain amount of time because I know That as soon as you start working and the WhatsApp notification, you know, rings, and you feel like, oh, let me just check. And guess what? When was the last time you received a real emergency message on WhatsApp? How many emergency messages you receive on WhatsApp during the day? There are very few, sometimes none. But we check each and every WhatsApp message like it's really important for us. In fact, it's not. So you got to brutally avoid distraction. People in your life, Facebook, WhatsApp, or mail, even video games— that's distracting. And that's the reason people are lazy. They don't— they can't, you know, gather the energy to, you know, work on certain tasks. And they, if they can't get the energy, they leave the work. Then the third cause of procrastination is indecision. Oh, big thing. Sometimes you just only one decision away to do whatever you want to do. Like I said before, I had a client, you know, he wants to do something. He knew already what to do. But then something was stopping him. If you need to do something, just do it. Yep, just do it. You heard about, you know, in, uh, in the advert of Nike shoes, just do it. But like I said, you know, we can't persuade our reptile brain to work harder, to work faster. Sometimes it doesn't work. And I'll tell you later on in this, in this class that how to, you know, do something without looking for motivation. Wait for that. The 4th cause of procrastination is anxiety and also overwhelm. You know, we want to do so many things at the same time. We can't do. I tell you what, even during the day I can do only 12 to 13 things max, right? 12 to 13 things a day. I mean, completely laser-focused, I can say that. I— when I make a to-do list, in fact, I try to restrict my to-do list to about 9 things only, 9 things, because I know by the, by the end of 9 tasks, I, I won't have any energy to do more things, or the day will get— or they will get over. I won't have enough time to spend with others. So we get overwhelmed with the ideas. We want to do so many things and we become anxious. Oh, we gotta do this and that and this and that. You can't do so many things at one time, my friend. So stick to one thing at one time. Now the thing is, like I said, that we can't, we can't see the long-term goal. One of the, I don't know, weird questions I heard that, where do you want to see yourself after 5 years? Uh, I, I don't know how to answer that. So I don't even know what's gonna happen tomorrow morning. Fair enough. So the thing is, there's so many things are beyond your control. And I'm not disagreeing with the formula of 5-year plan, you know, I completely agree. But the brain, the brain is not motivated to, you know, see that far. It can't see that. So you got to set some short-term goals. Short-term goals is like, what are you going to do in next 3 months' time? We can't see beyond 90 days. 90 days is something you probably can visualize, but beyond 90 days, I don't know, it's just out of imagination. I break that 3-month plan into 1-month plan, okay? 3 plans, each of 1 month. Then break it down to weekly plan. On a specific day of a week, most probably on Friday or Saturday evening— today I did not go, but I usually go to a cafe where I just sit alone And make a plan of what you do from next Monday, a weekly plan. Because on Friday or Saturday, I have an idea that what I have— what have I done in this week so far, and what things I could not do but I must do in the next week. So I make a plan on Friday or Saturday evening sitting in a cafe. Why is it in the cafe? Why don't I sit in the office? It's just because I want to get out of my routine environment. I sit alone for an hour, I make a plan, and I also see how it's going to make an impact, right? How each and every task is going to impact, because every single task has a cascade effect, right? Also, one task— I mean, one big task cannot be achieved. Our mind cannot you know, cannot understand how to achieve that. Because every, every single, you know, thing you want to achieve requires certain tiny little steps, right? It requires tiny little actions in order to complete that project. Let me give you a small example. If you want to make a cup of tea at home, and it, it sounds— it looks so You know, easy in your mind. But if you just take a piece of paper and if you write down the complete recipe and the process to make a cup of tea from the very beginning, right? Hence you got nothing. So you need sugar, you need milk, you need, you know, water, you need a bowl, a gas stove, right? You need gas supply, you need chai ki patti. You need tea, I mean chaika masala and everything, right? You need those resources, don't you? Because without those resources, you can't make cup of tea. If you just ignore only one ingredient from it, you can't make cup of tea. So if you just write down the process, you will realize that you're going to fill up the entire page with the ingredient and the complete process. Right, and if you miss out any single process from it, you can't make a cup of tea. In the same way, you can't achieve whatever you want without understanding the tiny little steps involved in order to make that happen. Okay, so the thing is, when you make 3-month plan, you got to break it down. Okay, how I'm going to reach from here, from the beginning to the end? And what are the