​At People Move Organizations, we believe that you will be more successful if you are self aware. Knowing your internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions is what makes you self aware, which makes you better at making decisions, interacting with others, and more productive.
 
Self Control is one aspect of self awareness which we will dive into in this episode.
 
Self Control = keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
 
People who are good at self control:

• Stay composed
• Positive
• Unflappable
• Think clearly
• Stay focused

 
Self control is invisible – it is the absence of drama.

There are tools that can help you keep disruptive emotions and impulses in check:
 
Give it perspective
Think about your situation in terms of who will die as a result. This really gives you perspective to realize that although you are currently feeling stressed, it isn’t – literally – the end of the world.
 
Recognize your personal filters
Something that may be devastating to you might be a great opportunity to someone else. Every situation can have multiple, legitimate responses. Your response may be legitimate for you, but remembering that it isn’t the same for everyone can help you stay composed.
 
Each week, we send out a free guide to the episode. If you’d like a copy, sign up for our newsletter.

Sometimes, when you aren’t being as productive as you want to be, it is hard to put your finger on the reason. Here are some tips that might help you identify what may be holding you back:
 
What should you not be doing?
Over time, we become progressively less productive because we let a bunch of things that have become unproductive take over our time. It was probably serving a purpose when you started doing it, but over time, it lost its value and you’ve just kept doing it because you’ve always done it.
 
Consider what you are doing that is no longer necessary and stop doing it.
 
Are you following your priorities?
What are the highest priorities in your life? We call this your North Star List. If you want to be productive, you need to ensure that you are only doing things that support your priorities. As a matter of fact, we’ve even done an episode just about this topic: The Foundation of Productivity is Priorities.
 
Mindset
Recognize that mindset can impact your productivity. Have you ever said this:
I can’t get everything done, there just isn’t enough time.
 
This is a mindset issue. When I catch myself saying this, I change my words to:
I don’t need to get everything done, just the next thing.
 
Take away the power that the thought has over you.
Become aware of the mindset that is impacting your productivity.

Productivity is a way of life – not a set of hacks.
You can be a productive member of society and not actually be very productive.
In this episode, we are going to focus on the type of productivity that, when you get to the end of your day you know that you worked on the most important things.
But, for those of you who are looking for a productivity hack, let me tell you mine: being crystal clear on my priorities.
When you know what your priorities are, you are more productive because you spend your time on things that support your priorities. You don’t spend your time on things that don’t support your priorities.
In addition to knowing your priorities, you also have to learn to prioritize your priorities. Sometimes, work is the most important priority. Sometimes, its family. The priorities are always changing, and you need to consciously think about which of your priorities are taking the spotlight.
 
North Start List episode
​

Status Quo Bias is the tendency to stick with the status quo even when presented with a better option involving change.
 
Inertia is real! We all fall victim to it. The lack of motivation to make a change because what you are doing is working fine is natural.

When there isn’t an issue with the way things are working today, you don’t even think about how it could work better.

It takes action to break the status quo. But, first, you must recognize the need to take action.
 
There are processes in every company or organization that are a victim of status quo bias.
“we’ve always done it that way”
 
In the agile development methodology, there is a concept called the ‘retrospective’, sometimes called lessons learned. It is a process that serves to look at the activities of the last several weeks (called a sprint) and determine what worked well and what didn’t work well.
 
At it’s core, the concept is designed to challenge status quo bias.
The question is— within your process, what can be defined as a sprint?
 
How can you build in a process at the end of each sprint to challenge the status quo?
 
Ask yourself what worked and what didn't for each sprint. Then look for something that you can do differently to improve the process. At the next sprint, you’ll review again and find out if your change lead to improvement.