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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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Still reeling from the “As long as we busy ourself with the semi-important or immerse ourselves in the pseudo-relevant, we can avoid thinking about the reality that life is short and there is only time for what matters. We can stay asleep.” I just reached 40 and am scared of stoking any mid-life crisis! I’m wondering if some of my priorities are too mundane now.
OK – focus on at least! I have identified 5+ tasks for each of my top 7 priorities which I think will get me started on those priority areas. Not many of them are tasks I would say are repetitive and therefore are conducive to a consistent approach, nevertheless they are things that I am procrastinating on that really will have the most impact on my life (I think!). It’s crazy to think I am burying my head on these when I know they are so important to me, or should be!
I am finding the not magic activities harder, apart from knowing that I do try to get through my mega important (not) to do list of chores around the house to give my day a productive feel (not) – problem is none of the magic activities above are on my to do list! I do definitely take the bull by the horns (not) and devise a detailed plan of action to get me started on the path to achieving it (not) – problem is I don’t actually do it – just plan it (amazing plan with tabs and colours and sticky plans and reminders ) – but never implemented. So I think I just need to make a promise to myself to put at least 3 important tasks on my to-do list each day – and actually do them (from those detailed above), and then be mindful when I am deviating away on the path to nonsense productivity and trying all the avoidance tactics I can! Easy right – uummm?
Feeling unsettled. It is true: it’s like staring into an abyss. If I do the magic activities, I’ll have find out what I am truly capable of. Things will change and more will be expected of me. Brave now.
Well the good news was I did my magic activities in conjunction with Day 2 – hooray. I’ve got them taped up and am going to try and journal each day over the next week to see how I’m feeling about it!
Illusory for me is doing something “productive” while sidetracked from something important I have decided to do.
My magic activities are getting enough sleep, exercising, eating healthy, cleaning, organizing, spending time with family and family activities. Spending time planning and trying to make the perfect schedule is a big illusory activity for me.
I can relate to Debbie Sperberg. I have a list now of magic activities and my non-magical activities are less obvious. (except for FB time ) Will have to practice a bit of mindfulness now that I have some “pegs” to categorize activities into magic or illusory. (:
If you never finish a job you can never have not done it “perfectly”. You can fool yourself and others by claiming that “I’m not done it, yet!” Personally, I think we should forget about the opinions of others. The only opinion that matters is your own. I don’t think we can ever do any job “perfectly”. Done is better than putting it off until we can devote “enough” time to do it “right:”. We need to decide for ourselves what matters most, decide what we can do to achieve those goals, take enough time to decide which activities will give us the most bang for the buck, and then start doing the baby steps that are involved in that activity. Speed is not the most important thing. I think what’s most important is understanding ourselves, what our priorities are and mine may be totally different from the next person’s. What gets us where we want to be? Even if you can only give a task five minutes at a time if you keep coming back to it, you WILL get it done.. If you find you don’t ever have enough time to get to some job because you are involved in so many activities, ask yourself if the activities(girl scout leader, volunteer at a soup kitchen, whatever, are you doing them to avoid doing what you really want to get done? Yes, those activities are all wonderful but they are just allowing you to avoid the job. Not all problems we face can be overcome but we must face them in the first place to overcome them.
My biggest illusory activity is compulsive planning/scheduling. I plan and re-plan which is a great form of procrastination…and keeps me from completing my magic activities.
I’m really bad for things like spending a lot of time reading health/fitness articles, but not acting on the advice in them, or spending more time picking out my workout clothes than I do on my actual workout! NO MORE@
Magic activities: started a new diet today, healthy foods, will track online and with workbook. Set aside time each day including mealtime to spend quality time with family. Start exercising 20 mins. Per day, I wasn’t doing anything. Limit spending on non-necessities. Plan weekly meals, and work on organizing projects one at a time at home.
Illusory activities: too much time online, throwing things in a pile to deal with later, buying books and never reading them. I am feeling both unsettled and excited. I know that I need and want to improve these important areas in my life. This was a good challenge. 🙂
Magic activities: started a new diet today, healthy foods, will track online and with workbook. Set aside time each day including mealtime to spend quality time with family. Start exercising 20 mins. Per day, I wasn’t doing anything. Limit spending on non-necessities. Plan weekly meals, and work on organizing projects one at a time at home.
