10 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever by Steve Chandler

Author:Steve Chandler [Chandler, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2016-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

6. Simplify your life

The great Green Bay Packer’s football coach Vince Lombardi was once asked why his world championship team, which had so many multi-talented players, ran such a simple set of plays. “It’s hard to be aggressive when you’re confused,” he said. One of the benefits of creatively planning your life is that it allows you to simplify. You can weed out, delegate, and eliminate all activities that don’t contribute to your projected goals. Another effective way to simplify your life is to combine your tasks. Combining allows you to achieve two or more objectives at once.

As I plan my day, I might notice that I need to shop for my family after work. That’s a task I can’t avoid because we’re running out of everything. I also note that one of my goals is to finish reading my daughter Stephanie’s book reports. I realize, too, that I’ve made a decision to spend more time doing things with all my kids, as I’ve tended lately to just come home and crash at the end of a long day.

An aggressive orientation to the day—making each day simpler and stronger than the day before—allows you to look at all of these tasks and small goals and ask yourself, “What can I combine?” (Creativity is really little more than making unexpected combinations, in music, architecture—anything, including your day.)

After some thought, I realize that I can combine shopping with doing something with my children. (That looks obvious and easy, but I can’t count the times I mindlessly go shopping, or do things on my own just to get them done, and then run out of time to play with the kids.)

I also think a little further and remember that the grocery store where we shop has a little deli with tables in it. My kids love to make lists and go up and down the aisles themselves to fill the grocery cart, so I decide to read my daughter’s book reports at the deli while they travel the aisles for food. They see where I’m sitting, and keep coming over to update me on what they are choosing. After an hour or so, three things have happened at once: 1) I’ve done something with the kids; 2) I’ve read through the book reports; and 3) the shopping has been completed.

In her book Brain Building in Just 12 Weeks, Marilyn Vos Savant recommends something similar to simplify life. She advises that we make a list of absolutely every small task that has to be done, say, over the weekend, and then do them all at once, in one exciting, focused action. A manic blitz. In other words, fuse all small tasks together and make the doing of them one task so that the rest of the weekend is absolutely free to create as we wish.

Bob Koether, who was the president of Infincom, had the most simplified time management system I’ve ever seen in my life. His method was: do everything right on the spot—don’t put anything unnecessarily into your future.

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