The Sweet Spot is an excellent book that helped me to get going on and actively work on my currentbig project. (The one that keeps me from posting more regularly).
Here are some ideas of the book. Don’t be deceived by them sounding simplistic. Christine distills the latest behavioral science and neuroscience research on performance, productivity…and happiness into a user-friendly read.
Take a recess
Today, take a good old-fashioned recess in the middle of the day. Go ahead and do your hardest or most dreaded work – or whatever you need to do – but after about sixty to ninety minutes of focused attention [when your brain starts to become fatigued] honor your ultradian rhythms and take a break. Rest. Don’t do anything that exists on a to-do list anywhere.
Take a nap.
Read something just for fun.
Look at pictures of pretty living rooms on Pinterest.
Go outside into the great outdoors (or the plaza across from your office) and let the sun shine on your face.
Doing Without Trying
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
– Aristotle
Establish a tiny habit
Christine discusses the biology of habits and how to begin to rewire our brains, and thus our behaviors She offers examples from Stanford habit researcher BJ Fogg. I will review his program in a coming note. It is a very powerful and helpful way to start new positive habits.
Cracking the Habit Code
A 21 Day program to create new habit sequences to make routines automatic and thus safe a lot of energy.
Easing the Overwhelm
Decide your five top priorities and say “no” to everything else
Mending Ruptures
There are two pillars of happiness revealed by the seventy-five-year-old Grant Study…One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.
– George Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience
Making Hard Things Easy
Given that life includes a boatload of disappointment, risk, discomfort, and even failure, we need to develop an ironic comfort with discomfort if we are to truly build strength and find ease. We need to make sure that every setback doesn’t send us headlong into a massive fight-or-flight response. This means that we need to be able to do three things. First, we need to tolerate the discomfort that comes from difficulty and challenge inherent in pursuing mastery, because mastery ultimately makes hard things easy. Second, we need to be able to cope with the discomfort inherent in our own vulnerability by becoming brave enough to follow our passion and purpose instead of the crowd. Finally, we need a plan for bouncing back when the going gets rough – which it inevitably will!
– Christine Carter, The Sweet Spot
The difference between perfectionism and mastery is the ability to risk, and even embrace failure.
1. Something happens.
2. We react to it emotionally. We feel embarrassed, horrified, struck with fear, etc.
3. We have predictable thoughts about the event that led us to continue to react emotionally or to avoid our emotions altogether.
4. We accept our feelings and untangle our thoughts, and the negative emotion dissipates. The sting of the mistake or misstep clears, the grief waves, the situation blows over.
Finally Chapter 10: A Short Guide to Getting Your Groove Back