Getting Off Of My A…
Been spending a fair amount of time on HBR.org thanks to their recent writing on habits. As someone who has always needed to exercise more, understanding the characteristics of establishing good habit patterns is quite relevant. For whatever reason, recent articles have been popping up via Google Reader and have made for an interesting learning experience.
It started with Kare Anderson’s post “What Captures Your Attention Captures Your Life”, where she argues cell phones and other technology has stolen most adult’s attention from the world around them. “Whatever we focus upon actually wires our neurons.” Once you internalize that statement, it becomes readily apparent what mobile can do to how you interact with the world around you.
Prepared for some context shifting, I started noticing more articles, such as Peter Bregman’s “Two Lists You Should Look At Every Morning”, which boiled the prioritization process down to your Focus List and your Ignore List. It’s a great way to filter out the noise and ensure attention on that which is important. Yes, I’ve started using both. Less Trulia, more Lose It!. Less ESPN, more Economist. Fewer email checks, more blog posts. (Like this one.)
And then discussions with colleagues isolated a key difference among top performers – their most important tasks are done first, in the morning, before anything else can get in the way. I’ve always treated the morning as adaptable, adjusting based on my evening before and the tasks of the day ahead. But just knowing that top performers have this one trait in common was enough to get me reorganizing my morning around a disciplined approach to exercise and consuming media. Which, of course, I do at the same time thanks to FitDesk.
We’ll see if I can stick with it…
