The Danger of Focus
Over the past few years, I've been putting a heavy emphasis on GTD. (For the purposes of this article, GTD ('Getting Things Done' means attacking large lists of tasks and completing them as efficiently as possible). This year, however, I'm trying to learn how to instead direct all of my energy into ONE project at a time and really pushing to expand my boundaries and abilities. I'm trying to knock myself out of a comfort zone and achieve a higher level of ability with my Work.
It's been going okay. I mean, it's been very hard, and draining, and I don't think I've progressed much, but I have been successfully putting a sincere effort into it. I do feel as if I'm actively climbing the right road, even if the road is super steep and I'm tripping a lot.
One thing I've been noticing, however, is that when I channel all of my energy into fighting the Resistance, my GTD efforts suffer. (In other words... I'm behind on a lot of mundane chores).
Motivation is an exhaustible resource.
When I put my all into a challenging creative project, I'm exhausted and unable to GTD. When I switch and put a ton of energy into GTD, I'm too exhausted to push myself creatively.
Making a standard webcomic update no longer scares me creatively, and so I'm not usually exhausting my scarce motivation resource. Now that I'm actively attacking the Resistance, I no longer have the energy to maintain my lists, keep my inbox clean, and stay on top of my chores.
This is a new level that I'm seeking and it's not something that's going to come instantaneously. I'll need to work to find balance because this is a looooooong big project and important aspects of my life will suffer if I continue to fail at keeping up with the mundane tasks that fill our days.
Tactics to Try:
1) GTD for one hour per day. In the past I've been trying to use the 'one hour' rule to chip away at creative efforts, and used the rest of my time to GTD. Now I've swapped: I spend about 4 hours in my evenings at this creative project, and almost no time at GTD. I need to make sure to spend at least one hour on my lists, maybe that will be enough. I worry that even an hour of GTD will exhaust me creatively, but hopefully it will work out. It's all about habits.
2) Alternate days: If the daily GTD hour doesn't afford me enough time/energy to keep up, I might try an alternate-days tactic. Mondays work on Big Thing. Tuesdays work on GTD. Wednesdays work on Big Thing. I have a few worries about this tactic: for one, I feel that the only way I've started to make progress on The Big Thing is by attacking it every single day. You can't schedule your muse: "Ok I'll see you Tuesday at 6pm." The muse shows up when it wants to, you just have to give it enough time. I worry that if I try this, I'll either lose my momentum on the Big Thing, or get so wrapped up in momentum that I'll fail to GTD on the days I'm supposed to!
3) Early riser GTD: I still think this is a good tactic but, brother, every time I even THINK about waking up earlier I fail SO HARD because of my sleep problems. Originally I was thinking of waking up earlier and working on The Big Thing but it TOTALLY wasn't working out. To make matters worse, I find that I've been putting out my best creative work between 10-1am. YEESH. Still, it might come down to 'do or die'.
I'll let you know how it goes.
How to Cope with the Fear of Starting Something New
Let's face it: most of us stick to our patterns because it's easier to do something we already know how to do. We enjoy doing something that we're already good at doing!
It's just the way we are.
But if you are trying to break a cycle, break your boundaries, or break into a scene, the existing pattern is just not going to cut it. Those of us striving for excellence are going to have to do new things, and that means doing things that might make us uncomfortable.
This usually introduces a lot of fear in us, so we stall.
- Fear of not being instantly good at something
- Fear of how long it will take
- Fear of the unknown
- Fear of knowing that you might never achieve your goal
In order to start a new journey we HAVE to face these fears.
Admit that you will suck at it
Who cares! Everyone sucks when they first try something. You'll probably suck at it for a long time, so make sure it's fun and you're able to meet interesting people by doing it. These other motivators will keep you going until you're able to get some "hey I'm kind of okay at this" joy.
Know that you WILL improve
The earliest attempts and lessons are the ones where you actually learn the most, you level up fast and you'll be amazed how much better you are after a few attempts. You can't get any better without trying and YOU WILL GET BETTER. No matter what you're trying to do, you'll have to re-wire the pathways in your brain, and that takes time, but it DOES happen.
Focus on how much better you will be for improving
Set some incremental milestones, mini projects that you can tackle and count as intermediate successes. Look forward to how much happiness you'll get from trying, learning, building this new skill. The most impressive skills are the ones that were built up "from nothing", seemingly out of the blue.
Know there's no going back
Reinforce in your mind why you wanted to make this change in the first place: why staying put is just intolerable. Use that as motivation when you find yourself stalling.
