Rethinking Productivity

The number one issue with being productive isn't that you people usually don't know what to do with the day. It's that they look at it with dread and they accept that feeling and they stop. They go, I don't wanna. So they stop. Even though. Even though if they looked past the immediate dreadful activity and looked into the future about the benefits it would give them, if they could reconnect with that, they could push through. It's that when we get in the short term, just automatic feelings, automatic emotions that come up, those things when they're not monitored consciously and sometimes they're not overridden by a higher calling, a higher ambition, a higher ambition to serve a higher mission, then what ends up happening is we go, ah, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll skip this one. And you know, I'll get the workout in tomorrow and then workout comes tomorrow. I'll get it in next Friday and then it doesn't come in next Friday and then I'll get the work in. The work doesn't happen. And we keep telling ourselves these stories. I'll do it when I feel like it. But I hope if one thing you've learned here is the power plant doesn't have energy. It you need to generate the energy in which you need to excel and serve in this world. That's what I had to do last night. I had to generate the energy that I need to excel and serve on the stage. I had to make sure that today I felt my best. This is my marathon that I get to do eight times a year. This is what I train for, this is what keeps me sharp. We all have to have those things in our business or our brands or the things that we're being productive towards that push us, that challenge us. If you don't have three or four of those each year that are your form of business or productivity marathons, build them back in. Build in challenging expressions for yourself each year. Build them in. We all need our own marathon each year. Whether that's a true running marathon or for me, this is it for me. And I got eight of these a year that I build in that make me sharp. I don't need to do them. The better use of my time would just be doing more videos on the Internets, more social media. But this, this pushes me. This demands excellence from me. When we talk about productivity today, I'm gonna say, what is the things that are scheduled for you that demand you be great? Cause if you don't have any of those, you'll never Be great. You'll just do what's comfortable and easy. You gotta have those milestone moments throughout the year in your business. Sometimes that means, okay, that's three weeks. I'm gonna write my book in that three weeks. And you're just gonna gear up for it and you're gonna crush it. Sometimes that means that's when you're gonna launch your thing. Okay, we're gonna gear up and launch that thing. Sometimes that means that's when you do your executive retreat. You pull away all the executives, you meet with them, and that week is just like fire week for you. That's not. I don't mean fire. I mean fire, you know, but you gotta have those scheduled. Otherwise you just go into homeostasis. You just kind of go through the days and go through the motions, and nothing is compelling you to reach and stretch and push. And if you don't have that, I'm telling you, it is hard to live a fully charged life. So you gotta approach productivity now in a completely different way. First rule, don't think of productivity as something that you're doing just in a block of time. Think of your life as being a productively fulfilling life. That productivity is not a time management thing. It's a purpose thing. I don't think of time management when I think of productivity. I think of purpose. I think of who do I want to be, what do I want to contribute, what will be fulfilling for me? Because if you don't have something bigger than just blocks of time, which are important, but there's not something that we together are going towards, where it's this set of dreams where there's personal meaning and there is social contribution, we won't go. And you might write that down. You need both things as a mindset for productivity. Personal meaning, meaning you care about it, you like it, it's intrinsically valuable to you. You feel like me doing this is important because I like it, I enjoy it, it's important. That's personal meaning. The other aspect of productivity is social contribution. I have to see what I'm doing is going to matter to somebody. It's going to make a difference. And if we don't look at productivity that way, we'll just be like, uh, it feels like a task. But if we can assign some meaning and social contribution to our tasks, everything can change. But ultimately, those things have to come together in something to be productive for. Like, I'm always. I'm like, what am I productive for? Took me a long time to figure that out for myself. Based on what I do. What am I productive for? Well, at the personal meaning, I'm productive because I want that vibrancy of being a creative human being. I want to be productive because I want to feel like I'm creating and expressing myself. That's the personal meaning for me. I also want to be a productive person because the social contribution, I want to feel that energy and that creativity. But I also want to feel like, you know, what my life mattered? Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? Did I create some outputs? Did I create something or do something that helped somebody or move the needle or made a difference or a contribution?

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