Obsessive thinking? Obsessive emails? Stay in course..

How many times do you finish your day by making a to-do list for the next work day, or start your day making your to-do list first thing? I do, most of the time.

If everything goes to plan between the previously scheduled calls and activities, and my to-do list,? I would expect to have a good, accomplished feeling day.

But this is real life, right? There is no such perfect day.

Emails pop up by the minute. I take a quick glance at them to identify the sender and subject. I click open one, and if it requires an action, I could then start working on it. Sometimes the same subject triggers other follow-up actions.. call someone, find out this or that, add a quick same-day call to your schedule.

Then the next email arrives, and it could be a similar story.. or can be nothing, just another email sent to the masses without a clear message as to the expectations from every receiver on the list.. and just like that, hours go by.. I get to the end of the day realizing I did not finish my to-do list, and might feel unaccomplished, or be required to stay up later to finish.

Something similar happens with our thoughts. Our mind is so powerful, generates thoughts every second. We can be on a call, or in the middle of a conversations with someone, and get distracted by a thought.. then we could keep adding thoughts to the original one, start solving situations, running multiple scenarios .. we keep the thought line going and lose track of the conversation we were having, or what was being discussed on the call, all in a very short period of time.

It could also happen as you are trying to meditate or have a quiet moment or break.

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How can we weaken these habits?

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On both situations the first thing is to stop and acknowledge we are going off track.

Fort thoughts we can stop and say to ourselves.. ”This is a thought.. I am not my thoughts.. I do not have to solve this now”. We can make a mental or physical note for another time to solve, and we can get back to the present, listening to the other person or call, or enjoying our meditation or quiet time.

For emails and daily to-do lists, I like to remind myself of the third habit of Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 habits of high effective people”, the time management matrix, scheduling priorities Vs prioritizing a schedule.

This way I can recalibrate my day and to-do list, and still be able to accomplish results Vs just being busy.

There will always be some sort of circumstances that could disrupt our days or plans, but those should be the exception, not the rule.

Staying in course takes being present, disciplined, and committed.

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How do you stay in course?