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May 4 - May 8, 2020
4. Prioritize each small goal.
5. Pay attention to your performance, not whether a specific short-term goal is achieved.
Every time you reach for your phone in any given circumstance, you train yourself to do so when that circumstance recurs.
First, it destroys your momentum.
Second, your phone addiction diminishes your creativity.
Third, your phone makes you more prone to distractions.
Fourth, your phone makes you less present during meetings and conversations.
Fifth, being obsessed with your phone makes you more likely to play games and use time-wasting apps.
Sixth, your phone addiction will make you more inclined to confuse busyness with efficiency.
Action Steps
1. Turn off your phone during time blocks you’ve scheduled to work on high-value tasks.
2. Refrain from checking your phone out of boredom.
3. Define the times and places you’ll allow yourself to check your phone.
4. Define the activities you’ll use your phone to perform.
5. Monitor your phone usage throughout the day.
6. Turn your phone off when you go to bed.
Do you feel unmotivated to take action of any kind? Is the quality of your work slipping? Are you indifferent to your poor-quality output? Do you find yourself becoming irritable with others? Are you having difficulty sleeping? Is your outlook overly-cynical? Do you often feel tired, even after a good night’s rest? Have you lost your appetite? Do you no longer find joy in spending time with your family?
Burnout interferes with your ability to get things done in five notable ways.
First, it induces a feeling of helplessness.
Second, it makes you more inclined to be resentful toward others.
Third, burnout sets the stage for exhaustion.
Fourth, it fills you with an enduring sense of failure as you continue to miss deadlines, make mistakes and produce low-quality work.
Fifth, the more stress, resentment and lack of motivation you experience, the further your productivity will decline.
Action Steps
1. Perform a monthly self-evaluation.
2. Schedule breaks throughout the day.
3. Commit to ending the day at a specific time - for example, 6:00 p.m.
4. Take weekends off.
5. Limit the amount of time you spend on your phone.
6. Periodically review your responsibilities and evaluate how they align with your short and long-term goals.
7. Stop multitasking.
8. Start each day with a morning ritual designed to motivate and inspire you.
First, long-term stress can lead to mental and physical fatigue.
Second, consider the impacts to your health. Ongoing stress can cause headaches, breathing difficulties and tachycardia (rapid heart rate). It can cause nausea, back pain and diarrhea.
Third, studies show that long-term stress can impair your ability to process and store new information.
Fourth, you’ll make more mistakes.
Fifth, because high stress levels hamper your focus, cause you to feel fatigued and increase your error rate, you’ll spend more time completing tasks.
Sixth, stress can make you short-tempered.
Action Steps
1. Identify the triggers that are causing you to feel stress.
2. Develop healthy ways to respond to elevated stress levels.
3. Work fewer hours.
4. Review why you love your work.
5. Limit the number of tasks on your to-do lists.
6. Delegate tasks.
7. Put an end to unnecessary interruptions.
8. Reevaluate your relationships and purge those that are negative.
9. Start an exercise routine.
10. Remind yourself: “one thing at a time.”
10 quick tips for putting to use the Action Steps you’ve read over the last 30 days.