micro little steps involved? What are the micro little steps involved in order to make it happen? Then you break it down into one month. Then you break it down into weekly goals and daily goals. So the thing is, as we are talking about the procrastination and laziness and how to lead ourselves effectively. Let me share a story. About 2 and a half years ago, I mean, I spoke to Amit a few times before that I wanted to write a book. So, okay, let me write a book. I want to write a book, right? And I was— I kept telling people, oh, I'm working on a book. I want to write a book. I want to publish a book. And people say, oh, wow, good, good. And I was also feeling good. Oh, I'm going to be an author. But I was not doing anything. I was not going beyond 4 or 5 chapters. And I was thinking, oh, let me just take some time. Let me make a really good structure. I don't think it's right. And then I just postponed. And I postponed for many years. And on one fine day, I shared the same with my colleague, and I said, I really want to write a book. And my colleague said, so why don't you write it? I say, yes, I want to write a book. And he said, Mayur, why don't you write it? I say, yeah. And he said, you really want to write a book? Then write the damn book. It was said by my colleague. And I realized that I had no plan in place. Then I asked him, but how am I going to write a book? And he said, you know how to write a book. Because by that time I wrote more than 70 articles, you know, on my website. So I said, okay, let me try. And he said, okay, Mayur, let's sit down and let's plan out, okay? And he said, by tomorrow evening, you got to make a plan on what topic you want to write a book and what subtopics you want to include in that book. And then I had a question, how am I going to publish that book? Because We have to move from one publisher to another publisher to third publisher. I wonder who is going to approve my manuscript and who is going to publish my book. Then suddenly I realized that Amazon is giving the service to publish your book for free. Yes, if you want to publish your Kindle book, they do it for free. Then I say, okay, let me try. But I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to do those tasks. Then my colleagues say, so find a way out there. Then in one day, I made a plan. I say, I want to write a book. I want to write a book on conquer your procrastination and get your things done easily. And it took me only 1 month to finish that book. Just 1 month. Then the second— then my colleague said, would you like to write the second book? I say, trying to be greedy? Uh-huh. What do you mean by that? And at that time I was teaching conversational hypnosis, and my colleague said, why don't you write a book on that topic? I said, really? And he said, you know what you like, the structure is already within you, so write down. I said, no problem. And guess what? The second book again took only 1 month to finish because I had the complete picture in my mind. I had a big-sized paper on my wall with a calendar on it. It says everything. On this day, I want to write this many chapters. And I even gave credit to Amit in my— in that book, by the way. If you go to Amazon, if you open some free— I mean, preview pages, you know, you see the, you know, thanks to Amit Pathak, because, you know, he's my good friend. See, in just 2 months I wrote 2 books. Then my colleague, you know, went mad. He said, why don't you write the 3rd book in 3 months? I said, Now you're being really naughty, you know. And he said, no, just write, just write. I said, okay then. Then I had the confidence because I have published 2 books in 2 months. I thought, okay, let me write the 3rd book. I think I can do it. So I wrote the 3rd book called How to Be a Badass Writer. And again, it took only 1 month and a week or so, and that's it. Then I rested, and my colleague also rested. He said, okay, Mayur, now you take a rest. Okay, you have done a lot. So the thing is, you got to make some plans and you got to stick to one task at one time. Remember, even when you set some short-term goals, people make mistake that they, they try to do so many things at one time, and also they try to do so many things too soon. Remember one thing, everything takes time. Everything takes time. You can't do everything too soon. When I wrote a book, I rigorously spent, you know, few hours. I mean, I don't remember how many hours I spent specifically on the task of writing a book, nothing else. And I religiously dedicated myself to write the book. That's what you need to do. You can't do so many things at one time. Even if you want to lose weight, you got to start from small. You can't go large in the first go because every first step is really uncomfortable step. Now here's the thing, let me tell you why people can't work, you know, uh, can't work more. It's because they don't see the reward. Let me make you understand. You play games. I guess you might be playing games, you know, video games. I'm talking about Mario, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, San Andreas, GTA, whatever, right? Temple Run. Now the thing is, when I said earlier that when I did the research on why people are lazy and how to be productive, uh, I also approached some game developers, and there was a reason for that. Because I had a client a few years ago, um, 4 or 5 years