Elimating Distractions, Interruptions and Overcommunication
So last few weeks I’ve fallen in the habit of logging onto slack early in the morning; and I’d catch up with a developer on a project. This is still a very much needed ‘thing’ to be doing … but the problem is, it immediately scrambles my brain for the day.
It’s the same for loading up your brain with any sort of communication early in the morning. That’s the time when you just want to use your fresh mind to work on important challenges.
Emails are never important enough to get done first thing, although many will say they are. If they are that important, get them done the night before and send them. But to sacrifice your fresh mental energy to deal with messages coming in from slack, whatsapp, email, discord … it’s such a waste; and when you are self-employed and on your own time you just can’t afford to waste that energy.
There’s always exceptions to the rule … that one important email which seals a deal, or solves an urgent and pressing matter. But in general, emails and all messaging will be abstracted away from us in the future world of AI Personal Assistants.
I am guilty of it as well – ‘brain farting’ when I have an idea that I think is so great that I need to tell someone. Or having found something ‘great’, forwarding it to someone who I think will find it useful. But all I’m doing is consuming their attention and perhaps breaking their concentration on something potentially important.
So the main thing going forward is no communications at least until 3pm. That’s normally the time when my fresh mind runs out of juice. Between 3pm and 8pm I generally don’t work very effectively.
Overwhelm & Stress
Recently hit a point where I got overly stressed with all the things going on. Partly that was down to me not managing the over communication going on in my life.
It was also down to me not single handling tasks, and trying to manage more than one thing at a time. I think it was proven in a repeatable scientific method way that multi-tasking was insanely inefficient. So, as I was beginning to have more than one thing on my mind at any one time… it was tearing me in several directions.
Also, the notebook that i started 70 days ago (ish), is now full… and whilst all the ideas are in there … it’s now time for a brand new clean notebook that builds on everything I’ve been working out over last few months.
I’ve now started back at zero point – choose the key projects and short term goals for next thirty days within them, and cycle between them … without the overhead of multi-tasking, digital overwhelm, or without letting too many people into my head.
Sports Psychology & Visualisation In Business
Sports psychology is one of my favourite things to study, and in an different quantum timeline, maybe I would have been an athlete … but that didn’t happen for whatever reasons and no reason to not accept it. But you can apply SP to your own daily business life; and many would say it really is the key to their rather large successes.
The very core of SP is in learning to work with your mind in a very specific way. Your ‘mind’ is actually the result of the central nervous system … (read Psychocybernetics for a new paradigm change on the subconscious) and it works pretty much like you would expect a robot to behave. You give it a clear goal that your biological machine can understand, and it will go and do it.
We live and operate both as the passengers and drivers of ourselves. It’s a weird paradox that most don’t get to appreciate unless you unravel your mind and wake up to what’s beyond it.
Point is, have a clear list of priorities… then mentally cycle through them – seeing what they look like at the end of completion. The key is knowing you won’t visualise it perfectly done first time, so just hold the intention, outcome and feeling of winning at it, and see what pictures come up into your mind. You will gain insights, and as you rewind from the end point to now, you will map out the journey in a way that your subconscious mind can understand better.
I’d got out of the habit of doing this many years ago, but in reality, it’s the only way of true mental control.
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