In this week’s newsletter, I said, “Take care of your mental and emotional housekeeping. Do it and the email and the filing will take care of themselves.”
“Yeah, right,” I hear you all thinking to yourselves.
But it really works.
Let’s look at the flow chart again.
- A Clean Mental Environment >> leads to
- Obvious Choices/Priorities >> which leads to
- Focused Action >> which leads to
- Getting What You Want
If you know what your priorities are, then you know the difference between what is useful and what is a distraction from those priorities. Ruthlessly eliminating the volume of email that comes into your life so you can focus is a natural outcome of that. Responding to email twice a day instead of every five minutes is a natural outcome of that. Handling paper once, putting documents in their designated homes so they don’t form distracting, useless piles – is a natural outcome of that.
I’m not saying that changing habits and learning new systems is completely effortless, but in an environment of clarity it is much easier and much more intuitive. It doesn’t require the force of willpower and discipline – at most it will need an occassional nudge. Management of this stuff will take on a certain obviousness. I promise.
0 Responses to “No, Really, It Works”