Maximise your day this simple way, every day!

This afternoon I had a revelation and I thought of sharing it with you. I was coaching someone who is an international expert in his domain. Here is a man I respect for his wisdom, humility, and achievements. ( Name not disclosed to protect privacy.)

During the coaching session, it emerged that my client is behaving out of character during some situations at work. “ Manoj, I am usually calm and cool, but it seems I am getting quickly agitated whenever this particular situation arises. Previously, I have faced similar situations, but I was cool. Now I am agitated.”

Probing further and trusting my intuition, I said “ It seems your mind is clouded with too many things. What is going on?”

He revealed “ Yes, you are right. I have tons of things to do and no time to do it. I am also beating myself up for not completing one important task that’s long overdue. Then, people are giving me new things to do. Too many things and too little time.”

This is something I regularly hear these days and we have all been in this situation. Never-ending To-Do lists, Incomplete status on important tasks, Getting busy with trivial things, Getting distracted by unwelcome intruders.

The question I asked next, revealed something that woke me to up to a new possibility.

I asked, “ What would you like it to be?”

After a long period of silence, he said “ I want it to be like playing a video game. I play video games daily for an hour. Only for an hour. When I play, I am fully immersed in it. I do nothing else. I progress on my virtual quests, I am completely lost in it and I unwind myself. However, when one hour is up, I do a hard stop. I will not play a minute more. Never. I move on to the next thing. I will get back to the video game the next day.”

I asked “ What if you approach your To-Do list like you approach the Video game? How would it look like?”

“ Hmm, That would be ideal….. (silence)…. Wow, that is a shift in perspective.”

It was an AHA moment for me too. I was like, why don’t I adopt this too!

What emerged during this conversation for me is the following.

1. We all have tons of things to do. We set out to achieve a lot every day, still, we will seldom get to the end of our daily To-Do list.
2. We often have important things that get dropped. This does make us feel good. We let ourselves down and our mind gets clouded with unfinished tasks. It affects our mood, attitude, and behaviour. We could behave out of character and react adversely to the mildest trigger.
3. However, if we approach our tasks like playing a video game, MANY possibilities emerge.

• We look at our tasks as a fun endeavour. Not tied to the result.
• We allocate a period of time for each task. While we are doing a TASK, we are fully immersed in that ONE task and totally ignoring everything else. Just like children playing a game. No other things to worry about. Just one difference>> When the time is up, put a HARD stop and move onto the next one. Compare this to mindless spending hours on social media refreshing the news feed. (A good thing done for too long can be a bad thing too. For example, Sometimes, I spend the whole day reading one interesting book and letting other important things slip by. I now plan to read for an hour, hard stop and move on to the next item.)
• We can move from one task to another carrying over residual negative emotions. We have made progress on this task, pat-on-the-back, allocated time is up, move onto next.
• When you make progress, your brain releases dopamine, you feel good at the progress, you develop a habit of continuous progress, you keep your minds decluttered. We could keep our calm for longer. There is no lingering feeling of “Oh, too many things to do, not much time → My backlog is piling up → I must be inefficient → Oh, here comes someone who doesn’t understand me → Stealing my time →” The thought process behind this can go in unpredictable directions.

Today, my To-Do list is too long, but I wanted to use the opportunity to share this learning, because if I don’t do it now, it may never get done.

After all, I have decided to live my days from playing the video game perspective. Adopt a video game perspective. This way, you can Maximise your every day.

What do you feel about this? What strategies would you like to share?

Manoj Vasudevan is a Next Level Leadership Readiness expert, management consultant, and the World Champion of Public Speaking. He helps executives and entrepreneurs to break through to the Next Level in career and life. Manoj is known for his expertise in simplifying complex topics into practical strategies. He is the CEO of Thought Expressions and holds an MBA from Imperial College, London. His books include the international bestseller Mastering Leadership The Mousetrap Way. He speaks at international conferences, multinational companies, universities, and around the world. As a coach, Manoj has a proven track record in personal transformation and breakthroughs. CEOs, Senior Executives, UN Diplomats, Celebrities & Professionals from 27 nationalities have benefited from Manoj’s coaching. To contact the author click here.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/in/manojthecoach.