My Productivity Strategy to Reset, Get Unstuck, and Focus on the Right Things

the moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside showing too much of yourself that's the moment you may be starting to get it right this is a quote from Neil Gaiman one of my favorite fiction writers it's from his University of the Arts commencement speech but let's bring it back to my story few months ago I had a birthday party it was great dozen friends and I gathered for a few days of sun Beach barbecue catching

up we do every year and then on the last day I didn't get up until 11:30 that's late even for me knowing full well that the last few remaining friends were leaving about 30 minutes later around 12:00 noon and the sad reality is I was afraid of being alone I was afraid of being lonely so like a child I hid my head under the covers that's literally and hit snooze until I just couldn't postpone reality any further but why am I telling you this why am I being so self-indulgent telling you this ridiculous story it's

because we all like to appear successful a nebulous term at best and the media like to portray certain stand outs as superheroes these people on the magazine covers and so on and yes sometimes these dramatic stories of overcoming the odds are super inspiring but often just as often they lead to an unhealthy conclusion maybe an inner monologue which is something like well maybe they whoever they happen to be maybe they can do it because they're incredible they have no Faults they're just Cy chop ing the day and winning at all moments but I'm just a

normal person I can't do that the reality is most superheroes these superheroes are nothing of the sort they're just as weird and neotic as we are they're strange creatures who do big things despite lots of self-defeating habits and selft talk so to personalize this let's bring it home I am definitely no superhero I'm not even a consistent normal whatever that is so let me give you a little laundry list not too long ago I cried while watching Rudy on an airplane and uh that was caused for concern for a lot of people around me I

repeatedly hit snooze for 1 to three hours past my planned wake time because I simply didn't want to face the day I considered giving everything away moving to Montreal Seville or Iceland location kind of depends on what I'm trying to escape I've used uh gentlemanly websites to relax during the day when clearly having other urgent and important to do I wore the same pair of genes for a week straight just to have a constant during weeks of chaos so listening to all that you might think it seems pretty dysfunctional right I assume so I certainly

hear it that way but around the same time especially so the latter few weeks of that I also was able to increase my passive income 20% bought my Dreamhouse got to the point where I was once again meditating twice per day for 20 minutes per session without fail so not winning any gold medals in meditation but incredibly helpful and stabilizing I cut my caffeine intake to next to nothing that usually means po tea in the morning and maybe a green tea in the afternoon I've had no more than one cup of really strong coffee per

week there's a lot to that but suffice to say much improved sleep signed one of the most exciting business deals of the last decade including working on a collaboration that is first of its kind for me completely transformed my blood work including a few biomarkers I've been working on for years and and I realized as the next Point once again that let's just call it manic depressive symptoms are just part of Entrepreneurship and last but not least I have come to feel closer to all of my immediate family members so where does that leave us

personally I suck at efficiency which is doing things quickly or doing things super well but I have a few tricks so here is my coping mechanism it is an eight-step process for maximizing efficacy which is doing the right thing number one wake up at least an hour before you have to be at a computer screen email is the mind killer so don't go immediately into reactive mode number two make a cup of tea I like puer tea and sit down with a pen or pencil and paper I like to do it analog number three write

down three to five things and no more that are making you most anxious or uncomfortable they're often the things that have been punted from one days to do list to the next to the next to the next and so on and most important usually means most most uncomfortable or very frequently it does with some chance of rejection of conflict to find the most important you can often just look for the most uncomfortable with some chance of rejection or conflict so write down those three to five things step four for each item ask yourself if this

were the only thing I accomplished today would I be satisfied with my day also ask Will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later that's a nod to Gary Keller the one thing so thank you for that Gary step number five look only at the items you've answered yes to for at least one of those those are the high leverage items if removed number six block out at least two to three hours to focus on one of them for today one let the rest of the urgent but less

important stuff slide they'll still be there tomorrow step number seven and I'm repeating to be clear block out at least two to three hours to focus on one of them for today this is one block of time uninterrupted no distractions no social media cobbling together 10 minutes here and there to add up to 12 minutes does not work step number eight if you get distracted or start procrastinating have to everybody don't freak out and downward spiral just gently come back to your one to do congratulations that's it that's the whole thing this is practically the

only way I can create big outcomes despite my NeverEnding impulse to procrastinate nap otherwise Fritter away my days with all sorts of and it works works really really well and I've come to learn if I have 10 important things to do in a day it's 100% certain that nothing important will get done that day so you got to pick one thing on the other hand I can usually handle one must do item and block out my lesser behaviors for two to three hours a day in the beginning of the day that's what works for me

it does not take much to seem super human and appear successful to nearly everyone around you if you learn to single task single single single single task one in fact you just need a sing simple rule what you do is more important than how you do everything else and doing something well does not make it important so material over method the what over the how and if you consistently feel the counterproductive need for volume and doing tons of stuff maybe you should put a few things on post notes put them in your bathroom and the

first that you can add is being busy is a form of laziness lazy thinking and indiscriminate action does not mean that more equals more in the positive sense being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions you need to take and when despite your best efforts you feel like you're losing at The Game of Life just remember even the best of the best feel this way sometimes it happens to everybody and when I'm personally in the pit of despair I recall what iconic writer Kurt vonet said

about his process hiler recommend his books amazing guy and here's the quote when I write I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth so don't overestimate the world and underestimate yourself you are better than you think and you're definitely not alone we're all in this together and everyone is fighting a battle that you know nothing about