The Intentional Advantage

Why is mindfulness so important when it comes to productivity? Today, Chris Bailey & I will be discussing productivity, mindfulness, and his books, The Productivity Project and Hyperfocus. Chris is a productivity expert who speaks to organizations around the globe on how to become more productive without hating the process. We will also be sharing about the importance of taking time to let our minds wander and the benefits that come from that time.

What's In This Episode:

• Why mindfulness is so important for leading productive lives
• How we create meaning for our lives through what we focus on
• Recognizing the impact the information that we consume has on our happiness
• Controlling our attention and eliminating distractions
• Being intentional in taking timeouts to deliberately let our attention scatter

Which is better, to fill our day with 40 insignificant tasks that we can check off our list? Or five momentum building, goal setting tasks? Five important tasks will trump any number of insignificant ones any day of the week. Today, we're talking about shifting our mindset from busyness to productivity. I'll share why it's important to be intentional with our time and how to be sure our 'yeses' matter.

What's In This Episode:

• Focusing on what we're doing best rather than worrying about whether we are doing enough
• Willful focus vs. automatic focus
• How to eliminate distractions, specifically technology and social media
• Stop using busyness and distractions to cover uncertainty in our lives
• Making choices about how you spend your time & making your yeses matter

Time blocking and routines are two solid ways to focus on doing things that really matter the most to us. We all function in many different roles and if we don't intentionally plan our time, we can find ourselves feeling overwhelmed and overstressed. Today, we're going to be talking about creating routines and utilizing time blocking to help move you closer to achieving your goals and your dreams.

What's In This Episode:

• Cultivating and creating intentional habits so you can focus on what's most important
• Using time blocking to organize your day instead of just organizing our tasks
• Overcoming the planning fallacy
• Adding structure to your life with routines

Today, we're talking all about the power of paper and how journaling can change your life. Paper is a permanent space in an all too temporary world. The words we write don't disappear in 24 hours unless we want them to. Paper's a break from the consumption of technology. In today's episode, we'll discuss the benefits of journaling, how writing awakens our creativity, and five ways that you can use a journal.

Season 8 is all about planning for success. As we move towards the end of the year and into the next, this is the ideal time to lay down the groundwork and focus on how planning for success can help lead us into happier, more productive lives. Today, we are going to talk about creating a planning system that works for you. I'll share how having a system in place enables us to focus on our goals every day, the importance of writing our goals down, and my 5 P's for how to plan.

What's In This Episode:

• Having a system for planning to enable us to get to our goals each day
• Simplifying our lives by creating a process for ourselves
• Taking ownership of our goals by writing them down
• The 5 P's for how to make plans and achieve goals

We all feel so busy, rushing and hurrying... Our days feel like they're chock-full to the brim with every minute filled with tasks and activities. It feels difficult to stop and really savor the moments, and that's what I want to focus on today - savoring our time so we can feel less stressed. We'll talk about the how savoring increases our happiness and five ways to create savored moments.

What's In This Episode:

• Increasing happiness through savoring moments
• How to stop rushing to begin savoring
• Five ways to create savored moments
• Take a daily vacation! I'll share a quick and easy exercise you can use right away.

Over the second half of the season on cultivating happiness we've been talking quite a bit about connection and the need for one another in order to increase our happiness. Today, I want to talk about why we need to disconnect from our smartphones and choose instead to connect with others to really intentionally carve out time to deepen up those connections. We'll talk about setting aside tech free time & making routines to enrich our connection with others.

What's In This Episode:

• The benefits of deep social connections
• Feeding our dopamine addiction with smartphones
• Deciding what we really want to use our phones for
• Setting aside tech free time for ourselves and our families
• Creating your own routines for connecting

Sometimes we might feel as though happiness is not a choice. When John O'Leary was nine years old, he suffered burns over 100% of his body and he was expected to die. He's now an inspirational speaker, podcaster and bestselling author, teaching more than 50,000 people around the world each year how to live inspired. John encourages people to wake up from accidental living and lead an inspired life. Today on the podcast, he's sharing why cultivating happiness is a choice and how you can choose happiness in the little things, along with the importance of having the right people in our lives to give us guidance.

What's In This Episode:

• Leading a more intentional, inspired life by seeking joy and contentment
• How to find happiness in the little things
• Choosing the lens with which we see the world
• Needing the right people in our lives to provide guidance at the right time
• Dealing with trauma or difficult life experiences
• The three questions you should ask yourself daily

Traditions have a way of weaving time together. They allow us to retain and pass down our cultural beliefs, our spiritual beliefs, and even our family moral values. A tradition is any activity that is purposely repeated, and today we're talking about how they help us create stronger bonds and connections, which is a key to happiness. We'll also discuss the benefits of creating traditions and the three different types.

What's In This Episode:

• Conserving energy and alleviating stress through traditions
• Strengthening family bonds over traditions
• Creating comfort and security by practicing traditions with your family
• Three types of traditions you'll want to implement
• FREEBIE: the Creating Traditions download will help you brainstorm ideas and schedule in new traditions to try out weekly, monthly and yearly!

Relationships are one of those things that are at the top of our priority list, but in the busyness of our days, we sometimes forget to pay attention to that as a priority. Our connections with others are what builds into our overall happiness and improve our productivity. This week, we are talking about building and cultivating your partnerships, dealing with issues and conflicts, and letting go of unrealistic expectations in your relationship. We'll also discuss the three keys to creating strong partnerships.

What's In This Episode:

• The connection between our relationships and productivity
• Creating new experiences to feed your relationship
• Dealing with issues in a partnership as they come up & allowing yourself the space to constructively resolve conflict
• Letting go of unrealistic expectations in a relationship
• Three keys to creating strong partnerships