Quit Talking About It and Do It Already

What happened?

You just looked at the clock and it is the end of the day, and you did not do what you intended to do. Although it was on your list of things to do, you talked about it, you made the plans, yet you never got to it.

How is that possible? Retrace your steps during a typical working day.

“what the hell happened?” by Jonathan Rados on Unsplash

Email.

Facebook.

Instant messaging

Meeting

Email

Phone call.

Meeting

Another phone call.

More (a metric buttload more) instant messages.

Meeting.

Email.

.

.

.

Huh, look at that at, the end of the day.

And you did not do a single thing on your list.

“person distracted by their stupid smartphone” by Erik Lucatero on Unsplash

Now let’s look at the weekend. The intent is to work on Halloween costumes or carve pumpkins, or .

Coffee

Email

Web searches

News

Exercise

Xbox

Chores

Grocery shopping.

XBox

Cleaning

Dinner prep.

Dinner

Movie or TV

Bedtime.

Well, damn, I never worked on the costumes or carved the pumpkins or the other things I intended to do. I talked about doing it. Even argued about doing it. And didn’t. What do you think the problem is?

Priority.

“there are only so many clicks in the day, make them worthwhile” by Phil Desforges on Unsplash

You did not find the tasks you were intending to complete and the most important thing to do. I, unfortunately, do this myself every day and there are a number of tasks that I keep pushing them off. 

Now what?

You have to make the activity you want to complete the most important thing on your list. Really really make it the most important thing. Meaning you ignore everything else, no matter how badly you want to check email. No matter how “important” you may think it is to remain in contact with the outside world.

Most importantly, you need to break your pattern of behavior. We easily fall into a pattern of activity that burns excessive amounts of time daily. To hack this, you need to start by turning off those distractions. It will force you to begin to deliberately break your normal day-to-day activities.

This act of breaking, um, your activity pattern, will enforce your skills to be sure you are doing something that is anomalous to your actions. It will help you build a new habit of actually doing the real things on your list that have value.

This is hard to do. It is practically a withdrawal when you pull away from social media such as email and messaging. Because they have become so habitual, they feel like they are the most important thing to do.

How many times do you check your phone daily? OH MY GOD, I MISSED A MESSAGE, oh, wait never mind, it was just a Google News search update. Meanwhile, the bus just ran you down because you were distracted from the most important thing at the moment, which was crossing the street.

What do you think is the most important thing? (note — I already removed the distractions below)

So when your son or daughter comes to you and asks, “Dad, can you help me build my costume?”

When your partner comes to you and asks if you will assemble the Ikea furniture while they go to the grocery store.

Your boss asks you to finish the voice over for the training slides that are required for the upcoming safety shutdown.

Is email or XBox or random distractions the most important thing? Unless your screen name is Ninja, no.

“I am sorry I did not pick up the dry cleaning, I was too busy playing cards” by Joanna Nix on Unsplash

Make sure you take the time to pay attention and focus on the most important things. Do not allow trivial distractions to get in the way. Admittedly it is harder than you think and it takes lots of practice. You have to make choices. The choice is to focus on the most important thing and you need to remain disciplined to finish the most important thing.

Go forth and be brilliant.