Do you know that thing which you should already be doing it but you HAVEN’T EVEN started yet?
Or that thing which you already have started, but left it halfway through without actually finishing it? And what about that gargantuan task which you cannot take care of in just one day, but somehow you’re leaving it for later, and it’s becoming an ever-growing snowball?
Your problems have ended, because today you will meet the…
THE GUILT HOUR!
My name is Seiiti Arata, of the Productivity Ninja course and this here is an adaptation of the tip already shared by The Action Mill and Lifehacker guys, one that is really going to help those who stop and think “damn, I have so much stuff to do and that’s making me feel bad” – do you know that feeling of distress? It’s normal, everyone has it. We’re going to solve that with the Guilt Hour technique.
How does it work? Pick your notebook and a pen. First, look at your calendar, your schedule, and see a window that you have available every single week. It can be, as an example, every Tuesday from 7 to 8. Or every Sunday, from ten to eleven p.m. It’s a timeframe whose availability is highly likely. Got it? Very well, BOOK THAT HOUR. From now on, it’s called The Guilt Hour.
When that time comes, dedicate to it two or three minutes during which you’ll think “what do I have to do, what are things that I have yet to start, or what did I start but have not yet finished?
“What’s bothering me, stressing me, what’s making me feel GUILTY that needs to be sorted out?”
It’s really quick, two or three minutes at most. If a gigantic list pops up, relax, pick just ONE ITEM. This part right here is crucial, this listing cannot by any means consume more than two or three minutes of your time.
And then, what will you do with the other fifty-seven minutes remaining of your guilt hour? Get things moving and start doing what needs to be done.
Is it very very very simple? I love when things are simple and they actually work. Because there are no excuses left. Extra advice: if you are able to gather other people, that’s even better. It can be people from your family or friends… or also people from your office.
Set a timeframe during which everyone is going to meet up in order to identify the things that need to be done, SAY OUT LOUD what is the activity that will be performed… and then you just have to do it, get things moving. When we tell other people, our commitment increases even more (and the people around us will understand why we are so focused on that activity) and I even have a secret weapon here that I’ll show you soon to increase our focus.
You know, there’s a really interesting thing about Bruce Lee, about personal productivity and the Guilt Hour, which I’m going to talk in a bit.
Let’s now talk about the great master Bruce Lee. Among many things that made him a legend, one of the most famous is the one-inch punch, a martial arts technique which got pretty popular. It’s a punch performed at a one-inch range, which is two and a half centimeters. But it can also be thrown at a distance of half an inch, three inches, anyway, it’s a really short distance.
And that’s something rather unusual because, generally, in order to strike a proper punch we need to move our whole body to gain distance and more power. It’s very hard to achieve a strong punch at a short distance and for this strike to be effective you need lots of concentration and explosiveness.
Ok. But, in martial arts, how can they use the one-inch punch in a fight? Imagine that you’re fighting from afar and you throw a kick or a punch at some distance, but your opponent happens to block it, he protects himself. What happens next? You’re face to face with him and you’ll need to step back to throw another strike, HOWEVER if you master the one-inch punch technique, you can throw an additional strike very quickly and that can be decisive in a fight.
But why are we talking about that in our productivity course? Because the one-inch punch is an isolated technique. If I teach it to someone who doesn’t know how to dodge himself, who doesn’t have endurance, stamina, flexibility, who doesn’t have a fighting strategy, it’s just worthless. The best thing that that person will do is to call his friends at a BBQ party and say, look, guys, I’m going to smash a wooden board at a two-centimeter distance! BANG. That’s it. And nothing more.
The thing we’re seeing here on today’s video, the Guilt Hour, happens to be the same thing. The Guilt Hour technique is just an isolated one, similar to the one-inch punch. It’s a cool trick. I hope it can be helpful to you and that you’re able to harvest this video’s results… and if you want to harvest even bigger results, then I invite you to take the next step, which is to get some proper background, to complement this technique with dozens of others, comprised within a wider strategy. This is the full Productivity Ninja course, in which you will find more details after submitting your email on the page’s form on this link here and you can use an email whose inbox you check every day, because I’ve lots of cool stuff to send your way.
And I’ve said that I had an object to show you, one that is really helpful during the Guilt Hour. It’s this one right here, look, a kitchen timer. Those in a bakery spin it and then it starts to count the remaining minutes you have, the alarm goes off when the time ends. How do we use it? When you start YOUR guilt hour, pick one of these timers, spin it and, when it’s doing tic tic tic tic, you do absolutely no other activity, until the alarm goes off. It’s only after that that we are free to do other activities.
Let’s suppose I need to write my monograph, I’ll spare a whole hour to do that, my guilt hour, I’m going to turn my timer on and, even if something new pops up on my email, if I remember that I have to hang some clothes to dry, if my cell phone rings, I will not let those interrupt what I’m doing during that period. This is the Guilt Hour, it’s a special one that I’m using to feel better with myself, with which I’m able to live a guiltless life and have time to get solve things that are just stuck in my life… and with this timer I’m sure that I will lock that time. Actually, the timer itself is part of some other technique, the Pomodoro Technique, of Francesco Cirillo.
Again, I hope you’ve enjoyed it and consider it to be useful. Combine it with two techniques: use the Guilt Hour and the kitchen timer along with the Pomodoro Technique and you’ll absolutely produce more and, as a consequence, you’ll have more free time to kickback, WITHOUT any Guilt. After all, the Productivity Ninja is designed for us to enjoy an improved life, one that has more free time. That’s why we’re here, together, searching ways to improve our efficiency, our productivity, that’s why we will smash the guilt with today’s technique, in order to be really relaxed, really laidback, after doing it.
And to actually double your productivity with a full method, use the form on the LINK here and there you’ll access our course in a members-only area, which will cover MUCH MORE ground than today’s free sample. Nobody will stop you after that
Thanks so much! I’m Seiiti Arata of Productivity Ninja!