Productivity Voice

Most people I know don’t have a clear purpose for money, most rich people do.
You want a million dollar to buy a car? a house? quit your job?
Most people get into the working force and begin making money just to make money, hoping that someday some number of zeros in the savings and checking account will make them happier. They go and work sixty to eighty hours a week just to be unhappy.
Do you want money to travel the world? Help the poorer? Own your home? Have a home in each country in the world? Buy cars? Why do you want money.
Until you discover that, all the money in the world, will just make you as unhappy as no money at all. The only difference may be that you will be eating Caviar and Champagne, and maybe even didn’t even like it.
i.e. Once I work on discover my purpose for money, a lot of things change, for me travel is one of those things, and I hope that soon my wife and I will begin traveling soon. I also want money so I can provide with my kids education without debt. I would love to give them as a graduation present, a zero debt education.

Do you continue getting exited when you listen: “The Macarena” or “We are the World”? most likely, you skip those every time you listen to those in your iPod. (I would too)
You don’t delete them because when you sit in the computer you are not going to search among the million of songs and you for sure don’t remember now which ones they where.
You can create in iTunes an smart list that will aggregate songs that you skipped. Next time that you sync your iPod to iTunes they will be there. Then you can choose delete them or unmark them so they don’t sync (assuming you have so iTunes only sync check songs.)
Next time you skipped “The Macarena” you will finally be over to delete it for good…

 

– I am worried… really worried…
÷ Are you going to do something?
– What do you mean?, I am doing something, you are not listening to me?, I am worrying…

This is what most people do about worry. I have been guilty more times that what I am willing to admit it, but worrying just for worrying accomplish nothing. You can spend years worrying, the only thing you are going to produce is stress, anguish, and more worry.
Your other option is to spend fifteen minutes doing something to change that thing that worry you, you may even found a solution.
i.e. We all worry, I do, constantly. I need to remind myself constantly of this, stop worrying and begin doing. I had discover that I get better results doing than worrying, for that reason I do a big effort on stop worrying, and continue doing.

I love when people said that everything it is a priority. In my experience, when everything is a priority nothing is.
The reality is that you can only have one Top Priority. At a given moment, only one thing can be a priority. If you think otherwise, you really don’t know which one is your priority, therefore you think everything is.
That doesn’t mean that priorities can’t change from one moment to the next, only means that if you compare two or more things, only one can have the highest priority, otherwise, none of them are.
Imagine for a moment, what it is your higher priority right now. What are you doing towards that priority? Do you have a conflicting priority? Notice that if when you answer the question of what it is your Higher Priority you though on more than one thing, honestly you need to sit and really think which one is the real priority, you can only have ONE HIGHEST PRIORITY, otherwise, you have none.
When I publish my latest book NO, my highest priority was that book, until was ready for sale, nothing else. I didn’t had twenty other higher priorities, I had one, that book.
We confuse, important things, and things we need to do with our higher priority, and it is that confusion that generate that really any of them get to be really our higher priority.
Think about it, if everything it is your higher priority, nothing is.

We are back to the focus read a book per month during 2013.
Our January Challenge was: “The War of Art by Steven Pressfield” and I hope you took it.

This month I bring a different kind of book. The book for February is a Walt Disney Biography, called: “Who was Walt Disney”

You may or may not be a Disney fan, but you can't deny that Walt Disney was not only a great dreamer but also someone who was able to create a business that last way past his life and time. More importantly, Disney was someone that failed, but got up, again and again.

Here is the link to the Who Was Walt Disney? “>book on Amazon (Affiliate Link).

We all have low days. Some people have them more often that the world actually is aware. That it is a fact of life. So you have two options, weep for hours or days; or remind yourself of the fantastic stuff you have accomplished.
This is more than just a list of stuff, it is not enough to have, wrote book, magazine cover. That will not do in a low day. Mine read:
– Wrote 25 Tips for Productivity that was on the Amazon Best Seller List for more than 150 days!
– Got Featured on Productive Magazine! on the cover of Issue 14
See the difference, this need to be written to lift your spirit. This is so you get reminded of the great stuff you had accomplished. Regardless how small seems, we all have Victories and Accomplishments, that may seem small today, but where big when we did, and we need to be reminded of them, as often as we need.
i.e. I have a Law Degree that was useful to get an MBA. I discover I didn’t want it to be a Lawyer in the middle. I really want it to quit, do something else, anything else. I am proud that I finish it. I don’t want to practice, I am not interested, but I consider an accomplishment that I finish my degree and move on.

