There are a lot of articles that help you focus on being more productive, but one thing that they do not hit is purpose.
Without purpose productivity is pointless.
An example, email, everyone has too much and it is a never ending battle. For every email that you delete two more come in its place. There are plenty of very helpful tips and tricks on how to manage your inbox. What is the purpose? If you are doing it just to say you have a clean inbox while the rest of your life passes you by, then you productivity is pointless and is a huge waste of time.
However if you keep a clean inbox to help you stay organized be responsive and create traction than your emails have a purpose.
Purpose is a double edged sword; it is both a long-term and short-term goal that causes a lot of frustration, anxiety and self-doubt. Your purpose can change from day to day and over your life time as well. What matters is that you have one, you pursue it and you are open to change.
Use your purpose to define what you will focus on. There are a lot of great plans out there that help you focus what you should work on. I have tried a lot of them and what keeps missing for me is a purpose.
Grab a notebook and write your life’s purpose on it. Do not think about it, just write it on the first sheet and visit it daily. Each day write how you will help yourself live on purpose. This will become your daily purpose; it will give you the mindset to live in the moment and to be ready to live.
When you have a big project, it is easy to get caught up in everything that needs to be done and easy to get lost in the purpose of the project. We become so focused on getting things done and checking them off the list that we forget why we started and where the finish line is.
When you start a new project, write out what the purpose of the project is. List the tasks that you need to accomplish to complete this project. They key is to not think about an order or how they all fit together but to focus on getting as much as you can down. Keep going until you have run out of ideas. Take that list and put it in order of what will be the most impactful to the purpose and put that at the top and create a list from most impactful to least impactful.
When you do this at least two things should happen. You should gain a clear understanding of what will be the most impactful; giving you direction and you will also start to realize everything that goes along with the project.
Your purpose should not overwhelm you, it should make things clear.
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