9 Ways to Become More Productive and Motivated
Season 1: Episode 2
9 Ways to Make Your Day Effective
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How to become more productive and motivated (#9)
How to make your day effective at home or as a student (#4)
My motivation in life - create your Why (#2)
For a long time, I lived under constant shame that I didn't have an effective morning routine. Maybe you can relate? Or ways to get my goals met in my free time, or a way to push my relationship with God forward past the mundane day-to-day. All that would do is cripple me, render me ineffective, and melt my productivity into a big old pile of nothing. Perhaps you can relate?
On today's podcast, I'm gonna take you through 9 hacks to productivity and motivation that you can start right now so you can move toward those God sized dreams in bite-size chunks.
Hello, I'm so thrilled to get you going on today's podcast because this information truly can revolutionize your day so that you feel like a superhero when it's all said and done. You know that pillow feeling you get when you lay down to bed and your day was super effective? These hacks will make you feel that way all the time, and they're really not that hard to do. So, let's dive in.
Episode length: 17:07
Transcript:
1. Morning Pages
My first especially really cool tip is morning pages. Morning pages were a game changer for me when I sat down for coffee in the morning. Instead of grabbing Facebook, I grabbed my morning pages. This one shift began to make a huge difference for me because it helped me get super clear on habits that needed to go. Now for this podcast, there is a downloadable worksheet. I provided a copy of my own morning pages so you can try them, too. Just go to AngelaMeer.com, and you can get it free. In my morning pages, I answer guided prompts, such as:
· What went right yesterday?
· What could be improved?
· What are coming obstacles to my goals?
· What can I do to be prepared for those obstacles and
· What are things that need to be done today? Or things that can be done later this week?
By answering these questions, I find the clarity I need to tackle my day, and the best part is I can usually get them done in about 15 minutes or less!. I'm really curious to see what you think when you try morning pages for yourself.
2. My motivation in life - how to find your Why
All right, let's move on to number two. Number two is really the thing - the mindset shift that I needed to get me moving into a place of day-to-day efficiency and not really kind of kicking myself for not getting what I thought I should get done. And that is, I let go of what I called time shame. Do you just know what I mean by time shame? It's that thing that you feel just that guilty feeling of like, “Oh my goodness, every single second of my day wasn't productive.” And I should just, you know, really discipline myself to try and force myself to be more effective the next day.
What I began to realize, as I was studying brain health, is that when we kind of punish ourselves for habits that we want to enforce, what happens is our brain creates these synapses or these pathways that kind of make us not want to go towards those efficiency hacks or any kind of habit changes, because why would our brain want to associate a good habit with our kind of whipping ourselves into shape? So what I began to do is if that was the way my brain worked, I began to start looking at time-shame in a very different way.
Instead of being judgmental towards myself or getting upset with myself, I let go of time shame. I would say things like, “You know what? I'm a creative and creatives need a lot of space to try and process what they're getting to process some of the creative energies that's coming from God.” I also said things like, “You know what? It's okay if you have a rest day and yes, sometimes days aren't as productive as you want them to be. But you know what? I bet you tomorrow will be better.” I said things like this to myself to prevent me from kind of, you know, disciplining myself because of time shame. And it really worked! What I began to see is as I gave grace to myself, there was more grace from the Lord that I could receive because the Lord was giving me the grace to do the things in his time frame, not necessarily my own. And so, by letting go of time shame, I was able to be super, super, more effective.
3. How to slow down mentally
All right, Number three. This was kind of an interesting one, and it really kind of helped me to be more effective in my day. And that is instead of trying to read the Bible on a schedule. So you guys know these schedules, like the Read your Bible in a year, read the New Testament in six months, those kinds of schedules. I began to read the Bible really slowly, and I really took the time that I would normally take just to read a chapter, read two chapters, read three chapters, or whatever your morning devotions. Maybe instead of taking that time to do that, I would allow myself to just read a paragraph at a time, or sometimes even a verse at a time, and I would read it really slowly and let it sink in.
But what I found is that the Bible is a living document that's designed to transform me. And if you want to be transformed, then the best way to go about it, in my opinion, is to read it slowly and let it really sink in this way. It kind of goes past all of my defense mechanisms, all of my thoughts like, “Oh, I've already read this before” and I kind of let Holy Spirit really begin to speak to me about what the Bible is saying. It really has caused the Bible to come alive. And guess what? It's made me more effective in my day because I'm being transformed by the living word instead of just consuming it. I'm letting it transform me, and I invite you to try that one, too.
Daily Grow
Devotions for today + daily task planner + guided bullet journal = the devoplannal system! With:
established goals and trackers
simple prayer templates
devotional for the day
4. How to make your day effective at home or as a student
And we're back. Number four is a really fun one. And I began doing this about six months ago, and it's really helped me with my efficiency. And that is, I scheduled a tea break officially, like four o'clock tea break. And I know that sounds odd, but I thought, you know what? My ancestors are English and they had tea breaks. They had tea time. You know, let me try this out. And so what I began to do is, as I was moving through my day, I always kept in mind that I had a tea break at four o'clock. Now, you may have to move that time around. Maybe you have to move it to the time when the kids were taking a nap. Or before the kids return from school or whatever your schedule looks like. But scheduling a tea break into my day gave me 15 minutes to do something that was really nice for myself. And sometimes I even got myself a nice piece of shortbread to go with it. Or a cookie, just to kind of really feel like it was having a tea break, and during that time I allowed myself to not think at all. I just sat there and enjoyed my tea break. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to strategize. I didn't have to worry. What that did is it gave my brain a rest so that I could be efficient for the rest of my day. It's one of the funnest part parts of my day, and I hope you enjoy it, too.
