Your dream matters – Protect it!

Phew, I’ve finally worked my way all the way through Rory Vaden’s Procrastinate on Purpose. It’s been a fascinating journey of self-discovery, as I have honed in on what really speaks to me in each chapter so I can put it into practice in my own life and share my insights with you.

His framework of what he refers to as a  “Focus funnel,” with 5 permissions (Ignore, Invest, Imperfect, Incomplete and Protect) and their 5 corresponding choices (Eliminate, Automate, Delegate, Procrastinate and Concentrate) is an incredibly helpful structure for examining the choices we make with our time and attention every waking minute of our lives.

I like the image of a funnel – wide at the top and narrow at the bottom – it’s a great visual for picturing the literally thousands and thousands of items competing for our attention at any given moment – tasks, information, demands, priorities, agendas, (our own and others’), swirling around our heads, each screaming “Me! Me! Me!”

How do we ever figure out what the heck to pay attention to amidst this overwhelming ocean of possibilities?

Well, as I’ve learned from reading this book, far too often we pay attention to what is screaming the loudest, what Vaden calls the “tyranny of the urgent.”

We cave in to other people’s ideas of what we should be doing, and ignore what really, truly matters.

For a variety of noble reasons – we don’t want to let people down, we don’t want to seem selfish, we want to be team players, and on and on… we over commit, we agree to do things that aren’t really right for us, we end up spending our precious hours and days in the service of… everything except what is truly Significant.

And what is that?  I share Vaden’s belief that we are put on this earth to do something that nobody else can do – to fulfill our unique purpose that is ours and ours alone to complete. 

But how can we do that if we are constantly spending our time serving other’s people’s needs?

Hence, the need to Protect, fiercely protect, mama bear kind of protect, our time and out attention. So we can concentrate on what matters.

Here’s the question Vaden proposes we continually ask ourselves:

“Is what I’m doing right now the most significant use of my time?”

In other words, is this task moving me towards my greatest contribution to the world? Is it allowing me to be my highest and best self?

If not, the answer is clear. Not always easy, but clear.

Stop doing the little things for now, so you can concentrate on the big ones. Protect your Priority.

So dear reader, here’s Vaden’s question for you today: ”What do you need to give yourself permission to concentrate on?”

Patience...A Forgotten Virtue

On the path to kick procrastination in the butt, Rory Vaden has asked us to answer three important questions.

In the Eliminate stage, it was, “Is this task something I can live without?”

In the Automate stage, it was “Can this task be systematized?”

In the Delegate stage, it was “Can this task be performed by someone else?”

If the answer to those three questions is No, then guess what?  It’s our turn to do something!

But before we jump head first into the task, there is an essential element to consider.

Timing.

Finally, the title of Vaden’s book, Procrastinate on Purpose, starts to makes sense.

Seems counterintuitive, uncomfortable even, but he is challenging us to… wait.

What? Wait?  I thought we didn’t want to procrastinate!

Turns out there is a big difference between avoiding something because it is uncomfortable to do it (procrastinating), and deliberately postponing something because it is not actually the right time to do it (being patient).

Hence, Procrastinating on Purpose. 

Turns out many great minds are on the same page when it comes to patience and timing:

“Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is "timing;"

it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.”

​​​​​​~Fulton J. Sheen

“The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.”

​​​​​~Joshua Harris

Or my favorite:

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

​​​​​~Willie Nelson

Patience… sadly lacking in today’s climate of rush, rush, rush.

Patience gives us time to pause, to think, to breathe, to allow what is truly important to rise to the surface, for external conditions to become clear, for our own priorities to become clear.

Patience gives us room to breathe, so we are not madly sprinting from urgent task to urgent task, but instead taking stock of what is truly important, so that when we do take action, we do so in alignment with our spirit. We can be fully present to the task at hand, knowing that we are indeed doing the right thing at the right time, for the right reasons.

Give yourself some love: Permission to invest in You

I must admit I got a little bogged down in the first part of this chapter on Automation in Rory Vaden's Procrastinate on Purpose since it dealt with compounding interest.  My eyes tend to glaze over and my brain gets foggy when I hear phrases like this. But simply put, compounding interest is the interest added to the principal so the added interest also earns interest. It’s actually pretty darn important. If I’d understood that 30 years ago I’d probably be a whole lot wealthier!

The bottom line, states Rory Vaden, is that “anything that wastes your time is a waste of your money.”  And what follows “Automation is to your time what compounding interest is to your money.”

What he’s saying is that we all waste a lot of time doing tasks over and over again that could be either automated. Yet we have so many excuses not to invest in systems or services that will automate these repetitive tasks and save us time (and thus money).

I can’t afford it.  I don’t have the time to do this right now.

Sound familiar?

Here’s a line that jumped out at me: “… each moment that you don’t do the things you know you should be doing, you are stealing from your future self.”

