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Being Present in Your Career

As I come back from vacation with my family I'm reminded yet again of the power of being present. Fully present.

I like to tell myself I'm going to focus on one task at a time then I find myself 3 hours deep in ping pong. Not the actual game but the jumping between activities and never doing any of them well.
Before we left for vacation I set up a plan for myself. I would check my emails and post on social media before my kids were up and after they went to bed. I have never been more relaxed in my life! Because I preplanned my business activities I didn't freak out when I was with my children.

This made me think really long and hard about my business in general. I have a long laundry list of items that I want to tackle. Because I want and, quite frankly need, to do all of these activities for my fledgling business I was starting to panic about how on earth I would do it all but remain present in each task. Then I remembered my google calendar and how it was time to revisit the daily activities laid out in it anyway.

  1. Are the activities on my calendar actually getting done or am I ignoring them?
    1. I would love to tell you that everything gets done on a daily basis but the activities I really don't enjoy are getting put off indefinitely in some cases.
  2. Am I allotting enough time for the activities on my calendar?
    1. Nope! I tend to get sucked into a task and spend 2 hours on it rather than the 10 minutes I allotted on my calendar. In the 10X Rule Grant Cardone talks about this and says it's the biggest reason people don't meet their goals. They underestimate how long activities to reach the goal will take. Wow, he pegged me!
  3. What items aren't even on my calendar that need to be?
    1. These are the items I brainstormed on vacation. These need to be inserted but where.
  4. Am I wasting time daily?
    1. Yep. I find around 2pm I hit a wall and have this dead window of unused time that I completely waste from 2-4 daily. 2 hours!!

So how am I going to do everything on my calendar and in the time allotted while adding things to my calendar and not waste any time but stay engaged.

I know what my problem is. I'm not fully focused and present in any given task which is causing me to spend too much time and get burned out by 2pm daily.

I recently heard Brendon Burchard speak and he talked about our inabilities to transition from task to task properly. We do, well, what I laid out above. He recommended taking a few minutes to take deep breaths and focus on what it is we want from our next task, give ourselves at least a 10 minute break between tasks to center ourselves. He also mentioned giving ourselves a break every 50 minutes of work to reset and be fully present in the task.

I know what you're thinking, who has time for that? Apparently I have 2 hours for this so I might as well try it. ;-)
Takeaways

  1. Review weekly calendar and decide what needs more time.
  2. Add in 10 minute breaks for transition periods to regroup and center my purpose for the tasks. I decided to download headspace to use these breaks for meditation.
  3. Add in new items once daily tasks are accurately allotted.
  4. When I sit down I will set a timer for 50 minutes and I will stop what I'm doing and take a break.
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