ago I can say, and there was a lady and she said, my child doesn't, you know, study hard and he doesn't, you know, do the homework on time. And that lady says, "My child keeps playing video game for hours and hours." You know, Mustafa, you must have faced this scenario in many houses. This is a problem. People play games for hours and hours. मेरा बच्चा वीडियो गेम खेलता रहता है. And and I was thinking, I was not the only child. In fact, even some adults. They play games for hours and hours. And I was— I've been to a train station because I was going to a different town, and my train was late. And I was sitting there on the platform, and there were some people, you know, around me. They all had their head down, and they were playing games. Solitaire or whatever, and they were feeling really good. Train was about an hour late, and then it was announced that it is going to be another hour late. But those people, they're feeling refreshed. They, they were not— they said, oh, that's okay, train is late, no problem, we can play games. They were spending hours and hours to play games. Look at some children, they play games. Look at some adults, they play games just to Avoid working. But I thought, how come people can pay close attention and concentration to games? Because it requires a tremendous amount of concentration to play games. Look at Temple Run, a tremendous concentration. You got to pay attention for, you know, for every microsecond. How come people can focus that much? And that was— that made me, you know, clueless. I was thinking, how come people can't focus on the task they're supposed to do, and how come they can focus for hours on playing games? So then I approached some game developers. I said, how do you make games that's so addictive? People play games for hours and hours. And what do you do, by the way? It's just like cocaine, you know, people want more and more. The more you intend, the more you want to check. And this is mind-blowing. And I got the answer from them. You can use the same technique in order to be more productive. This is what happens when you play games. The first stage, right, the first level is that easy. Anyone can achieve. Anyone can achieve first level. Yeah, good. What about the second level? Slightly tougher than the first level, slightly, right? Then the third level is slightly, and so on. Now, this is an interesting part. What if that level 1, do you think you're going to continue? You might have played some games in your life, you know, uh, you actually gave up playing because you could not pass the stage, you could not pass the level, and then you gave up. Oh no, that's a baka game, and you gave up. You don't want to play again, and you think, oh, don't play that game, it's just too tough. So that's what happens when you try to do something bigger or Tougher in the first go. You can't do everything too soon. You need to gradually build up the strength, right? You got to go easy, because if you take this first step very tough, you don't feel rewarded, you don't feel motivated, you give up. Start from small. If you're going to gym, if you need to lift up, Start with ten kilo, fifteen kilo, no problem. But don't just go for fifty kilo in first go, and you will get tired. You will give up this. Let's say if you want to start walking, right? Maybe you can walk for five hundred steps. Then you can gradually go for 600 steps and steps in first— on first day you can't do that because you get tired and you won't get rewarded. Because like I said, our brain needs some reward. When you pass the first stage in the video game, what happens? You know what happens. No. And then you say, oh, hey, let's go to second stage. You go to second stage, then you realize that after 5 stages you get a bonus life. So you feel motivated. They give you a bonus after some stages, right? Don't they? Right? Something is added into your arsenal and you feel good. So there you go. That's, that's the key. Don't try to do so many things Too soon. Everything takes time, my friend. Everything takes time. And the second mistake, you know, people make is they don't have the clear idea about the end result. They don't know what's going to happen, what they exactly want. Like we discussed in the goal setting, well-formed outcome in neurolinguistic programming. And have a specific outcome in your mind. And that's damn true, I can say that's damn true. But guess what? When you wake up in the morning and you say, I want to work hard, you, you can't work hard. No, you can't. You can just work on certain tasks. Okay, I want to write a book, but how many pages? On what topic? By what time you want to finish? You got to have a very specific outcome in your mind. Let's say you, you go out of your house. If you're having a car, do you think you're going to start your engine if you don't know where you're going? You won't. But if you have a specific end in your mind, let's say you leave at Akuli Road at Kandivali, and then you decide, okay, let's, let's go to, uh, what you call, Linking Road. On specific stop, or let's say you want to go to this stop, then you have a clear idea that how you should move on. You steer your wheel based on, I mean, based on where you're going. You make strategies, right? So you make strategies based on the outcome in your mind. How I can reach there in the short amount of time and