Go, take the first step.
Read a book. Sign up for a class. Pick up the pen and just get going at it. Any act is better than nothing.
The future awaits!
How to Cope with Boring Work
The problem with a lot of jobs is that they are boring. It's okay, say it with me: the job is boring. Admit it. As they say: "that's why they pay you to do it."
Ideally we'd all have stimulating work that just pushes our specific joy buttons all day long, and that's what you should be striving TOWARDS, but today you gotta just fill out that expense report.
Boooooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiing
You gotta get it done, somehow, and get yourself through the day or you won't have ANY job, boring or otherwise. How can you get yourself through this?
Reframe it: "Boring" = "Easy"
I'm not going to tell you to "trick yourself into thinking it's FUN 
" because I've tried that and it doesn't usually work. What does work, sometimes, is reframing the situation. The work isn't boring, it's easy (and often this is true). You procrastinate because you know that finishing the work holds little intrinsic satisfaction.
If you're lucky enough to be able to enjoy music at work, tell yourself that you're NOT filing out this boring expense report, you're ENJOYING MUSIC. The expense report is just there to keep your fingers busy. It's easy.
Fill out this form? EASY.
Call Accounting? EASY.
Force yourself to smile and enjoy other things about your day, and your mood will lift. The work will sink to the background.
Set up a Carrot
Boring work is usually easy and it's also, usually, kind of pointless. You're just doing it because it's a thing that people at your company do. It's not really accomplishing anything.
You need to set up an external carrot, such as ten guilt-free minutes of web time. Time spent talking with your coworkers. A snack break.
Set the bar a bit lower than your normally would. If you can't focus for your regular hour, focus for 20 mintues. 5 minutes. Just this one thing. Whatever it takes to keep you moving forward.
Make it a contest
Set up a count-up timer and see how FAST you can do it - the faster you can not-have-to-do-it-anymore!
Who are you helping?
Ask yourself: who am I helping by doing this boring work?
Whose life am I making easier? Is your boss going to be able to do a better job if the reports are properly filed? Will the admin have an easier time meeting her deadlines if she has the proper form filled out in time? Will these letters get to their destinations faster and more efficiently once they are sorted - connecting a happy sender to a happy recipient?
Try to imagine the exact person you are helping. If you don't know them, just invent them in your mind. Imagine their smiling face when they see the results of your completed task.
Even if they don't usually recognize or appreciate it, imagine that they will and focus as that as you chunk away at the task.
Okay, good luck and have a happy rainy Friday 
Book Response: The Kaizen Way
I was recently forced to read "the Kaizen Way" as part of a change management program at work.
As far as books that I'm forced to read go, I rather liked it. It made sense, I got something out of it, and most importantly: it was pretty short. If you can get it out of the library, I would recommend it. I got it on the company's dime, but had I shelled out cash for it I would have felt a bit jipped. If you took all the content it was little more than a series of blog posts... with big font, huge margins and a thick cover.
But it was an easy, quick read with good tips and a solid message.
Really the only thing I didn't like about this book was the name. ("Kaizen" is kind of a dorky name that never really made sense to me. It's over-fluffy.)
Here is the gist of the book:
Big things freak us out. They trigger our lizard brain, and make us want to run screaming in the opposite direction.
Instead of trying to take drastic, massive steps, try to take the SMALLEST step possible towards your goal. Steps that take thirty seconds, one minute. Steps that are SO easy you can't possibly make an excuse not to do it.
Honestly, some of the steps that it suggested were so minuscule that they seemed kind of pointless and ridiculous, but the book itself was conscious of this fact. They said that the process was actually about building a pain-threshold for things that you fear, getting yourself in the habit, and chipping the mountain away pebble by pebble.
I've started incorporating a little bit of this into my personal life. If I'm confronted with something I'm really not into doing (usually: cleaning or some other chore), I "Kaizen it to death". There's a cluttered table, but I'm not super into clearing it off right now, so I'm just going to take ONE thing off every time I pass by.
Also I've started this approach to my passion projects.
I'm exhausted by the time I get home. Sometimes the prospect of setting up to work on a huge scary project is just too much. Before I drift into a time trap (TV or internet eye-candy) and lose the whole night as a result, I resolve do to at least ONE small thing towards my goals.
Ask yourself: "What is one tiny thing I can do TODAY to make life better?" Even if it's as simple as adding just the profile photo to my Linked In profile, or deleting one file I don't need. Sending ONE email.
Start with small steps, but take them every day.
Kaizen it to death.
