And it needs to be in one place.
Each time you think of something you need to do, put it in one note on your phone so you know for certain it’s been captured. Then you can come back to it later.
Trying to remember or synthesize multiple locations will leak brain power without you knowing.
Cause and effect is important to notice. They say if you don’t measure it, it can’t improve.
Some things are easy to measure. How many words you wrote on a page. How much weight you can lift at the gym. Other things are harder to pin down.
But if we can figure out a way to quantify the things we actually want to improve, to measure them somehow, we start to see the cause and effect of our own actions. When I do this, this happens. And once you can see that, you can adjust.
So what do you want to improve at? And how can you measure it, so you can actually improve it?
Special things require special places.
A beautiful gift is seen as beautiful because it’s in a lovely and thoughtful box.
We remember to use our tooth brush because it has a little home in the bathroom.
I’m about to begin rehearsing a show and I wondered why my relationship to the actual script wasn’t feeling as strong as other projects.
I realised it was because the script was floating around the house in random places; it didn’t have a home.
So yesterday I hole punched each section and put it neatly in ring binder. Everything I need to do that work is in one place.
When I look at the folder I get a little gleeful flutter. That project has a little home now and I’m much more likely to do do productive work with it.
You don’t need ‘perfect’ or even ‘complete’.
You just need zero to one.
Zero to one is opening the gate.
It’s getting out of analysis paralysis and getting into the game.
Trying to be perfect, getting it finished or figure it all out before you start won’t get you nearly as far as zero to one.
You know the thing you’ve been avoiding?
The email that you know if going to tke some thought…
The boring task that simply needs your time…
The uncomfortable action.
Yeah, that one.
Do that first- then you’ll feel like king of the world.
This morning I hummed and ahh’d about planning my day out.
“I’ll just get started now”
“By the time I plan it I could be well underway with what actually matters”
Let me tell you, it’s ALWAYS a good idea to plan your day.
Clarity of objective, intention and a scheduled time to complete it is unbeatable.
There’s a great discovery waiting for you. If you’re like me, you have a lot of things you’d love to get done across a day.
The ones that take precedence are the ones like cooking dinner, getting ready for work, doing the washing, showering and a hundred other things a human has to do to function daily.
The things that tend to take a back seat are the ones that will actually make a difference to your life.
Things like meditating, planning some healthy meals for tomorrow (because you know you won’t have time tomorrow), reading a book.
These things don’t seem urgent, and they aren’t really- urgent is for things that you need to do to survive or at the very least to not experience too much unpleasantness…
But who wants a life of just surviving? The good life is about finding ample time for the things that aren’t urgent but that really matter.
For me, it’s my daily voice bubbling exercise, it’s taking time to actually plan my day (before merely reacting to email), it’s the breathing technique I learned that I really want to get better at.
Today, I happened to have Spotify playing while I did my non-urgent but important tasks.
I realised I had a very limiting thought about all these tasks “They take too long”
Well, Spotify disagreed:
My bubbling exercise took two songs to complete.
Planning my day? One song
The breathing exercise? Yup, that was one song as well.
Three tasks that will change your life over time in the span of just 4 songs.
The big discovery is this: the things you want to do that you’ve been putting off take way less time than you think.
To prove it to yourself, put on your favourite song and do the pile of dishes you’ve been avoiding.
I bet you you’ll be done by the end of the song.
Once you beleive me, choose one of those magic life changing tasks and put another song on to find out the exciting truth:
It takes way less time than you think.
You know the one.
The task that would actually only take 7 minutes and thirty seconds to do…
But you keep putting it off.
Here’s your chance to get it done.
They are the ones that matter, and we know this.
We know that great things come from culminative efforts.
We know that in order to eat an elephant you take one bite at a time.
We know that nothing great was built by changing everything at once and doing everything in one day (or even a week).
The truth (that we know) is that it’s the little things, done over and over again that get you there.
The choice, then, is to select the right little things to get you there.
Reading an inspirational quote each day mightn’t help you write your book…
…but writing a sentence each day might.
Choose the little thing and one day you’ll get the big thing.
I have a question for you: As a teacher, what do you find most difficult about making te ao Māori part of your day?
Many schools genuinely want to make te ao Māori an authentic, living part of daily school life…
…but often the challenge is not intention, it’s knowing how to turn that intention into something practical, consistent, and sustainable for busy staff.
That’s why I recorded this short video for you.
In it, I share 3 core ingredients I keep seeing in schools that are making real progress with embedding te ao Māori school-wide.
If this is something your school is working toward, I think you’ll get a lot from this video.
