Orient Yourself With A Compass

Productivity is about more than accomplishing a lot every day. It’s about doing good, meaningful work that impacts others lives and improves your own. We think of productivity as doing that which one sets out to do. Productivity as a business owner is not how much you do or how much you accomplish, it’s about accomplishing the right things.

You can increase your productivity immensely if you have a clear vision for your life and your business. Your personal vision is contained in your Compass.

It’s a one-page document that can steer all of your decision making, keep you on track and motivate you to be better. You’ll find an example of my own Compass at the end of this guide.

Here’s what makes up a Compass, but this is by no means prescriptive. You may add or subtract at will.

1. Life Goals - 3 life goals that are generally unachievable. It’s the striving that counts here.
2. Daily Actions - The daily actions that, if completed every day, support your life goals above.
3. Reminders - Life rules that you often forget and need reminding of on a regular basis.
4. Affirmations - Okay! Getting a little Stuart Smalley on you here, but they work!

Notes - A Scattering of notes that inspire you

1. Life Goals

Write two or three of these goals down to start version 1 of your compass.

Productivity decisions become much easier in the context of a clear vision about what you value. Think about it - when you sit down to decide what to do in a day, what’s the basis for those decisions? For example, if you value time with your kids, it becomes an easy decision to disappoint a client during dinner time by not answering your phone. If your goal is to be financially independent with passive income from your business, you may stay up late to write a Productivity Guide instead of answering emails ;).

Close your eyes (not yet, wait until you finish reading this) and envision what your ideal life looks like. Run through a day or a week. Picture yourself in a spot - where you live, where you are vacationing. What kind of work are you doing? What do your hobbies look like? What’s going on in your business?

The key with this type of visioning is not to drag yourself into the “that can never happen” self-talk. Be open to possibilities without having to know how they will happen. This may sound odd, but the goal is not to fully achieve this lifestyle. Life goals require trade-offs and often cannot be realized together. When you start a business, you are not living a life of balance. You are realizing another goal to lead a meaningful, flexible life at the cost of other life goals.

2. Daily Actions + Habits

Once you have set your life goals, list out the daily actions and habits that support them. On a perfect day, what would you do that would get you closer to those goals? How would the perfect day go? Again, this perfect day is unlikely to happen, but it’s still a useful exercise. Consider breaking these habits down into morning (waking), daily, and evening (winding down) habits.

3. Reminders

What are good practices that you need constant reminders for? I don’t mean whether you remember to lock your doors before you leave the house. I mean in the way you live your life. Where do you let yourself down? What do you preach but have a hard time following yourself? The point is not to be hard on yourself, it’s to be better.

4. Affirmations

Affirmations, mantras, positive self-talk - call this what you will: there is good science behind positive thinking. Our self-talk is overwhelmingly negative (more than 80%). We generally aren’t in the habit of talking ourselves up. Today, we’ll have enough internal monologue like, “I am so tired because I had a horrible sleep last night.” “I think I must be coming down with a cold.” And on and on. Give yourself a little affirmation. You’re a ball of energy and ready to take on the world! What’s the worst that could come of this!?

5. Other Notes

This is not supposed to be a static document. A great place to put it is the inside cover of a notebook which can be revisited completely when you get a new one. Add quotes, notes and bits of wisdom. It’s fun to see if you can integrate these into your next version.

So what are you waiting for? Start with a compass and build from there. It’s easy to get caught up in being productive about productivity. The key is to set up productive routines and not revisit the whole system too often. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you're not productive every moment of every day. Keep revisiting your Compass when you feel like it’s becoming a vicious cycle of unproductive behaviours. Just keep remembering the inspiration will return.

For more tips and tricks download our full guide here.