Today I am continuing with my Productivity Myths series where I explain why some common productivity advice isn’t accurate and uncover the truth hidden beneath the myth so you can actually improve your productivity!

Productivity Myth #3: Hourly schedules keep your day on track!

It seems like pretty basic planning and productivity advice, doesn’t it? Even many planners come designed with hourly grids where you are encouraged to map out, hour-by-hour the tasks of your day. It reminds me of a quote “a place for everything and everything in it’s place” but twist that to “a time for everything and everything in time.” In a different world, where things always run smoothly and best laid plans come to fruition, an hourly schedule does seem like the perfect solution for planning your day. But, alas, over time I have come to recognize how this seemingly sound advice can wreak havoc when put into practice.

Now, I do want to provide a disclaimer to this information and say I recognize that in some cases, using an hourly schedule is necessary for the work that some of us do. Many businesses work on an hourly appointment schedule for very good reason, and I am not suggesting that this practice should end. I’ll expound on the situations where using an hourly schedule does work a little later on. What I am suggesting with this information, however, is that for those of us with more control over how we spend our time, there are significant reasons why hourly schedules are problematic to overall productivity.

First, let me explain the productivity science behind why using an hourly schedule may seem to work. There is an axiom in productivity known as Parkinson’s Law. It states that “work expands to fill the time allotted for its’ completion.” In common language this means that no matter how much time you give yourself to work on a task, it will take you that long to complete it. Now, in the past, I often took this axiom to also mean that work contracts to fill the time allotted for its’ completion. Meaning that if you give yourself less time to complete an objective, you will also accomplish it in that time as well. However, I have come to realize that this is not true for objectives across the board. Yes, if I give myself 15 minutes to clean my kitchen I can get a decent job done by speeding up my actions that I might usually do at a more relaxed pace in 30 minutes. Or, I might do a decent job but skip over some actions or lessen the quality of the work I am doing to some extent.

Now, cleaning my kitchen is one situation where my adaptation of Parkinson’s Law works well enough, but there are plenty of other examples where it fails. For example, if I am traveling by car to visit a family member in another state, this may be a trip that takes me 90 minutes on average. Now, if I gave myself a time frame of 120 minutes, by Parkinson’s Law, it may very well take me 120 minutes because I might stop at a rest area or for a snack or gas on my way to my destination. However, I cannot expect to be at my destination in 30 minutes or even 60 minutes because the laws of physics and the state of New Jersey say I cannot legally travel by car and reach my destination in such a short period of time. In some respects I believe that the concept of Parkinson’s Law shows how making a realistic schedule and sticking to it can work for completing objectives, however, it doesn’t really work when trying to limit time spent on tasks. In addition, it pretty much ignores some of the most common issues that interfere with productivity when using the model of an hourly schedule to manage your objectives.

So, next I want to lay out a few of the most common issues that arise when using an hourly schedule. If you have ever tried and failed to stick to one, you might recognize a few of these yourself from personal experience.

The most common issue I see with using an hourly schedule for your day is that many people have a difficult time carving out the proper amount of time to alot to an activity. If you have ever tried an hourly schedule and assigned tasks to a specific time slot, you likely faced the scenario where your tasks were taking longer than originally expected and although you were working diligently on your tasks, you started falling behind. Unfortunately, many people are just very bad guessers when it comes to assuming how much time something will take. It’s a default for many of us to assume something will get done quicker than is realistically possible. Even (and sometimes even especially) when we know we have completed a task before in the past. How often have you said to yourself “oh, I’ll do this now, it will only take 15 minutes,” but by the time you wrap up 40 minutes has elapsed? When it comes to time, hindsight is not 20/20 and unless you have specifically tracked and measured your time for various activities in the past, more often than not, you remember it taking less time than it really did.

The second most common issue people face when using an hourly schedule is that unexpected issues or distractions often pop up during the day and divert our attention away from our schedules, again throwing us off track. I think the concept of distractions keeping us from our work is something we are all familiar with and understand how that negatively impacts productivity, so let’s focus on unexpected issues. Unexpected issues can take the form of changes to our planned tasks, technical or communication issues that halt the flow of our work, or people/processes we need to work with or through to complete our work. These aspects are the most unpredictable part of creating a schedule because no matter how diligently we work towards our objectives, in many scenarios other factors can keep us from being productive and staying on track.

