I'm sure this happens to everyone at some time. You wake up in the morning and you just don't feel like doing anything. Or worse yet, you dread going into work.

Well, fear not. I stumbled upon this article that'll give you the tips and tricks that'll get you through any day. Even if you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

There's some pretty neat stuff here, but I'd love to hear what you have to say about doing work when you don't feel like it.

Drop a comment below and give us your secret tips.

How To Remain Productive When You Feel Like Giving Up

From Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Like most people, some mornings I wake up and feel less than enthusiastic about working. Sometimes, this feeling doesn’t stem from laziness or apathy, it’s a stronger power, a sense of futility and helplessness. Read More…

Let's face it. Not everyone is a morning person. Least of all me. But we still drag ourselves out of our cozy beds each day to live our lives.

To be honest, I just woke up and feel like going back to bed but what's a better time than now to write about having a great morning?

So I did some research, looked at the hardest parts of anyone's morning, and came up with this quick 5-step guide to getting the best out of every morning so that the rest of your day is absolutely amazing.

Step 1: Get A Good Night's Sleep

Probably the most important. You can do all the morning rituals you want but if you didn't get enough quality sleep, then you'll still be missing out on your full morning potential.

Now not everyone's the same. Some people only need 6 whereas I need a good 9 hours. Figure out where you stand and make it your target to get that amount of sleep every night. Of course, a little late night partying is allowed every now and then, just don't over do it.

Here are some quick tips on getting a better night's sleep:

• Meditate - clearing your mind can do wonders for getting you into deep sleep right away instead of staring at the ceiling for hours.
• Avoid caffeine and alcohol in the evenings. Read More…

I'd like to share a valuable principle with you. It's something I've taught to many business owners and executives I've worked with. This principle may go against the grain of some of your beliefs about time and the best way to get things done. Because of that, I ask you to keep an open mind.

Multitasking is a myth. It just plain doesn't exist.

Does that shock you? Multitasking has become something of a heroic word in our vocabulary. Many executives pride themselves on their ability to "multitask". Recent job descriptions that I have seen even ask that potential employees have the ability to multitask. A current national commercial sings the praises of multitasking. However, multitasking, as most people understand it, is deceptively counter-productive. Multitasking is tremendously costly. Multitasking hurts us every time we attempt to engage in it.

Background Tasking - Killing 2 Birds With One Stone

I should clarify a few definitions. When I speak of multitasking as most people understand it, I am not referring to doing something completely mindless and mundane in the background such as exercising while listening to a CD, eating dinner and watching a show, or having the copy machine operate in the background while you answer emails. For clarity's sake, I call this "background tasking".

Switchtasking - A Neurological Meltdown

When most people refer to multitasking they mean simultaneously performing two or more things that require mental effort and attention. Examples would include saying we're spending time with family while were researching stocks online, attempting to listen to a CD and answering email at the same time, or pretending to listen to an employee while we are crunching the numbers. What most people refer to as multitasking, I refer to as "switchtasking." Why?

Read More…

Mike Reining and Vishen Lakhiani with Sean Stephenson

A couple weeks ago, FinerMinds' parent company, MindValley, went on a company retreat. Now before you picture convention rooms and bad lighting, let me tell you where we went.

Bali, Indonesia.

If you think we're crazy for going all the way to Bali, we're not (well, maybe just a little bit). Because we're based out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia it only cost $10,000 for 46 people to stay in Bali for 3 beautiful, starry nights.

At MindValley, we're not just any boring company. When I said 46 people, what I really wanted to say was 43 people from 17 different countries and 3 amazing kids.

All the amazing interviews we've had on FinerMinds, the exclusive content, the growth of the FinerMinds community is credited to the employees of MindValley who continually strive for personal growth for themselves and for you, the readers, and the world we live in.

Read More…

For many of you out there you may be thinking about writing a novel, self-help book, an autobiography, or some other work of written art.

But when faced with writer's block, procrastination, self-doubt, and demotivation, how can one possibly finish what they set out to do? Trust me, I've been through it all when it comes to writing.

But there is an answer to all that. Not just an answer, but a solution with the end result being quick profits!

Sounds good right? Then read this guide to getting fast results and even faster profits from one of the most prolific writers out there in the self-help and spirituality genres, Stuart Wilde.

Read More…

The electric feel of creativity pulsing through your veins, your mind, and every inch of your body.  Sound a little too much?

Well, it can be. Especially when you're trying to figure out where to direct that energy and creativity. So just how do you choose which project to complete? When your options seem endless, your choice becomes more difficult.

But you can get help from the same spirit guides giving you this intense stream of information and imagination in the first place. But to do that you must understand how they work. And it comes down to the 4th dimension: time.

Read More…

In this fast paced, go go go world, it's no wonder that you're stuck doing a billion things at the same time.

The word multitask comes up all the time.  They talk about in school, employers list it as a requirement, and we all put so much emphasis on the ability to multitask that we sometimes forget to ask, "Is multitasking really helping me?"

Well the truth is that there is no such thing as multitasking. What really happens is that we end up switchtasking. Our mind just switches from one task to another giving the appearance of multitasking. This is why people shouldn't use their cell phones when they're driving. If people could truly do two things simultaneously, then there would be no accidents arising from a cell phone/driving combo.

What marketing guru Alex Mandossian suggests instead is stacking.

Read More…

I recently wrote a post explaining the importance of following your passion and doing what you love.

