How often do you find your mind feeling fuzzy? You get up, step into the home office and your to do list hits you like a ton of bricks. Before you even open up your email, you’ve lost your train of thought because of a chance encounter with a coworker’s problem and then your supervisor has assigned you something new to do too.
By the time lunch rolls around, your morning priorities have disappeared under the tyranny of the urgent and your true priorities have are now as afar away as the moon.
How do you find clarity of purpose and work intentionally in a distracted world?
- Turn things off to tune in.
One thing my clients say often is they feel overwhelmed with the choices of technology and unable to really slow down and order their minds to figure out what they need to actually do to get ahead. It’s one thing to have a goal; it’s another thing to actually sit down and work towards the goal productively when you have the time to do so.
It’s easy to say, hard to do. But when you sit down to do something, turn off your social media. Turn off the notifications on your phones. If you work in an open plan office, put in headphones and find a quiet corner to block external noise.
And often it’s the internal noise that gets to us most of all. It’s the noise of the critic or the perfectionist that gets inside of us. And so, turn it off and tune into your ability to get stuff done, good enough, because you’re worthy of success.
2. One thing at a time.
Multitasking really isn’t the best for us. It’s something that we try to to do to feel important, like we can actually get some stuff done. And yet, we don’t get anything done as well as we could if we start and stop something.
If we work on something and then start another project. It’s called context switching and our brains just can’t handle it. We are designed to give our full attention, the full power of our minds, to something right in front of us to do it well.
And so, save yourself and do a few things well instead of many things haphazardly.
3. Say no, and don’t feel bad about it.
It’s easy to say yes to a lot of things at home and at work. And yet, by saying no and holding true to our own standards, we are able to protect ourselves from doing things poorly, from stress and overwhelm. It’s when we say a half-hearted yes that we lose the true power of our creative will. It’s when we say a full yes to the few important things so that we can truly succeed.
It’s old-fashioned advice in a new digital social media world. Slow down to get ahead.
In what ways do you find yourself needing to slow down to gain clarity in your business? I’d love to chat and help you discover some strategies to get from where you are to where you want to go, so you can have greater income and impact in the days ahead.
