Hacking Your Spaces for Greater Clarity, Focus and Productivity

Good morning Full Potential beings! A new morning is upon us. As designers of our day we get to choose how great we make it today.

I am grateful to be alive. To be in a such a beautiful environment with such amazing relationships around me. With so many opportunities to thrive.

And as the designer of my life.. I am constantly trying to update my spaces to be more intentional. I have white boards everywhere and I continue to update the Home Screen and widgets on my phone / IPad and computer to be as focused on what I want to create as possible.

Especially when it comes to screens — it’s easy to get lost in them. So I like to make what I choose to focus on as visible as possible.

Additionally I like to make the things I want to use to help me regularly focus as accessible as possible. So I like to use a stop watch (offline) or a timer on my phone to keep me focused on what I am doing during that time frame. And a white board to be clear about what I am doing next.

And instead of being stressed about this it helps me feel like my day is a game, with a finite amount of time to make everything happen.

I will take a photo of my white board and put it on my phone to keep going, if I have to leave the space where the white board is.

Otherwise I like to keep my focus ‘offline’ as much as possible and thus why I would rather use a white board or offline stop watch than getting on my phone.

I am fond of making lists, and I love to organize those lists into relevant and immediately useful chunks .. so one way I think about the day is:

Morning, Afternoon, And Evening. The morning is until 12 pm. The afternoon is from 12 pm to 5 pm. And the evening is 5 pm onwards.

Then I have my week planned out.. manually, so I don’t have automatic calendar events that aren’t as relevant distracting me from what I want to focus on.

Any items that don’t fall into the week go into my Month. And future months.

And then I have a section for the other big picture stuff I want to recall when I am done with the tasks. This section includes Ideas, Goals, Projects, Visions, Values, Pending (to follow up).

I have an app called TOT that makes it easy to organize the day into chunks and duplicate my offline system.

I also use THINGS. I also still use IThoughts (for mind mapping).

I like to explore what works best and constantly shift around to find most optimum work flow.

I find that the offline system is best for feeling a clear mind. And that the on screen system is the most portable.

So when home I try to get everything into my offline focus (white boards or a focus sheet on a clip board: with goals, tasks, schedule , time log)

And now when leaving the space I will just take a picture of the offline system and append it to the start of a note in my Bear app.

That note is on a widget on the Home Screen on my phone. So I will instantly have access to that photo and manually add any additional tasks beneath it that I can later update on my white board when I get home.

It’s not that I am so busy I need to create all this structure. It’s because I want to be so clear about what I am focused on that I use this structure.

I might overdo it sometimes but I would rather error on the side of structure, intentionality and clarity than the opposite which is just pure flow.

I know some people thrive on flow alone. I like to structure my flow by having time where all I do is flow, but I don’t miss anything because I also have structure.

Bottom line:

– Take some time to think about how you want to optimize your spaces to have a more clear focus. Especially your screens

– Add some white boards to the spaces you frequent.

– And according your phones Home Screen to the apps and widgets that will help you focus on what’s important

– You may want to use a stop watch or timer on your phone to get really intentional about what you are doing with each segment of timed activity

– Bonus: use the lap timer to immediately shift from one task to the next next.

Ultimately find a style that works for you. Family life. Have fun. Don’t do any of this if it stresses you out. Structure should make life more clear and enjoyable. Not more stressful.

Take care. I love you.