When it comes to personal productivity, growing your business or even being a better spouse, there is a temptation to believe that if you spend enough time searching, you’ll stumble across an extraordinary tool that will deliver exceptional growth or progress. Unfortunately, in real life, these success accelerators doesn’t exist. When you invest time in their pursuit, you rob yourself of smaller doses of success that lead to increasingly greater, sustained success. This is why some of the most un-productive people are the ones who are on a perpetual hunt for next great GTD productivity app, software or method.
In reality, extraordinary results only come when you’ve determined to do the ordinary with greater consistency and commitment.
Do you want to get more done? Use a simple time-blocking method and stick to it. Or, buy a $0.99 legal pad and draw up prioritized to-do list every day. Do it in order of priority until you’re finished. This simple exercise was an indispensible tool for Charles Schwab, one of the most successful businessmen of all-time.
Do you want to be a better spouse? Don’t (just) plan that once-in-a-lifetime vacation or save for a diamond ring. Make progress toward intimacy by making dinner once per week, shutting off your phone at dinner, or praying for your wife every night before bed.
Ordinary disciplines, when practiced daily, will yield the extraordinary growth results that the “extraordinary” tools never do.
What “consistently-ordinary” things have been helpful for you?
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