Answer these questions:
- How do wives get their husbands to do "difficult chores" like washing the dishes, taking out the trash...?
- How do parents get their kids to clean their rooms?
- How do teachers get their students to read?
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition.
Others - friends, co-workers, family members, routinely make us do things simply by repeating their requests. Even we don't want to, we eventually give in and do it.
On the other hand, there are things we want to do but we keep on procrastinating. Do we need more willpower? Maybe not.
Here's how I used the power of repetition to create action.
A few months ago, I created an Anki deck with 30 great quotes. It took a few hours and I was done.
Before the quotes, I used to tackle my easiest decks first. However, after a few weeks of memorizing the quotes with Anki, I changed. I started doing the hard ones first and here's why.
One of the quotes I memorized was by Dale Carnegie, "Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs would take care of themselves."
I started to mentally hear this command, "do the hard jobs first." I wanted to ignore the voice and do the easy ones first but i couldn't. I had two choices:
- Delete the offending quote
- Obey and do the hard tasks first.
I chose the second.
I know it seems like a minor change in behavior and you may be right. However, it's awesome what repeatedly reading and reciting a few quotes through Anki could do.
In conclusion, if you haven't done so, download my Anki deck of success quotes free of charge. Start reviewing them daily. It only take a few minutes per day.
Next time, I'll talk about using Anki to remember what you read in articles.
