If you've been working on being honest with yourself you probably have discovered that you are settling in many areas of your life. If you did the "honesty inventory" I described in a prior post then you have probably identified areas of your life that you need to change. First of all congratulations! As I discussed before just becoming aware of the lies you have been telling yourself has moved you into a higher level of living. But you can't stop there. Now you have to truly commit to not only remaining in truth but changing that truth to what you want it to be!
One of the rules along the way that will save you a lot of time comes from a pretty famous story no doubt originating from bible quote at the beginning of this post. The story goes like this:
A lumberjack who worked for a demanding boss for over a year was suddenly fired for low productivity. He was replaced with a lumberjack who was promoted by the same boss in less than two weeks for high productivity. When the first lumberjack heard this, he went to the forest and asked the lumberjack who took his job what his secret was. The second lumber jack said " every twenty minutes I take two minutes to sharpen my axe".
The point is simple (again, most profoundly useful life strategies are). Whether you are trying to lose 30 pounds, rekindle your marriage or get that promotion at work you need to work smarter not harder. Here are some suggestions for "sharpening your axe":
1) Get 8 hours of restful sleep. Sleep deprivation in the name of productivity is an oxymoron. Sleep deprivation leads to poor focus, low energy, hormonal changes, mood problems, anxiety and furstration. A restful night sleep will undoubtedly help you perform whatever your task is the following day.
2) Exercise daily - It improves mood, strengthens you body, fights fat and boosts your immune system. Its simple. You are either vibrantly healthy while trying to perform you tasks or you aren't.
3) Eat properly - Give your body what it needs. Whether you are trying to get amorous with your spouse or filling out the applicatino for the business loan, eating properly will keep your blood sugars level and help you maintain focus. Your body will work with you instead of against you by rewarding you with energy and well-being while you accomplish your task.
4) Don't multi-task. Perform one thing at a time, always. You're lying to yourself if you really believe you can do two or more things at once that both require your attention. Obviously, you can maximize efficiency by using "net time" which is simply those times when you CAN actually do two things at once but we as humans in the 21st century think we can way more simultaneously than we really can. We can listen to an audiobook on self-improvement while we jog or drive. But we can't really email and drive or study for an important test while playing poker online. We can't really review those reports and surf the web. You know where multi-tasking is negatively effecting you. Get rid of it. Try it for a week and watch what happens when you focus on one thing at a time.
5) Create a list of goals for the day and review them in the morning, again at noon and then again in the late afternoon early/evening. Live purposefully. Decide what is most important to get done today and tackle that task first. If you do this every day you willl undoubtedly become more productive. Make sure you are making realistic, objectively verifiable goals that in themselves are small steps to a larger goal for your life.
6) Delegate. Don't fool yourself into believing that you're going to "go it alone". Succesful people have support systems. They have people who believe in their life purpose and work with them to accomplish it. Outsource those things that don't honor your time or that someone else is simply better equipped to do. I love to coach and write about personal growth but I am not a computer programmer. I let the good folks at blogpot do the programming that made this blog possible without me having to learn html. Likewise I currently have a web designer designing my website. Could I learn how to do this on my own? Sure I could but its simply not worth my time to learn. I am a life coach, not a web designer.
7) Clear your head. Spend at least 10 minutes a day minimum in silence. Complete silence. We have so much information bombarding us every day. Our brains are always being programmed whether intentionally or unintentionally by the environment around us. TV, Radio, people on the subway, newspapers, websites, co-workers, texts, tweets. . . well you get the idea. Try taking just 10 minutes a day to sit in silence. You'll immediately see a boost in overall productivity.
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