Your worth is not measured by your productivity

I have always been a conscientious and driven person. I focus, work hard at get results. I have been like this for a very long time. Probably since I started school where I noticed that if you work hard and do as you are told then you get praise and rewards.

This is all very well but what tends to happen is that you externalise your goals according to what is going to get you praise or rewards.

I did not realise this in myself until very recently. I have been working so very hard to achieve certain things and get the praise and rewards that go with them that I have not realised that those external goals are not aligned with who I am.

If you add to this the ‘fear’ of being a freelancer/business owner then you have quite the cocktail for overwhelm and burnout. Pushing yourself to your limits for the sake of achieving some external marker of success that does not fill you with any sort of fulfilment or contentment.

The idea that your self-worth is not measured by your productivity runs against years and years of internal programming for me. It has been one of those things that I see on coffee mugs at Christmas and think “How twee”.

I have been missing the deeper lesson.

What is the point of all this work or you are not feeling a sense of self-worth or even much enjoyment?

This ties in beautifully with last week’s issue where I raised the question, “How does what I am doing tie in with the person I want to be?”

I was shocked to find out how often my answer could have been, “It doesn’t”.

The person I want to be is not driven by output. The person I want to be is driven by creativity, love, gratitude, and purpose.

I want you to think about this this week.

Your worth is not measured by your productivity. In fact, I want to extend it so include your worth is not measured by your success, achievements, money, likes, shares etc.

You are amazing just the way you are.

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I’m feeling motivated by…

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad OnesPacked with evidence-based strategies, Atomic Habits will teach you how to make small changes that will transform your habits and deliver amazing results.

I have found this book to be simply amazing. It has been on my radar for years now, pretty much since it was published but I have only gotten round to reading it recently.

I am a firm believer that things come into your life at the time they do for a specific reason. This book has arrived to bring me some incredibly simple lessons that I am going to be sharing with you over the coming weeks.

I have decided to separate out the important points in this book because there are so many that I want each lesson to be given the time of day it deserves. Also because I am making efforts to action each thing one at a time so as to properly digest them and integrate them into my life.

There are some amazing things that I have been doing already, like habit stacking for example. But there are others that I have not ever heard of.

I am going to start with the basic ideas that habits are formed and maintained according to a handful of things. The most important being identity related. We choose habits that support out own ideas of who we are as a person.

Those habits that are not in line with the persons we believe we are are not kept. Those that support our beliefs of who we are are maintained.

This is going a little deep straight away because we are then confronted with the daunting questions of our deep beliefs of ourselves. A lot of these are a lot worse than we would hope.

I am by no means going to even attempt to dissect and breakdown my own limiting beliefs about myself in this little excerpt but what I will return to is simply the question:

What type of a person do you want to be?

Once you can get a handle on this idea you can then start to build your habits and choices around this person.

If you follow this question with the one from last week (“Does this action/behaviour tie in with the person I want to be?”) you can really start to lay some amazing groundwork for personal growth.

If you are at all interested in personal growth and productivity then this book is a real must and one I will definitely be coming back to again and again.

I’m pondering:

What are your rumble strips? - Pat Flynn SPI podcast

‌I heard this on one of my favourite podcasts, Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn. He was interviewing a guest about living a life that is full of meaning and they were discussing how you can look for signals that you may be going ‘off course’.

Pat then brings up an analogy. As you know, I love a good analogy. He talks about when you are driving on the motorway/highway and your car starts to vear into another lane or off the road your tyres start to go over these little markings on the road called ‘rumble strips’.

These little strips are designed to gain your attention and let you know that you are going off course.

Simple and brilliant.

As a quick side note, my favourite rumble strips are in Belgium and France, they make a high pitched ‘squeal’ that I found to be particularly musical.

Pat’s point here was that in the car these little sounds let you know you are not driving in your lane. So what little ‘sounds’ can you look out for in your life to let you know that you are going off course?

I love this idea because it comes back to awareness of your own behaviour. You have to be on the look out for things that you do when you are losing focus.

