Productivity is more than just task lists, to-do systems and productivity apps. Productivity is getting the most out of every minute you engage in something. And includes everything from work, to play, to socializing, to exercise, and everything in between, even watching TV or doing nothing.
To me productivity is all about flowstate. That’s why I call it “Flowstate Productivity”. It’s not enough to “get things done” like a productive task robot. It’s about bringing all of who you are to everything you do. Savoring every moment you’re in flowstate, even work. In flowstate you come away fully satisfied that you couldn’t have done it any better, been more present and the outcome is exactly how it should’ve been. You fully experience and engage in the moment.
In flowstate your riding the wave of your intuition and skills coming together to make decisions and creative choices to meet and exceed the demands of the moment with ease and simplicity. Each task doesn’t drain you, in fact it re-energizes you to take on your next activity. Your left with more energy throughout the day. Now imagine having this experience in every aspect of everything you do, from when you wake up to when you go to bed.
If you want to experience life like every moment is a super concentrated bomb of life and flavor. Go throughout the day with less stress and anxiety, get it down to near zero. And not just get things done, but get them done with excellence, with your full engagement and more satisfaction and fulfillment. If you want to feel like everyday is a gift, a reward waiting to be opened. Then I might have some things I can share with you that might be helpful.
Eliminating unnecessary anxiety and stress is the biggest key to maintaining your energy level throughout the day. We don’t even realize how much anxiety, stress and fear we’re managing while we’re doing something. It’s like a pain we’re ignoring or a bad smell we’ve gone nose-blind to. But we’re expending all our energy just to manage that anxiety and stress just to get through our day and what we’re working on.
Subjectively, I would say it feels like 70-80% of my energy is just on managing the underlying stress and something like 20% is left for the task. This makes it take longer to complete what I’m doing, makes it feel like I’m not really at my best and not very satisfied of fulfilled with what I’ve done.
Anxiety, stress, fear, worry is stealing your productive energy. When I was able to remove the underlying negative energy, every activity felt easy, felt so much more fulfilling, was more efficient, took less time to complete and I could easily go from task to task without any downtime. No more procrastination. I’m able to pack my day with so many different things to do. But I still had way more sustained and consistent energy throughout the day. Doing more, with way more energy. Zero stress, has given me almost 10x energy throughout the day.
And ultimately, more energy means it’s easier to get in and out of flowstate. I like to say productivity is knowing how to manage your flowstate. Knowing the keys to easily get into flowstate. Knowing what takes you out of flowstate. Knowing why you don’t have the energy to get you into flowstate.
Getting more flowstate productivity starts with understanding how to manage your energy levels. And the biggest energy drains are anxiety, stress, worry and fear.
Here’s my Top 10 situations that cause anxiety and stress that zap energy levels
- Distraction from being present – replaying events in the past and thinking too much about things that haven’t happened yet.
- Putting off decisions and procrastinating.
- Micromanaging yourself and others.
- Perfectionism – having to get everything right and the fear of making mistakes.
- Overvaluing the result – identifying too heavily with the success or failure of an outcome.
- Mismanaged expectations – either unrealistic or unreasonable.
- Overthinking, over-calculating, over-analyzing, over-planning, over-trying.
- Multi-tasking – worrying about other things you need to do while you’re trying to focus on what you’re currently doing.
- Self criticism, judgment, negative self talk – second guessing what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and judging your outcome, results and performance.
- Feeling like you need to prove yourself to others and letting other people’s perceptions, judgments and criticisms dictate how you feel and what you tell yourself.
Eliminating these things that steal the energy to fuel for your flowstate will 10x your flowstate productivity. And these are the the kinds of things I write about. So stay dialed-in as I share more thoughts and insights on how I’ve approached and overcome these challenges and obstacles in an attempt to reach higher flowstate.
That was a list of things that zap energy. Here are three basic ways to recuperate and refill some of that energy; better sleep, nutrition and physical activity. Which I’ll follow up with in more detail in future offerings.