Category: Being Productive

Being surprised when something comes up is not a good strategy.

Better might be to expect surprises and set aside a designated time each day or week or whenever—when the things that inevitably come up can be addressed.

• This works for work: Maybe you designate one hour each week for pop-up tasks and surprise assignments.
  
• This works for relationships: Maybe you designate 30 minutes after dinner each night to touch base and address daily challenges, buds that need to be nipped, and important topics that could easily get swept under the busyness rug otherwise.
  
• This works for chores: Maybe you designate one weekend each month to a different house maintenance category. (e.g. Week 1: Deep cleaning; Week 2: Fixes & Repairs; Week 3: Landscaping; Week 4: Other).

The difficulty with not having these preemptive pockets is that each surprise task that comes up becomes a stressor. Not just because of the additional problem(s) they present, but because of the strain on the schedule they represent, too. Now, you have to find more time when you already didn’t have enough time to do this thing when you already have too many other things to do…

But, if you have preemptive pockets of time set aside for the inevitable daily surprises, then the problems get mitigated almost as fast as they’re created or recognized. And suddenly, surprises won’t shake your day how they used to.

Eventually, your biggest surprises every week won’t be the annoying ones (because those are planned for and expected)—but will be the times if/when you enter your preemptive space and nothing needs to be addressed at all.

…And what a pleasant surprise that’ll be instead.

Sitting in meditation can sometimes feel like a waste. Like you’re spending time doing nothing when you could be doing something. And resultantly can have opposite of the desired effect on anxiety.

Yet, I am reminded time and again how it is often one of the most productive things I do in my days. Not because of how much I’m getting done during that time—I’m literally sitting down and doing nothing. But, because of how much clarity and calm I’m gaining during that time.

Clarity and calm is highly underrated and wildly under-discussed in the productivity conversation. It’s on the days when I feel most busy, that I tend to forget the most (and make the most mistakes). And it’s on the days when I feel most calm that I feel most on top of things and effective.

Just the other day, in a simple 15 minute zazen meditation session I:

• Had a blog post idea arise
• Remembered a person I needed to reach out to
• Had an flow for an upcoming martial arts demonstration come to mind…

This, however, wasn’t the point of the meditation—don’t misunderstand what I’m saying.

The point isn’t to have blog ideas, remember people, and get things organized on your to-do list. The point is clarity… so that you settle the mudded busyness that wreaks havoc on our mind and can be more deliberate and focused in your approach when done. And in that instance, that’s what gaining clarity looked like for me.

Remember this: if you don’t have time for clarity… then you’d better make time for mistakes. Because that’s exactly what’s coming when you don’t give your mind time to settle.

Getting things done can often involve many steps, and in our busy lives, casually coming across a task (that has many steps) AND having the available time to do them all isn’t often.

Or, let’s be honest, we’re too tired or lazy to do them all at that moment in time.

This is where one step closer comes into play.

Rather than completing the whole chain of tasks, you do just one of the steps in the task so that it’s a little easier to fully complete (or get one step closer again) later.

Here’s an example I used just recently:

Picking out an outfit to wear, I noticed I had a bunch of clothes that I don’t wear anymore than needed to be donated. So, rather than take them to the donation center right then, I put them into a pile near my bedroom stairs. Then, on another day, I took them downstairs and placed them near my back door. Then, on another day, I put them into the trunk of my car. Then, on a day when I happened to be driving past a donation center, I spontaneously pulled over and donated them.

It isn’t often that I’ll casually get a multi-layered task done (unless it was in my plan to get it done), but I definitely get multi-layered tasks one step closer to getting done—casually (in an unplanned way)—every day.

And it’s in this small practice, done regularly, that the big—blog worthy—difference is made.

I obsess over finding ways to do things optimally. If there’s a way to save even a pinch of time, energy, or money… I want to know about it and I want to make it a part of my lifestyle asap.

Because of this obsession, I have a very redundant typical day. I have optimal:

• Sleep and wake times
• Chore and personal care days
• Workout strategies and regimes
• Eating windows and food choices
• Work flows and compartmentalized work times

…If there aren’t any extenuating circumstances or unique variables in the day, I could very well live the same day, day-in and day-out without missing a beat. And I would be totally fine with it because in my mind, I’m doing things in an optimal way… why change things to a less than optimal way?

…Here’s the catch.

It isn’t very long until an extenuating circumstance intervenes or a unique variable interrupts.

These past several weeks in particular have thrown my normal, redundant schedule for a loop. I’ve travelled to California and Pittsburgh; attended Martial Arts tournaments and music festivals; slept in cars, at friend’s houses, and in hotel rooms; etc…

Optimal exits the conversation real quick under circumstances like these.

And what I’ve had to remind myself these past few weeks is that optimal doesn’t have to be defined within the confines of one day. Optimal can be defined within the context of seasons.

Some days you reap; some days you sow…

Some days you produce; some days you recharge…

Some days you get it all done optimally; some days you’re better off optimizing for one thing in particular based on the season you’re in… like sow, recharge, or rest.

There’s always something that can be improved.

Which means there’s never going to be a time when the work will be “done.”

Understand this and remember to do just what you can today. And when you’ve done what you can within the confines of your allotted time for work that day—and this is the important part—leave the rest for tomorrow.

Go home, rest, invest time with friends and family, decompress, explore hobbies, and create art… go and do what you need to do so you can return to work the next day recharged and ready.

Better that than trying to fix it all immediately and having nothing left give the next day—especially when there are countless days of work yet ahead.

It’s amazing how seamless doom scrolling is for me when I’m tired.

I’m sitting here trying to catch up on work after a long weekend and it’s like… I can’t help but scratch every damn itch for distraction that peeps into my mind. It’s as if the self-discipline and focus has been drained right out of me. And auto-play videos? Forget it. It isn’t until the stupid things end that I realize they had my full and undivided attention the whole time they played. I was shook how long it took me to get out of that hole and finish the work I had at hand.

Don’t get it twisted: Being well rested is top tier productivity advice.

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P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.