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Welcome to Day 3 of 7 Days To Better Productivity & Time Management.
Today’s task will take about 1 hour.
Now that we’ve determined our optimum productivity style, and we know how to avoid a huge time-management trap, let’s take the next step. Today we’ll identify ‘magic‘ activities that will turbocharge our productivity.
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Ok so I changed my priorities list slightly yesterday and here are my magic activities –
My Health
– drink more water.
– walk the dogs more.
– make time to see my friends.
– go to bed before midnight.
My Business
– make calls to local businesses to promote my business and find clients.
– start setting realistic deadlines.
– set up processes to make things easier.
Family Time
– Plan one on one family time.
– Spend more quality time as a family.
– Plan date nights with hubbie.
House Work
– Declutter!
– Come up with a cleaning routine that works.
Time Management
– Use my diary daily so I don’t forget meetings, appointments or deadlines.
– plan deadlines for getting things done and stick to them.
– Try to organise school things the night before.
Illusory Activies –
– Signing up to free webinars that I won’t listen to.
– Signing up to free newsletters and reports that I won’t read.
– Excessive facebook usage.
– Researching organising/time management books I won’t implement.
– Researching organising/time management software that I won’t use.
Hmmm, feeling more in control now, but still a little bit freaked out about not having the usual to do list.
After yesterday’s 5 top priorities I recognised right away what my illusory activities were. Facebook is one of them! Because we run not only our personal but business FB – as well as some for our clients, I can spend an inordinate amount of time following interesting paths and researching info. I’m in love with blogs and sites that are relevant to what I do and love. (sheepish grin) that’s how I found your Get Organised site Michele! There is soooo much great info out there you can get lost looking at it and never actually apply it. Figuratively speaking, I’m also that person who cleans the desk and other jobs before working and then finds there is no time left. What a great wake up call Michele.
What a wonderful AH-HA moment! I never looked at it that way with the tasks or activities I was doing. Many of them were actually illusions of magical when it came to some of my priorities. And it explains why for those I was dead~on with why I was successful with that particular priority. I do agree with the fear factor – that was so helpful of you to point out. Thank you! Excited for tomorrow’s lesson! I am learning so much.
I am a stay at home mom/grandma so my magic activities are those surrounding what I do for a “living”. I clean, decorate, repair, do maintenance, make social activities for all the family to get together, etc.-actually I don’t clean, decorate, repair, do maintenance, make social activities for the family nearly as much as I engage in non-magic activities. For lent this year I could not get online til after 10am (I get up early). Now I know that does not seem like much of a sacrifice but it was for me. I was more productive in the morning hours during lent. I think my biggest non-magic activity is the computer. Of course, I’m not going to give it up altogether, but set limits much like I did for lent. I think I am feeling a little unsettled because of the changes that are coming. As good as the changes may be my “piddling” days are numbered, and I love to piddle (on the computer, etc) ; ) Thanks again!
Wow – magic activities – what a great concept!
A few things are striking to me.
One of my priorities for the summer is to prepare for the fall – to create structures for myself, and to get academic work done so that the fall is a lot less stressful than last year was.
Underlying that is a commitment to being a fantastic music therapist and teacher. As a music therapist I play guitar or accordion every day. The biggest magic activity is to practice guitar, learn new songs, review old songs, write new songs, practice accordion, practice voice. You wrote that a writer’s magic activity is writing. A music therapist’s magic activity is musicing.
Distractors? looking for new songs, buying new books.
I do have to be careful though because listening to new music IS a useful activity. Learning new & popular music is a magic activity, and can even involve browsing on YouTube. Browsing related links can easily become a distractor though.
Documentation is another magic activity. The sooner after a session I document it, the better my documentation is. The sooner after grading a paper I give feedback, the more useful that feedback is. The better I am at recording client’s progress, or student’s grades, the easier it is to summarize at the end of the semester, the less stress in the meantime, the easier preparation becomes.
Preparation – session preparation or class preparation are also magic activities, but they so easily become distractors. I have created beautiful powerpoint presentations that I never use for my class, or visual aids to a song that I never use. If I am less prepared for class or a music therapy session, it causes stress, and does not honor my commitment to doing my best work. Yet I can easily lose sight of how much preparation is the magic limit. A useful question might be “Am I still doing magic work, or have I gotten into the realm of distraction?”
Did I say that I think while writing? 🙂 I had written notes, but here is is boiled down. Practice and Documentation are the two most important magic activities. Lesson preparation is key too, but contains a built-in pitfall.
OK, so I said “a few things are striking to me”. The first thing was that music is a magic activity to a music therapist. *Duh!*
The second thing that is striking to me is that a big part of my priority for the summer is to create structures for success – create space in my home, put structures in place so that the school year goes more smoothly than last year, so that I am more organized, so that fewer things fall off the radar, fewer things are lost. And I do not have a clear idea about what the magic activities are for that. I feel clueless about how to do that. No muscle there. So clearly I need to do some research / learning / searching. And I need to make sure that I don’t get stuck in distractors such as reading organization techniques without DOING them, or buying organizer containers instead of using them.
