“Just checking in. Are we still on for today?”

“Since I haven’t heard from you, I’m assuming we’re not meeting anymore…”

It happens to all of us. You make plans with someone, you confirm ahead of time, and yet they still don’t show up. Frustrated, you have two options. You can either let it ruin your day or you can see it as an hour saved.

Most people choose the former.

The common response

When plans fall through, the majority default to anger.

They feel rejected and annoyed at the person who failed them. But there is a better way to do things. Instead of letting frustration ruin your day, see their lack of attendance as a good thing!

Now you have time to do whatever it is that you have been meaning to do. That could be an email response you’ve been putting off, a book you’ve been wanting to start, or an up-and-extra for your business.

You have an entire hour free to spend however you so choose.

Relieved

This actually happened to me not too long ago. I had a video chat scheduled with someone and they forgot about it, missing the meeting altogether. Instead of being upset though, I was relieved.

My inbox had been slowly growing the entire day and I wasn’t sure when I’d ever be able to address it. And then, suddenly, with the cancellation of that meeting, I had the time to get through it all. I didn’t let the change of plans discourage me. I saw the opportunity and took full advantage of it.

Something that I encourage you to do as well.

A Bored List

In David Allen‘s book Getting Things Done, he mentions having a list of things to do while going through menial tasks. For instance, while on hold with a phone company, you could work through your email, clean off your desk, or fold some laundry.

Since reading his book, I’ve started a similar list for myself.

Deemed my Bored List, I always have at least two things on it. Then, when I find myself in a boring situation — like waiting in a doctor’s office — I pull up my list and work through whatever’s there.

You can apply this concept to your life as well. When your flight’s delayed, or you’re waiting for a client to join a Zoom call, or you’re standing by for a store to open, you can pull up your Bored List and use that time productively.

Refuse to wallow

One issue that you’ll likely encounter when things do go awry is wanting to complain or wallow. But that just wastes time. Instead, you’re better off recovering from the change as quickly as you can.

Reevaluate your time and decide what you can do with those newfound minutes.

Don’t hesitate. Choose what you will do and then take action. That’s a critical factor in making this time work for you. If you let it derail you, it will do so gladly. But instead, if you see it as an opportunity to take advantage of, you will be able to do so with maximum productivity.

Be prepared

The most crucial aspect of using your time productively, especially when plans go awry, is being prepared. It’s having that Plan B thought-out and ready to go before it’s needed. Not scrambling to figure it out in the moment, but knowing that you have options ready to go.

In the case of my video chat cancellation, I knew that I had email to respond to.

So when the meeting didn’t happen, I took immediate action. I didn’t delay. I knew what I needed to do and I got right to it.

The reason for a backup

That’s where having something like a Bored List becomes so handy. You never know when you’ll need it, but you’ll be happy you have it when you do.

You don’t necessarily need a list like this to be productive when plans change, you just need to be prepared. That could mean keeping a book downloaded to your phone. It could be letting a few emails stack up.

Or it could be simply reaching out to three or four people that you haven’t spoken to in a while. The Plan B doesn’t matter so long as you have one.

Plan A, B, C

Your Plan B may have different levels to it as well.

For instance, in my case, I generally don’t opt for my Bored List until I’ve already exhausted my other options. Meaning that before I go through that list, I’m sure to respond to any texts, emails, or Slack notifications first.

So really, Communication is my Plan B. My Bored List is my Plan C.

As you can see though, regardless of the situation, I have options. I don’t let my time be squandered. When I have a minute, I use it as productively as I can.

A little story to serve as example

You get to the restaurant five minutes early. You check-in, sit down, and order a drink. The potential client should be arriving any second now.

Ten minutes go by though and she still hasn’t arrived. You check your phone. There’s a text waiting for you: Running a few minutes late! Sorry! Order without me. I’ll be there soon. You sigh. I hate when people are late.

You feel irritated. Then, suddenly, you remember: I’m behind on my book club book!

Happy she was late

Immediately, you pull your phone back out and start reading. Wow, I forgot just how far behind I was! Now, instead of fuming, you’re relaxed and, actually, quite grateful that the client is running late. You finally have a chance to catch up on reading.

The client eventually arrives. Apologetic, she’s surprised to find you in good spirits. She figured you’d be mad.

“Why would I be mad?” you say. “I haven’t been able to read this much in weeks!”

Your two options

When things don’t go according to plan, you have two options:

• Wallow and complain
• Use your time productively

Most people do the former. But you’re not most people. Instead of letting unexpected events ruin your day, you can take advantage of them. Refusing to let circumstance damage your mood, you can utilise your time and ultimately be happy that things worked out the way they did.

Moving forward with a backup

There is always a chance that things will go awry.

Don’t be surprised when it happens, because it will. Instead, be prepared for it. Keep a book on-hand, have a Bored List ready, be aware of a few people that you haven’t talked to in a while and can reach out to.

Have your Plan B and possibly even Plan C within reach. That way, you’ll be happy when things go according to plan and when they don’t.

You’ll be ready either way.

PS: Wondering what’s on my Bored List? As of this writing, it contains just two things:

• Clean out all of the files in my Google Drive
• Clean out all of the apps on my phone

The post What’s your Plan B? Being productive when things go awry appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

And it occurred to me that if all the countless available stress “remedies”—books, videos, drugs, audio tapes, aroma therapy, vibrating chairs, relaxation techniques, programs, devices—are so effective, how come everyone is still stressed out?

The answer is simple. While these methods may help to ease your stress—that is, treat its symptoms—most of them do little or nothing to eliminate the causes, to reverse the stressful habits, attitudes and mindsets you’ve developed over the course of your life.

The solutions mentioned here will give you the tools, motivation and attitude changes you need to root out stress at its very source… on the multiple battlefronts of your life.

It’s time to stop the insanity and take back control of your life. Starting today. Starting now.

30 tools to help you take back control of your life

1. Do one thing at a time

Do it mindfully. Do it well. Enjoy the satisfaction. Then go on to the next thing. That’s the way to take back control of your life — one thing at a time. Multitasking might work for computers, but humans have yet to get the hang of it. A growing body of evidence affirms that trying to accomplish several things at once takes up more time overall than doing them sequentially. It consumes an excessive amount of mental energy, too, so you fatigue more quickly. The lack of focus also leads to careless mistakes, shoddy work and unreliable performance. Worst of all, having to do things over. This is no way to live. Give what you’re doing your undivided attention. Take the time to get it right. You’ll be more productive, and less stressed, in the long run. Why make yourself crazy?

2. Throw something out every day

You’ve got too much stuff in your house. Office. Garage. Attic. Useless clutter that’s weighing you down, getting in the way, obscuring the things you really need. Just looking at the stuff is stressful, to the point where physical clutter soon becomes mental clutter. The problem is getting rid of it. It’s a huge job, so you keep putting it off. But the more you put it off, the more clutter you accumulate… making it an even more humongous task to face. Here’s how to break the cycle. Every day, find one thing you don’t need and toss it. Or give it away. Or sell it at a consignment shop. Be realistic. If you’re not going to use it, lose it. Over time, the clutter will begin to vanish and space and order will magically appear in your home… and your life. Stick with this. It really works. Why make yourself crazy?

3. Cut down on competitive stress

Today, we compete for everything: the space around us, to be first to own a new product, to get our kids signed up for programs, to get our viewpoints across, to be faster, smarter, richer, sexier. Our days are filled with stressful competitions. And most are absolutely unnecessary. Because they’re driven by insecurity, fear of being left behind, an ingrained need to always have more or better than the next guy. If you wish to take back control of your life, try to get above all that. If you want to compete, vie to be the one who stays calm and in control, who isn’t easily sucked in by material things, who avoids being caught up in the daily grab-bag that robs people of health and peace of mind. Compete for that and see how pointless all those other competitions become. And how misguided those who partake in them begin to appear. Why make yourself crazy?

4. It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react

In any given day, you’ll have progress and setbacks, triumphs and failures. That you can bet on. But as good a day as some people have, they’ll manage to find something to fret about. [“It’s just luck, it won’t last, I’m destined for misery.”] And as bad a day as others have, they’ll see the good in it. [“So what? I’m still alive, still kicking and nothing’s going to stop me”] will win over your day? And the next day? And the next? You have control over that: to enjoy your accomplishments without diminishing them; to accept your failures as opportunities to learn. You have the power to make every day a positive outcome. Because it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to it. Why make yourself crazy?

5. Eliminate meaningless deadlines

Our lives have become one long game of beat the clock. Crammed with arbitrary and unrealistic time constraints imposed by ourselves and others that serve only to make us more pressured, anxious and stressed out. For no worthwhile reason. Avoid the trap of assigning time frames to everything you do, especially if you have little idea how long it will take. But, you say, I need a deadline or I simply won’t get around to doing it. If that’s the case, it’s not a deadline you need, it’s a goal. Make your goal one of completing a project in a careful, professional, satisfying manner. In other words, as long as it takes to do it right. Or maybe your goal is to make the project more fun and interesting, or to develop a new and more expedient way of doing it. In any case, save your nerves and your energy for the few real deadlines we face… Why make yourself crazy?

6. Leave a cushion of time between events

Scheduling appointments, meetings, projects, luncheons, and events too closely together is a guaranteed stress fest. It leaves you vulnerable to even the slightest delays, which will occur. You’ll always have one eye on the clock and thus be distracted, rushed and prone to miss things and make mistakes. Be smart. Don’t stack up your events like planes on a runway. Life never works out that efficiently. Spread your schedule out. Always leave sufficient in-between time to allow for any unexpected bumps and delays. It will not go to waste. You’ll be glad to have those breaks to answer phone calls and email messages, take care of incidental things, and prepare yourself for your next event. That extra cushion of time will leave you less frazzled, and more productive, in the long run. Why make yourself crazy?

7. Have backups of essential items in place

So that you never run out of critical oft-used household staples like laundry detergent, milk, deodorant, toothpaste, batteries, or bathroom tissue… employ the buy-two-replace-one method. For example, buy two bottles of mouthwash. That way you’ll have an immediate replacement when the first one is used up, which will give you ample time to buy another before you run out of the second. In order to take back control of your life, make a list of those items it would be more than a little stressful to have to go without—there really shouldn’t be many—and see to it you’ve got both the item and its backup on hand. Why make yourself crazy?

8. Don’t get hung up on product features

The more bells and whistles a product has, the more there is to learn and remember, the more complicated it is to use and the more expensive it is to buy. Save yourself the waste and aggravation of overbuying your need. Get a unit that serves your main purpose simply and economically, with maybe one or two extras you’ll definitely use. Loading up on the latest gimmickery will cost you in more ways than one. There’s nothing more annoying than having to reread instructions every time you use something. Why make yourself crazy?

9. Entrust responsibility to responsible people

There are those who always have a convenient excuse for not getting it right, showing up late or botching the job entirely. And there are those who consistently, effectively and unequivocally come through for you. This isn’t luck. It’s responsibility. Not something you’re born with. Something you do. Responsibility takes effort. Concern. Pride. And perseverance. Whom do you want to entrust your children, your home, your finances, and your other important responsibilities to? Lose the whiners and stick with the winners. Why make yourself crazy?

10. Always view yourself as ahead, not behind

This small change in perspective can alter your approach to everything. When you perpetually see yourself behind schedule, never caught up, forever lacking in something… your emphasis is always on need. And that puts unrelenting, unhealthy pressure on you. But view yourself as ahead of the game [and most of us truly are] and the pressure almost immediately eases, and your needs diminish, because you’re grateful for what you already have. You can move forward confidently from a position of strength, rather than struggle from one of weakness. It’s all in the way you look at it. Why make yourself crazy?

