Do you want to structure and manage your time more effectively, completing important tasks and projects in a timely, professional manner?  

Then step one is to eliminate digital distractions that needlessly waste your time and cause added stress and brain fog in your life.

The solution is easy. Applying it can be challenging.

Why?

Scrolling through social media, checking texts, emails, and what’s happening on your favorite Apps is addictive.  There’s an endorphin rush and a feeling of connectivity associated with these activities, or you wouldn’t engage in them. 

Five minutes become fifteen, then forty-five and you’ve lost a chunk of time during your day.

Digital interruptions hijack your productivity, break your concentration, and interrupt the flow of thoughts, insights, and ideas that make you uniquely you.

Creativity flows best in a quiet, supportive work environment where you feel fresh, focused, and relaxed, where you’ve blocked off time and the distractions of the world so you can do the work that requires your immediate time and attention.

Finishing a task or project or the chunk of a task or project that you set aside for today creates an endorphin rush, as well.

And, this one isn’t transient.

It supports your productive, positive self for the rest of the day. It lays the foundation for future productive, positive moments in all areas of your life.

Your body-mind remembers the feeling of success, and no one can take that away from you.

Because social media, texts, emails, and your favorite Apps are an addiction, it’s not unusual to experience withdrawal symptoms similar to stopping smoking, gaming, drinking coffee, or consuming sugar. 

Have a plan in place in case you experience headaches, irritability, or fatigue.

Your ego and your body want that fix.  You need something to replace the addiction until you retrain yourself to say no and stay positive during your productivity blocks of time.

Here are a few suggestions:

Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose with the out-breath longer than the in-breath, and do this at least ten times. This physiologically takes your body out of fight-or-flight response and into rest and relax mode.

Take a 2-minute break, go outside, and breathe fresh air. Appreciate your feet on the ground and feel yourself fully present in your body and grateful for your life.

Remember something you’re grateful for: someone you love, a fun time you recently enjoyed, or anything that helps you focus on the bright side of life.

It’s amazing how quickly the body and mind adapt when you are determined to implement a new way of approaching time management that engenders success.

Success that supports your mental, emotional, and physical health, and positively changes how you feel about yourself.

During the transition phase, remember to be kind, patient, and tolerant with yourself.

If you fall back into that old way of being, review what happened.  

Ask yourself:

Why did I fall back into this pattern and program?

What did I learn about myself?

What could I do differently next time?

How would that look and feel?

Then visualize it and know it to be true. 

Feel and know that this is who you are now, committed, confident, and self-assured. This is the productivity, time-management path that works best for you.

Do you want to manage your time better, be more productive and focus on what matters?

Of course you do. Everyone wants time management skills, as they are a key to work-life balance. They give us the time to engage in other activities that are important to us.

The problem is that some of our time-management skills could use an upgrade. It’s not because we’re incompetent or don’t care; we’re smart, talented and care a lot.  

It’s not because we haven’t tried; we have.  It’s not because we don’t have the desire; we do.

It’s because we first need to master three skills:

Awareness

Being aware of how much time we have today to complete tasks, and how long each task will take.

Having design and organizational skills

Knowing how to design and organize our goals, plans, schedules, and tasks to make wise use of our time.

Being adaptable and flexible

Adjusting how much time we spend on an activity because of interruptions and shifting priorities.

Prioritizing what needs to be done.

Where do we start? 

While we are mastering these skills (the subject of another article), we give ourselves a win by deciding tonight what needs to be accomplished at work tomorrow. 

What's the most pressing? What's the priority that needs to be done?

It could be time consuming. We may dread tackling it. We may have procrastinated and pushed it to one side. 

Whatever the task is, that's where we'll begin first thing in the morning and work until done.

And we make a list of what needs to be done within the task, numbering those subtasks in order of importance.

We breathe, acknowledge a job well done, relax and enjoy our personal time.

And we overestimate how long it will take.  We give ourselves a generous window of time.

If it’s a project with a lengthier timeframe, we write down the tasks within the project that need to be done and choose the most pressing one to start and finish tomorrow,

Be honest.

We know in our heart-of-hearts the task that would put the biggest smile to have in our rearview mirror.

How does this help?

When we get to work, even if we work from home, we already know our priority and where to start.

This saves us time and energy and mitigates anxiety and stress.

And then there's the gift of completing our priority task: a big endorphin rush!

