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20 June 2008
Upgrade an Unproductive Day ...
... by Mentally Rehearsing a Better One
There’s no going back in time, but there are ways to learn from the past rather than live in it.
Every day we walk through a minefield of potential distractions, sometimes arriving on the other side unscathed, sometimes not. One digression leads to another, the cycle repeats, and hours later we wonder where the time went. It’s tempting to criticize ourselves for getting nothing none that day, and even if the criticism is somewhat accurate (it’s unlikely that nothing got done), the diagnosis itself is idle — which is to say, “So what?”
Figuring out the obvious moves nothing forward. On the other hand, recognizing the problem implies recognizing the solution. When I run into this situation, I ask myself to process questions:
* How did I get nothing done today?
* What will I do differently tomorrow?
Since a day’s accomplishments, or lack thereof, is the sum of many behaviors, neither of these questions can be addressed by a single answer — at least to have the level of precision necessary to make a substantial change.
It’s not enough to know our worst practices in general. To make tomorrow a more accomplished day than today, we need to rewind the film strip to the precise moment where we got derailed.
(More via Tools For Thought)
Figuring out the obvious moves nothing forward. On the other hand, recognizing the problem implies recognizing the solution. When I run into this situation, I ask myself to process questions:
* How did I get nothing done today?
* What will I do differently tomorrow?
Since a day’s accomplishments, or lack thereof, is the sum of many behaviors, neither of these questions can be addressed by a single answer — at least to have the level of precision necessary to make a substantial change.
It’s not enough to know our worst practices in general. To make tomorrow a more accomplished day than today, we need to rewind the film strip to the precise moment where we got derailed.
(More via Tools For Thought)
06:00 Posted in Home, Work | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: work, home, distractions, productive, behaviors, accomplishments
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