Tag Archives: flow

There are far better options that enhance every aspect of our lives and while implementing them requires an investment up front, the return on that investment will be like no other you have ever experienced.

Doing Life Gracefully

What if everyday you were forced to play scavenger hunt in a new city?  To thrive, or even survive, you would have to learn to navigate new environments. Find your bearings no matter where you were dropped. My guess is that if a GPS were available, you would find it pretty handy.

Navigating in our fast paced, chaotic world can seem just like that.  Everyday, the specific tasks we take on, as launching pads to our vision, move about like the staircases at Hogwarts. That is one of the main reasons having a process for identifying and tracking next actions is critical in the game of life.

Still, most face these moving targets armed by mentally storing their priorities, or maybe using an incomplete, disorganized listing of projects that must get done. Nether of these create, nor even allow, effortless high performance. There are far better options that enhance every aspect of our lives and while implementing them requires an investment up front, the return on that investment will be like no other you have ever experienced.

I invite you to take on this new process that has revolutionized my life and the lives of hundreds of people who I have taught to use it.

It’s All About Flow!

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow encourages the creation of such experiences with these four elements being present:

1. Completable tasks

2. Attention demanding

3. Clear objectives

4. Immediate feedback.

By keeping our inventory of completable tasks or next actions easily accessible and intelligently systematized, we are able to move through our tasks, staying fully engaged while avoiding overwhelm. This is the recipe for both deep enjoyment and high levels of achievement.

Sounds like something worth cooking up, don’t you agree?

We must get more granular if we wish to build momentum and experience the power of flow in our lives.

Intelligently Systematized

What exactly is the task at hand and what will you be that you are doing when you address it? These are the two questions you must be able to answer before feeling that a next action has been identified to file.

Visualizing the next physical action is an important step because most things that find their way onto lists are actually projects, not actions, and we don’t do projects, we do actions.  While this can seem a minor point, the fact is we tend to resist projects on lists because they are not clearly communicating what we are supposed to do with them. We must get more granular if we wish to build momentum and experience the power of flow in our lives.

In addition to the clarity that comes from thinking more deeply about how we will engage, it also enables us to store the action on the list which we will be engaging when we are able to take that action.  In other words, if the next physical action is to write a letter and we choose to write with our computer,  then placing that task on our “at computer list” makes sense.  It is there when we need it and out of our way when we don’t.  Same thing is true of phone calls, office work, running errands, etc.

Instead, most of us have instead developed the ritual of creating actions lists stored by our projects. While on the surface this may seem like the most effective and logical way to categorize future actions, it is in fact quite disconnected from the terrain of our lives.  Creating what David Allen calls “contextually driven lists” multiplies the effectiveness by ensuring we have access to what we need when we need it.

So what do we do with this awareness?

Let’s commit to act on it.  Far too much information that can enhance the quality of our lives goes unused because we are so ingrained in our ways of doing things we fail to embrace more powerful ways of being.  And on this I speak from personal experience.

New Love of a Wild Visionary

For far too long, I saw systematizing my life as the antithesis to artistic and spontaneous existence.  But, like a newbie in recovery, I can now see the error of my ways.

Since having embraced this program which provides a clear view of the rapidly moving terrain, I recognize the increased freedom and creativity that emanates from a clear mind. Rather than being a slave to the system, once mastered, (and even while in the process), the system serves our highest intentions.

By knowing the entire universe of available next actions, and having those options organized by what we can physically do based on access, energy and time, we consciously choose those actions in the moment that keep us most engaged and on purpose in our lives.

What Does this Look Like in Action?

Until quite recently, I was prone to coming up with tons of ideas that I could/should implement in my life, only to have the vast majority of them die a slow death in the trash heap of my subconscious mind.

Why?  It wasn’t by design, but rather by default.  I didn’t have a system for capturing and then effectively processing the ideas from conception to implementation.  I continued to be “intellectually creative,” but having ideas are never realized in the physical stretches beyond use the term creative.

