All right, we are live. I’m trying to get this up and running. I am going to fix something real quick and then we will get started. Live, let’s edit that. Doing stuff for the first time is always fun because getting the process down is kind of crazy.
All righty, hopefully if you’re watching this you’re able to see it on the page and things are working well. Anyways, this is the productivity academy. This is going to be the live Q&A that we’re going to start doing weekly here at 10:00 am eastern via Facebook. We’ll see how that goes. If you are watching and you have any comments or suggestions as far as call quality, the video/audio, where you’d like to see it because we can also get this over on YouTube, but I thought Facebook would be a great place to start.
Let’s jump right into it. Today is the 10th of May. I’ve got a few questions already from people that I’m going to go through. If I see anything, any comments on here which you can just comment right there on the post and I’ll be able to see them. We’ve got a couple questions that I wanted to go through that were kind of interesting. Probably have a pretty short one today as we get started here and people start seeing that this is actually happening. I know right now not too many people know about this.
On the questions which actually I’ll link to right now, there’s the link I’m sending out where you can ask questions every week just throughout the week. It doesn’t have to be a specific time. These get put into a spreadsheet so that I can track the questions and see what’s being asked. I’m actually going to put that right there. If you have questions outside of the live net time, ask them here. Cool.
The first question, this is good. Somebody just said what’s your single biggest productivity or time management problem? Somebody said other people dragging me down. This is kind of the other part of this. I think this is important because not only do you have productivity, time management, focusing, process related stuff, you’ve also got this other side of things like the outside world influencing how you’re doing things or why am I doing all of this?
Something I talked about recently was you’re not just being productive to be productive. I’m not being more productive because I want to get ten more tasks checked off in my to do list. I don’t care. If I do one thing, but it makes me money and it provides me with happiness and all that sort of thing, then that’s all that matters. That’s the really big picture idea, but I think this question about other people dragging me down is good. That’s a tough one again to answer without knowing more about it. Just that general sense of if you’re depressed or you’re not feeling good, it’s really tough to be productive. Everyone’s had that when you’re having a tough time focusing.
My response to this is if other people are dragging you down, then you need to look at what you’re doing. You can take some really specific actions. Literally one concrete action I would take is … This totally depends on your situation. It’s remove yourself from that situation. Maybe if you’re a student, you can study somewhere else. You can go to a different library. If it’s your roommates, go somewhere else. Go to a coffee shop. Go to a library. If you’re in an office situation, perhaps there’s a conference room you could work at. The idea there is to physically remove yourself and where your body goes, your mind will hopefully follow. That’s just one way to do it.
Then beyond that is to look at why are other people dragging you down? Is it a productivity thing where people are really sucking your time away? Again, that could be helped by explaining to them what you’re trying to do. “Hey, I’m trying to be more productive. I need to get more things done for X, Y, Z reasons. Could you help me out?” If they’re not going to listen to you or they’re like, “Hey, whatever why aren’t you being cool and hanging out or doing stuff,” then again you might need to look at removing yourself.
Some easier possibilities would be like getting headphones. Really simple, but sometimes it works. If you can, maybe even noise canceling headphones. Those are awesome. I’ve been using those. I’ve just had them for a few months. I got a really cool pair for Christmas. Thank you, Donna and Mike. Those really help. When I’m out in public … It’s kind of a signal too. You see people who are wearing headphones and generally you don’t go up to that person and start talking to them. I’m not saying it’s perfect of course. Everyone’s been there where someone keeps bugging you, but that’s one way to do it.
If you commented and your question was other people are dragging you down, if you go back and ask me that question, give me some more specifics. I’d be happy to put in more ideas. I’m sure other people would have some really good ones too. If you’re watching this and you have a way for feeling with other people and they way they affect you, by all means, leave a comment.
The next question was about lazy weekends. Their single biggest productivity or time management issue is having lazy weekends it sounds like. This one is cool. I can definitely identify. I have two different feelings on this. One is weekends are good. It’s really nice to have that downtime. On the other hand, I get antsy sometimes. I’m a believer for me personally and this changes from person to person and even from time to time. When I’m really busy and then I need that downtime to recuperate and mentally recharge, but at the same time there are times where I really want to get things done or it seems like the weekend gets away from you. I don’t know if that’s a feeling you have, but it’ll be Sunday afternoon and I’ll be like, “I had a lot that I was going to do. I don’t know what happened. I don’t even feel relaxed or recharged.”
Something you can do with that is I try to still maintain my weekly flow in terms of time management, doing a daily review or reviewing my to do list, but I generally don’t take it as seriously. I’m not going to really set an alarm to do it, but I keep the really top priority things, like doing that daily review, I may not during the weekends sit there and write it out, but I’ll at least go through my to do list, look at it, five minutes and do a quick Triologe and get rid of a lot of stuff, but then say, “Oh, yeah that’s right. I needed to definitely take care of these two things” and then if I have some time and I feel like it, I’m going to work on this other thing. I’ve found that that’s really helpful. A lot of times for the weekends for people it’s things like doing work around the house or it’s kind of a mental switch usually in terms of it’s not your work or that one big thing.
That’s my big idea for lazy weekends is just try to take some of that productivity and time management skills you use during the week and bring it into the weekend and use it as a good thing. I know sometimes people get hung up on I want the weekend to be free from this constraint. For myself and I think a lot of other people, you feel better when you’re doing something. I think if that’s a problem for you, you can look at it as just I’m helping myself to really enjoy and get more out of my time and still go do these things like, “Hey this morning I’m going to spend two hours doing these three tasks. Then I’m going to go out and do whatever, play with family, take a quick road trip, go out to dinner, things like that.
For me, I’ve found that that really improves my quality of life and I end up feeling better. You feel good. You’re moving forward, but it’s not like you’re stressed out about getting a lot of stuff done. That is all of the questions for this week. Again, I’ve got the questions posted in the top of the video here and in the comments, or the link to it. If you have questions, please just click on that link throughout the week. You can pop in your question really quick, or you can show up live 10:00 am Eastern and ask questions. By all means too if you have comments or suggestions, leave them here. Until then, we will catch up next week. Thanks.
