What are your BIG 5’s in Life?

Your Happiness lies in your To-Do List

Do you feel like you don’t have time to get your work done and spend time with your family and friends?

We human beings have become human doings multi-tasking many things at the same time.

We are right now living in an advanced technological era than compared to our grandparents and we can work anywhere, anytime, to great effect.

Actually, this generation has more time than our previous generations(no hand-washing our laundry, no laborious cooking process etc).

So, why do we feel starved for time?

The answer is we have so much more things to do. Expectations on what we will accomplish in a single day have expanded, but the hours in that day have stayed the same from time immemorial.

That’s why you see, everyone advocating you to have a To-Do list to become more productive.

But,

There is a flip side to your To-Do lists…

You end up in an unique feeling caused by Zeigarnaik Effect

It’s that nudging or irritating feeling of not completing your tasks of the day. Hope you can understand this feeling.

In this article, I am going to share with one strategy or tactic which can help you find happiness in your to-do list and at the same time, achieve your dreams and desires in your life.

Time Management Teacher Peter Bregman, Author of 18 Minutes: Find your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the right things done, advises his clients to pick their top 5 priorities in life and spend 95% time of their time doing those activities, saying “NO” to all other activities. Everything else on the remaining 5% of the time.

Have you read this interesting Book? Here is the quick summary of this book…

The author represents 3 key ideas in this book

1. Do Fewer Things: 

1) The secret to doing great things is to do fewer things
– It’s impossible to get it all done and it is dangerous to even try
– The key is to identify what’s worth doing and what’s not worth doing

2) Develop Self Awareness – Understand Yourself: 

1. Strengths
– Play the game that is suited to your strengths
– Or invent a different game where you will win

2. Weaknesses
– The most successful people do not try to conquer their weaknesses/improve upon them.

3. Differences
– Trying to distinguish ourselves by being the same as others but only better or faster or stronger is very hard to do and very hard to sustain.
– It’s much easier to be different and send out.
– Don’t blend in. You can not win there

4. Passions
– Desire – Our obsessions will tell us what we should go after
– Persistence – You have to be willing to persist through the tough times
– Ease – Spend time on things that you enjoy so much that they feel effortless.
– Meaning – As much as possible spend time on what matters to you the most

3. You need less motivation than you think:

1. We don’t need huge chunks of motivation to complete the whole task – We just need enough motivation to get started.
1. Break down the task and get started on the smallest piece – even if it is for 1 minute.
2. Getting started will build momentum and actually create motivation to take the next step and then the next step.

2. Reduce the transition time to get started on a task – hence eliminating the need to wait for motivation.

Buy this book and implement what the author says if you are serious in achieving your goals, dreams and desires of your life.

Initially, I was like many allowing the day to run over me and hardly had any time to do what I would love to do in my life.

But I took the Big 5 Exercise very seriously and started living my life based on that. Today I spend 95% of my time towards my Big 5 only.

To give you an idea of how this concept worked for me, here are my top 5 priorities in my life this year

  1. Maintain my own health and happiness
  2. Nurture my family, business connections and closest friendships
  3. Grow my online courses offerings
  4. Coach and teach individuals and groups
  5. Give back to the community

I ensure that my to-do list is always focused towards these Big 5 this year.

If your to-do list is going to help you focus on your most important work, then you will need to decide now your most important priorities of this year.

What brings more happiness, fulfilment and satisfaction in your life?

What are your Big 5’s this year? Can you comment below…

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.

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