11. Don’t over-volunteer

Resist volunteering for more than you can handle, more than your free time allows. Volunteering is great, but heavy involvement can steal important time from your family and relationships. [And it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to avoid more important obligations.] If the work becomes too demanding, simply say no. Nobody else is going to look out for you better than yourself. If we all “volunteered” to spend more time with kids, visit our parents, make loving homes, and carve out special time for ourselves, there wouldn’t be a need for so much volunteering in the first place. Why make yourself crazy?

12. Accept that people think differently than you do

You could spend your entire life trying to win over people to your point of view. The simple truth is, you won’t. At least, not everyone. Even if you present the most logical, rational, airtight arguments, some people will never see it your way. Maybe they’re proud, stubborn, stupid, or in some people will never see it your way. Maybe they’re proud, stubborn, stupid, or in some instances—did you ever stop to think?—right. If you wish to take back control of your life, don’t waste your time trying to convert the diehards. Instead, work with them, live with them, respect their differences, and be thankful the world isn’t full of people exactly like you. Why make yourself crazy?

13. Don’t say it. Do it

Boasting about the wonderful things you’re going to do for yourself and others can actually be your undoing. For one, now you’re expected to do them. Secondly, if you don’t do them you appear weak, unreliable and irresponsible. If you really want to impress people, don’t reveal what you intend to do… but simply do it. They’ll be surprised and pleased with your accomplishment, and even more moved by your modestly. And if for some reason you can’t get it done, no one will be the wiser. Why make yourself crazy?

14.  Always be equipped for an emergency

This is an important step when you wish to take back control of your life. You only need to do this once. In your car, keep a first-aid kit, jumper cables, flares, flashlight, blankets, and a fire extinguisher. Home: a first-aid kit, fire extinguishers, flashlights, candles, and a portable radio. Sports bag: first-aid kit and instant cold packs. Take the time. Make the investment. Do it today. Even if you never use them, the peace of mind alone is worth the effort and expense. Why make yourself crazy?

15. Don’t look at your crazed schedule in its entirety

It’ll freak you out…like looking over the edge of a steep cliff. You’ll swear you’ll never live through it. And stress yourself big time fretting over it. Calm down. Focus only on what you need to accomplish over the next day or so. Deal with each event as it comes. You’ll find that things have a way of sorting themselves out, refreshing breaks do sometimes open up, and other options will present themselves. Your kitchen calendar [or electronic scheduler] can look far more frightening than it really is. One thing at a time. Why make yourself crazy?

16. Be a slug one day a week

Especially if you’re a jackrabbit the other six. Sleep late. Languish in bed with the newspapers. Don’t answer the phone. Go out for brunch. It’s okay. It’s not a crime. In fact, considering how you normally abuse yourself, it’s downright virtuous. Even better, designate a day the whole family can be slugs. No shuttling the kids around frantically. No social calendar to be slave to. One way to take back control of your life is to just let things happen… lazily and naturally. It will leave you more energized and better prepared to tackle the week ahead. Why make yourself crazy?

17. Don’t let routine tasks become urgent ones

Don’t wait until: you’re out of underwear before you do your laundry; the fridge is empty before you go shopping; the cell phone dies before you recharge it. That routine task will quickly become a critical one at a time when you can least afford to deal with it. And saddle you with exasperating stress when none should exist. Keep tabs on what might soon need attention and take care of it before it rears up and bites up. Why make yourself crazy?

18. Be on time

Lateness can signal a lack of respect for those you keep waiting. At least, that’s how they might view it. However acceptable you think lateness has become, you can bet it still grates on those whose time is compromised. Aside from that, constantly running late is a stress factory. It’ll fry your nerves, make you prone to errors and accidents, weaken your immune system, age you prematurely. Get hooked on the relaxed, liberating feeling of being ahead of schedule. All it takes is planning, practice and empathy for others. Everyone wins when you’re on time. Why make yourself crazy?

19. Make the “I’m running late” phone call

When it’s fairly certain you’re not going to arrive on time, make the call. Let others know in advance you’ll be delayed. It accomplishes several things. You’ll experience an immediate unburdening of stress and a sense of relief. You won’t be keeping people hanging, fuming and wondering where you are. Your alert will allow them to alter their plans accordingly. And by the time you arrive, they will have appreciated your courtesy, adjusted to the situation and be more agreeable with you. So don’t just arrive way overdue and try to minimize it with a trite “Sorry I’m late.” Call ahead and let them know you’re delayed. Why make yourself crazy?

20. Don’t expect gratitude

You may get it, but don’t expect it. Accept that a lot of your good efforts will go unacknowledged. [And your kids will never fully appreciate you until they have children of their own!] Today, people mostly take notice when things go wrong… and take the rest for granted. So rather than repeatedly setting yourself up for disappointment, don’t expect accolades. Do it because it’s right, because it pleases you, because your reward should derive from the fruit of your labours, not the arbitrary whim of disinterested recipients. And when that infrequent expression of thanks does come your way, it will be that much sweeter. Why make yourself crazy?

21. Tell people what you expect of them

How else are they going to know what you want? And how to deliver it? When you’re the boss, the customer, the parent, the teacher… you can’t be vague or timid. You have to be clear, firm and decisive. Don’t be shy about giving orders or afraid you’ll ruffle some feathers. And you have every right, indeed obligation, to give it. You can save yourself and others a lot of frustration when you simply take command and let them know what you expect. Why make yourself crazy?

22. Don’t answer your morning emails right away

Read them, but don’t answer them—unless there’s an immediate fire to put out. They’ll sap your time and the mental energy needed for more important tasks. Save them for later when you need a break. Responding will be easier then, too, since your subconscious will be working on them all the while. [Notice how you instantly know what to say when you revisit them.] Personal messages and jokes can be especially insidious and take a big chunk out of your day. They’re like electronic water coolers. And try not to interrupt your workflow every time a new message arrives. Wait till you’ve got a bunch. The objective here: fewer distractions, more focus, less stress. Why make yourself crazy?

23. Leave yourself an extra day at the end of your vacation

Enjoy a day of transition at home to unpack, read your mail, do your laundry, reconnect with others, catch up on things, or simply relax… before heading back to work. Thrusting yourself right into your busy routine without a breather is asking for the same stress you were trying to escape in the first place. That extra day of reentry and re-acclimation can make a huge difference. Take it. Why make yourself crazy?

24. Don’t be so thin-skinned

Why let an off-the-cuff remark or minor criticism rankle you to the degree it leaves you tense, angry and unable to focus on much else? Develop a hide thick enough so that verbal slights bounce right off and get only the minimal attention they deserve. [Sometimes we misconstrue what was said, too.] Overblown reactions create unnecessary stress and negative energy. To what purpose? You can bet the off-putting remark isn’t bothering the person who delivered it! To take back control of your life, don your emotional flak-jacket and accept that you can’t always please everyone. Why make yourself crazy?

25. Lose that jarring morning alarm

If your alarm clock shocks you out of bed each day with a sudden, loud, jangling noise, you could be doing yourself harm—starting the day with a burst of unwanted stress hormones. Try one of those new wake-up clocks that lift you gently out of sleep with natural sounds like ocean surf, birds, rainfall, or babbling brooks. Some even have pleasant chime sequences that gradually increase in volume. Or wake up to an unobtrusive radio station. Set a melodious rather than dissonant note for the day. Why make yourself crazy?

26. Improve your posture

Try not to slouch. Because when you slouch—for example, slunk low in your office chair, hunched over while walking, or ensconced deeply in the cushions of your couch—it impedes the flow of blood, makes breathing more difficult, contributes to a feeling of stressful incapacity that makes it harder to hoist yourself to a task. Snap to it. Sit up straight. Profit from the energy and alertness of a good healthy posture. Why make yourself crazy?

27. Seek professional help for major stress problems

The stress we deal with here is the everyday stress, the retail stress that we more or less bring on ourselves and thus have the power to eliminate ourselves. But sometimes there are major stressful events in our lives we don’t have control over—an illness, death of a loved one, marriage breakup, loss of a job, depression, abusive relationship—that require the help of a professional therapist. In such cases, don’t put off seeking assistance, or believe that casual stress remedies are going to do the trick. There are people out there who can make an extraordinary difference in helping you get through a difficult time. Seek their counsel; they will help you take back control of your life. Why make yourself crazy?

28. Don’t talk so fast

Have you noticed how much faster the pace of normal conversation is becoming? How we rush our words, leaving no openings, anxious to complete a thought before someone else rushes in? Often having to scold our listeners with “let me finish”? It’s a sign of our hurried times. And as much as fast talking is driven by stress, it can cause stress, too. Rapid speech is highly contagious. It’s less effective, hard to follow and easily misconstrued. No matter how fast the other guy is blathering on, slow down, speak deliberately… replace speed with firmness and clarity. You’ll stay more calm and communicate more forcefully. Why make yourself crazy?

29. Set up a stress relief fund

Put aside some money, and stock it away somewhere in your house where it will be available at a moment’s notice. This is not vacation money, not typical fun money and should not be used capriciously. But when things really start cranking up and you’re all but fried…break into your emergency stress fund. Go out and do something totally unplanned and indulgent. Whether it’s a favourite restaurant, store, nightclub, sporting event, whatever… is up to you. But when things are getting too insane, declare yourself a disaster area and send in some aid. Why make yourself crazy?

30. Alternate mental and physical activities

If you work at a desk all day, don’t sit in front of TV all night. Do something active. If your job is physical, or involves being on your feet or running around, relax and exercise your mind [like reading a book] during the off hours. If our work involves both mental and physical aspects, try alternating the two throughout the day. What this does is add balance and vitality to your life. It’s more energizing, stress-reducing and healthier overall. It’s easy to get stuck in a single monotonous mode—like moving from chair to chair all day—and suppress your other self. It’s essential to exercise both your mind and body. Why make yourself crazy?

The post 30 tools to help you take back control of your life appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Contrary to what we may think, striking a work-life balance doesn’t make us less effective. In fact, it only makes us better workers than those who burn themselves out by focussing on work at the cost of family, health and harmony. Many senior executives complain that they have too many demands, too many interruptions and distractions. They struggle to prioritise and end up firefighting despite their best efforts. For them, work-life balance is an aspiration, albeit an elusive one. They often feel that if they eke out time for their family and personal needs, they will fall behind in their careers.

All of us are blessed with the same 168 hours in a week. However, while a few achieve breakthroughs in life, the majority merely trudge along, wondering why they can never find time to do the things they want to. It is not just that harmony benefits your life—lack of harmony hurts it, in real tangible ways. The ability to concentrate and use your time well is important if you want to succeed in business or in other areas of your life, and a well-balanced life is the best tool for that. When you are spiritually, mentally, physically, socially and economically balanced, then you’re successful in the real sense.

The key is to look after your business, your balance [work, health, social circle and family] and your beyond [spirituality, giving, purpose]; and not prioritise one over the other. Paying equal attention to all three aspects will strengthen you as a person.

The World Health Organization estimates that stress costs American businesses $300 billion a year. The 2012 Workplace Survey released by the American Psychological Association suggests that many Americans report chronic work-related stress. Around 41 per cent said they “feel tense or stressed out during the workday,” an uptick from the previous year’s 36 per cent. In its annual wellness report, Employee Assistance Program provider ComPsych found that 38 per cent of employees can’t stop thinking about emotional, health, financial or job concerns.

Work-life balance not only results in happiness and personal success, it can even lead to business innovation. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, has noted that some of his best ideas come when he engages his children in conversations about his work.

Melinda Gates sums it up well: “The only thing I care about on the day I die is that people think I was a great mom, family member, and friend.”

