Productivity Arata! When you realize that the world is going through a serious crisis, it is very difficult for you to be productive and follow your long-term planning. If you are worried about getting sick, dying or losing a loved one, your head will only be able to focus on the crisis. Productivity will be lost.
During any type of crisis, it is common that you end up putting aside your long-term goals. This worsens the situation, because now, in addition to the problems of the crisis itself, we will also have to face the consequences of lack of productivity, lack of focus and procrastination.
There is a practical way to solve this. You can use a relatively simple way of dealing with the crisis, take action in the short term, and don’t neglect our long-term goals. All you need is to do a very short term planning and act one day at a time.
When the world is in crisis, it is difficult to stay focused on completing a project, organizing your finances or taking care of your health. But leaving important goals aside will only make the situation worse. If you do this, in addition to dealing with the crisis itself, you will also have to deal with professional, financial, personal or even health problems.
All of this can be avoided if you start looking at each day as a mini-project. Your concerns, tasks and even uncertainties are restricted to a single day. And so, one day at a time, you go through difficult times without completely letting go of your life planning.
In today’s conversation, I want to introduce you to how to do this in practice. For this, we will understand how to put intention in your day using an ancient practice.
In times when it is difficult to do long-term planning, try to perform very short-term planning by defining only 3 priorities per day.
One of the big problems of going through a crisis is that the reason for the crisis seems to be on your mind at all times. It is the only thing they talk about on television, on social media and even among your friends. You can’t get away from the problem and it ends up contaminating your productivity and destroying your day.
To solve this, you need to dedicate a few minutes of your morning to make a very short term planning and put intention into your day. This kind of morning meditation is an ancient practice, recommended by philosophers since the time of Aristotle.
But don’t be alarmed. Putting intention into your day with morning meditation is very simple and practical. All you have to do is take a pen and paper and list your three most important tasks for the day.
Define and prioritize a few actions for your day. Focus only on what you can do today.
Long-term plans are very useful in giving us a general direction. Good life planning shows where we want to go and what steps we have to take to get there.
The problem is that, when we are going through an urgent crisis, these long-term plans lose some strength. Who wants to think about financial independence when they don’t know what tomorrow will be like? Who cares about a few extra pounds when everything is falling apart?
That is why, in times of crisis, many of us end up throwing away the planning that used to give so much motivation. As I already said, this is a mistake, because if you do this you will end up with two problems: the crisis itself and the frustration of not moving towards your big goals.
For example, in a situation where the world is going through a crisis involving a serious health problem, there is a chance of a lockdown. You are forced to stay at home and you are concerned about a possible loss of job, of income or even the possibility of you or a relative getting the disease. You become unmotivated and abandon your long-term plans, including the healthy eating and exercise routine you had.
If you do that, you will have to deal with the world’s health crisis and you will still feel frustrated to see your body lose shape, to lose energy and disposition. Even worse: you will end up being less healthy and having more difficulties dealing with the disease if you happen to get infected. Your lack of focus and action made the problem worse.
We understand that rationally. But even so, we lack motivation to act thinking in the long term, because all our attention is turned to the crisis that is out there. What’s the solution?
The solution to acting in times of crisis is to focus exclusively on what you can do today.
Every morning, as soon as you wake up, before you even pick up your cell phone or turn on the television, grab a pen and paper to write down the three most important tasks you can do that day.
In this case, pen and paper works better than any electronic task management application. If you have to pick up your cell phone or computer to list your tasks, you will end up seeing a lot of news and notifications about the crisis that will hurt your productivity.
Simply grab a pen and paper and write down what you can do today to have a minimally productive day.
That list should not include your routine tasks. We are not talking here about making lunch, doing the dishes and making the bed. We are looking to find three really important tasks for you to stay productive today.
You can even consult your life planning and see, among your long-term goals, which ones have some tasks you can do today. Even if it is a very small task, the important thing is to take one step each day.
The rule here is that you choose fewer tasks. Three, at the most. But they are really important tasks, tasks that, when they’re done, they make your life easier, more productive or even happier.
