June 2015 – LLUMI Australia

As busy people, days can often fly by and you think to yourself, “I’ve been SO busy, but I swear I haven’t got anything done!”. I find myself getting all of the small tasks done (repetitively), but my important, game-changing projects remain on my to-do list like hovering sharks. I did some research on being (and feeling) productive today. Here’s what I found:

A feeling of productivity and accomplishment allows our minds to work more smoothly, positively and creatively.
Therefore, if you FEEL that you have accomplished something, it frees up space in your mind and allows you to accomplish more. I watched a video from the guys as Basic Bananas Marketing today and they have some hot tips that I would like to share with you:

Touch things once – these are the small things in your day, such as emails, bookings, phone calls, quick tidy-ups, etc. If you can deal with something in less than five minutes, deal with it immediately and resolve the issue. This avoids clutter ending up on your to-do list. BEWARE: do not go SEARCHING for these small things, or you could fill up your day very easily with them!
Mentally congratulate yourself when you accomplish something – this creates a pattern in your thinking that reinforces your goal-attaining ability and you get ‘on a roll’ by constantly experiencing victories or ‘wins’. If you don’t congratulate yourself, you may feel down and unappreciated.
Do the hardest task first! Get it done and get it off list and shoulders – more productive and creative. Otherwise,we tend to procrastinate and it grows bigger in our mental space (proportionately). By getting the hardest thing out of the way, you impress yourself, use your best energy to get this task done properly and set yourself up to achieve the ‘easier’ tasks as you ride the happiness wave for the rest of the day.

I hope this helps with your day’s productivity!

You may have seen the new TED talk by Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work, you may not have. I do encourage you to watch the entire thing (it’s 12 minutes long…so brace yourself, busy people!), but I’ve summed it up in the following post (as well as taking ideas from other research).

Happiness isn’t on the other side of success
Does the phrase, “I will be happy if I can just do/have/be…” sound familiar?
It does to me, and I’m betting that it rings a bell to a lot of you – perhaps you think it to yourself, perhaps you hear others say it. What scientific research is now showing is that if an individual feels dissatisfied in the present, that they are not only less likely to achieve their goals, but if they do – they will not be likely to experience happiness. They just change the goalposts and feel ‘less than’ compared to a new standard. For example: If you work all year to get a new promotion, you hate your current job and expect all things to be better once you get the promotion. There are a few things happening here:
a) You are creating a mental habit of ruminating on the negatives – this is not easy to shake
b) You may become less appealing to your employer – there’s a saying “work for the job you want, rather than the job you have”. BE the employee that everyone would want working with/for THEM.
c) Once you get to your success, you will move your goal targets to the next ‘thing’ and may not appreciate the benefits.

It’s very important to set goals – that’s what our whole business is about! However, it is equally important to look for and value the life and blessings that you have NOW – train your brain to be positive and even more positive opportunities tend to flow your way. Now, this may sound a bit ‘hippy’, but the scientific link between Positive Psychology and Success is growing stronger and stronger every day. Try some of these things for 21 days and perhaps you will be able to notice the difference:
– Writing 3 things that you are grateful for each day
– Meditating or sitting in silence, focusing on one thing
– Journalling
– Exercise
– Random Acts of Kindness

Here is a link to the speech

Month: June 2015

Productivity

The Science of Happiness