A To do list is for daily tasks, but what about those ever important long term goals?  It would be a distraction to look at all of it every day.  Over the weekend I had a conversation about this exact topic, so I felt it was worth writing about.  My clients, colleagues, and friends know I'm a GTD practitioner.  It reminds me of how my father managed his day using some old DOS software.  He captured everything he needed to do and set a day to be reminded.  Every day he would print off his list and get to work on it.  New items were captured on the paper and keyed into the program daily.  He specified the day to be reminded and then forgot about it.  This is where the magic happens! This post will go into more detail on how to make this work for you.

Use the Right Tools for the Job

As I mentioned before, the magic comes from setting a reminder for the action.  This is critical to filtering out distraction and noise on a daily basis, but not losing sight of the long term goals.  In my post about how to find more time in the day, I stress the importance of reviewing lists regularly.  How do we review lists associated with projects that may not end for five years?  You need two reliable tools for this.  One to to store information such as articles or notes for reference.  The other to capture actions to take with the ability to show you the right actions on the right days.  This can be papers and folders, digital, or both.  The key is that you always have access to what you need when you need it.  I personally use Evernote for notes and Things (Consider Omnifocus as an alternate) for actions.

Do you have the right tools?

Categorize your Goals by Time

Once you select your tools, you'll want to capture your projects with the associated actions and notes.  We'll say a project is anything that's two or more actions and will finish within a year.  If the goal spans outside of a year, then create a lists of 1-2 year, 3-5 year, and lifetime goals.  Take time to associate the long term goals with any active projects that relate to them.  This will differ based on the tools you're using, but it's still important to do.  Capture any notes and reference material related to your projects in your other tool.  Make sure you create the appropriate associations there as well.  With everything primed and ready to go, it's time to schedule tasks!

Create a Schedule to Review the Lists

Scheduling your various reviews will help quiet the mind and remove distraction.  Scheduling tasks will differ depending on your tools, but it's critical to being effective.  First you want to schedule a daily review to stare at your calendar and daily to do list.  This is best implemented as recurring event on your calendar.  Next schedule a weekly review on your calendar and to do list.  I usually block off at least 1.5-3 hours to do this.  You'll review actions associated with your projects, areas of focus (family, work, finances, etc.), and scan your calendar a few weeks out.  

Schedule your reviews

Next schedule a quarterly review action of your 1-2 year goals.  You'll end up looking at these more frequently, but this is a good review interval.  Next schedule a bi-annual action to review your 3-5 year goals.  Again, you'll end up seeing these more frequently, but these times will be more deliberate.  You'll want to take more time reviewing progress and adding more projects (within a year) to help move the goal along.  I usually take three hours of time to do this, but I'm an INTJ who enjoys thinking and analyzing a lot.  Make sure you give yourself enough time to reflect and plan.

A Quick Recap

Let's review how to reduce distraction and use lists for long term goals.  You need tools to support capturing and scheduling of tasks and notes.  The tools should support your ability to associate your tasks and notes with areas of focus in your life as well as the projects and goals they're associated with.  You then divide your projects and goals into less than a year, 1-2 years, and 3-5 year lists.  From here you'll have scheduled tasks to review your lists at the appropriate frequency.  This will change your daily to do list into a mixture of actions that lend themselves to short-term and long term goals.  You will have more lists to review, but only when the time is right.  This will keep your mind clear and focused and remove the distraction caused by the nagging feeling that the important things are slipping.

What did you eat last night or this morning?  Will you have the focus and energy you need throughout the day?  Will your todo list grow or shrink?  Even health conscious eaters may be shooting themselves in the foot.  I frequently see common patterns with my clients that hinder them from consistently being in a high performance state.  They suffer from brain fog and can't regularly get into that high energy mode.  I continue to find three things working against them.  They're not avoiding brain fog foods.  There are not enough high energy foods in their diet.  Finally, they're not using supplements to cover the gaps.  There's new data and helpful practices like intermittent fasting, the keto diet, and more that are worth learning about.  Whether you have bonuses dependent on tough deliverables or ambitious goals for your career or life, you can't afford to not read this!

