THE SPONTANEITY FALLACY
You may think that being spontaneous and having a life where one can take-off and indulge in the joys of life at a moments notice is only afforded to courageous and exciting people- people who don’t follow a boring plan-
people who are cool and fun, not structured and boring, sticks-in-the mud.
A spontaneous life looks more FREEING and light and simple.
BUT
I’m here to tell you that the exact OPPOSITE is true!
THE MORE YOU PLAN THE MORE FREE YOU WILL BE!
People with a plan own their time. They are in control of it- their time DOES NOT own them!
People without a plan have a LACK of time because instead of being efficient with it, they waste it.
We can only fix what we can control. As we’ve all learned there are so many things outside of our control so don’t you- not even for even 1 second- give up control of the things you actually can control.
Don’t let your time own YOU!
HOW TO CONTROL YOUR TIME:
Time ticks and waits for NO ONE! Take advantage of that time and use it to benefit you and your goals. We all have to produce and accomplish things to get what we want in life. You can let that time run away from you OR use it to your advantage.
Your time IS IN YOUR CONTROL. Although it may not feel like it when kids are in the picture, co-workers endlessly distract you at the office, or emergencies that appear throughout the day, these things won’t derail your whole day if you have a plan. Your plan will be structured to work around your children and common distractions so that you can make the best use of your uninterrupted time.
Did you know you can actually make MORE time…WHAT?!! How is that possible?
Your lack of plan “ate up” all your free time, your “spontaneous” time. Now you have to spend that time running all over town at the whim of your lack of a plan.
I DO NOT want to spend my time re-doing the same things and making the same mistakes over and over again.
Instead, I want to do it right the first time. Then I can spend the rest of my time, not “being spontaneous”, but doing spontaneous things. I can do all the things I love daily because I have a plan.
I love riding my bike to the beach with my family at the end of a long day. I love being done with my work at 5 so I can meet friends for happy hour. I love going on walks with my friends. I love sitting out on my porch next to the firepit hanging out with my neighbors while watching all the kids skateboard in the cul-de-sac. All of these things can happen daily when I make great use of my time.
WHY HAVE A PLAN:
“A plan elicits action and action elicits change”.
Without a plan, your ideas, goals, and tasks are just purely thoughts. You can think, hope, and wish for your goals to come true but until you put a plan or process in place you won’t have order or organization to your thoughts and ideas. By creating order you then elicit action and action is what makes change.
A Plan is Freeing.
Having a plan puts me in control. Control is freedom because if the “ball is in my court” I get to choose.
CHOICE = FREEDOM
Remember that, choices are freedom- ALWAYS!
Success story after success story of the most successful people in their fields-CEOs, entrepreneurs, athletes, teachers, entertainers, inventors, you name it–THE BEST IN THEIR FIELDS, every single person got to where they are because they have (and I didn’t say ‘had’ for a reason) a plan and they NEVER stopped until they accomplished it and continue to keep those same habits every day to keep their life where it’s at, by continually planning, and getting better at what they do.
“Your DAILY habits led you to exactly where you are right now”.
Do you hear what I am saying?! Your daily acts collected over time and got you exactly the life you have RIGHT NOW.
Do you like where you are? If yes, then you must have a good plan and good daily habits that led you to who you are right now. Way to go! If not, then we have some changes to make.
HOW TO BEGIN:
JUST START
Know what you want and then go get it. It really is as simple as that. You make a choice and then run with it.
“You learn by doing“!
You will learn as you go. Our biggest hurdle is having the courage and confidence to start something that:
- We are UNSURE of it being successful.
- We are UNSURE of our knowledge in the area.
Let me assure you…NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING. The people that now know what they’re doing, know it because they DID it. You haven’t done it yet.
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good”.
The action of getting started is the entry point to anything you want to do. That’s step one. There you have it – that’s the secret!
When I decided I wanted to start being a writer I went online and started reading everything about how to write. I seriously googled “how to become a writer”. I knew I wasn’t Kevin Costner from Field of Dreams …“Write a book and they will come”. I knew I had to find a different way of using my passion, skills, and talents to find a way to
- Find a platform to share my writing
- Find a way to have it monetized
By simply starting and diving in headfirst you start to gain knowledge. One piece of info leads you to another, and another…and you’re on your way.
