Last night after talking with my roommate for hours and sending her this hilarious SomeeCard, I knew I would be revisiting one of my favorite programs: Wake Up Productive.
It’s from my mentor Eben Pagan and it’s full of all the good stuff to help me focus on the Important Things in my life.
So I’m at the point in the training (the Introduction!) where he’s sharing his 11 Productivity Principles.
He suggested taking notes, so I figured I’d take my notes here, and then share what each of the tips brings up for me.
Because hey – if I’m not making sense of what he’s saying in a way that’s useful to me, listening to his program would be no better than watching Gray’s Anatomy. It’d just become mindless “TV” which I’m so not into watching. And I’m totally into getting the most of this program – because it rocks and so do I.
So – let’s strut out the Productivity Principles!
1. Everyone Can Be Productive (And Creative)
Notes: It depends on whether we’re in the optimal conditions: do we require structure or a blank canvas? What is the context?
When do I feel most creative and productive? What are the conditions? What’s the environment? Who is around? What kind of structure (or lack of structure) was there? Look at the last 3 times you felt creative and productive. What commonalities were there?
Talent implies something that is inate. Inborn. You can take this and develop it into a skill, you can turn it into a Strength. Then you can become a master. You need to identify your Inner Talents. And develop them into Strengths.
What This Brings Up For Me…
I love knowing that everyone can be productive and creative. I totally agree. It just depends on whether or not that conditions have been set up for that particular person to flourish in those ways. It requires being honest with ourselves about how we work best – and not wishing that we would perform as someone else does.
I am a productive and creative type person within certain structures and frameworks. If I have a blank canvas in front of me, I wouldn’t know what to paint or where to start. But if someone said, here’s a blank canvas, paint a picture of a house with some trees and a little garden in the backyard. Make a daytime scene and put some animals in it too…
Well, THEN I would have some context for painting and I could be productive and creative on that canvas.
So it’s important for me to know about myself that I require some structure in order to be my best Productive and Creative self.
2. Managing Time Is Actually About Managing Yourself.
Notes: “Time management is a misnomer. The challenge is to manage ourselves.” – Steven Covey:
You can’t really manage time. It just flows. We all get the same amount of it.
Managing time is actually impossible. But if you say you want to learn how to manage yourself better, that’s a whole new level of insight. We’ll discover, we’re not as in control of ourselves as we think. We’re more like robots – waking up and doing the same things everyday, thinking the same things, worrying about the same things…and we’re just laying the same pavement down over and over.
What This Brings Up For Me…
Oh how I’ve been a pavement putter-downer. Thick sturdy roads I’ve been building. Very robotic in the things I’m thinking and feeling on a regular basis. Things I worry about. Things I avoid. Things I do. Auto-pilot, default. And I haven’t even been wearing a cool orange construction worker vest. Boo.
Even though I sometimes think I’m making intentional choices about things during my day (which sometimes I am) the large part of my day is highly unintentional and I’m really just going through the motions without much awareness. (Sorry to bust your little Ego Bubble of “I’m in charge of my day, Mona.”)
I am clearly not in charge of my day – and have had blocks preventing me from being in charge – because truly if I were in charge, I would have had some Big Projects DONE so that I could feel good about them and move on with things. But they aren’t done. Because I’m not in control and have not been able to “make myself” do them. In that sense, I’ve been a victim to my robotic default patterns.
So I’m very excited to become more aware of myself and intentional about how my day goes.
3. We Have 3 Brains – Not Just One
Notes: Lizard. Mammalian. Conscious.
We tend to think that we are in our Conscious, Thinking, Human brain all the time.
The reality is that we’re not. We’re deeply affected by our Lizard (the old Limbic system physical brain) and the Mammalian (Emotional, feeling brain).
These brains all work well individually, but they’re not very connected. We tend to feel pulled in different directions because our brains are not in good rapport with each other. Conflict comes from the 3 brains not working together.
What This Brings Up For Me…
I’ve studied a lot about the 3 brains and what their functions are. And I’ve gotten tons of benefit from it because it helped me take all the stuff going on in my head Less Personally. That was huge for me.
It was huge because it helped me realize that I am not all that stuff swirling around in my mind…feeling like a crazy person with schizophrenia because at one moment I’m loving and kind (mammalian brain in high gear) and the next I’m wanting to bite someone’s head off (primal lizard brain getting triggered.)
Knowing that that’s part of how my brain is set up – and that that’s how it’s evolved over time – give me the courage to say,
“Oh, okay brain. I get it. This is what you’re doing right now. You’re doing your job perfectly. I totally understand why you’re creating thoughts and feeling like this.”
It’s like me finally understanding that the heart’s job is to pump blood through my body. My 3 brains’ job is to be lizard-like, mammal-like, and rational-like at different times. And what I can do, the I that witnesses the 3 brains, what I can do is help them understand each other. I get to help them be in relationship with each other. And I get to stop taking them all so personally and blaming them for ruining my life. Awesome.
#4 Habit Is Destiny
“First you shape your habits, then they shape you.”
We have what you could almost think of as Freeways in our 3 brains.
- Physical roadways
- Emotional roadways
- Logical roadways
Actual thing: Mylenation (sp?) Happens in the brain. It lays down Myelin so that the thought becomes easier and easier to think.
Globules of emotion in our cells…when the system sends a signal to release it, it goes all over body.
Emotions are the most powerful and addictive chemicals in existence. – Jerry Ballinger.
The more we spend time in those emotions, the stronger the pavement on that path gets and we do that more naturally (even if it doesn’t feel good.)
If you sit with poor posture, you pave the road to that physically. And at some point you can’t HELP that you’re sitting with bad posture. Because the road has been so paved. So you have to consciously make new choices to start paving a different physical habit.
Suggestion: Start to notice that most of the stuff you do Physically, Emotionally, and Logically are the same things you do all the time because of the way you’ve paved them.
We’re going to work on changing things at the Habit Level.
What This Brings Up For Me
I used to be SO resistant to this idea of having record grooves in my brain, or pathways that I created.
I resisted it because I was so entrenched in the stories, so deep down in the groove/ditch that I could not even see up to the top where the sky was. Because I couldn’t see anything else, I really couldn’t believe that anything else was possible. I couldn’t even conceive that there could be another pathway that I could create or that I could get out of the hellish one I was in. It seemed hopeless…and really, really, really hard.
From where I sit now, I have a higher vantage point.
I totally get that there are grooves that I’ve created in my life. Just like the paths in the yard where the dog walks regularly and the dirt is showing more. I have those same kinds of grooves in my mind for things I do physically (like getting out of the shower and toweling off my face first then my left arm. I do it ALL the time this way.) And emotionally when I hear news I wasn’t expecting and I feel disappointed. I’ve established that pathway. It goes from News I Wasn’t Expecting straight to Disappointment Land. Well-worn path.
So…it’s time to lay some new Yellow Brick Roads that I can follow. Ones that feel better. That support me in having everything I desire. I’m ready to lay some new pavement. And carve my initials in it and put my hand print in it forever too.
Productivity Principles 5-11 will be coming in later posts. Stay tuned…
In the meantime…
- Which of these principles resonates most with you?
- Which one could you make use of right away?
- Which ones rub you the wrong way and make you want to kick them to the curb?
