Improve Productivity by Working in Blocks of Time
The world is focused on productivity and can Improve Productivity by Working in Blocks of Time. As individuals we have personal and career or productivity goals. One thing that interferes with both are distractions.
Three of the main distractions to productivity are emails, phones, and urgent problems. They interrupt the goals we set for the day. Each day should have a list of priorities. Our life should have a list of priorities. Focusing on the priorities is how we improve productivity and reach goals.
Warren Buffet said list the 25 things you want to achieve in your life and the top 5. Then throw away all but the top 5 until you have achieved them. What are your top 5? How much time do you spend thinking about them and how much time in a day is devoted to their progress?
Working with Our Priorities
Our priorities are most likely tied to our values. What do you value in your life? You value relationships, your career, your health, your finances, and your free time. Can you achieve work/life balance with these 5 priorities? Can you plan each into your daily schedule?
The best way to achieve your priorities is to align them with your energy patterns? When is your energy best and what are the most complex daily priorities that demand the most creativity? Yes creativity requires peak energy. Creativity is how you make the most rapid progress.
My most demanding daily task is writing. I schedule it first. I find that I must start early to have peak energy. I often rise at 5 a.m. when I seem to have the clearest mind and no interruptions nor demand on my time. Some writers begin at 10 p.m. when the family is asleep and they have no interruptions.
I have a block of time for exercise which follows the writing if I am not teaching surf lessons. Exercise is my second priority each day and I need to engage when my energy is peak. That comes around 10 a.m. after I have written and consumed my energy shake and oat meal.
Lesser demanding priorities come later in the day. The things to do list should have a low priority even if important. Things to do will not bring you closer to your life’s goals. Free time should rank high on your list. You will burn out, become discouraged, lose faith in your plan, or even become hostile if you are not tending to your desires to insert meaningful activities into your day.
Finding Yourself
Consider part of the poem by Kali Kavara (Instagram) a spiritual leader;
Sometimes we go into windows of time
Where we need deep rest
To truly drop in and just be
To lie down, relax your shoulders, breathe, tune into beneficial noise
In a society that has tried to build value on over achieving, over exerting, over extending one self in constant action,
It’s hard to break the conditioning and let go.
Rest is sacred,
It is in the rest
The limbo
The quiet
The seemingly unknown
You restore, refigure, restructure
And become
Ever have the desire to sink into solitude? I now have a block of time I sink into solitude I call camping. It is camping. I go to nearby Lake Dixon, CA where I select my favorite spot overlooking the lake and it is quiet. There are no distractions and I can’t work. I start with two days and I have the luxury of being able to extend the days if I want. There is nothing comparable for me to sync into my existence. Total quiet, a campfire, no productivity possible.
Pat Lynd-Kyle, a psychologist wrote Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain. She would take meditation leaves from her practice and family for a month at the start and she eventually started taking several months. She reached a point where she said she felt she had no purpose and it was totally rejuvenating.
That is beyond what most of us can do or want to do in our lives, but there is a spot people who recede into the quiet find something the rest of us don’t experience with our lives that may be the most important part of our lives. Who are we? What is life about? Why are we here?
Think about the relevance to your life about how you spend your valuable time each day. You are only here once. What are you about? Why are you here? What is your purpose? Who are you? We get caught up in what we should do and who we should be and what we want to buy and lose contact with who we are?
Creating blocks of time to spend valuable time on your greatest priorities will reward you over the years with the satisfaction you are living a meaningful life. Nothing halts satisfaction like thinking your life has no meaning.
Daniel Pink in Drive says we have 3 innate desires:
- Autonomy-The desire to direct our own lives
- Mastery-The urge to make progress and get better at something that matters
- Purpose-The yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
Your life is a block of time. It has a beginning and an end date. You can string your 75,000 days in a meaningless progression of struggle or focus on your passions and purpose and make it glorious. In the end, only you are the judge.
Today is a day that will be lost forever after today. Use it to make a meangingful step into tomorrow and the next day. Make the days string together in the continuity of improving your 5 most important goals. Make each day about living your values.
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