An isolated action taken in a day is insignificant. What has impact is repetition. If you are not satisfied with your results and ultimately with the life you have, it may be because your habits are harmful. Look at yourself, every day. What do your days really consist of? We often give ourselves the impression that we do a lot of things, but in reality, our productive time is minimal on a daily basis. If we are not careful, we get lost in the wanderings of thought, we answer emails, we chat with people etc. But in the end, what have we really achieved? If you are disappointed with your results, you may need to work harder to see a noticeable change.
Write it down on a piece of paper, a spreadsheet, or use an APP (I use https://track.toggl.com/, it’s free) to track what you do on a daily basis. You’ll be surprised at what you see. You’ll realize that a lot of what we do doesn’t directly affect our results, we work to make ourselves look productive.
Once you have done a multi-day review of your actions, you can take stock of them and try to determine which ones have the greatest influence on the results you are seeking. Once you have identified where the key tasks are for your productivity, try to accomplish as many of them as possible while limiting those that have no real impact. These you can do in blocks, if possible, or delegate or eliminate completely if they are unnecessary.
Do this skimming work regularly. It will increase your ability to produce the results you are looking for.
Beyond the productive dimension, an action defines us in that it is the mark of our values, our personality, what matters to us. If you spend a lot of time watching series on Netflix, it means that you like to relax, of course, but it also means that maybe you haven’t thought enough about what was important to you in life. When you haven’t really thought about what you want to do because it’s valuable, you often get caught up in all sorts of temptations.
Relaxing is important, but it should not be a default choice. Rather, it should be what you do when you achieve a specific goal as a reward. If you train your brain to take the reward before you make an effort, you will train yourself to be lazy and you will no longer have the will to achieve the things that make you great.
