Productivity

11 Easy Ways to Uncomplicate Your Life

02.02.2021 by Angel Chernoff // 57 Comments

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Clare Boothe Luce

Let’s start off here with a simple question:

What does your perfect day look and feel like?

Visualizing your perfect day is important not necessarily because it will be a recurring reality, but because it’s crucial to understand what a simple life — or an “uncomplicated life” — really means to you. And it’s different for everyone — for me, it means practicing my morning gratitude meditation, quiet writing and reading time, a few fours of focused time with our coaching clients, and doing something memorable with Marc and our son, Mac. For others, it’s a long morning walk, afternoon yoga, a productive day in the home office, and a hot bath before bed. And for others, it’s simply lots of time to focus on an important life goal, while still leaving enough time to get a good night’s rest.

Take a few moments now to visualize what a “perfect day” means to you.

Then shift your focus and consider all the miscellaneous, needless nonsense you get involved in on a daily basis, both mentally and physically, that goes against your “perfect day” philosophy.

Again, we can all agree that life is NOT perfect, and surely there are very necessary, hard things that must be handled every day. But there’s still a lot of mental and physical energy spent on matters that don’t deserve our time and attention.

Truth be told, the average day is actually pretty simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Let’s break the cycle! Here are a few easy ways to gradually uncomplicate your life — and yes, it’s a GRADUAL process, because it’s easy to change your life one tiny step at a time: [Read more…]

The Life-Changing Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time

11.19.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 24 Comments

Be the type of person whose values, priorities, and actions always agree with one another.

Why is it that over 50% of our new course students tell us they feel completely overwhelmed and exhausted in their personal and professional lives?

The answer may surprise you: It’s not the number of minutes they spend awake and working hard each day that’s the issue—it’s that they often spend 99% of those minutes juggling too many things at once.

Be honest…

Do you check social media apps on your phone when you’re sitting in meetings, or when you’re spending time with family and friends?
Do you eat lunch at your desk, or while you’re on the run?
Is the TV often on in your home, even when you’re busy doing other things?
Do you send the occasional text message while driving?

The biggest cost of doing multiple things at once like this (assuming you don’t crash from the texting and driving) is [Read more…]

5 Signs You’ve Been Doing Too Much for Too Long

11.12.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 21 Comments

When things aren’t adding up in your life, begin subtracting.

Busyness is an illness.

Think about your own life and the lives of those close to you. Most of us have a tendency to do as much as we possibly can—cramming every waking minute with events, extravagances, tasks and obligations.

We think doing more will get us more satisfaction, success, etc. When oftentimes the exact opposite is true.

Less can be far more rewarding in the long run. But we’re so set in our ways that we can’t see this.

And so…

When we work, we shift from one task to the next quickly and continuously, or we multi-task—juggling five things at once until the end of the day… and yet we still feel like we haven’t done enough of the right stuff.
When we finally break away for some healthy exercise, we tend to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can… until we’re exhausted and sore, and less likely to want to exercise tomorrow.
When we go to a nice restaurant, we want to try all the appetizers, drinks and entrees, indulging in as much deliciousness as we possibly can… and we leave feeling bloated, sometimes uncomfortably so, and then our waistlines stretch.
When we travel to a new city, we want to see it all—every landmark and every photo op—so we do as much as physically possible… and we return home from our trip utterly exhausted.

How can we tame our urge to do too much? [Read more…]

7 Powerful Reminders to Focus on What Matters

10.28.2019 by Marc Chernoff // 29 Comments

What you focus on grows.
Stop managing your time.
Start managing your focus.

“Am I making meaningful use of this scarce and precious day?”

That’s a simple question Angel and I challenge our course students to ask themselves anytime they feel busyness overwhelming them.

Because excessive busyness is rarely meaningful.

And make no mistake about it—excessive busyness is a widespread, modern-day illness!

We fill our calendars and our social media feeds with various kinds of busyness, oftentimes just to avoid being bored… to avoid being exactly who we are, exactly where we are. The instant we feel a bit idle, we run off in the direction of the nearest shiny object that catches our attention. And in the process, we not only miss out on the serenity and beauty that exists within ourselves, but we also miss out on [Read more…]

10 Excuses the Mind Will Tell You Before You Take the Next Step

09.30.2019 by Angel Chernoff // 15 Comments

STARTING NOW: NO shortcuts. NO quick fixes. NO blaming others. NO “I’ll do it tomorrows.” NO MORE EXCUSES!

The mind is a wonderful thing. It’s also an excuse-making machine that frequently tries to convince us not to take actions we know are good for us. And this prevents many positive changes from taking place in our lives.

I’ve had to learn to watch these excuses very carefully in order to make the positive changes I’ve made in my life: a healthier diet, regular exercise, meditation, more sleep, daily writing, better planning, less procrastination, more focus, etc.

If I hadn’t learned about these excuses, and how to suppress them, I would never have succeeded in making these positive changes. In fact, until I knew better, I had failed countless times when I was young because my mind’s deceptive tendencies used to get the best of me.

So why does the mind mess with us and make irrational excuses?

Because the mind wants comfort, that’s why. It’s afraid of discomfort, pressure and change. The mind is absorbed in its comfort zone, and anytime we try to stretch that zone too far, for too long, the mind tries desperately to get back to ground zero at any cost—including sacrificing our long-term health, happiness and success.

So let’s expose 10 of the cowardly mind’s most damaging excuses once and for all… [Read more…]