Come Out of the Brain Fog

​Recent studies have found found links between low grade inflammation and brain fog.  Additional data shows that most everyone has reactions to sugar, gluten, and dairy.  For some it's severe, and for others it's mild, but it still causes inflammation.  I personally had to change my diet to address auto-immune issues.  As a bonus I no longer had headaches, my energy levels increased, and my focus and clarity of thought became higher and consistent.  I've since connected with many others with similar experiences and frequently read about more.  Unfortunately, there's a lot of foods on this list that are considered "ok" that people really enjoy.  I advise committing to giving up all of it for at least six weeks, but push for ninety days.  Record energy levels, ability to focus, mood, headaches, and anything else you want to add.  Keep it simple and use a 1-10 scale with 10 being awesome!

Love your brain and keep it out of the fog.

Foods to Avoid

Please keep in mind that the diet of what we eat matters, so avoid grain fed beef, farmed fish, ​etc..  They tend to eat junk to fatten them up to increase profit. If this is is not possible, then try to make sure it's the leanest cut you can get, because the junk ends up in the fat.  Remember, being in a high performance state requires us to fuel ourselves properly, so avoid these foods.

• Sugar
• Gluten
• Dairy
• Vegetable Oil
• Anything Fried
• Grain Fed Beef
• Conventional fruits and vegetables, but especially those that are heavily sprayed
• Artificial everything (sugar, color, flavor, sweetener, etc.)

To adopt a specific diet that will keep you on the right path, I would consider reading one of the following.  The Bulletproof Diet by Dave Asprey, Eat Fat Get Thin by Mark Hyman MD, or the Whals Protocol by Terry Whals MD.  Terry Whals beat MS by changing her diet alone, so that's worth a read in general.  Here's an article from the Huffington Post that offers some non-diet ways to combat brain fog for additional benefit.  We'll never beat brain fog and achieve high performance if we can't stop bombarding our body with these foods, so make a commitment to test it for yourself.

Eat High Energy to be High Energy

Not all food is created equal in regards to nutrition.  The goal of eating is not to be full, but rather to provide us with the nutrition we need to live and perform.  Our bodies are very resilient and will find ways to make something work for periods of time, but this usually comes at a cost.  Can we "live" on burgers and fries, it depends on what you mean by "live", but generally speaking yes.  Will you feel great, be in a high performance state, and be able to solve complex problems or create innovative solutions?  Most likely not.  That said, what foods will provide us with high levels of energy?​  The three diets mentioned earlier are different forms of a keto diet.  A keto diet avoids carbohydrates and glucose. This causes the body to break fatty acids down into ketones which are used for energy.

Avoid the food coma by not eating crap!

A Better Source of Energy and More

There are many benefits from a keto diet worth mentioning, but we'll start with energy.  Ketones are more efficient than glucose and is why the need to snack frequently goes away.  Ketones also promote increases in energy producing mitochondria in the brain.  Along with this they also reduce oxidative stress in the body, reduce inflammation, and neural protection which becomes more important as we age.  Of course always talk to your doctor, but research the keto diet on your own (Avoid Adkins...it does not focus enough on quality).  Here's an article from Scientific American discussing some of what I've mentioned here and more.  Regardless if you're on a keto diet or not, there are common foods that show up on many diets worth mentioning.  Remember, high performance needs high quality food!

• Eat a lot of vegetables, but especially dark green leafy ones
• Eat moderate (4-6 oz per meal) clean sources of protein (grass fed beef, wild caught fish, farm eggs with very orange yolks).  Too much protein can turn into sugar and spike insulin.  Body builders and athletes will need more, but the key is to avoid excess.
• Eat plenty of healthy fats (olive oil, avocado, grass fed butter, nuts).
• Cook with fats that are solid at room temp or have a high smoke point.
• Cook food at lower temperatures to avoid damaging the nutritional value or creating carcinogens from smoke (sorry, but smoked meat is just not good for the body).

