How To Escape? Understand, Really Understand, The Rules Of Life. Rule 4

The back-story: the stuff from which many of us would like to escape...

Rule 1: You Can Do Anything, But You Can't Do Everything.

Rule 2: You Need To Be Before You Can Do Before You Can Have

Rule 3: If You Want Things To Be Better, You Need To Be Better

Rule 4: Do Less To Achieve More

To do less and yet at the same time, achieve more, decide to get a much deeper understanding of time. Simply ‘doing’ does not necessarily equate to productivity: you know that. Accept that you never will have enough time and that you will never break out of the time trap until you stop using urgency as your sole measure of activity.
Firstly make your primary scale of achieving, important. Something is important if it is meeting a goal. A goal might be business e.g. ‘increase business revenue by 12%’ or personal e.g. ‘help our young daughter with swimming confidence’. Do your utmost to only do things which are important. Remember that urgent is not always important and that not addressing what is truly important often causes things to become urgent. It will require you to clarify what is important at work and what is important in your life. No bad thing of course.
Once you are working on issues and topics which are important, address those important tasks which are also investing for the future: many of these will seem to be not that urgent. However that is the whole point. Although non urgent, they are investing: they are making things easier for tomoorow or next week or next year. To take a walk at lunch-time is not urgent but it is investing in your energy for the afternoon. To sort out your finances this month is not necessarily urgent, but it is investing in enabling you to retire at the age you wish to retire. This combination of important and investing is what we call the state of focus: it is highly productive.
Once you are happy with the state of focus i.e. that which is both important and investing, decide to augment your decision criteria, wherever possible with what is interesting. This gives the powerful combination of what is important, investing and interesting. For many this creates the state often know as ‘flow’ or ‘being in the zone’. A very productive, satisfying and yet oddly timeless state. This will boost your happiness and contentment which will in itself boost your productivity.
Read this statement each day:
» I will be clear on what I want; what is important for me.
» I recognise that busyness does not necessarily equate to productivity.
» I will remind myself that when I say yes to the urgent, I may well be saying no to the important.
» I will insist on focusing on tasks which meet the three I’s: important, investing and interesting.