Category: Productivity

As you might have figured out I am a big fan of setting goals. All my life I have been setting goals.

Setting SMART goals was ‘the‘ thing of my time. All motivational speakers were harping about it including Brian Tracy who made goal setting a phenomenon in the nineties and the twenties.

Goals are great but there is one big problem with them when you can’t achieve them you feel terrible.

On a day-to-day basis, goals often lead to anxiety, worry, and regret rather than fulfillment, pride, and contentment. They exert pressure from afar. Once fulfilled they just disappear, leaving a vacuum which we try to fill with a new goal.

And when you do achieve them, the happiness that comes from it only lasts momentarily. Then they leave behind a vacuum that we try to fill by setting more goals, bigger and higher ones this time, and the whole cycle of begins again.

A Harvard researcher, Dr Tal Ben-Shahar (I had the pleasure of attending one of his workshops), describes in his book Happier, something he calls “the arrival fallacy” — the false hope that “reaching some future destination will bring lasting happiness.”

Recently I came across an article by Niklas Göke you don’t need a goal you need a theme.

Why?

Because a theme has no end date.

According to Niklas Göke a theme gives you an achievable, meaningful, daily standard you can live up to. The point of a theme is to make you happy.

A goal splits your actions into good and bad. A theme makes every action part of a masterpiece.

A goal is an external constant you can’t control. A theme is an internal variable you can.

A goal forces you to think about where you want to go. A theme keeps you focused on where you are.

A goal condemns you to order the chaos of life or deem yourself a failure. A theme provides room to succeed amid that chaos.

A goal shuts out opportunities for current fulfillment in favor of a distant payday. A theme looks for opportunities in the present.

A goal asks “where did we get today?” A theme asks “what went well today?”

Goals are sticky. They’re clunky armor, weighing you down. A theme is fluid. It sinks in, becoming part of who you are. It flows from the inside out, allowing you to change as you go.

When we use goals as our primary means of attaining happiness, we trade long-term life satisfaction for short-term motivation and reassurance. A theme gives you a meaningful, achievable standard to live up to. Not once in a while but every day. It’s a way of being content with who you’re becoming, choice by choice, one act at a time, and finding peace in that.

No more waiting. Just decide who you want to be, then be that person.

Niklas Göke

In other words, you feel happy, content and fulfilled and make more progress than you do while going through the cycle jubilation and desolation of goals setting.

It was James Altucher who first switch goals with themes.

The only times I’ve ever made money (and I’ve been on this roller-coaster quite a bit) is when I switched from ‘goals’ to ‘themes’. Instead of having a goal: ‘I need to make money’, I switch to a theme: ‘I want to help people with this product’. Or…” Forget about money completely. I want to help people by writing a blog about honesty, failure, myself, entrepreneurship, and whatever else I can write that people will relate to.

Don’t set goals – Business Insider

Psychologists too emphasize the importance of meaning over pleasure. Meaning comes from your actions, pleasure from results.

The difference between goal and theme is like the difference between passion and purpose, between seeking and finding.

A goal asks “what do I want?” but a theme asks “who am I?”

Now the question is, how to set a theme?

According to Niklas Göke, good themes are verbs and nouns at the same time. Such as ‘Focus,’ Love, ‘Balance,’ ‘Compassion.’ So are the ‘invest,’ ‘help,’ ‘kindness,’ and ‘gratitude.’ 

Each year you can set yourself a new theme depending upon what you want to achieve that year.

With a theme, all you have to do is ask one question: Is this aligned with my theme?

There’s a clear answer, yes or no. For every thought you have, the decision you make, and action you take, if they are aligned with your theme, and you’ll go to bed happier.

Themes support goals, they reduce the pressure goals create. At the same time, they replace the need for your goals to make you happy.

Full converted, I decided to set a theme for myself.

My theme for 2020 is: FOCUS.

The question that will keep my thoughts, actions, and decisions aligned to my theme is: “Does this add to or take away from my focus?”

What will be your theme for 2020?

Have you ever whined that you have ‘no-time’ to do so many things you want to do? That your to-do list is like Chronicles of Narnia — neverending. That you don’t know where your day goes. And this year is whooshing past faster than even the last year.

These are the symptoms of the ‘no-time’ syndrome and if you are suffering from it like me), then there is something seriously wrong.

When I finished full-time employment to devote my time to my passions I thought I will have so much time on hand that I will be able to do anything I want. Boy was I wrong!

