Productivity Advice is Distracting You From This.

So here's a radical idea for how you can have a productive peaceful day. You do one thing at a time. That's it. That's the radical idea. And it is radical because we've gotten so far away from the truth, the obviousness of how things get done that to say it just very plainly and simply like It's almost like insulting that I'm making a video on it. It's like, how? It's uninteresting what I'm saying is or how not insightful it is, right? It's so basic. You do one thing at a time, but that is such like I've written a book on procrastination recently and there's how many books on productivity and procrastination out there. But if you if you boil it down, remove all the noise from everything and maybe you're just looking at a person who is having a productive day. And we might say, well, what's their secret? What's that person's secret? But you know what you'd find if you just took away all the noise? You'd be looking at a person doing one thing at a time. That's what it would look like. That's all that's happening. Take off all the analysis and all the different philosophies and strategies. It's doing one thing at a time. And I actually think if you listen to a lot of spirituality, You know, and. mindfulness stuff, they talk about being present. That's actually a very practical working definition I have of presence, which is to do one thing at a time, to be with the thing you're doing instead of trying to juggle or mentally be somewhere else with five other things while you're doing one thing. This brings us to a very, very useful strategy, really. And the strategy is to do one thing at a time in life. And really what that means is to forego The need for big, elaborate plans. Decisiveness is still needed. Okay, what am I going to do for the next thing? And learning how to do that, that's the topic and the focus of my book is how you actually show up for the commitments and what you do after you don't show up. The book is called After You Don't Show Up. But effectively, it's doing training. When we are becoming consistent and procrastination is a thing of the past for us, what we will always come back to is we'll notice Someone asks you, what is your secret? Well, I do one thing at a time. And I'm training myself not to think about anything else. Now, I would say having boundaries with everything, right? I'm doing one thing and it has boundaries around it, right? It's a small doable thing I'm committing to. I'm not committing to doing one thing at a time and that thing is open-ended and has no boundaries around it. But effectively, that's what it is. It's just doing one thing at a time. It's what is the next thing, right? And committing to that and foregoing the need to have a big elaborate plan about how the entire day should unfold before the day has even begun, right? So I really want you to listen to this because it sounds so basic, right? But really, I'm inviting you to grapple with the penetrating truth in this idea that you do one thing at a time. The simplicity, the emotional and psychological freedom it can give you. The effectiveness of this idea, right? When I'm committed to doing one thing at a time, that means I'm not thinking about other things. I'm fully present for what I'm doing, giving it the attention that it needs, maybe. And we're letting go of the plan, the perfect plan, that the day needs to go exactly how I've mapped it out two weeks ago or last night, right? I often think of planning as, you know, we write this big elaborate plan and like, okay, that helps me feel better in the moment. But the implementation of it, well, that's a problem for future me to deal with, right? Future you isn't, or present you, right, who has received that plan from past you, doesn't really appreciate those plans. Those plans put enormous pressure on you. So there's an alternative. I'm not saying you don't plan and let it go. I'm saying you step into this philosophy I'm talking about, which is I do one thing at a time. Another kind of way of saying that is I never focus on finishing anything. I focus on starting. What's the next thing? Okay. When will I start? Okay. And then I start. And that's all I'm doing until it's finished, right? And ideally with a boundary around it so that it's not this open-ended commitment that your nervous system will get intimidated by. So that's a short video today, but it's worth repeating again and again and again. How do you have a productive day? You do one thing at a time. The next thing. And the trick is training yourself in that, in that I'm not going to think about everything else. What's the next easy doable step for me? Small step that has boundaries around it. So that's what I would invite you to sit with. I talk about this idea near the end of the book. The book is really more about the inability to show up for commitments. How do you show up for your commitments consistently? Because that's about the development of something I call self trust. It's not about discipline or willpower. If you can get that self trust thing down and you're able to show up for the commitments, you will notice At the end of the day, at the end of the week, how were you productive? You were doing one thing at a time. You were making small commitments and showing up for them. And you look back and you notice, that's interesting. A lot of stuff got done. And I didn't even have a plan to do it. I just made a sequence of choices and commitments to doing one thing at a time. And usually you look back at the end of the week with a great sense of gratitude for yourself. Instead of this guilt-reinforcing thing of, well, I had 92 things on my to-do list, but I only did 87 of them. Well, that's not really very good, is it? Even if you do all 92, you don't really get any gratitude or what you feel is, well, I mean, I met the commitments, I suppose. I'm supposed to do that. So the strategy of only committing to the next thing, doing one thing at a time. As opposed to having a big elaborate plan, it actually opens you up psychologically to experience more gratitude for yourself, right? And to be able to give yourself more validation for the actions you've taken. So that's the idea. Only focus on the next thing, right? Doing one thing at a time because that is how you will have a productive day. Hope that's useful. Links to work with me one-to-one and to buy my book. And also we have a group on Tuesdays and we meet for an hour and a half. So if you're interested, those resources are there as well. Take care and I'll talk with you again soon. Bye-bye.