8 Productive Daily Habits I Never Miss
If you're tired of productive habit lists including things like (ethereal tone) journaling, meditation, eating healthy, and exercising. This video is for you. By the end of this video, you'll know the 8 productive daily habits that keep me on track as a neurospicy spoonie.
Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.
If you're neurospicy or a spoonie and are looking to master yourself and your time in a compassionate way, this is the place for you to be. Subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every other Tuesday.
As a productivity expert and life coach who serves those with chronic illness, mental illness, and neurodivergence exclusively, a lot of what I do involves teaching my clients ways of doing things that are different from the norm.
Now it's your turn, let's get started!
So the first of the 8 productive daily habits that I do is ... ONE (1) CHORE. Just one. And I talk about this a little more in depth in my Morning Routine video.
Essentially, after I get myself out of bed, which is a process, the first thing I do in the morning before making breakfast in the morning is just one simple chore.
I will unload the dishwasher if it's clean. I will load the dishwasher if it's dirty. I will start a load of laundry. If I feel like I have more gas in the tank, and more time available to me because I don't have, like, a Zoom appointment with a client too early, I might do two (2) chores!
But the deal is one (1) chore. Just ONE.
And because I have it in my morning routine it serves to purposes: 1) I'm getting a chore done! YAY ME!
I hate chores. Having this as a habit has been so helpful.
But 2) it's a really gentle way for me to warm up my body in the morning. And that's why I include it in my morning routine. I'm getting a chore out of the way, it's done, I can feel good about that! My home feels nicer to be in. I'll be ready to cook later if I'm doing dishes. That kind of stuff.
But also, it's in the morning! It is done early. It's out of the way! It feels great.
So that is productive habit number one (1).
Number two (2) Daily Check-In with my system.
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT because I talk about this A LOT whenever I say, like, "this is why planners don't work for you, yadda, yadda, yadda."
We need to engage with our organizational task management/time management systems on a regular basis and keep them up to date so we can trust them. So they are useful to us.
If we are not keeping something trustworthy, we're gonna stop using it and then we're gonna depend on our brain to be our planner and that doesn't work very well for 99% of us.
So, every morning I check in with my system which I have in Notion.
(adoring whisper) Love Notion. It's so good.
This helps me keep in touch with not only things I need to get done that day, but the context in which I need to get them done so I'm not losing track of the bigger picture. And I'm still able to make choices about how to plan my day in the most effective way.
This brings me to the third daily productive habit that I've got which is Prioritizing.
And, I know because so many of my clients struggle with prioritizing that this is really important to say: prioritizing is a learnable skill.
Just because prioritizing is hard for you doesn't mean it will always be hard for you. And, more importantly, there's more than one technique for prioritizing.
These are things I talk about in my course The Action Navigator.
So don't be hard on yourself if prioritizing is hard right now.
You can learn it. And there's more than one way to do it. And one way will probably work better in some circumstances whereas another will work better in others.
It can be really helpful to know all of the techniques so that way, when you need to prioritize you can pick the one that is optimal for what you're dealing with right then and there.
So part of my Daily Check-In is Prioritizing the things that are on my plate for that day in the context of my larger goals.
Daily Check-In and Prioritizing go hand-in-hand but they are two separate things, therefore... two (2) separate daily habits.
The next daily habit I have is a fun transformation of internal to external accountability.
In my coaching program, The Action Navigator, I have a private Discord server where all of my clients check in every day.
What I have found that is so powerful is simply by having a safe place to share what you're up to and what you would like to accomplish... even though there isn't necessarily someone who's gonna, like, poke you later that day to be like, "Hey, did you do the thing?"
Although ... I do enjoy doing that .. on occasion .. for my clients. 😉
It isn't a necessary part just knowing that you have shared your To Do list for that day, for example, with a loving and supportive group of people .. they see what's on your plate.
It provides that little extra external accountability, like, "yeah, I want to, by the end of the day, to go in and put a little checkmark emoji next to each of the things in my To Do list so we can all celebrate HEY I did the things!"
It's so amazing. For those of you who benefit from external accountability a really simple way to start doing that is not necessarily to have an accountability buddy
It's not necessarily to have a coach like myself or community like I have although that is available to you, if you are interested in it.
Sharing with someone you feel safe with... being like, "Hey, here's what I'm trying to accomplish today and I'd love to tell you at the end of the day how I did." That can be amazing.
Even though I'm the authority in my coaching program, I'm the one helping everybody, I benefit from this too.
I check in every day in my server with my clients and I've found it amazing so it's part of my eight (8) daily habits, too.
Comment below and tell me about your relationship with internal versus external accountability. Do you need external accountability in order to take action on things?
The next productive daily habit that I have is so important (jaded chuckle) this is how I live my life and it is to... continuously accommodate my needs.
For those of you who haven't seen my three gas tanks video, my needs kind of break down into three (3) categories:
Physical needs
Cognitive needs
Emotional needs
And making sure that I adjusting my plan as I go through the day to accommodate my needs is so important.
When I was batch writing the scripts for this and three (3) other videos I was (tired whoa) I was exhausted. And so even though it took me longer to do the writing, I lay down and wrote by hand on my iPad because I simply could not sit up and type at my computer.
That was not an option.
Even though I work from bed sitting up with my legs up was just too much for me that day. I had to be lying down. So that's a version of accommodating my needs.
(giggles in neurospicy)
Another thing that's ... a little embarrassing to share but ...
I am all about showing up messy.
I was having a tougher .. just emotional day .. I was feeling a little bit raw on a group coaching call with my amazing clients. But what's so magical about creating a safe space for them is that it's also a safe space for me so ..
