You have enough enemies when it comes to getting things done—having your own brain plotting against you is just unfair. Hone up on a few strategies, thought exercises, and habits that get you past mental roadblocks and back to productivity.

Photo by CarbonNYC.

10. Pick Good Sounds

Megadeth doesn’t get everyone motivated, and classical is many folks’ idea of nap music. Music is a highly subjective thing, but that doesn’t mean lots of smart folks have spent time thinking about what kind of music works best for getting things done. Productivity guru David Allen prefers Vivaldi and other Baroque-period pieces that hover around 60 beats per minute. Founding Editor Gina and the editors at our gaming-crazed cousins Kotaku dig the ambience of Music for Airports. And while we’ve previously tried to tally up the best sounds for getting work done, the ultimate answer may be “Try something new. Not too loud, not too fast or slow.” And, for folks like your editor, stuff you don’t know the lyrics to.Photo by Ruud Hein.

9. Use Minor Distractions to Fend Off Big Distractions

Were you the kid who listened to mom’s advice about sweets before dinner, or were you the kid who tried to reshape the frosting so it looked like nothing was missing? If you were the latter, or it feels like that’s still the case, see how kids resisted marshmallows in a famous test. The main connection between all the good little kids who could hold out for a better reward was that they distracted themselves when temptation came up. Distraction, of course, is what you’re trying to stop doing, so we’re talking about avoiding one kind of distraction (wandering into email, getting coffee, checking a favorite web site) by using a more benign form (checking a project status, tidy up your desk a bit, stand up and stretch). If you acknowledge your temptations to get away from your work, that’s half the battle of stopping them. (Original post)

8. Set a Timer and Crank Until It Beeps

Which would you rather do: spend weeks on a big, multi-faceted project, or work 10 minutes on fixing typos and errors and then get a two-minute break? It’s surprising how easy it is to force yourself into working in a short dash, with a definite end in sight. It’s a technique beloved by 43 Folders, prolific personal finance bloggers,psychologists, and many others get to work when work seems overwhelming. (Original posts: 43f, GRS, Psychology Today).

7. Move and Breathe Like You’re Excited

Fast breathing, cold sweats, a pounding heart—when your mind is trying to stay cool before public speaking or other big events, your body knows how you really feel. Use that mind-body link-up to your advantage when you’re less than excited about a meeting, a task, or other obligations.Psychology Today suggests sports-style psych-ups, like moving around, talking to yourself with high-energy words, and breathing like you’re about to step into the ring. Your ability to do this stuff discretely will vary, but grabbing some quick private time is probably a better use of time than praying for an electrical outage, anyways. Photo by Andrew_Nielsen. (Original post)

6. Make Your To-Do List Doable

The demands that our jobs put on us is usually more than enough. The way many of us over-stuff and micro-manage our to-do lists makes it worse. Gina gave us the big picture ofmaking a doable to-do list, but her advice on saving your workday contains a fast-food take-away: cross one item that’s not worth doing off your list, right now. Whether it’s unimportant busywork, old ideas that don’t work, or something you can delegate to better hands, your list will speak more clearly to you and you’ll feel a lot better. Photo by ebby.

5. Don’t Check Email for the First Hour of Work

We know, we know—not everybody can technically do this. But, honestly, maybe you can, by shifting your schedule an hour ahead or training coworkers on when to expect responses. Organization writer Julie Morgenstern titled an entire book on this idea, the basic premise of which is that that first hour, the one where nobody can pull you in different directions, is when you can crank on an important task, the first thing to get done today, the thing you know everyone’s going to pull you away from later on. Try it out for a day or two—don’t let what happened overnight in your inbox dictate your entire day. Photo by trekkyandy.

4. Create a Fake Constraint

It’s something of a companion piece to the “dash,” or perhaps a 300-level class for graduates of Fooling Yourself Into Producing 101. But putting creative constraints on your work or personal projects—500 words, 140 characters, 24 hours, 10 people, three colors—makes you stretch your brain a bit further, and get more creative, than just plodding and plodding until you feel “done.” I found particular inspiration in how Beck gives himself and his friends just 24 hours to record entire cover albums. Entrepreneur and blogger Guy Kawasaki stands by the success of presentations that use 30-point fonts, 20 minutes, and just 10 slides (the 10/20/30 rule) for less soul-deadening effect. Whatever fence you set up, you’ll likely feel paradoxically more free inside of it. (Original post: 10/20/30).

