How To Be Consistent When You Think You Have No Time | by Leonie Worrell

Which one is better: Motivation or consistency? They are both great of course, but motivation has the tendency to arrive late. This leaves you to procrastinate, feel downhearted and unproductive. 

A Step By Step Process That Works:

1. Massive Braindump
Braindump all of the open tabs in your mind. You could do this in a notebook, Google doc or voice note. Don't get me wrong our brains are great but having loads of tasks swimming around in our minds isn't helping anyone and is not very sustainable

2. Master Your Internal Triggers 

Have you ever walked outside and it's colder than you thought? Our body then decides to tell our brain to get warmer, so our next action is to run back in the house to grab a jacket. If we want to “get sciency”, it's called having an Homeostatic response. This is an example of what happens to us psychologically after we have created our brain-dumps. Our internal triggers are feelings that we have that put us off doing an important task. Based on the Homeostatic response we are constantly trying to escape uncomfortable situations. Nir Eyal, lecturer and investor known for his bestselling book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, says that “Time management is pain management”. Meaning that when you are creating this massive mind dump there may be some tasks that are painful to look at because they might push you to the next level, ie a promotion, or starting a new business, but because they seem daunting you avoid it, or self sabotage an opportunity because neurologically speaking we are always escaping discomfort. 

However, rather than escaping the discomfort, instead, try to surf the urge of escapism. Acknowledge the discomfort, even feel sorry for yourself in that moment when you look at this list. It will calm down after a while because you have given yourself grace and self compassion to do so. 

3. Review Your List And Make Good Decisions!
The Eisenhower Matrix with a twist. 

a) What can be deleted?
Shocker! Just because you have a thought or idea it doesn't mean we have to do anything with it.
🎇 Insightful moment - Half of your brain dump is probably written down because you are worried about something happening in the future versus this being something that addresses a problem you are experiencing right now.  If it's not something that solves a real problem you have classified as a key initiative now, delete it (or put it in the car park for later) Post-it notes are life at this stage!
b) What can be delayed?
Compare against your bigger goals and review your current capacity for the week. Push back and say “not right now” to anything that isn't a vital need at this moment in time.
c) What can be delegated?
Do I need to be the one that completes this? If not, what level of instruction, context or explanation do they need from me to be successful in completing this for me? 
d) What can be done TODAY?
You should only be left with essential tasks.
Pick your BIG 3 - I'll pick my big 3 for the day based on on my energetic capacity and reschedule things that require me to be on camera ready for later in the week

4. Consolidate Your External Triggers
Your external triggers, in a nutshell,  are anything that makes you turn left to right constantly throughout the day and distracts you from the goal/s. E.g Whats Apps, Slack messages, emails, children, pets and hunger. Have a look at your day to day and ask yourself. Are my external triggers i.e. emails, slack notifications, whats app groups, children, meetings taking over my day? If not, then you are superhuman, however, if not join the club. 

In the context of this article it's important that we stick to what you can and are allowed to control depending on what is required as part of your job and other responsibilities. However, the most important point to take into consideration is that if you  give a specific amount of time in your diary you are still reacting to them but they are in your control. In your dairy, give yourself an exact time frame called “REACTIVE TASKS - Emails / Slacks etc.” for when you are going to tackle all emails and slacks. This can be repeated as much as you need to be successful in your day. Don’t forget, people reply to those emails so it's important to put in that time too. You can even go a step further and write an automated response that satisfies whoever is emailing you. Be open that you are going to start responding to emails at whichever time you pick that works for you. 

5. Make Time For DEEP WORK
Put time in your calendar to get these harder, bigger and  important tasks done first. It's essential that you schedule this as a priority. In the book  The 12 Week Year, Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington say that “We’re held back from achieving our potential, not by a lack of ideas, but by a lack of consistent execution.”

Ideas are only powerful when they are acted on. When we don't execute things well, it shatters our confidence and self belief over and over again. When this keeps happening it confirms the negative belief of incompetence where you are actually competent. A conundrum of absolute stress is created.  Your ideas are normally fine, but evidence shows that the consistent application of best practice will improve results significantly. 

a) When are you most productive?

Whenever that is, put it in your diary as “Focus- Deep Work Time”. Repeat as you see fit throughout the year.  

b) Make a note of what needs to be done in this time frame.

Try to be as detailed as possible so that this reduces the thinking time and increases productivity in the moment.

Leonie Worrell is a People Leadership coach at Multiverse.