Purposeful Productivity
Feeling like you spend too much time on your smart phone? Does your day go by with little to show for your efforts? Do you often find yourself feeling disappointed that you made little progress on heart projects – those things that, if moved forward could make a big difference in how you feel about your life? Time can seem to evaporate when we’re in the trenches. It happens to all of us.
As the year comes to a close, I am choosing to intentionally refocus where I give my valuable time. Here are my top 5 tips on being purposefully productive.
Start your day with an expectant, grateful mindset.
Before your feet hit the floor, take at least five minutes for prayer or mediation.
Gratitude should run the script in your mind.
Thanking God, the Divine, Universe for allowing you to wake in a healthy body,
For allowing you to have a warm bed to sleep in the night before,
For giving you a warm cup of coffee to look forward to, for everything that you are going to be given in this day, be grateful.
It’s the most powerful way to establish an expectation for great things ahead.
What steps create the most important outcomes?
We can all get lost in our ‘To do” lists.
Having too many items without organizing them in order of most important outcomes creates overwhelm. When we’re overwhelmed, we tend to get distracted by easier tasks that provide short-term satisfaction. (I perfected the magic of tidying up the refrigerator, my sock drawer, and basically every inch of my home when the overwhelm hits. I’m starting to realize a perfectly clean home is not a good thing!) Take time to make note of your own distraction habit(s).
What we want to do instead is to decide what one thing, when completed, would make the biggest difference in our productivity. Tackle the big stuff first. Then take on the next big thing for increasing your profits, your excitement factor, on so on.
Large corporations pay consults hundreds of thousands of dollars to coach them on this method. It can work for us to.
What is meaningful to you?
This is one of my favorites for the non-tangible things that make me feel more alive and aligned with my values. Take a big pause and close our eyes. Get still in your body and ask the question, “What is meaningful to me in this moment?” Our minds can’t answer this question. It can only be answered by our hearts. This makes it the perfect question to realign our activities and actions. Notice how your attention shifts and how you feel. What new and different things rise to the top of that ‘To do” list?
Muscle Test
If you’re not familiar with this technique, it’s a method that many holistic practitioners use to determine what is best for an individual. Your body has all the correct answers for you already stored inside. I teach clients to muscle test to decide if a particular action, person, choice ‘serves your highest good” and use the technique often in my own life.
5 Second Rule
Now that you know what activates deserve more of your focus, use the 5 Second Rule to take action fast. Mel Robbins created this phenomenal tool and it has transformed her life and the lives of thousands of others.
The concept is simple. When you catch yourself dreading, avoiding, procrastinating, think of the thing you need to do that will have the biggest impact. Stop and immediately go into NASA blast-off mode. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” and Go! Make it happen without hesitation! By immediately taking action, our mind doesn’t have time to kick in and try to reason with us.
This process reminds me of the courage young kids must harness when they desperately want to kiss their first crush. They go for it with gusto knowing that everything will be better on the other side.
These simple new habits can make you the master of your time and your life.
Here’s to your awesome success and joyful outcomes!