The third and final common issue people face when using an hourly schedule is that they ignore or fail to account for their personal energy cycles. People are not robots. Even if we know the precise amount of time our tasks will take and can ensure we are in a distraction and problem-free environment, it is still hard for us to stick to a schedule because working back to back on tasks is mentally exhausting and mental energy is a difficult factor to plan for. Each of us has an amount of energy we begin the day with and that energy cycles in highs and lows that most of us are not attuned to. Sometimes, work just drains us and this results in a slowing of our rate of productivity that again throws us off schedule. Yes, sometimes coffee can help us power through it, but that affect is usually only temporary.

Next, I’d like to explain one lesser recognized issue when it comes to using hourly schedules, but one that I am extremely mindful of, and that is the fact that hourly schedules prevent us from going with the flow of least resistance in our work. The way I look at the previous three common issues to using an hourly schedule is that they each represent a different form of common resistance that throws us off our well laid plans. This is an indication to me that the plans, however, were not well laid. Yet, people will continue to push through, clinging to their schedule, trying very hard to stick to it and then feeling overwhelmed and dissatisfied when they fail to achieve the plan. For me, when I approach my work, I see my objectives as outcomes I would like to manifest and so I prefer to go with the flow and not hold too tightly onto my own expectations or plans for how something should go in order to be completed. Although in many cases with our tasks, our reasonable expectations will be fulfilled, that’s not because things can only work out one way. Objectives can be met and outcomes can come to fruition in a myriad of ways, so when we try to stick to our plan as though its the only way forward, we usually prevent ourselves from meeting our objectives in the easiest way.

This is where I will insert my favorite productivity example of playing a game of chess to illustrate the point for you. In chess the objective is to capture your opponents King piece. Games of chess can last hours or even days between two players matched in skill making countless moves across the board, but a chess master can also win the game against a lesser skilled player within a matter of just a handful of moves. Think of your daily schedule or plans as those games of chess. Most of us start our day with a strategy that involves many moves and through our days sticking to this plan we can hit roadblocks that cause us to have to make even more moves to get to our desired outcome. But, in reality, there is a path you can take where you only have to make a few key moves to reach your objectives. It’s the Pareto Principle, 80% of our results come from 20% of our actions. So my suggestion to you is that using an hourly schedule is like playing a long game a chess, when you might actually be able to use a different strategy with far less effort to reach the same ends.

Now, I don’t want this article to be all negative, because as I stated earlier, there are situations where using an hourly schedule works, and I think we can learn from these situations how to best use an hour schedule to manage our tasks and objectives productively.

I think the best example of when an hourly schedule works is with an appointment based time management model. So visiting the doctor, getting a service done or having a call or meeting. When your work requires you to achieve a certain number of daily objectives, like sales calls or patient visits, mapping out an hourly schedule and working with clients within that window is a great way to put that reverse principle of Parkinson’s Law in place. The key here is that the limit or expectation is agreed upon by all parties and that a regular routine of service is fulfilled. I guess we can all have a laugh about expectations at the doctors office as in some instances our appointment window isn’t always honored, but for other professional services or customer calls the system works because their is an expected process to follow that from experience has very little deviation. So essentially, when your task or objective follows a script or prescribed system or process, it’s okay to use an hourly schedule for time management as long as other factors like interruptions can be minimized or prevented.

So I hope you can see now why I do not use hourly schedules on a daily basis for myself and I don’t normally recommend them to others. Moving forward I hope you will use this information to help you more adequately evaluate factors that hold back your productivity and keep you from executing on your objectives. Think about paying closer attention to or even tracking the time it takes you to complete tasks so you clearly understand the time expectations of your work. Notice the types of issues that pop up when you work on different objectives to help you better anticipate drains on your time the next time you complete those tasks. Most of all, I hope you will start to notice the patterns in your own mental energy while you work to understand how your energy cycles throughout the day. Each of these areas will help you understand yourself and how to maximize your productivity in the future, bringing you close to becoming the master of your productivity game.

I hope this information has been insightful to you and helps you to master your productivity game. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic and how you are using this information to benefit your life! So, please do leave me a comment below!

xoxo,

Today I am continuing with my Productivity Myths series where I explain why some common productivity advice isn’t accurate and uncover the truth hidden beneath the myth so you can actually improve your productivity!

Productivity Myth #2: To Do Lists Keep You Focused and On Task.

