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Mid-Day Habits
BY: Alan0 COMMENTS CATEGORY: Daily Routine
Getting Lost in your own Life
Here’s the problem with modern life in society. (Okay, there are lots of ‘problems’ that keep life your from being what you envision it to be, but let’s just focus one one for now, ok?) The ‘Problem’ I am addressing is that you set out to make your day meaningful to you and somehow you keep getting ‘distracted’ by factors seemingly out of control, that you can’t manage to avoid, that take you off-course from living your life the way it ‘Should Be’.
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Do any of these sound familiar?:
• Projects take ‘WAY’-longer than the time you budgeted them for, throwing off the schedule for the rest of the day.
• Interruptions: – Phone calls, Email, Texts, Co-workers, Children – seem to demand your attention NOW and take you from your objectives.
• Procrastination: The fact that deep down you really don’t want to do it in the first place leads you to fill your time with other ‘fluff’ that makes you feel busy but shirks your responsibilities. Eventually, you wind up feeling guilty, overwhelmed, stressed, and unproductive.
• Distractibility: Just hopping on your phone to send a 2 minute email turns into 20 minutes of reading Facebook posts or playing that stupid game that keeps sucking your in for another round. The more stress you are under, the more easily you find yourself pulled away from the activities that would actually help resolve the stress.
• Lack of Focus: The day never really had enough of a backbone to withstand the withstand the ‘winds’ and ‘currents’ that came along and blew you off-course from the destination you were trying to sail to. You feel instant resentment to people who spout those cliches about “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail,” because no one ever taught you how to plan, or you never nurtured the discipline to learn how to steer your ship back on course.
3 Approaches that Don’t Work
Our “Surface level” reaction to the winds that blow us off course typically lie within the nuances of our personalities. The problem here is that our Knee-jerk reactions to frustrations either fail to sustainably correct the problem or cause us additional problems in other areas of life. See if your personality falls into any of the following 3 categories:
The Director
The frustration of not being able to get through the key tasks and to-dos of the day inspires a beast of solitary focus. A ‘Director’ is capable of putting the blinders on and getting hyper-focussed on his/her agenda. People who try to bring their questions or needs to this person might get snapped at, given ‘the look’, or all out ignored. They actually wind up getting things done, but leave a wake of hurt feelings and damaged relationships in their path. Others grow to see them as being selfish, egotistical, or insensitive and uncaring.
The Nomad
In ancient days, you had people who lived in cities, people who farmed the land, and the wanderers who pitched their tents wherever their flocks were grazing. They didn’t really want to be tied down to a house and all the boredom of being stuck in the same location with the same routine every day. Nomads don’t like schedules, plans, mission statements, or anything that gives an indication that there is a specific route that should be followed to get to the destination. Having a destination in the first place seems to suck all of the excitement and adventure out of life. For as much as the Director gets jazzed by a planning session, the Nomad feels all of the life-blood drained from their bodies. The spontaneity and energy of the Nomad draws people in, but after a season of adventure, others begin to get frustrated with the lack of progress and direction, and feel pulled off-course by these people.
The Free-Spirit
This person will not always identify with the term. They see themselves as being ‘adaptable’ and ‘flexible’ and able to adjust to the needs and demands of the moment. Free spirits don’t mind sitting down to lay out the perfect day, but they hate the rigidity of having the iron-clad box of a schedule descend around them every day. If another idea or opportunity comes along, it is no problem to scrap the original plan and go with the flow of the moment. The course change ‘feels’ important and significant in the moment, so it appears to be the best choice to head off in a different direction. People-pleasers are particularly susceptible to this and others love that the free-spirits can be so easily diverted to attend to their tasks and concerns. But for as much as the Directors are perceived as ‘Self-centered’, the ‘Other-centeredness’ of the Free Spirit leaves them eventually feeling drained by always getting pulled off of their plan for less important trivial concerns and the needs of others. Life begins to feel hollow and resentments towards others build, even those they love.
Getting back On Course
How then to we avoid the trappings of our personality weaknesses and adjust course when the winds and currents of the day try to blow us off course from our original heading?
