10x Your Results
Here’s the latest edition of The Optimized Report newsletter, a collection of actionable ideas to help small business teams improve their performance, profit, and potential without sacrificing what's most important.
If you want to create a bigger impact, you have to focus on what’s most important.
It’s hard. You have thousands of things pulling at your attention, like a toddler hanging on your ankle as you drag him through the house (personal example). You must remove the noise so you can concentrate on the essentials.
The only way to do this is by constantly and consistently getting better at what you focus on.
It’s priorities over productivity.
Now, on to this week’s optimized ideas: 👇
1/ Make Better Decisions By Silencing Your Assumptions
“Assumptions create blind spots that prevent you from seeing the truth.”
Your mind is plagued with biases, beliefs, and programming that have occurred throughout your life.
It’s these automatic answers that lead to the worst outcomes. But with a bit of self-awareness, it’s an easy fix. The best way is to start by questioning your assumptions. Questions are the key.
When you learn to work through your assumptions, you’ll live a much more prosperous life.
Related: How To Ban Irrationality From Your Life And Lead With Purpose
2/ 10x Your Productivity
Flow is “the state of consciousness where work ceases to become work and instead becomes energizing and immersive.”
To enter a state of flow, you have to access environmental and psychological triggers. It’s these triggers that push you to “an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.”
Environmental triggers are qualities in your environment that push you into a deeper state of flow.
Psychological triggers are your inner conditions that help push your attention into the now and create a better flow state.
If you want to increase your productivity, hack a flow state
Related: Struggling To Be Productive? Ask Yourself These 3 Questions Every Day
3/ Shut Down Your Mind To Be More Creative
“The key is to separate the idea generation phase from the idea evaluation phase—your evening self from your morning self.”
You should break up creativity into two sections.
The first section is idea generation. This is the time you tame your inner critic and let your inner child run wild. “Don’t censor, evaluate, or critique. Inside your own mind, all ideas—however foolish or outrageous—are welcome.”
The second section is your inner critic. Here is where you begin to evaluate your ideas. You begin to peel back your ideas to see if there’s something worth pursuing.
If you try to do both of these simultaneously, your ideas will fall flat.
Related: Problems Are Illusions Of The Mind
4/ When the World Actually Solved an Environmental Crisis
“One study found that ozone-depleting chemicals drove half of Arctic warming in the 20th century.”
It pains me to watch us kill our beautiful and miraculous earth.
The good news is, the ozone layer appears to be healing. With swift global action and the phasing out of CFCs, it has made real progress. However, despite this good news, some believe we’re starting to take a step backward.
I hope not, and we should all be in this fight together.
Vote with your time and money.
Related: Turn Your Problems Into A Hiccup For A Better Life
5/ The Power Of Daily Practice
“You have to make ideas your own, you have to take with somebody teaches and you have to put it into your own experience and can’t just be these dead words.”
What’s the difference between a practice and a routine?
Ryan Holiday says, “one is about daily rhythm. The other is a lifelong pursuit. One can be ruined by something as simple as hitting the snooze button one too many times or getting called into work unexpectedly. The other can adapt accordingly. One is something you made up. The other is something you do.”
Practices are nearly universal. They won’t change with a calendar conflict or a slight disturbance to your daily routine. They remain constant, forever.
It’s a daily mantra I use to “Trust The Process.”
Develop daily practices in all areas of your life.
Related: The Ultimate Deliberate Practice Guide: How to Be the Best
Subscribe to The Optimized Report which features a collection of actionable ideas to help small business teams improve their performance, profit, and potential without sacrificing what’s most important.