We are so fortunate to have this database of information – information about ANYTHING you can think of, from all parts of the world, and from experts in their fields – right at our fingertips. There is not a single reason why each one of us can’t start making change today.
MAKE MISTAKES!
Even if you think you have it all figured out before you start, you will soon learn that you will always encounter mishaps no matter how well you plan. Take appropriate risks. I recently listened to a podcast interviewing Cindy Eckert, an entrepreneur who’s built and sold two pharmaceutical companies for over a billion dollars. She said that her father would ask her and her siblings at dinner each night “What did you fail at today?” Cindy said that my father placed a lot of value in teaching us to not be afraid to take appropriate risks. What I take away from that is that jumping in, head first, often starts out as failures because we have no idea what we’re doing. But, that’s how we get to where we do know what we’re doing. We take a leap of faith and go all in. If you’re afraid to make mistakes you will never move forward.
Thomas Edison said,
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work” Any time you try, you take a risk that you might fail. Don’t ever be afraid to try.
Esther Dyson the technology writer and daughter of famed physicist Freeman Dyson, says,
“Always make NEW mistakes”.
She suggests that we should not only embrace risk but also learn to ‘fail fast’, then make more mistakes quickly to steepen the learning curve.
PUT A PLAN IN PACE
I like to call it a process.
What you want in life (your goals) happens because of all the little things you do EACH DAY! It starts with a plan and that plan encompasses ACTION! – All of the ACTIONABLE STEPS laid out in a step by step plan.
SET UP A FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESS
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When you’re first starting a new way of doing life there’s some prep work that needs to be done. To be successful at anything you need to make sure your plan is tailored to how you live your life. It has to coordinate with how you learn, your talents, your choke points, and it has to become a new way of doing life every day.
More precisely, you’re starting a new habit. What’s the point in having this amazing new plan if you don’t keep it? To start, let’s first learn what you need as a unique individual to be successful. Then from there, we can put a plan together. To learn how to create new HABITS read the life-changing technique HERE.
KNOW WHAT TIME YOU ARE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE
Each day we have about 4 hours where we are firing at 100%. It’s during this time that we are our most creative, have the most energy, can stay the most focused, and are the most motivated.
This is your holy grail of time! I call this time our “producible hours”. If you’re in sales this better be the time you plan all of your meetings with clients, if you’re a writer this is your time to be inspired and get all your thoughts down on “paper”, if you’re a surgeon…you get my drift.
Peak productivity, it seems, happens at the same time during your workday, no matter where you are in the world.
A two-year global study conducted by project management software company Redbooth found that productivity among office workers worldwide is at its highest point at 11 a.m., and plummets completely after 4 p.m.
John Trougakos, an associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto in Canada, says about 75% of people tend to be the most mentally alert between 9 a.m and 11 a.m. CLICK HERE to read the research. I for sure won’t be letting any doctor’s scalpel near me after 4 pm ever again.
Don’t use this time to run errands, or make calls, answer emails, or even hold meetings, use this time for your ACTION GOALS. This is where you “make your money” meaning, this is where change is made and the needle moves!
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FLOW
Flow is the time when you’re completely and utterly immersed in a task? Oblivious to the outside world, focused only on your own progress and what’s going on right here and now? Flow is one of life’s highly enjoyable states of being, wrapping us entirely in the present, and helping us be more creative, productive, and happy.
When you have a plan it’s easier to get into a state of flow. When you create conditions where you have practiced, prepared, aren’t distracted, you’re confident, you can then allow for your body, mind, talents, to perform all on their own. Time stands still. Here’s another example where your preparation and planning created more time. You’re in that special state of being where you don’t have to think, stress, labor, all of our senses and talents take over and PRODUCE…they FLOW!
“Planning creates a space for FLOW”.
PLAN YOUR DAY IN BLOCKS OF TIME
When you’ve planned your day you can carve out a space in time where you are not distracted. This is key! A growing body of research on ultradian rhythms suggests that our day is driven by cycles that affect how alert and productive we are. The results of this research clearly show that the human body goes through cycles of between 90 and 120 minutes. Through each of these cycles we are taken from an unproductive trough to a productive peak, and then back again. CLICK HERE for the research.