Now, I have developed the habit of capturing those ideas and putting them into a predefined leak proof system in which they will absolutely get processed, and soon.  Knowing his has reignited my creativity.

So…How do you get started?

1. Work the five steps of processing Corral, Define, Systematize, Strategize and Engage that I addressed in earlier blogs.

2. Make sure next actions are actually actions and not projects.

3. Work in sprints. (50-80 minutes of full engagement followed by 10 minutes of break.)

4. Keep your Next Actions Lists current and systematized by context. (i.e. Calls, emails, computer work, etc.)

5. Seek “capacity appropriate challenge,” balancing between boredom and overwhelm.

My experience, and that of others I have introduced this practice to, have found that like all new skills, it takes practice and over time becomes habitual.

Investing the effort up front to reap the benefits forever is one of the greatest investments in yourself you will ever make.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGFDwCqYQww

What Am I Forgetting?

It is the middle of the night and you are awakened by an adrenaline spike that shouts at you, “GET UP!!!You forgot to take care of BLANK!!!”

Maybe your experience has been less sleep depriving, but no less energy sapping. Possible it happens when your in a meeting and all the sudden your mind throws up an alert about a completely unrelated project you are responsible for completing, but for which you are neither in the space nor proper time to address.

Why does this happen and more importantly, how do we stop it without just ignoring our responsibilities?

Effective Project Management.

By this, I don’t mean having and implementing with clarity the management of the required steps to complete any given project.  While vital to our success, this skill is a part of the solution, but fails to provide the entire process necessary to allow the peace of mind we need to function at our best.

Managing Your Projects List

I wrote earlier about the benefits of the weekly review and one of the most compelling is maintaining a good management of your entire active projects list.

When I first begin working with clients in this area, what we find is that of the 30-50 projects (outcomes requiring more than one action) most of us are attempting to forward at any given time, it is rare to find more than a couple written down.  This is a clear challenge since most of the research on brain and memory function tells us that we can only hold seven ideas, plus or minus two in our conscious minds before we start dropping them.

So when we drop them, where do they go?

Into the subconscious mind.  And since your subconscious mind isn’t really sure when you are going to need this info again, as a loyal servant, it brings it forth at some of the oddest times, like when we are sleeping or doing something completely unrelated.

Doesn’t seem like a system we should be relying so heavily upon to me, how about you?

Project Management and Weekly Strategy

Bringing a project list current, including all dated responsibilities and next actions to bring to your personal weekly strategic planning session is a vital starting place from which you can then begin to ensure you are both clear and current on your commitments.  Looking back over the past week, you will likely find completed tasks not yet recorded and discover other projects that have stagnated due to lack of next actions.

From this reflection, you are then able to think clearly about how best to invest your available resources of time and talent to forward your objectives.  Being able to ensure all the plates are spinning requires you now where all the plates are.   Make this process a ritual and see both your peace of mind and your productivity shoot through the roof.

we can only hold seven ideas, plus or minus two in our conscious minds before we start dropping them.

Vital Steps for Flow Enabling Project Management

1. Write them down. Get every commitment into your “extended mind.”

2. Immediately get a next action associated.

3. Use a “trigger list” to ensure you are thinking through all the needs of the project.

4. DO NOT allow lack of clarity of last steps to stop you from taking current steps!

5. Do a complete review of active projects weekly, ensuring every active project has a clearly defined next action.

6. Incubate projects that don’t warrant a current investment of your time and talent.

While higher level perspectives like purpose and vision are fairly stable and can be reviewed less frequently, the landscape on projects moves rapidly and therefore requires weekly revisiting.

Please let me know your experiences and what has either worked, or failed to work for you in keeping all the plates spinning effectively.

Get Your Head Out of the Clouds

While it can be energizing and inspiring to connect with our goals, visions, and life purpose, each of these are fulfilled through the actions we take.  What that means is that being able to get granular, stay focused and knock out tasks is a prerequisite to reaching a high level of achievement.  As much as we might want to remain at 50,000 foot level, until we get in the weeds, the garden really doesn’t grow.

