Michael Hyatt's Productivity Summit -

Friday morning - ending another week - and this has been a great week for me.

I am considering choices.

Do you do that?

I tell you I find it hard because I want to do it all - -

But this week I have been having some guidance about choices to increase my focus and step up my productivity.

I am so glad I registered for Michael Hyatt's Productivity Summit on the internet.  For the past 8 days I have been watching a new video every day from  Michael Hyatt . Every day there has been a different speaker who is an authority on some aspect connected to productivity in business and life.  Each video is an in-depth interview with one of the speakers conducted by Michael - who is an excellent interviewer.

Learning new information always excites me. I have loved it!

As a business entrepreneur as a spoken word artist I can apply a lot of what they say to the work aspects  I do to back-up my performance work. If you have read me her at all you already know that I am fascinated by technology so I was quite happy there was plenty of information along those lines.

Michael planned a program that went covered organizing, social media, decision making, health, sleep and a few other topics.

One of my immediate take-aways was the deeper learning of how different conducting business is today ---from working remotely to the reliance on technology's tools. I will never use everything these people do but I can tell you I am very happy to know about the tools and how they are being used. Most important, it opens your eyes to the thinking and the world of younger people today.

I can't possibly report all I heard nor would you want me to but there are several points that stuck to me immediately:

1. Focus - discussions of how we are living in a time of extraordinary and overwhelming distraction and how it is interfering with our ability to concentrate and to "go deep" when we work on intellectual projects and products.

 Not news, right? They added suggestions for getting the upper hand such as -block your internet interruptions - both with personal discipline and apps that will do it for you on your schedule.

2. A fellow named Greg McKeown talked about choices and decisions. My main take-away was a better understanding of the trade-offs that go with every decision - and - the importance of examining the impact of your decisions.

That was exactly the right talk for me because I am juggling a choice between two major story projects and I need to select one to put at the head of my list. After listening to McKeown I wrote down all the trade-offs and pluses and have almost made a final choice.

A big surprise was the interview with Shawn Stevenson on his book Smart Sleep which turned out to be right on target and was fascinating.  Sleep is very important to our productivity and many times busy people sabotage the kind of sleep they get when they finally put their body down. One "biggie" is the information that watching TV  or using electronic devices before bed interferes with your best sleep which is a bed rock for productivity the next day.

Since Jim died I have watched a movie in bed on my iPad every night as sort of a compensation for sleeping alone.

After Shawn's talk I stopped that - and I can feel the difference in the quality of my sleep. I won't try to explain the effect of the light from the computer and devices etc or its impact on RIM sleep - I just urge you to do what I have - read the book.

Many thanks to Michael Hyatt for such uninformative and productive learning experience. I look forward to more!