Challenge yourself with the following “How to” exercises to

• MAKE balance a personal priority and be clear what balance means to you. As Dr. Stephen Covey puts it, “first things first”: making sure that business, balance and beyond all play their parts.
• SPEND time with loved ones; also set aside time to improve your health and do things that matter to you, like pursuing a hobby. If you don’t spend quality time with yourself and your loved ones, someone or something less important will take up your time.
• PREPARE a “not to do” list, not a “to do” list. This will remove non-essentials from your life. How do you make it? List everything that must be done in your life; delegate as much as you can; next, eliminate what is not necessary, then prioritise and execute what is left.
• PRACTISE the Hour of Power: 20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of meditation each morning.
• OBSERVE the Power of the Hour: schedule an appointment with yourself midday to regroup, reflect and reprioritise. This will make your afternoons more productive.
• RECORD how your time is spent. When you do this, you become more aware and alert, thereby improving your focus and allocation of time.
• REMEMBER that slow is fast—when you slow down and spend more time with your family, you notice a lot more about them, and have time to actually hear them out. Consequently, your relationships get better as your attention and care create impact. Or, as another example, if you start eating slowly, you can enjoy your food better and feel full faster.
• FOCUS on the 20 per cent of things that give you 80 per cent of value.
• WRITE the top three goals you want to accomplish the next day before you go to bed, and work on them exclusively [at least till 2pm the next day]. Then you can take care of smaller tasks.
• SPEND quality time with business partners, colleagues, customers, spouse, children and parents.
• DEFINE what a successful day and week means to you. Then set about achieving it.
• DEVELOP the attitude that you will manage time, and not that time will manage you!

The post The effortless way to work-life balance appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Fun? Yes… but also time, joy, and energy suckers. Not only that, but we typically beat ourselves up for ‘wasting’ time, and feel anxious about the ever growing to-do list.

So Why Do We Get So Easily Distracted?

Well, we are human. We have five senses, and all the bells and whistles go off when we see, smell, hear, touch, or taste something exciting.

So instead of beating ourselves up for our lack of focus, let’s compassionately observe, and learn more about ourselves.

Anything we do is to either create a feeling we want to feel, or avoid a feeling we do not want to feel.

Ask yourself—what are my true reasons for allowing myself to get distracted?

Perhaps you crave rest, but do not give yourself permission. Perhaps you desire more fun, more connection, more passion, but you define your worth through how busy you are. Perhaps you are going through heartache, loss, or a challenging time, and you want to zone out. Or maybe you are not writing that book because you are afraid of being judged.

Are you avoiding something, or are you craving something?

If you are not sure, don’t get stuck in the ‘why you do what you do’. Move on to the ‘what you can do about it’. Take action. The why will be revealed to you in time. Of course, it is helpful to understand ourselves, but we do not need to psychoanalyze ourselves to death in order to be able to make changes. That too becomes a huge distraction.

Being fully present and able to hold our attention on what matters most is like a muscle that has to be exercised, stretched, rested, and well fed.

First, we must get clear on what we want and why. What are your priorities in life? How do you want to feel? What makes you come alive? What is truly important to you in life, and what are your priorities? What do you really want to spend your time on?

A lack of clarity results in a lack of direction. I am not talking about having clear head-based goals here… I am talking about what your soul is really hungry for. What is your vision for your life? Are you creating it? If not, distractions might just be your way to avoid your soul’s painful yearning for more meaning in life.

Perhaps you don’t know what you really want. Then start with how you want to feel, and start doing things that make you feel really good. Your purpose will come to you. Knowing what you do not want may also spark a light in you. Create a NOT-TO-DO-LIST and get clear on what kind of things you eventually want to stop doing, delegate those things to somebody who loves it, or outsource them.

Set yourself up for focused, inspired action. As much as you are able, make your workspace a creation station. Clear the clutter, bring on some flowers, and other objects that bring you peace, joy, and remind you of why you are there.

You are your time

Take back your power. You can choose what you spend your time and energy on. Is the three-hour Facebook adventure really making you feel the way you want to feel? Once you reconnect to your deepest desires, you know what you really want to focus on.

Make self-care a priority

Instead of checking emails, pounding coffee, or hitting the ground running first thing in the morning, take some time to ground and center yourself. Meditation is the greatest exercise for the focus ‘muscle’. It is impossible to get things done while having fun, when we are moving and thinking a million miles an hour. Yoga, meditation, journaling, reading, dance parties, art, or do anything else that brings you back into alignment with your most joyful self. Do that first thing in the morning, and sprinkle some of that yumminess throughout your day. Slowing ourselves allows for more creativity, more joy, and more focus.

Create a fierce and flexible schedule

Especially if you are an entrepreneur like me, being in total charge of your schedule can seem overwhelming. I really love using the 60-60-30 method for productivity.

Be flexible in your approach, always checking in with your north star; your purpose and passions.

Set boundaries

I have three cats, a dog, and my husband coming through my office every day. My phone rings, emails pile up, laundry needs to be done, and the house has to be cleaned. I am my time. When I write, coach, or work on projects, I make the decision to silence all my gadgets. We do not have to be available 24/7. I dedicate a time to check email, and to return phone calls/texts. I let my hubby know that I love him and want to be fully present for him, but right now I really want to stay with this project, I am on a roll. He feels acknowledged, and my boundary is set. My tip for you: do not apologize or get into lengthy explanations that you ‘have’ to finish something. Take charge, declare that you really want to finish this, and agree on another time that works. If you have an office, put a sign on the door. Own your desire and gently create those boundaries. You will inspire others to do the same.

Replace expectation with trust

Our worth is not measured by our productivity. Setting hard expectations for each day sets us up for failure. We are human beings, not robots. Has it ever worked for you to put pressure on yourself? Perhaps you got it done, but how did you feel in the process? We are here to feel good. Trusting yourself, your abilities, and the divine timing of all things is the key for living in the flow.

Above all else, be gentle with yourself. Beating yourself up about choosing to browse the web for hours does not really help you to get focused. Be a compassionate observer of your choices, notice where you spend your energy, and fiercely realign yourself with your purpose and passions again and again.

The post 5 Tips to Avoid Distractions and Align With Your Purpose appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Ask me, I have worked sincerely, seriously and without even using up my CL [casual leave] or SL [sick leave]. For a while, years went past without my taking a vacation, but 30 years down this road, I am still raring to go, and full of beans!

I think I discovered the trick when I took over Femina as its editor. It was a huge challenge being at the helm of a magazine that was more than 30 years old, and lay gasping at the verge of collapse. It meant meetings and more meetings, discussions, and brainstorming sessions. It meant setting up a network… oh you know how it is with a start-up. And for all practical purposes, this was just that. We were scrapping everything but the brand name and starting afresh.

Well, to make a long story short, there were days when the enormity of what I had taken on would swamp me. Add to all this was the fact that there were seniors, in age and seniority in the company who resented a younger ‘boss’.

Under the circumstances, I should have in the very first quarter, been lining up for a stress test and risking a serious burnout. But I took a walk instead.

Go Take a Walk!

It has been my way of de-stressing, de-cluttering my mind when something could not be solved in writing, or a problem, to take a walk.

Walking the streets, window shopping, or looking at the sea or a river, calms one down; it makes the mind move out of its narrow corridors of thought and admire what it sees, relaxing in the process. Soon, I would find my brow easing, and a song presenting itself to be hummed. The feeling of being able to walk away from the scene, and find something else to interest the mind, would give the issue at hand perspective. And whittle it down to the proper size. In the large scheme of things, it was only a transitory drop of pique.

The walks were the first step. As the years rolled by, I found other ways to ensure that I created little asides to sidestep imminent burnout. Mental parks, to find the space to relax even as I continued with my rather demanding working schedules.

Fan an Old Flame

I think being blessed with an interest in many things is one reason this was easy. But interests can always be developed. It’s amazing how much there is waiting to catch your fancy, if you just look around.

We’ve all grown up with interests. Wanting to sing, or dance, or climb a hill, wanting to know how to skate, or fly a plane. Where have all those dreams gone? Chances are we write them off as dreams, and they are lying forgotten in some far away drawer beside the diary you once kept in school, or the trophies you won, which you could not bring yourself to throw away.

Time then to open that forgotten drawer and pull out those dreams.

Do it on some weekend. Just when you think you are so busy that you have no time to eat, or indulge in a siesta.

As you go through the things that you wished to do, but did not quite get down to, something might just grab your fancy.

I know I always wanted to do theatre. And one day, on an impulse, I did join a theatre group. It was an experimental play, and there was a lot of dance-based movement involved, and having learnt a bit of dancing, and loved it as a school girl, it would be easy and fun, I was sure.

It wasn’t. The dance was based on Purulia Chhau, a martial arts form; I was terribly out of form myself, thanks to my city bred ways. Just mastering the first steps took me over a month.

It was work all over again, hard work, the kind that made one sweat and sometimes made me think that I had more muscles than others and all of them only knew how to ache.

Earn as You Learn

But it was a learning, and learning something new is always an adventure. It uses different parts of the brain from what you normally use at work; it makes you stretch your limits as you go back to being a child again, and taking instructions and following them. It teaches you humility and wonder, and when you finally make progress in small steps, the same sense of wonder fills you that fills a child’s mind when it realises that putting one foot in front of the other can get it from one place to another!

In the process, the job you do gets pushed to its proper slot as one of the many things that fill time and space in your life. The humility and wonder are useful, they help you appreciate others’ skills and points of view and help you look at things at work afresh. Most important, the entire learning process de-stresses you. And you have earned a mental respite!

For years after my first foray into learning Chhau, I continued to be a part of the theatre group.

I made new friends, I learnt new methods of expression, I learnt to throw my voice and express myself in different ways, and I learnt after the Chhau episode, Kalaripayattu, T’ai Chi and a smattering of other disciplines.

Flirt Shamelessly

Over the years I have done most everything I wanted to do as a child. Well, most everything. I have learnt singing, serious classical singing from one of the country’s best teachers, who lamented the fact that I had a full-time job and only ‘flirted’ with learning. But the sessions with her were a revelation of another world, and I still value what she taught me about voice and expressing a note through it, in the morning classes where I sat on the floor looking up at her on the divan, as she strummed the tanpura and guided me along.

Her own dedication to music to the exclusion of everything else including marriage and children, gave me a sense of awe at her single mindedness, and yet told me there were pitfalls in being so single minded unless one was really world-class as she was.

I still regret having to give up my classes with her; it meant a long, long journey to a far off suburb from where I lived and an equidistant trip to work, which eventually got impossible to handle. But the experience left me richer in memory and understanding, and opened a new world. More important it helped me write with some knowledge on music. Besides singing and theatre, there has been a host of other things. Travel for instance!

Run Away!

I remember falling in love with the Everest when I first read a book about Mallory and Irvine’s attempt. Doomed though it was, it was fiercely magical in its hold on the imagination.

When the going gets tough, they say, the tough get going.

When things get bad, and seem irrevocable, they mend pretty fast if you really take your mind far away from it. I did that, and right in the middle of a worsening situation at work, once I had neatly tied all straggly ends, and set the boat sailing on its own for the next 15 days at least, I bought a pair of hiking shoes and set out on my first ever hike.

When things get bad, and seem irrevocable, they mend pretty fast if you really take your mind far away from it

It was tough, of course, but the exhilaration I felt at getting there and getting back washed away all negativity. If I can do this, I told myself, I can solve issues at work. And by Jove, I did!

Since that first trip, I have done another, trekking 84km to and from the Pindari glacier. Other times, I take a road trip into far off places, or fly away to a lesser known destination. When work presented me with fam trips, I took the untrodden route. That would make routine into an adventure.

Though fam trips are looked upon as pleasure trips by those not in the charmed circle of being invited, they are often trips where one is slave-driven from one tourist spot to another, one lunch meet to another tea meet where press notes and info comes in heavy overdoses. There is little free time, and by the time one returns, one might want to take time off on a vacation!