Here's some additional reading from Mark Hyman on Energy, Mitochondria, and Oxidative Stress.  In this article Mark goes deeper into the science behind what happens when we pump empty calories into our bodies.  The short and sweet answer is we have low energy, age faster, and suffer from a wide range of disease and health issues.  Do yourself and your loved ones a favor and get informed, make a change, and find new levels of energy you did not know were possible.

Supplement Your Gaps

Vitamins and supplements are more important than they have been in the past.  One of the biggest reasons behind this is related to mass production of food and the depleted soil we have in the United States.  The food we eat today is not the food our grandparents were eating.  I've always been surprised, when traveling in Central America, about the difference in size between the produce and animals versus here in the US.  When I was younger I would have believed we had superior processes and therefore product, but now I know it's because that's how produce and animals are supposed to be naturally.  They can't afford to feed the animals the crap that fattens them or spray the chemicals all over the produce, so they don't.

Critical Supplements to Start Taking Now

Most people walking around are deficient in Vitamin D and Magnesium.  Vitamin D is critical for bone strength, hormone regulation, immunity, and countless other things.  Magnesium deficiency can cause heart related issues, metabolic syndrome and more.  Vitamin C is important for immunity, collagen production (healthy skin), and is used to produce glutathione (the master anti-oxidant).  You may want to consider blood tests to see exactly where you are and measure over time.  If you're focused on being high performance, you want to make sure you're not deficient first.  Here's a list of supplements you should be taking.

• Vitamin D
• Magnesium
• Vitamin K2 (especially for ​vegetarians and vegans)
• Vitamin C
• Iodine

I would read more about the various reasons we need supplements in Dave Asprey's post on this topic.  For a more complete list of supplements to consider, I would also read Dave's post about what he considers most important, the reasons why, and the dosages.

Parting Thoughts

Brain fog is not a random thing that just happens.  High performance is much more than a strong will and determination.  We all want to crush our goals and be successful, so give yourself an advantage!  Avoid foods that cause inflammation. This will allow your body and mind to focus on being productive instead of undoing the damage from a poor diet.  Whether you switch to a keto diet or not, do not feed the body empty calories.  There's plenty of overlap with foods between low fat Mediterranean diets and keto that provide high energy.  They both push lots of vegetables, healthy fats, and moderate levels of protein.  Regardless if you're on a keto diet or not, make sure the source and quality of the food is high.  Avoid mass produced, non-organic, etc...  Lastly, start taking supplements and spend some time learning why you need to.

We all want to involve innovative ideas into our strategic planning, but many of us struggle with the creative process.  We tend to put ourselves in boxes made from our own limiting beliefs.  We say things like "brainstorming is hard for me" or "so-and-so comes up with the innovative ideas".  We mentally block ourselves from being able to be the creative people we truly are.  First you need to drop the limiting beliefs, because they're not serving you.  Read more on my post about five limiting beliefs to drop now.  Next we'll get some tools in the bag.  My preferred method is mind mapping.  The mind map is the perfect tool, because it's very quick and aligns to how the brain works.  Lastly we need to learn the do's and don'ts of brainstorming made easy.  We'll focus on how they work and especially how they don't work.

Brainstorming Will Be Easy For You Too!

Generally speaking all of our brains function the same way.  We all have strengths that make certain activities effortless, but that does not mean we can't strengthen areas that we find valuable.  There's no sense in making it hard by mentally sabotaging yourself.  For this to work, we need to alter our outlook.  Going forward, you'll stop saying "I can't...", "I hate...", and "I'm not...".  Now you will say "I value being creative and I get better every time I practice"!  Because you want the innovative strategic planning, you'll commit to making these changes.  It's just words you have to say, so there's no excuses!  If you really want something made easy, don't make it difficult to start with.

Don't give up!

The Mind Map Is Your Friend!

