I've read pretty much all of this stuff in the thread and there is a lot of overlap. The key is making a clear concise plan of attack and after I did that I am having excellent results.
The most important thing in all of this is not the goal setting but the systematic elimination of as many cue's as possible for your bad habits first. The quickest way to fail is to constantly have shit tugging at your attention. Ask yourself two questions:
1. How can I make the things I want to do easier?
2. How can I make the things that are distracting me harder to do?
Be clever it's like a game of outsmarting the impulsive cunty you and one who wants to be someone in 5 years. If you want to stop watching TV put it on Craigslist for Free and give it away. If you want to stop eating like shit then go to the store and buy $300 dollars worth of only healthy food and stock your fridge. If you want to stop playing video games get rid of your mouse, install a different O/S, Install site blockers and setup your host file to block problem websites you don't want to visit. Setup a totally different computer or buy a netbook that you don't connect to the internet to do work on.
I hadn't made any significant change in my life for nearly 10 years until I did this.
Get rid of as many distractions as you possibly can before piling on new goals like exercise, meditation, a hobby, or work goals.
Example: I've been meditating on and off for maybe 5 months and I could never get myself to do it everyday. I figured out the reason and it was because it was a hassle for me to setup a timer. I didn't have a clock and I didn't feel like unplugging all my soundcard and headphone stuff to play it on the speakers.
I went to
Audio Dharma - Meditation Timers downloaded the 20 minute, 45 minute and 60 minute timers and put it on an MP3 player. I made it easy and a no brainer to do it now. Now I do it every day.
The same thing will happen when you setup barriers for procrastination your brain will not fucking feel like re-installing a graphics card, getting your gaming mouse from the closet and re-installing windows every time you want to play Diablo III.
When you really put it together full circle it makes sense. David Allen's GTD system of making clear next action goals combined with a todo list / Brian Tracy's Eat that Frog.
I'm not kidding when I saw I've gotten more done in the last two weeks than I have in the last two years.
The way I started was with a piece of paper then moved on to spreadsheets.
tl;dr make it easy to win, make it hard to fail
