The Joy of Missing Out

You created the pace of your life. You can change it.

Most people try to balance their work, personal and home lives. Keeping all three in balance can be exhausting, and accomplishes little. You can change this dynamic by combining your time, energy and focus to concentrate on one target.

To concentrate on your true priorities, accept that you can’t “have it all.” You have to make choices, or have them made for you. This proves particularly true when you feel stuck.

“It’s not reality that makes us feel stuck; it’s the lens we use to view the world.”

People with a “strong internal locus of control” have greater happiness and motivation because they believe they control their lives.

If you are hesitant to believe you have the power to choose for yourself, ask why you believe this. If your answer is negative, question it again. Perhaps there are areas where your co-workers, spouse or children could help free you to follow your passion.

That decision is yours. You define your happiness and how you focus your time and energy. Prioritizing your goals helps you choose happiness.

Define your own path through life.

Would your obituary reflect that you lived your life following your passions? If the answer is no, rethink your priorities and define your “North Star” by creating “mission and vision statements,” and aligning them to your core values.

“Your North Star is uniquely yours. It’s your own filter for guiding your behavior and choices…to help you achieve your goals.”

Your mission statement describes what you do and why. To refine your ideas, try the “ABC Brain Dump” exercise. List the alphabet, and next to each letter write a word that resonates with you. Think about what inspires you, what is unique about you and why. Your mission statement should be a road map for your decisions.

Create a one-sentence vision statement encompassing your future goals. It should inspire you and be direct. Ask how you can improve what you’re doing, and how you envision that changing and maturing.

Define your core values by choosing no more than six words. These will steer your choices and actions. Think how you’d like others to describe you. How do you positively influence others, and what is the delta between your dreams and where you are now? Write down words, and group similar ones together. Then find a word to encompass each group. When you’re done, write what your core value words mean to you. Use them daily to ensure each word aligns with what you truly want.

“Your core values fulfill the prophecy of your mission and vision statements and create structure for the life you want to live.”

Defining goals helps you focus on what matters to you. Without focus, you will be busy, but not effective. The sun’s rays, for example, can burn wood, but only when you focus them with a magnifying glass.

Focusing mandates a choice. You may not want to limit yourself by choosing, but that gives you greater freedom to pursue your goals.

Goals support your North Star and help you select the right opportunities. A study of Harvard MBA students found that after 10 years, the 3% who wrote down their goals before graduating earned 10 times the amounts of the other 97%.

To achieve your goals, define boundaries. Boundaries at work, home and in your personal life allow you to focus and be more productive.

This compartmentalization helps you concentrate on the task in front of you.

If you work from home with children, for example, let them know their options when your work phone rings. It may take time for them to learn, but they can. Similarly, tell your colleagues that you won’t email or call them back immediately after work hours. It’s your responsibility to be clear with everyone, and your actions should reflect your words.

You have limited time in this world. Respect it.

Time is finite. You control how you spend it. You will be more productive if you focus on your priorities instead of checking off tasks on a list.

These prevailing myths about time and productivity can inhibit your focus:

• Multitasking makes you more productive – People who multitask get 40% less accomplished, and their IQ drops significantly.
• You can’t afford to take any down time when you’re busy – Your ultradian rhythm, a cycle of about 90 minutes of work, plus 20 minutes of rest, helps you work more productively. Your productivity stalls after a 50-hour work week.
• When a technical option exists, use it – You engage your brain more thoroughly when you take notes or create plans with a pen. When you write manually, your brain focuses with fewer distractions. These findings surprised Princeton-UCLA researchers, who discovered that students taking notes by hand did two times better on tests than those using a keyboard.

An idea around for hundreds of years states that roughly 20% of your work yields 80% of your results. In your life, what is that 20% that you want to focus on? Invest the majority of your time and energy in those tasks.

“It’s focused time that creates the greatest impact.”

To use your finite resource of time and energy on a task itself instead of just thinking about it, tighten up your self-imposed deadlines. When you’re on deadline, you think more clearly and finish a task more quickly.

Focus on your priorities.

Create a priority list to ensure you are working toward your North Star. Checking off tasks gives your brain a shot of pleasure hormones, but can become a way to keep busy.

Your priority list should start with urgent items that help you achieve your long-term goals and have clear deadlines. You can eliminate these items through planning, but if your car doesn’t start, fixing it should be first on your list.

The next group is where you should spend most of your time. It includes plans for the future and self-improvement. These items don’t have deadlines, and center on cultivating the goals you want to achieve.

The last section contains unimportant items you need to do. They include chores you should delegate or remove from the list.

“Important tasks” help you achieve your mission, vision and core values. “Urgent tasks” don’t move you forward in your priorities. These might include helping co-workers who have a project due that they delayed working on.

Defining what’s important can be difficult. A system, “getting CLEAR,” can keep you on track. Ask if the task “connects” to your mission, vision and core values. Determine if it “links” to a goal you’ve set. Must you do it yourself, or can you delegate it? Does completing the task bring a worthy return on your emotional or professional goals?

Habits, systems and routines free up time for your priorities.

