Your GET TO Guarantee: 9 Good-News Examples

I am incredibly behind in a number of things right now.

You know all those productivity articles I have written in the past? Well, you can quote them back to me unmercifully and laugh gleefully right now, at the thought of me falling off that proverbial work-hack wagon and scrambling behind it to get on my feet again” go on, I’ll wait for your laughter to subside. I deserve it. In fact, if you listen closely you’ll be able to tell I’m laughing right along with you, what the heck.

I can laugh with you, because of what I still get to do. I think of it as my Ka lā hiki ola Guarantee.

Here is the good news:

• My “incredibly behind” does not look anything like inactivity, apathy or complacency. I have lots to do, and lots I want to do. My situation is one of simple To-Do quantity versus personal bandwith right now (and both of those things are variable, not fixed).

• I am not bored. Can’t remember being bored since I was about 9 years old. Seriously.

• The person I am disappointing most right now is probably me. Goes to show you what great people my life is surrounded with and enriched by. Believe me, there are others I know I am disappointing (and I’m not thrilled about that), but they understand and have cut me some slack (and boy, am I ever happy about that.)

• That disappointment I have is more of the “oh dear, (sigh)” variety, and hardly any of the “my work habits really, truly suck” variety. A little secret: My habits are a bit sucky right now. A bigger, better secret: I have learned that getting down on myself is akin to biting the hand (and spirit) that feeds.

• I am producing stuff, and actually a lot of it. (Re-pitch: Have you been able to listen to our first VoiceThread yet? Steve, Joanna, Tim, Phil and Karen are there now too!)

• I am totally enchanted with my new hobby: Digital photography and engaging with the Flickr community. Hobbies are great: They make us feel more well-rounded, and like we are engaged with all of life and not just parts of it. You can still suffer from workaholic-like behavior even when your work is your personal Ho‘ohana like mine is. Hobbies help you be more normal versus obsessive or possessed.

• Business could be a lot better… same refrain you are probably hearing from a lot of coaches, trainers and consultants who go into automatic luxury status in their clients minds whenever the economy gets wobbly (ethically, I coach mine that we probably should be on hold as they take care of their basics – like employee paychecks). The good news with this one? All of a sudden, I can make time to do things I had on a wish list for 2012.

• Those productivity articles I wrote before? They are there in the archives waiting patiently for me to remember them, and when I do, they will be shiny and new all over again.

• When all I feel like doing is talking story with you here at the blog, I can, and I do. There is a lot that I HAVE to do, but there is even more that I GET to do.

GET to do is guaranteed in a way. Do you remember the very first thing I wanted you to know about Ka lā hiki ola?

You can CHOOSE to have the “dawning of a new day”

whenever you WANT to,

whenever you NEED to, and (this is important),

whenever you DECIDE to.

You GET to do that!

Whatever time it is right now, get a picture of the rising sun in your mind too. Your picture might take the form of Good News bullets like these I just wrote for myself, or they might be a real picture like this one” you gotta love yellow.

Photo Library: Ho‘ohana Publishing ©.

See my Flickr page for other CC-licensed photos.

Or it may be that you just look down at your own To Do List and realize that you’ve already done a lot of it, and just didn’t cross things out yet (that would be cool, huh!)

Another idea is to write a Stop Doing List (put that on your To Do List:)

Okay, better pull out those old productivity articles now. Guess I could get more done with them if I took this yoyo string off my hand now, you think?