overwhelm

Swimming in It (Part 3): Build Your Life Raft

When there is too much to do, or think, or finish (and there often is), the world won’t stop to wait for you. It won’t let you rest. It won’t let you focus. Only you can do that.

Many of the most successful people in the world maintain demanding schedules, juggle responsibilities and discover their peak performance by expertly managing their mornings. How I manage my mornings makes all the difference.

Build Your Life Raft with Routine

A morning routine accomplishes three key things:

  1. It frees you from decision-making, which preserves willpower.
  2. It gives you time to think, plan and act, before the day makes you react.
  3. It builds mindful awareness of what’s within your control and what isn’t.

Here’s my typical routine:

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Swimming in It (Part 2): Mind Like Water

The previous post was about silencing your critic with action; to flow freely in the context of the moment, rather than the imagined future context that your inner critic is protecting you from.

This post reveals a powerful reason why getting everything out of your head (letting your ideas, thoughts, feelings, preoccupations… flow onto paper) is more than just an inner critic judo move. It cultivates a ready mind.

I’ve never heard anyone put this better than David Allen, creator of Getting Things Done:

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Swimming in It (Part 1): Let It Flow

I listened to three podcasts while at the gym. I came back and discussed them with my wife. Weighted down with juicy fruit ripe for the picking, my head was swimming.

It’s going to be easy to write in the morning, I thought. That’s what I thought.

In the space between a creative spark and a public proof of work are layers of evaluation and editing. There’s vague, imagined possibility, and then there’s concrete, specific actuality. To say that translating thinking into doing can be a challenge is a gross understatement.

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