6 weeks off. 2 hours to inbox zero.
I'm back from my honeymoon! I'm sure most of you are out enjoying holiday festivities and stat days off, but I wanted to share a quick email tip.
Even though I was away from the office for almost six weeks straight, when I got back I was able to get caught up on email in less than two hours. How did I do it?
1. Manage expectations
The first - and probably most important - thing that I did to combat being overwhelmed by email was that I actively told people that I was going away for a significant amount of time. I made sure that everyone who regularly emails me knew I would be away. I set up delegates for different components of my work (if you need help with x, contact y...) and made it clear that the blackberry was off: I wasn't going to be checking email while I was away. If they want my attention, they will be able to save the question for when I get back.
2. Prevention
When I set up my out-of-office alert in Outlook, I also set up a rule to filter out global emails. I set up a new folder called "Auto Archive", and using outlook I set up a rule that went like this: when my name is not in the To: box, move it to the Auto Archive folder and mark it as read. Messages where I'm not in the to: box could include company wide distribution lists, announcements from the front desk about people who were parked in the wrong place, or messages that I'm just cc'd on. Either way - if I'm not in the To: box, nobody has an expectation that I will reply.
Some people would automatically delete these messages, but I didn't want to in case the email filter caught something I actually DID need to see. It's also nice to go through the corporate messages quickly to catch up on big organizational changes you might have missed, or any other interesting news.
Marking it as read prevents "sticker shock" when you come back from holiday. Even if these are the emails that aren't urgent, seeing "(1000+)" in a folder NEVER gives you a good feeling.
3. Block out the time
The third and final most important thing that I did to combat being overwhelmed with vacation email is yet another thing that you can do before you even turn out the lights and board that plane.
My first day back at work was blocked off completely with a "fake*" meeting. Things DO come up while you're gone, and when people need to talk to you, they'll look for the first available timeslot in your calendar. It's not their fault, it's just the automatic thing to do.
Unfortunately, this can mean that the first day you're back, you're scheduled into back-to-back 9-5 meetings, including breakfast and lunch, and with a few conflicts at 3pm! Tuesday won't be much better, and as people realize your back, your email will be flooded with REGULAR messages that need your attention TODAY! You'll either ruin all your vacation destressing by working through nights and weekends to get back on top, or you'll miss something important and never get back to inbox zero again.
The fake meeting reminds people that you need some time to get back up to speed on things (and you do), and allows them to decide whether the meeting really IS urgent enough to take up your first day back from vacation. If all goes well (and it did for me), you'll have at least a few hours of peace and quiet reserved to focus.
It doesn't hurt to come in an hour early, either 
(*By "fake" meeting, I mean I set a meeting with nobody (but myself) and I titled it "hold". If you opened the event, it read "I just need some time to get through my email." I wasn't trying to pull a fast one on the boss or anything, I just wanted to make people stop and think twice before booking into Monday)
4. Inbox zero
We're finally into post-vacation tips! This one is just a link to my inbox zero strategies: sort by to:, delete what you don't need, reply quickly and then flag what needs your action.'
5. Remember that extra folder!
When all was said and done, I had about 200 or so emails unread in my inbox. There were over 500 in the auto-archive folder!
As predicted, 80-90% of the emails in AutoArchive were completely ignorable... I really didn't need to know about that bake sale 3 weeks ago. Being able to focus on the inbox first meant that I wasn't being distracted by these less urgent matters, but there were one or two chains that I did need to rescue, and a couple of interesting organizational announcements that I was glad weren't deleted.
[Before we get into competitions here, 700 is really not that much email, I know. I'm not a big player in the company, and I do a lot on a regular basis to mitigate the email I receive.]
For Email: An Ounce of Prevention Truly Is Worth a Pound of Cure
I know that not every company is as understanding as mine (not remotely!) and this much time off usually isn't possible for people. But illness and emergencies do come up, and for some people a week away is enough to get their inbox completely flooded. No matter how much email flows in, these steps will help you quickly sort out what needs your attention and gets you back to work faster.
Climbing a Mountain of Work – part 2/2
This is the second half of a series of tips for making headway on a BIG HUGE SCARY PROJECT. Check out part 1 for more great tips and a rundown of what the heck BIG HUGE PROJECT is anyway!
Take all your problems and break them apart
Be like the squirrel, girl, be like the squirrel
If you're climbing a mountain of constant, similar tasks, find a way to divide it into chunks. If it's a novel, break it into sections, chapters, or 500-word chunks. Write it all out in one big list:
Chatper 1
- 500-word chunk #1
- 500-word chunk #2
- 500-word chunk #3 ... etc. You might mis-estimate. no big deal.
