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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2012-10-31
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHxhjDPKfbY
the art of stress free productivity is a martial art we start with a quick little story nineteen ninety took an overnight sailing trip with my girlfriend at the time two senators islands or the Channel Islands but twenty six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara it's a rugged %HESITATION beautiful island but the coach is very rugged sheer cliff Sloan a rocky outcroppings that we anchored in
a tiny little cove that not many of those we anchored in one as it was getting dark with one blow to make dinner and the wind suddenly came up to how as it does in this area by the way can pretty easily as I'm making dinner I got the queasy feeling about was moving and sure enough our anchors are losing their grip that's very uncool in
a tiny little cove where the wind is howling and about fifty yards away at the end of the cove a very nasty see is brewing so we ran up top turn on the motor so we can get some control of the boat and %HESITATION sure enough ran over the rear anchor line which chokes the prop we now no longer have control of the boat we are
now at the mercy of wind which is actually whistling down that canyon the blowing us out of the cove into the open ocean with them down along that coast right close to those cliffs radio the Coast Guard they let us know be three hours before their heavy winter weather risky but we get there so we're pretty much at the mercy of all of this we got
our the ready to go overboard because we have the rocks boat and even our lives were at risk and almost simultaneously we both looked up at one point and noticed the most incredible dramatic beautiful full moon and amidst all that chaos we actually had the experience it's wonderful Zen like peace I tell you that story because everyone has something similar I'm sure in his were you
in something you might in retrospect call the crisis and somewhere along the line you found yourself in your zone time disappeared and were fully present you're totally engaged with what was happening your productive flow and if you have the luxury to stop for a minute you may have been had the experience of a wonderful sense of being present like my girlfriend and I did that night
the interestingly crisis can actually produce a kind of calm that's rare to find sometimes why it demands it because it's the calm that comes from those behaviors that create the kind of positive productive engaged %HESITATION experience but moves indoors on very clear on the outcome for us that was live instantly making intuitive action decisions and taking actions being meaningfully engaged for that outcome and everything else
in our life was put on a back burner so they would be totally present about what happened and you probably explains that to and maybe you had the sense of that peace would be nice by the way if you could experience that kind of peace that counterproductive engagement without having the dangerous stress of a crisis force you to it actually is possible let me give you
a little secret getting things done is not about getting things done it's really about being a properly engaged with what's going on appropriate engagement is the real key here many times not getting something done is how to appropriately engage with it everyone of you hopefully is appropriately not engaged with every single thing else aside from listening to me right so there's some key there something unique
about being a properly engaged wine as a crisis get us there because it forces us to do those behaviors that get us there now there's a lot to unpack about this idea of appropriate engagement I would hit the highlights of it but a little in that for you a few indicators of this would be I think about are you properly engaged right now with the projector
on with a paper you need to write with your cat with the holiday coming toward you are you properly engage with your health or you properly engaged by the way with all the stuff you've heard so far today that might be who I might would could should want to do that do you have appropriate engagement with that and indicator by the way that you don't have
to go very far to find opportunities to be more appropriately gauge just notice what's on your mind any doubt anything undermine aside from listening to me if you have any strategic importance to point among well interestingly the more it's undermined the more it's not happening the more you are in a properly engaged with it why it's not on cruise control it's only in your mind because
you know they're still some thinking or some decisions about that you haven't made or you haven't part the results of that it to some trusted systemic process that you trust will be triggered at the right time in the right way you actually don't up to finish those things folks to be appropriately gauge and get them off your mind but there are very specific things that you
do need to do about that so there's a number paradoxes by the way that happened about all this material there some counter intuitive things but what I'm gonna be sharing within the next few minutes you need to get comfortable with that if you want to get to this place of productive engagement without a crisis forcing you to do that the big paradox is that all the
complexities of all the stuff of your life in order to manage that use the three core principles that you understand and apply it's not about a new smartphone it's not about a new elegant planners not about a new piece of software those are cool tools but only insofar as you use them to apply those key principles once you get those principles you make your own system
a second paradox here is that the initial moves and behaviors and best practices this may very likely for many of you initially feel very awkward very unnatural and even on it's exactly like learning moves in the martial arts which I did years ago you wanna learn how to maximally produce power with the karate punch you're gonna have to spend hundreds of hours doing something that feels
very awkward and very unnatural as a movement hundreds of hours doing that once you do that by the way you'll never go back to anything less in terms of producing power some of the things I'll be recommending will be just like that for instance don't keep anything in your head the rest of your life that's gonna feel unnatural awkward and unnecessary every single thing you're committed
to finish the takes more than one step to finish it you need to clarify exactly what that are common project is and put them on a project list and you look at least once a week every single next action you need to take about an eager commitments that you're involved and you need to clarify those and park bills in appropriate places that you can see those
actions on a regular basis it's going to feel awkward a natural and unnecessary but those left of the final paradoxical this rap all that together is that some very specific but seemingly mundane behaviors when applied produce the capacity for you to exist in a kind of sophisticated spontaneity which in my experience is a key element to a successful life now I mean it reinforced why I
think this is critical what it would look like if you were wildly successful doing that and I will give you some house how to do that but what's the problem the problem is when you're not a Christ in crisis there's a more subliminal crisis that happens wine the whole world now is allowed into your psyche you now get to experience all the stuff you would could