It didn’t take me long to find out that I have even less time than when I was working fulltime. I was taking more time to do everything. Parkinson’s Law in action! So much so, that my usual tasks were not even getting done.

Then one day I stopped the mad rush and took the day off to figure out what was going on.

I realized all my frustrations can be attributed to two things — lack oof efficiency and laziness.

With the amount of time and effort I was putting towards my passions it was hard for me to accept that I was not being efficient and just plain lazy sometimes, but it was true.

If it takes you two hours to do something that could be done in half an hour it is an issue of efficiency.

If you have bought new software (Scrivener by the way) and don’t bother to learn its features then it is laziness. Learning those features might take time but in the end, they save time and you end up writing faster.

That was it. I was not prepared to have the labels of inefficient and lazy on my back forever, so I set upon finding the antidotes to the ‘no-time’ syndrome.

I have come up with seven strategies.

1. Write your tasks down and put them where you can see them.

I realized there were five tasks that I must do every day to count my day to be productive. I made a list of those.

Then there were tasks that can be divided into small-size projects (taking a week to finish) and medium-size projects (taking up to a month to finish). Since I am a compulsive list-maker, I made a list of those as well. I won’t talk about big projects here because they require different strategies. 

Now the problem was unlike work I was not sitting at my desk so my tasks were not in front of me all the time. Working from home means constant interruptions which break the rhythm of productivity. 

So I made a grid of my daily tasks and put it up on the pin board. Now as soon as I finish one task, I tick it off and move on to the next one. 

Viola! it was that simple. I now have a system to stay on top of my daily schedule.

2. Allocate time for each task.

My next challenge was not to let the tasks expand themselves. The best way to do was to allocate time to each task. 

I knew it took me only twenty minutes to write a page in my diary (I write one page a day to chronicle my life) and 40 minutes to write 750 words (which go towards my articles, stories, and novel). That adds up to one hour. So two tasks are done in one hour.

I allocated one hour each towards blog posts and walk and half an hour to draw a sketch. Two hours and my exercise, creativity, and business tasks are ticked off.

Then depending on the family and social commitments, I would carve out five hours a week for the weekly project and 7–10 hours for the monthly project But I made sure I don’t spend no more than one hour a day (15 hours altogether in a month) on either of these projects. This meant I was spending, on average, just half an hour every day on projects.

For maths buffs, it adds up to four hours a day. Four hours of work and then I have the rest of the day for myself. 

The important thing to understand here is when we have a time limit, we tend to finish the work within that time limit. Taking longer will not improve the quality of the work, rather it will bring procrastination for future projects. Finishing work within the time limit sharpens our concentration and brings exultation that comes with accomplishing a task.

3. Take breaks.

I don’t do all these tasks in one sitting. No one can. High-energy consuming tasks need to be separated with lighter and less-concentration-needing tasks. 

I write my diary and 750 words as soon as I wake up and before breakfast. I have just woken up, my mind is fresh and in the creative zone and they give a great start to my day. Breakfast is a natural break. I read my emails over the cup of tea and catch up with reading articles on Medium or other magazines I subscribe to. 

Then around mid-morning, I work on the blog post. If I have time I will work on a weekly or monthly project before cooking lunch. 

Sketching is an afternoon activity. Straight after lunch. I am in a relaxed mode and my fingers love moving lazily on the paper while I listen to a podcast. It usually leaves me enough time to work on projects. 

The walk around five pm. It is an indication that the tasks are over and I have the evening for myself and my family.

What makes the schedule work so well is the natural breaks. I know I have to get up for breakfast hence I have to finish the diary writing and 750 words. I know mid-morning is the only time to work on the blog post, so I make sure it gets done.

Some things still don’t get done for whatever reason. Walk gets interrupted because someone dropped in for dinner, or I had to duck to shops to buy something urgently. But that is fine. Life happens. But my schedule keeps me on track most of the days.

4. Manage distractions.

Emails, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, online window-shopping, and TV are all chewing up our time. I made a pact with myself not to check them when I am working on my tasks.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t check them. I am on social media while having breakfast, cooking lunch/dinner or at night while watching TV. I just make sure I stay away from them when working on a task. I don’t watch TV during the day and even at night if I don’t like what is on. I switch it off (or mute it) and read or surf the net.

5. Improve skills.

If it is taking you two hours to do a task that can be done in half an hour, it is possible you don’t have the right skills to do it. Invest time and effort to learn those skills and keep improving them with continuous practice. 