Chapter 2
...
CROSS IT OFF WITH SATISFACTION WHENEVER YOU FINISH A NEW CHUNK.
The key is having a VISIBLE way to see your progress. It motivates you. BIG HUGE PROJECTS are often so big they fall out of our field of vision. That makes the goal always feel soooo farrr offff.
When I had to draw in 200 artist editions of my book, I divided it all into 15 book chunks (10 was too easy, 20 too scary). I set up the little piles on my table, and brought them 15 at a time to my nest. When I finished 15 books, I wrapped them up for shipping then got the next batch. What was an invisible, impossibly massive task before now had a visible progress bar and that was enough to keep me motivated. I met what seemed like an impossible goal!
Make it Public
The great thing about having a blog or a webcomic is- compared to a book that you write by yourself in isolation-you can publicly show when you've finished a chunk and get feedback. It's AMAZINGLY motivating!! Once you've chunked your work out, find a group that cares, and a way to announce it.
Even if you don't want to show the world your rough drafts, sometimes it helps just to update your status: "finished 3 500-word chunks today! Onward to chapter 4! ". A few "likes" reinforce that good feeling make it easier to repeat the feat tomorrow.
Dance Break
Sitting and concentrating for hours can get exhausting. I like to find a really upbeat song, play it really loud and DANCE VIGOROUSLY. It's a good way to break up the day.
Silence
Most people like to work with some kind of noise: a movie, a podcast, some music. If you're finding the music still too stimulating, try working in complete silence for awhile.
Make it a Party
Working on BIG HUGE PROJECT can be quite lonely. Especially if you're doing it day in and day out. Even introverts get lonely sometimes! It's nice to have a group of friends to call who ALSO have BIG HUGE PROJECTS of their own.
Of course there's a balance to be struck here. Make sure you all understand that you want to have a WORK party, where primarily you will be sitting in silence and working. You're basically just there to have the presence of another human and to keep each other from losing the day to time traps. Different people have different thresholds, sometimes one person will be too chatty, another will have too low a tolerance for any kind of talking at all! Experiment: if it makes you MORE productive with a partner, keep it. If not, ditch it.
Batch Processes
Say you need to sew 20 toy rabbits. They all have the same steps: first you sew the body, then you sew the ears on, then you sew the eyes, then the details... Instead of working on them one at a time, start-to-finish, try working on two or three at a time. First you sew 3 bodies, then you sew the 3 pairs of ears on... Batching processes like these can help prevent the "between chunk" downtime. We finish one chunk and then AUGFghgg... we go get a cup of tea. And then hey, I wonder what's on facebook...
"Rule your board" as soon as you finish
Similar to batch processing, I found this helped me a lot to reduce between-chunk downtime: once you finish a chunk, instead of IMMEDIATELY going on your break, FIRST do the VERY FIRST STEP of the next chunk. In the case of comics, my first step was "ruling the board". This is where you measure out and draw all your guidelines. It's very simple, and takes no creativity, but even the simplest first step helped to prevent the 'empty page fear' and it was easier to get back into my groove after the break.
Channeling Inspiration Away
Inspiration ALWAYS seems to strike when you sit down to do BIG HUGE PROJECT doesn't it? I mean... inspiration for anything BUT your BIG HUGE PROJECT! It's distracting, and infuriating. The first line of defense is to write it down. OH! I have a great idea for a new story! WRITE IT DOWN. As fast as you can, just enough so that you can remember what you meant later, and GET BACK TO WORK. If it's still bugging you an hour after that and it's DRIVING YOU CRAZY, take an "inspiration break".
SET YOUR TIMER for one hour. (Again, you don't want to lose TOO much time to this - inspiration distraction is a CLASSIC lizard brain tactic.) Use the hour to burn yourself out on the inspiration. Whatever it is you were desperate to do. Wanted to paint? Cool. Paint something. For an hour--- then get back to work.
BIG HUGE PROJECT is usually the project that is closest to your heart, which is why it's the scariest to work on. Your lizard brain desperately wants to do ANYTHING IT CAN to keep you from working on it because it's afraid of failure. Or success. Know thy enemy, and use these tips to get back on track.
Hope it helps!
Climbing a Mountain of Work PART 1/2
Many of the tips that I've described so far (action lists, perfect project planning, prioritizing) work great when you have a large variety of different tasks to do.