For example, a little rumble strip for me is checking my phone. This is a small rumble strip but it lets me know that I am going off course. I now leave my phone out of my study when I am working and as a result am a lot more focused.

This is just a small example but there are bigger ones. Your job is to ask yourself the question, ‘what are your rumble strips?’.

‎The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast: Uncertainty, Fear, and Doing Meaningful Work With Leo Babauta on Apple Podcasts‎Show The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast, Ep Uncertainty, Fear, and Doing Meaningful Work With Leo Babauta - 9 Nov 2022

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I’m enjoying…

11 Awkward Things About Email — Wait But WhyIf someone you’re emailing with is making typos and you’re not, skipping capitals and you’re not, responding to your long, well-written emails with short responses… then you’re their bitch.

This blog is amazing. It is the type of bog I would have loved to have built and grown had I had enough self belief.

The reason I say this is because the topics he covers in his post are so niche, so quirky, so brilliant that would have been years and years of work.

Go check it out if you have not already as there are some amazing posts that are fascinating and also really entertaining.

This particular post had me cracking up because I know someone in all of those categories he lists.

This is my personal favourite from the post.

I’m Loving…

I was born in 1983. So I was of course one of the many many kids who owned a Rubik’s cube.

The iconic little cube sat in my toy box forever unsolved.

From time to time I would pick it up and imagine myself solving it and being praised for my problem solving abilities.

After many attempts that were spread out over a couple of decades I finally came to the realisation that I was never going to solve this puzzle.

Fast forward to 2021. I watched an episode of the Vlog Brothers where a Netflix documentary called ‘Speedcubers’ was mentioned.

I was intrigued so I watched in during a lunch break. The film follows a couple of kids who can solve many different cubes in a matter of seconds (sometimes blindfolded). I was amazed and thoroughly entertained.

So I picked up my son Noah’s Rubik’s cube and once again tried the “am I naturally gifted” approach.

Yep. I didn’t solve it.

Months went by without me even thinking about the cubes.

Then, when I was going through a particularly stressful time in my life.

I was struggling to unwind and couldn’t stop my mind from replaying disaster scenarios and unlikely arguments.

So I decided I needed to relax more.

I sat down on the sofa to relax but my mind was still racing a million miles an hour. I had a lot of nervous energy that I needed to focus and/or expel.

At that moment I saw on the table my kids collections of fidget toys. These are toys designed to give kids so that they can fidget with something when they feel that they are bored etc.

When I was younger I just used to use a ballpoint pen. I would have loved these little fidget spinners, they are awesome.

My eye was then caught by my son’s Rubik’s cube. And the little voice in my head whispered, “you need to learn how to solve this little puzzle, this will help you relax.”

So I went on to amazon and bought a book to help me solve the cube. A couple of weeks of reading and practicing. Not solidly of course, I have other things to do. I was then able to achieve what I consider to be a life ambition.

I can solve a Rubik’s cube. F*ck Yeah!

The amazing thing was that picking up this little cube had become a trigger for me sitting on the sofa and switching out of work mode, it had become my relaxation anchor. The cue to unwind.

In the words of Alan Partridge, “Cashback!”

If this has ever been on your radar of things you wasn’t to do. Grab the book. It’s great! It might even help you to unwind a little bit too.

I did a little video on it because I am proud of myself 😀

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🖥️ Latest Posts & Stuff

The 10 Minute Method: The Easy way to pursue your dreams and achieve success“If you want to be more productive, you need to become master of your minutes” - Crystal Paine (I wrote this in 2016 as an ebook and just reread it. I feel like you guys are going to like this one) I have found myself having this conversation a lot

Violin Range: What Can It Really Do? - The Trailer Music SchoolIn this post I talk about not just what the Violin range is but what it can really do; lowest and highest notes etc.

7 things Zelda Taught Me About LifeI grew up in the 80s and 90s at what I would consider to be the most exciting time for video games. Each new console seemed to bring with it new amazing things like 32bit graphics or new controllers, or even 3D graphics (gasp). Back then my brother and I

This week’s quote:

The best is the enemy of the good - Voltaire

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The Quiet Whisper