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080 - Biggest Lessons of 2016 - Productivity

Hello there, Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. The absolute first episode of 2017. Wow!

I am continuing with the biggest lessons from 2016, wanting to review all that we have learnt over the years before learning more, inspiring life changing lessons.

The last lesson was on motivation, we discovered some of the biggest ways that you can find motivation. When you are feeling a little uninspired, tired, un-energized. So once you have the motivation, you’re ready to go, you feeling pumped up, meaning you’re feeling energized and excited.

Well, you need to learn ways to be productive. What do you focus on?

And when you do focus on certain tasks for work, for school or English learning, how do you do it in the most effective way, so, you can get the most done in the shortest amount of time. It’s a good goal to have.

Today we are going to dive deeper into this topic of productivity. Dive deeper means to get deep into the subject. Look into the subject more deeply so we’re gonna dive, like into water, deeper into productivity, so we can be more productive, get more done and get bigger and better results.

Three lessons on productivity from three episodes.

And if you have not yet go to feelgoodenglish.com after the episode. Sign up for my free course on the “Seven habits of Highly Effective People” So meet me over at feelgoodenglish.com after the episode, and now let’s get into the very first episode of 2017. Bam!

Productivty

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Something that often happens in the beginning of the year is people start worrying about what they need to accomplish. They think, Oh dear! I need to lose weight, I am getting a little fat from the holidays. Oh no! I need to actually become fluent in English this year. I have been putting it off for years and years and years. Remember to put off is to delay to procrastinate. I’ve been putting it off for years and this is the year I have to do this, if I want to create a better life for myself and my family. All this worrying start s to happen.

Worrying can get in the way of being productive. We worry about what we need to do and that creates a cycle of non-action. We start to over think things. We make excuses, oh this course is not good, this course is to expensive, and that course is not going to work. I don’t have time. What am I going to do? We just keep putting off the things we need to do.

We often even get paralyzed by our worrying instead of taking any action, oh we worried about what to do with our current situation that we do nothing. Maybe it’s getting a new job, maybe it’s finally traveling somewhere to learn English in another country.

In the book “How to stop worrying and start living” by Dale Carnegie, he gives you a very clear way to get over worry and to start taking action.

To get over is to overcome; resolve; so we need to get over worry, the main thing we need to do which will help solve the problem of worry, is to get all of the facts straight and make a decision.

We complicate things. It does not have to be that complicated.

Think about what you are worried about. Are you worried about something right now?

If you had the facts straight and you got clear one what am I worried about? What is the best decision what is the best thing that I can do to get over this worry, how does that make you feel.

Do you feel already a little lighter?

So think about that for a second, what are you worried about? What are some possible ways that you can resolve that issue?

Now what is the best easiest fastest way that you can resolve that issue?

Then make a decision and take action and follow through with that, keep going with that, follow through means keep going with that, keep going.

So ask yourself the questions, what is the problem? What are the causes of the problem, what are the possible solutions? What is the best possible solution and go with that?

Simplify, clear up these worries, give you brain something to focus on, something to work on, as opposed to just fantasizing about all the problems that could possibly happen.

And if you don’t know what to do you are totally lost you need to ask for help ask for some body that can help you. I am sure there is somebody out there that can give you some tips on what you should do next. And hey I am here to help, have a question about English learning or even life in general send me an email, kevin@feelgoodenglish.com, I am here to help you.

Although time seems to fly by meaning it goes really quickly times fly’s, fly’s by we all have the same amount of time we have hours in a day. So why do some people accomplish so much more than the rest of us. One explanation can be found in their ability to manage time effectively.

How do people divide up there tasks? how do they manage to do all the different things they need to do in a day?

Sometimes we have deadlines that other people put on us so we are stressed trying to get things done, but these are not even the most important things for us.

In the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective” people Steven Covery set up a time management grid. Grid is like a box different boxes it’s a grid, a chart. To help you manage your available time more efficiently. His matrix allows you to organize your priorities much better than if you were just to try to do what’s most urgent the closest then does that first this is a more effective way.

There are four different quadrants to this grid, to this matrix, and the first quadrant based on things that are urgent and important. These could be things like big problems, projects that have a deadline coming up very soon, an emergency, last minute preparations, these are the things that you have to do.

You don’t have a choice if your boss want you to have something done with in a day obviously that is what you have to do today. Right? So quadrant one, emergencies, tasks that are urgent, you have to do. Now quadrant two, are things that are not urgent but are important. They do not have a high urgency but they can play an important role in your future.

This is not only reserved for strategic planning, but also things like health and education, exercise, career, development, you have to play close attention to this quadrant and make sure you are giving enough time to the activities that fall within this quadrant. Activates like planning, preparing, training, taking care of your health, think about it often we put these types of activities to the side to focus on more urgent tasks or often what other people expect of us, or we have to get this done for this person or we have to do this, we have to do that. All these things that just interrupt our tasks that can help build a better future that can help create a healthier body, so these tasks that are not urgent but important are vital. These are the tasks that are building a better future for you, but they’re not urgent so sometimes we put them off, we don’t do them.