But what about when your primary project -your next most important task- is a single, monumental task. There really aren't many little tasks to climb over to motivate yourself, you're just getting them out of the way to carve out times of day for you to work on BIG HUGE PROJECT.
What's a BIG HUGE PROJECT?
- It's long: something that will take weeks and months of solid constant work to achieve
- The work is always the same, with little variation.
- examples:
- Writing a book, or drawing a graphic novel.
- Reading a textbook, or studying for a final.
- Knitting 20 scarves as Christmas Presents for relatives
- It's either really boring or really scary to you
- It's generally something you need to sit alone and CONCENTRATE on
Quite often, you can get quite good at carving time out for the BIG HUGE PROJECT, but when it comes time to just sit down DO IT it's so hard to motivate yourself.
You stare at the blank page and can't seem to make the pencil move.
All those amazing thoughts you had running through your head have conveniently run off to find something better to do. (Yeah, thanks guys, while you were totally keeping me distracted when I had that expense report to do! JERKS)
If you can just GET INTO THE DAMN GROOVE of it you know you can do a good job and you can make yourself happier for having made progress, but right now you just want to... make another cup of tea. Check facebook. Get zoned into just one more episode of Dr. Who. Clean the stove.
ANYTHING BUT THIS!
What do you do!? How do you keep yourself on track!?
Of course if I had the secret to this I'd be a brazillionaire by now. Below are a bunch of things that I've tried that sometimes help to get myself un-stuck. Try them in isolation or in combination, see what works for you!
Build a Nest
You sit down to write and.... oh, damn - you should have your phone in here. Just in case. Oh! you forgot to get some tea. Oh!and you need your reference book. Augh! Why is this chair so uncomfortable... Where are my notes?
When I'm working on BIG HUGE PROJECT, I try to always go to the same place, physically. Setting this place up for the task at hand is a bit of a ritual. A way to tell my brain "okay, we've arrived at the place. Now we are setting it up so everything is ready. Now we are working."
Your nest needs to be:
- comfortable: but not so comfortable that you drift off to sleep!! Comfort means not too hot or too cold, and ergonomically set up.
- set up with everything that you need within reach: with practice, you'll build the habit of collecting everything you need to work so you're not constantly getting up to fetch something.
- AWAY FROM THE INTERNET
- If this is a problem for you (and it is for most of us) find a way to unplug. For me, working in a different room from my beloved internets is enough. Of I course drift over to twitter when I need a stretch, but I am (usually) disciplined enough to wrench myself away. When I have to do computer work, on the other hand... that's a totally different story.
- If you know your personal time trap websites, add them to a blocker using this tip: http://lifehacker.com/146448/geek-to-live--ban-time+wasting-web-sites
- Or you can use this Chrome extension http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/stayfocusd-block-time-wasting-websites/
Of course, there are ways for your lizard brain to get around anything. You can turn off your computer, but you still have your phone. You can block facebook, but oh! Didn't block wikipedia... eventually you're just going to rely on motivation. Remember why you're doing BIG HUGE PROJECT. Remember that you really WANT to do this, and it's worth more to you than random wikipedia article #35.
The key is to STAY AWAY FROM TIME TRAPS. If it's too hard for you, you may need to build an ISOLATION ZONE. For me, the cafe made a great isolation zone. Being in public means I can't just flop over when I want to. Surfing the internet is *just* inconvenient enough. Libraries and friend's houses also make great isolation zones.
Warm Up
If you can't quite break the silence of the page and just GET MOVING, treat yourself to a warmup period.
SET A TIMER (you don't want the entire precious block of time you saved for yourself to get wasted on something random!) 20 minutes usually works well.
Use this time to be ridiculous.
If your BIG HUGE PROJECT involves drawing, use the time to draw crazy looking monsters. Sexy ladies. Weird cartoons. Whatever you want, who cares if it's good or not.
If your BIG HUGE PROJECT is writing, use it to write stream of consciousness, or try to write the opposite of what you NEED to write. If you are trying to write an amazing drama, write THE WORST melodrama. Write as BAD as you possibly can.
Be LOOSE and FAST.
I like to write outlines, point form thoughts, random threads at the top and bottom of the document to warm up and then stitch the piece together slowly.
This list of tips ended up getting too long, so check back next week for part two!
Manufacture a moment of peace
This post assumes the following: that you are having a really really hard finding a simple moment of peace. Obviously it would be ideal if you could just shut everything down and run into a forest, but not all of us have that kind of freedom.
