3228: Productivity Needs A Purpose by Shawna Scafe of Simple On Purpose on Personal Values & Vision

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[00:01:33] Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Living Daily episode 3228, Productivity Needs a Purpose by Sean Escaife of SimpleOnPurpose.ca and I'm your narrator, Justin Mollick, reading you articles every single day

[00:01:52] of the year with permission from the authors to give you and me a bit more motivation, inspiration, or happiness today. So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life. Productivity Needs a Purpose by Sean Escaife of SimpleOnPurpose.ca. Why setting goals isn't enough.

[00:02:19] As I've been on this purposeful living journey for the past five years, I've dug a lot into productivity. I've worked on changing habits, setting goals, making new habits, taking action, in general getting-ish done. Why productivity is important in motherhood. Many of us moms feel that

[00:02:40] frustration of getting to the end of our day and feeling like we just didn't get anything done. Of course there are seasons where all you get done is care for tiny children, eat some toast over the sink, and hope you remember to put the laundry in the dryer.

[00:02:54] However, as we exit the constant demands of babies and try to take management over our day, it can be so important to feel satisfied with how we lived out the day. Feeling unproductive

[00:03:06] leaves us feeling like we aren't doing this gig properly. Whether we are moms who stay at home, working, or a combo, we all need to feel like we are doing a good job. We all need to feel

[00:03:18] productive at whatever it is we are called to in the day. Productivity is very important, but one big takeaway I have from all this and a mistake I had made is that you can't just be

[00:03:30] productive for the sake of being productive. Productivity is a tool, not a lifestyle. It took me a long time to figure this out. There's a difference between living life on purpose and being productive. I think we confuse productivity for purpose. We think that if

[00:03:49] we are active on something that we are being purposeful. In fact, this is often our solution to feeling a lack of purpose. We google how to be more productive, and we make to-do lists,

[00:03:59] and we pick some goals to work on, and we choose a good habit to learn. These are all good things, but they need to serve something bigger. They need to move us towards something bigger.

[00:04:12] On setting goals without a vision. When I would set goals and work on changing habits that I simply deemed good or bad, I found I wasn't successful. I'd burn out, not really be invested

[00:04:24] in the goals, or get to the end and realize I was still unsatisfied. I still didn't feel like I was purposeful and passionate about my life. There's nothing worse than getting to the end

[00:04:34] of the day, or week, or month, or finish line, and feeling like all that energy might have been better spent elsewhere. Maybe all that effort came at the cost of things that were more important to

[00:04:46] me. Maybe I didn't really pursue that goal in a way that honored who I am, or the relationships that matter most to me. All in all, I couldn't just slap on some goals. They seemed like the

[00:04:57] obvious fix to feeling dissatisfied with my life, but I was missing the obvious part, the vision I was working towards. I wanted to live my life on purpose, and it needed to be more rooted in the purpose than the productivity. Purpose before productivity. It's so important

[00:05:15] to know the purpose you have for your life. I don't mean your calling. I mean getting really clear on what a purposeful life looks like to you. It is important because without this purpose,

[00:05:26] we meander, we roam, we feel lost, we feel restless. We are doing busy work for the sake of being busy. We know there is more, but we don't know how to get it. Maybe we try setting goals as I previously

[00:05:41] mentioned, but this feeling of restlessness usually doesn't stay away. Then we might feel bad our goals didn't miraculously change our life, and we feel even worse about our crappy goal experience compounded with this lost and restless sense we have about our life.

[00:05:57] Two things that help you determine your life on purpose. To know what purposeful life is, you need to consider who you are and what you want. You need to know your personal values,

[00:06:09] what is important to you, and how you show up. And you need to know your vision, what you want your life to be like and feel like. Number one, your personal values. Your values can't be

[00:06:22] underestimated. They are part of your core identity. You feel connected to them. They contribute to who you are. You feel a privilege or responsibility to live them out. A quick way

[00:06:33] to dig into the values you have is to finish this sentence. I am a person who is blank. Caring, diligent, environmentally conscious, creative, ambitious, cultured, relaxed, etc. When we don't live out our personal values, we feel frustrated, not like ourselves, and disconnected.

[00:06:54] It is so important for us to understand the values that are most important to us and the things that make us feel like we are living true to ourselves. Number two, your life vision. A reason why many of us feel unhappy with the life we have at this

[00:07:09] moment is that we just let it happen by default to a large extent. In my case, I can say I made a lot of safe decisions to build up a life I thought was successful. I got a safe job, the home, the

[00:07:22] marriage, the second vehicle. I just kept checking all the boxes. Yes, I was guiding my own life, but I never stopped to really question it. Was it what I really wanted? As I've taken time to

[00:07:35] start asking myself what I do want, how I want to feel, the future I want to build into, I've seen the power of visioning playing out before me. I've seen it in my own life, the lives of my life

[00:07:48] coaching clients, and the users of the Life on Purpose workbook. Digging deeper into life on purpose. In a world of hashtag do more, be awesome, get done, we need to keep this motion pointing to

[00:08:02] the right direction. Productivity is a rewarding feeling we can have at the end of the day, but living with this bigger purpose is more effective, rewarding, and valuable than filling your day with general productivity. You just listened to the post titled, Productivity

[00:08:24] Needs a Purpose by Sean Escaife of simpleonpurpose.ca, and I'll be right back with my commentary. It goes without saying that a lot of people don't know where to start when it comes to investing.

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[00:09:32] disclosures at acorns.com slash old. Thank you, Dishana. It's a good point. I don't think it's a great place to strive for productivity just for productivity's sake. Why do we want to be more

[00:09:45] productive? To get a promotion or a raise because we want to free up time to spend with family, friends, or even get more time for ourselves? Values have definitely come up before. I think

[00:09:59] that's a great one to revisit from time to time because like she said, it can be frustrating or worse if we feel like we're living in contradiction to our values. And as obvious

[00:10:09] as that sounds, it could be sort of unconscious. We might not realize it's happening if we don't take the time to actually think about what our values truly are. So some good ideas and things

[00:10:21] to think about this week. I'll be thinking about it and maybe we can quickly jot down some of our values and see if something we're doing is in opposition to them. But I'll leave it there for

[00:10:32] today. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you back here for the Wednesday show tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.