I used to take seven hours to write an article. I have spent three months learning how to write articles in a reasonable time. Now I am able to write an article in less than three hours. More importantly, I have learned how to spread it over several days. I don’t spend more than an hour each day on article writing. Three months I spent on learning was well worth it because of the time it has saved me in the long run.

6. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

Trying to accomplish too many things in a day is a recipe for disappointment. I used to fall into this trap all the time. My enthusiasm would want me to start a new project as soon as I conceived it. The result was many unfinished projects and me burning out.

I have now started pacing myself. Any idea has to pass the test of time. It goes into a queue of either weekly or monthly projects. At the start of each month, I pick a project from the list. I will only start it if I am still feeling passionate about it and stick with it for the whole month. The same goes for weekly projects.

7. Outsource whatever is not magic.

After spending years and years doing tasks that can be easily outsourced, I have learned to let go of them. Imagine 33 years of house cleaning every weekend. What if you can use that time writing books or painting or making movies or becoming a therapist or whatever else you wanted to be.

There is no magic in washing dishes or vacuum cleaning or mopping the floor. So I have outsourced them. I have outsourced my garden too. Now I only do the things that have magic. What is magic? For me, the magic is in writing articles. Drawing cartoons. Plotting a novel.

We’ve covered quite a bit, let’s summarise:

‘No-time’ syndrome is because of two reasons only — lack of efficiency and laziness. If it is taking you double or triple the time to do something it is an issue of efficiency. If you haven’t learned the features or skills that can help reduce the time to do something it is laziness.

Seven strategies I have used to beat the ‘No-time’ syndrome are: 

1. Write your tasks in a grid form and put them where you can see them easily. Cross them out when you complete each task.
2. Allocate time for each task and make sure to finish it within the allocated time. Taking longer will not improve the quality of the work, rather it will bring procrastination for future projects.
3. Make sure to separate the high-energy-needing tasks with lighter tasks and breaks, preferably natural breaks such as breakfast and lunch.
4. No social media while doing tasks in the allocated time. Leave it during breaks or for the evening when you are relaxing.
5. Get better so that you can do the tasks in less time. Improve your skills. Learn what you have to learn to reduce time it takes to finish a task.
6. Don’t overcommit. Manage your passions. You can’t do everything you want to do straight away. Make ideas pass the time test. 
7. Outsources whatever is not magic. Save your energies to do what is magic for you.

That is what I am doing by writing this article and letting my fellow writers beat the ‘No-time’ syndrome.

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

There is so much I want to do that it doesn’t matter how much juggling I do I don’t seem to fit them all in my day. Yet I don’t want to let go of anything. I am a typical case of being busy but not productive. I am not going deep enough and the quality of my work is suffering.

When my kids were little they wanted to do several extra-curricular activities just like their friends – swimming, basketball, dance, piano, violin, gymnastics, ice skating. I didn’t believe it was possible to fit them all in a week. So I made two rules for them. They can do only two things at a time and they will have to stick them for at least six months. This way if they wanted to try something new, they will have to wait.

It worked like magic with them. My daughters stuck with Indian classical dance for twenty years and maths for ten years while basketball, tennis, swimming, ice skating, piano, and clarinet came and went.

I need a similar rule for myself now.

But it is easier to discipline your kids than yourself. At least this is the case with me.

After going through a lot of agonies I have unearthed a few strategies.

1. Choose 5. The credit of this one goes to Jame Altucher the writer of the book ‘Choose Yourself.’ According to him create a list of 25 things and choose 5 that are your absolute favorite. Concentrate on those five. Park the rest for later, they might just be distractions.
2. Turn them into projects. Make them time and result specific. Write for one month, draw cartoons for one month. Have a new focus every month. Create mini projects and that will give you some structure around your wants and dreams.

Working a little by little on a regular basis gets a lot done and you don’t waste energy.

And this is what I will be doing. I will be devoting December, the last month of the year, to get back to the novel that I started more than five years ago. This month I will be writing a 100-page synopsis of my novel that will include plot, story, characters, details and research.

And I will be reporting about it on this blog.

I am a list maker.

All my life I have been making lists. To-do lists, to-read lists, to-learn lists, bucket lists (in other words travel destinations list), but I never made the most important list of all.

A not-to-do list.

