I have been noticing a consistent pattern to the lifestyles of a number of people with more flexible schedules. When you ask this group to describe their ‘normal day’ they respond that there is rarely such thing, but pushing deeper there are usually common elements that support an optimal mindset.
Movement
After waking naturally, go for a walk, run or do some yoga. Fitness is a by-product here, the key is to get your blood pumping through the body and through the brain.
Mindful breakfast
Take some natural and likely organic good food and enjoy it. You may or may not decide to pair this with some information like a newspaper or a glance through the twitter stream. The newspaper describes the external removed world, the twitter stream describes your personal but virtual world, and the choice of neither will often lead to connect with your personal internal world.
Two strong work hours
Now it is time to get some work done. Work being defined in the physics sense of having an impact on the world, changing some things. Two hours is long enough to hopefully connect and maintain a flow state to enable your most effective output. To do this your will have minimized interruptions – this probably means you haven’t checked your email or twitter and have turned off anything that could potentially flash or beep to distract you.
The limited time constraint means you need to spend those hours wisely and not blow it away refreshing your blog stats – you need to have an impact in this time or it won’t happen all day.
Emergence
The aim of the two focussed hours is to get into a flow state while working on the most important thing for the day. Once the two hours pass you are either in this state and feel like you can work all day without wanting to stop, or you’re not and you might as well move on because it just isn’t going to happen. Try again tomorrow.
The flow days are absolutely amazing. They are why you make the two hour bet each day. If you have one or two of these each week you will get a lot of momentum on your main projects, while also enjoying the freedom of your afternoons on the days they don’t happen.
What does your day look like?
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