Coordinate your most producible hours by 3 things:
- When won’t I be distracted?
- Take advantage of 1-2 hour (blocks) where I can get into a state of flow.
- What time of day am I most creative?
PLAN YOUR DAY THE NIGHT BEFORE
- Spend the end of each day decluttering for the next day. Whether that’s cleaning your kitchen and running the dishwasher the night before, or set your desk up for tomorrow’s work so when you arrive you can hit the ground running.
- Have items by the door or already in the car that pertain to your next day’s to-do list (racket for tennis, gym bag, packages that will need to be dropped at FedEx, etc.)
START EACH DAY WITH THE SAME ROUTINE
Having a routine or ritual helps you to keep a habit. It takes the distractions and choices out of the way so we don’t have to think “Am I going to do this today?” Also, research shows that it is easier to create a new habit if we “piggyback” off a habit we already have. To read more about how to finally make your habits stick read HABITS: The 7-Step Process That Will Change Your Life.
Wake up at the same time, work out each morning, meditate, read, or walk the dog- do whatever it is that gets you motivated for your day.
DO THE HARD THING FIRST
Do your worst task first. By “worst” I mean “most important,” and by “most important” I mean the task you’re most likely to procrastinate on. The deadline you’re dreading, the slides for the presentation you’re terrified of giving, the research you’re sure will turn up information you don’t want to know. Do it, before you do anything else before you have time to think about it too much.
Author Brian Tracy calls this “eating your frog,” quoting Mark Twain. Twain famously said that if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you. Your frog is your worst task, and you should do it first thing in the morning.
Set yourself up to eat your frog first thing tomorrow morning. Organize your desk as the last thing before you leave the office tonight. Choose your frog, and write it down on your plan. You’ll see it on your desk, the first thing in the morning. If you can, gather together the materials you’ll need to get it done and have those out and ready to go, too.
For my daily life goal that I tackle each day, my frog is, working out. This one thing alone has been the greatest habit to set me up for success. And it’s simply because…. it SUCKS!!!!
What?! Ya, you heard me, “it’s HARD”.
Accomplishing HARD things changes your whole brain. The HARD makes it great, it makes YOU great!
People think because I have had a habit of working out every day for all of my adult life that it must be so easy for me or that I just love it.
WRONG!!
LET ME BE CLEAR! I don’t know a person out there that looks forward to waking themselves out of a deep, comfy, warm slumber to drag themselves out into the cold morning air as they feel like a train just ran them over.
I HATE it!
BUT
I do it. I do it everyday for one reason (besides the obvious health reasons).
It makes me feel like a million bucks when I’m done.
And I’m not talking physically. Physically I am exhausted, sweaty, and stinky, but THIS is why it’s absolutely life-changing.
EVERY SINGLE DAY, I start my day thinking, “WOW! I did it!” I did something hard. Something that I didn’t want to do… and it’s over now.
This EARNED feeling of accomplishment and confidence catapults our every emotion and thought into…” You’re a winner and you can do hard things, come on world, what else do you have to throw at me?” It’s the “easiest” way to start your day with accomplishment, success, and confidence. And I say easiest because you don’t have to be good at it. You just have to DO it and that’s the accomplishment. Eat your frog, first!!
ALLEVIATE DISTRACTIONS
KEEP A TO-DO LIST – And not for the obvious reason but if you have a place to jot down your thoughts that pop in your head you will be more confident to let them go and not be distracted by them. By writing them down you free up space in your brain to not have to hold on to them and remember them. That way you can get back to them at a more appropriate time, a time that IS NOT NOW because now is your producible time.
DESIGNATE COMMUNICATION TIMES – TURN OFF ALL NOTIFICATIONS, even TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. – Of course, there will be emergencies, but how many times do we get pulled off track because we want to respond to a funny text we just received or a call from a co-worker that isn’t urgent. Stay on task and get back to people during set aside phone times. Most calls are not urgent so having a time before your producible time, at lunch, and at the end of the day will give you pleanty of time to keep up with communication.