Walking the untrodden route is to either find the offbeat story while in the crowd, like concentrate on one aspect, so you can read up, take tiny side excursions, and no organiser minds that extra input for you, if it makes a good story for him. Or like I did, I took a colleague along; [she paid for her flight, but after that, the rooms were anyway twin sharing] and drove all over Ireland, daring myself to drive in a foreign land, through places that I could sometimes not pronounce. We got lost, we ended up in strange nooks and dead ends, but it was a trip we will never forget. And the result was we enjoyed writing the many stories we gathered along the way!

Play Peeping Tom!

Other times I have taken up writing a book, losing myself in another person’s life, in an era that is now almost forgotten. Living their lives, dreaming their dreams, understanding their lows, it was easy for me to breathe easier. When the pressure mounted, I could dream away in my secret world, and refreshed and relaxed, get back into the real one!

There are ways and ways, to escape. Write a diary, laugh at your troubles each night, and gloat over your successes. Better still, write it as the story of someone like you, looking at the events from a third person’s perspective. The 15 minutes of writing will make you see things in perspective and relax you completely, so you wake up with the past day well in the past.

Divide and Rule

As team leader, I have always believed two things are important. One is being hands on and leading from the front. And the second is delegating responsibility. Divide and rule is a great way to find time for oneself in the midst of a work week.

By delegating, you build responsibility, you nurture latent skills in your team, and you start a process by which the team becomes as good as you are. Yet, the very fact that should make a leader insecure will help make her more secure. Because most colleagues when they know you value them and treat them as equals, even as you mentor them, will hang on and ensure they learn everything they can. When they are ready to fly, they will, but everyone flies anyway. And knowing they will carry good things about you wherever they land next makes for a happy heart.

More important, your load at work is lighter. Of course you must weed out the ones who won’t learn, who play politics, who gossip and back bite. That is a sure-fire stresser-outer. But don’t build stress, give them a fair chance and if it does not work, let them go.

And try and pass this on to your team too. The bright eyed and bushy tailed among the team will try to sure get the first fox, the first snippet, be the best, mop up, take over, in short, their enthusiasm or efficiency, or simple need to prove themselves will make them work twice as fast and jump twice as high than everyone else.

Ease them into understanding the need to slow down. To look around, to take an hour off at lunch and read, or surf the net, or fish up old Calvin and Hobbes strips, to walk out and chill over an ice cream or a movie.

Get them to spread the enthusiasm all around and make fun and play as important as work. Creating games at work, during meetings, helps ease the tension for those who feel inferior and brings the know-it-alls down a peg or two.

Most important give them doses of the chill pill mantra, as you mentor them. And take two yourself.

Daily Doses

Our grandmothers and mothers knew the trick, there was always a piece of embroidery or knitting to take the edge away from chores, from long journeys, and keep the mind relaxed and stress-free. I think the tools were different in my case, but the trick is the same.

I sing as I drive, or take the train, I always carry a book to escape into, so long waits don’t frustrate me, most of the time. I remember once writing an entire TV script for a serial I was doing, while waiting for four long hours at a Consulate for my visa!

Find me time, find things to do that are different, find ways to keep smiling at every new day. When the going gets tough, take a break, a real or mental escape.And you will bounce back.

Ask me, I am still bouncing!

The post Here’s How I sidestepped Imminent Burnout at Work appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

In order to address, this we must bring awareness to how we are living and being. Let’s begin by looking at it from what you say about time [which reflects how you feel about time]. One way to distinguish your relationship with time is in the language you use to describe it. In my seminars, I have asked thousands of people, “What do you most often say about time?” The almost immediate answer is, “I don’t have enough!” We live with such a feeling of scarcity regarding time but the more you relate to time as a resource or in fact, an opportunity, the more you will make conscious choices about what to do with this resource.

You’ve got to see to what degree you are playing the “I’m so busy” game. Many people find a sense of importance and self-esteem in how much they have going on; how many activities they do; or  how much their kids are doing. Where does it end? The busier you are, the more important you may feel; but as you well know, the “busyness” is draining the life out of you. Chances are you don’t know what to do about it. The resolution to this stress is to create meaning in what you are doing.

Finding Meaning

Lack of meaning is a cultural epidemic. Negotiating the tension between cultural expectations and the cry of your heart requires tenacious resiliency. My client, Colette, was a perfect example of this. She was a successful corporate executive, but hated the culture in which she was operating. She wanted to leave her job to begin teaching yoga as she had been a trained instructor but never pursued that as a career. She longed to help people connect more deeply with their essence and experience wellness.

Colette was afraid of what people would think of her if she gave up her ambitions in the corporate world, not to mention her high-paying job, to pursue something that seemed “less successful” in the eyes of her colleagues, family and friends. She also knew that she enjoyed the stimulation of the corporate world—she just didn’t enjoy her toxic workplace. In fact, if she could find a way to bring wellness to corporate America, she felt she would have landed on her true calling.

After about nine months of coaching and support, that is just what Colette did. She found a new job as a corporate wellness trainer, where she was able to combine her love of yoga, nutrition, stress-reduction, communication enhancement and wellness, while doing all this work inside of a corporate setting. She was still being paid well and enjoying the camaraderie and stimulation of the workplace she enjoyed and yet she followed her heart’s calling to do what was aligned with her values and passions.

Busy Versus Productive

What ends up missing is not time to do more, but time to feel more. What is missing is meaningful time.

Many people spend their lives being busy to avoid delivering on who they really are. Following your heart and pursuing your true calling, like Colette did, takes tremendous courage. It requires a willingness to go against the grain of what our cultural norms tell us we are “supposed to be doing”.

There is a tremendous distinction between being busy and being productive; two words that reflect similar notions but are energetically divergent. How do you feel when you say you are busy or you hear others say this to you? Most often, when I ask people that question, the reply is that ‘busy’ feels chaotic, frantic, disorganized, pressured. People who report that they are chronically busy most often say that they start on many things, but finish very little.

I use the notion of being productive in a whole different way. The word ‘productive’ indicates that things are actually getting accomplished. My definition of productive is that you are clearly and consistently taking ground on what is important to you, producing an intended outcome that you desire and for which you find meaning.

A man approached me after my seminar and told me that he had spent a year sailing with his family. He said that during that year he was constantly doing things: reading charts, adjusting sails, checking navigation and weather patterns; but he never once felt that he was ‘busy’ like he does in his day-to-day life as a CEO. His example highlights this point well—being busy has nothing to do with the amount of activity. It has to do entirely with the amount of choice, enjoyment and meaning we associate with our activity.

Below is a chart to help you break these concepts down a little more so you can begin identifying the skills and ways of being that you have been practising regarding busy behavior versus productive behavior.

Moving from Busy to Productive

These two different states, of being busy or productive, represent divergent ways of thinking and perceiving. This is what I call your level of energetic consciousness. It is the vibratory field created by your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes and ways of being. Change your level of consciousness and you change the way you see the world. Altering your perception, in turn, creates the energetic conditions to bring to fruition what you truly desire. In this way, you come closer to your innate perfection, or what I call your “God-Self on Earth”.

You will experience all life’s challenges and opportunities through your predominant level of consciousness. Let me illustrate this further with a real life example. I had a client—let’s call her Sheila—who inherited $350,000 when her mother deceased. Sheila is a ‘high energy’ individual who is wonderfully engaged, happy and vital. On the other hand, her sister Sonya, who is a ‘low energy’ person, is frequently negative and complaining, often having health and financial challenges. Both women inherited the same amount of money, yet had radically different responses to their inheritance.

Sheila was grateful to her parents for planning and providing for her in this way and quickly went about deciding what to do with the funds. Contrarily, Sonya received this gift with anxiety and complained that she cannot trust anyone to invest the money for her and that now “everyone would want something” from her. Sonya is a woman with financial need, yet she could only experience this gift through her principal level of consciousness.

Change Your Consciousness, Change Your Life

As we shift and elevate through the levels of consciousness, our experience of life changes.

Level 1: Survival

Characterized by

• Victim thinking
• Notion that life is hard
• Living in the predominant feeling of just getting by
• Frequently blaming others and circumstances for difficulty
• Desiring help from others but often rejecting it
• Tendency toward apathy

Level 2: Stress

Characterized by

• Anger at how difficult life is
• Having difficulty relaxing or enjoying simple pleasures, therefore a tendency to ‘numb out’ with various addictive behaviors
• Being hard working, driven
• A tendency to be antagonistic
• Being chronically overwhelmed
• Anxiety and ‘what if’ thinking
• General unhappiness
• Tendency to hold a grudge

Level 3: Transformation

Characterized by

• Taking responsibility for thoughts, emotions, circumstances and actions
• Living beyond the notion that life is hard
• Having solid ability to cope with life
• Being self-motivated
• Being cooperative and productive
• Having a strong desire for improvement, growth and success
• Being encouraging
• Being primarily focused on internal locus of control, self-empowered

Level 4: Transcendence

Characterized by

• A strong tendency toward loving kindness
• Easily accepting people and circumstances
• Creating harmonious relationships
• Inner peace
• Believing they create their own life experience
• Predominantly being happy, often blissful
• A focus on spiritual understanding and growth

Your level of consciousness is constantly changing. On the energetic plane, you attract other people, situations and relationships that vibrate at the same resonance as you. If you live at a low resonating level of consciousness, it is likely that you will attract low-resonance realities into your life. Likewise, if you live at a high resonance, you will attract high-resonance realities. When you incorporate higher, lighter, more beautiful energies into your day, your energy is lifted and you rise to a higher level of consciousness.

It is in understanding and managing your consciousness rather than your time or stress that life mastery begins. As you recognize that it is your perception of any given event that creates your reaction to it, you can train yourself to shift your perceptions and create the experience of life that you desire. It is about empowerment—recognizing that you can consciously choose how you experience life.

The image of the Levels of Consciousness Model given below will deepen your understanding. The center arrow in the spiral represents that we are always moving up and down these four levels of consciousness. The colors represent the colors of the energy centers of the body, known as the chakras, with the lower energies being at bottom of the spiral and the higher energies at the top.

Organize Your Mind

A disorganized mind creates a disorganized life. Therefore, to begin calming the chaos you have to bring order to your mind. To understand this idea of organizing your mind, let’s take a look at how you organize material things. If you want to organize your storeroom, for example, a reasonable first step is to take everything out of the storeroom so you can actually begin seeing what is in there. You cannot organize what you cannot see. Most likely, your mind is a little too much like your cluttered storeroom. It is too full of things that are probably useful and important, but you cannot really gain access to them because they are cluttered and disorganized.

I’m going to show you a three-step exercise that can help you bring clarity and order to your mind. It may seem overwhelming at first, but I have done this with thousands of people and it is amazing to see what happens and how much fun it can be.

Step 1

Brain Dump! Get It All Out!

Write down everything you have to and want to do in your life between now and when you die! I want you to literally empty your mind! You cannot organize your inner world until you begin sorting out what’s in there.

This list is not to be confused with what some people call a bucket list, which only contains the things you want to do before you die. The list I am asking you to create includes your dreams and hopes, as well as everyday things like going to work, paying the bills, cooking, shopping and the rest of it.

This list has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it helps you capture the whole of your life [which we often feel is overwhelming] in one place. The other benefit is that it helps you evaluate your life. When you actually put your life down on a few pieces of paper and look at it, there is this odd sense of “That’s it? That’s all I have been stressed out about? This is all I am going to be doing with the rest of my life?” You may even realize that you need a bigger life!

Now, of course, this list is not exhaustive nor a one-time creation. You will always come up with new and exciting things that you want to experience and ‘have to do’ as well. Keep adding to the list over the coming days so you can just jot down items as they come to mind.

Step 2

Establishing Your Sacred Intentions

The next step is to begin organizing the list. Break it down by placing all of the items you are not currently working on or doing anything about on a separate list. These are items that are simply dreams and you have no intention of doing anything about them right now. They are what I call your “Sacred Intentions” list. It serves as a constant reminder that life is a sacred gift and that your dreams and intentions are uniquely yours, directly put into your heart for you to enjoy and pursue. Labeling this list of desired experiences “Sacred Intentions” has a higher consciousness to it that elevates your life.

