In a lot of ways, busyness has become glorified in our society.
You see someone else who's working really hard,
and you feel like it's a bit of a competition.
If you're not being as busy as they are, maybe you're just being lazy.
But you see being busy doesn't necessarily mean you're being more effective with your time.
A busy person might take an hour to get a task done that an effective person could get done in about 15 minutes.
So let me ask you: would you rather be a busy person or an effective person?
I'm hoping you're gonna say the latter, because in today's video we're gonna explore some characteristics of effective people.
Effective people focus their time and energy on things that they can control,
like scheduling their time or focusing on healthy habits.
The one thing you won't see them doing is complaining about things that are out of their control.
Because really, what good does it do to complain about the weather?
You see three things that crush all productivity and effectiveness are comparing,
criticizing and complaining.
And remember one thing that you do have control over is your mindset.
So let's say for example that you're comparing yourself to someone else.
Maybe you envy their work or their healthy lifestyle choices often comparing them leads to self-criticism,
and then we go on to complain about it to our friends or to our family.
So you can see how it becomes a bit of a vicious loop of things we let our mind focus on.
Precious mental energy that could instead be used to work on something constructive.
So be proactive, realize that you can take charge,
and break the chain anytime you feel yourself being emotionally affected by external stimuli.
In a previous video on productivity,
I shared with you the Eisenhower decision matrix.
And I love this thing. It's essentially where you categorize your tasks based on their importance and their urgency.
More commonly, people spend most of their time putting out fires by focusing on items that are in the high
urgency and high importance quadrant.
And that makes sense, but for long-term effectiveness, we want to put as much of our time as we can afford
into quadrant number two. These are the tasks that are of high importance,
but low urgency.
Working in quadrant two means you're going to be working on those things that you really truly value.
Things that are really important to you, and that offer a sense of fulfillment.
And when we're able to accomplish the items that are in this quadrant,
we're gonna feel more motivated to continue working effectively.
You might have heard that one habit of ultra successful people is that they read
a lot.
And the wonderful thing about reading or listening to books
is that you can chip away at it during your downtime.
Like when you're in commute,
or just before bed, or setting it to play
while you're cleaning or cooking.
But for those of you who feel you just don't have the time to go through an entire book,
there's an app I highly recommend called Blinkist.
And I am forever grateful to my sister for having introduced me to this.
Essentially what Blinkist does, is they take the insights from thousands of different books,
and they compress it into 15 minutes that you can either read or listen to on the go.
Now you can get a free trial to test it out and if you do,
I highly recommend listening to the 15 minutes of gold from the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.
And actually some of the points I mentioned in this video came from the book.
Another way that I personally use the app is as a bit of a filter
after I've listened to 15 minutes of a book and it's key points,
if I want to learn more
then I go ahead and invest my time in listening to the book in full.
So if you're interested in getting a monthly or yearly membership,
Blinkist has been kind enough to partner with us on this video.
Which means that you can get 20% off the cost of membership
to the first 500 people to click the link in the description box below.
Some people work better in the morning, some after lunch, and others are more efficient in the evenings.
What you want to do is make sure that you schedule your most important thought and labor-intensive
tasks during that period of time you know you're gonna be the most productive.
And then leave the filler more mindless activities
like responding to emails maybe,
for when you know your energy tends to be a bit more drained.
Now that we know when we're the most productive it's time to schedule our day, and if I can recommend
I would say do it the day before if that's possible.
That way you're not spending any precious mental energy first thing in the morning,
trying to figure out what you need to do.
I'm a morning person, so I try to schedule the more difficult and important tasks first thing.
I also write down how long I predict it's gonna take me to complete a particular task.
And by doing this I'm actually practicing envisioning.
I mean I have to imagine how long I think it's gonna take me to get the task done,
and by envisioning, we're always more likely to see tasks through.
Creating schedules also makes us more accountable
to getting the tasks done in that preset amount of time.
If a lumberjack complains it takes too much time to sharpen his saw,
he simply won't be as effective at cutting down trees.
The same goes for our physical, mental, and spiritual health.
We need to take the time for breaks and self-care
or we're not going to be as effective.
So it's important that when you're scheduling your day,
you also take the time to schedule your breaks,
both short and long ones.
That way you don't feel guilty for taking some much needed time off.
There's a long-standing debate about whether multitasking allows us to be more effective or less effective.
And I think a lot of the research is just coming down to it just depends on what area you work in.
Now I'm somebody who always thought I was an amazing multitasker,
but recently I started questioning that a bit.
I mean just because I was a good multitasker didn't mean I was being as effective with my job.
So I decided I would challenge myself
by focusing on just doing one thing at a time.
Working on it completely and seeing it through to the end before picking up another big task.
I felt that since I've started doing this, I've been much more effective with my time.
I feel I'm actually accomplishing tasks which is rewarding. Comparing this to multitasking,
I had the feeling I was being busy and doing a bit of everything,
but without as frequently finishing any one thing.
But what do you think? Are you somebody who is a more efficient multitasker?
Or more of a one-at-a-time kind of person?
Alright, "Less being busy, more being effective".
Thumbs up if you agree.
And that's it for today, folks.
Thanks a lot for watching.
Pick Up Limes signing off. We'll see you in the next video.