Lady, EAT THAT FROG and cave living

My life hasn’t been thrilling but I do get a few claims to fame. When I worked at the Four Seasons, I gave a massage to a real life English Lady. Her life was so astounding. She always insisted that I not call her “Lady.” (We were required to call all guests by their formal titles. Everyone feared getting the actual prince of a certain foreign country. His formal title included no less than 10 words, ending in “his royal highness”. I digress.)

The thing about doing massage full time was that I got to work on a lot of people, most on vacation or at the hotel for a wedding or party. I was astonished that I rarely saw people from the many conferences and business events that were happening.
​
Ironically, when people were the most stressed they didn’t have time to get a massage. I feel the same about yoga. It’s when your schedule is frighteningly packed that you can’t make it in.

So, Tiffany and I put our heads together and wrote out our favorite, exciting, time saving tips. We figure, if we can save you time then you’ll be thrilled to make it to class more (you might even commit to coming 21 times in February!) Here is the flashy little list we came up with:

1. Take 15 minutes to plan every day. Tiffany says she gets up 15 minutes earlier than everyone else to do this. (I laughed, isn’t she cute? Intriguing idea but there is no way I am getting up any earlier!) I do this before going to bed the night before (basically stay up 15 minutes later, LOL). Obviously deviation from your schedule is fine but having a plan for each day can make you astonishingly productive. There is also something very satisfying about getting the plan on paper. I write my list and feel a dramatic shift in my stress level.
2. Always plan your hardest task first (if possible). My business coach recommended I read Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy and I found this to be the most simple yet impressive concept. It’s wildly common for us to procrastinate the things that are hardest to do, or that we dread or that aren’t super stimulating. And yet those tasks are consistently the ones that get us closer to our goals. I’m working on this in my own life and have found it to be astonishingly helpful (and the reason I’m writing this newsletter on Wednesday when I used to write it Friday evening).
3. Prioritize your to-do list. Another dangerously useful tip from Eat that Frog! Write out your to-do list and mark each item A-E. There’s a video on it but here is the gist.
   1. Must do tasks. (Things that get you in trouble if you don’t do them and of course your hardest task)
   2. Should do tasks. (Still important but not A tasks)
   3. Could do tasks. (Or they could wait a little bit)
   4. Tasks to delegate. (Can I delegate this to a staff member or better yet, one of my kids? LOL. Seriously though, some tasks we “assign” to ourselves when really it should be someone else doing it. “Why am I washing my teens’ clothes when she could do it herself?”)
   5. Tasks to eliminate. (Is this something that I REALLY need to do? Or am I doing it because I feel pressured to do it?)

4. Minimize your belongings. Nothing flashy here; the less “stuff” you have the less “stuff” you need to keep up with. Think about the time you spend organizing, sorting and putting away stuff. Think about how much time you spend deciding what to wear, trying on clothes that don’t fit and then sticking them back in your closet.

It’s been said that we wear 30% of our clothes 80% of the time. MIND-BLOWING. Now go to your closet and throw away anything worn, stained, faded, ill fitting, or that you haven’t worn in a year (wedding dresses and suits excluded). Once you get your closet down to less clothes they will be less of a time suck (and you might even have room to breath in there! It could be an new impressive meditation station!) If you want to hear about the sensational scale down of my closet watch this.

5. Do one thing at a time. We are deceived in thinking that multi-tasking saves us time but it DOES NOT! It makes us shockingly less good at what we are doing. Women have a hair-raising hard time with this but there’s an important reason.
Back up to the time of living in caves. Men went to hunt wild animals. Focus on animal, kill it, bring it home, done. Women went to pick berries. They would scour the land while carrying a heavy kid on their back, while chatting about how to cure a fever using only flowers, while keeping one eye pealed to make sure to not get eaten, stung or strangled by anything. Women are impressive multi-taskers!

That doesn’t, however, mean that we/they should be multi-tasking. We still know that you complete more and do a better job at it when you are able to fully focus. So, instead of spending two hours doing four things maybe spend 20 minutes doing each thing individually. Find ways to shut out the world (my way includes a pair of huge black headphones that mean “do not disturb”). Try to dedicate 50 minutes of uninterrupted time to work before starting on another task (or being interrupted!) Staying focused can be dramatically difficult but keep in mind that worrying about the future is always a time suck. Conversely, being present is always a stress reliever.
​
Hope you find one or two of those intriguing enough to try! Without exception, I hope you save time for your yoga practice. On our mats we are able to practice these concepts: doing the hard stuff, focusing our minds, prioritizing what is most important and letting go of what isn’t. On our mats we learn about ourselves and our purpose, one breath at a time.
Thanks for reading and being a part of this community.
-Lora