The advice is pretty clear on this; make a to do list, complete the tasks, be a productive person. Hmm, more like clearly confusing, overwhelming and just plain wrong! Have you ever made a to do list? Grab a sheet of paper and write out all the things you need to do. Some of us can write tasks for pages on end, and then what? We just get started tacking this endless stream of work? Wrong!

To do lists are often touted as being the ultimate strategy of productivity. If you need to get things done, make a list of what you need to do and get started working. But this advice could dig you into a productivity hole if you are not careful and discerning.

You see, the big problem with to do lists is that when you make one, it likely isn’t prioritized or organized in any way to indicate to you which tasks are more urgent or important than others. Often, when we makes to do lists, our natural inclination is to start from the top and work our way down. Or we sift through the list and cherry pick tasks we think we can do easily or quickly just to get them off the list. But without a sense of organization, without a hierarchy that indicates which tasks truly are necessary and which are optional, we can fall into the trap of wasting our time on work that gets us nowhere!

It actually takes a tremendous amount of discipline and knowledge ahead of time to make a to do list work- which most of us aren’t employing when we execute on this false productivity strategy. Not to mention how complicated getting things done actually becomes when we work off of numerous to do lists or create a fresh list every single day. It’s like we are changing the game plan each time and not necessarily to optimize it. It can become a mess for most of us!

On top of that, did you know that research has shown that just the act of making a to do list makes you feel more productive, even if you never take action on anything on that list? So you can just make a list, and go take a nap and you just feel like you’ve done something even if you haven’t and then when the high of the list wears off, you are more behind than you were before the list was made. I hope you can see where I am coming from exposing the problematic nature of to do lists!

Finally, I dislike to do lists because I feel as though they often stand in the way of manifesting success from a place of ease and flow. Essentially a to do list is a step by step of what we think we should do or what we think we need to do to reach desired objectives, but as I explained in my post yesterday, that’s the hard way of doing things. Making a to do list and sticking to it, even as someone making a list with a high amount of knowledge and sense of priority, can still lead you to a longer road to achieving your goal.

What To Do Lists Actually Do for Your Productivity

All that being said, there is of course a vein of truth that does run through the advice and strategy of making a to do list, which is causing some people to benefit from the practice. Chiefly, sitting down and writing out a list of all the tasks and items you are storing in your mind is essentially executing on a truly productive strategy of brain dumping. Brain dumping, or a brain dump as I call it, is when you take everything you are thinking of and trying to remember in your brain, and listing it out. The practice unpacks ideas, tasks and memories and puts them in a more reliable and concrete storage method like a sheet of paper or even a digital list, which causes an instant sigh of relief for your brain. Despite popular misconception, our brains are not where we store information. They aren’t akin to the hard drive of a computer. There are intended for processing, like the RAM of a computer. Yes, you can hold onto some information in your working and short term memory, but as you learn new information, that old info is pushed out and lost. So, brain dumping relieves your mind of the burden of holding on to information. This is where the affect of feeling more productive comes from. It’s literally your brain feeling a weight lifted and redirecting energy towards fully processing tasks. It makes me think of when you sit down to watch tv and are still playing on your phone at one time. Your attention is split, so you aren’t fully enjoying either activity but you have a vague sense of what’s going on in both places. Then once you put the phone down and start paying full attention to the tv, you feel more focused on the show and may begin realizing there were things you missed that you need to go back to. That’s how your brain feels after you make a list. It has been paying attention to older information you are telling it to remember while at the same time trying to actively engage in the moment. So when the information is dumped out of your brain, suddenly it starts experiencing reality in the moment with a greater sense of focus.

Now, obviously, to do lists also work to help you remember tasks as well. Having a list on hand when you go to the grocery store is a great idea so you don’t forget what you went to buy. This is an example of the right time and the proper usage for a to do list. But these examples are few and just because a to do list helps you be more productive running errands, doesn’t mean it will help with productivity in other areas of your life.

So, moving forward now that you understand the myth of the to do list and how it actually affects your productivity, what I want you to focus on is how making and creating a to do list can become your step one in planning and organizing a productive day, but through the process of a brain dump. So, you can sit down and unload all the information you are storing in your working memory, but then you need to take some time to organize that information before you act on it. If you aren’t aware, the Charmed Life Master Planner contains an entire section of inserts dedicated to brain dumps where you can create your list and then using the structure of an Eisenhower matrix, prioritize the information by urgency and importance. From there you can integrate the more priority tasks into your day as you also functional plan to integrate them alongside other time obligations for a productive day. But never, ever, ever should you just make a to do list for the day and get to work on it… at least not if you are trying to manage your time and day productively!