Our lives are a constant struggle of fitting things in a day. We constantly complain that we don’t have enough time to do all the things we want to do and yet we keep piling up more. There are so many things that demand our time and attention. Since we can’t do them all we prioritize and leaving a pile of unfinished things for later. Constantly doing that leave us in a state of discontent.

That is what I have been experiencing at the moment.

I have a huge pile of things that I was keeping in the ‘when I retire bucket’. As I did ‘retire’ (or ‘finished paid work’ as I like to call it) I thought I will have all the time in the world to do them.

The trouble is I am getting even less done.

Even with an extra eight hours on hand, I still find I don’t have enough time to follow my passions.

Rather than doing one thing at a time, I have been trying to do them all, making schedule after schedule, allocating blocks of time to each hobby, each activity, each thing I ever wanted to do.

Until today.

I was rushing through the day when I stopped long enough to ask myself why I am doing this.

Why I am making my day so stressful by packing so much in it.

It was not long after when a fellow blogger, Melyssa Griffin, reported a total burnout. Her doctor told her to slow down or bear lasting damage. Already a successful blogger and solopreneur at a very young age, Melyssa was fighting back her feeling of discontent and unfulfillment by adding more work to her plate. She thought she needed better time management skills.

While I am nowhere near where Melyssa was when she took six months to break, but I am beginning to understand that I need to manage my own expectations.

Many times we are harder on ourselves than we are on other people.

The way to treat ourselves with kindness and compassion is to get in touch with our inner-self and find out what really matters to us.

I did that by creating a not-to-do. The things I will never do from now on.

Are there things which you don’t want to do? They don’t have to be about your workload. They can be about your choices in your life.

A not-to-do list can bring more clarity in your life than a to-do list.

Try it. It might be a life-changer.

I waited for a month before sharing this with you because I wanted to see its full effect before making any recommendations.

More than a month ago I came across a morning routine based on Hal Elrod’s book ‘The Miracle Morning’ which truly is a miracle.

Prior to following this routine, I would get up in the morning and straight away turn-on my laptop and start working. I will have to pull myself away to have breakfast and shower and take a short break for lunch. Needless to say, I was working harder than working at a job and yet my output was less than what it used to be when I was working full time and blogging part-time. On top of that, I was always tired, anxious and was behind in finishing daily tasks I had set up for myself.

Since I started this routine, my days start at a slower pace but I still get much more done. Besides I am attracting all the right things in my life.

The routine consists of six elements:

• Meditation 10 minutes
• Visualization 5 minutes
• Affirmations 5 minutes
• Journal writing 10 minutes
• Reading 10 minutes
• Exercise 20 minutes

The Miracle Morning routine is meant to take about an hour which means you will have to wake up an hour early each day. The first few days are harder but then you get so much benefit that you start looking forward to the morning and do wake up early each day.

The time next to each element is just an indication, you can add or remove time from an element if you think it would be more beneficial to you. Even if you change the times, I still recommend keeping all the elements as they each serve a unique purpose.

Meditation: Meditation helps to clear and center your mind and you start your day without feeling overwhelmed or emotional. You can meditate in pure silence or you can use a recording for a guided meditation. There are several ten-minutes meditations available online. On the days I have a bit more time I like to use the following one.

Visualization: There are so many studies on the power of visualization. With little practice it is easy to master this technique. You can visualize completing your daily goals or achieving your bigger goals. Try to engage your five senses while visualizing them happening.

Affirmations: Affirmations are the positive things that we tell ourselves. They help develop a positive mindset and grow self-confidence and eventually turn up into self-fulfilling prophecies. Each morning I write my affirmation in a small diary. Then I go back and read the previous days’ affirmations. By the time five minutes are over, I am smiling both outside and inside.

Journaling: Writing down your thoughts is incredibly powerful. I write a page a day in my journal. Sometimes it is about what I am feeling, other times about what is happening around me or what I am planning to do. There other choices too. You can write down things you’re grateful for or lessons you learned during the previous day and any new goals or ideas that came to you since.

Reading: Reading something good each morning allows our minds to move in new directions. I keep a good book handy by my bedside to read a few pages each morning.

Exercise: Other than giving you health benefits exercise improves your mood, clears your head, and makes you feel happier. It is great if you can fit exercise in your morning. I do my exercise in the evening.

There you have it, the morning routine I have been following for a month now. Hal Elrod encourages to try it for at least 30 days to see the benefits. I can assure you, that you will start seeing the benefits after the first week.

Getting started might be hard, but once started I am sure you will not break the routine. It is that good.