A Very Different Way of Increasing Your Productivity
Today we are going to look into a very interesting manner in which to be productive. I am a person who thought that I understood this whole concept of productivity, and indeed I do, however, I never thought of my actions in this framework before.
There are many folks out there who teach one how to be more productive — usually, it’s about keeping your phone off and staying off social media till you do your morning rituals and get your most important tasks of the day done, time blocking to get like tasks done all at the same time, responding to emails in the middle of the day and again before you end your day, etc.
The other way that productivity is explained is in how we frame our years, quarters, months, weeks, days according to the goals that we have set to meet for the year.
Well, here is a new take on all of this which I do every day, 7 days a week.
Plan one day at a time…yes, it is that simple. Make sure that your day included your morning rituals which usually includes some form of ‘meditation’ gratitudes, journaling, exercise, time with your kids if you have any, time with your pet(s) if you have them, and reading something on business, history, philosophy, poetry — something to expand your thinking and then you have your breakfast if you have breakfast (I skip breakfast and eat between noon and 1 pm depending on how long it takes to get all my morning stuff done. And, then you get into your day.
For me I do all my morning rituals, then I do all my daily social media which is always around one topic, and only then do I have my lunch. Then my workday begins with all the activities that are planned there. Sometimes though, other things arise and they take precedence. Yesterday, for example, I received a call from someone who wanted a bit of guidance on how to do her consultation (she’s in the same business coaching program that I am) so I spent a bit of time with her doing that. I had another who wanted to learn self-hypnosis and we cleared some issues as well because as the late great, Jerry Kien would always say, “We never want to waste a trance.’ He meant that if we were giving someone the experience of being hypnotized (placing them in a trance state) then we always want to use that situation to help the person to overcome something — nothing huge, just a thing we can do in a few minutes. As I was doing that, I had a follow-up conversation set up with a potential client. I told her that I would need to call her back after I was done with the person who I was working with on my i-pad. She said fine and ended up signing up for my program to help her overcome her money block issues to be able to grow her holistic health business.
By the time I was done with those calls and all the follow-up texts and emails I promised others, it was about 1:45 AM — because I am here in Israel and most of the folks that I am interacting with on a daily basis are in the US — all across the 3,000 plus miles and 3 time zones — though I also have a client in Hawaii as well — even further away time zones get to be very interesting to work out.
So, you can see that when one has a determined set plan for the day, all the things that need to get done, do, and those that can roll over to the next day can because the last thing one needs to stress about is doing other potentially more helpful actions than the ones planned. So happened the individual that I taught the self-hypnosis to, had a potential referral for me — so that in itself is a teaching for those of you who are in practice or in business. The ‘little pink spoon’ from Baskin Robins allowing one to try a few of their various flavors of ice cream works just as well for your own business.
Learning: Having a daily schedule with all those aspects of your life contained will help you to be much more productive than without it. This coming from a person who hates schedules and likes to do as she damn well pleases! Well, I own my time so I guess I am still doing as I damn well please — just in a structured fashion to my own choosing.
When we have more important things to attend to, allow that to be the case and go with it. Allow others to have a taste of what you do, because you may just find yourself getting a new client out of the deal. This is separate and apart from the classical consultation process — that still needs to be a consultation and NEVER coaching. In this case, it was an individual who wanted to know more about my morning rituals and learn self-hypnosis which is something I can teach in a matter of minutes. So, because this individual is always making comments of appreciation on all my posts, and is someone who is ‘coachable’ I was more than happy to give her a free taste of what I do. And, I know she was very happy I did!
