So, did you do it? :-)

So, how’d you do with the weekend exercise I left you with on Friday? Did you do it?

If you’re clueless what I’m talking about, you can re-read Friday’s issue at this link.

We’re going to move on to some new topics, but first I wanted to cap off what we talked about last week. Because, it’s important as all get out.

Things happen when energy flows, not when it is stored. We, as human beings, are more or less energy. The “state of flow”, again, is defined as:

“A mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

This is a state of action. A state of FLOW.

In a computer, the algorithm executes on the basis of yes or no decisions. Once an arbitrary ( we can call it a “maybe”) enters in, execution halts until it gets outside influence. We’re very much the same way. We FLOW on the back of yes/no decisions. As long as decisions get made, things move like lightning. But, once we get into a “maybe”, things grind to a halt.

Yes or no leads to flow. Maybe messes the whole thing up.

Thing is, when we get hung up on a “maybe”, we park a little chunk of ourselves back there. The more maybe’s we let stack up, then there’s less of US to apply to our work here in the present. It is like having part of you stuck in the past, not paying attention to the here and now. All because it got “stuck” there on a maybe.

As you look around you, your environment, your projects, your email inbox, etc…. you may find things stack up because they’re there for “later”. Someday… maybe… you’ll take care of it. There’s some pending decision to be made, and there it gets parked.

If you want to know why people feel overwhelmed and confused…. or “not enough time”… it ultimately comes down to this. They’ve let things stack up. Parts of them and their own mental horsepower are parked off and out of commission.

The answer is to identify the “maybe” and unstick it. One by one. Make it flow. And it erases.

And so, on Friday, I asked you to go and find these things in your life. The things on your to-do list that have been there for a long time. The emails which stack up in the inbox. The papers on your desk. The junk in your closet you’re keeping for later. And then… make a decision on it and unstick it.

One little thing I can add to this discussion is…

One of the biggest productivity “secrets” out there is simply to DO IT NOW. 🙂

Don’t procrastinate. Make a decision. Yes or no leads to flow, remember? So, you make that decision when it comes up. Or, you handle it right then and there so things don’t stack up.

On a small scale, as an example, this weekend I was working on the floor remodeling project in my RV. I’ve ripped out the old floor and, this weekend, I was doing some repair work on the floor. The rig was a total mess! But, before I put it back in storage, I cleaned the whole thing up. It would have been easy to leave tools around and to leave a mess. But, instead, I vacuumed the whole thing and cleaned it right then. That rig is sitting there right now without any flooring, but it’s freakin’ clean! 😉

It’s just an example of “do it now”.

My office is a bit of a mess right now, so as soon as I send you this email, I’m going to deal with that.

I don’t like to let undone things stack up if I can help it. Those things are maybe’s. It reduces my FLOW.

I just zero’d out my entire inbox before I wrote this email. All emails, all support tickets, forum posts… across multiple inboxes. Done. Yes or no, man! Nothing stacks up.

Ya got it, home slice? 🙂

OK, if you didn’t do that weekend exercise, it’s OK. Do it now. And report back to let me know how it went.

But, we’re going to move on to some new stuff here in The Daily.

Starting mañana. 🙂

– David