You must shift your priorities to the most important at any given time to move forward. Like riding a bike, where you have to shift your weight forward and start moving, not to topple over.

Don't try to achieve balance

Productivity means firstly identifying your priorities and secondly focusing on them.  It does not mean a long list of tasks that don`t help you to move forward in life.

On productivity

You can do anything, but not everything.

Less is More

<ol><li>A: Important and urgent</li><li>B: Important and not urgent</li><li>C: Unimportant and urgent</li><li>D: Unimportant and not urgent</li></ol>Sort all your tasks into this framework and tackle the As before the Bs and the Bs before the Cs. Eliminate the Ds.

Priority List

<ol><li>Why do you want to build a new habit?</li><li>Identify your triggers/cues</li><li>Define the behavior</li><li>Three Rs: </li></ol><ul><li>Record your progress</li><li>Reward yourself</li><li>Redirect your efforts if you have slipped</li></ul>

Good systems through the right habits

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.

C - Connected to your purpose?L - Linked to a goal?E - Essential?A - Advantageous?R - Reality-based?When you answer 3 or more of the above questions with yes the task is important. If not, then it is only urgent.

CLEAR

<ol><li>Multitasking makes us slower and produces drastically inferior results </li><li>We need to take breaks: 20 minutes for every 100 minutes worked </li><li>Technology is not always better: Write down your ideas and to-do's from time to time. You will pay more attention and store the information better </li></ol>

Three productivity myths busted

<ul><li>Set clear WRITTEN goals with a deadline </li><li>Set boundaries and separate from play (e.g. don't check your social media when at work and don't respond to work emails when at home) </li></ul>

On Goals and Boundaries

<ol><li>Work: your job</li><li>Personal: relationships, hobbies, health</li><li>Home: Household chores</li></ol>Don't try to spread your time and energy equally between these three areas. Ask yourself: "What is most important right now?"

3 key areas in life

Identify these expectations, whatever they are for you, and let go of them. Stop worrying about what other people may think of you and make decisions that reflect what is truly important to you.

Unrealistic expectations

When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.

<ol><li>Your mission: ABC Brain Dump will give you 26 different words -  look for recurring patterns/themes and write down your easily memorable and short mission statement.  </li><li>Your vision: “Where do you want to be in the future?” Use a vision board and imagine your best possible future. Turn it into a short, memorable vision statement.  </li><li>Your core values: Write down no more than 6 words that you would like others to use when describing you in your absence.  </li></ol>Put these 3 together and you will have a better idea of your life's purpose and a guide for making better decisions.

Define your life's purpose to make better decisions 

We all need more whitespace in our lives: Time to explore, play, and think. Try switching off your phone from time to time and going out into nature to get lost in your thoughts. Meditation can also be a great addition to your daily routine.

Whitespace - Play and Explore

This book gives a great overview of how to identify your life's purpose, prioritize your tasks in accordance with this purpose, and make good decisions in the process. 

This book is two things. It’s an eye-opener to the fact that we don’t have to do a million things to be productive (or successful). And it’s a coach that helps us trim the fat, get real with our purpose, and start living more intentionally-Goop Dalton helps readers by teaching us to focus on the most important things and create our own operating systems that are exclusive to our lives as individuals. By doing this, we can simplify and make life even better- San Francisco Book ReviewDalton’s ground-up approach to productivity teaches readers to identify their real priorities and, in doing so, cut their massive to-do lists down to size by learning to say no to the tasks that pull them away from their North Star-GratefulOverwhelmed. Do you wake up in the morning already feeling behind? Does the pressure of keeping it all together make you feel anxious and irritable?Tanya Dalton, CEO and productivity expert, offers you a liberating shift in perspective: feeling overwhelmed isn't the result of having too much to do -- it's from not knowing where to start.Doing less might seem counterintuitive, but doing less is more productive, because you’re concentrating on the work you actually want to be doing. Through this book, you can learn how to:<ul><li>Identify what is important to you and clarify your priorities.</li><li>Develop ways to streamline your specific workflow.</li><li>Discover your purpose.</li></ul>Named Top 10 Business Book of the Year by Fortune magazine, The Joy of Missing Out is chock-full of resources and printables. This is a legitimate action plan for change. Once you reject the pressure to do more, something amazing happens: you discover you can finally live a guilt-free, abundant life.

Good systems through the right habits

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3.d. Implementation: Cultivating Discipline