easily, right? Avoiding the traffic, whatever. If you don't have an outcome in mind, you can't start your journey. Okay, because even if you have business, let's say you want to make certain money, but you need to sell certain products or service to customers in order to make that money, right? But you got to make— you got to find more prospects, you got to get more clients in order to make that money. Making money is under your control, but the thing is, the decision of buying your product lies on your customer. If they don't want to buy, they won't give you money. That's simple. There are certain things beyond your control. If you are doing a job, you say, I want to make that much of money. No problem. But do you think your boss has the money to give you or not? The boss may not be happy with your work. He doesn't want to give you money. Then what can you do? Those things are not under your control. You can't just put the gun on the head of your boss and you can't say, oh, give me that money. You can't do that. Okay, so there are some things which are beyond your control. And the next mistake people do is they immediately reset their goals. And understand that sometimes, you know, you achieve so many things on some day and you feel like, okay, let me do more things, let me do more things. Go slowly. Like I said, you need to stretch yourself slowly, right? You can't take a giant step in the first step, in a first go. Take slowly because every single result, you know, requires certain tiny little actions. There's no shortcut. You can't skip certain tasks. You know, you can't skip certain actions. You got to do those things, right? Because again, like I said, let me come back to the point of reward. That just like a video game, when you take tiny little actions, when you get tiny little results, you, you, you get reward. You feel good. And that's the key of success, my friend. Remember, this is the golden point for you. When you achieve a small goal, it gives you reward. It motivates you to work more. Now, sorry, let me tell you what I do personally to work more, to get more things done. I give myself reward. Now, it's generally— it's not monetary reward because nobody's paying me, by the way. But I give myself reward based on the task I do. Now, when I work, I decide to do something for max 45 minutes. That means one task takes 45 minutes to complete. And that's it. I mean, I can't stick on one task for more than 45 minutes, but if that task, you know, must be done, I divide in 2 parts. I said task 1, part A, task 1, part B, and that's 90 minutes in total. That's how I divide, and I write on my to-do list. And then when I complete that task I just make a tick mark. Why there's a tick mark? The significant, I can say significant. Remember in your school time when you used to give correct answer, what the teachers used to do? Remember? And you feel motivated. You feel wow, I got the right. I got a tick and. You're still programmed to believe that tick is reward. So when you finish any task, I used to rub it off. I need to just, you know, take it off. But then I say, okay, let me just put the right tick mark next to it. And it created a different impact in your, you know, in my mind. Okay, so when you want to do something, break down into 30 to 45 minutes task. Even if you do nine things a day, you'll be in the far better position to do more things. Trust me. Sometimes what happens people do only one thing for entire day, and it doesn't even finish. But you got to break it down into small enough chunks. Again, the presupposition from NLP, right? Anything can be accomplished if you break down into small enough chunks. Chunks. And when you give a reward, you need to give a reward based on your behavior, based on the results you get. You can't just give yourself reward if you haven't done anything. Like I said, I mean, in the first 15 minutes of this class, I said that I also wonder why people celebrate weekend without significant achievement in the week. And so the thing is, they give themselves reward, right? for doing nothing throughout the week. You can work harder, you can party harder, nothing wrong with that, but you— there must be something, there must, um, there must be some results in a week so that you can celebrate, right? And people want the quick rewards because our brain, our reptile brain, it wants quick results. So if a task takes 30 to 45 minutes to do, our reptile brain can visualize the outcome And you can see the result, and as soon as it's done, you still feel motivated. You don't need to go and see some motivational videos, right? Because your mind knows, okay, task is done. And guess what happens? Do you know what? You've seen some football games or cricket game. Now IPL games are on, so The players were very hard, right? You know, before the match, during the match, and it's a lot of hard work. I can say that, and you know it very well. But you know what? After winning the match, guess what the players are doing? They're jumping around, they're dancing around, and yeah, and you feel how did they get the energy? Because they got the reward. Right, they, they found something that they were looking for. So even after the hard work, they feel satisfied, they feel motivated. And the commentator asked the question to captain or man of the match, how do you feel? And they say, oh, we are feeling