4 Smart Strategies For Prolonged Productivity

A writing coach and author of 18 books shares 4 ways to empower your work in fairly easy ways. From philosophical concepts to practical tips, this lesson is like having a personal coach who can help you live and work with less stress and greater calm. You may want to have a journal or notebook nearby so you can pause the recording and take notes when you have insights about how to apply these principles and practices to your specific work situation.

Transcript

My four strategies for empowering your work in fairly easy ways.

Number one,

Get clear.

What does clarity mean?

Clarity is about vision and you need to have a vision for what you want in your life and work.

As we know,

Journaling helps a lot with this.

You can use other strategies such as the bubble map.

You can mind map it.

You can just doodle on a piece of paper as you think about what you want in your life and work.

Clarity also is about space.

So when we're using the metaphor of vision,

What do we see with our eyes becomes very important for the level of focus you can bring to your work.

Here are some examples of that.

When you open up your computer to work,

What do you see?

Do you have 15 tabs open?

Do you have a bunch of documents all over the place,

Willy-nilly,

Messy?

Get clear on your vision for your life and work.

And then secondly,

Implement strategies that allow you to have that clarity throughout the day.

So let's start at the end of the workday.

Close down all windows.

Clean up the desktop so that what's most important to you the next day is the only thing that you look at when you log on to the computer the next day.

Also look around your workspace.

Is it clean and clear or do you have 15 different topics going right within six feet of your desk?

If so,

Clear out time and space.

Work with your partner or co-workers to figure out how can you get this space to be something peaceful and that makes you feel clear on the inside as you're working.

Strategy two has to do with boundaries.

In the same way that clarity has to do with vision and space,

Boundaries has to do with time and the physical sense of being spacious and not scrunched in your body.

So part of this has to do with kind of having an interior perception of when you feel stressed.

The stress means that the muscles start to tense up and you start to feel squished like you have to rush,

Like you have to force,

Like there's pressure on you.

What that means is that what that means is that you do not have good boundaries around your time and what you're doing.

So an example of that would be you say to yourself,

Here's my focus time during the day.

Here's when I don't actually have meetings where I'm working with a client or I'm talking with my supervisor.

So you might say to yourself,

I have four hours from nine to one where I'm not meeting with anyone and so that's my focus time.

No,

That's a mistake.

You know why?

Because the brain gets bored AF super fast and says,

Oh,

You've got four hours?

Oh,

Let's go on Amazon.

Let's check out Facebook.

I think I might need a snack.

What you do is you take that focus time down to 20 minutes.

Some people like to use the Pomodoro method.

You don't need an app for this.

You just need focus and discipline.

The brain works best in 20 minute bursts of focused energy.

So you've got something that you need to do.

Let's say you're writing an abstract for a project.

You sit down,

You take 20 minutes,

You bang it out as quickly as you can,

And at the end of 20 minutes you stop.

Your alarm goes off,

You get up,

And you use what I call the 3M method.

Movement,

Music,

Or meditation for five minutes.

The reason for this is because the body works very hard when you're focusing intellectually and you want to reward the body for that focus by giving her a little treat at the end.

But the treat doesn't have to be M&Ms or another rip it shot.

The treat can be something healthy that actually fills her well again so you can go into your next 20 minute intense focus feeling like the body is your ally and helping you.

And again,

Not squish,

Not tense,

Not having the gravity of the world upon you because everything's going to fall apart if you don't do well on this project.

Three,

Priorities.

Priorities comes from the word prior,

Which means before.

The most important work time in your day is whenever you feel the most spacious,

Your body is relaxed,

You feel creative,

You can get into the flow,

You're not being interrupted,

You don't have your eye on the clock,

You've got to pick up your kid in 40 minutes and how the heck are you going to do all this before you get into traffic and then you're going to be late.

The priority of your day,

Your work day,

Should happen before anything else.

So there are two aspects of this.

One,

As I said,

The body is so much more important to our work life than we give it any credit for.

So you ask yourself,

Am I making my body a priority on a daily basis?

Am I getting my workout in,

In a way that I enjoy?

Do I have my food situation set up so that they're easy,

Healthy things throughout the day to keep me fueled?

Am I getting enough sleep so that I'm not over jazzing with caffeine throughout the day to stay awake?

All of those things are priorities,

Meaning you work on them before the work day even starts.

You get that all set up.

Secondly,

You decide for yourself when your mind and body work together the best.

For me,

It's a little bit nuts,

But it's from 4 to 6 a.

M.

When I am working on a book that is important to me or a work project that is important to me,

I get up on a regular basis at 4 a.

M.

And I work on that from 4 to 6 using the two methods that I've already talked about.

Focus time for 20 minutes,

Then get up,

Do a little meditation,

Refill my tea,

Move a little,

Listen to a song,

Kind of reward the body,

And then go back into it.

Over the course of those two hours,

I get more done than most people get in a 12-hour work day.

It's because I'm using what I have discovered is the best time for my brain.

Your best time might be 10 p.

M.

To midnight,

So be it.

I have a poetry publisher that I work with.

