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In this episode we talked about:
- What is it that works well for me?
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Welcome to the productivity Academy weekly q and a number 103. It is the fifth of December 2019. And just wanted to say welcome. And if you’re watching it live, feel free to ask the question. I’ll check those as we go. If you’re catching the replay, you can find the link down below. And come join us live and ask questions, get answers.
Also, if you’re checking it out on YouTube, you can hit subscribe if you want to stay up to date with these q&a videos, as well as other content that are put out for the productivity Academy around time management, organization, tools, apps, team building, all that sort of good stuff. So let’s get into it today and keep it short.
Just had the holidays on my mind after Thanksgiving here in the us getting a lot done coming back and you know, it’s that time of year where you know, Christmas is right around the corner. And as we go ahead, we’re like okay, we got to And if you sit down and look at it, we really only have a couple of weeks before most people are taking breaks and you’re traveling or you know, you’ve got projects that are really compressed.
And I just wanted to, as I was reminding myself, I thought this would be a really good time to remind people to spend a little bit of time now you know, if you can block out 1520 minutes in the next week, and apply the 8020 rule to your holidays, like what are the normal things that you remember from the past years that either stressed you out?
That took up your time that annoyed you that you were like, man, why am I even dealing with this? And I mean, it could be things on unrelated to like being productive, maybe it’s, you know, the fact that, you know, I told myself I was going to eat better or I didn’t get exercise, you know, when I was traveling and you know, I felt bad afterwards, I just didn’t like it.
Or I left that one project with a loose end and you know, is in my head the whole time and just work through that stuff and see what you can do and I really mean the 8020 rule. Don’t spend hours and hours on this but you think through what can I do?
So that man, when I do travel, I’m going to see people hopefully I like like friends and families, you know, if you’re going out and doing activities so that you can really enjoy them instead of, you know, I think we’ve all been there where you’re kind of half president, you know, and I really try to avoid that. And it happens right?
You can’t avoid it all the time things come up. But just doing this little bit of planning is kind of like the review idea talk about you know, once a week I sit down and ask myself you know, what’s going well, what is it? What can I do about it? Right? What can I delete, automate delegate?
But just thinking ahead now to the holidays, what is it that works well, for me, you know, does for like, literally for myself, I need time to myself, I don’t enjoy, like non stop interaction, like, yeah, I get totally burned out. And it’s not the people around me, that’s just the way I am. I really enjoy having some time to go read a book or go for a walk.
So I had to recognize like, Oh, I need to tell people that like they can’t read my mind. And I, you know, was like, Oh, of course. That’s it. That’s one of the things I need to do. And for other people, I’m sure it’s Different, you know, whatever it is you need to do, and then communicating that coming up with some sort of an action plan, right that is born out of that realization.
So I think spend 15 or 20 minutes on this, you can really get a lot out of it and save yourself some some stress and headaches and realize to maybe, hey, even back it up, like what can I do beforehand to get ready for that? Maybe it’s saying, I need to say no to some projects or some things going on.
I need to be realistic about the time I have left before, you know, traveling, things like that. Let’s see, oh, something else I really liked to I realized this a couple of years ago. And I had been trying to do my annual planning in December before the holidays. And I don’t know why it took me so long to realize like this is a terrible idea.
Like it makes sense from the calendar event or a calendar perspective because we’re all dealing with, you know, January in the new year and wrapping up projects, yada yada, but it is right. It’s a stressful time. You’ve got you know, again travel coming up, you’ve got the holidays.
Maybe you got your visiting relatives or you got people coming in there’s parties and this and that and now you’re trying to cram in something additional that you don’t normally do. And so finally I just said this is crazy like I am not doing this I’m just going to continue December’s normal in the sense that I’m not going to add anything.
I don’t need to and I pushed mine out to March or April depends kind of how things line up. And that made a really big difference not having to worry about it not having to also worry about with employees getting with them in December that’s no longer an expectation beyond the normal holiday you know, hey, have a great time whatever it is bonuses, things like that.
Now it’s you know, expected that hey, we you know, we talk in the springtime and that’s when we do kind of the year long review as well as planning. So I would encourage you to think about that if you’re trying to do this right now and in sweating, you know, having the time to do it or again, it’s stressing you out, move it around, you know, and put it at a time that is not normally maybe a stress point.
So depending on your business maybe if you’re on a fiscal calendar, maybe doing your plan here at the end of September beginning of October is not a good idea either. So you know finding that other time that works well for you so that you can really devote the time for it because these things are meant to help you not to just be a burden.
So that said, those are just some holiday things that came to mind today that I wanted to cover I think getting ahead of that is really important. I know for myself getting in my mind like okay, this is the stuff I need to take care of when it’s the first week of December be thinking about and not wait till you know the 23rd and be freaking out.
And wondering how I’m going to get it all done or you know, worried about getting work done before the NBA or anything like that. So anyways, hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate and looking forward to a great December and starting out 2020. So that’ll do it for this week. And I’ll catch everyone back next week.
