Are You Living Up to Your Full Potential?
Posted on August 15, 2015
Have you ever been in the middle of a task or project and asked yourself ‘Why am I doing this right now?’ and not been able to answer it clearly. This happened to me last week, I was working on a project (can’t even remember what it was now) and thinking this is taking me way longer and is way more challenging than I thought it was going to be. Then I asked myself what the purpose of this task was and I realized it no longer applied, with respect to the direction I want to take Fitness For Freedom. So I scrapped it on the spot and wrote out the 3 most important things that I needed to do to grow Fitness For Freedom and from now on if a task doesn’t get me closer to achieving any of those goals I won’t do it.
So in theory this is great, except despite the image I try to project I am very disorganized and scattered at times and I hate agendas and schedules. (just typing agendas and schedules gives me an icky feeling) so I was at a bit of a loss. Until earlier this week I listened to an episode of the Fizzle podcast about productivity and journaling. I almost didn’t listen to this episode because journaling gives me an even ickier feeling than agendas and scheduling. But I listened to it anyway and one of the things they sited is that in a study people that journalled for 15 minutes at the end of each of their workdays were 23% more productive than people that worked for those 15 minutes, I love stats and that’s a lot of productivity (almost as much as exercise gives you). One of the interviewees says he answers these questions at the end of his day and he’s been doing it for 2 months now and has noticed a huge difference in all aspects of his life. I added the second half of the last two questions because I noticed I needed it to make it complete.
What are my biggest accomplishments of today?
What didn’t go as well as it could have today and why? How can I make it better for next time?
What tasks to I need to do tomorrow? Why do I need to do these tasks i.e How do they move me closer to one of the 3 larger outcomes I’m trying to achieve
Since I implemented this journalish method I have been way more productive and able to get a lot more stuff done, I’m not perfect and a few things still creep in to my day that shouldn’t but I’m getting better.
My point is I apply it to my business and part of my personal life and there is no reason you can’t apply it to health and fitness. It goes well with the ‘be better’ mindset I talk about so often,
I have attempted to journal before and it has never worked in the long-term but this is different for a few reasons.
– I need to be more productive and organized if I’m going to grow a big business that actually helps people, and therefore need to change something about how I do things.
– I set an alarm on my phone to remind me to write it and stop working for the day (which has helped for the writing part but not the stop working part)
– This points out what I accomplished and tells me where I need to improve and gives me clearly defined tasks to move me closer to my goals
I will update you on how this goes but based on how effective it was for me this week I will be doing this for a long time to come.
I have pasted my second entry below as an example if you’re interested (my first one was on a piece of paper and seems to have disappeared, hence the switch to a book, which is too bad the first one was much more positive),
Jonathan
Jonathan’s First Second Entry August, 11 2015
What did I accomplish today?
– I had a meeting with Kyle that lasted 30 minutes too long
– I sent out invoices
– I set up a meeting with a potential mastermind person
– I did 3 modules on the ‘How to Build an Audience Course’
What didn’t go well?
My video f*cking sucks and the script couldn’t be memorized by me. Really pissed I spent so much time on it.
I didn’t get any exercise in, which made me even more angry and frustrated
My working day needs structure and I can’t figure out how to achieve it.
What are my tasks for tomorrow?
Going to systemize my tasks, every time I do a task I’m going to write Why am I doing this task, what is the first actionable step for the whole task, what is the next actionable task after that first step is complete.
Finish yesterday’s tasks I didn’t get done today.
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