Creating a list of your dreams and intentions creates what I call an “energetic placeholder” for the things you wish to bring into your life. It is not something that you have to reference all the time, but it is something that you have given your attention and positive emotion to. Creating positive intentions for your life is one of the elements of living in higher consciousness. This list is central to that magnetic force.

When you live in chronic overwhelm and chaos, there is no room to dream and explore your deeper sense of self. The dreams I am referring to here are not so much about material possessions for fame and fortune but the deeper longings for self-expression. I have reinvented myself time and time again in service of seeking to grow and express more of my highest Self. That is what we are here to do, rather than be confined to our fear of change or to the convention of culture. I left a successful career as an inpatient psychiatric unit director in my mid 30s to pursue my own business, dove into motherhood in my early 40s and am now reinventing myself as an author and speaker in my 50s. None of these changes came to me lightly; each felt like a direct communication from God to keep reaching higher and experience more of life and give more to life. That is the importance of paying attention to your desires.

It is easier living in the lower realms of consciousness where you can shirk these kinds of challenges by pointing to all of the external reasons for why you cannot change. That is easier than doing the hard work of facing your fears, learning new skills, taking on new routines and living with an open heart in the face of failure. But it is not nearly as full, rich and expansive as knowing that you can meet any dream and challenge with faith rather than fear. You would only choose to live this way if you have a passion for something beyond the ordinary—and since you are reading this article I know you are one of those passionate ones.

Step 3

Schedule Your Life and Live Your Schedule

This is my favorite part of calming the chaos. When you finish, and then live by, this next piece, you will never again have to live with a to-do list. This doesn’t mean that you will not be recording and organizing the things you need to do. In fact, you will be doing so much more than keeping a to-do list. I am talking about keeping a schedule, a time-bound structure that keeps your mind organized and keeps you moving toward your desires.

Once you start managing yourself in relation to time, actually scheduling what you are doing and when you are doing it, you will begin to establish a relationship with time in reality rather than in an illusion. Learning how long things take to manifest helps you make better decisions regarding what you commit to doing with your time.

Normally, your schedule contains things that you do for work or for someone else, like people you have to meet or tasks you must accomplish. Often you leave out the things that most matter to you, like rejuvenation, meditation, connecting with your spouse or partner or playing with your children. These ideas stay in your head and your head can only hold so much data before going into overload. That is why everyone walks around in chaos, with overloaded circuitry, feeling stressed out and depleted.

Far too often, to-do lists are a setup for failure because they have no bearing in time. As a result, you walk around with this incredibly disempowering inner conversation of “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I get it all done? I need to be more productive.” Or an outer directed conversation of, “What is wrong with them [boss, manager, or spouse]? Can’t they see that I am running on all cylinders here? They are trying to run me into the ground.”

Consider that your schedule can begin living for you, not as just a list of things you have to do, but as a meaningful, organic, fluid structure that provides the container and accountability for you to live an empowered, balanced and joyful life. Imagine that it is a contract of sorts between your day-to-day self and your higher Self. By higher Self, I mean the part of you that is connected to God or Spirit or whatever notion you choose to represent the wholeness of life.

You often walk through your day feeling overwhelmed with things to do, but what happens when you actually have a couple of hours with no meetings or no place to go? Do you sit down and become wildly productive ticking things off that you know you want to accomplish? No, you don’t. Instead, your mind goes into neurological overload and you can’t think straight. So you do busy work; a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and then at the end of all of that busy work you only have a half hour left before your next meeting so you can’t start anything too profound in such a short period of time!

Learning to plan your life and to live your plan quiets the inner turmoil. So what do you put on your life schedule? Well, I suppose the answer to that is everything that you are doing. You will only begin calming the chaos when you start getting present to what you are doing and when you are doing it. You have got to get clear on how many things you are saying “yes” to in any given day or week in order to stay even remotely out of overwhelm. The only way you can really know how much you are doing is to be able to see it all in front of you in a concrete structure that shows you when you are already committed and when you are free.

Related » Time Management Is Really About Managing Our Behavior

This Is How You Create Your Schedule

First, you will need to get all of your daily activities set up on your calendar. Start with the face-to-face things like meetings and appointments, and put those on your schedule first. Then add other routine things you regularly do but that are not in your schedule. Here is a list of items that might be included:

• commute to work [you can use this time to listen to audio books or make phone calls here when you plan ahead]
• exercise
• meals and meal prep
• food shopping and errands
• planning for meetings, writing reports, doing paperwork.

Lastly, add those items that you have been wanting to do, but simply have not made time to accomplish. For example, one of my students had put off painting her kitchen for over three years because she “didn’t have time.” She had the paint and supplies for three years and never did the project. After applying these principles, she had the kitchen project completed in three weeks! Because she never planned her time, she would “stay busy” every evening after work and therefore “didn’t have time” to do the project. With a change in mindset and skill set, something she had put off for three years was literally complete in three weeks!

You will have to schedule things out further in time to accommodate all of the items that you have been keeping in your head. Most people just schedule things a day to a week in advance, but using this method, you will likely start scheduling things several weeks or even months into the future. And be sure to schedule the things you want to do not just the things you have to do!

There can still be plenty of room for spontaneity. Remember, this is your schedule and you can do whatever you want. Suppose you have scheduled on a given Saturday to pay bills and do errands but get a call from a high school friend who is only in town on that Saturday. Do you rigidly say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I am scheduled to run errands”? Of course not! You simply adjust your schedule accordingly. You are not rigidly locked into anything but clarity and planning will drastically expand what you accomplish.

Create Your Freedom

This system does not limit your freedom. It creates freedom! That may sound counterintuitive as you think about bringing this level of order and organization to the living of your life, but here is something to ponder: there is no freedom without the freedom to express your deepest, truest self. There is no freedom in life when you are living in chaos, too busy and stressed to think about what your life is for or how to move toward what your heart is calling you to pursue. This system addresses that challenge head on. It provides you with tools and structures to bring forth your deepest desires and passions, as well as increasing what you deliver to this world. I don’t know what is more exciting and freeing than that!

The fundamental reason to learn to manage your energy rather than your time is simply this: you will feel better. You will come to trust yourself in a new way and you will like the person you become as a result. Calming the chaos begins and ends with you.

Before I created this system and way of life, I was always busy, dealing with two chronic injuries, intermittent depression and attention deficit disorder. I was on medication for all of these ailments. I had a fine career, but I knew that I was staying busy to avoid the calling of my heart. Today, my injuries have healed, I am not taking any medications, and I can honestly say that I am one of the happiest, most productive and engaged people I know. I love my work, am happily married and enjoy being a mother. It is an amazing shift for me since learning how to manage my energy rather than my time and stress.

The most important thing for you to know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is that the calm you are seeking is also seeking you. Living in a higher level of consciousness will not solve all of your problems, but imagine what a difference it will make to address practical, day-to-day challenges with this knowledge and awareness. As each of us calms the chaos and elevates our consciousness, all of humanity changes.

The post How to Stop Being Busy and Start Being Productive appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Kenichi Ohmae, voted by The Economist as one of the world’s top five management gurus, once wrote a tribute to the legendary Sony co-founder Akio Morita in Time magazine. While describing Morita’s exemplary energy, he wrote: “The best way to describe Morita’s extraordinary drive is to scan his schedule for the two-month period immediately preceding his stroke. He took trips from his home base in Tokyo to New Jersey, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Dallas, Britain, Barcelona and Paris. During that time he met with Queen Elizabeth II, General Electric chief Jack Welch, future French President Jacques Chirac, Isaac Stern and many other politicians, bureaucrats and business associates. He attended two concerts and a movie; took four trips within Japan; appeared at eight receptions; played nine rounds of golf; was guest of honour at a wedding ceremony; and went to work as usual for 17 days at Sony headquarters. Morita’s schedule had been decided on more than a year in advance.”

Morita lived a rich life—and I don’t mean that financially. The man, who led Sony to become one of the world’s biggest and most recognised brands, managed to find time for everything—work, play, family and friends.

In contrast, most of us keep struggling to cope with the ever-increasing demands on our time and, as a result, remain in a perpetual state of overwhelm. The tasks on our to-do list never seem to get exhausted and, in the end, we compromise on what we really value. But Morita was not blessed with extra time. Like all of us, he had the same 24 hours each day, and 365 days in a year, within which he had to accomplish all his goals. He was not superhuman either. So what was the secret of Morita’s inexhaustible energy? This month’s cover story points to the answer.

“A disorganised mind creates a disorganised life,” writes best-selling author and psychotherapist Jackie Woodside in the cover story. According to Jackie, to master life, you need to understand and manage your consciousness rather than your time or stress. “Most likely, your mind is a little too much like your cluttered storeroom. It is too full of things that are probably useful and important, but you cannot really gain access to them because they are cluttered and disorganised,” she writes as she outlines a three-step exercise to help you organise your mind and your energy.

So don’t waste any more time; just read the full story here and learn how to stop being needlessly busy and start being meaningfully productive for life.

The post August 2015 issue: Busy bee no more appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Imagine if time was a bank account and, each morning, you were credited with 86,400 seconds. Further imagine that if by the end of that day you hadn’t spent any of the credits, they would instantly be deducted from your account. What would you do? My guess is that you would make every effort to spend them as best as you can. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how much we take time for granted and then regret the moments we lose or waste?

In transport economics, the value of time is the opportunity cost of the time that a traveler spends on their journey. In essence, this makes it the amount that a traveler would be willing to pay in order to save time, or the amount they would accept as compensation for lost time. The value of time varies considerably from person to person and depends upon the purpose of the journey, but can generally be divided into two sets of valuations: working time and non-working time. I guess that sums up life very well, and it is important that we make a balanced investment into both work as well as play time.

From Managing to Prioritizing

One of the biggest challenges that people face is personal time management and the ability to prioritize. Let’s face it: we all have our own quirky little habits that we have adopted and have been guilty of putting ourselves and other people under unnecessary pressure by just not being as well organized as we could be. This can have a big effect on our stress levels too. The more efficiently we manage our time, the better we will feel generally.

It is also important to respect other people’s time and, if our own lack of personal organization or timekeeping disrupts others, then it is important that we take responsibility and do something about it.

Also, it is worth considering that, no matter how organized we may be, there are always only 24 hours in a day. Time doesn’t change. All we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have. Many of us are prey to time-wasters who steal time that we could be using much more productively. It is so easy to go off-track or become distracted by something that is so much more interesting than the task in hand.

Redefining Time Management

It is important to remember that the focus of time management is changing your behavior, not changing time. Here are a few tips of how you can do that:

Review time

Have you ever stopped and really analyzed how you spend your time? For 14 days, record how you spend your 86,400 seconds. Keeping a log will help you detect self-defeating habits, which you can then begin to change.

Eliminate personal time-wasters

Once you know how you are spending your time, you will easily begin to see how you waste time. Often, it will be things that you can easily change. Here, being honest with yourself helps.

Related » What’s Your Plan B? Being Productive When Things Go Awry

Create a system

It’s amazing how so many people don’t have a good system in place and work rather randomly, reacting to whatever comes along. It is a far better approach to be proactive and have more control over your day. Making a priority plan will help you to stay focused. Learning how to manage emails is immensely important. One system I use is that when I have an email in my inbox, I deal with it straight away rather than open it and go back to it later. I either action it, delete it or file it.

Related  4 Productivity Hacks That Actually Work

Avoid procrastination

Procrastination is the ultimate thief of time. It is tempting to put off what you don’t like doing to another time or even another day or week—but it’s not at all helpful. One of the best pieces of advice that I have had is to do what you least like doing first. Get it over and done with and I guarantee you will feel lighter and more motivated. There is nothing worse than having something hanging over you. It slows you down and makes you feel heavy.

