Tag: productivity multipliers

Spice up Your Planning

Spice up Your Planning

Posted on by kbodtmann

Sometimes productivity and planning can get stale, boring, rote. I often fall victim to planner fatigue. If this is you, consider changing the way you view your time so that it becomes more exciting, totally different, and yours. Let’s take a more traditional system and take a rebel approach. This may just spark some motivation.

Consider the tried and true “quarterly” planning that most people employ. I have seen others take these 3-month chunks of time and rework them. I have heard of others breaking down the year into something that is more natural for them. Some start the new year in September to follow a school-like approach. I recently learned that each “quarter” is actually 13 weeks and not 12 – this new nugget of information blew my mind. How about you take a leap with me and let’s rework the system.

What if … November was the start of the new year and hence is Quarter 1. Each quarter has 1 week to reassess your life and make plans/choose the new goals for the next quarter. 1 week of planning and12 weeks of passionate work toward your goals.

Such a system would look like this:

Halloween is fun and then November comes. Suddenly we are thrust into holiday planning, organizing decorations, seasonal jubilation. Seems like everyone else is slowing down for some turkey. NOT YOU. You have started the holiday sprint and Quarter 1. You capitalize on the natural energy of the season and begin to buckle down. You find enjoyment in the ease that your extra planning and hard work will bring you when the holiday fun finally rolls around. Never again will Christmas Eve be filled with a hum of stress and agitation – you will be zen. November is the time to get those exciting events on the calendar, stay ahead of shopping and gift wrapping, and put extra effort into getting work done AT WORK and not AT HOME so you can really appreciate time with family at end of November and December. January wraps up the quarter and allows you time to get in touch with what you really want for the year ahead. No New Years Resolutions to fizzle out. January, you are recovering and allowed to take some much-needed respite in a cold winter month that is filled with snow, fireplaces, and quiet. This is the end of your quarter. You are just getting warmed up for the year ahead by intentionally slowing down, instead of already depleting your willpower.

Quarter 2 – February/March/April. Sow the seeds. It is still cold and not much to do but plan for spring/summer. This is a great time to really focus on your own passion project. The family is settled. This is time for you to move the needle forward on something you want for your own life.

Quarter 3 – May/June/July. Spring and Summer are all rolled into this one. Start planning family trips and focusing on decluttering for the spring. Front-load projects and tasks in the Spring to have a laid-back Summer. Enjoy time with friends. Barbeques. Late nights on the porch. Fresh air. In July, you will have the time you need for friends. Barbeques. Swimming. This is also the time to assess your personal wellness, workout plan and to be strategic about your health plan for the year. This follows your natural energy to get some more UV and prepare for the lack of clothing that accompanies this Quarter.

Quarter 4 – August/September/October. End of summer and welcome fall. August is a great time for planning back-to-school necessities for children. Halloween costumes. Focusing on family agendas and new schedules. Buying new planners and reassessing systems. Figure out what is working for your flow and eliminate unnecessary tasks. Set Boundaries. Halloween ends the year with the start of your New Year in November. Time to start getting ready for the warmth of the holidays.

What I love most about breaking the year into these unconventional time frames is that each beginning of a quarter is a time where you would be strategically planning for life events that are upcoming at the end of that quarter. It works for me and it might just work for you too at this stage in your life. Be a rebel and make your own untraditional system, or follow mine. New systems bring new energy and a chance for a fresh start. Who doesn’t love that?

Dopamine: The ultimate brain currency of motivation

Dopamine: The ultimate brain currency of motivation

Posted on by kbodtmann

It turns out that our drive is directly tied to our drips of dopamine, a master neurotransmitter in our brain. Dopamine is not released when we obtain the object of craving or wanting; it is released prior to, to help us go after what we want. If you would like to wake up every day with passion and motivation to go after the things you want in your life, you must be able to master the release of dopamine. Dopamine is what gives you that flash of excitement when you think about achieving something. Like everything else in this world, the release of this neurochemical operates within a cycle. There is always a give and take. You may release escalating amounts of dopamine in pursuit of a goal but this is never sustainable and there will always need to be a reset once that goal is achieved. There will always be a down after the high. There are lots of productive people and high achievers that will tell you about the paradoxical disappointment that occurred after finally reaching the summit. This is the dopamine reset.

Dopamine is essential to motivation. We need to produce enough of it to feel a desire to make any changes in our lives. Any time you feel a craving for food, an itch to check your social media account, or a want or will to go after anything in your life – this is all mediated by releases of dopamine in your brain. It is what activates you to want to accomplish anything. Interestingly, dopamine has also been found to speed up our spontaneous blink rate which has been found to slow down or dilate our perception of time. The more dopamine you produce, the faster you blink, the slower time will seem to you. Dopamine is a precursor of epinephrine (adrenaline). This makes sense when you think about getting in a car accident – time seems to slow down for you during those milliseconds where dopamine/adrenaline is released in buckets. It makes your blink rate very rapid in order to help you to take in information as fast as possible and help adjust your reaction time to save your life. It is also important when you are doing life-saving work – an intentional slowing down of your perception rate will give you more time to work through the details of what needs to be done and respond quickly and effectively. More dopamine may give you an overall advantage in life as well; thinking that you have more time in your day to accomplish the things that need to get done.

