Friday, June 22, 2012

Choice 4: Rule Your Technology - Don’t Let it Rule You


Today I am writing part 4 of a 5-week blog series providing an overview to the principles covered in The 5 Choices to Extraordinary Productivity.  Have you been so swamped in emails you missed the first 3 posts?  If so, today’s post should be helpful, but before you begin, make sure follow these links to read Choice1, Choice2 and Choice3.

When participants attend our 5 Choices Program, they get exposed to a video in the beginning of their training on Choice 4.  Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.  (author of Crazy Busy and Shine), points out that many of us have an addition… to technology.  He states it might not be a full blown addiction, but it is certainly a habituation. 


When your phone rings, your texts whistle at you or your computers ding, do you jump to see what it is?  When you see messages in your inbox that you haven’t read, does it stress you out?  It reminds me of a game I played when I was a teen.  We used to go up to our male friends and act like we were going to punch them in the arm.  When they flinched, we yelled, “Two for flinching!” and then we punched them in the arm twice.  If your technology could punch you for flinching, would you be sore?

We want the paradigm that “We Rule our Technology”, not the other way around.  The principle is of ALIGNMENT.  Our program teaches participants to Design a System that works best for them, to make the 3 Master Moves and how to use Productivity Accelerators.

This is by far one of the most popular parts of the program.  Participants find sanity in the process of setting up rules and alerts and learning new ways to look at information.  For example, almost every email you have can provide you information with one of the following: Appointment, Task, Contact or Notes/Document.  We teach participants to “turn it in to what it is.”  It’s one of the 3 Master Moves.

When you apply this content, you will have an effective system for appointment, task, contact or notes and you will no longer have to “live in your inbox.”  Your email will be organized so you can act on your most important work quickly.  This is a key step to achieving productivity!

Well, next week we’ll dive into Choice 5: Fuel Your Fire; Don’t Burn Out.  Be sure to check back.  I have a surprise for you!


Until next week,
John Vakidis

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking a moment to read this post. I welcome all of our members to post their thoughts on the subject. If you would like to suggest a subject for a future blog post, please add it here. If it relates to our content, We'll give it a shot. Thanks!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.