Wow, that one stopped me in my tracks. How often do we stop and think about our future selves?  It’s different somehow than merely thinking about the future. I actually have a responsibility to my future self. What I do, or don’t do now, is going to affect her well being, her happiness, her success. And I'm rather fond of my future self. So I better be good to her!

I started wondering what I could automate now that will not only make my life easier today, but will benefit my future my self too. Here are some fabulous suggestions.

So dear reader, what tasks are you doing again and again that you could invest time or money into automating?

Believe me, present day you and future you are worth it!  So give yourself some love and give yourself permission to invest in You!

Getting things done – or getting results?

Don’t you just love checking things off your to-do list and feeling very productive and efficient as a result?  I did.

But as I learned from reading about the next myth that Rory Vaden busts open in Procrastinate on Purpose, it’s not just about being efficient, or even effective – it’s all about efficacy – or getting results.

 I know, it seems like semantics.

The point is – it’s all too easy (as I know from personal experience) to focus on all the things we did, rather than on what resulted from what we did.

Yes, I can look back at the dozens of notebooks sitting in my office cupboard with lots and lots of to-do’s checked off – but more importantly, what were my results? Did I make the world a better place?  Did I create something of value? Did I improve my bottom line in a significant way? Did I contribute to the whole?

Those are the questions I want to ask myself. Those are the activities and tasks that I am choosing to focus on.

So here is my Monday suggestion to you, valued reader – take a word of advice from those “Multipliers” who are truly successful, and start focusing on those activities that actually get you the results that you want.

P.S.   If you missed reading about the other myths about time management that I wrote about, you can catch up here:

 The Myth of "I'm too busy"

Balance is bogus...

Lesiure is not the goal - What?!#

Balance is bogus…

… states times management and productivity expert Rory Vaden in his book, Procrastinate on Purpose.

Well believe me, I had a hard time swallowing that one. I’ve always been all about life-work balance. It’s one of the big reasons I love being a self-employed entrepreneur – my time is my own to decide how to allocate it and I have always strived for that balance. 

So imagine my surprise when I read Vaden state that balance is an ineffectual strategy that should be avoided because it won’t bring us the results we want! It’s just an excuse for justifying why we aren’t getting the results we want in an area of our lives.

You mean all these years I’ve been happily balanced and yet ineffective? Pretty much, I have to admit. If you’ve been following my blog for a little while, you know what I mean.  (If you’d like to catch up, you might also enjoy reading this post).

Ok, deep breath. Let’s see what he has to say. If you take the notion of balance literally, it would mean that our time and energy would be equally apportioned across the numerous tasks that make up our days.

Success, claims Vaden, does NOT come from doing this, but rather from just the contrary – focusing our skills, financial resources, time or energy in one priority direction for a shorter period of time, or what he calls a “season,” which can also be described as “imbalance.”

Well, I must admit that makes sense. Look at nature. There is a season for everything. There is winter, where life’s energy and priorities are focused on regeneration and dormancy, followed by spring and the burst of growth and creation, the maturing expansive blossoming of summer and the abundant harvest of fall.

Now that I have had this period of focused “imbalance” – spending way more time and resources on my writing, blogging, and learning to navigate the intricacies of social media, I get what he says. I am starting to see the results that have previously eluded me.

And what started out as feeling imbalanced – getting up earlier than I would prefer, putting other projects on hold so I can devote time to this pursuit - has become the comfortable normal. 

So, I’m learning to embrace my season of focused imbalance, what Vaden refers to as “working double-time part-time for full-time free time.”

Because what I get is that working double-time part-time now is the path to full-time free time tomorrow.

So, esteemed reader – want to join me as we embrace imbalance so we can move closer to our dreams?

The myth of “I’m too busy”

You know how it is when you focus on something, and suddenly you see evidence of that thing everywhere you look?

That happened to me with the matter of procrastination. After my recent epiphany on the subject and subsequent commitment to be done with it for once and for all, I was walking through my local library to pick up a book for my mum, when Rory Vaden’s new book, Procrastinate on Purpose, literally leapt out at me from the new books display.

Now why would I want to procrastinate on purpose, having just kicked the darn thing in the butt, I wondered. Well, I was in for an eye-opener and a truly innovative approach to time management.

According to Vaden, truly successful people, of whom he has worked with many over the years, never whine about being too busy. Radical!

“I am just so busy.”  How many times have we all said this, with a sigh of overwhelm and yes, even a touch of pride at our own self-importance.

That was my excuse for so many years.

Until I realized that it really was a self-defeating justification for not doing something important, something that had been quietly calling me for a long time.

And you know what? Everything that is on my plate, I put there, or allowed it to be put there. I made the commitment. I took it on.  I choose to do it.

So, no more whining about how busy I am. I am not a victim. I choose my own priorities. I am in charge of my life.

Tune in tomorrow as we bust open more myths about time management.

“You and I have the same amount of time in a day as Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Michael Jordan or anyone else who has achieved greatness.”

                                                            Rory Vaden