The Most Fun Way to Trick Your Brain Into Being More Productive
16 Sept 2016 · 5 min
Matthew Hussey shares a productivity trick called the phantom holiday exercise that helps you focus and finish tasks faster. He explains how tricking your brain into thinking you're on vacation can boost your output and motivation.
Welcome to Love Life. I'm Matthew Hussey and I have an amazing show for you today. But first, let me ask you: Did you know that there are three female mindsets that drive men absolutely wild? Okay, you're right, confidence is one, but.
Can you guess the other two?
I'll give you a minute to think.
About it and we'll come back to.
This at the end of the show. But first, let's get into today's episode.
How do you get more productive today than you have been in the last year? Well, there is a particular day that naturally we become more productive than any other day in the year. And it's because of the day that comes after this day. When we know that we're about to go on holiday, and we know that tomorrow we fly away on holiday, we tend to have an incredibly productive day because we know that there are many loose ends that we have to tie up, many of which we may have left until the final day before our holiday, that we have to get done in order to go away and relax, in order to go away and not have everything burned down when we're gone. So you'll find that the day before you go away, not only do you pack your bags, but you pay that bill you need to pay, you call that friend you were supposed to call, you send that email you were supposed to send, you get that project tied up and done and sent, whatever it is, you get it done before the holiday. Now, you may not get everything done the day before you go away, but you tend to get 70% more done that day than you do every other day. So even though many of us still go on holiday stressed because we say, oh God, I still didn't do this and I still didn't do that, what we forget is just how much we did get done. that if it was a normal day, we would never have done. If we knew that tomorrow was just another day, we would never have put that intensity of focus into what we were doing. So, the key question is this. How do we have a day that's that productive on other days? Well, I'm going to give you a fun little mission today. It's going to be short and sweet, but I'm excited about it. I think we should give it a go. I haven't tested this yet, but I think it would be an interesting exercise for us all to do. I want you to pick a day in the next week where you pretend that the next day you're going on holiday. Let's call it a phantom holiday. The next day you're going away and today you need to tie up a bunch of loose ends that you would tie up if you knew you were going away for the next two weeks. What would you get done today? Now, I don't want you to make a list of a thousand things, but here's what I want you to do. Imagine that you're going on holiday tomorrow, let's say, and then make a list of six things that you've been putting off that if you were going away for two weeks now, you have to get done. Make that list. And then today, I want you to go crazy completing as many things on that list as you can. And by the way, if you have to do this to make it rewarding, fine. Tomorrow, book a really nice dinner with a friend, or maybe even at the end of the night, book a nice dinner with a friend that you can go to and have something you can look forward to. But treat it very seriously. Play this little game with yourself. Human beings are interesting. We sometimes have to play games with ourselves in order to get ourselves to actually do something. And that's okay. I mean, our brains are kind of wired that way. We need the challenges. we need something that's pushing us. Let this phantom holiday be the thing that pushes you and see just how much you get done. By the way, you won't really need to introduce an artificial reward because the reality is the reward will be how well you sleep that night. The reward will be when you look back on this day just how much you achieved and just how many loose ends you tied up that you've been procrastinating. And this way, you won't have to wait until the next time that you're going away to relax to suddenly feel that cathartic experience. Instead, you'll have it right now, today. And you'll feed into tomorrow a much more positive mindset, a positive mindset of having achieved something, having done more than you normally do in a day, and perhaps tasks that you wouldn't normally do in a day because you consistently put them off. So try the phantom holiday. In the next week, you're gonna pick one day where you're gonna pretend, I'm going away tomorrow. What do I need to get done today? Give it a go and let me know how you get on. Come comment on Facebook.
Facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey.
I'll see you there.
Well, did you guess what the other two mindsets are that drive men wild? Good news, you don't have to rack your brain forever for the answer. I'm giving you free, exclusive access to a Q&A session from my live seminar where I coach real women on how to deal with hot and cold men, How to find out if a guy is single, how to be strong and confident in a relationship, and more. To get your free access to three female mindsets that drive men absolutely wild, just go to lovelifepodcast.com/mindsets.

