☕️ saturday mornings #15
☕️ saturday mornings #15
honesty, hacking productivity & creating breakthroughs
Good morning all,
I hope you’re having a lovely Saturday.
Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of what I’ve been testing, learning and exploring over the past few days.
✍️Quote I’ve been thinking about:
“Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people.”
― Warren Buffett
📰Article I’ve been pondering:
Tim Ferriss’ Productivity System
In this article, Tim lays out the step-by-step process he leverages to tackle difficult tasks and stay two steps ahead of the competition, even on days he feels like doing nothing.
“Personally, I suck at efficiency (doing things quickly).
Here’s my coping mechanism and 8-step process for maximizing efficacy (doing the right things):
1) Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. E-mail is the mind killer.
2) Make a cup of tea (I like pu-erh) and sit down with a pen/pencil and paper.
3) Write down the 3-5 things — and no more — that are making you most anxious or uncomfortable. They’re often things that have been punted from one day’s to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. Most important usually = most uncomfortable, with some chance of rejection or conflict.
4) For each item, ask yourself:
– “If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?”
– “Will moving this forward make all the other to-do’s unimportant or easier to knock off later?”
5) Look only at the items you’ve answered “yes” to for at least one of these questions.
6) Block out at least 2-3 hours to focus on ONE of them for today. Let the rest of the urgent but less important stuff slide. It will still be there tomorrow.
7) TO BE CLEAR: Block out at least 2-3 HOURS to focus on ONE of them for today. This is ONE BLOCK OF TIME. Cobbling together 10 minutes here and there to add up to 120 minutes does not work.
8) If you get distracted or start procrastinating, don’t freak out and downward spiral; just gently come back to your ONE to-do.
Congratulations! That’s it.
You just need one rule: What you do is more important than how you do everything else, and doing something well does not make it important.”
Tim is effectively laying out a process to help people focus on the 20% of work that drives 80% of the results.
If you feel you struggle on some days to be productive, or guilty for not “optimizing” your time, I’d highly recommend learning more for yourself. For the full article, click here.
💡Idea I’ve been thinking about:
Tony Robbins’ “3 Steps to a Breakthrough”
The three steps to create a breakthrough in your life are: State-Story-Strategy.
The underlying idea is that at the beginning of your day, before you create your story in order to formulate a strategy for achieving a specific goal or tackling a problem, you want to improve your physical and mental state to be alert, awake and attentive.
The logic makes sense. If you’re in a positive and primed mental state before you begin to plan your day, obstacles you face are less likely to feel debilitating or downright depressing. If you are in an elevated state, that often will enable an optimistic story and your strategy will be more successful.
Everyone knows the days where they felt like conquering the world and days where it’s a struggle to get out of bed. Priming, simply put, puts you in the best position possible to have more days like the former. As far as I can tell, this is one of the reasons many world-class CEO’s exercise first thing in the morning.
Tony Robbins speaks a lot about the mind-body connection: how our mental state influences how we carry ourselves and our energy levels. But also, how we can seriously upgrade our thought patterns and energy levels by intentionally changing our physical state. Emotions are linked to movement in our bodies. The relationship works both ways.
So, you may be wondering, “this is all well and good, but what does this actually mean?”
This is what I’ve been to be both practical and helpful in my own life.
If I’m feeling negative, stressed, or strained as I start my day, instead of “gripping tighter” and trying to muscle through it (which is typically my default), I’ve been trying to take a step back and changing my physical state to shift my mental state.
This can involve: (i) fixing my posture, (ii) intentionally smiling (which spurs the release of positive neurochemicals and actually makes people feel happier), (iii) getting energy levels up.
To boost energy levels, I’ve found three strategies to be helpful (depending on how much time I have): (i) 20-30 minute workout, (ii) 30-45 second cold shower, (iii) 10-15 push-ups (or another mildly strenuous exercise of your liking).
It’s as simple as that.
Changing your physical state may sound whacky, but there’s some pretty serious scientific evidence supporting it. Often, “the difference between peak performance and poor performance is not intelligence or ability; most often it’s the state that your mind and body is in.”
Hopefully this has provided some helpful tools to put you back in the driver seat on days that aren’t going your way.
If your curiosity is piqued, read more about these steps here.
🖋️What I’m laughing at:
If anyone is looking to upgrade their email game …
That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.
And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter or by replying to this email. Which topic above is your favourite? What do you want more or less of? What challenges and ideas are you exploring or having fun with? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Just send a tweet to @tommy_dixon_ and put #saturdaymornings at the end so I can find it.
Thank you for reading. Have a splendid weekend.
Much love to you and yours,
Thomas