productivity – Page 4 – Bucket List Journey

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013

Using Information To Reach Your Goals and Build Stronger Habits

Last fall I was forced to sit through a seminar at work about Leading with Data. I was about as excited as you were when you read the above title. As it turns out, it’s really helpful. I’ve applied this to my personal life and again finding it useful. What am I talking about?

Unless you’re a data analyst or took a business degree, you probably are going through life a little like me: you have an idea of what’s going on but you’re not sure. As I’ve learned, real data is helpful because it’s raw facts. You can’t argue with facts. This spring I wrote about how I didn’t do a good job in December of using my light therapy because I didn’t feel like it. The facts said: if you don’t use this you will feel worse. I trusted my feelings instead of the facts. Guess which one was right? The facts. I ended up having a crappy Christmas again because I just felt really blah. That could have been prevented if I had trusted the facts (“No, I need to do my light therapy whether I feel like it or not.”).

Why real data helps

Data helps in achieving goals because we have real information about how we’re doing. It helps us to evaluate and adapt based on how we’re actually doing. Am I eating veggies every day? More or less. I have that info tracked in LiftApp. As I begin to track it, I become more aware of it as we talked about in my post on Keystone Habits. Now I can say, “I’ve flossed once a week for the past four weeks” because I’m tracking that behaviour on LiftApp. If I scour my memory for those occasions I can remember one or two. If I rely on my memory, I wont have the full picture of what is really happening.

Take the info, adapt

After you have a bunch of data about the habits or goals that you’re trying to track, take some time to consider what it says. Are you having a hard time getting out of bed on Mondays and so you never manage to go for a run or write or do whatever it is your goal is to do that morning? You maybe haven’t noticed this pattern before, but you see it in the data. I never wake up on time on Mondays. OK, so what are you going to do to make sure you do get up? Maybe you need to go out and buy a coffee maker that will automatically turn on. Monday morning you’ll smell that coffee when you wake up and all you need to do is stumble out of bed and get it.

How to track?

There are several ways you can track your habits and goals. In your personal agenda, on your calendar, in a small notebook like a small Moleskine or FieldNotes that you carry with you. Maybe just a note on your smartphone, or perhaps in Evernote, or LiftApp. Think about what it is you want to know more about and think of a way that will be simple enough that it wont be a bother to input the information every day.

Respond

Ok guys, I know this is a really nerdy post. I want to know what your immediate reaction is: ‘I’ll never do this’ or ‘I don’t see why it will help me’ or ‘I’m skeptical, but I’ll give it a whirl.’ Go ahead and leave a comment here.

March 28, 2013

The role of ‘productivity’ in reaching our goals

Don’t forget the giveaway that finishes tomorrow. Click here for more details.

As I’ve been working on this blog and flushing out my ideas, I’ve realized that maybe I haven’t really been clear about the link between productivity and reaching my goals. In my head it’s clear, but you might be thinking “if this blog is about reaching her goals, why does she talk about productivity so much?”

Why productivity?

When I was thinking through topics I know about and enjoy learning more about productivity was on the list. I didn’t want my blog to be just another talking about the exact same things as everyone else, but more importantly, I wanted it to be something that was true to me. Over the last few years I’ve learned things about working more efficiently that I’ve tried to pass on to others, but didn’t really have one place I could send the people I was teaching. This blog is now that one place.

More than that, I do believe that if we can harness some of our wasted energy we have more to put in other places that require more energy. This is where productivity comes in. If I build good habits now, I’ll be that much more likely to have success in accomplishing my goals as my life becomes more and more complex. I’m still in the early stages of a lot of these goals, as you very well know. I’m determined to do my best to make them happen, which involves tweaking things in the process to achieving those goals.

What do you mean?

Here’s an example: if I have a weekly routine of work, meal planning and prep, getting groceries, running, my morning routine etc. then I don’t have to think about it. I have a lot less resistance due to less decision fatigue. If that freaks you out because it’s too repetitive, I agree. However, I’ve learned that there is tremendous freedom in structure.

