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4 daily tasks: not what you need to do. instead what you see you can do for a future you decided to have.
In my case the future: being able to pick up and move countries without loss of productivity, loss of health, loss of income, loss of standard of living. Having an apartment, food, transportation, internet connection, mobile phone… the important things.
The four daily tasks are really a very useful tool.
An aside: what is a task? Anything that you can do in one sitting, not long enough even to have to get up to go to the bathroom. Even writing an article is a project that is made up of several tasks… idea, outlining, writing, editing, title, publishing. It may include even researching…
And every project, a result in space and time, measurable result is made up of many tasks. Even taking your car to the shop for service is a project, not a task. It will include several tasks: find the phone number of the shop, call them on the phone, make an appointment, put the appointment into your calendar, and finally take the car to the shop. Five tasks. I learned this in the famous productivity book, Getting Things Done
On one hand embarking, or even just considering the 4-daily tasks shows you the level of self-trust you have with regards to the future and you can work on that if it is low.
Or you may need to reduce the level of your expectations, remove self-delusion and get real.
If you have been, if you have lived your life thinking that you could do better, you could do anything, that you are an unrecognized talent, that you are smart, blah blah blah, but you can’t see a future you could work towards and win, you may have to wake up and smell the coffee.
And downshift your future expectations, but still make it work to achieve.
It is becoming clearer and clearer that only work, achievement can change the mood. That effortless makes one unhappy, whereas hard work, maybe even privations can make someone happy.
Counter-cultural, but true.
Life, again, turned around for me is when I signed up for the Article Writing Course.
I had been writing and publishing articles for 33 years, and it was old shoes… comfortable.
Learning to write articles differently was and has been like changing a leopard’s spots… felt unnatural.
And yet it opened up the path to growth again, building a future that doing more of the same would not have achieved.
The 4 daily tasks is not only about business…
The 4 daily tasks is not only about business… creating or growing it… It can be about health, about relationships, about fulfillment, about studying, about skill-building, or about cleaning up one’s integrity… little step by little step.
The 4 daily tasks is best if and when the tasks are small and manageable.
I hear from people in the entrepreneur community that most people try to do projects without breaking them into distinct tasks at which they can win or fail. This leads to anxiety, overwhelm, and often failed projects.
It is not easy to see the tasks. It is a skill that requires someone to see the order of things… while they keep the whole project in mind, and the context or the possibility of the project.
When I do the Clarity Process with people this skill is very important… as is the skill to see that there is an opportunity cost for everything.
Opportunity cost is what you are not doing, what you are not accomplishing, while you are doing what you are doing.
If and when someone gets really clear about opportunity cost, they will start to drop activities that don’t reliably take them to the ‘promised land’… what they ultimately want to achieve.
In my case, given my age, given my physical health, given that I need a lot of replenishment of creative ideas, I spend a lot of time lying down and reading things that delight me. That enrich me.
Listening to audios that do the same… Abandoning cheap stuff that would entertain someone who doesn’t spend all their brain every day.
One of the energy providing activities is, interestingly, working with a couple of clients with whom I need to prepare and then turn around and teach them so I can really learn the material and use it on my stuff… The most effective learning is through teaching. If you can’t teach it you really don’t know it… and you’ll mis-apply it thinking you are doing the right thing.
How does this 4 daily tasks thing work?
I have this social platform, looks like a forum, but it can be just for one person. I pay for each, so you have to pay if you want to play.
Every day or evening you dream up the 4 tasks you want to accomplish, and then at the end of the day you come back and report back to yourself.
I occasionally look at your stuff and check it against what you set out to accomplish… and comment.
You can use it to accomplish anything, really.
But the most important (in my humble opinion) is turning your life towards a future in which you can be proud of yourself.
Some of my clients don’t see that they can set four daily tasks… so they start with one.
One of them has a long history of no achievement, abandoned projects, quitting school, quitting this and quitting that,
In addition to an unfortunate soul correction of the quitter, he also has a strong evidence of bipolar…
We are all bipolar…
We are all bipolar… Bipolar means that we fluctuate between awakeness and sleepiness… or in the extreme: manic and depressed. They are just awake overdone… sleepy overdone. Awake on steroids…
The only methods that tame this tiger (bipolar) are disciplined bedtime, disciplined wake time, and regular and religious consumption of Lithium Orotate.
I learned about Lithium in Joel Wallach’s Rare Earth book more than 20 years ago. At the time there was no Lithium Orotate, or if there was, there was no way to find it on the internet, in its infancy still at the time.
Today I take 2 when I go to bed, and every time I feel like I am dying… 7-8 times a week.
I haven’t gone into a serious and deep depression since I’ve been taking it… I didn’t say I am cured. I am managing my bipolar. I go to bed around the same time… and I fall asleep when I fall asleep. I get up inside a 2 hour window…
So it is not military discipline… I still experience freedom…
But I don’t lose my sh!t every week like this client does: on his days off he stays in bed almost 24 hours… and becomes unmotivated, melancholy, and lost.
If he were coachable… and he isn’t, I would set first the goal to become asymptomatic for bipolar. Without that there is no future for him that is better than his present. He will always circle the drain… and what kind of a life is that?!
And when that is happened and is automatic, I would start scheduling for something that he has aptitude for, like writing poems, or songs. Or learning to write them. Or creating a community around that.
But unless someone starts from a somewhat firm ground, firming the ground is the first step of the process of a future worth going for.
In my case, given that I am learning-disabled, the first step is always to find opportunities to teach what I need to learn.
If you are interested in the 4 daily tasks method, please email me back and we’ll schedule a brief conversation for me to see if I want to work with you. There are several levels you can participate: just post your daily tasks… and occasionally I check on you, post your daily tasks, I check on you, and hold a monthly group coaching session you are invited to so you can ask questions and learn from others’ example, same as the previous level, but I have one private session with you a month, and the highest: weekly private calls with me.
Obviously, depending on the level of MY participation, you pay more… email me if you are interested on any level. I won’t sell you on anything, I promise. I won’t even allow you to buy… is what I normally do… lol.
Anyway, one of the skills I am going to teach in the Inner Authority Course is the skill of feeling your feelings, and allow them to guide you.
It is a skill and it needs a lot of practice.
This is a worthy goal to accomplish through the 4 daily tasks…
The introductory session is free and is happening this coming Saturday, June 26, twice. at 10 am and at 6 pm EST. These times allow almost anyone on Planet Earth to participate.
If it works, this will be the biweekly (a session every two weeks) schedule for the Inner Authority Course proper.
For now registration is not open. If you can, please come to the introductory meditative session this Saturday.
Go to step 2PS: Landmark Education teaches that what gives you the sense of aliveness, or not, is the future that you live into. Here is an interesting piece on it…
