productivity

I always tell people if you want to know the secret to happiness, I can give it to you in one word: progress

Tony Robbins

If you’re having a problem with momentum, go out and get a small victory and celebrate it. Rinse and repeat.

Documenting can also come in handy. Sometimes you feel like you aren’t going anywhere, but if you’ve documented everything along the way, you can look back and see where you’ve come from and all the little steps you took.

This is a foundation of skill building. When I started in piano, my first song was Yankee Doodle. I was fortunate enough to have many family members celebrate this small victory with me.

When I went in my 12-step program I would be in awe of people who were so far in the journey to me, and they kept reiterating to me that it’s a journey of 1 day. Take it 1 day at a time, and repeat that one day. “This disease is arrested one day at a time”. Over time you build habits.

If you want a Youtube audience, serve one person who’s watching your videos.

If you want more blog subscribers serve one person who’s reading your blog.

If you want a more fit body, don’t worry about all the things you think you’re going to have to do in the future. These things don’t exist and just clutter your mind. Think about being fit today and pushing yourself today and doing what’s hard today so that it becomes a habit.

I see so many, “how to be more productive” articles, but I don’t ever see this problem framed as “you’re naturally productive, so what’s stopping you”.

So I Googled “Things that slow productivity down” to see what was out there already and this article popped up that pretty much echoed everything I was going to write about. And written 4 years ago. That’s wild! Well done StartupGrind. Well Done.

I especially agree with the “energy levels” section of that article. I saw this a lot with jobs. Many jobs I worked for would push and push and push the employees and not give any significant downtime. It was like they wanted more orange juice, but they were squeezing an orange that had been all squeezed out. That orange might produce more teeny droplets, but there is no flow any more.

Another approach that seemed to make more sense, is to play and have fun and rest until you want to go back to work! And if you don’t want to go back to work, evaluate the work or how you’re actually doing the work. I had never thought of this perspective, but I saw the value after taking an extended break to Mexico. I wasn’t even aware of this perspective until I received coaching in my coaching program.

I think this really works well if you’re doing creative work. Your mind goes to different places on vacation and when you come back to work you relate to it differently.