Avoid the “Superhero Syndrome”

Some people are their own worst enemy because they want to portray the image of someone who is infallible and capable of taking the world on their shoulders as a cartoon superhero might! However, we are not superheroes; we are fallible humans, and there really is only so much that we can do. Learning to negotiate, and on occasions even saying no, is not only necessary but also essential. It takes the pressure away, and you are less likely to let people down and stress yourself out!

Related » The Great Gift of a Positive No

Be tidy

The tidier and the more minimalist you are, the easier it will be to find things. This saves lots of time. It is also good for your mind because it will help you to focus and feel more in control. The people who work around you will also appreciate you being tidy as it makes their life better and easier too.

The post Time Management Is Really About Managing Our Behavior appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

In the real world, procrastination costs us more than just money, time, and productivity. It costs us health and happiness, too. Guilt, regret, and a feeling of low self-worth often accompany the act of procrastination. Our very inaction is an act. It’s deciding not to decide, which can often lead us down a treacherous road. If you’re a breathing human being, you’ve been affected by procrastination to some degree: the late fee at the library for overdue books, the surcharge for overnight delivery because you pushed off sending that birthday gift for too long after you bought it, the sour look on your editor’s face when you’re past deadline—again. Despite our bad experiences, we continue to push the envelope, addressed to no one other than ourselves.

Students are particularly notorious for waiting until the last minute to accomplish their work. If you have ever pulled an all-nighter in college, you will know the feeling of getting things done at the eleventh-hour. The average person reaches a plateau of effort over a longer period of time than the procrastinating student.

Our very inaction is an act. It’s deciding not to decide, which can often lead us down a treacherous road

If it really is uncomfortable to procrastinate, why do so many of us put off things to the last minute? Is it the thrill of the adrenaline rush? Is it our desire to test our limits? Or are we simply too stymied by our daily demands to distinguish what’s most important? Could it possibly have something to do with our relationship with time?

The answer is: sort of. Being chronically late is a form of procrastination. Burning the midnight oil is another one. All types of procrastination lead to time-sucking activities.

While some level of procrastination may always be present in our lives, we can learn to work through our blockage and time-sucking activities in simple ways.

Principle #1
Mastering your own ship

Staring at the starlit sky is a humbling experience. You begin to realise how many more energy forms exist beyond Earth, not to mention outside our galaxy. It is easy to feel insignificant when you realise how immeasurably large the universe is. What does it matter if you pay that bill today or tomorrow? The truth is, inside your very own Universe, you are the star. You are the master of your own ship.

You can observe how little control people feel they have over themselves when they come up with excuses as to why, for instance, they simply cannot be on time for appointments. These little white lies become the person’s truth, overshadowing their own power and ability to change. Most people resist change because it involves actually thinking about the self-destructive behaviours that got them in the situation in the first place.

It’s the little voice inside that nudges you in the wrong direction. In German that voice is called der innere Schweinebund, literally the ‘inner pig-dog’. It symbolises the weaker self that gives in to the temptation of procrastination and inaction. We all have a pig-dog just crying to be fed. Some of us nurture our pig-dog more than others. It feeds off our doubt, our fear and, most importantly, our time.

Most people resist change because it involves actually thinking about the self-destructive behaviours that got them in the situation in the first place

Lauren Zander, chairman of the Handel Group, a leading corporate consulting and private coaching company, advises people to take charge of their lives by first tackling the withheld and hidden thoughts that are running the show. For instance, regarding our relationships, we often have tacit agreements with our partners. You won’t say anything about my inability to resist my daily doughnut, and I won’t say anything about your getting fall-down drunk at parties. Enabling others, instead of empowering them to rise up to their higher serves, leads to co-dependency and remaining stuck in a rut.

Principle #2
Create your pockets of win

Lack of motivation is a primary cause of procrastination. Sometimes we have to trick ourselves into moving forward. To keep on track, create pockets of win to coincide with particularly challenging moments in your life. This helps offset the temptation to fall back into your old ways again, by offering you a yin-and-yang perspective.

If you know you’re going to have a tough week, creating pockets of win can be especially helpful to level out the stress you may be experiencing in the moment. For instance, you have a huge project deadline at work, which stresses you out every quarter. Designate a time when you will do something you love, such as watching your favourite movie, to offset the negative feelings you may experience during the big push at the office. These rewards are not designed to aid your procrastination, but to actually motivate you to continue on even when you’d rather not. There’s nothing wrong with rewarding yourself when the going gets tough. The point is to keep going once you’ve gotten started and to not use your rewards to distract, but to congratulate yourself when you’ve reached your goal.

Celebrating milestones is something Kimberly Richey, a senior sales director for a cosmetics firm, understands well. Working from home, she sees procrastination as her biggest barrier to productivity because there is always something infinitely more interesting to do. She has developed a system of naming each hour so she can readily identify what she will do next. Family hour, spiritual hour, prospects hour, booking appointments hour, and so on are all mapped out for her to help her avoid falling into a black hole of inaction. When she’s reached a milestone, she rewards herself by engaging in a fun activity commensurate to the work she has completed. It might be as simple as an ice cream cone with the kids, or a massage after a particularly gruelling task. “It is my belief that everyone works better with a carrot dangling before them,” she says.

Find your carrot. Create your pockets of win and fill them with rewards. The next thing you’ll know, you’re moving forward without even realising it.

The point is to not use your rewards to distract, but to congratulate yourself when you’ve reached your goal

Principle #3
Five-minute commitment

Experts say making a promise to yourself to focus for five minutes on a somewhat undesirable task will help you break through your own hesitation. After five more minutes, make another promise to spend an additional five minutes. Oftentimes it’s merely finding a place to start that causes the most concern.

Business development expert Sian Lindemann used to be what she terms the “world’s worst procrastinator” until she realised it was costing her money to not finish what she started.

She took baby steps toward her commitment to end her procrastinating ways by telling herself to make the bed the minute she got up, place the cap back on the toothpaste tube, and rinse out the sink after every usage. “Done over the long term, these basic steps set me in motion. Now I experience an actual discomfort if I don’t finish what I’ve started.”

In this exercise, ask yourself what small things you could do differently to have your day run more smoothly. Perhaps it’s making a cup of coffee instead of standing in line at the coffee shop. Or you vow to limit your YouTube viewing to one video per day. These changes should not take more than five minutes each. Changing your habits takes commitment and time, so you need to engage in some goal-setting. Plan out on your calendar what you will do differently starting today, not tomorrow. You will start to see a measurable difference in the way you feel when you accomplish tasks based on your new commitment to bringing things to completion. Miraculously, you will also find you suddenly have more time to spend on the things you love doing.

List five simple things that take five minutes or less that you will do differently for thirty days. Record them on your wall calendar to remind you of your five-minute commitment. It might not take an entire month for you to expand your activities into other realms of your life. Celebrate your tiny successes with a gold star on your calendar. If that sounds too childish for you, reward yourself by dedicating your saved time to an activity you truly enjoy.

Excerpted with permission from The Power of Slow by Christine Louise Hohlbaum. Copyright © 2009 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

The post Always putting off till the eleventh hour? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The old-fashioned time management programs had a huge, burdensome focus on the future. The line of tasks stretched out forever into the future. It was fear-based and it was overwhelming to have so much of a future to carry around with you.

It resulted in massive, pathological procrastination. Everything got put off in the name of perfectionism. Nothing was bold or reckless anymore. Therefore there wasn’t much astonishing success happening for the world-weary practitioner.

But when I teach people to go non-linear, a strange thing happens. New life and energy come in.

In non-linear time management there is no line extending from my mind into the future. No tapeworm of unfinished business coming out of my body.

Linear time starts with your birth and ends [at the end of the line] with your death. Along that long linear line it’s just one damn thing after another. Then the lights go out. What was the point?

Non-linear time management stops all that weary nonsensical treading on the road to one’s destiny. Rather than inching along horizontally you must simply rise up. Your life can now become vertical. Now you don’t postpone challenges, you rise to them. You become a warrior. And
it works.

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that
a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes
everything either as a blessing or a curse.”
—Carlos Castaneda

A time warrior does not manage time. A time warrior goes to war with [challenges and cuts away] all the beliefs that create linear time. A time warrior is a peaceful warrior but a warrior still. Peacefully taking a sword to all those negative, frightening, depressing thoughts that are automatically believed… so that a great, timeless, active day can be created. A day with no time in it unless you want to make some.

No, you’ll never find time

And just how do you make time? It’s made in your mind. By slowing down. Paradoxically. By creating your day. By being ruthless. With great swings and swipes of your samurai sword. You develop a brutal grace. Cutting out the unnecessary.

Instead of letting your calendar abuse you, and letting people use you.

Why do you let all these other people clutter up your day? Because you want to please them? Because you believe their approval is everything?

I have never seen a greater time-waster than people pleasing.

The nervous habit of scurrying around trying to win the approval of others. Answering all their emails the minute they come in, taking their every call, fulfilling every request… interrupting myself and my own dream over and over.

There’s no time left for achievement. For creation.

On this matter of people-pleasing, I learned more in Byron Katie’s nine-day school than in any other nine-day period in my life by a factor of about a thousand. Katie says, “God spare me from the desire for love, approval and appreciation. This would be my one prayer because the answer to this prayer brings the end of time and space.”

That’s non-linear time management in a nutshell.

So Katie, what is there when there is no time and space? She says there is energy, love’s pure energy. She says, “It’s the energy of pure unlimited mind, set free in all its power and goodness.”

Your problem is not time management

When you say “I’m having a real problem with time management,” my first objective is not to come up with some kind of better tips or techniques for you because that’s really not what’s at play.

What I want to find out is what’s beneath the time management problem. Because if you had a clear objective—let’s say your objective was to go to the airport and fly to New York City—you would have no problem managing time.

You’re on your way out the door to the car to drive to the airport and somebody says to you, “Hey, do you have a minute? I’ve got a couple of things I want to discuss.” You simply say, “No, I don’t. I don’t have time right now, I’m on my way to the airport.” You are a warrior in that moment of time. You can say no. Purpose makes you that way.

And you would get into your car and you would go to the airport, and maybe make an appointment to talk with that person later. You wouldn’t have any problem whatsoever managing your time! The reason for that is you have a specific mission. You have a commitment. People who have that don’t have problems with time management because they always know what to say yes to and what to say no to.

I am always committed to getting to the airport on time to catch my plane. If a call comes in for me and somebody says “Maurice is on the line,” I say “Tell him I’ll call him from New York.” And if somebody else says “Do you have a minute? I’d love to talk to you,” I say “I don’t, I’m sorry, I’m on my way to the airport.”

So with a clear mission driving me, time management is never a problem. Even if my car breaks down, I grab a cab real fast so I can still get to the airport. Nothing gets in the way of me going to New York.

Now what if I could live each day that way!

I truly would not have any time management problems ever because I would be so on purpose and so focused that I’d always know when to say “no” and when to say “yes.” The problem comes when someone gets up in the morning, gets out of bed, and sleepily walks into the never-ending “demands” of their day with no sense of purpose or mission. There’s no New York that day.

These people have nothing that they’re up to and no primary goal. So when someone pokes their head in the office and says, “You got a minute?” the answer is always yes. Why would they say no? That wouldn’t be very pleasing. So I say yes to that, like I say yes to everyone, I open every email, I take every call. Pretty soon I’m falling behind with what I know I have to do and I then believe at the end of the day that I have a time management problem when I don’t. I have a mission problem. Soon I’ll go around telling people “I have more to do than I have time to do it in!” Even though that’s not really true. The truth is I have no direction.

With the people that I work with who have “time management problems,” the first thing we create to counter it is boldness. What’s always missing is boldness—an ability to be brave and strong in staying on mission. We are on our way to New York.

