Today’s video is a time management tip that reduces chaos in your life. Just 3 minutes can save you a world of panic so you can put your energy where it needs to be: on your important work.
You can watch the video here, or read the transcript below:
Hello, Natural Professionals!
I’m Shawn Tuttle, today at Lake Wildwood in Penn Valley, California.
This is where we talk about energy management, the basis of a New Way of Working for more productivity, more creativity, and thus more success.
Today’s topic to help you decrease a common energy drain: namely, being in constant reaction mode, which in turn helps you stay in your flow.
When you get right down to it, most of what you’ve got going in your life are Patterns. And Patterns are predictable.
When you acknowledge and work with patterns, a lot of what throws you off kilter during the week disappears. Here’s one strategy to do just that: the “think-thru” session.
Here’s an easy example
Say you’re invited to a potluck this Friday with a Mexican theme. Yum!
Two options:
Option#1
Hit reply to that email invite, RSVP Yes! And then jump to the next email in your inbox. Friday afternoon rolls around and you look at your calendar—Potluck! Doh!
Either run to the store on the way to the potluck and be the fifth person to bring chips and salsa—(do you really want to be that person?)
Or, you ditch the rest of what you had planned for the afternoon, dive into a cookbook, race to the store and show up at your friends with a great dish in hand, (and a bit frazzled).
Option #2
Hit reply to that email invite, RSVP Yes! And then do a quick think-thru:
It’d be awesome to make that delish dish you learned while you were in Mexico: rajas con crema.
- You pull up the recipe to check for ingredients,
- Add the ones you don’t have to the grocery list so you don’t have to make an additional trip to the store
- Take a glance at the calendar, which reminds you that Thursday dinner would be a great night to BBQ. BBQ dinner, and while you’re there, you can throw the chiles on the grill, and carmelize the onions in the meantime. The dish is almost made! You take note of when you can finish the dish—done!
Sweet! The process took, what five minutes? Less? It’s not rocket science. It’s easy because it’s the same pattern that’s initiated every time you’re invited to a potluck.
Avoiding the chips and salsa faux pas
By acknowledging the cycle, look at what you avoided. You didn’t pull a last minute chips and salsa faux pas, you didn’t upset your entire Friday afternoon, you saved an additional trip to the store, and you minimized the time spent making the dish by adding most of the prep to Thursday night’s dinner.
It’s an easy to understand example.
Where can you apply this to your biz?
For your biz, what’s getting “thrown” at you mid-week that’s actually just a part of a cycle that you can anticipate, think-thru, then add to your schedule and ToDo Manager accordingly?
Newsletter production? New client meeting prep? Post creation for your blog? Travel plans?
The part of your brain that says: I don’t have time to “think it through” is wrong. You do have time, and doing it will save a huge amount of time, leaving you with more energy to focus on the important stuff.
That’s it for this episode of New WOW TV. Shawn Tuttle signing off with the reminder to be free and live authentically.