She can rock the world between midnight and 2 a.

M.

So the fact that many people are working from home and working in a hybrid way means that you have to kind of negotiate this with the people that you work and live with so that you are having that max of 2-hour,

20-minute,

5-minute,

20-minute,

5-minute,

20-minute,

5-minute,

Where you're getting incredible stuff done.

And then what happens is the rest of the day is gravy.

The kid actually doesn't tantrum.

The dog doesn't throw up over everything.

Your spouse is nice to you.

Why?

Because you have fed your soul with what is most important to you.

And you know that because of that,

The ripple effect is that your mind,

80% of your mind is not thinking about all the things that you have to do while your wife is trying to tell her about this great thing that happened to her that day.

You start with your priorities.

You start with the before,

And you make those what's your first thing,

Your most important thing,

Because only you know that.

Only you can tell yourself that.

No coach can tell that.

Certainly no boss or supervisor.

You have to decide this for yourself.

And when you put your priorities first,

You work that out before anything else,

Everything goes incredibly smoothly because you're calm,

And you know that you're doing the work that you came to this planet to do.

Now,

Not every task is going to be pleasant.

Not every job is going to tap into your job is going to tap into those deep reservoirs of meaning.

But there are other secondary kinds of meaning that can help you focus and do a good job for other reasons.

For example,

Let's say that you have a job that is a little bit annoying or a task that you have to do at work that is a little bit annoying.

What you do then is you spend some time in journaling or meditation or discussion with a friend,

And you figure out what the higher why is for that.

What's important to you to deal with these kind of stressful bumps and boulders in your day is a higher why,

Meaning the overtime will help you save up for the daughter's wedding or the taking a little bit extra time on a project means that then you can take a three-day weekend with your wife later.

So you figure out what the higher why is.

The motivation for your work might not always be found in the work itself,

But you want to do a good job so that you then have later rewards.

And rewards is point four.

So,

So far we've talked about clarity of space,

Boundaries of time,

Priorities,

And you using the before time to really focus and get done what's incredibly important to you.

And then number four is rewards.

So we talked about movement,

Meditation,

And music as little rewards that you can give your body and your soul throughout the workday.

Another strategy that I like a lot,

I call the asterisk method,

Which is somewhere in your workspace,

You have a whiteboard or even a printout of the month's calendar,

And you decide what your two most important things are that month.

So for example,

In a certain month for me,

It might be working out and working on a book.

And so you take color-coded pens and you decide one priority is asterisk purple and the other is asterisk green.

At the end of every day,

What you do is you put an asterisk on that day if you have accomplished,

Made progress,

Worked on that project.

And what this does is it gives you in one clear snapshot boundaries,

Clarity,

And a visual representation of your priorities.

And then you can start to analyze,

Oh,

There's a work week where I had two asterisks all five days,

Monday through Friday.

What went well that week?

You can start to kind of analyze and think back what you can tweak that really allows you to have a week that you feel proud of yourself.

Conversely,

You might look at the calendar and there's one day a week,

Maybe it's a Monday,

Maybe it's a Friday,

Maybe it's a Thursday.

It doesn't matter when you never get those asterisks done and you say to yourself,

Why?

And then you realize,

Oh,

Okay,

I'm having no bumpers before and after these meetings.

That's the day of the week when we tend to be out of groceries and I'm not eating healthy.

Whatever it is,

You can start to,

As each month goes by,

Aim for a nice,

Balanced,

Colorful asterisk calendar by analyzing what went well,

What went wrong,

And how can I change these things?

So the last thing that I will say is that these kinds of strategies and brainstorming and getting clear and putting boundaries around things,

Figuring out your priorities through journaling,

Figuring out what your reward structure is for yourself,

All of this is part of your work.

Don't let your workplace ruin your entire life so that you're working 45 to 50 hours a week,

Plus you're squishing all of this strategizing into the early morning,

The evenings,

And the weekends.

Make that part of your work.

Know that ultimately,

You and your employer want you to be healthy,

Balanced,

Calm,

Peaceful,

Loving,

Living a long life,

And enjoying this precious little time that we have here to be together.

So log on and then give yourself 20 minutes for journaling,

Priority making,

Figuring out what your asterisks are.

On a regular basis,

Just like anything else,

Taking a vitamin,

Going for a walk,

Hugging your dog,

Making love,

Done on a regular basis.

It doesn't take that much time and there are huge rewards.

Reviews

Thank you, Cassie! I cherish you and your wisdom, 🖤🖤and I think I shall reassess when my best two hours are 💪🏻

This was absolutely excellent! You really resonate with me so much. I am taking each and every step you suggested and implementing them all ASAP . Thank you, thank you!

Great tips I plan on testing out during my workday tomorrow!

Very helpful strategies, Cassie, I know now why my teaching burned me out some years ago, I could not figure out that working/ preparing a plan for 20 minutes and then breaking/ rewarding myself, would be so beneficial. I fell into procrastination, this being the most challenging part of ny day.
Thank you! 💚🤗💖✨️💐🙏🏽

As always, perfect wisdom. 🙏🤍 Thank you for your work.