When your to-do list is too long, how do you dare try to be more mindful? Or more in the moment? It’s the “more” part that catches me every time. Because I don’t need MORE things to do. I need less. A lot less!

But research shows that if you’re able to focus on the things in front of you, what you’re working on and doing right now, that you’ll be happier with all of your efforts as well has more energetic. I hate to say it but this sounds like it’s a good thing to be more in the present moment and mindful (there’s that dreaded “more” word again).

So how can you be more in the present moment and more mindful without adding yoga, meditation and a whole host of other guru-based activities to your already long to-do list?

I’ve come up with a way of doing this where I don’t add anything to my to plate of chores and I’m able to be more in the present moment. This means I’m enjoying life more and feeling more fulfilled by it.

How?

I take the things I’m already doing and do them in a different order. So for example, when I’m eating breakfast, I just eat breakfast. I don’t take my plate and go eat in front of my computer or grab my phone and scroll Facebook. Who wants to come back to cold eggs? I take the time to eat all that’s on my place at once. Then, I go do all the other things that are next on my to-do list.

This keeps the run-around feeling to a minimum. It’s also more efficient because if you have to keep coming back to a task, you waste time pulling yourself away from it and re-engaging with it. If you’re anything like me, if you don’t complete the task at once it keeps crossing your mind over and over until you do complete it. That’s the worst!

Look at the things you do every day and see if you can practice doing them in a streamlined way.

How do you eat breakfast, lunch or dinner? How do you fold laundry? How do you write your blog posts? How do you prep for your day ahead?

Here’s a hint. If you feel like you’re overwhelmed from all of the multi-tasking, life might be easier and more enjoyable if you can find ways to begin and end one task at a time.

If you haven’t tried this yet, start with something small like brushing your teeth. Don’t try to read your emails on your smartphone while you’re brushing for two minutes. Stick only with brushing.

If you feel annoyed or bored with this, go deeper into your thoughts about brushing your teeth. How does it feel to scrub your teeth? What do the bristles feel like on your gums or tongue? How does your face look in the mirror while you’re brushing? It’s okay to fall into deep thoughts or to be silly with this. The idea is that your only focused on this one task.

Then you can try this approach on bigger things like writing a client email. Even if writing that message makes you think of ten other things you need to do or look up online, come back to that email until it’s done. Notice ~how it feels~ to not get lost down a rabbit hole of distractions when you focus on doing only one thing at a time.

This approach allows you to really live in the moment and focus on the “one” thing you’re doing right now, all without doing more of anything. Let me know in the comments how this approach makes you feel and if you think it might help you enjoy life better instead of taking on “more.”

With much love and gratitude,

Staying focused is NO EASY TASK. Often times I have so many things happening at once that I feel constantly pulled in multiple directions.

This makes me feel crazy and like I’m not really getting anything accomplished—even if I’m actually getting a lot done! How maddening, right?

So I started to be mindful of reflecting on what went well and what didn’t for all of these tasks that I have going on. This has two major benefits.

One, is that it allows me to see what I can do better next time.

For example, scheduling a client phone call too close to time for my kiddos to get home from school meant that I had to try to quiet them and signal that I was on the phone as they walked in the door. This turned out to be a BAD IDEA because there was a lot of noise and I was totally distracted.

Reflecting on this means that next time I more easily remember to schedule that client call to happen when I have more time.

The other benefit of reviewing what worked and what didn’t is that I can tell if I was productive or just busy.

Busy means that I was doing a lot but didn’t have much to show for it. Productive means that I saw results from the actions I took that got me closer to meeting my goals.

Here’s a question I ask myself to help me reflect on the work I’ve done and know if I was productive or just busy:

How did I grow last week?

How do you answer that question? If you can’t easily answer it, no worries. You’re not alone.

I’m here to say that you can figure out a way to answer it that allows you to see your progress, track it, and celebrate it.

If you can get into the habit of setting a goal for the week, then checking if you completed it by asking that question, you’ll be set to really see the progress you’d like instead of just feeling busy all the time. Does this make sense?

For example, the goal you set at the start of the week might be to send follow-up emails to the business leads you have. You want to turn them into clients and you know that the next step is to respond with your follow-up email. At the end of the week if you sent those emails, you know that you’re closer to getting a new client if you took the action step you needed to take.

If you didn’t take the action step and found yourself only doing busy work around that goal, you know that you lost focus.

An example of losing focus for this goal would be that you started the email drafts and never finished them. Or because you went on Facebook to find a detail about the lead that you wanted to include in your email and ended up getting lost in a social media rabbit hole and ran out of time to finish and send the follow-up emails.

Can you be proactive with this idea by creating a goal for the week that you want to grow in XYZ way (pick a way to fill in the blank)? If you can, you’ll be able to focus the actions you need to take for that growth and truly actually accomplish it. I promise you this!

This eliminates that feeling that you’re doing, doing, doing and not getting anything done. It helps you to be aware of the bigger picture so you stay focused and complete the actions you set out to finish.

Some weeks are harder to see results than others. Reflecting on “How did I grow last week?” allows you to put attention on not just your to-do list, but what you actually got done and how it helped you to uplevel and meet your bigger goals.

Goodbye squirrel brain! Hello focused and productive actions!

Let me know what you think about saying goodbye to your inner squirrel and hello to getting things done by reflecting with the question, “How did I grow last week?” I’d love to hear how it went when you tried it.

With much love and gratitude,