I am hoping that this course is a magic activity. Doing a 30-day house re-organization? Enrolling Jan (husband) in the structures I create. Create and revise structures and documentation for the fall. But that becomes a distractor if I spend lots of time creating a new documentation system but don’t use it (been there).
A long post. Sorry! 🙂 Clearly more thinking out loud had to be done on this one.
Today & Yesterday’s tasks were enlightening.
My Top 5 Priorities & magical activities for each:
1. Losing weight/regaining fitness.
-Quit snacking, exercise each morning, after dinner walks, lots of water.
2. Get CFI reinstated.
-1hr study/day, practice commercial maneuvers, review/organize resources, schedule checkride.
3. Writing
-Write, get my own computer, move/organize desk area, write morning pages.
4. Decluttering house, closet, life.
-Edit a shelf/cabinet/or drawer per day, Try on 2 items/day(have donate bag), JUST SAY NO(over-volunteering), sift paper daily!
5. Marriage/Relationships
-communicate
Recognizing what is NOT Magical was definitely something I need to face so I can stop playing/avoiding/not thinking!
My Illusory Activities to curb:
Excessive facebook
Reading (I’m addicted!)
Suduku puzzle in daily paper(they are all solvable, why do I bother?)
Mindless surfing
Time to stare into the abyss, I’m not getting any younger! 🙂
I had some overlap of magic activities: be on time! get more sleep! I really need to make bedtime a priority.
Magic activities:
Family
– Spend more time one-on-one with all three of them.
– Regularly schedule familytime with board games, talk or just the kids favourite meal.
Health
– Plan meals.
– Run in the morning more often.
– Eat 300g of vegetables a day.
– Drink 2litres of water every day.
Home
– 15min laundry every day.
– Put things back when used.
– 15 min tidy every night.
– 15 min declutter a day.
Job
– Book meetings every day with relevant people.
– Close follow up of delegated actions.
Illusory activities
– Planning to get organized through reading and surfing the www.
Tomorrows opportunities
– Late night wine in the garden with the neighbour ladies.
– Run 8km.
– Conquer Mount Washmore in 3x15min.
– Prep for next weeks trip to the mountains.
This is a helpful way of assessing activities. Reading and learning are useful activities but not if you never apply what you learn.
This has been very thought provoking and is taking me way longer than 1 hour. Still a work in progress as I refine it down and really think about what I need to be doing and which are my magic activities. I am always busy but don’t always accomplish a lot so this is a great exercise for me to make sure I a, putting my effort in where it will produce the best results.
This has been very thought provoking and is taking me way longer than 1 hour. Still a work in progress as I refine it down and really think about what I need to be doing and which are my magic activities. I am always busy but don’t always accomplish a lot so this is a great exercise for me to make sure I a, putting my effort in where it will produce the best results.
I liked having to break down the magic activities that I NEED to be doing for each priority….that makes sense and narrows down what I NEED to be doing to be successful in each area. I am feeling very excited about this!
Some of my magic activities include: exercising daily (I seem to find every possible excuse NOT to get this done), planning a weekly business meeting with my husband, and moving forward with a plan for our website. I have a lovely list with the recommended updates, but I haven’t done anything on the list yet. The illusory activities include spending too much time on the phone with my parents and excessive worrying. I think I feel so grateful to still have them that I let this take up a large portion of my day. Perhaps worrying while exercising would be the perfect solution 🙂 I’m looking forward to tomorrow and creating a practical system.
I’ve actually been aware of the dangers of the NON Magic Activities (Step 2) for a while now and have spent a little time trying to pin-point them, I call them “Avoidance Behavior”. For me they are e-mail and the plethora of newsletters (and podcasts) about business, art and writing. Apparently I will be able to make everything work if I just learn one more thing (snort). I also spend way too much time web surfing and Social Network cruising to find people who will be good to network with to help me better my business – but do I actually connect with them? No. Both of these are just excuses to chase the rabbit down the hole. I also tend to spend way more time tweaking my project plans and task lists than I do working on the actual projects and tasks. Formatting a document to look pretty rather than writing it’s content. You get the picture. I KNOW I’m doing these things but I can’t seem to stop myself. Some of it was caused by not facing my fears – the fear of success as it turns out. This was a huge revelation for me about a month ago. I had always assumed I was afraid of failure and looking stupid and my Mom saying “I told you so” (at my age, pathetic). But the bigger fear was if I succeed; I will have to WORK to fill orders and be disciplined and not have time for fun and be stressed over too much work. Once I faced these down and made a list of solutions to each of those concerns I’ve been much better the last few weeks. Doing these lessons instead of letting them pile up in my inbox is a prime example (yea, me!).
