AN INTRODUCTION TO PRODUCTIVITY
RESPECTING THE CALENDAR
We can all write on our calendars on a given date “Clean the bathroom” or “study for exams”. It’s not rocket science. It’s what we expect to accomplish on that exact date. We know what we need to get done and when, which is why we write things on the calendar or in our planners in the first place! The problem comes in because there is a gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Mel Robbins calls this the knowledge action gap in her book The 5 Second Rule.
Once we put a task on the calendar we like to think that it will just get it done (because that is the point of a calendar right? It tells you what you are doing on a given date!). BUT it’s not always the case. Brook Castillo talks about this in her podcast series The Life Coach School. It’s to do with the primitive brain..
For example, you add “Clean the bathroom” to the calendar for next Tuesday.. and your long-term thinking is that this will help you have a cleaner home.
BUT it will get to Tuesday and you will look at the calendar and it will say “clean bathroom” ….and you are NOT going to want to clean it. You brain will look at the task you wrote on the calendar and immediately it will think “I don’t want to do that right now, I want to go and watch Netflix/eat popcorn/watch a YouTube video [insert more fun thing here].” Nobody needs motivation to watch Netflix – am I right?
THE PRIMITIVE BRAIN
The part of your brain that does this is the primitive brain (your brain isn’t primitive! There is a part of the brain in everybody that is the primitive part – remember this important distinction!). It’s the part that exists to have fun and do things that it finds fun. As humans we are wired to do what we find fun, we look specifically for things we enjoy. This issue is that fun is a short-lived concept and doesn’t always help us to be the best version of ourselves long-term. I’m not saying you need to be depressed to be successful but some hard work is required to build a better life!
What happens if you keep listening to the primitive brain is that you will end up watching Netflix, eating all the snacks or doing something more fun than the task you originally planned to do. And over time you end up not being able to trust yourself to get the difficult things done. This is why many of us tell ourselves we will do something and then end up not following through – we lose trust in our word and ultimately ourselves. This then results in you ignoring your calendar altogether and before you know it productivity becomes a faraway dream that other people talk about. (to listen to the full podcast episode check out The Life Coach School podcast episode 261).
So how do we get around this? Honestly? It takes a lot of practice. It takes slowing down and actually having a conversation with yourself (reflecting on why you feel a certain way when it comes to certain boring tasks). It’s something I still work on every single day. Nobody is perfect when it comes to wanting to do the boring things that aren’t Instagram worthy.
I don’t think I will EVER enjoy cooking but I’ve got around that by having slow cookers and oven-ready meals that taste good. Yes there are currently only 5 things I know how to cook well but’s it is much better than only being able to make pasta. It’s about getting better one step at a time. It’s also all about compromise. It’s about understanding the kind of person you want to be for the long term. For me when it comes to food I don’t want to be the kind of person that defaults to takeout every day of the week.
When you hear yourself saying or thinking “I don’t want to do x,y,z” it’s about understanding that this is your primitive brain and that it is a mindset that can be adapted slowly. It’s a gradual step-by-step change that you make to that internal conversation. It’s about fighting the urge to do something fun over doing the thing that helps you move your life forward. The more you practice this the easier it becomes but there will still be those days when you mess up. We are all human!
Challenging things such as goals often have a long term pay-off that isn’t visible immediately. THIS is why tricking your brain into doing things works because you get things done and then the long-term benefits will start to gradually build up (one of them is you become the kind of person who says they will do something and then actually DOES it). The opposite of long term goals is daily tasks that are tiny and these can feel really boring so what is the middle ground?
THE DAILY HIGHLIGHT
In their book Make Time – Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky talk about the daily highlight. This is the sweet spot between a goal that can feel too far away and a task that can feel too mundane. A highlight is when you create a focus for your day. So for example on Monday my highlight could be to write 5 blog posts. If I complete that and do nothing else then I would call it a productive day. Even if I did 3 or 4 posts I would take that as a win no matter what little else I do in the day. Another highlight could be spending time with your kids, working on a DIY project or cleaning a room that you haven’t had time to do. It’s about giving yourself one focal point for the day and just doing that. In the book Jake and John go into detail about how to select a highlight and then how to create energy to get the task done. They also talk about the important of reflecting on your day.
For day-to-day projects strategies like the five-minute and two-minute rule come in handy or even the 80-20 rule for projects. It’s about tricking your brain into starting a task and then letting it run using the momentum. We often like to think that we can’t keep tricking our brain into doing things but here’s the thing: the hardest part of starting anything is always the first step. Why? Because that is when the most amount of effort and energy is needed. After that it is MUCH easier to stay moving and keep going because you are already working and moving forward.
All of these tricks exist to stop you relying on solely on motivation and to help you build momentum that keeps life going. Eventually over the long term you will find you become a more productive person as a by-product.
Ready to dig into the world of productivity? Let’s go!!