Check in with yourself often and figure out what matters.
Uncovering what’s important to you and avoiding vanity traps help light the way forward!
Prioritize
Just Get It Done!
The productivity industry doesn’t do this work to entertain us. They’re trying hard to help you get more done better. Emphasis on done.
Seth Godin, on the whole point of getting more productive: moving past efficiency to the more important stuff of being brave.
Figure Out Priorities With A Productivity Matrix
As any incredibly productive person will tell you, it boils down to knowing what your priorities are and systematically attacking your tasks with a focused mind. The one resource in the world that is common to millionaire CEOs and the average Joe is time.
We stumbled across this great tip and illustration of Stephen Covey’s time management matrix from the blog of an iDoneThis user, Eva.
Determining what your priorities are paves the road to getting stuff done in an order that makes sense!
Check out Eva’s Productivity Monday posts for more useful tips.
Just Slow Down: A Note on Busyness
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.
Tim Kreider writes about modern life’s worship of busyness and how to slow down in The “Busy” Trap for the New York Times Opinionator.
Find the balance between idleness and hustle, for “Life is too short to be busy.”
Photo: Alan Perryman
Focus and Ignore Lists
The key to success is not just focusing on what’s important but knowing what to ignore, to say “No” to. The decision to achieve something requires decisions not to achieve other things. HBR’s Peter Bregman recommends looking at Focus and Ignore lists every morning to direct your day to success: List 1: Your Focus List … Read more
A Lesson on Setting Priorities
We don’t know about the origin of this story but it’s a nice reminder about setting priorities: When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day isn’t enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee. A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some … Read more