You have things to do.
So you sit down at your desk, ready to knock stuff out. To get the project done. To move closer to your goals.
Maybe you open up your (ping!) laptop. Or you look at today’s (ding!) list of prospects to cold call.
You’re making some (knock, knock, come in!) … progress.
But then…
Calendar Notification: Zoom meeting in 5 minutes.
You hurry to finish up what you’re doing.
Rinnnnng.
Someone is calling.
It’s your best friend.
“Hey, whatcha doin?”
Uhh, working. Call you back.
The meeting begins … but someone is late.
Someone is always late.
So you wait.
Small talk.
A full TEN minutes of small talk until the tardy one clicks on.
“Sorry, guys.”
That’s when this so-called “very important” meeting wastes a full hour of your day solving a problem that could have taken all of 5 minutes.
You’re bummed.
Because you felt like you were making some headway this morning, and you didn’t really need to be on that long ass Zoom call.
But you were.
And now the day has officially gotten away from you.
It’s already 1pm, and you need to eat.
Every day it’s that same 1pm feeling. Like you haven’t (ping!) really gotten anything done.
It’s just been pings, dings, and rings. All day. Nonstop interruptions. Pointless meetings. With maybe a little work done in between.
You wonder, how does anyone get anything done these days?
Productivity has become somewhat of an art form mastered by the few.
Today’s high-tech world has been engineered to distract, interrupt, and intrude. To skyrocket consumption while minimizing production.
So, how do you fight back?
How do you take back your day from the dings and pings, knocks and notifications?
Well, while the tendency is to battle technology with even more technology, the best solutions, in my opinion, are rather low-tech.
They’re old school.
For me, it’s not downloading an app that tracks my habits, limits social media access across all devices, or grows a virtual tree when I’m focused.
It’s putting my phone in a drawer, turning off wi-fi while I write, almost never agreeing to Zoom meetings, returning non-urgent emails and DMs on Fridays, and not texting with friends until after 5pm. Getting things done is mostly about what I don’t do.
Speaking of old school, today’s QOD clip with Brian Tracy was probably recorded in the early 1980s. But the tips he gives you for managing meetings and banishing interruptions are probably more relevant today than ever before.
If you want to find out how you can get more stuff done so you can avoid that 1pm feeling, tap a PLAY button to listen in.
Source: Brian Tracy – Time Management Seminar
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