I hope this information has been insightful to you and helps you to master the practice of true functional planning. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic and how you are using this information to benefit your life!

xoxo,

Hello dear friend!

Lately, there has been a lot of stir in the productivity community about the link between happiness and productivity. Specifically, that measures of productivity indicate happier people as more productive than their unhappy counterparts. Although this point is getting a lot of attention right now, this is not new information by any means. A 2015 study conducted by the Social Market Foundation and the University of Warwick’s Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, demonstrated that when a subject was shown a 10-minute comedy clip before starting their work, it resulted in a 12-20% increase in their productivity as compared to a control group who were shown no clip before they began working. This study has been cited over the past few years as evidence to support workplace practices for creating a more positive environment for employees as a means to increase their productivity. Now, all that is great and I hope that this trend continues changing the way companies treat their employees and the company culture that they create, but I don’t think most of us needed a study like this to understand the role happiness plays in our productivity.

One of the most popular questions I receive from my community revolve around how to be more productive with a long term illness, anxiety, depression or other physiologically related challenge. I think many women are keenly aware of how unhappiness has negatively affected their productivity. It’s hard to get your mind in the right state to be productive when you are not feeling the most confident or are experiencing pain or discomfort. Living with a regular challenge like that can absolutely become a mood killer that would inhibit your happiness.

It isn’t just physiological challenges, however that can kill your mood and therefore your productivity. Stress, overwhelm, comparison and unreasonable expectations really seem to be the number one killer of female productivity as far as I’ve witnessed within my community. This is why I’ve been working to integrate more metaphysical practices and principles into my content across the board. It is no surprise to me that happiness and personal contentment are the key to unlocking our productivity. This concept is woven throughout world religions, ancient wisdom, modern physics, and new age thought. You’ve probably heard me talk about cultivating a high vibration for yourself during your morning routine as a secret to success. I even designed a daily manifestation journal called the High Vibe Bible around this essential truth; your level of happiness (vibration) dictates your ability to succeed.

When you feel happiness and contentment for your life in the moment, no matter what goals you have set for your future, or what you have experienced in your past, you are creating a high vibrational set point within your mind. So, moving forward from that moment, as long as you are able to keep your level of happiness the same, or even increase it, you are programming yourself to work with a positive momentum, overcome obstacles with ease and you allow your day to flow from task to task through an inward sense of guidance where you don’t need to stop and pause to ask yourself, what’s next. Happiness, a high vibration, turns your mind into a receiver for right action automatically because this is our instinctual state of being.

Once you reach this state, which is apparently as easy as watching a 10-minute comedy clip, you are programmed into the mindset that I call “manifesting success with less stress.” This mindset is my personal be all and end all of productivity. It’s the mindset that programs you to easily achieve your objectives with minimal effort or challenge because you have kept yourself in the right vibration to receive a divine inward guidance for what to do and when to do it. An analogy I commonly use to describe this is that of a chess game. In chess, two players guide a set of pieces across a board in a series of moves in order to strategically “capture” the king piece of their opponent. Games of chess are notorious for lasting a very long time with players making a long series of moves in order to outwit each other. But, experts at chess who reach the level of grand master are able to play a lesser skilled player and win by making only a handful of moves. So, it is possible in chess for you to play against an opponent for hours on end, making countless moves in order to reach your desired objective (winning), or it could take just a few moves. The difference is in the mind of the player. In chess, it’s quite literally knowing the strategy of the game so well that you can win without all the time and effort that might be required of a less skilled player.

This is what manifesting success with less stress is all about. Understanding that whatever your desired objective is, you have two choices; to do it the easy way or to do it the hard way. The hard way is starting off with the mindset that you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you and all this work is going to be hard but that if you put in the hard work and stay focused long enough and sacrifice time with other things to devote more time to this thing than you will reach your objective. This is the mindset of setting expectations for what you think you should do to achieve your objective, and then working diligently to check off each step until your objective is reached. It works, most of the time, but it’s a buzz kill of a mindset isn’t it? Instead, what I am offering to you and what the study on the link between happiness and productivity is really illustrating is that there is an easy path too. When you shift your mindset into happiness and contentment, even gratitude and joy and then approach your objective thinking about how great it’s going to be when you hit your goal and how excited you are to finish your work, and what you can’t wait to do after all the work is complete- then suddenly your mindset is in alignment with the vibration of success for that objective, and like a grand master, you will instinctually know what the next right move is from exactly where you stand, and as long as you listen to the feeling inside that urges you to do x next, and as long as you keep your emotions in a state of happiness then you will complete your objective in far fewer moves overall. Manifest success with less stress. Get what you want with less effort expended.

