It's the New Year. Have you done any planning? I sometimes feel like I have done more drifting than planning. But planning will give a sense of direction. Think of it as a road trip with some destinations in mind. I'm not talking about the high-flung promises you might make to lose weight or get more organized. I'm talking about deciding what direction you want to go in, and setting up some plans to move in that direction. No? You haven't done a plan? You should. It's not too late.
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My dog had things that she could teach me. She had few needs, few desires. Her life was peaceful and simple. So here is the Beagle's Guide to Simplicity.
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I was recently trying to get some work done, and there was one cat banging on the blinds and the other one on the desk draping her legs over my forearm as I tried to type. I was thinking about writing the article about cats as productivity destroyers, but then I realized that cats actually understand deliberate living concepts in a way that most humans don't. So here is the Official Cat Guide To Deliberate Living:
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Did you ever feel so overloaded that you simply want to shut down? Or perhaps you need to be at least two places at the same time? It gets worse at this time of year, too, with all the holiday activities added on top of everything else. It may be time for you to perform an activity audit.
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Mom sayings: there are certain things that all moms seem to say. I don't know where they started, but I know that my mom said them (or variations of them), and they can all be looked at in the light of deliberate living. Here goes:
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Have you ever found that there is a time when your life is suddenly frantically busy? So much that there are not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything. I've heard this called a Task Explosion. I think explosion is an apt description, because for me it always happens suddenly, I never see it coming, and it sends me reeling across the landscape. I've had a couple of these happen this past year. A couple frantic all-hands-on-deck to get product out the door, coupled with family demands and suddenly everything is turbulent.
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Managing time is the basis for all productivity systems, yet the systems assume people already know how to do time management. This is not a fair assumption. Most people don't know how to manage time, but turn to productivity systems to help them.
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One of the ways to get things done faster is to use time compression: set a tight deadline and then pare down the task at hand to the bare essentials.
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It's funny. When we have all the plates spinning in the air, we never intend for any of them to fall. But when you're spinning plates, it's easy to hit the productivity wall.
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I've seen over and over that we procrastinate on something because deep down it goes against our core beliefs or because we know it's a waste of time. I think there is a third type of procrastination: where we procrastinate because at some level we can't accept the larger meaning of our actions.
