“I never have time to work on what’s important to me!”
I hear that every day from people all over the world. Every one of them is so busy attempting to master the latest productivity hack they end up spending most of their time running like a hamster on a wheel.
Frankly, I was doing the same thing when my new business was sucking the life out of me and demanding all of my focus. One day, I realized my focus was in the wrong place.
The problem was that I ran my day based on events on my calendar, and all of those red and green blocks were controlling my life. Without thinking, maybe to become more productive, I added more and more blocks to my day. While I got more done, I wasn’t doing the things that were important to me. Out of pure frustration, I asked myself a question…
“How do I want my calendar to look?”
My honest answer was EMPTY!
While it may sound like a silly goal, I have no interest in focusing on more colored calendar blocks, I want more time to do what is important to me. At that moment, I realized the secret I was looking for was hidden in plain sight – the space between events.
Since then, I’ve seen the space on my calendar as 100% mine that I can use in any way I decide. When an event is scheduled, I interrupt my flow, deal with the event, and immediately get back to focusing on what is important to me. It’s a small distinction that yields huge results.
Now, to make this work, two things are required:
1) You must know what is important to you and have it at the forefront of your mind. Those goals become your primary focus and not a maybe/someday goal.
2) You must know what actions are relevant to getting the results that you desire.
That’s it.
All that remains is for you to grab all the open space you can get and start having fun with your stuff instead of everybody else’s stuff.