A client named Priscilla came to me and said, “What am I supposed to do to manage my time?” I said, “Why do you want to manage your time?” Priscilla was stumped. And then she said, “Isn’t time management important? Always? I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

I wanted her to find her purpose first. With a powerful enough purpose, time gets managed by itself. Like the trip to New York.

People often ask how I write so many books. I didn’t start until I was 49, and yet there are now 30 of them. It’s really a matter of choosing to do it or not to do it. If I only work when I’m “inspired” my work won’t be reliable, and it won’t be accountable. It won’t be a grown-up activity. I’ll be like some kid always trying to decide something. My problem with productivity only happens when I don’t have a discipline. Because then I wake up every day trying to decide if I feel like doing it. And that’s like waking up and trying to decide whether I “feel like” flying to New York, even though I have a ticket and a seat on the plane.

» Is it time or is it money?

Sometimes my trouble with time is really my trouble with money. If you have a real fear about money, the first things to look at are the underlying beliefs you carry. You might say, “I could lose my job. And I couldn’t handle it if that happened.” So let’s look at what would happen if you lost your job. How bad would that be? Is it really true that you couldn’t handle it if it happened? Might you not survive if it happened? I mean, maybe you could handle it. It might be uncomfortable, but I think you could handle it.

People get very confused when they tell themselves they couldn’t handle something. They scare themselves unnecessarily by believing that thought. Believing I couldn’t handle various future scenarios reduces my energy for life. My effectiveness drops. Now I’m avoiding tasks I used to handle with ease. I even think I might have a time management problem because so many of these tasks pile up unfinished. But I really just have a belief problem.

I behave as if money were oxygen. I think losing all my money would be like having the oxygen taken out of the room. Now I won’t be able to breathe any more! Terrifying picture. In the mind.

A warrior realizes money is not oxygen. Money is a tool of value-exchange created through service. And service is something a warrior can always do.

Solving the real problem

Time management is actually just problem management, isn’t it? When a problem comes up, what do you do? If you are a time warrior, you capture the problem. Straight away.

In other words, you write it down. You take it away from the emotional realm. Once it’s on paper, it sits there as a neutral object, just like a crossword puzzle sits there for your amusement. You know the minute you write it down that solving things can now become amusing and entertaining.

Writing it down has removed the problem from the ephemeral emotional realm of “something horrible.” You’ve eliminated the sense of doom.

Now that it’s written down it’s going to go somewhere. Maybe you’ll take it in to your coaching session with your coach. Maybe you’ll take it out with you for a long walk. You might have it go into a phone call you make.

Once you’ve captured it and written it down, it no longer lives in the back of your mind.

The former enemy is now in captivity. And he’s ready to talk.

You know that feeling whenever a problem is lingering back in your mind. You know it’s there. You can feel it back there. You’re walking around, trying to live, trying to communicate about other things, trying to have relationships but you’ve always got this feeling in the back of your mind. Like a mood parasite.

It isn’t being captured, it hasn’t been put down.

So step one is to capture your problem and write it down. Notice the free, powerful feeling that already gives you and you haven’t even solved the problem yet!

The second warrior step in rapid problem-solving is to redefine the problem. In other words, I no longer want it to be a “problem.”

And I don’t mean just glossing it over with a phony new “positive” word. I mean really, truly converting this thing [whatever it is] from a problem in my mind into something entirely different.

How about calling it a project?

A project is a lot more fun, emotionally. A person can have a favorite project. A person will never have a favorite problem.

When people have “projects,” they can wake up excited about doing their projects. They know that when they finish their projects, they’ll get a good feeling—a sense of completion, a sense of accomplishment!

We are glad to have projects in front of us that we can work on today, because we derive self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment from finishing projects.

Wrapping them up, putting them to bed, knowing they are done, taken care of and handled.

You may have noticed that in our society we reserve the word “problem” for the worst, most troubling kinds of things. Therefore I don’t want problems in my mind. I want projects.

Problems are good for us but we don’t really know that because of the emotional baggage we’ve attached to the word “problem.”

A time warrior’s life is filled with new projects.

» Help! Help!

Now you’ve got a project. Good. But if your project looks too big to do quickly, go to someone. Sit down with someone. If you have a coach, sit down with your coach. Take the problem that you’ve written out and put it in front of your coach and make sure you both look at it.

The reason coaches are so good at working with people is because they don’t have the emotional charge on a client’s problem that the client has. When the client thinks, “This shouldn’t be happening to me,” the client is now disempowered by his own emotions.

The coach, a consultant, or anybody who can sit with you and look at the problem with you, is not going to bring any emotional baggage to this problem. They will have a healthy distance from the problem. To them, it’s just an intellectual challenge. It’s like the Sunday crossword puzzle or a great mystery on TV they are watching and really enjoying trying to solve.

We human beings love trying to solve things. As long as they’re not our things. The real trouble comes in when we think these things we are trying to solve shouldn’t be in our lives, that they are bad for us. Because then we slip down the ladder of consciousness [and resourcefulness] to very low levels. It affects our creative ability and our clarity of thought. Our cognitive power is diminished. We struggle.

We avoid. We try to escape. We procrastinate. Soon we even think it’s a time management problem! It’s not. It’s an emotional problem.

Most “time management” problems actually began as emotional problems.

It’s really an exciting thing when I work with another person on my problem because pretty soon there are a lot more options available than I ever thought possible looking at this thing by myself.

» Complete

Now we get to the next step in the warrior’s way to deal with problems. This is the most important step. This is the one you always want to make sure you do. This is the step in problem-solving that most people really don’t want to do. But that, in itself, creates new problems!

The name of this step is “complete.”

What you want to do with every project is to complete it. If you only solve part of it you’ll still carry it around as unfinished business.

Notice how much energy it takes away to have unfinished business in life. How much that drains you.

In fact, it takes more energy to carry around unfinished business than it does to complete everything on your list—a lot more! Try it someday. Try waking up and pretending you’re a robot or pretending you’re Superman, or someone without feelings, just someone who can do things without considering whether they feel like doing them. Then do everything you can think of that’s unfinished; and notice at the end of that day how much energy you’ve got. You’ll be amazed. The more things you complete, the more energy you’ll have.

That’s a real paradox! When you finish something and complete it and tie a ribbon around it so that now it’s done, your sense of energy about life goes up—it doesn’t go down. You are exuberant after completion. It really feels great.Notice at the end of a football game the team that wins is jumping all over the field. I mean, where do they get the energy? They have just been playing their hearts out all night long and here they are leaping and jumping into each other’s arms and running in circles and running around on the field. Now they run around and extend their hands to the fans leaning over the railings from the stands! Look at the energy in these people. Now they go into the locker room and they’re yelling and whooping and hollering and singing and dancing. Then they go out and party all night long. The sun is coming up and they are still partying. They still don’t want to go to bed. That’s because a victory on the field makes them feel gloriously complete. They completed what they set out to do! There’s no unfinished business. Now notice the team on the other side of the field. They’re just wiped out. No energy. The reason they’re wiped out is that it feels so unfinished.

From now on cross off every task on your to-do list. Don’t just half-finish it. Don’t just finish the important part and leave a few things hanging out. Finish the whole thing and tie a ribbon around it.

The more things I finish and know are complete and I can cross off my list, the more I can say to myself, “I’m totally, fully, complete with that,” the more whole I feel as a human being.

The so-called ‘time management’ problems

Competing commitments?

Don’t make them. Why would I commit to finishing a work project and taking my kids to the zoo on the same Saturday if the commitments compete? I would not do that. Commitments are things you keep no matter what happens to make them difficult to keep. Commitments are powerful. So be very selective when using them.

Just like a flame-thrower is a powerful weapon. It’s not necessary to own one, but it makes an intruder think twice before proceeding further into your home when you show him what it can do. Commitments are like that.

Not very organized?

People who think they are “not very organized” don’t have to re-experience childhood with better parents, find better medications, or take some long time-management course. What they need to do is organize.

That’s the non-linear approach. Just organize. The linear approach is to string the problem out over time. To put yourself though lots of linear paces as you struggle to finally “know how to” organize your desk.

If my professional life is to be simple, I must simplify it myself each day, each week. I must simplify it by organizing it. Putting things in compartments so they don’t haunt me like ghosts. The greatest drain on my energy is an unfinished task. The way to restore my energy is to DO that task or SEAL IT OFF inside a compartment of time on my calendar so my mind can be free of it. A free mind succeeds faster.

Find small tasks boring?

A warrior does all small things with great effectiveness. She does it with inventiveness, humor and love.

She sings when she does the dishes, and she takes her sweet time when she lovingly writes checks [she really understands how nice it is to have the money to be sending people]. She slows down and enjoys everything instead of having a category called boring.

If I continuously activate that “boring” category in my head it is going to be a long day. The day will be filled up with difficult work and I will feel dreary and distressed.

I’ll drag myself around wondering how I can get it all done.

What’s boring is all up to me. It’s completely in my control. I can do any task any way I want and I can have as much fun with it as I choose.

The deadline is your best friend

Victims think of a lot of things they “should” be doing to improve their lives, but then they think they are just too busy to do them now. They are soon focused on their troubles.

Warriors focus on the next quantum leap of success. [In life, what you focus on grows.] The time warrior does surprisingly good things NOW.

His ruthless sword cuts through all the nonsense of impressing people and leaves only love and service in its wake.

And now is when it all happens. And if it can’t literally happen now, the warrior sets precise deadlines. Sets them up now. He sets the deadlines NOW, so that they are still in the NOW. Deadlines soon become the warrior’s best friend: “We’re changing our price structure January 1st, we are hiring our new marketing director by March 15th, we are going to have the house painted and made over by April 30th and we will have the whole neighborhood papered with our new flier by noon Friday.”

The more seriously you regard your deadlines and the more you keep your word on meeting your deadlines, the stronger you get internally. The higher your self-esteem becomes. The more you trust yourself.

I experience a stressed-out feeling whenever I think about the deadline for a creative project. But my stress comes from having that project be in the future.

Non-linear time management doesn’t allow that line that stretches into the future. Because the linear thought process always produces stress. Unreasonable stress.

Here’s what always works for me. Creating my perfect day. Figuring out what I’d have to do in one day [today] to automatically meet the deadline.

So if my book is 220 pages, I know that if I write two pages a day I can finish it in less than five months [my deadline]. So I have a new project. It isn’t a book, it’s two pages. Today. That’s all I have to do, and it’s all I ever have to worry about. Two pages. It’s fun. It’s exciting. And it’s very satisfying.

Some days I get on a passionate roll and write ten pages! Nothing can stop me! So I’m way ahead of deadline. I can sometimes get ahead. I can never, ever—with this system—fall behind. It’s a system called “today.” I can never feel stress because I’m always working within my day. I don’t stretch a linear line into the future.

Can you see it? Non-linear time management doesn’t ever have a long timeline. It has two choices: now or not now.

No more overwhelm

Sometimes people think radical, innovative time management is something they are going to have to get into later. Right now, they are dealing with a difficult situation. And they are feeling overwhelmed.

They don’t realize something important.

Situations—even “dramatic” situations like bankruptcy, divorce, death and economic recession—cannot directly cause a feeling of any kind until the brain interprets and creates a story about said situation.

Your problem is not that you are overwhelmed. Your problem is an attachment to the story of overwhelm. Truthfully, are you overwhelmed? Or do you just feel that way? Let us really, really look at your last five days. Let’s just isolate one of the hours. Let’s take a look at this “overwhelm” and see if it’s really there.

You are not, in this hour we’ve chosen to look at, at all overwhelmed, are you? Not in this particular hour.

But your story is that you are.

You can drop that story. You can tell a different story. Try this story: “I’ve only got one thing to do! How liberating. It’s the thing I’m doing right now.”