Now, if you’ve been around the block with me, you may recall that I often suggest that if you are working towards an objective and don’t know how to get started, that the first thing you should do is some research on how to achieve your objective. I make this suggestion knowing full well that if someone is really ready to achieve that objective but are not yet in alignment with a higher vibration, that doing the research becomes the first step, the first action they take to put them in alignment with achieving that objective. Many times, when we go to do research on how to achieve an objective, we find information that confirms what we already believed was the right action to take. Isn’t that interesting? We already kinda knew what to do before we got started, but instead of acting on what we felt was right, we needed confirmation from another source. This is a very common situation people find themselves in when they are not yet used to being in alignment with a high vibration and don’t trust their gut yet! In psychology there is a concept called confirmation bias that is a tendency humans are afflicted with. This is the tendency to seek out and trust information that confirms what we already believe to be true. So, humans are programmed instinctually for this alignment, and when you take the step of doing the research on your objective, it aligns you to that objective and confirms those feelings you already had about what to do to achieve it. So once your done getting that confirmation you start to feel better don’t you? You feel more confident! You feel like you are better prepared to start and as long as nothing else stands in your way, your vibration is rising into alignment with your objective.

But, I assure you, the research step wasn’t actually necessary as part of this mechanism. All you actually need to do is get into a high vibration and align with your objective- make yourself feel happy and clearly identify what you want to achieve- and you will automatically start receiving insight for what the right action is to take! Then it’s up to you to trust that information you receive. Trust your feelings. Try acting on what you feel is the right thing to do first, and then next. See where it takes you. If you stay in the high vibration and in alignment with your objective, meaning you don’t change the objective and you don’t start doubting the objective, then you will absolutely achieve it quicker and with less energy expended than had you tried the hard way. It does take practice and mastery to get into a high vibration, especially if you aren’t the healthiest or most confident person, but with time you can build a new neural net of experience. Practically speaking, deciding to be happy and finding simple ways shift into happiness requires very little work and is something anyone can do. It does take discipline and focus to stay in alignment with a goal, but over time those mental muscles can be trained as well. So really, what we need to develop is the discipline of controlling our mind, not the discipline of controlling our actions, in order to become productive and successfully achieve our objectives.

Now, I realize this discussion may bring up more questions for you- specifically around the metaphysics of how this all works. How do we receive the information for the next right action and where does it come from? I will get into this idea in future posts, but for now I will ask you not to focus on any lingering questions but instead to focus on practicing the process I have shared. After all, I don’t know how my television works, but I know how to turn it on and change the channel, and that’s enough for me to use it to meet my needs.

Of course, I would love to hear what you think of this information and your experience with it. If you have any questions, of course also leave those down below in a comment so I can address those for you because this is truly a very important skill to master for productivity and I’m committed to helping you build and use this skill successfully!

xoxo,

Great News Charmed Ones!

My FREE Monthly downloads are back!

I know, it’s been a while, but I’ve got a new set of free downloadable tech backgrounds to share with you for the month of October PLUS my favorite monthly to do list of the year, 31 Things to Do In October.

Click here to get access to your downloads now!

Thanks for sticking with me here on my blog, and for supporting my endeavors all over the internet! I truly appreciate you and I hope these little gifts help motivate and inspire you for the month ahead.

xoxo,

Today, I’m starting a series on the blog where I teach you about a few very common productivity tips I hear people talk about all the time that I actually believe don’t really affect your productivity. Now, what makes these tips a little complicated is that they do happen to touch on some real productivity truth, but it’s one of those situations where the true cause of the improvement is being masked by the myth. It’s like the concept of an old wives tale if you are familiar with those ideas that have been handed down through generations that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. The reason this happens is because the concept being shared touches on truth but the full understanding of the mechanism behind it isn’t fully realized. This is the case for the tips I want to share with you today. For simplicities sake, let’s call them productivity myths, because that is what they are, things people believe affect your productivity but they don’t. Instead, they touch on a truth that runs deeper, and I want to explain those truths to you as well!

Productivity Myth #1: In order to be productive, you need to wake up early.