Your turn

Have you had an experience where you found yourself running on optimized performance or running on all cylinders because you had planned and structured your life well? Do you think you could never organize yourself well enough to do that? I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

March 20, 2013

Overcoming resistance

Forgive me if you’re sick of me making reference to Michael Hyatt. He’s clearly an influencer in my life right now and if that annoys you, maybe this isn’t the blog for you! Michael recently did a podcast called How to Overcome Resistance that I found helpful. You can listen to the whole thing here or skip down to the summary.

What is resistance?

Michael brings up a subject that I face on a regular basis and I’m sure you do too. Resistance’ according to Hyatt is, “that invisible, destructive force that opposes you every time you try to start a new project or make an improvement in any area of your life.”

Sound familiar? Know why I’m bringing it up? We all face it.

“You might not experience resistance if you decide to eat dessert but you will experience it if you decide to go on a diet.”

True words, no?

How to overcome it

Michael says we typically have 3 responses to to resistance. They are fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Also sound familiar? Hyatt does a great job in his podcast through telling a story of how he persisted in getting one of his books bought by a skeptical publisher after tons of rejections, only to have it hit the best seller list. He advises a response for each of those ugly responses: to start, focus and finish.

I’ve heard this before in reading The Now Habit. The response to fear is procrastination and the response to procrastination needs to be: to start.
The typical response to uncertainty is distraction and the counter-measure needs to be to focus. Remember when I was doing Nanowrimo last November? In a millisecond, without thinking, I learned that could open a new tab and be on Facebook without thinking. It’s a habit I have unwittingly developed for the moment when my brain has a lull. So thanks to the recommendation of my friend Diane, I installed StayFocused in my browser and blocked Facebook and Twitter during my writing hours. It worked.
The third response to resistance is to doubt (should I really be doing this?) and the counter-measure should be just to finish. Push-through. This is where going public with things helps, you have a bunch of people who you can turn to help you finish.

If you found this post helpful, I encourage you to listen to the whole podcast. He finishes the podcast by answering questions that his listeners have asked him.

Can you think of a time when you overcame resistance? I’d love to hear a story from you! Don’t be shy and leave it in the comments here.

March 5, 2013

If this, then that

This morning I woke up and it felt like spring in my heart. Even though it’s been cloudy and slushy for weeks, I can tell that something is thawing my heart. I am glad! I checked “craft” off my list today on Lift. Inspired by a commenter who pointed out that maybe I actually just plain like my christmas decorations, I took the printable that I had made my Christmas bunting from and made an easter version. I’ll post pictures and links to the printable once it’s done.

What I really wanted to talk about today was this glorious website I’ve been using for quite awhile. Have you ever been frustrated that the internet doesn’t do what you want it to do? “I wish I could click this button and then this article shows up in my Evernote” or “I wish that I could have an automated process to do X.” Well, folks, that’s what If This Then That does. As I’ve fiddled with it, I’ve made certain processes completely effortless because, well, they require no effort. Here are a few of my ‘recipes’ that I have on IFTTT:

each wordpress post automatically gets put into my Buffer list to be distributed on twitter at set times each day
every day at 9PM a new Daily Portfolio note is automatically created in my Evernote
(one I don’t use anymore) any time I posted a recipe on my old blog with the tag “curry” it would tweet the link to my friend Christina who likes curry!
if I star an item in Google Reader, it saves it to Pocket for me to read later (I had forgotten about this one!)
If I tag something with “buffer” in Google Reader, it will add it to Buffer to tweet and share
Every time I post a picture to Instagram, it adds it to a folder in Dropbox.
Every time I post a picture to Instagram, it adds it to my pictures in Flickr, which is attached to my AppleTV and those pictures are used as my AppleTV screen saver.

Amazing, right? And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You can do basically anything with texting, tweeting, Facebook, Google Reader, Buffer, Gmail, Blogger, WordPress, Youtube and tons of other websites. I highly recommend this website to help you streamline certain aspects of your online life and to — like their tagline says — make the internet work for you! Here are some more examples from other people who are using IFTTT.

I have to say, there are 3 that I just love. The one that adds my wordpress to buffer, the one that backs-up my Instagram on Dropbox and the one that puts my Instagram to Flickr for my screensaver. Just love.

Do you use IFTTT? What’s your favourite recipe? Is there one that has made your life a lot simpler? If you’re new to IFTTT, what will the first recipe you make be? Leave your comment here.