Illusory activities: too much time online, throwing things in a pile to deal with later, buying books and never reading them. I am feeling both unsettled and excited. I know that I need and want to improve these important areas in my life. This was a good challenge. 🙂
This was the task that I was kind of dreading, because it pinpoints my biggest problem…getting distracted! But I recognize they are “on-purpose” kind of distractions, where I’m so overwhelmed by the things I need to do and the energy they take that I check out almost completely on trivial activities. That is a dangerous road! Thank goodness I don’t have alcoholic or drug addiction tendencies, but it’s nearly as easy to get addicted to these distractions – like going through every email and facebook post, playing games, silly news, and random google searches on interests that, although they may be important one day or at another time, are not priorities in the moment! On the other hand, I have confidence that I can set them aside if I refocus on what is truly important to me:)
What non magic thing is in every priority?! Facebook!
I’m having some difficulty selecting Magic Activities that are useful AND actually going to be done. For instance, ‘writing’ is one of my priorities but since it is not a current habit I’m not sure how to fit it in. I can say my Magic Activity is ‘write daily’ but that isn’t going to happen just like that. If it could have, I would have started already. Other systems need to be put into place beforehand but I’m not sure what. I also get confused between goals for each priority vs Magic Activities for each.
Here is what I have so far:
Homeschooling
– Relationship building with each son, but especially the youngest. (He often derails our day with relationship issues.)
– Plan in advance so the weeks we are schooling aren’t derailed by my need to plan more. (The schedule I’m trying this year includes off weeks for the kids/planning weeks for me.)
My health
– Track my food intake. Eat fewer than 100g carbs a day. (I could add activities about sleep and exercise, but want to just keep it simple right now.)
Creating systems for easier days.
– Tackle each problem area sequentially until new system solves problem. (Currently working on a system for keeping the kitchen counter clutter-free.)
Writing
-?
Personal time for learning.
– Begin having Quiet Time each afternoon (once fall begins) to allow me time for my own projects.
Somehow I don’t think I’m doing this right. There are missing steps. In January I spent a day looking at all my priority areas, writing a description of my overreaching vision for each, then a list of goals and THEN for each goal a list of actionable items (some of which would be Magic Activities). That method made a lot of sense to me and I came up with a beautiful document with lots of personal investment and yet, on the whole it was so overwhelming I just quit looking at it. Still, it seemed to get to the real issues better than what I’ve done here. (Are my MAs goals or actionable items? Seem to be a mix.) Maybe I’ll pull that old document back up and apply the Day 4 to it to see if that makes more sense to me.
Or is there something in this system that I’m missing?
It’s amazing how many things I can find to do that have no real effect on achieving the goal. On days that I have a list of things to do (of importance) I feel like I have achieved something, while on other days I spend the whole day busy doing things but feel like I’ve accomplished nothing by days end. I’m certainly going to stick to my magic activities so I have that feeling of satisfaction every day!
Doing what matters is incredibly scary – especially when you are afraid of failing those important matters. Reading that was like having a balloon flying around as it loses air. It’s a relief. I was happy to determine that in almost every priority I have all the resources I need, and the key activities, once I sat down and wrote them, are not too difficult to achieve. YEAH!
Plus, I identified “out loud” (pen to paper) that I HATE ILLUSORY- Sneaky Interloper – (love that term = it fits so well) ACTIVITIES as I have quite a few of them.
Thank you for opening my eyes to these truths! Already I am feeling better about my time.
I have my lists, now it’s just a matter of staying on track. Sometimes I feel I have ADD, my mind jumps and wanders all over the place
I had to change a priority, getting to bed on time during the school year. I find myself too tired to really accomplish anything, I think this one item can make a huge difference. I have read and do the 10 get ready for bed things you suggest, but when you start them late, you get to bed late.
My husband always teases me that the “magic” thing is #13 on a to do list of 12 items:-) Once I thought about it, this seemed like such an easy task. Can’t believe that I didn’t think of it before:-) My paid job and my extracurricular job are both pretty “stuff” heavy. Looking at the boxes and totes sometimes paralyzes me, yet managing the stuff (either getting rid of what I don’t need or organizing and putting away what I do need so that it is easily available when I need it again) is one of the magic activities, yet it is the last thing on my list! Since it involves more than I can get done in a day, I’m going to try to set a “stuff goal” every day. Maybe it is simply dealing with one or two boxes per day. That would make a huge impact, even if I don’t do it all in one day!
Magic activities: start giving talks in my community to raise my community’s awareness of our clinic and my very existence. Make a budget and -stick to it-! (I make budgets all the time, and then I somehow completely forget about them. Oops. Get in 10,000 steps a day.
Illusory activities: constant checking of email.
This is great information!