Sadness, depression, frustration, upset, and anxiety can only be produced by seeing a situation and then producing an interpretation of it and then believing that interpretation. So, therefore, you and I can only be overwhelmed by our thoughts about something, never the thing itself.

I keep daydreaming a scene I’d like to put in a book or movie. A mad man [Me? Why not?] lives in a mental ward. [Me? It fits.] Each day they let this man into the recreation room. He’s in his pajamas. He sits down at the circular table. The attendant gives him a big blank pad of paper and a box of crayons. He takes out the crayons and draws the head of a monster. He stares at the monster, screams, and runs out of the room.

The whole thing looks funny to the attendant. It looks, shall we say it… insane. The poor mad man is scaring himself to death!

And crazy as that looks, we ourselves do that each day. We use our crayons [our imagination] to scare ourselves instead of to create.

When we imagine [perceive] that we are overwhelmed by outside events [or options, or tough choices, or situations, or ways of making money, etc.] it is an illusion, because the brain doesn’t even function that way.

Only a thought believed can produce a feeling of overwhelm. Something happens, and we add the meaning of it. Circumstance carries no meaning by itself.

In a simple life in which you only do what’s in front of you, there can be no overwhelm, ever. That life is yours to create.

Slowing down

It’s what you do with your time that frees up more time and draws life into your world.

Are you doing what you’re doing right now better than you have ever done it? Be truthful. Or is it just “as good as” or “good enough”? The “good enough” stuff we do is not good enough for the time warrior.

Do you want to succeed at something? Good work right now will help you do that. Most people want to start by improving how they “market” their services. Maybe a new website, or a better network of affiliates. But most of the time that’s not where the answer lies.

The answer is in the work itself.

Let’s slow down. Let’s write a better book, preach a better sermon or build a better mousetrap, because that’s where the magic is. That’s where your secret leverage lies.

But how do you master mastery by slowing down?

How do you master time that way? Don’t you fall behind?

No, because slowing down gets you in harmony.

You’re not out of tune any longer.

Without slowing down, you get way out ahead of life itself. I’m only asking you to slow down to the speed of life. You want to dance with life, not race out ahead of life.

People who race out ahead of life are falling down on the dance floor. They are living in their own future, which is where fear lives. But when you slow down to master this present moment, life gets fearless.

For example, I was coaching a man I will call Ben. Ben was excited because a large company had hired him to come in to give them a 60-minute talk. Ben couldn’t wait. The talk was on his calendar for a month from now and he knew exactly what he was going to present. It was a talk he had given many times before and he knew it would be a big hit.

So now that it was all set and on his calendar, Ben was onto other things. Ben was spending his days racing around mentally and physically trying to get other new business. He was answering every call, checking email thirty times a day and living in a whirlwind of chaos. Ben was always in his own future, so Ben was always anxiety ridden [as all anxiety is about the future].

My job as Ben’s coach was simply to slow him down.

Down to the speed of life itself. Because life was on Ben’s side; he just couldn’t see it. He saw life as a giant opponent. Something that needed to be won over.

Once Ben relaxed and let himself take some deep breaths, I asked him to go back to the client who had hired him for a talk.

“What if someone passed a law,” I said to Ben, “that said you could only have one client for the rest of your life and you would have to make all your income from this one client, and this was your client, Ben. What would you do?”

Ben was silent. I could see he was thinking.

I asked Ben to spend the rest of our coaching session thinking about this one client. To slow everything down, as if this client were the only thing that existed in his world.

I was teaching Ben to go non-linear… to be a time warrior. The time warrior slows time to a standstill. Now there is no time. Ultimate victory. There is only timeless, eternal presence. Or “now.”

Ben and I began to list the many other ways he would love to serve that company. He wrote a list of people in the company he wanted to go visit prior to his talk, to gather research on the many problems and challenges Ben could help them with. Two weeks later Ben had converted a $3,000 one-time speaking contract into a full year’s program with more than twenty times that income.

Just by slowing down and applying laser-like focus. That’s the only difference between the average man and the warrior. The warrior has focus.

Remember that such focus cannot be frantic. It has to be relaxed and slowed down.

Notice when you’re out on a boat and someone points out something on the shoreline for you to look at. If you strain your eyes, trying to force your focus, you won’t see it. Only when you relax and let the image come to you do you now see it clearly.

Most people think they are not inspired because their project is not inherently inspiring. Therefore they procrastinate. Or they just work on it sporadically. They don’t realize that if they would slow down and do this project one slow step at a time—in a loving and deeply energetic way—inspiration might just appear. After the work starts!

» Now is the key

The time warrior steals from the future. Then she pours her stolen gold—all of it—into the present moment. Like sand out of a boot into a sand painting. She pours from the future into the present. She embraces the present and increases her capacity for living. Only then can the future truly be bright.

When I coach people who have small businesses, or who are coaches or consultants, or who raise children or lead other people, I notice that their greatest opportunity for success is right in front of them in the very next conversation they are about to have.

Yet they fly past that conversation, barely tagging it like in a schoolyard game, racing to get to their “better” future.

When I recommend that they slow down it goes against their inner anxiety—the anxiety that runs their lives—as they strain so hard against their leash. The leash begins to choke them off and they start to lose oxygen. At night, they don’t sleep, they just eventually pass out.

No wonder no valid plans for the future can be made. Those plans are all fear-based [invalid] because they want a “better” world than the one that presents itself in this next conversation, this world of infinite opportunity.

War against distraction

We live in an embarrassment of information. We are connected to everything. It’s all here. A few keystrokes away.

And the only downside is the intoxication of it.

Because we can become drunk with options. Games, blogs, chats, videos, social media, gossip updates; there is no end to where we can go. Oh the places.

Two hours later we step back from the screen wondering where the two hours went. Sure, we took a lot in, but what went out?

That’s why the warrior of time must keep his sword sharp and at the ready.

To carve out and cut away the clutter. To open up a clear space for creation. For it is active creation that will produce wealth and well-being. Not information.

Even though we understand the value of selfeducation, we know intuitively that we must, sooner or later, provide service to others. We must create something of value with our time.

Therefore, more than ever before, focus is vital.

Uninterrupted time is the portal through which we now succeed. Not the flurry of multitasking and chaos.

Devoted time.

It’s your war against interruption and distraction.

Because if you can bring gentle, sustained focus to a task, you’ll never regret the results.

As my friend and colleague Dusan Djukich says in his marvelous book, Straight Line Leadership, we stop. We start something and then we stop. When Dusan coaches his clients his recommendation is this: stop stopping. The more space we open up for ourselves the more problems we solve. The faster we achieve our goals. The great philosopher Voltaire observed, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

The key word in Voltaire’s observation is “sustained.” We don’t sustain. We don’t take long, thoughtful, sustained walks. We don’t sit quietly in space and solitude until a problem disappears [which it would] because we are too busy.

Or, we think we are. Same thing.

We think we’re busy, especially today, with the way our “phones” hook us up to the whole nagging planet. We are so connected now! We never have to be alone again!

This is good?

In most ways, it is. It’s fun and exciting when I sit in my Arizona office and get an urgent text from a client in Scotland. The phone beeps and I grab it and check it.

But what happens when I do that? I interrupt my meditative train of thought and it might have been a train that was taking me to a HUGE breakthrough solution to a major challenge. Beep, beep, beep! And I stop. I am on to something beautiful if only I would continue, but I stop.

Are you a good piano player? No? But you took lessons, once, didn’t you? Yes? What happened?

“I stopped.”

Have you ever looked back on your life and wondered what would have happened if you hadn’t stopped? Piano, a foreign language, studying a certain subject, a distant love, anything.

Management and efficiency studies in the work place tell us that one hour of uninterrupted time is worth three hours of time that is constantly interrupted.

Or, as the old saying says, winners focus, losers spray.

So the warrior element in how you relate to time is how “violent” a swordsman you are going to be before your day begins. How much uninterrupted time will you carve out for yourself? Will you be a true time warrior?

Because if you will, you’ll love your timeless time. You’ll be amazed at what you can create when time is not an issue.

End of procrastination

A time warrior removes her sword and dismembers procrastination. And this may be the most important thing she’s ever learned about winning the war against procrastination: she can always start small. Start small, and the smaller the better.

The mind makes all future tasks big and scary. So we procrastinate. Even little things, when we imagine doing them in the future, get distorted and take on frightening proportions. Objects in the mirror of the future appear larger than they really are. Because the imagination, when it ventures into the future, always finds the worst case. No wonder we procrastinate! Thinking and imagining the worst case scares us into putting everything off. Worry produces the opposite of action. It produces a chilly block of Jell-O where a human heart used to be.

Trembling. Therefore, worry is the ultimate in dysfunction. It’s a misuse of the imagination. It chills the body.

But if you’re a warrior, you want the body to be hot. Or at least warm. Warm and friendly until you catch even more enthusiasm for your task [which happens by doing it] and soon you are on fire.

Action is the answer. Action warms the body into fire. The biggest fallacy there is about making good use of one’s time is that you have to feel like doing something before you can do it. That you have to know how to motivate yourself prior to your action. Try this: Have the action happen first. You can work up a sweat with wild action just by doing it. Then a funny thing happens. The motivation shows up.

But not always big action. Try three minutes. Give your task three minutes of your time. [You can address 40 neglected things in two hours this way.] Small actions.

Any tiny action. The smallest acts are like atoms. They often turn out to be the most important acts of our lives.

So once I identify the big scary imagined task as a distortion produced by my own worried mind, I want to go small, as small as possible. What can I do in the next three minutes? Three minutes then walk. Quit. Bail. Walk away. Barefoot. [If you can, that is. But my experience is that nine times out of ten I get excited by how easy this thing really was all along. It was just masquerading as big and scary seen through the lens of my worst case future.]

And when I say three minutes, that doesn’t mean you can’t take that smaller and split it from three to a minute and a half. Just do it. And make sure the action is effortless, too. As they say in Zen, effortless effort. Always the best.

Otherwise we [and I include myself] ruminate, brood, meditate and wander the intercranial halls of self-loathing and mental fatigue, making up all sorts of mystical stories that keep us fearful and passive. Dungeons, dragons and always out of action. Now knowing I only have a three-minute commitment I just do the thing I was procrastinating about! I just make that a policy!

How do I distinguish between waiting [listening inside for inspiration] and procrastination? If I’m legitimately waiting for timing to be right and inspiration to emerge on a creative project, I have no problem waiting. If I’m procrastinating [there is something to do that I know needs to be done] then I want to identify my next action. Just do that one thing—you know what it is—it’s the thing you’re thinking about right now. Don’t think in terms of patterns. None of this: “I always” or “I never” because those globalizing thoughts will never serve you. They will scare you and make you a pessimist. Keep your life creative and simple: what needs to be done now in these three minutes? That’s all you ever need to ask, and you’ll never have anything like procrastination bother you again.

Focus is everything

Push my head under the water and I experience an increase in energy because I am immediately focused on what I want to do. I want to get out of the water. So I know exactly what I want to do. And any time I know exactly what I want to do my energy increases. My energy increases the same way the sun’s power increases when I take the diffuse rays and harness them and focus them through a simple magnifying glass and let the focused ray of sun burn an old dead leaf like a science fiction laser.

When we focus we are joining the energy that created the world. We forget that we can always do that. We forget, and then we cling to worries and fears and all the mindstuff that keeps us passive. Soon anger emerges. A vicious circle. But the minute someone calls us out back to play volleyball or take a swim or climb a mountain or ride a bike, something happens. We are breathing deeply once again! We are joining the energy that created the world. Breathe first, then let the mind expand. Don’t wait for it to happen the other way around.

P.S. To maintain sanctity of the source, this article follows American English.
Excerpted with permission from Time Warrior by Steve Chandler, published by Maurice Bassett

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