Productivity Myths that are Slowing You Down, Part 2

If you are going to become a serious sports bettor, you have a lot of work ahead of you.  This is a job which requires you to do ongoing research, analysis, and development of betting techniques and to keep up with sports teams and athletes on a continuous basis.  It can chew up a lot of hours, and if you are doing it on top of a day job, you have your work cut out for you. 

That is why becoming a productivity expert is a must!  I have shared productivity secrets for sports bettors with you before, and in my previous instalment in this series Productivity Myths that are Slowing You Down, Part 1,  I talked about several common productivity myths.  Check it out if you haven’t already.  Once you have, here are a few more!

1. You need to be inspired or excited to get things done.

Do you sit down to work sometimes and think, “I am just not in the mood today to do this?”  How often do you put off your work until tomorrow?  There are days you are not going to be feeling inspired—you may even sometimes feel downright bored.  While sports betting can be an exciting career, there are still plenty of tedious tasks associated with it. 

But you do not need to be feeling inspired just to accomplish the day’s tasks.  Being productive is about learning how to work around your lack of motivation and recognising that realistically, not every day is going to be accompanied by a surge of excitement. 

2. Willpower is a limitless resource.

“Willpower” is very much treated as a poetic concept; after all, physicists are still debating whether it even exists.  For that reason, many of our ideas about it are fairly arbitrary.  There are a lot of people (bosses, teachers, and so on) who may have found it convenient to suggest to you that willpower is a limitless resource because they wanted you to keep your nose to the grindstone.

But research suggests that willpower is a limited—but renewable—resource.  It can be depleted if you go at it too long and too hard.  Breaks from self-discipline are essential.  Otherwise you can actually deplete your self-control.  That is how bad betting decisions start.  So now and again, ease off and cut yourself some slack.  This is a marathon, not a sprint.

3.  You need to do your hard work in the A.M.

For whatever reason, our culture has long been obsessed with the idea that you need to wake up at the crack of dawn to get anything done.  If you are a “morning person,” then for you this is completely true and you should stick with it.  But if you are not, you should not be forcing yourself onto a “morning person” schedule with your betting work.  Yes, there is some work you may occasionally have to do in the morning (like checking last-minute news before a match), but a lot of work you can schedule when you actually want to do it.  So long as you can be disciplined and stick to a working schedule on your own time, go for it!  Pick a window to work when you are functioning at your peak for the day (or night).

Once you manage to set aside these productivity myths, you can start putting practices into play that will facilitate far more actual productivity.  You will get more done in less time with less effort, which in turn will actually prevent that willpower depletion discussed above.  Ultimately you will enjoy a more stable, balanced life as a sports bettor, and you will make smarter and more profitable choices.