The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play Paperback – Illustrated, April 5, 2007

What a fantastic book! I am so grateful to Neal Fiore for writing it and I thank my lucky stars that I found his book. Although I did buy the paperback, I also got the audible.com version and have been listening to it for the past week when I'm in my car. Already I have completed a task that had been hanging over my head for the past 5 months. I've been getting much more done with less stress and anxiety, and I'm only on the 4th chapter or so. I've also been enjoying my free time more, in that I am guilt-free, just as he says.No matter how badly you want something with your conscious mind, if your unconscious mind is convinced that it could be dangerous or painful, it will find a way to keep you from doing it, every time. If you were raised to believe that your worth as a person was dependent on performing well, there is just too much at stake for you to risk failure. We need to separate our WORK from our WORTH. This is just one of many important insights I gleaned from this book.Fiore also says that procrastination can become an addiction, because it makes us feel better in the moment, in that we avoid the source of our anxiety. But by constantly shying away from challenging tasks, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to start out as a novice and gradually increase our skills until we are competent and then expert. Most of us procrastinators are so harshly judgemental of ourselves that we expect to be perfect right out of the gate, which is generally not possible if learning something new.Really, I am just now realizing what a huge problem this is for me and how much it has held me back. If one has a phobia about work, your life will never be right. You will not live up to your potential, achieve your dreams, or succeed financially. Although our addiction is not obvious like an alcoholic's or a compulsive eater's, the effects are very real. I really believe this book will change my life and will report back on here in 6 months to let you know how it's going.

The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play originally was published in 1989, so perhaps everyone besides me has already read this book ... but I found it incredibly helpful in diagnosing my current procrastination problems with finishing my book and getting done some nagging stuff on my to-do list.Pros:- Practical tools to diagnose your problems (keeping a procrastination log).- The "Unschedule" tool to schedule your fun time, to keep you motivated to get your work done.- Acknowledgment that most of us actually only have 15-20 hours a week for the big projects, once you plan for meetings, email, phone calls, showers, kids, sleeping, and the rest of life.- Great for self-employed people who have wide open but incredibly busy schedules.Cons:- Really, you've heard a fair amount of the stuff in this book (keeping track of your time, setting goals, etc.) but I found it was presented in a way that was helpful to me.- If you are not a self-motivated person, not sure that scheduling "fun" time will get you motivated to do work; especially if you are not sure what you should be working on.- The Now Habit contains a bunch of procrastinator stories that frankly, I speed-read through because reading about other procrastinators make me upset, but those stories may be very helpful if you feel alone in your habits.What I've already used:- Realized that the reason I was procrastinating on finishing my book (it was 98% done) was avoiding delayed failure. In other words, when I finish my book it will be published and I could fail at selling the book, so if I never finish, I can't fail. Nuts.- Used the "unschedule" to figure out I only have 15 hours a week for major projects.- First day I used the "unschedule" I got all my work done by 2:30 PM. I didn't know what to do with all that time -- it was weird and great!