If the tasks are very large, break these tasks into smaller pieces that can be done in a single day. For example, if you have to write a graduation paper for college and can’t move forward because you only think about the crisis out there, make it your task of the day to write two paragraphs.
After choosing your tasks, place an order of priority: one, two, three. Ideally, you should do the most important things first, because at the beginning of the day we are generally more willing to handle more complex tasks.
The last step in your morning planning is to anticipate problems. Predicting obstacles helps to overcome the difficulties of the day.
After you have sorted what you are going to do that day, finish your planning by anticipating problems. To do this, just ask yourself what could go wrong when doing the tasks you have chosen.
Write next to each task what can get in your way. And, if possible, write a solution for each problem.
It doesn’t have to be anything very complex and time consuming. You should not waste your time experiencing problems that have not yet happened. But you must anticipate the obstacles that may arise ahead so that, if and when those obstacles arise, you will be able to get through each one without great difficulties.
These obstacles can be external, such as difficulties brought by other people, lack of resources or even lack of any tools to do the task you have chosen.
But, between us, the biggest obstacles we face are almost always the inner ones. It is procrastination, lack of focus, the stories we tell ourselves.
You know yourself better than anyone. So you should already know what are the inner obstacles that most hinder your productivity. List these behaviors and write down a solution for each of the problems you may face that day.
Warning: don’t try to solve complex psychological issues in this morning planning. Focus exclusively on your day today. What can you do today to reduce the damage caused by the exterior and interior obstacles you have managed to anticipate?
Set a block of time to forget about the crisis and focus exclusively on the 3 most important tasks of the day.
Now that you have listed your three most important tasks for the day, you need to perform those tasks. For this, the best technique is to isolate your productivity to prevent the crisis from contaminating your focus.
When the crisis is really serious, it seems to be everywhere. Mostly, it looks like it is in our head all the time. And it is natural that it is so, because we want to protect ourselves from what lies ahead.
But we also want to protect our productivity. And you can do that using the time block technique that we saw in episode five of the Study Arata series [https://arata.se/study05 ].
For example, let’s say task number one on your list in daily planning takes about two hours to complete. Then define two blocks of sixty minutes to focus exclusively on that task.
Prepare a stopwatch with an alarm. When that block of time begins, you must completely disconnect from the outside world. Put your phone in airplane mode, disable notifications on your computer, block social networks and news sites, turn off the television. Keep away from you anything that might be distracting and focus exclusively on that task for as long as you set it.
When the alarm goes off, take a break. Do what you want in the rest period. Then, do another block of time with total focus until you complete the task. After a break, do the same with task number two and task three.
If you cannot focus for sixty minutes, set smaller blocks of time, for example twenty-five minutes. If you are unable to complete the tasks you have listed for the day, the next morning break the tasks down into smaller pieces and list tasks that can actually be done in one day.
Living one day at a time brings presence, increases productivity and decreases anxiety. Try putting morning planning into your routine starting tomorrow.
Every great journey begins with a small step. If you are going through a major economic crisis or even if you are facing a personal problem that is taking you out of focus, try taking a first step to get out of the crisis by doing morning planning starting tomorrow.
Try, as soon as you wake up, before even grabbing your cell phone, taking a few minutes in silence to put intention into your day.
Take a pen and paper and remember the steps we talked about here. List one to three important tasks that you can accomplish that day. Then, list the external and mainly internal obstacles that may appear ahead, already thinking about how to solve these problems. And, during the day, separate blocks of time to do the tasks listed.
When doing this experiment, avoid thinking about tomorrow. It doesn’t matter much what will happen in the next few days, the next few weeks, or in the next few months. Focus only on what you can do today. And do it day after day, until you get out of the crisis and see that even with all the problems you were able to stand firm in the pursuit of your biggest goals.
The strategy of living one day at a time works much better if you already have a life plan in place. This way, you can take your plan and extract from it the two or three most important tasks to do that day.
If you want to know how to put together a life plan, I invite you to attend a special class in the Planning Your Life training. In this class, you will discover how to start putting together your life plan from what you value most in life.
To see this special class on personal values, just visit this link