Create systems in your life that you base on habits. They will help you focus on your priorities. Such systems should integrate with the life you want to live, not a magazine or social media ideal. If you don’t like to fold clothes, don’t. Just make sure you have space in your closet to hang them up.

Systems help you avoid decision fatigue. Your brain is a tiny portion of your weight, but uses 20% of your daily calories. When your brain tires, it stops thinking issues through, and picks the easiest option.

To create a habit, take these four steps:

1. Define why the habit is necessary – How can it help you achieve your goals?
2. Determine what “cues” you need to cause action – The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg identifies five cues: “location, time, emotional state, other people and preceding action.” For example, to get you to go for a run after work, leave your shoes near the door.
3. Describe what the habit will entail– Consider what might inhibit you from following through. It takes a little over two months for a habit to form.
4. Plan to track your progress, acknowledge your success and get yourself back on track when you fail – Creating habits is incremental, so document your progress and design small rewards for yourself. If you fail one day, which you will, try again the next day. The goal is to align yourself with how the habit can help you.

“Designing our systems to work with our strengths and weaknesses sets us up for success.”

To stop the bad habit of checking your email constantly, for example, acknowledge how much time you waste. Turn off alerts on your phone or log out of the email system. Designate a time for checking email each day.Reward yourself at day’s end by spending your extra time on your pleasure.

Routines are related habits that generate forward movement. To make a large impact, start with a small routine. Define a morning routine that contains life-affirming elements, and do it three days a week. This supports your priorities and reduces your brain energy. Creating flexible routines reinforces habit cues so you move easily from one action to the next.

Remove decision energy from mundane things as well. When you schedule time for laundry, taxes or cleaning the fridge, they no longer become stressful, last-minute chores. Pick a day to do your laundry and designate age-specific tasks for your kids. Increase their tasks as they get older, and they will do their own laundry unthinkingly. Even with the best kids, you’ll have to remind them, but scheduling chores removes the energy of thinking about them.

If you feel your time doesn’t belong to you, who owns it then? The “5 P’s” system allows you to take control of your time and decisions.

• “Purge” – You can get your list of tasks out of your head by writing them down. Outline high-level tasks you need to do for the week. Create separate home and work lists. Involve your family, and hold them accountable.
• “Process” – Take 10 minutes to consider what you want to accomplish for each day. Pull from your high-level list for the week. Divide large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones.
• “Prioritize” – Arrange your daily list in a hierarchy, so unimportant tasks don’t consume you. Save time by lumping similar items together, such as making calls or dealing with emails.
• “Protect” – Guard your time and detail your tasks on your calendar, especially if others have access to it. Leave blocks of time between sections. If it takes 10 minutes to get somewhere, leave 5 minutes earlier. That reduces stress.
• “Propel” – When you need to move to another task, accelerate your work by knowing how to restart it quickly. If you use a folder, write on it when you worked and what you need to do next. This eases your transition when you turn to it again.

A five-minute “daily download” reflection time at day’s end helps you recount what you accomplished, remember how the day went, acknowledge your progress, highlight what you’re grateful for and plan for the next day.

Sharks rest. So can you.

You may think you’re like a shark and that if you stop, you’ll die. But sharks can be still. What sharks need is water flowing through their gills. Facing a current open-mouthed as they rest on the bottom takes care of this.

How can you find ways to create pockets of quiet and reflection in your life? An average person will spend more than five years in his or her lifetime using social media. Your choices create the cadence of your life.

“We have to stop rushing through life and missing all the goodness that is there before us.”

Saying no to volunteering or starting a new project can be difficult. When you choose not to do something, you make a positive choice to support your priorities.

If you have difficulty saying no, alleviate it by using the “finding your yes” process template. Write down a description of a task or action. As you write it, note how you feel. If you have a negative response, it’s not something you should do. If you have a fearful reaction, continue with the process. Write down the reason you want to do it. If you can’t, it might not be worth pursuing. Other questions to ask include whether it lines up with your North Star and how you will make the time for it. You may have to stop one activity to make time for a new one.

“Whitespace is where ideas innovation and ideals are born and nurtured.”

To decline something, use the “sandwich strategy” by encapsulating the “no” between comments that acknowledge the request, your appreciation of it and its importance to the person asking.

Let go of things that aren’t in line with the life you want to create, and work toward your North Star every day.

How We Can Help You

At Bentley Moore Executive, we have specialists with excellent commercial experience in transformation, service delivery, cost savings, cost containment initiatives, as well as operational efficiencies gained operating in the public, private and charity sectors.

If you want to know more or wish to engage us to have a consultation on sustainable cost savings for your business or organisation, please do feel to contact us.

Learn More About Us and Our Services

Contact Us

Email:             [email protected]

Web:               www.bentleymoore.co.uk

LinkedIn:        https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/jasongeorgebme/

                        https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/davidmparkin/

Tel:                0333 012 9079

About the Author

Tonya Dalton is a productivity expert, mentor and the 2019 Enterprising Woman of the Year. She is the CEO and founder of inkWELL Press Productivity Co.