Quadrant 3 things, that are urgent but not important. They seem to have a high urgency but they are not important. Checking emails throughout the day, checking Facebook messages, Instagram posts, see if anybody liked your photo of you and your girlfriend on the beach, and these are often ego driven. What do I mean by ego driven? Well our ego is kind of how we think of ourselves or of our self-image so we want to make sure that people are sending us things, seeing us, valuing us or we want to feel valid in certain different ways, so these activities can be ego driven, but they are obstacles that stand in between us and our goals.

A lot of times these urgent things, like I said based on somebody else’s desire, we need to learn to push these to the side. This is also where being able to say “no” comes in handy. Being able to say no comes in handy, comes in handy, handy. HANDY is when something is convenient to be handy means it’s convenient, so being able to say no is convenient in this situation. Sometimes we have to say no to other people trying to take away our time, with meetings at work, interruptions, these types of things. If you can say no focus on the things that are important to you that will help.

Last quadrant here Things that are not urgent and not important. So this is just a waste of time, watching too much t v, being on the internet too long, watching too many Youtube videos. Time wasters, things that take away your time, so obviously learning how to notice these and take them out of your day will help you be more productive.

A good way to do it is to reserve time for these, so once you get everything done after work, you studied, did some English practice, and you got everything done. Spent time with your family or whoever then you can waste your time for an hour or so and feel good about it.

So, when prioritizing your to do list think about these four quadroons. This was a very short lesson however this is part of the free course “The Seven Habits of Active People” on my website, go there, get that course or get the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” even better, you can find that on Amazon or you can get the audio book. A great book to start learning about how to be more effective in life.

Different tasks, different things we do in a day, maybe we have five things that are very important for us. Which one do we do first, what do we focus on?

Focus is the big question of the book, “the One Thing” by Gary Keller. A big message from this book, one of the underlying theme, meaning the theme below everything, the foundation, is focus is a matter of deciding what things you are not going to do, rather than just deciding exactly what you are going to do, focus on what you are not going to do, and in the focusing question in this book, the biggest question of the book, and that is, What’s the one thing you can do such by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Again, what’s the one thing that you can do such that by doing it so everything will be easier or unnecessary?

Basically the whole book is about that question, and it’s about the power of organizing every area of your life around one thing.

Something called the domino effect. If you know what dominoes are, those little games where you have those little plastic pieces with the dots on them. Well, the key to success is figuring out your one most important thing, in your business, or career or life or English learning. Think of this as your someday goal, what i want in the future and once you figured that out, once you discovered that, you need to identify how many dominoes you need to line up or either knock them down in order to achieve it , so you can think of dominoes on a table one by one and you knock one down and knocks the other one down, the other one down. Seems simple and it is, but one thing about things that are simple they easy to do but they are also very easy not to do.

We get distracted.

So focusing on the one thing that you can do that will make everything else easier. Giving you a clear example maybe its English, so the one thing you can do to make your life easier in business, career, travel, is become confident in English so that your future one thing. Now the dominoes need to be stacked. To get to that goal what are the things you need to have happen? You need to speak better, you need to have better comprehension, and to do that you need to practice more, to do that you need to buy a course, or get focused on certain contents online, you need to have conversation classes, get conversation classes online. You need to study business English and get really confident with your business English skills. All those dominoes that need to be knocked down in order to become confident in English.

Great book “The One Thing”, if you’re interested in this, again go to my website you can always find a link to these books. You can sign up, get a free audio book and listen to these books for free or you can download the digital version. Whatever works for you, But this is also not something that’s that quick, you have to learn it just like anything, it’s a skill. The more time you spend on these aspects, the more you will learn how to do them more effectively, so maybe in the beginning it will be hard to choose that one thing but get clear on it, simplify things in your mind, get rid of all those things that you should not focus on, and focus on the one thing.

So there you have it, three big lessons from the year 2016 on productivity.

Very brief introductions.

Remember this podcast is here to help you naturally improve your English skills, become a more confident speaker with English which you are doing by listening to this. If you get the transcript to the episode and you repeat the episode and you do a little bit of practice every single day, I guarantee you, I promise you, you will improve. But this podcast is also to give you lessons and to introduce you to certain books that I think could really help you. Some books will connect with you a lot more than others and it’s your responsibility to go after that book, go deeper with these lessons and more than anything, apply them to your life. Without application nothing will change.

So take these lessons, fined lessons that really impacted you, go deep with them, try them out, see how it works, and start integrating them into your life. Until the next episode, I hope you enjoyed this one, and I’m going to leave you with a quote today, not a joke, a quote, kind of deep.

Might make you think.

This is from Oscar Wild he says “Good resolutions are simply cheques that men collect, in a bank where they have no account”