Yes, you can have everything you want.
The matter of if you can really comes down to what you’re willing to do to get it. You just need to get organized.
I want and need to learn how to write but I didn’t know where I’d find the time. I’m working two jobs, running a business, raising kids, nurturing a partnership, cooking healthy meals, maintaining a regular workout schedule, and learning Spanish. There is always some important event around the corner. I find myself juggling multiple calendars and filling up every evening and weekend. There is a perpetual guilt when I can’t meet the needs of others, but there some things where you need to focus on you.
I made a commitment to writing two blog posts a week and I’ve successfully met this promise–so far. I’m rapidly discovering that as my writing improves, the time and energy that goes into each post increase as well. Looking to find a way to carve out more time from my busy schedule, I opted for my favorite game: people watching.
Everybody is always interested in the path with the least effort. Some people call this lazy, but I think it’s the lazy people that we should be watching. It’s because they will use the creativity of their mind to find ways to do something faster, easier, and with less work. I’ve seen these people in every job I’ve ever held. They will tackle the same position with relative ease at a fraction of the expended energy I would use. The reason for this is because they decided to work smarter and not harder.
The skill they seem to excel at is being able to group their tasks in a way that involves the fewest number of steps. This is generally done by calmly assessing the work before them and refraining from reacting to every immediate need. By taking their time, they allow themselves an opportunity for the immediate tasks to process and then responding with the most efficient plan of action. Next time you’re sitting in a restaurant, conduct a “people watching” experiment with the servers. Find the server that looks the most rushed and the server with the calmest demeanor in their body language. You will see that it’s the calm one that seems to have the most time on their hands.
I often used time as an excuse for my lack of focus when it came to learning. It is not an entirely false assumption. As we grow up and have kids, start a career or project, our responsibilities seem to multiply infinitely. There is less time to learn when you’re working 40+ hours a week and taking care of little ones. It makes it an unfair comparison when thinking back to my days as a single college freshmen with no job.
The added responsibilities also cause a mental toll that is paid for with your energy. Sometimes you may find yourself too tired and completely unmotivated to subject yourself to learning something you need. We have to be able to make the most of the time we do have. So how can we become that calm and collected server and apply their philosophy in our own lives? That’s where my biggest life hack jumps in to solve.
Upload Your Brain to an App
There are tools available today that can help us organize the tasks of life to free up our time and mental energy. Beyond the left and right hemispheres, we can create a virtual third hemisphere of the brain using technology. I recently discovered an app called Notion. Notion is basically a notepad with some very impressive features when it comes to productivity.
One of my saving graces is the ability to create a visual workflow for writing this blog. As I’ve made a commitment to publishing two posts a week, my normal process is to sit in front of a blank page and start from scratch every time. The disorganization can be quite evident after reading my blog editor’s comments and corrections. So what I’ve done is divide the process of blog writing into smaller tasks. It’s wonderful because I can pickup exactly where I left off and the app is synced throughout all my devices and available via webpage as well.
You can see that I created a workflow where I can brainstorm topics to write about. These ideas often come randomly throughout the day and it’s great to have access to a smartphone where I can jot it down and come back to it later. When I have another moment, I go back and review everything I thought of and pick out ones I find interesting by a simple drag and drop feature. Next, I can start thinking more about the topic and that’s where templates come in.
Templates are one of the greatest features about Notion. It allows you to create a framework for thinking through an idea in a way that’s more focused. What’s even more amazing is that you don’t have to make templates from scratch. Notion has another feature where you can make your templates publicly available. This template is actually one I found here. You can duplicate public templates and add them to your own Notion with a click of a button. This template was originally made as a video template but I revised it to fit my blog workflow. It hits all the same essential elements. Hopefully this makes my blog editor’s job easier.
What I’ve shown you just scratches the surface of what the app is capable of. Notion is not sponsoring this post and I just wanted you to know about it. I’m still new to the app and learning as well. Despite using the tips I mentioned above, I still experienced some of the learning pains and felt overwhelmed at times. It’s always best to start small for what you need and learn as you go. This is a good place to start and I can take confidence in knowing that the app will grow with me.