ALL YOU NEED IS FIVE MINUTES
1) Go outside. ALONE
Actually outside, not just out of your office. Get some sky overhead.
I don't care what the weather is.
2) Shut down all tech.
Put away your phone.
Step away from computer.
Don't accept calls (or read texts) for FIVE MINUTES. Just five minutes!
Shut off your music.
Un P L U G.
3) Relax your body.
Sit on a bench- or, if it's not gross, lie down on the grass
Let go of everything you are clutching - just put it down beside you on the bench. Free your fingers.
Let your hands fall empty by your side.
Relax your shoulders.
Unclench your teeth.
Put your hand on your heart, you want to slow down your heart rate and this helps you concentrate on that.
Close your eyes and slow down your breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
4) Slowly open your eyes and gaze straight ahead.
DO NOT FOCUS on anything. Let things enter and exit your field of vision.
Do NOT turn your eyes or neck to follow anything. It's tempting to (it's automatic!) but when you catch yourself doing it, just conciously bring yourself back to center.
Envision the world as flowing around you- you are not a part of it. You are just an observer.
Do the same with noises and scents. They enter your conciousness and you let them flow around you.
Same with thoughts. Let thoughts flow into your head, acknowledge them and let them go.
Nothing is good or bad. Nothing matters but this moment.
A noise may be annoying, but don't let it rile you up. That chick might look ridiculous with her arms full of tiny yappy dogs, but don't let your mind or eyes follow her down the street. She looks ridiculous. Thought in, thought acknowledged, thought out, and she exits your field of vision as you stare straight ahead.
If it's too much, close your eyes again.
5) Enjoy the moment
If it's warm, enjoy the warmth
If it's cold, enjoy the biting cold on your face
If it's raining, let the rain fall down your skin, feel the droplets on your face
Enjoy the prickly grass under your fingers
Enjoy the solidness of the concrete bench you're leaning on
Enjoy the peace, or enjoy the bustle.
Find joy wherever you are RIGHT NOW.
6) Return.
Once you feel you have achieved some state of calm that is acceptable, calmly return to your life. Try to maintain this calm for as long as you can. Work calmly. Speak calmly.
Good luck.
Taking steps towards your ideal day
Remember your ideal day? (Go check out the exercise if you haven't yet!... )
All of the hard work you're doing is to earn your ideal day. When is the last time you compared your actual day to your ideal day?
What are you doing right now that's not "ideal"?
What will it take to make that change?
Surprisingly, I've found that sometimes it takes... nothing! Sometimes there's nothing really holding you to your non-ideal day but habit and stubbornness.
The other day I realized that one of the major components of my ideal day was "freedom to chase inspiration": to work on whatever I felt like working on.
Instead, in my real life, I hold myself rigidly to my priorities and timelines, refusing to budge.
Finally, I stopped to ask myself... why?
I have deadlines, certainly, but no one is holding a gun to my head... why can't I carve out some time to chase inspiration? So I did. The rule was that as long as what I wanted to do was PRODUCTIVE in some way (ie, not just watching TV) I was allowed an hour to do it. That way I have a piece of my ideal day, and I won't fall too far off track.
So far the problem has been keeping myself to just one hour (last time went 1:46 according to my timer...) but in the days since I've found it WAY easier to focus on my goals, and it even unblocked me in a few places where I was having difficulty!
(I should note that I'm not some kind of souless machine... of course I have unproductive time where I am a useless, procrastinating pile of poop. The difference is when I waste time that way I feel guilty, for this 'inspiration time' I'm NOT allowing myself guilt. Telling myself it's an okay use of time is an important step.)
REMEMBER: the goal is happiness. It's pointless to spend all your time fighting for an imaginary future if you never actually build up the courage to claim parts of your ideal day. Who knows... your "real day" may become your ideal sooner than you think!
Stop Stressing Out About Everything!
Sometimes it feels like you can't possibly finish everything you HAVE to get done between now and a certain deadline.
So you stress out about it.
But that is a waste of your emotional energy, and when you waste emotional energy you are draining the very energy that you NEED to get all of that done.
When I'm tearing around the house shouting "Aaaa! I'm so STRESSED OUT!"
My husband says "Well, stop stressing out then!"
We all know it's not that simple, but over time I learned that it WAS something that I could control, to a certain degree.
- Recognize that stressing out is a waste of your energy
- Write down everything you need to do before the deadline. Remember: NEED to do - not probably should do.
- Prioritize. Be ruthless!
- Work from the top of the list down.
There's no use stressing out over what you need to do. Just calm down and do it.