It's a minimalist Monday edition of optimal living daily episode 1655, the greatest secret to productivity that no one is talking about by Courtney Carver of bmoresless.com and I'm just a molecular personal narrator reading to you every single day of the year and I'll keep this intro nice and minimal so let's get right to minimalist Monday as we optimize your life. The greatest secret to productivity that no one is talking about by Courtney Carver of bmoresless.com. There is no shortage of productivity hacks. If you want to get more done, spend more time reading about it.
You can learn how to sleep less, work longer hours, drink more coffee, use a timer, be an expert multi-tasker, or work in airplanes. You can learn all of that and more, all for the sake of getting more done. What these productivity hacks forget to mention is that by becoming uber productive, you compromise your health and relationships, are in constant demand, and still never get it all done. Productivity experts teach you how to get things done so you have time to do more things.
Then what? The greatest secret to productivity is less. Doing less will help you accomplish more. We have to start by redefining productivity because the current definition is clearly broken.
When was the last time you finished everything? When was the last time you thought, I'm so productive that I got it all done and didn't have to wake up and do it all over again? A new definition of productivity. The current definition may work when describing assembly lines, but we are people, not machines.
What if productivity was not about getting the most done but getting the most important done? What if productivity was not about doing it all but doing the things we love and want to do? What if productivity was not about doing it fast but doing it well? If your purpose in life is to churn and burn and that's what really does it for you, none of the following advice is going to help.
But if doing it all is exhausting and overwhelming and you want to do things differently, keep listening. How to be more productive by doing less. Edit, edit, edit. Be mindlessly add things to our lives and rarely subtract without great intention.
It's time to make an extensive edit list to clear away the things that really don't matter. Look at your work, your life, and your relationships and consistently edit to make room for the things that matter most. Make a love list. What do you love to do and why are those things always on the bottom of the list?
If you are waiting until you get everything done, until you work enough, make enough, and have enough time, you will never do what you love. Start now. Rest. Without rest, you can't do your best work.
Without rest, you can't give fully to your friends and family. You are less creative and motivated when you don't rest. Just stop. Rest.
Because if you are constantly worried about how to make ends meet, it's time to think about having fewer ends. What are you paying for right now that you don't need? What have you got rid of those payments? Could you work less and make less?
There are better things then to be rich. Drop more balls. More balls in the air requires more juggling and more ball dropping. When you forget to do something or you accidentally drop the ball, you feel guilty and unworthy.
What if you intentionally drop the ball or simply remove them from your juggling act? I know he thought it was important to throw it up there, but if you've recently discovered that it isn't, drop it. Say no. If other people notice that you are almost done, they will ask you for help.
They are the same that goes something like, if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. Likewise, if you feel you are almost finished with doing things, you will add more instead of just being done. Say no and give yourself a break. Single task.
In my new mini-mission book, Brooke McCallery from Slow Your Home wrote a chapter about single tasking. She suggests doing one thing at a time. Make time for that to be the one thing you are thinking about, the one thing you are experiencing, the sole purpose of that moment. And when you are done, take a deep breath.
Then it's back to the day. Giving balls in the air, food and bellies and colleagues informed. Stop measuring your worth by your accomplishments. At the end of the day, we have a bad habit of measuring who we are by what we got done.
If our to-do list don't have enough check marks and inbox zero is still a mile away, we feel like we didn't contribute enough and therefore we aren't good enough. Instead of measuring yourself by what you get done, measure by how you make people feel, measure by what's in your heart, and not on your list. I know that some of you are shaking your head or your fist, and thinking that it's easy for me to tell you to do less. You may have more to do than you can handle and think there is no way out.
I used to think the same thing. I blame my boss and my finances and anything I could think of. As long as I had an excuse to do more, I did it. If there wasn't more to be done, I created it.
I did more to keep up, catch up, and shred water. I did more to prove myself, climb the ladder, and shoot for the moon. It didn't work. More was not the answer.
There will always be more to do. Choose less, and do it well. Choose less, and get it done. Choose less, and do what's most important.
You just listened to the post titled The Greatest Secret to Productivity that no one is talking about by Corny Carver of BeingMoreTheLest.com. Definitely something to think about today. I narrate a lot of articles about productivity, like doing more in less time, but how much of it do we really need to do, and is there a way we can do less? It's really important to consider since time is our most valuable resource.
That's something I've been considering with this podcast even, so hopefully you can take some of her suggestions and use them in your life. But I'll leave it there for today. Hope you're having a great day, and I'll be back tomorrow, where you're optimal life. Oh wait.