Secret OWL Society: productivity

Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts

Printable: A Set Time for Everything

This printable is for keeping a set record of activities that always need to be done on certain days at certain times.

Your thought process would be like this:

I always wash my car on Sunday afternoons.

I always clean out my Gmail account on Saturday evenings.

I always create YouTube videos on Wednesday mornings.

This way, when you wake up in the morning, you know exactly what to do that day and that every activity has a day and time in your schedule to get accomplished - so you don't worry about when or how you're "going to get to everything."

Email me at michellerohr@gmail.com if you would like this printable. :)

Free Yourself from Discouragement

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

What is the source of frustration and discouragement? In my humble opinion, I believe we experience discouragement when reality doesn't meet our expectations - when we're just not getting the results we want.

Results are good. All our work is for results. But if you're planting apple seeds one day and waking up the next morning expecting to pick fruit from the tree, you're in for nothing but frustration and discouragement.

What if, for one year, you forget about the results? What if you just focused on planting as many seeds as you could every day? Imagine how that would that change your whole attitude. Feelings of discouragement would just melt away because you're not stressed out over whether or not reality is matching your expectations. You're focused on the one thing that you have control over: planting seeds. No seed is too small and sometimes even the seed that you thought fell where it couldn't grow can surprise you by sprouting up when you're not looking. In fact, this is something that happens all the time.

Yes, there is a time to focus on results in order to evaluate and measure our activity. The problem is we want to judge the results far too early. Time must always be factored into the equation...and plenty of it! That is why I suggested staying focused on planting seeds for a solid year - you accept the passing of time right off the bat. Or better still, give it 18 months. This is what's called the "J Curve" - the principle that it takes 18 months from the point in time that you set a significant goal to the point in time when your goal comes into full fruition.

This may seem like quite a challenge, but think about it. 18 months are going to pass anyway and wouldn't it be nice to let go of what's causing you so much discouragement? We cannot always control our results, but we can control how many seeds we plant today. Focus on the seeds and keep faith in the harvest that is coming to you.

A Quick Post on Habits

I've watched many interviews of successful people and when they're asked what was the single most powerful factor or key to their success, they all pretty much say the same thing: that they've been more consistent than most people.

Consistency is everything. But successful people aren't just consistent. They are persistently consistent. At first glance, this may sound redundant, but when you get into the challenge of being consistent at anything, you really start to feel just how persistence comes into play.

And this is where habits come in. The dictionary defines habits as:

"an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary: the habit of looking both ways before crossing the street."

In short, it's really, really hard to be persistently consistent at anything unless you turn those things into habits.

Sure you can get stuff done through will power, but every human being has a limited supply of will power, so you cannot depend on will power in the long run. Eventually it will run out and you'll fall into the dead end trap of waiting till you "feel like it." We need good habits to carry us through.

So I have "bad" news and good news. The "bad" news is that building a good habit can be really challenging. The good news is that it takes only 21 days for your brain to accept and implement a new habit - a new, automatic mode of operation. In other words, after 21 days, it won't hurt anymore!

But there's one thing you need to remember. 21 days means 21 days straight. No breaks. Studies have shown that if you even take a day off from practicing your habit, you have to go back to the beginning and start from day 1 again. Your brain knows you're cheating and won't settle for anything less than 21 "perfect" days.

Successful people will tell you that you are only a few key habits away from living a successful life. Now that's a pretty significant piece of information and I plan on taking it very seriously!!!

So, identify your "success habits" and let's get to work implementing one at a time.

OWL Assignment #4: Recondition

Hello! I hope everyone is having a restful weekend. We are moving on to the 4th OWL assignment. In addition to our monthly meetings, I put up a little challenge every weekend to help us stay committed to the process of personal development. This week's mini challenge comes from a post by one of my favorite personal development enthusiasts who I've fanned on facebook. His name is Mike Klingler and his facebook updates are always awesome. He really knows how to shed light on people's rusty thought patterns with short messages that you can really take action on. Here's his post that I am using for our assignment today:

What we perceive as "hard" or "easy" is primarily conditioned. Similar to running up a hill... that's really hard if you're conditioned to sit behind a desk all day and nothing more... and quite easy if you're conditioned to run the hill. What is hard or easy is relative to what you're conditioned to believe is hard or easy. This means you can condition yourself to see anything as easy. As always, it's a choice.

-Mike Klingler via his facebook page update

Here's the challenge:

Make a list of all the things in your life that you are currently perceiving as "hard." Now think: what can you do to condition yourself, your mind to see these things as easy? Remember, it all starts with making the choice to do so.

Here's some ideas:

- Support that choice with your thoughts and actions. From now on, instead of thinking, "This is hard," think, "This is easy!"

- Focus on what you want instead of what you don't want.

- Stop feeling like you have to wait for things to be a certain way before you can be happy. Be happy now.

- It takes 21 days to create a habit. Anything that is "hard" for you to do now can be put on automatic if you practice that one thing for 21 days straight! (more on habit creating in next post)