February 11, 2013

Announcing Giveaway #2

A year and a half ago I decided to face my problem with procrastination. As with a lot of things in my life, the first step is to read a book. I picked up a book on my Kobo called The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. It came well recommended by reviewers online so I gave it a shot. I was surprised at how insightful and helpful it was. It was like the author was in my head telling me things about myself that I didn’t even know about me. The book is pretty dense with information and I didn’t get very far before I put it down and started mulling over what he was saying and seeing if I could identify those things in my life too and make some changes.

I picked the book up again the other day and continued reading. Guys, this book is GOLD. This book is to procrastinators as Dr. Henry Cloud’s book Boundaries is for people pleasers: it’s transformational.

The author addresses things like fear, our negative self talk, taking adult responsibility for our choices and our lives. It’s fascinating and challenging.

I want you to benefit from it. I’m going to post a bit about the book this week as well as doing another giveaway.

The Rules

Leave a comment here sharing the time you felt the worst about your procrastination. What did you put off? What was at stake? How did you feel after?
You will gain another entry for every social share (Facebook, Twitter, G+ etc), as well as if you follow by RSS, or by email. Leave a separate comment here telling me if you tweeted or shared on Facebook etc.

January 24, 2013

Lift

I was telling my coworkers yesterday about much I am enjoying Lift App. Here are a few reasons why:

I get to see my progress.
It encourages me (“Congrats, Jess! You’re on a 5 day streak of drinking more water!”) daily.
I actually derive pleasure/value from that BIG GREEN checkmark. Never before has a digital check mark been of value to me.
Other people can give me props.

It’s basically a community/app/thing based around achieving goals/to-dos. I only have one “friend” connection on it and he’s not really a friend so much as a guy I have a tech-crush on who I see all the time in St. Henri and I’m too afraid to say hi (he co-writes books with Chris Brogan). He also wrote about Lift this week and what he says is really helpful so I’ll quote him. He’s actually writing about morning/evening routines, which is something we’ve been talking a bit about since this blog’s inception. (How many of you just thought “whoa, inception” and thought about the movie? Me too). You can read the full post here on Julien’s site In Over Your Head.

My life is structured around a set number of goals to complete every day. Some of those goals are tiny, others are large. Here is an incomplete list in picture form:

As you can see, I have tiny habits, like ”Smile at a stranger” (which breaks my usual pattern of looking grumpy all the time), and then I have large ones, like “Finish all to-do’s,” which is a pointer to a another HUGE list in another app.

When I finish all of my habits for the day, like the ones in the list at right, I’m done. But there’s more to it than that.

I also deliberately plan the orderin which I will do these, and the reason I do this is because it helps keep me cheery and motivated to do more.

So I wake up and immediately floss and weigh myself. These are like little wins that get me started on my habit building. Then I go into “Process mail“ and maybe ”Take fish oil“ (very good for you btw).

Then my day is started and I’ll go into my calendar and see what my day is going to look like.

I also force introspection every day through a habit of free writing, which helps me think about my own path, or my work, or whatever else I feel like putting some thought into. You cannot trust yourself to think through important stuff in your head only. Because we are so distracted, it simply does not work. So this forces it to go on paper, where I won’t quit until I hit like 750 words.

So it’s almost like my day is structured with easy win > hard win > easy win > hard win-style loops that will keep me from feeling exhausted. Some stuff is easy, others are hard. With breaks obviously. And of course I forgive myself if ever I don’t get everything done. I draw a lot from Alcoholics Anonymous style ideas so that I can think one day at a time.

The final thing I wanted to mention about this is that often, at night, it is a great idea to just do one more thing. It can be small or big, doesn’t matter, but it helps set you off on the right foot and feel like you were extra productive today. For you that could be anything, maybe doing pushups, or writing a blog post.

I never thought Lift would be as helpful as it is. I don’t even know where I heard about it, but I’m lovin’ it. If you want to add me as a friend/follow me it will automatically suggest me as a friend if you’re following me on twitter, or you can search my name and follow me. Make sure you let me know so I can follow you back and encourage you, too!

Have you found any app or anything that gives you the reward or “lift” you need to reinforce your habits? Comment here and let me know.