In one of my most recent breakthroughs, I realized that my to-do list often does not lead me anywhere new. Instead, I find myself stuck in the same spot, waiting and hoping that something significant will happen in my life. It like I am expecting a magical change to happen without doing any specific to guarantee the outcomes I long for.
For example, I mentioned a to-do list, as it is one of these magical tools that helps me organize my life by listing things I want and need to do, separating the important tasks from trivial ones, and directing me towards the outcomes I desire. It is one of the best tools that increase my productivity 300% and pushing my life to the next level, so I use it on a daily basis.
However, this tool doesn’t guarantee that my life is progressing, as it helps me do a lot of actions that keep my life in one place, such as reacting to my everyday obligations and performing “maintenance tasks.” In other words, even if I do a lot, it doesn’t mean that it adds up to anything significant.
What I need is to keep my eye on the prize, whatever it may be, which is something I want to achieve or someone I want to become. For example, after writing my first book called Optimal Happiness, I now want to write a second book (to be announced soon!). However, to do so, I really need to proactive dedicate a part of my day to tasks related to this goal, such as researching and writing.
And this is the biggest lesson of this article: constantly and proactively dedicate time in our lives to do something that pushes us towards the outcomes we desire. This is realistically the only way to progress, as opposed to standing in one place, or even worse, having your life shrink.
Sure, we need to maintain what we already have, and we need a system to help us do even that because it can be overwhelming. However, we also need to steadily progress towards something more.
After all, human beings are not programmed to stay in a status quo indefinitely. Progress can easily overtake us, so we need to always do more to ensure that our lives are moving forward. Failure to do so can easily result in us falling behind and our lives shrinking.
It’s like inflation, which could be, for example, 5%, meaning that our money is now worth 5% less than what it used to be. In this case, we want to be growing at least 5% to stay in one place, and more to make any progress.
It’s simple mathematics, and the math says that we need to make an extra effort to keep growing.