But Step 1 was the missing ingredient – now that I’ve listed my Magic Activities that I should be doing, I know what they are and (hopefully) can switch over more easily when I catch myself doing the Avoidance Behavior stuff. I need to take more photos and tweak them (I hate doing that). I need to write more and better Blog Posts. I need to put backs on buttons instead of thinking they are done when they come out of the kiln. I need to finish my website. I need to send out marketing e-mails and packets. I need to DO, not avoid.
So far, this has been an eye-opening week!
I’ve used a priorities list for a long time, because sometimes I just can’t get more then 2-3 things done in a day. Exercise, Reading, and Marketing are my 3 top items each day. If I can’t exercise, the alternative is 6 fruits and veggies. Next in line: meditation, flossing, a daily household task, reaching out to friend/family, and emptying all in-boxes.
I feel like if I did all this every day my life would be perfect…but I think, like “we’ll never get it all done”, we’ll never feel our lives are perfect either. But it’s a fun journey to take!
Magic activities include scripture and uplifting reading /meditation time EVERYDAY.
Being thankful and helpful to my husband, a few minutes to declutter (have my list of ten posted!)
And to drink more water and take a walk on most days. Starting slow, but I think this will really improve my life. I’m feeling excited to be taking control! Thank you
My 5 key areas changed since yesterday!
LOL Steve – ah that’s life! Nothing stays the same for long!
My overarching one goal for my small productive brain 😉 is to get out of the house with my dogs so that I don’t feel cooped up, (with my illness/disability) this will improve my mood/mindset. Automatically today I’ve worked out that this is my #1 priority, after all I am not living, if I’m only thinking about living.
Due to my most productive time being evenings (when I can settle my 4 fur babies after dinner), I can easily divide the day into spending time with the animals during the day and leaving the house to meet my goal; and working on my activities of choice during the evening when I’m productive and able to be immersed without distraction of managing my puppies high barking times etc. which really exhausts my energy. I’ll swap this for walking with them in the park etc. Win-win.
This leads me to THE magic activity which apart from actually doing it (leaving the house, walking, exploring), is showering and dressing daily. I know this doesn’t sound difficult for most people, even frowned upon that I’m admitting I don’t do this, but in my new world, this is it, this is my magic activity, from which all success follows, and without which, there will be none!
So:
1. Choose one goal (based on brain productivity style > small) = what is most important to me is to leave house with dogs,
2. Divide activity/day into peak productivity times = day > go out with dogs; night > stay in with settled animals and achieve personal joy-full goals,
3. Do THE magic activity of showering and dressing; avoid illusory , non-magic activities such as ‘buying’: sports clothes, gym equipment, yoga dvd’s, anything really, before actually DOING these things.
What I’m scared about, once I have met my goal and seared through the BS of excuses and distractions that I have been living, is that I will be left feeling unfulfilled with my new life (of disability being at home, not working, and no study or career… it will all hit me that my life has changed, and I can no longer avoid it any more. I will feel so alone, and isolated, and so sad. That I will get up each day, and there will be nothing, just a void of what was. That’s what I’m afraid of finding out. That my life is boring, and there’s no way I can change it, and it will be like this for the remainder of my life, and I will just cry. Staring now into the abyss!
The first 3 days of this program have been very useful to reflect upon, despite my fears 🙂
Julie, realizing the importance of getting up and dressed every day is honest and liberating. Your 3 decisions sound wise. But I’m worried by the other things you say. Do you have a doctor or support person to help you as you adjust to the changes in your life? It seems to me there may be some services that could help you make this adjustment a more positive one, and I’d like you to speak to someone about that. Could you please let me know about that?
WOW… Great exercise! One of my Priorities is losing weight. So, my magic activities should be: attending the weekly Weight Watchers meetings, keeping my food journal, working out 5 days a week. My distractions are reading posts on the WW website. Another Priority is going into management by becoming a Sales Director in Mary Kay. My magic activities should be: booking appointments, delivering product orders, holding parties. My distractions are organizing my inventory, reading websites on how others have accomplished their goals.Thanks again!
Kelli these are fantastic! You can see how those illusory activities can SEEM to worthwhile because they’re goal-related, but they’re not as powerful as the magic ones. 🙂
I have made my list of magic activities so I can now see what my focus should be in each priority. Throughout today I am going to list the illusory activities that bog me down. I know they exist but I want to catch them as they happen in order to imprint them into my brain for what they are. I know that watching tv and too much computer time are two very big ones for me. Since I have a lack of privacy in my home at the moment it is difficult to focus on the things that benefit me personally, and I slip into the mind numbing activities. As I recover from my recent health issues and am gaining more strength, I hope to refocus.
This is perfect timing then Debbie! You’ll be setting new habits to go with your stronger self.