Your day needs to be broken up into segments, only 20% of your day is actually “move the needle” work. And that is by far and alone because we are distracted throughout our day. With a plan, a process, we can create better habits that allow us to not let distractions take over our lives. Be deliberate with your time.
TOUCH THINGS ONCE – I love this concept. It means when your hands are on a task – complete it. Basically, don’t multi-task! The more touches, the more distractions. It’s time-consuming to get reacquainted with each project, so instead of re-wrapping your head around each item, stay with it until it’s completed and you won’t have to keep re-remembering where you left off. Challenge yourself to reduce the “touches” for each task.
I know as a mother, for example, it’s really hard not to multi-task. I almost feel like multitasking and mothers are synonyms. How can you survive or get anything completed if you don’t try to juggle everything at once? We think it’s a luxury not available to us. But it is – with a plan.
Instead, group multiple like-tasks together. Many employees claim to be good at multitasking, but that’s a myth. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that productivity decreased by 40 percent when people tried to do two or more things at once.
Instead of trying to get a lot of different tasks done at once, group your similar tasks together and get those done in one chunk of time. For example, that could mean making all of your phone calls during a designated hour or creating all your content at once.
Batching your work will allow you to better focus on the task at hand and make you more productive during your time blocks.
SET BOUNDARIES – If you structure your day and set boundaries you can find that time. And waking up at 4 am is not an option (although that’s what I’m doing right now…eek, tonight will be brutal).
I give myself a couple of uninterrupted time blocks throughout the day. If you’re a mom, prep your kids. They too can learn a new routine. Set up 1-2 hour blocks a couple of times a day that coordinate with your family’s needs and have them be “mom off-limit times” unless someone’s bleeding or the house is burning down they can do an activity on their own until the clock hits a designated time.
You can do the same in the office. Set a standard that everyone gets uninterrupted time periods during the day. Maybe every day between 9-11 is where everyone gets to have their creative “producible time”. We obviously will be working all day but to have even 2 hours straight with zero interruptions sounds unreal to me.
In fact, that’s what I asked for Mother’s Day this year, kids had to be nice to each other and no one could talk to me for 3 hours straight… haha. These days it doesn’t take much to make my day;)
CHOOSE YOUR ONE GOAL and break it down into actionable “bite-sized” tasks.
Today my goal, for example, is to write a post. But to write a post I have to have all the information to do so. So that starts with breaking down the main goal into actionable steps. Below is how I started breaking it down.
- Choose a topic
- Research, research, research ( this gets broken up into steps too: read 5+ articles, cross-reference the books I’ve read, listen to podcasts by experts in their field, etc)
- Make an outline
- Find quotes to support my writing (and so on to the rest of my 16 steps)
SUCCESS
We have just completed our first goal! Success is now being free to choose how we spend our free time.
First: We have to spend our time charging our goals, working our butts off so we can then have the freedom to choose how we spend our free time. We gain confidence, respect, knowledge, etc for a job well done.
Second: Our free time is where we get to choose how we will live our lives. Use this time engaged in building friendships, helping our communities, learning new skills and hobbies, nurturing your family. Whatever CHOICE you make…this is why you work hard. TO HAVE THIS TIME.
You will be more successful at work and at life if you really focus in during those dedicated times. This is why it’s so important to block out time for each. I promise you if you can be diligent, organized, and plan out your time efficiently, your plan or process will help you to be better at both work and parenting. YOU can be 100% at work and 100% at home.
BE PRESENT
At work and in free time! When you know you gave 100% at work and made the best use of your time and left with a plan already in place for tomorrow, it’s easy to put that to bed until tomorrow. You’ll know that everything is accounted for, planned, and won’t fall through the cracks. It’s then so much easier to be fully engaged at home or to really allow yourself to engage in activities that feed your soul. It’s so important to have the time away from work to replenish and refuel not only to make all the hard work worth it but also to help us be better at our work.
IT’S GO TIME
Let’s make our plan NOW! Download my FREE Daily ACTION GOAL Planner. Yep, it’s free because I want you to OWN your life TODAY! I don’t want you to even have to decide if you’re going to spend a few bucks to get this amazing 7-page download – including 2 templates you can use over and over again to plan every single day! Let’s start now and start accomplishing your goals TODAY!
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