Have you ever looked at your life and realized something needed to change? It’s like you’re at a standstill. You’re not moving forward. I looked at my life and I realized I wasn’t happy. It seemed that nothing was happening. See, I just officially broke up with the guy I was dating for two years and it’s been on again, off again for the last three month. The extra ten pounds are still hanging on since Christmas and now it’s April. My big goals weren’t getting done and the house is full of clutter. My life is a mess. It’s time for a change. Have you ever felt that way?

I decided to put myself on a 30 Day Productivity Challenge. The two areas of my life I wanted to change were my business and my eating habits. I spoke with a good friend who said she also needed to spice up her life and said she would do it with me.

 

Here’s the challenge I designed.

Wake up 5:30 am and meditate

7am check-in call.

Where I share what I’m eating that day and what type of exercise I’m going to do. Since I don’t exercise, my goal is to do 10 minutes of something. I’m deleting sugar, flour, dairy, alcohol, peanuts, beans and grains from my diet. Once a week is treat day and we are to share our successes.

7:15am ride my stationary bike or stretch

7:30am shower and breakfast

8am in the office- productive things

12:30 lunch

1pm in the office-productive things

3pm do unproductive things- errands, read, paint, housework, etc.

5pm walk

6pm dinner

7pm office- easy, no brain projects

8pm relax

9:30/10pm bed

To keep myself motivated I asked myself, “Why are you doing this?” I made a list of all the benefits. One list for my business and one list for my health. Sounds like a good plan doesn’t it.

Day 1: I woke up at 5:25am meditated and had my 7 am check-in call. I was in the office by 8:30am. Half hour late, not bad for the first day. I tracked my time all day and notice a simple errand took me 2 hours. A few Facebook post took an hour. My biggest observation was when I was procrastinating. I asked myself, “Why?” After a little talk with myself I buckled down and started working. I felt very successful about my day.

Day 2: I woke up at 6:45am feeling tired. 7am call we readjusted our program to wake up at 6am and sleep in on week-ends but still have 7 am call every day. I was in the office at 8am but by 9am I took a nap. I was too tired to work. Back in the office at 10:30 reminding myself why I chose to do this. What am I crazy? Why am I doing this to myself? I made it to lunch and after lunch I had to take another nap. By 4pm I was done for the day. Observation for the day: I was really tired and not feeling well. Took two naps and noticed it took longer to do things than I thought.

Day 7: Observation: I noticed I am going strong in the morning and get a lot of stuff done in the office. In the afternoon I’m tired and my energy is not as strong. I push myself to declutter the shelf in the bedroom or go through a pile of papers in the office. I’ve got to stop writing every down on little pieces of paper. Went out and bought a few notebooks to write in. One for ideas, one for projects, one for podcast, and one for blogs. Now it’s all contained and no more piles of paper. Yeah!

Day 10: Observation: I’m not getting up at 6am its more like 6:10-6:20am I’ve shorten my mediation time for sleep. I notice when I’m working on a project in the office and when it gets hard, I get distracted with something else like Facebook. I’m not putting in the productive hours to succeed. I notice that I’m stuck and now I’m able to get out of it faster.

Day 15: Observation: Wow! I’m half way through. I’ve definitely have been more productive. I just finished writing a sales page for my new program called Create Your Abundance Mindset. It’s a huge project and I just knocked a big hunk of it down. I’m so proud of myself. Funny thing is even the art work I’m painting for my son is ridged. He wants a painting like Piet Mondrian who paints in red, yellow, white and blue squares all trimmed in black.

The art world says its abstract, which I wonder about, because how can squares be abstract? Now I have to paint in straight lines. I don’t like straight lines. I like curves. I’m looking forward to the day I can go back to painting tall, breezy palm trees on the sandy beach of the beautiful blue ocean.

Well that’s it for now. I’ll have to keep you posted for the next fifteen day and how my 30 day challenge ended. If you find there is an area in your life that isn’t working I invite you to a 30 day challenge. Who know what you can accomplish. Just look at what I’ve done.