To have sustainable dopamine release you need to do three things (1) Find a goal that ignites a passion inside of you and develop a relationship with it. Review it daily and tie it to something very important in your life. If the work is tedious and the goal is not exciting then learn to tie it to a reward that you really desire. Fuel the dopamine fire. (2) Find joy and tie your happiness to the pursuit of the goal and not the goal itself. If you learn to love the feeling of striving and the struggle of working toward something, then you are rewarding yourself for the production of dopamine and learning to love that state. When you tie your happiness to the outcome of your hard work, you are relating to the serotonin /pleasure chemical release and inevitably rewarding yourself for lower dopamine levels ( the reset instead of the production) (3) Expect recovery time. Reward yourself when you achieve a goal but do not excessively celebrate. The higher the high, the lower the low. It is good to acknowledge yourself for a job well done but just remember that this will prolong your recovery time and may even lead to depression after a “win”. You can also practice intentionally denying yourself little cravings. This will trick your body into thinking you need to produce higher levels to get the reward, making you rich in dopamine currency to use when it really matters and strengthening the system.

You Are Not Your To-Do List – Break Free Baby!

Posted on by kbodtmann

Are you drowning in a never ending to-do list of tasks and responsibilities? If you are, I am about to say something very controversial. You are causing your own misery. You are stuck in first generation productivity thinking. You are reducing relationships and strategic thinking to tasks you can tick off for your own personal gratification. WAKE UP – you are not your to-do list and if you find yourself being a slave to tasks on paper, you are playing small.

There is no way to complete all of the tasks life will throw at you. There will never be an end to your list. Adopt these following strategies to realize your value lies outside of lists and there is a better way to accomplish your goals. One that requires less hurry and more heart

  • When you say YES to your list, what are you saying NO to?
  • Game Changers
  • Time Multipliers

I don’t believe in working hard and then playing hard. I believe in trying to find joy and fulfillment in everything we CHOOSE to do. Some tasks are necessary — but are they? How much time do you waste adding trivial things to a list? Have you ever asked yourself if this absolutely needs to be done? If it does need to be done then does it need to be done by YOU and RIGHT NOW? There are 100’s of tasks we can clutter a list with. In the end we never finish, get overwhelmed and feel defeated. People with lists tend to choose the easiest task with the least amount of energy expenditure to complete first. Is that really moving you forward? Checking off tasks may give you a fleeting moment of satisfaction but leaves you with a lifetime of missing what is important. Are you prioritizing making your lists and completing those tasks over a moment with your child, a walk in the sun, a blanket and a book on the couch, or a phone call with your Mom? In the end, no one is going to care about a check mark on a dry erase board. What matters are the memories we hold close to our hearts and the love we have given to others. When you say YES to your list, what exactly are you saying NO to?

Does every task have equal importance in your life? OF COURSE NOT! Making to-do lists is easy and anyone can do it. It is the rare individual who makes the difficult choice to sit with all of life’s demands and CHOOSE those tasks that are the real needle movers. No one has the time to accomplish everything – this is just a fact that everyone needs to sit with. Sit down and ask yourself – What tasks are adding value to my life, to my family, to my work and craft, to my profession? Is it more important for your patients to write charts on your day off or hone your rare and valuable skills as a doctor? To dust the bookshelf or read a book to your child? To write protocols for employees or use that time to sit with them and learn their goals and dreams? You get the point. Invest your time in YOURSELF and OTHERS. Sit down and find out what you want your life to be all about. We can’t do EVERYTHING but we can make the choice to do the RIGHT THINGS. Throw your task lists out and start your day by doing the things that will make a real difference.

Time, time, time. No one has enough time. We are all so BUSY. Busy doing what? Busy figuring out how to get through your to do list faster? Can you sense the irony in my voice. Have you stopped to think about what things you can do today that will make your life easier in the future? Sometimes, we need to take that initial time investment to organize our desk to make back hours every week in increased efficiency. How about investing time today to make that work template that automates some rote task that you keep having to do over and over? Really, be creative. Can you organize a drawer in your home in the ORDER in which you use the utensils to make the same breakfast you eat every day? How about putting your vitamins/supplements in the time order in which you take them inside your cabinet? Set up a pet food station right next to where you feed them. Work on your typing speed, meditate to fall asleep faster, go for that run to increase your energy and function for the day. Is it faster to take a deep breath or spend the next 10 minutes in an argument? So many possibilities. Thinking about the things you can do today that will buy you time in the long run. This is definitely third generation productivity thinking and this is where truly great people spend their time.

Ditch your to-do list. Value presence and relationships over tasks. Determine what is important, not urgent and do that FIRST. Invest your time in productivity multipliers. YOU are not your to-do list, you are so much more than that.