Xmas already? Wait, wasn’t that on December? ok, it was.
I don’t remember when I create this list, but if you are like me, you struggle with presents. I am awful, I hate go to the shopping mall. Go Shopping and Go to the Dentist are at the same level of things that I avoid like the plague.
I learned many years ago that I could write down all that stuff that you see and think that someone will love, but that it is too early to buy. For example, if my wife said that she wants an X, I write it down. I may or may not ever get it, but it is great to have it in the list.
Same works for my daughter, nephews and nieces, (I think my wife is the only adult I gave presents to, as a general rule I only give presents to kids) a soon as we think on a present I added to the list. When the time is right (birthdays or X-mas for example) I just pull out the list.
i.e. That’s one of the reasons I finish my X-mas shopping so fast, after thanksgiving in the US, I open the lists, go to Amazon and buy all the stuff I will need. It is fast and effective. Because in general I have twelve months or more feeding this list, doesn’t take that much and the suffering is little.

I remember those days that Scan a document in order to fax it to the approbate person was something so complicated and expensive.
I remember when I got that really cool and super portable NeatScan that fit in by bag and could scan one page at the time.
The first problem, is that my main machine is an iPad. My Backup, an iPhone.
For many, that means you are out of business, for me means install one application to solve that problem. It is a software called Scanner Pro. That it is my go to every time I need to scan a document, it works incredible well in both of my devices and I can email, sent to Evernote (my file cabinet this days), DropBox, or another server, Print even fax from the application.
I have been using this application for my scan needs for many months and honestly I don’t need anything else.
One of the things that I love about working on the iPad (and with the iPhone as a Backup) is that sometimes it feels like I am carrying the biggest Swiss Army knife in the pocket, but somehow, it seems feels like it is the smallest one.

It’s not a secret that I work from home. I have the luxury to take care of my daughter and soon I will also take care of my son. I think she was two when I pick the “Duck” sound on my phone to be her sound. Any alarm that involves her, had the “Duck” Sound.
I have on my iPhone an alarm for her to be up to school, to her classes, and on those moments that she is taking any kind of medicine, also, we have one when it is time to get to the shower and ready to bed. I even set alarms for activities that may not be a routine. She knows if the “Duck” is making noise, it is something related to her, and she immediately pay attention.
She knows in the morning that the first Duck is so I wake her up and bring her milk. She knows that on the afternoons the Duck means time to pick up so we go to class. She knows that at 7:30pm, theDuck means it is time to hit the shower and get ready to bed.
The main advantage of this, is that she knows, she is aware, and therefore she pays attention immediately. It may not be a perfect system, but she may be on the other side of the house and listen to the duck, and she will come to check exactly what happened and where she need to go now.
I wish, I could had understood the power of the alarms much more early in life. Honestly would had been incredibly useful for me.
i.e. When we told her that we where pregnant and she found out it was going to be a boy, she suggest that we use the Car sound of the iPhone (Motorcycle) for her brother. So when time comes to set alarms for him, we have a sound picked.

It’s not a secret that I love contexts, and that I believe that when you lose the fear that most people have and begin using all the context you need, your system tend to allow you to move even faster.
Some years ago, I create a context that I called @Journal. The content of this is things that I want to journal, that I want to think about it, that I want to write and reflect about. As I am writing this, I have seven entries. This are seven things that I want to spend time journaling on, I am not looking to a compromise, or a quick response. I am looking just to remind myself that once in a while, it is important to go over this topics.
Some days I can open my journal application (I use DayOne on the iPad and iPhone) and just write and write. Others, I can stare to the white screen. Are on those days that I open OmniFocus and get to my @Journal Contexts.
I enjoy Journaling, and I understand that having that context allow me to re-visit and be intentional about what somedays I am going to write, but also had been an incredible way to work on stuff and found answers that otherwise I don’t know if I would had work hard and long enough to get. Most time it is hard to Journal, at least for me, the dialog that comes from there sometimes is hurtful, but eventually the clarity that produce is magical.
Do you journal? Have you ever consider having your own @Journal context to remind you of stuff that you should journal about? Try it, it’s painful the process, but magical the answer.