fantastic, right? And the commentator asked, you know, what about— what do you think about the next game? Guess what's the common answer? The captain says, now we are confident, we think we can win the next match and we'll do really well now. And I think our players have played really well in this match and hope we will win. We will make any massive victory in the next match. And that's the answer. So when you do something, you feel satisfied. Why don't you give yourself reward every half an hour? I'm not saying again to give yourself money, but just a tick mark is good enough to motivate yourself. Now let me tell you some, some lessons which I learned during my coaching practice on how to help people to lead themselves more effectively. How do I do it, by the way? Now, first of all, most of the time you know what to do. Yeah. You know what to do. You are here, right? This is where you are right now. You want to go here, right? From here to here. The thing is, people actually feel motivated, then feel down, motivated and down, and they slowly reach from here to here. But that doesn't work. It takes time. Takes time. Then there are some people who just don't start. They don't start. They just don't think they should start, right? They're stuck. You can't— I mean, it's very difficult to help those people out because they Can't see where to go. There are also some kind of people who just say a lot of time that I'm going to do this and that, do this and that, this and that, this and that. They don't actually start. They say they're going to start, but they don't start. But guess what? If you want to get anything that you want, you got to take Required action. Let me just type in. This is huge. This is huge. Required action. Whatever you want to do, it requires certain action. Do it. If you want to drink a cup of tea. What actions it requires? You know what it is. Check it then. Check required action. Simple as that. But people are far too complicated. I mean, they make it far too complicated. They say we want to get motivation, then we will start. Oh, we will start. I will start tomorrow. Start next week. This is not the right time to start. Right? This is not the right time to start. Why? I mean, you know what you do. And I made a video a month ago, what to do if you don't know how to do. And I shared an idea in that video. It says figure it out. Okay, figure it out. I mean, everything is figured outable anyway. If a thing is humanly possible, Consider it to be within your reach. If something is achieved by someone, if you just believe that you can do the same thing, you can achieve it. Something is humanly possible, right? So take action. Take required action. But guess what happened? People don't feel like taking action. Ah, that takes us to the interesting part. Yeah, that takes us to the interesting part. People don't feel to take action. I tell you what, I don't advocate positive thinking a lot, okay? And I don't even advocate negative thinking. There is no such thing as positive thinking or negative thinking. It's just thinking. Be realistic. If something is wrong, you better admit that. Fix it then, right? You can't fix something if you don't admit that something is broken. We shared this earlier in this class, right? Right or not? We did. You gotta be aware. You gotta wake up and see something is broken. Something is wrong with our life. You admit that brutally is good for you ultimately. But you know what? We carry so much of ego to accept that we are not blown. Right, Amit? How much time we left, Amit? Yeah, about five minutes. Okay, let's all let me just end. Let me just end quickly. You know what? Most of the time you know what you do, right? You know, you know the cause of the problem. But the thing is you're not doing anything. You got to take action right now. Why wait for the right time? Most of the things actually, you know, doesn't require right time. It got, it got to be done right now. So take action, my friend. And friend, just take the step. Just do it. Just take required action. Nothing else I can say anymore in this class, my friend. Nothing else. So thank you very much. I think, Amit, I'm done. Over to you now. Yes, so, um, I would definitely encourage everyone to go and check out these courses as well as the books that Mayur mentioned, because obviously what gets covered in 1.5 hours is just a little bit of what you would probably go through and understand in a proper course or a proper book. So feel free to go around. and search out these books, buy these books and the courses. And, you know, maybe someday we will have one of you presenting here how this book has made a difference in your life and the way you manage your tasks and achieving your goals. And that would be a wonderful session for every one of us as a learning out of what you took away from this session. So with this, uh, I would like to thank Mayur for spending his time with us. You're awesome. And you gave us such, such wonderful tips. Uh, I'm sure everyone— on behalf of all of us, I would like to thank you. It was a great learning and a great experience. So with this, we will close the session. Thanks everyone. Thank you very much to all participants for listening, and thank you, Amit, for organizing. You're a legend. Stay in touch. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. You're welcome. Bye-bye. See ya. See ya.