I totally was hugging a stuffie during the whole coaching call and it just made everything so much better.
Instead of ignoring the fact that I had higher emotional needs at that time, I leaned into it and I accommodated myself. Constantly, throughout my day, I am always accommodating myself and ...
(sighs in neurospicy)
I remember a time years ago, but in the grand scheme of my life not that long ago, where I spent the majority of my energy, my time, my capacity ... my emotional labor spoons ... to accommodate every one else.
I was trying to fix myself.
I was trying to somehow, magically, become:
Neurotypical
Able-bodied
Mentally healthy
And like I talked about in this video, life transforms and opens up for you when you stop trying to fix yourself. And you just lean into the fact that you need support. You need accommodations.
Once you give yourself unconditional permission to need accommodations, and then to accommodate yourself?
Magic happens
Next one ..
I think we are on number six (6) ... Intentional transitions. And this is particularly for task initiation.
A lot of what I coach around is to help people with that nebulous, hard-to-reach, skill of task initiation:
"How do I get myself off the sofa into the bathroom to brush my teeth?"
"How do I get myself out of bed in the morning to the office so I can do work?"
"How do I get myself (neurospicy chuckle) TO WORK?" ... if you actually have to go to work if you don't work in your own home
How do you do those transitions?
Intentional transitions is so powerful. It's basically breaking down the steps between where you are now and where you want to be ... which is physical, cognitive, emotional ... so that way you can actually support yourself through that process.
If you're struggling because you're on the sofa, watching Netflix but you need to brush your teeth and go to bed? The thing that you need to focus on is how to pause or stop Netflix, turn off your TV or computer, and addressing that moment can be so powerful.
And then the next moment, how do- how do we get you standing up? Off the sofa? How do we get you so you can walk to the bathroom?
Intentional transitions means either being really granular about that process and really breaking down the steps, OR it can be blurring the transitions.
What if you had a single-use toothbrush on the table next to the sofa and (thumps table in 'what if') you could brush your teeth while you're watching Netflix?
It's stuff like that.
Intentional transitions is a sub-category of accommodating yourself, but with a focus on task initiation, and it can be so, so powerful.
My next productive daily habit is what I call, “Butt in Chair Time,” and I have taught an entire masterclass on it. And if you're interested in it, it is free. There's a link in the description box below to check it out.
But essentially it is a framework for creating safe expectations for yourself to ensure you actually do stuff instead of, say ... "I want to write a thousand (1,000) words today," instead, you say ... "I'm gonna write for fifteen (15) minutes today and if all I do is stare at my blinking cursor for fifteen (15) minutes, as long as I continue to try to write in that time, once the timer goes off I have met my goal."
It's about the time and effort put in as opposed to the accomplishment output. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's why there's a whole masterclass on it .. but I use that framework every single day to help me make progress on meaningful things .. not just in this business. I mean, really, this entire business of mine is built on the back of Butt in Chair Time. I wouldn't be here without it.
I also depend on it in other areas of my life ... simple things like, cleaning my apartment, or ... I also do work as a dance teacher for West Coast Swing. It's how I wrote a novel! Criminey!
Butt in Chair Time is amazing.
The last productive daily habit of mine is Self-Care. And I spend an entire module on Self-Care in my Action Navigator course. Here's the two (2) cents.
Self-care is not an inherent quality of certain activities.
I say that because when we hear "self-care" we think of taking a bath.(chuckles in neurospicy) Going on a walk. Reading a favorite book.
The way I look at self-care is, depending on the circumstances, the same activity can be anywhere on the spectrum of self-care to self-harm.
Taking a bath if you are starving and you desperately need food? That's more toward self-harm than it is self-care.
Watching your favorite Netflix show when you have a deadline for a paper to write and you're really stressing out about it? I see that as more self-harm than self-care.
Self-care comes from radical compassion and understanding that sometimes something that makes us uncomfortable is much more caring to do for yourselves than doing something that is comfortable.
So sometimes, yes, watching Netflix can be the best form of self-care. Other times, as I know a lot of you know, it can be more self-harm.
So let me repeat this ... the essence of this: Self-care is not an innate quality of activities. Something is not either self-care or not self-care. It depends on the circumstances in which the activity is happening.
For example, today (laughs in spicy-tired) I woke up with no gas in my physical tank. I have been sipping a Diet Coke to have enough juice in my brain to film four (4) videos.
Self-care, in the traditional sense, would encourage me to be like, you know, “You can film those videos another day."
I know from understanding myself and the way my three (3) gas tanks are behaving right now (like in the past week or so), and I also understand context of my business and how important it is to get these videos filmed. That it is much more self-care for me to push a little today and to use an accommodation. Like I rarely drink soda ... but I have them in case I need them and today I need them. And I'm accommodating myself in such a way that I can push a little harder today than I would normally so I can get these done.
So, me filming right now is an example of self-care for me today.
And that's why self-care is a tenant of how I operate.
It is a foundational habit for me. Basically I saved the best for last.
Self-care. Every. Day.
So there you have it. Eight (8) productive daily habits that I use EVERY DAY that have been transformational for me. I hope they are transformational for you, too.
Earlier I mentioned my signature course, The Action Navigator. It's packet to the brim with tools and techniques for mastering your time, getting organized, and offering yourself radical compassion as a neurospicy spoonie.
If that sounds like exactly what you've been looking for, use the link in the description box below to book a Zoom call with me to learn more.
I can't wait to meet you!
Check out this post next for three (3) steps to become more focused on your work.
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