Category: Being Productive

Inertia is the natural tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion and objects at rest to stay at rest, unless a force causes the velocity to change.

Translated to human behavior, it begs the following questions:

• Going from rest to motion will require a force… one that’s enough to get you up even when you’re sleepy… even when you’re feeling lazy… even when you don’t feel like it… what is that force for you? …Don’t know? This might be precisely why you aren’t producing / performing / living the way you want to be. Identify and cultivate your “force” and watch how your world changes.

• There are more forces working against us than there are forces working with us. Starting with earthly laws such as gravity and friction and extending all the way to modern movement killers such as passive entertainment and social media—with plenty of other examples in between. What forces are actually working with us, though? What keeps us moving when everything else is trying to bring us to a halt? How can we better align with those fewer and more far between forces?

• Going from motion to rest is easier than going from rest to motion. In other words, starting back up once you’ve stopped is harder than keeping momentum going throughout your day. How can you stack and align your tasks so that less energy is required overall? Figure this out and you’ll have more saved energy, which equals more life that can be spent for other (possibly more important) things.

If you wake up and “wing it”—you’ll always fall victim to what’s urgent and distractionary.

If while you’re winging it, however, you discover there’s something important that you missed, could’ve done better, or did too late… and you create a reminder or system for next time…

Then suddenly you have a strategy.

And the next morning, when you wake up and follow it—you’ll likely notice a few things:

1. You’ll feel a pull to go back to what’s urgent and distractionary. Quick dopamine will always have an appeal, but at the expense of doing what’s meaningful long-term. Keep your prior lessons at the forefront of your mind.
2. You’ll discover something else that’s important that needs to get prioritized. And so the iteration goes. Slowly but surely, you’re strategy will grow and improve and become a productivity force to be reckoned with.
3. You’ll start to feel a little better about what you got done during that day. Quick dopamine wears off and leaves you feeling empty. Getting done important stuff leaves you with a lasting feeling of goodness.

Here’s the thing: we all start by winging it.

…It’s how we figure things out when we don’t have any experience or guidance to reference or fall back on.

But, continuing to wing it is a choice.

And not turning learned experiences into a strategy is a choice.

The question is: What kind of choices are you making in your day-to-day?

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P.s. I started uploading quotes from The Win Within by Bert Mandelbaum today. You can grab a copy and read along here.

When I asked two of my co-workers (whom I have weekly meetings with) if there was anything they’d like to add to the meeting minutes or general structure of how we meet… one of them said, “I think we should say something nice to each other…” in a half-joking, mostly serious kind of way.

And you know what…

We’ve been doing it ever since and I think it’s one of the best overall sections of the meeting. And I don’t just mean this in a silly kind of way… I mean this in a connection-forming, bond-deepening, mood-boosting-which-mood-boosts-every-single-other-person-we-interact-with-which-is-excellent-for-business-too… kind of way.

And you know what…

As tacky as it might sound to the super busy, high performing professional… the energy is met by the energy that’s brought. If you put some quality energy and thought into what you say… what you’ll be stunned to find… is that other people will bring some quality energy and thought into what they say as well.

This type of busy is meant to describe being so busy… that it’s awful.

Being busy is tough enough… it relentlessly sucks you out of the present moment (where life is lived), can fill you with anxiety (about how you’re going to get everything done), and makes it really hard to get important work done (because the urgent stuff keeps nagging for your attention).

But, there’s another perspective to busy.

…Being busy can also be a blessing.

It means you’ve filled your day with tasks and activities that you get to do—versus being left homeless on the street with no family, no connections, no resources, and no life options…

And rather than being awfully busy—eliciting a type of misery that follows you throughout your day into and out of every task… what if you tried being happily busy instead?

All those tasks you have to do for your family…? You get to do.

All those chores you have to do at home…? You get to do.

All those projects you have to finish at work…? You get to do.

All you have to do now is slow down, add a little deliberate to your day, and fill yourself with gratitude along the way.

Happily busy is an exponentially more beautiful place to be.

A tip from a friend on what to do when you’re feeling overwhelmed:

“The best advice I ever got from my 5th grade teacher stuck with me until this day. If you have a list of 10 things to do, don’t look at them all at once. Pick one and go from there. We’re only one person and if we train our minds to slow down when we have a meticulous or time consuming project, I find it relaxes the anxiety of feeling like I’ll never get it done. Hope this helps.”

I particularly like this idea of not looking at them all at once.

…Sure, make your list and get yourself organized on what all needs to get done. And sure, prioritize so you can distinguish between what needs to get done, what you want to get done, what doesn’t really need to get done, what can be delegated, and what can be deleted. And sure, take a quick look at it all.

But after that… stop.

Enough looking at the list.

The longer you look at the list, the more likely the list will paralyze you to inaction (and lead you to a modern day distraction).

Just pick something.

Go from there.

Train your mind to slow down.

Having a lot to get done is the modern day dilemma.

Getting one thing done at a time with a calm, clear intention is the modern day solution.

I’m getting better at controlling my downtime.

I know its value and know it’s what my mind needs after intense days/weeks of work, but I don’t want it to zap away an entire half day’s worth of time anymore.

Which, when I would browse all the different social media channels, is exactly what would happen. Not only would it zap away huge chunks of my day, but it would add zero to minimal value to my life and would more often than not put me into a bad mood / state of mind.

So, slowly, I’ve logged out and stopped using most social media apps altogether.

And slowly, what I’ve been intentionally turning to is more long-form content on YouTube.

This gives me control because I can be so much more deliberate in how I invest my attention whereas when I’m scrolling through short-form feeds, I get fire-hosed with dopamine smacks that I seem to only want to get more and more and more of—endlessly.

Long form, however, allows me to be more deliberate, to keep a better grasp in how much time I’m spending, and to focus on content that allows me to relax while simultaneously adding some actual value to my life.

…Worth considering as social media, in my opinion, only continues to trend from bad to worse.

I’m feeling very overwhelmed right now.

…Not necessarily in a bad way, though.

As those of you who have gone to business conferences, inspirational seminars, and/or events featuring some of the best in the world know… it can just leave you feeling like there’s so much to do and not enough time.

…Not to mention the everyday life problems that get tacked on top of the laundry list of ideas you want to act on… like how both of my websites are down right now and there’s nothing I can do about it which is stressing me the heck out.

…And also not to mention the exhaustion that usually accompanies these long weekends of training, learning, and conversations mixed with travel, jet lag, and messed up routines.

It formulates this weird inspiration haze that makes you excited to do things, but anxious about not having the energy or time to do what you want.

What’s carrying me through, though, is the calm reminder to simply do what I can now, with what energy and time I have, while staying organized on my future to-do items, and to let go and breathe out all that is outside of my control.

…I’ve done everything I can do to get my websites back up.

…I’ve acted on the items I’ve been able to act on so far.

…I’m slowly getting back to a routine that leaves me feeling fully energized and optimized for time.

And the rest… I’ll get to when I do.

…Which is, I keep reminding myself, the perfect pace to go.

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P.s. This is my post from Wednesday, July 10th.