We are a successful person. We did what needed to be done.

We didn’t divert our energy into small tasks that can wait.

We stepped up to the plate and accomplished something noteworthy.

This sets us up for success the rest of the day.

Knowing that anything else we accomplish is icing on the cake.

Standing straighter. Holding our head up high, enjoying life a little bit more.

There's something special and joyful about making time for ourselves during our busy, event-filled days to release, relax and let go; to give ourselves the gift of resetting our internal clock and refreshing our batteries.

Let's set alarms on our cell phone or computer that signal 'mandatory' five-to-fifteen minutes breaks.  We can prepare for these 'breathers' with an ever-expand list of possibilities to choose from.

Some examples could be:

Dance to music I love.

Sing my favorite song.

Take deep breaths.

Appreciate nature.

Stretch my body.

Take a relaxing walk.

Take a hot shower.

Hydrate and breathe.

Lay in the grass.

Sit in the sun.

Take a power walk.

Sip tea and chill.

Lie down in a quiet, dark room.

We need breaks to nourish our body, mind, and soul.  Five-to-fifteen-minute breaks can erase the clutter, ease the stress, and give us a fresh start.

I don’t know about you, but some of my most productive times are at the beginning of the day when my mind is fresh, and during the last 2 hours of my day post shower when I feel refreshed. 

So know thyself. What do you need and when to stay fresh and relaxed?  What helps you to switch gears and start feeling more relaxed and able to do what needs to be done?

Give yourself the gift that keeps on giving to you and to everyone in your life: the joyful gift of loving, supportive, nurturing breaks.

There is such strength, depth, and courage in a grateful heart.  No matter how much we have on our plate, no matter how challenging or exhausting life may be and feel, gratitude is a game changer. 

It lights up our hearts. With gratitude, we appreciate the small moments of connection, we appreciate the light in our children’s eyes, the joy in their step, and blessing of having them in our lives.

With gratitude, we appreciate our health, the roof over our heads, the food that we eat, the car that we drive and our ability to be so much to so many, including ourselves.

Gratitude is the balm that heals us inside, that gives us a new perspective, that brings us fully present in the moment and able to enjoy it no matter what the phenomenon is on the ground.

Life is not easy on this beautiful planet. There’s a lot of dissension and stress.  There’s a lot of ‘us versus’ them energies, encouraging us to see the differences in each other, instead of the similarities. 

There’s a lot of focus on what we are not, not pretty enough, smart enough, successful enough, rich enough, good enough.

The Truth is: What we focus on is what we get more of in our lives. 

If we focus on everything that we find irritating, frustrating and unfair, we will attract more things in our lives that feel irritating, frustrating, and unfair. 

If we focus on what we’re grateful for, the moments that make our heart sing and open us up to more love, then we will attract more of that, more moments to be grateful for, more moments of experiencing the love and support that is within us and available to us.

Take a moment and look at your life. What are you grateful for?  What could you be grateful for?  Where could you welcome more gratitude, appreciation, and love into your heart?

We can start with the foundations in life: the roof over our heads, our car and comfortable bed, the food in our fridge and pantry. We can be grateful for all the things that we have and don’t have to worry about, the things that keep us safe and bring comfort into our lives.  We can choose to take nothing for granted and see what we’ve created for ourselves with new eyes.

We can notice that how we are, the presence that we bring to our family that impacts our experience. Is it loving or not?  If not, how could I bring more gratitude and love to myself and them? What do I need to feel and act differently?  What would it look like to bring my patient, loving heart to myself and the people in my life?

A simple way to upgrade our experience is to start and maintain a Gratitude Log: Each evening we record two things that we are grateful for and appreciate in our heart of hearts.  Every morning, we read what we’ve written in the past 48 hours, allow that gratitude to sink into our hearts and to become a part of us as we go about our day.

With our Gratitude Log, we remember what we love about our life.  We remind ourselves what brings us joy, the moments that bless our lives every day. Gratitude turns our angry, frustrated, irritable self into a being filled with contentment and joy. 

We choose how we see and experience the world. We choose how we respond to the events in our lives. We can acknowledge our feelings and flood ourselves with our gratitude, appreciation, and love.

We can start and finish each day with, “Thank you, truly thank you for all the blessings in my life.”  A grateful heart supports a balanced, peaceful life.  We create work-life balance from the inside out as we bring a grateful heart to ourselves, our life, and the world.