Our brains are networks of associations.  Some of these are not logical, for example the smell of licorice reminding you of a barber shop from your childhood.  Others are very logical, like the smell of smoke and fire.  Our brain is constantly creating associations and relationships to better understand the world around us.  Because it's a fluid and free-form process, trying to access the illogical associations with a structured logical mind is very limiting.  Mind maps are unstructured by design and align to the many random associations your brain will create.  It's the perfect design when you don't need to know what will come next and when it does not make sense.  Every thought branches to another and you keep writing.  The innovative ideas that will help your strategic planning exist in these areas.  Why?  Because everyone sees the logical conclusions and connections.  Innovation requires new thinking versus the obvious.

Turn the Light On With a Mind Map!

Don't Fight The Process...

An article from the Harvard Business Review says "When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed" and I agree.  Most of the people I work with on this subject fight with the process.  At the root of their challenge I find unrealistic expectations.  They're in a hurry for a nice structured outline or idea to help with strategic planning.  They go into mind mapping with a logical linear mindset.  They find anxiety in the mind mapping process, because it does not create structure and can feel like it's not leading to end goal.  The structure will come later, but for now it's important to change our goal.  

The point of the mind map is to generate information that can be organized later.  The novelty and diversity of the information will lead to very interesting insight and more comprehensive solutions.  Innovative ideas often come when we're not focused on the problem, so give yourself permission to get off task for a bit.  The biggest part of brainstorming made easy is to not fight the process.  You can read about some other examples, like "fear of ambiguity", in this article from Copy Blogger.

​Some Parting Thoughts

As an aside, I would not advise using a mind map structure to write structured linear thoughts like an outline.  This too will lead to frustration and anxiety.  For brainstorming made easy, you'll want to practice the process and set your expectations appropriately.  There are times where I move back and forth between mind mapping and structuring.  If the thoughts stop flowing when mind mapping, then try to structure the information for a while.  If you find the structure is not solving the challenge yet, then go back to mind mapping for a bit.  Go back and forth until the structure is where you want it.  For me, this is very common when I'm using it in conjunction with strategic planning.  Visit Tony Buzan's site for more information on how to mind map.  Remember practice makes perfect, so keep trying until it becomes comfortable!

Workplace relationships are critical to any leader's ability to influence and execute against a strategy.  The quality of of those relationships rely on our ability to build trust with those we lead and others throughout the organization.  Whether we're speaking or not, we're always saying something.  The challenge with non-verbal communication is that it's hard to know how it was interpreted!  If you're regularly late to meetings, don't call others back when you said you would, or initiate conversation without asking if it's a good time, then you need to keep reading!  Personal branding is critical to the success of any leader, but especially for executives.  The most common challenge I find that hinders those I work with is an inability, or unwillingness, to be assertive with others.  Keep reading to find some simple ways to practice being assertive along with other tips to let everyone know you care.

Don't Waste My Time!

Time is the most valuable resource we have! A willingness to allow your behaviors to waste​ the time of others is the fastest way to say "I don't care".  How can we effectively build trust, create high quality workplace relationships, and influence when our actions say "I don't care"?  Learning to be assertive will help greatly with this situation.  Often times it's the previous engagement that's causing us to be late, so be assertive and let others know you have another commitment to get to.

I Never Heard Back From You...​

If you've heard this from others, then you may need a strategy and system to get organized.  If you already have one, then it's letting you down and you may need to change it.​  A personal branding strategy would help motivate the actions needed to stay organized, but it can wait.  For now, just know you need a way to make sure you don't drop the ball.  To have influence, we have to build trust, and effective follow-up is a sure way to get this done.  Read my recent post on time management for more tips.

Don't be the cause!

I'm Glad You Came to Talk to Me, Because I was Sitting Here Doing Nothing...?​

How do you know if it's a good time to talk if you don't ask?  Asking before you go on about how the meeting went, or what someone said, is a great way to say "I care".  Most people in the workplace are not sitting around doing nothing.  This does not mean they're unwilling to talk either, but give them the choice and the opportunity to defer!  You'll have a lot of high quality workplace relationships when interruption is not part of your brand.  Read this article from Forbes to find more tips on how to manage interruptions.