Airplane pilots have a wonderful little tool at their disposal for flying to their destination. Once the destination coordinates have been programmed in, and a good cruising altitude has been obtained, they flip on the auto-pilot switch. This system automatically checks at regular intervals the current location, comparing it with the planned route. If the plane has gotten blown off course by any cross winds, it makes regular minor adjustments to maintain course and altitude to automatically guide the plane towards it’s destination. What is more, is that the pilot is freed up to relax a little, engage in conversation, attend to other responsibilities, and even take a stretch break, whilst the plane stays on course.
Finding Your Auto-Pilot
The flight is your day. The destination are your goals for the day. The cross-winds are the distractions, needs of others, and unexpected situations you have to deal with. Your altitude is the energy you have to stay up in the air. Flying without auto-pilot either means you have to pay meticulous constant attention at every moment of the day, leading to mental fatigue and exhaustion, running out of fuel, or you get blown off course and have to land at a much different destination than you planned.
An ‘Auto-Pilot’ system for your day is having a mechanism that will occasionally check your current coordinates with your plan at regular intervals throughout the day, and make the appropriate course corrections.
Personally, I have divided my typical day into 9 different “chunks” or sections of the day. Others may have only 3 (Morning, Afternoon, and Evening), or as many as 16-32 (taking a break every hour or half-hour). You will need to program your auto-pilot for whatever fits your lifestyle, paying attention to how quickly you can get blown off course.
The key component, no matter how many ‘chunks’ you wind up with, is what to do to check course and adjust your heading. First of all, in order to compare your location with your planned course you need to have a route programmed in in the first place. See the article on Morning Routines for guidance on putting a plan in place before take-off.
Get Perspective
Next, you need to draw yourself out of whatever you happen to be doing at your pre-determined intervals and review your original plan. This is like leaving the cock-pit mentally and seeing yourself from the radar screen; the big picture. This leaves you with the option of getting back on course if you have strayed, or making a conscious decision to alter the plan and head in a new direction. The Director will usually choose the former, and the Free Spirit will be more inclined to choose the latter, but at least you have moved to making it a conscious decision that leaves you in control.
Maintaining Altitude
Use these breaks to stretch the body, take a few deep breaths, reconnect with your higher purposes in life, change your surroundings, get your blood pumping a little, drink some water. A sedentary mind or body needs a little shock to the system at regular intervals and a non-stop pace of busy-ness needs an occasional down-time. This allows you to refuel your energy reserves mid-flight and keep the plane in the air. Shake off the stress of what has already been accomplished, dump any guilt, regret or pressure from what has already transpired, and hit the reset button to be prepared for what still lies ahead.
The Emotional Equation
From time to time, you need to pull out the travel brochure for your destination and remember, emotionally, why you decided to fly there in the first place. Our actions and motivation are tied to our feelings. We don’t usually wind up doing what we ‘think’ we should do, we do what we ‘feel’ we should do. The piece that connects the flight stick with the rudder is your internal motivation, and that motivation is powered by your emotions more than anything else. Distractions pull you off course because in the moment they ‘feel’ more interesting than your destination. It is an emotional trap. Trying to adjust course by sheer will will deplete your will power reserves, so you need to find your emotional drive to reconnect with your passion for the destination you chose in the first place.
Landing the Plane
There is deep sense of satisfaction of completing the day more or less according to the plan you set out, realizing that you successfully fought the winds and distractions and landed at the airport from the brochure. It brings a refreshing feeling of success and self-mastery to the end of each day. Life becomes more fulfilling and meaningful.
The video on this page lays out some specifics to identifying and utilizing the ‘chunks’ of your day, and the process of how to install a functioning auto-pilot into your life. Then, download the FREE Guide to Daily Routines to get a specific road map to not only my 9 ‘chunks’ of the day, but also a guide to laying out your day with the ‘chunks’ that make sense to you. The guide also includes instructions for designing a Morning Routine to get your day off to the optimal start, and an Evening Routine plan to end your day with the best possible set up for deep rest and an energized tomorrow.
Our lives are filled with distractions and cross-winds, but you have the ability to steer your life towards the destinations that you have chosen. Live each day Intentionally! Make the fullest use of the gift this day can be for you!
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