I was up early this morning with heartburn (completely new to me courtesy of pregnancy; I’d never encountered it before last week, so I can only be so whiny 
) and decided it was finally time to buy the Zen To Done ebook.
I’ve been wanting it for months and am starting to feel the crunch with the impending arrival of our son, so it seemed like a good way to spend my “bonus” waking hours.
I’ve just finished reading it, and the piece of advice that really caught my attention was the repeated caution to only try to adopt one or maybe two of the 10 recommended habits at one time. Ideally I should focus on just one for at least 30 days.
It’s probably good that Leo repeated it so many times. Maybe it will help me actually do it! Focus is probably my number one challenge in every area of my life. I have diverse interests and love starting things, and then forget about all the things I’m already doing. I think I’m his exact target reader.
So that leaves me with two immediate decisions.
First, which of his habits to start with… I feel like I’m in desperate need of most of them right away, but that’s not realistic. So I’m going to spend the next 30 days focusing on the “Process” habit. Leo sums it up like this:
Habit: make quick decisions on things in your inbox, do not put them off. Letting stuff pile up is procrastinating on making decisions. Process your inboxes (email, physical, voicemail, notebook) at least once a day, and more frequently if needed. When you process, do it from the top down, making a decision on each item: do it (if it takes 2 minutes or less), trash it, delegate it, file it, or put it on your to-do list or calendar to do later.
This seems like a great place to start because one of my worst habits (productivity-wise) is letting everything pile up, particularly in my email.
If I start to deal with everything promptly, I expect that at least a few of the other habits will start to take care of themselves. For instance, if I deal with email immediately and am forced to say “yes” or “no” to new projects, that probably will help with the “Simplify” habit.
The second decision is about two productivity courses launching this week that I really would like to sign up for. One is called the 100 Day Challenge—it starts today and goes until December 31, 100 days away, and costs $97. The other is Wake Up Productive—it starts next Monday and runs for 90 days, so essentially the same time-frame, and costs $297.
Both courses include daily content and assignments. I’ve watched sample content from both and they both look like very high quality programs, which makes it both hard to choose and imperitive that I do—I want to get the most out of them, and I don’t think I can do that if I split my attention between them.
They’re both time-based, so I likely will only do one unless they’re repeated. Wake Up Productive seems more likely to be repeated, since the “draw” of the 100 Day Challenge is accomplishing specific goals before the end of 2008.
I’ve never purchased anything from either “guru” so no bias there… My business cash flow is tight, and I definitely need to get things in order before the baby is born, so should I decide strictly based on price? What do you think?