Covey wrote about this as being the evidence of Independent Will,  the final of the Four Human Endowments.  After having moved through the processes self awareness, imagination and evaluation, our intentions came to life through our independent will.  We must get fully engaged if we wish to “manifest our destiny.”

Three Facets of Action

We engage the world, and forward our work in three related, but unique ways.  Neglecting any of these will ensure that we surrender the momentum we so desperately crave from both the productivity and enjoyment perspectives.

By Prescription

The first facet of action is doing the work we have predesignated.  As we have previously discussed, this is one of the great benefits of envisioning how and where our next physical actions will occur.  It enables us to get into and stay in flow.  Staying on task, building on our successes and being fully engaged increases our energy and ensures a high level of productivity.

The Planning Process

In order to have the predetermined work to do though, we actually have to have invested the time and focus to create it.  We too often relegate this high priority work as an afterthought, squeezing it in when we can, but not respecting the value and leverage inherent in breaking projects down so we can get after it when the time and setting is right.  Failing to honor this time and give it a high priority  results in our wheels coming off, wondering what went wrong.

Life Keeps Coming at You Full Speed

The third facet of action is the doing work as it shows up.  Regardless of how well we have strategically designed our lives, stuff happens.

Real Art Ships

This is a powerful concept in Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin which ties in very well with this awareness that life happens when we are in action. Why I share it here with you is that regardless of the importance of all the other phases in this Live on Purpose model, until we are in action nothing else matters. We can capture, corral, define, systematize, and strategize, but if we fail to act, nothing changes.  Nothing.

Beyond merely taking action, the idea represented by “Real Art Ships” reminds us that beginning projects makes sense only in the context of a commitment to complete them. A huge barrier to completion is our unhealthy obsession with perfection and the belief that it actually exists.  Life is not about creating works of art that we protect from critics until every glitch has been removed and perfection achieved.  No, life, and art by metaphorical extension, must be put out into the world to impact others. Otherwise, it is merely another way of escaping reality.

Sorry to interrupt but have you been enjoying the Living on Purpose video series?  If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.  Here is the next video in the series.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y-3bO4DpWA

Flow in the Moment

Being fully engaged in our lives reduces stress capitalizing on momentum built one small success upon another. Where we lose momentum is when we fail to delineate the activities that comprise our lives.  This leaves us feeling stagnant and paralyzed, trapped motionless within big project rather than moving rapidly through the tasks that comprise the project.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his groundbreaking book Flow, describes the key elements that create full engagement and enable us to access our greatest potential. These components include completable tasks, requires full attention, clear objectives and immediate feedback.

We create the context driven lists in the Systematize phase.  These lists ensure we stay engaged. This scenario creates a fertile environment within which we experience effortless high performance, free of worry and frustration, with a peaceful sense of control.  Our focus shifts from being primarily personal to being more transcendent.

By investing the time and focus to identify the moving parts of our lives, defining our relationship with them, developing systems that enable momentum, and strategically thinking through the most advantageous effective application of our resources, we find ourselves fully engaged in action that is both incredibly effective and fun.  Having fun reinforces our actions and keeps us going for more. And the virtuous cycle continues!

In our next section, we will explore how we delve into the different vantage points from which we evaluate and engage our lives.

Allocate Limited Resources

Time. Talent. Money.

We only have so much of them, so we better think strategically about how to use them most effectively.  That being said, the reality is that very few of us do, consistently at least.

Why is that?  There are not many of us who haven’t been exposed to the leading thinkers on effectiveness, whether Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, David Allen, or Brian Tracy.  Everyone who teaches this stuff tells us of the importance of carving off 1-2 hours per week to think strategically about our lives.

Still it is not unusual that I am in a meeting with high level executives and very few of them claim this as a practice.  What’s up with that? Are the experts all full of it, or are the masses missing out on a huge opportunity?