Tea time means turning off the phone!
5. Creative journal ideas
All right, Number five. I always give room to creativity. Now again, this is different for everybody, and everybody has different ways that create it. Creativity comes and goes, but for me, whenever something would have happened where I was like, Whoa, that's like a divine download or that's a really cool idea, or that would be a really fun project to start. I would give myself the time to just stop what I was doing and let that creativity kind of flow through me; whether I got out my journal and took notes or I just thought it over by looking out the window, whatever it was, I always honor creativity. I always allow it to have space in my life so that it can blossom into something that could be bigger and awesome. Down the road.
6. How to become more productive and motivated
Number six: Don't be bothered by reiterations. So sometimes, when we are being efficient through our day, we get frustrated when we have to learn new software, for instance, or we have to learn a new process about doing our email. The processes that we've got in our life really are pretty time-consuming, and we really need to figure out ways to do things in a different ways. You know what? That is a time in your life when you don't need to be bothered by reiteration. What do we mean by that? This is a time in your life when you can practice a whole bunch of different techniques. You can try different things and see what works.
Even with these nine tips that I'm giving you today, you should try them, and see if they work; it will help you over time to become more productive and motivated. If they don't work for you, then that's awesome. But even trying one or two or three of them might really add to the productivity of your day. So don't be bothered by trying new things or reiterating things to see if they're really gonna work at your schedule that often times breaks through into some new development or new creativity. This opens doors for your God-sized dreams. Now one of my favorite things is Facebook. Well, at least I hear that there is a big mural at the Facebook headquarters across one of their big walls, and it says
“progress is better than perfection.”
Oh, my goodness, I love that mantra. I use it all the time. Progress is better than perfection. And keep that in mind as you're being efficient throughout your days.
7. Popcorn Prayers
Number seven: Popcorn Prayers. I don't know about you, but I love my popcorn prayers. My popcorn prayers usually go something like this. “Help, Lord!” And what it does is it just takes a second to just throw up my popcorn prayers, just like popcorn that's being popped in the old fashioned way on the stovetop pup pup pup goes up to the Lord. I throw it up to him, and usually, I find that there is great grace given to me from heaven so that I can overcome in whatever way it is. Sometimes it's just I feel a little overwhelmed by the chores or giving grace to get this done and not worry about it. Or sometimes it could be as big as “Oh my gosh, I've got a presentation ahead of me. It's freaking me out, Lord, help me.” So the popcorn prayers are always a great way to go.
8. How to get clarity on your goals
Number eight: clarity creates action. Something I tell myself all the time. Creativity is not just in a bubble. It also needs clarity, so your clarity creates action. So in your God-sized dreams, often times the difficult thing about moving forward is that it just seems so overwhelming. It's this giant goal that you have. Maybe it's to start a business or to start a website, or you know, uh, started ministry or nonprofit, Or you want to help people in Africa or something. Often times the reason why we don't get started on our God size dreams. It's because we lack clarity, so get some clarity, and you get some action behind you.
This is why I often say 15 minutes is better than months and months and months and months if you are clear on what you're doing. So if you need, then go ahead and journal it down. What are some ways to get clear on your God-sized dreams so that you can move forward with some actions?
9. Motivation to quit
And the final one is Number nine. This one's a pretty fun one for me. Oftentimes, when I start having bad habits in my life, I will begin to look at things that, um, that really kind of need to go, and you guys know what I mean by this. Like, for me, it's stuff like too much Facebook scrolling. Or maybe I need to be more active. Or maybe I need to be getting the emails in my account cleared out so that they're not, You know, they're my to-do list isn't so long. Of these kinds of new habits are oftentimes; it's so difficult to change habits if we are looking at all of the things in our life that need to change rather than doing, choose one thing, choose one thing, and quit it! Quit for good!
Don't say I'm eliminating this out of my life,
say: instead of doing this, I'm going to do this.
I give you an example at the beginning of the podcast about my morning sheets. Now, what happened is I had begun to get into this really bad habit of laying in bed in the morning and scrolling through Facebook, oftentimes up to an hour. And so I'm getting up at a decent time. But then an hour went by as I was scrolling through Facebook, and I began to be really kind of thinking, “This is not helping my productivity and motivation in the day, But what can I do instead that's a better habit?” And that's when I began to develop morning sheets. What I do is I get out my coffee. I get my coffee going for the day. You sit down with my morning sheets and with the Lord, and really is a really awesome way to change a habit without making it feel like I'm having to kind of, um, you know, judge myself or discipline myself or feel shame about what I'm doing. So I always choose one thing to work on, and I choose something to do instead of whatever the other habit was that I'm trying to replace.
So these are tips that are going to shift your day into overdrive, especially if you do Number two. It kicked time-shame to the curb.
Now, if you want to catch that downloadable morning sheets, it's at AngelaMeer.com. This is Angela Meer helping you achieve your God-sized dreams in bite-sized chunks.
So remember:
How to become more productive and motivated
How to make your day effective at home or as a student
My motivation in life
How to find your why
How to slow down mentally
Creative journal ideas
Popcorn Prayers
How to get clarity on your goals
Motivation to quit