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Just some thoughts I’ve been pondering around what real productivity is, and how helpful it is to treat it like a practice.
- Why am I doing the tasks on my list? Intentionality
- What is the outcome of my tasks? Review & Adapt
- Do the tasks on my list move the needle on my goals? What Really Matters To Me
- Why am I so busy? What should I be saying no to? Focused Productivity
- My “system/routine” doesn’t have to be perfect. Iterate, grow and change as I learn more. Be flexible
- Planning and Review need to be the most consistent things… not the actual system. Mind Like Water
- I can’t remember who originally said it, but I remember hearing this when listening to the book Measure What Matters: “We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.”
- When you trust yourself to review stuff in your system, you will then trust your system.
- Just do it! Don’t wait until you “perfect it,” that will never happen.
- Habits and intentions, and being flexible with yourself — You may have the best intention to wake up early and go work out. Your alarm goes off and you wake up, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. Reschedule that for later in the day, but actually do it still.
- Did you miss completely? That’s okay… it’s only practice. You can do better next time. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to it.
Why Call It “Practice?”
We have different emotional responses to different modes of “doing.” Practice conjures thoughts of working at something to get better at it. It’s perfectly fine to make mistakes or not be perfect because you are still “practicing” to get better. For me, I seemed to be putting too much pressure on myself and became almost defeatist when I wasn’t perfect. Instead of just trying harder, I would sort of give up. Changing my mindset to one of practice, knowing I have a LOT of room for improvement, has made it easier psychologically to get back to it when I fall short. In fact, I have started to apply this mentality to many different modes of my life.
