WT = Waiting Time. DT = Development Time.
PLANNING (task, scheduling, and WT = DT): I plan to write my Leap Year W37 post into the site Medium on Wednesday at 6 PM instudy. I plan to turn those small WTs into Grateful Time, where I look to see what I can be grateful for in those situations. For example, last week I thought how great it was to be able to have have extended vacations. We have had the abundance to spend a whole week at the beach.
EXECUTION (strategies used): From week to week, I use a combination of many strategies. There are always some which are used more than others depending on what comes up, but I wanted to offer a link to all them at once.
My advice is to identify the I CAN'T statement you tell yourself during the most. Then find a strategy below the statement which resonates with you, and then start using it.
Enjoy!
REFLECTIONS (learnings and actions): Merry Christmas everyone. I am writing to you from the beach this week and wanted to share two powerful things I learned.
First learning came from using the Streaks app. It is a simple app which tracks and gives you analytics on up to six behaviors or actions. For example I have told myself I need to drink more water each day for the last year, but only would keep track of my water consumption in my head. Problem is this is not the only thing I have to keep track of during the day. Thus, by the end of the day I would only have a rough idea of how many glasses I drank. Did I drink eight glasses a day consistently. NO!
However, I was totally surprised to see I was drinking maybe four or five glasses a day once I started using he Streaks app. Wow! Now a hidden bonus was my sleep improved, just by drinking eight glasses of water a day consistently. I was very tired after sleeping 7.5 hours of sleep before monitoring my water consumption, where as now, I can sleep seven hours of sleep and feel much more refreshed.
The key lesson I have learned is
"What you do not track, you can not change."
No matter how good or bad you think you are you will have no idea how to improve until you get a sense of where you are at. This can be applied to your Leap Year process as well.
Now there will be times when you feel like NOT completing your weekly task and think it will not make a difference. However, if you track how many weeks you complete them consistently then you will be able to identify why you are either making progress or not. For example, you will make more progress and see significant results if you complete 10 weeks in a row, rather than being sporadic and completing the weekly task one week and then taking a week off.
The Streaks app can help you with this as well. I have programmed completing my weekly tasks in as one of my activities and it pops up every Sunday to ask if I have completed my weekly task.
The second main idea I learned this week came to me while I was at the beach with my family and it deals with perspective. Our trip to the beach started out on the wrong foot, as the rental car I booked said it had enough room for seven people and come to find out it only seats five. I showed the agent the advertisement, but they said it was wrong. Argg!! Next, I was dealing with figuring out why we were not getting internet on our cell phones, even after I had paid. This was all done in Portuguese, so you can guess this only compounded the problem when I could not understand everything the representative was saying. Lastly, we had to go to the hospital to remove Tae's stitches before we left for the trip, and we waited over an hour just to remove three of them.
To say the least, I was quite frustrated before we even left. This frustration carried over once we arrived to this amazing beach. I did not know it, but I had a perspective of
"What could go wrong now?"
Funny thing is that is all I saw. From Tae not listening to us, or my wife being upset at something, or me thinking the internet was not up to standard, and on and on. The first day continued like this until I was swimming in the ocean with our nanny's two daughters, who have never been to the beach, and time seemed to slow down. I could see the droplets of water coming down on us while we were playing in the water and thought how amazing it was to be here, right now, in this position.
After this I changed my perspective to one of gratitude and started to see things differently. I was much more grateful for being able to provide this opportunity for the girls, my wife, and Tae. I was grateful to look out at the beach and ocean every morning when I wrote, and just thankful for all the great things in my life.
I am reminded of a post I wrote earlier where all you to change your perspective is to change the phrase "I have to..." to "I get to..." So the next time you see things in a negative light or catch yourself judging things constantly, change you perspective by saying "I get to..." instead of "I have to..." Hopefully you can be present to the current situation and see things in a different light.
What went well?
Weekly task completed while traveling and on vacation. New schedules and routines, but carved out time to complete the weekly task.
What is something we can improve upon? What actions can we take next week?
Cultivate a sense of gratitude in all situations by changing the phrase "I have to..." to "I get to..."
What is something to avoid next week?
Judging things, people, or outcomes.
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