I thrive on feeling busy and productive. The high of accomplishing something I’ve been wanting to get to is better than (almost) anything. I’m sorry to say I’m one of those people who has to struggle not to check my iPhone at the dinner table and often don’t succeed. There’s a lot of good that comes out of this, but I’ve learned to watch out for some downsides (apart from what it does to relationships.)
It’s all too easy to get caught up in the little things that make you feel productive instead of seeing the big picture. Email is a great example of this, you can spend a good portion of your day answering emails and be very busy, not necessarily the most productive.
At the end of the day you have to ask yourself, am I meeting my big picture goals?
A few months ago I read the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. Mostly, I hate it. I think his methods are spammy and I don’t think I would be happy working only four hours a week. Actually, I doubt he worked only four hours a week when getting his book out and promoting it. (There’s a whole separate post here about how I think the real goal is to work at something you love so that most of what you’re doing doesn’t feel like work.) There was one point that’s stuck with me though.
He said to choose three things you want to accomplish every day. Just three. And make sure you get those done.
Obviously, we all do way more than three things in a day. Sometimes though, I think we manage to be too busy all day to accomplish the three things that were most important. So maybe it’s not a bad rule.
So you’ll have to excuse me if I ask you (and myself) a cheesy question “What three things do you want to get done today?”
