Another way to put pressure on yourself is to imagine that you just received an all-expenses-paid one-week vacation at a beautiful resort as a prize, but you will have to leave tomorrow morning on the vacation or it will be given to someone else. What would you be determined to get finished before you left so that you could take that vacation? Whatever it is, start on that one job immediately.

Successful people continually put the pressure on themselves to perform at high levels. Unsuccessful people have to be instructed and supervised and pressured by others. By putting the pressure on yourself, you will accomplish more and better tasks faster than ever before. You will become a high-performance, high-achieving personality. You will feel terrific about yourself, and bit by bit, you will build up the habit of rapid task completion that will then go on to serve you all the days of your life.

Excerpted from Eat That Frog! :21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy. Copyright © 2007. Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Used with permission. All rights reserved.www.bkconnection.com.