There's Hope!​

If you don't already have a personal branding strategy, then you should create one and I'm happy to help with this.  Until you have a personal branding strategy, just avoid sabotaging yourself. That said, here are some simple actions you can ​take to let everyone around you know that "you care"!

• Be on time - This means you have to leave other meetings, conversations, the house, etc. with enough time to make it.  Be assertive and let people know you're happy to follow up, but you have another commitment to uphold.
• Follow Up On Time - Call, email, or text when you said you would.  Schedule the action on your calendar to remind you and to help with other conflicts that may have been there.
• Ask For Permission - Don't just interrupt, but check with others to see if it's a good time.  This is another opportunity to schedule a time that's good for them or maybe check with their admin to get on their calendar.

Consider reading my series on self-awareness and learn how to manage this stuff on your own!

​

What is Cognitive Junk Food?

I can't claim credit for the phrase "Cognitive Junk Food", but I knew exactly what it was when I heard it!  There have been plenty of articles on the distraction of web browsing and social media.  The problem has become even worse with the advent of the smart phone.  We've are a society that's addicted to distraction, but at what cost?  Often we struggle to be present with our families or at work.  We're unable to focus on important tasks for long periods of time.  We're wasting time that we could be using to make a difference.  Do you find yourself distracted or is any of this starting to sound familiar?  How much time do you spend on social media?  What does your time management practice look like?  Keep reading to get tips on how to address this.

Zero calories, but no time for the gym?

This magical phrase came to me while listening to Cal Newport on episode 9 of Chandler Bolt's self-publishing school podcast.  Cal has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT and also studies the impact of technology on how we work.  I've not read his recent book, Deep Work, but it's now on my list after listening to him on the podcast.  In general I find most people struggle with distraction and it has become much worse with smart phones and social media.  I coach many people seeking to improve focus and be better at execution.  The majority of the time those sessions turn into time management strategies to prevent my clients from being distracted.

It's just Facebook, what's the big deal?​

It's never just Facebook.  After that it's Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube, Reality TV, and the list keeps going.  We can't just put it down either!  I recently had to put my foot down when my own family sat down to watch a movie together.  At the beginning of the movie my kids were distracted responding to messages, snaps, etc..  The initial distraction turns becomes an endless chain and it just goes on and on.  With my children, it was during the early part of a drama where the plot and characters were still developing.  This means it was not exciting their brains yet and it craved distraction!

The question worth asking is how much time do we spend eating cognitive junk food?

That's the big deal!  Our brains crave short term gratification and excitement.  We live in a day and age where there's no limit to the distractions, but also the energy invested by companies to capture our focus.  All of our experiences are engineered to captivate our time and money.  The question worth asking is how much time do we spend eating cognitive junk food? What else could we be doing with that time?  What would your time management strategy look like?

It's time to limit the use of these!

So what should I do to avoid distraction?

Create a time management strategy to stop the madness! This problem stops you from living the life you deserve to experience.  Worse than that, the others around you are losing out as well.  We only have one life to live and you deserve to say you did more than spend hours upon hours distracted liking posts and snap'ing your friends.  Here are three quick tips to help you take your life back from the genius marketing people taking advantage of how your brain is wired.  These will serve as the start of your time management strategy that will prevent you from living a distracted life.

• Turn off non-critical notifications
• ​Schedule the time browse the internet, play video games, use social media, etc.
• Practice resisting your brain's urge to be entertained
• Read part one on how to improve your self-awareness

The call to action is to be deliberate with your time and make sure it's not floating away in an ocean of distraction.

I would say Cal has rare discipline and some would say he is extreme in his practice, but it's serving him in the way he wants.  I'm just to the left of his practice and that it's also serving me in the way that I want and need for my own life and goals.  I'm not saying you have to give it all up, nor is anyone better or worse based on where they are with their practice.  The call to action is to be deliberate with your time and make sure it's not floating away in an ocean of distraction.  Do yourself a favor and create a time management strategy that prevents you from living the "distracted life".