I can share with you that without exception, everyone I know who has embraced the practice and made it a weekly ritual in their lives feels it is one of the most important decisions that they have ever made.  If we are willing to buy into that idea, then it merely becomes an exercise in integration.

We can do this!

Have you watched the Living on Purpose video series?   Check the latest video out… httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y-3bO4DpWA

Clear and Present Opportunity

You know…kind of like that Harrison Ford movie with a more optimistic vision.

I go into my Strategic Planning as if I am a coach creating a game plan for the week.  There are three mental models of focus that I find helpful for me, getting clear, getting present, and embracing opportunity.

Getting Clear

Everything in process.  Nothing gathering dust.  Flow.

All the junk floating around in your head that you have captured and corralled, defined, systematized and ready for strategic action.

Once a week.  Every week. No Exceptions.

Ritualize the process so you can relax your mind and be  creative.  Knowing you will address things strategically each week lets your mind be clear, relinquishing the responsibility to keep it all under wraps. This weekly process will include a “mind sweep,” where you will be asking yourself probing questions to draw out any hidden projects, ideas, or commitments.

Get Present

One of the practices that takes getting used to in Living on Purpose is getting up to date with all your lists on a weekly basis.  In the the fast paced world within which we operate, we need time to catch up with what has been done, what needs to be done, and what are next actions are.

If flow is really happening for you, you will find yourself powering through a ton of actions, moving projects forward and in need of catching up with your progress.  Investing time each week to recalibrate will reward you not only in clarifying your map forward but in celebrating the success you have experienced.

Physically, this entails looking at all your next action lists, reviewing and projecting on your calendar, looking at all your projects to ensure they have next actions identified and placed on the appropriate list so when you are in action next week, you can build momentum and experience the “flow” that comes from being fully engaged.

Embrace Opportunity

What is possible now that you are all caught up.  Are there new opportunities you are ready to embrace, ideas that can come out of incubation and become active.  Knowing that you will revisit these lists and be forward thinking each week gives you the confidence to use the incubator in the first place.

When your mind is clear and you are mentally caught up with all the moving parts in your life, you will experience a release of energy and confidence that will enable you to take on the projects that have been stalled for fear of overwhelm.

You are now ready to dive in and Engage.

Get Out On the Edge! Misstep and You Die!

OK.  Maybe the safety harness will catch you, but only after you have banged rather violently against the cold, hard mountain.  Clinging to the face of a mountain by one’s fingertips is not a great place to get distracted or randomly take whatever action comes into your top of mind consciousness, wouldn’t you agree?

Imagine the level of focused attention one must bring to climbing.  There is no room for meandering thoughts about yesterday’s quarrel with your spouse or tomorrow’s strategic meeting.  None.  Every bit of your purposeful attention is required.

Be Here Now!

Maybe the negative consequence of “winging it” in your life is neither as immediate, nor as dramatic as climbing a rockface.  The fact that your death is not imminent does not make climbing your personal mountain less important.  Any activity can be transformed when you see it with the same characteristics that make climbing fully engaging. And you can do it with your feet on the ground.

Creating Effortless Performance

By designing our lives so they demand the best we have to give, we magnetize our attention to focus on the task at hand.  This puts us in an experience of “flow,” where even the challenges feel like an effortless performance. We feel a greater sense of control and paradoxically, time seems to both stand still and fly by simultaneously.  This experience of full engagement occurs when we let go of our little egoist representations of who we think we are and embrace the bigger, connected Self we have been meant to be. Expecting greatness of ourselves enables it to flourish.

Courageously Being

There is no safety net when you bring all of yourself to your life.  But there is also nothing from which you must be protected.  Living an authentic life where we no longer concern ourselves with how we are being perceived by the world frees us to be ourselves.  There is no other path to one’s greatness than being the best you.  Do you really think the person you make up could possible hold a candle to the one that the Universe already created?

I encourage you to play big games, walk on the edge and live a truly inspired life.   Tell me what you are up to in the comments, I would love to hear them!