3. Move Quickly on New Skills and Great Ideas

“If only I knew” is a dangerous tool to give your own mind. It’s easy to convince yourself that you can’t act on your ideas until you’ve learned everything about them, or researched every possible alternative, or read the entire programming book before writing your “Hello World” app. Video blogger Ze Frank calls these stashed-away thoughts brain crack, because it’s addictive to think you’ve always got an idea in the can that just needs one more thing. Adam built his first webappfrom what was basically scratch, and was all the happier for not holding out. Programmer Matt Nowack described what’s called for best—”hustle.” (Original posts: brain crack, hustle).

2. Have a Status Board (of Some Kind)

Just look at how the team at Panic software keeps track of their big-picture goals, small successes, and organizational progress. It’s neat, and it’s made their team more productive, but you’ll never get one. You can, however, analyze and panic-button your life with personal graphing tools, fitness monitors, goal-oriented webapps, or by taking inspiration (and caution) from the subjects of Gary Wolf’s NYT Magazine piece on The Data-Driven Life. Of course, people have been keeping personal status trackers for hundreds of years—they just called them journals.

1. Understand and Overcome Your Fear of Failure

The part of your brain that was forged in caveman times doesn’t want you to risk doing something great on your next project, to jump to a new career, to start writing on the side. It wants you to stay fed, remain quiet, and simply survive. Author Seth Godin and productivity writer Merlin Mann dug into the facets of this tendency—the “lizard brain,” the “puppy brain,” and beyond—in an interview conversation well worth listening to. Even if you take the step toward actually working on the project, your brain can start getting ahead on excuses for your failure, and they’ll affect the outcome all along the way. You can’t entirely stop your mind from wanting you to stay safe, but you can know what it’s trying to do and strive to work past it. Photo by Tiagø Ribeiro.(Original posts: fear of failure, excuses).

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

When is the last time you put your vision on paper. I am not talking about a 30-page business plan or the hottest self-improvement seminar that you went to and had to fill out a questionnaire or assessment. I am talking elementary school. Taking glue, pictures, colors and phrases and placing your vision on a board. This concept known as a Vision Board is a visual explorer.

It is our thinking, more than our surroundings, which determines our level of happiness. Hold a thought and you will create an emotion. That emotion drives a behavior, which in turn creates an event. To change your events you must first change your vision.

I was up one Sunday morning watching Joel Osteen and he was talking about visions and he stated that we must change our vision in order to change our lifestyle…he used chickens and eagles as an example. Chickens vision is limited, they only go after more of the same thing that is placed in front of them and they are always pecking down, they never look up for other things to eat. Eagles on the other hand uses his vision and soars, he chooses to get his food from afar, his vision is expanded and he uses that to survive. Which one are you? The chicken who just accepts what’s in front of him and continues to look for more of the same, or an Eagle who soars and reaching far to get what he wants?

The challenge, for most of us, is to move from pessimistic thinking to a place where your thoughts create feelings of hope and joy. So how do you do it? Simple, no secret, you create a Vision Board or better yet do what I do, have a Vision Board Party where you get a group of friends together with magazines, books, anything visual, and you cut out pictures that represent how you envision your life/business in the future. This whole process helps you turn your visions into reality and watch your goals come to fruition right before your EYES.

The concept of vision boards has been around for years; I actually started researching this concept last year and have conducted a Vision Board Party in Feb 2009. As a living testimonial, I was able to accomplish 80% of my goals for my life and business that I had on my vision board for 2009. Most people have a hard time creating a life plan or business plan and a hard time believing in the success of accomplishing their goals, but this visual process will give the motivation you need to go after “What’s been holding you back”.

Here are some tools you will need:

1) Create a vision board that includes pictures of things that you would like to have in life. Include things that you know you cannot afford right now, but if money were not an option you would have it right now. Items could include a vacation, a new house, a husband, wife, kids and of course more money and health. The pictures can come from anywhere such as magazines, computer printouts, and newspapers.

2) Place the vision board in an area where you’ll see it throughout the day.

3) Look at each picture on your vision board at least daily, and daydream about having that thing in this present moment. Allow yourself to be fully engaged in the daydream, and have fun with it.

Enjoy your visual creation and please keep your eye on the prize.

If you are in the NY area on January 26th you are invited to attend the Empire State of Mind Vision Board Party: click here for more information