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The Biggest Lie You Believe About Your Available Hours
The load of articles centered around productivity is weightier than a millstone. And the underlying idea behind most of them is that every available hour is a workable hour — if you can schedule the time, you should. That’s just what successful, influential, go-get-’em people do. It’s kind of the same concept of zero-based budgeting, where every dollar has to get allotted to a specific financial bucket.
Here’s the big flaw in this logic.
Ever blearily run your coffee maker after forgetting to put in the grounds? What about getting so lost in thought about your project or family that you don’t stop at the grocery store on the way home the way you meant to? And of course, there’s the classic stare into space as someone’s talking to you only to realize you haven’t processed a single word they’ve spewed out of their mouth.
Experiences like these show that you can’t always be mentally present simply because you’ve put something on the calendar. You might have the best of intentions, but if you’re mentally distracted or tired, guess what. Your time isn’t going to be productive. Just because it theoretically fits doesn’t mean that it actually will translate to a beneficial, desirable yield.
Why does this matter? Because if you don’t know what your personal limits or boundaries are…