should need to my talk to all the stuff piling up in your in basket emails while I'm speaking right now all of that now floods into your psyche and that could easily create a sense of overwhelm a sense of confusion a sense of conflict every single thing seems to demand equal kind of attention for you and then usually respond to that by either numbing out or
getting into crazy busy and then you blame that stress on the lack of time I just hope it's it's it's it's all I need is more time well I'm sorry Leonardo da Vinci Thomas Jefferson Einstein Mother Teresa they only had twenty four hour Johann Sebastian Bach only had twenty four hours I know he didn't have email but he had twenty kids and you say just give
me two more hours the habit to more hours please you know what you do it two more hours you have two more hours of over woman stickiness actually for most of you be a good thing you don't get two more hours the issue is not time how long does it take to have a creative idea zero time how long does it take to be inspired zero
time how long does it take to recognize an opportunity you could leverage take advantage of zero time time is not the issue for those things there is something required for those things what's that psychic bandwidth you need space to think believe me every executive I coach once I put those words and perhaps I need room to think I need space to be able to be creative
be innovative all that stuff on being tasked to do to be a leader all that stuff much the room and if you don't have psychological space you could have two hours of free time and wasted if you do have psychic band with two minutes on an elevator you can have a cool idea and have a fabulous relationship with somebody that moves the needle so this is
the real key issue here is the lack of the band with to be able to to engage without a properly even probably more reva worse than that is that our creative energy is the not available to be creative a creative energy is being used to try to patch up and handle and try to remember and remind we try to do all that stuff that most people
are trying to manage all the details and stuff for their life in their psyche instead of in the system just try to keep up the mess and by the way life is messy they haven't noticed actually NASA's cool actually the most productive times I'm am is when I have the freedom to make a creative mess you to you need I need I need room to to
be crazy that makes mistakes to brainstorm to be chaotic goal little off the edge that is going to be your most productive time it's when you have that kind of freedom to do that however folks if you're already in a mess Ewing got room to make one if your kitchen is a mess you don't have time or the energy to have a creative dinner for your
friends if your desk and your office are a mess you don't have room in space to be you know crazy about some new project and spread out and have brainstorming ideas if your email is backed up on you with a thousand unprocessed emails and got three thousand other things going on in your head you have no space to take advantage of discretionary time that may show
up in terms of it being created terms of your energy the results of that if you're trying to use your psyche to manage that mass and you never get out of it is you get the results of two things that are the critical elements of self and and organizational productivity you'll lose perspective that is you lose the ability to put your focus where you need it
on exactly the thing you need at the horizon you need and or you may be experiencing the results of what happens when you lose control that is by now don't have stability and I don't how the freedom in my head to be able to put the appropriate attention and execute on it when I do so those of the two key elements but you can't manage time
you know mismanaged five minutes and come up with six the only time that you think you need time management is when one or both of these two dynamics a suboptimal either things need to be more under control or more properly focused if you map those two things together what do you get if you on the bottom left here we got no control no focus ever been
there that your basic big victim experience no driven by latest and loudest for the most part most of us are bored thrown there by our own over commitments and creativity which come trying to come up for air now if that part of the shows up that has high focus a perspective but no control now you're the mad scientist now you're that desperate artiste now you're the
crazy maker with all kinds of crazy ideas no constraints of what you do need nothing very well organized middle the morning you decide to go buy the new iPhone butter IT department will support on the other hand you get down in the weeds sale later on it gets ten thousand things organized I need to get all this clean updated and now you get into micromanagement if
you don't have appropriate focusing get down on those weeds and hung up and I'm like crazy and you spend a lot of time and doing a lot of trying to get organized about things that may not be that important like in the morning you're crazy makers and get new iPhone the afternoon spent two hours of what could be a strategic afternoon trying to set up the
right ring tones here's what's true about all three of those folks you get ready for what's coming towards it you will be suboptimal in terms of your ability to handle the surprises and they're coming good bad or indifferent they're coming trust me and you want to be optimally available for those things when they come to you now everybody says how I'm doing okay and I doubt
if many of you in here we'll feel motivated enough to go do what I'm talking about because some part of you may not be feeling that it's that bad because you got a job for you near your you don't find you got relationships you got money if you don't okay I'm suggesting though for thousands of people have implemented what I'm sharing with you here that could
be a whole lot better how stable is your life and work style right now turns the long haul how available are you to all kinds of creative things that are right around you right now but you don't have the bandwidth to recognize or take advantage of and it could be a whole lot better what would better actually look or sound like well let's you know using
a metaphor from nature nature seems to get a whole lot stuff done today and stress in a worried you know there's some there's a seems to be a sort of natural rhythm about how that how things happen here so we go back to our matrix and say what if I had just the right amount of perspective and just enough structure just the right amount so that
I got the stability to focus on that and then to execute on it now you're in the captain commander modality which by the way it's very cool because that's the place that you're then going to be able to engage with life and your creativity and words designed for which is using your creative intuitive intelligence you know in the new frontiers you're gonna be much more beyond
your zone as a normal state as opposed to an exceptional state and you're gonna be a whole lot more capable of dealing with surprise and change is coming at you and by the way it's coming faster and faster that's what's new about the world is how frequently everything is being ready for that basically I refer to it I use a martial arts terms mind like water