Time to start thinking differently?

A couple of days ago a quote caught my eye:

"Slow living is this weird duality of being prepared, organised, having systems in place, knowing what's coming and managing expectations, and being flexible and fluid and understanding that life happens." (Brooke McAlary, The Slow Home Podcast Episode 235)

Replace “slow living” with “productivity”, and Brooke has expressed my philosophy way better than I ever could.

Productivity is all about being organised, managing your time and finding systems that serve you and work for you as an individual. No surprises there. But there’s so much more to it than that.

It’s also about being flexible and fluid. Are you able to recalibrate when plans change? How do you respond when life happens and things don’t go according to plan? Do you have enough white space in your days to allow for something taking longer than you’d expected?

It may be controversial for me, a productivity mentor, to tell you that nailing your to-do list every single day is not the most important thing. Of course that’s a great ideal to aim for, but if that’s how you measure success there will always be days when you fall short.

So how about we start thinking differently?

Let’s embrace the duality, be gentle with ourselves and take a softer approach to getting things done. Let’s be more forgiving if we have a bad day. Let’s strive for efficiency, not for efficiency’s sake but so we can enjoy life when it happens!

After all, isn’t that the whole point?

How do you feel about the duality Brooke describes? Is it something you’ve experienced in your own life, or something you’d like to discover? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one, so do let me know in the comments below.

Image credit:  my talented friend Charlie from Tide & Tree

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