Well, FinerMinds' parent company, MindValley, is looking for people who want to do just that. We are hiring people who are out to get their dreams, achieve their goals, and believe in personal growth and development.

Read More…

When was the last time you saw your mailbox EMPTY? Seriously - end your day without having a single e-mail waiting for you and being able to start fresh the coming day?

A trivial question, some would say, doesn't matter if you have 1000 or 0 e-mails in your mailbox, you can always only read the ones that matter to you and ignore the rest, right?

Well, according to psychologists your over-flooded inbox might actually be the number one reason for your decreased productivity. Nothing wrong in being informed, but the amount of information that is being bombed at you every day simply exceeds your brains capacity to process it. Much too often we become paralyzed by knowing too much and not being able to decide anymore what is truly important for us.

When you think about it then checking your e-mail is the single most common habit that your parents didn't have -- yet for you logging in into your mailbox and browsing your e-mails has become so automatic and frequent that you rarely even ask WHY or consider seriously HOW you're going to process the information that you find.

If you're like most of the people then you almost never end your day with having 0 e-mails in your inbox. Most likely you have some e-mails that you've read, a whole bunch you haven't read and don't intend to either, some that you've actually written a reply to -- and some you just don't know what to do with (you probably decide to read them in the future -- which almost never happens).

It's a mess! And it's cutting down your productivity more than anything else.

Fortunately there's a way how to turn this disguised energy vampire into a well-tamed pet of yours, in other words: how to create a simple system that reduces significantly the time your spend in your inbox and gives the control over the information you consume right back to you.

It's called the 0-inbox system.

A productivity expert Merlin Mann explains the system in his highly insightful presentation. According to Mann the 2 most valuable resources that you have are your attention and time. You have a limited number of hours and minutes every day and no matter how much you'd like you can't add anything extra to it.

So Mann asks a question: "What is most important to you?" No matter what's your answer -- your family, project you're working on right now, your cat -- your mailbox actually reflects your priorities. If someone would check what has been going on in your mailbox in the past couple of weeks that person could tell a lot about where your actual priorities lie.

This is how crucial it is to actually have your inbox under YOUR control -- not in the hands of all those people who are mailing you every day.

If you still feel that having 0 e-mails -- and yet having all the important things done -- is rather daydreaming, you might find Mann's ideas sort of revolutionary. However as with most of the good things in life -- they're rather simple and obvious.

How often have you sat at your desk, piles of folders stacked around you and dozens of unopened e-mails lurking in your inbox, and felt like hiding in a bathroom stall or sprinting out of the office because you literally don’t know where to begin with all the work you have to do?

Sooner or later most people suffer a bout of work paralysis. This causes people to feel anxious and helpless and often leads to a nasty case of procrastination.

Over the last 20 years David Allen has worked with over a million professionals in hundreds of organizations worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies and U.S. Government agencies, to help them tackle the issue of getting things done. He is THE productivity guru. He is the author of two best-selling books: Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life.

David Allen can help YOU manage your work flow and get things done.

According to Allen, there are five discrete stages we all need to go though as we deal with our work (regardless of the setting): We 1) COLLECT things that command our attention; 2) PROCESS what they mean and what to do about them; and 3) ORGANIZE the results, which we 4) REVIEW as options for what we choose to 5) DO.

The majority of us can stand to significantly improve our handling of each one of the five stages.

The quality of our work flow is as good as the weakest link in the five-stage chain. Things go sideways when part of the process breaks down. For example, some people might be superb at collecting things, but fail to process or decide what action to take. All links must be integrated together and supported with consistent standards. Many people get stuck because they try to do all five phases at once, which causes a meltdown.

1. Collect. In the first stage, you need to collect all incoming items into ‘containers’ that hold these items until you have a few moments to decide what they are and what, if anything, you’re going to do about them. There are various collection tools out there – both high-tech and low-tech – that you can use: a physical in-basket, e-mail, electronic note-taking devices, etc. To ensure this phase is working properly, you need to test it against three requirements: 1) Is every open loop in your collection system and out of your head?; 2) Do you have as few collection containers as you can away with?; and 3) Do you empty your containers on a regular basis?
2. Process. In this stage, you need to evaluate every item that lands in each of your containers. When something lands in one of your containers, you first need to figure out what it is. The next question is to find out whether or not it is actionable. The answer is either yes or no. If ‘yes’, you need to determine 1) what ‘project’ or outcome have you committed to?; and 2) what’s the next action required?
3. Organize. After you’ve processed everything, you need to categorize and file the items. For non-actionable items, Allen suggests that categories include trash, incubation tools and reference storage. For actionable items, you will need a list of projects, storage or files for project plans and materials, a calendar, a list of reminders of next actions, and a list of reminders of things you’re waiting for. Allen also points out that all these organizational categories need to be contained in some form.
4. Review. You need to be able to review the whole picture of your life and work at appropriate interval and levels. Normally, this should be done on a weekly basis. This is an opportunity for you to scan all the defined actions and options in front of you, thus increasing the efficacy of the choices you make about what you’re doing at any point in time. It also gives you a change to ensure that your mind is clear and that all the loose strands of the past few weeks have been collected, processes and organized.
5. Do. The fundamental purpose of this workflow management process is to facilitate good choices about what you’re doing at any point in time. Now it’s time to rely more on your intelligence, practical thinking and intuition. If you’ve diligently collected, processed, organized, and reviewed all your current commitments, chances are you have a pretty solid idea of what you should be working on at any given time.

Listen to a talk by David Allen on GETTING THINGS DONE for Google.