Long time followers of mine will not be shocked that I am starting with this myth. I have shared my thoughts on this idea before; that we need to wake up earlier in the morning in order to get more done, in order to then be productive. It’s not only a complete farce, but I actually think this concept has some very dangerous implications for our society, which, at least speaking from my perspective in the U.S., is already highly sleep deprived! So let me deconstruct this idea a bit for you so I can explain exactly how it is supposed to work, why it is particularly insidious and what is really going on behind the scenes that can sometimes make it seem like it’s working when it’s not.

So, the idea behind waking up earlier to be more productive is that getting a jump start on the day, by waking up before others in your house hold or getting to work earlier than your co-workers, will essentially give you more time to do things, and perhaps more uninterrupted time if that’s something you struggle with. Sounds good, right? I can completely understand why we would believe this concept. I think most people probably feel guilty that they sleep in too long, or hit the snooze button too many times in the morning. I know a lot of people in my community have come to me and asked for tips on how to complete more work during the course of their days, and one seemingly easy way to achieve this would be to just be awake for more hours of the day. Yes, if you wake up earlier and get right to work, you can theoretically get more achieved in your day, but eventually cutting into your sleep will start to show negative affects.

One of the reasons soo many people sleep in often is because they aren’t getting the right amount of sleep to begin with. They either go to bed too late or have a hard time sleeping so the quality of your sleep is affected. Time is a construct people, waking up at a particular time doesn’t have any affect on your productivity, and waking up earlier and cutting into your sleep time will ultimately harm your productivity and your health. I find that those who try to wake up earlier in the morning and cut into their sleep might start their day successfully and productive, but then end up hitting a wall of exhaustion sooner than if they had just used that time for sleep. Unfortunately, most grown ups don’t have the luxury of taking naps during the day when this happens, so they end up having to push through the rest of their day exhausted, and likely much less productive, all because they cut into sleep time. Sleep deprivation not only makes you much less productive, but it has some terrible affects we shouldn’t ignore to our health and well being, as well as to our attention while driving or performing other tasks that require focus.

The truth behind this concept that often makes it seem like it’s working, is that waking up and getting straight down to business (not dilly dally-ing) does have a positive affect on your productivity. But it’s a mindset shift, not an alarm shift, that achieves this. Also, there is something to be said of having that time in your day when you can work uninterrupted, and so I can understand why parents might be drawn to this concept. If waking up earlier to get things done before your family or so you can get to work before others is beneficial to you, obviously keep doing it. My caution is that you don’t want to cut into sleep time, however. If you want to wake up earlier, you need to get to bed earlier. You need to structure your day in a way that you are taking advantage of patterns and routines you see in your life and not wasting those opportunities. But, you do also have the power to create opportunities for uninterrupted work in other ways as well. Most people don’t set enough boundaries or take the proper steps necessary to ensure they avoid interruptions during their day to begin with, so consider starting with things you can change during your day first before messing with something as important as your sleep.

Some ways you can create boundaries to avoid interruptions would be to work with your office door closed, or put up a sign on a cubicle letting people know you are focused on deep work. Turn off your phone or close out of email. I love and have used the idea of putting an out of office message on your email to let people know that you check your email only at specific points of your day to set expectations. I also am a big fan of finding an alternate place to work, even at your office (like in a conference room) so that you can get away from your desk. Not all of these strategies will work for everyone, but there is no harm in testing them out. One thing that has always worked for me that I think most people overlook, as well, is how powerful it can be if you just have an honest conversation with family or co-workers on how you can manage interruptions. You never really know what is possible until you ask people for their cooperation, and I firmly believe that certain problems in a formal work environment might be a mutual concern that your co-workers may also be eager to improve.

There are a lot of different strategies I can think of off the top of my head to help you set boundaries to minimize distractions or interruptions at work and at home, so next week I’ll go in depth sharing those with you and elaborate more on some of the strategies I’ve already shared above. For now, I just want you to understand that you do not need to wake up earlier to be more productive. You just need to start your day with a sense of purpose and intention as soon as you wake and find ways to avoid interruptions while doing your most important work and it will increase your productive output for the day.

I do hope you have enjoyed this first installment of this series. I have a handful of other myths at the moment that I can’t wait to share with you, but I’d also love for you to share suggestions of tips that haven’t worked for you in the past, and I would love to evaluate those and share my thoughts on why they do and do not work in certain situations. So, please do leave your thoughts or struggles in the comments for me to address!

xoxo,