I want to share with you what I see as the best productivity secret on the planet.
That may sound like a really bold statement, but for 15 years, I have been studying productivity, doing every course I can find, reading all the books, and being really fascinated with being productive.
I think the reason I have this fascination is I have a bit of an obsession with time. It’s loosening its grip on me now, but for most of my adult life, I remember always feeling rushed, feeling like, “I’ve got to do a lot of stuff” because I’m a productive person. I like to be a higher achiever, I’ve always had my to-do lists, even before I was in business.
I remember going into my job at my desk and before I left in the evening or afternoon, whatever it was back then, I used to leave a little Post-It note with the things that I’m going to pick up in the morning.
Now, that was just common sense, right? That was just an insight I had then that made sense.
I hadn’t read any productivity books back then. It turns out that’s one of the key things that you do to be productive. I remember years ago sitting in my office and I bought this course from Tony Robbins about productivity and gosh, it took so much time to go through it. That was the first thing that was funny. I thought, “Wow, this is supposed to be on productivity and time.” It took me forever to go through it and I don’t know if I even made it through, it was so intense, which is the nature of Tony Robbins’ stuff.
There is some great stuff in it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just to share with you the obsession I’ve had with time and productivity.
Then, I was a big fan of Eben Pagan’s Wake Up Productive and I found that course to be really cool. I loved that. There was lots of stuff in that that I really enjoyed that really helped me.
Again, I’ve distilled it down so that I’m pretty productive without having to think about it that much.
More and more, I’m seeing the true nature of how humans operate and why we get in our own way. As I do I need less of these strategies and artificial boundaries to help me be productive.
What I want to share with you today is a shortcut.
Now, if you’re a productivity fan, you love shortcuts, right? This is the best shortcut that I’ve seen in all of these years that I’ve been studying and sharing all of this stuff on productivity and time and how to get more done.
It is simple. Who would have known?
It’s about trusting yourself.
It’s about trusting yourself to handle whatever shows up.
When you begin to really trust yourself (which is what everything I’m doing now is pointing to), it’s all about you connecting up with the real you, being able to trust yourself more and follow your own guidance.
When you start to see how it works for yourself, you can drop all of the prepping to be perfect. There’s so many ways you can save hundreds of hours every year once you trust yourself more. I’m seeing this play out time and time again in my own life and in that of my high achieving clients.
It’s like it’s become almost funny for me, the way I see it playing out. When I’m now able to drop the idea that I’m going to create some perfect podcast, for example, or blog post, I don’t really need to spend a lot of time preparing it because I’ve got this trust. I’ve got this trust that my inspiration or intuition or guidance is going to show up for me and tell me what to say so I don’t need to be up late the night before I’m going to make a podcast or a class or something, agonizing over how I’m going to make it perfect, you see?
Right there, you have potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in your career saved just because you’re preparing less because you’ve got more trust in actually being able to show up.
When you’re living more in the moment, this is just a really practical side effect of the fearless principles that I share. It’s when you are not living in the past or living in the future. Living in the future is worrying about how your presentation will be, how your client will respond to what you say, being perfect, giving a talk that is word-perfect and you can almost predict exactly what will happen which is pure illusion.
When we think of it logically, it’s absolutely impossible anyway. All of the worrying and stressing is drastically reduced and gives you back hours of your life. I’m not kidding.
If you’re not constantly preparing to be perfect, which is how I see it, then just think of the hours you have back to actually create stuff, fresh stuff, new stuff, to enjoy your life, just to have a better experience of your life and business.
You have a clear mind and this thing I’ve been pointing to is just such a great metaphor. I think of this connection we have to something bigger than ourselves; where we get our inspiration from, where ideas come from, when our mind is quiet, it’s like a Wi-Fi connection and it’s open 24/7.
It’s like you’ve got access to it all the time and it’s there to give you these beautiful insights and aha moments that are perfect for you. You just don’t get them; you can’t hear them when you’re so busy preparing for something in the future that you don’t even really know how it’s going to unfold or what’s going to happen, but you’re trying to manipulate the future.
I hope that makes sense to you.
That’s been a huge, huge insight for me with this whole “I must be productive. I must prepare.” We could do a whole thing around Ps. I could come up with the 7 Ps, the 4 Ps, the famous Ps in marketing, right.
We could have a whole big P thing going around on the productivity secrets. We’re just dropping that now.
We’re going to be human and we’re going to be able to be more productive just by trusting ourselves more and being present with what’s actually showing up in our life, not what we think might be showing up a few days down the line.
I’ve personally saved hundreds of hours in journaling. This was one of the big things that I shared with my coach when I was first introduced to the principles.
I saved so many hours of journaling, fretting over what’s going on in my life and having to write it out and thinking that that’s the way that I need to operate.
Now, nothing wrong with journaling, but if you’re spending hundreds of hours journaling, and actually at the end of the day, you’re probably not much better off, then you’ve got to question, “Is that really very productive?”
If you’re wondering where your time’s going, that’s something for me personally that was a huge time saver because I could use that time actually to write a book rather than fretting over my journaling, right.
For me, I’m much more able to see what I want now because my mind’s clearer.
Yes, I still have stages where I feel all confused. That’s just human. I know it will settle down soon. I know it will pass quickly if I just let it. I don’t need a quick fix-it magic bullet course to tell me how to do something to make everything all right.
I’m not in that illusion anymore that that’s the answer to everything. I’m able to buy courses in a much calmer way. If I want to learn something or I want to do something or I want to be part of a community or a group, then it’s cool. I do it, but I don’t do it in this desperation like I see so many people doing.
It’s not going to be the magic bullet that’s going to save their life.
What a lot of pressure to put on a course and on yourself. You have got your own in-built sat nav. Seriously, you have it. You know what’s right for you better than anybody else. That’s what I want to show you how to navigate more.
That’s what’s been life-changing for me after 30 years of trying to fix myself. It’s just the biggest game-changer. It’s the biggest productivity secret on the planet when you need to stop looking outside for all of the answers and you can just settle down and find them right under your nose.
Imagine how much time you can save. I hope that’s given you a few little insights or got you thinking in a different way today.
Rachel Henke is the author of Living Fearlessly. Download your Living Fearlessly Free Kit and get started today at https://www.livingfearlessly.co.uk
Originally published as a podcast.
Originally published at medium.com