”The mundane details of our life eat us up. Therefore it is important to keep asking ourselves again and again: what is the most important thing?” – Pema Chodron
There’s something about this time of year.
I don’t know if it’s the dark mornings, the grey days or the cold evenings but I just want to stay in bed and hibernate until spring!
This time last year I completely lost my work ‘mojo’. Getting out of bed each day was a struggle. Working alone at home, the days blurred. Nothing interested me and nothing motivated me. This year I joined Club Workspace in Clerkenwell to get out of the house now and again to see this would help. And it has to an extent, but those creeping feelings are still there. I think I’m just not a winter person.
When I have low energy and motivation, my carefully planned days can disintegrate into a blur of emails, reading blogs and faffing around the house. As Buddhist nun Pema Chodron rightly points out, “the mundane details of our life eat us up”.
Michael Nobbs from Sustainably Creative suffers from low energy and he has made a living helping others get their important work done especially if they suffer from low energy. He wrote that in the early days of his ME, some days he could only do 20 minutes of work before stopping for the day and that having only one thing on his to-do list is OK.
Like Michael, on these kind of days, I try to be compassionate with myself and ask, “what is the most important thing?” and focus on that. Even if I only get one important thing done that day, that’s still a good day.
If I am having a wonderfully productive day, I still stop now and again and ask myself, “what is the most important thing?”. What is the action that is going to lead me closer to my vision and my goals? Am I being productive or just active? Is what I am working on important, and if not, why am I doing it?
This is something that I teach in week 3 of my Mindful Productivity eClass (new class starts on 24 February). Our time, attention and energy are finite but the amount of things we could do are infinite, Therefore we have to make some hard choices.
Eric Klein in his free ebook 50 Ways to Leave Your Karma has some great advice on how to decide what to do. He quotes the poet Mary Oliver who says:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
To which, he adds —“And what is a simple, direct choice that will move you in that direction?”
Now, go do that.
This blog post is part of The Business Yogi – inspiration and thoughts for business based on the philosophy, principles and practices of yoga. The book, co-authored by Bridget Stacey-Luff from An Urban Om is due to be published this spring.
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