 Hi everyone, this is George Cao, welcome back to the Joyful Productivity Series. In this video we're going to talk about balance and this is going to be what I intend to be a beautiful call that will be both healing and also hopefully motivating for you to have more balance and joy and to get more done but always to come back to balance. Okay, so let's go on here and as always I really appreciate your comments so as you're watching this video the more comments you make the better so what kind of comments ideas that you're liking that you're hearing from me ideas or even how I'm teaching this please feel free to comment ideas that you have that come to you as you watch this and also any questions give a comment there as a quick reminder the values of this community that we're building here in Joyful Productivity is openness openness to learning and openness to ideas that come to you openness to trying things that are being taught here just to try them to see if it's if it fits you well supportiveness of yourself and of others in this learning and finally this is a new one instead of instead of previously I put love which I think all of its love right I'm going to be more specific to say gratitude and gratitude for the opportunity of trying out these things and our gratitude for one another's comments one another's support and gratitude that you are of sound mind and body to be able to to improve and to improve your processes in this way let's go on to just a summary of where we've been in part one the first video we talked about awareness and simplicity and the video last time we talked about priorities now if you didn't watch those yet I encourage you to watch those videos after this but you don't have to have watched those to benefit from what we're going to talk about today which is balance okay let's go on now balance all right here are the practices and principles I'm going to share with you today big rocks some of you will be quite familiar with this but it's a good story to tell anyway we'll talk about hourly pause that's a practice of change in my life that's made every single day much more joyful than previously I'm going to talk about setting personal time appointments in your calendar business maintenance times projects and then always returning the balance so we're gonna where it's a rich session I'm going to talk fairly quickly but you can always watch this video again and again to remind yourself and what I'm going to do actually real quick is just want to really quickly thank those who are commenting sorry for the I'm just I'm actually not able to see comments right now for some reason but anyway thanks to those who are actually actively commenting I really appreciate you I'm gonna I'll read the comments later okay big rocks all right there's a story of a teacher who's teaching his time his class about time management and he put on to a table a a jar an empty jar and then he started to fill this jar with some some big rocks and he was able to fit into the jar six rocks and he asked the class hey is this this you know is this jar filled now okay and his class yeah you can't fit any other rocks in there so that's true I can't fit any of the rocks in here but then he takes he takes from underneath the his desk a tray of sand and then he proceeds to put the sand pour the sand into this jar that's already filled with rocks okay you start filling the set the jar with this with the sand and the sand fell into all the various nooks and crannies of this jar and so what happened was he was teaching the class that if he had put in the sand first he would not have been able to fill the the jar with all the rocks he had wanted to fill but because he put the rocks in first he was then able to not only have the rocks in there but also have the sand fill in the various nooks and crannies so that the jars actually full so let me ask you a question right do you know what your big rocks are do you know what your big rocks are now in the last video we talked about priorities your priorities your life priorities that the jar by the way can represent your life or the jar can represent your business the jar can represent your health the jar can represent your relationships or any other important part of your life the big rocks are your priorities it can be six priorities per per jar the context the jar represents the context whether it's your life or your health or your prior or your business or your relationships or your hobbies or your time the jar is the context if you don't put the big rocks in there what's going to happen is the sands of time are going to fill it's going to fill your jar and you won't be able to put all the big rocks you want into the jar it'll in fact the sands of time will fill your jar to almost the brim and you can barely will be able to put any rocks in there so the moral of the story is you are responsible for the context of your life you're responsible for your life in general you're also responsible for your career you're responsible for your relationships or your experience of your relationships you're responsible for your health and it's your responsibility to put the jar to put the big rocks in your jars before the sands of time and the sands of life fill them up and you won't be able to put in the things that are important to you okay so remember your priorities and remember always remember this big rock story and always say to yourself I am going to put the big rocks into the jars of my life rather than let the sands of life and the sands of time fill them up make sense okay thank you and for those who are commenting on the on the video by the way those of you are watching the video after I'm recording this the comments section is located below the video so please do comment there I very very joyfully read your comments and really appreciate your comments there so thank you again okay let's go on to the next let's go on to this next principle here which is hourly pause and how ironic every time I'm doing this video the phone happens to ring the phone almost never rings except when I do this video and I haven't yet figured out how to I haven't figured out how to turn off the ringer on the main base even though I figured out how to turn off the ringer in in my actual separate phone so it should be less ringing than than it happened in the last video see see how I will make mistakes so hopefully you will learn from my mistakes and I'll learn from my mistakes myself this is what life and learning is about okay hourly pause this hourly pause exercise has changed my working day I do this hourly pause during my working day as often as possible I mean as many hours as possible during working day let me ask you a question do you pause every hour to get back to your balance to get back to your health get back to your spirit spirituality the question I ask myself is okay I'm gonna use the word God and you can use a word that makes most sense to you in terms of source I I say to myself is God worth five minutes of my hour is God worth is spending time with God is it worth five minutes of every hour during my working day when I ask that myself that question I say no God is worth all of my time really you know what I want to do really is practice the presence of God at all times that's my ideal but at the very least before I am able to get there I can at least do an hourly pause and let me show you my hourly pause practice that not only brings me closer to God but brings me brings me back to balance and brings them back to joyful productivity so let me ask you the question is joyful productivity worth five minutes of every hour of your day of your working day and hopefully you'll say joyful productivity should be my whole working day so let's go on here let me show you what my practice is these are the seven things I do it takes me about five to seven minutes of every hour of way the working day I love animals and I found this picture is free picture of a beautiful cat's doing her beautiful stretch so here's what I do I have a reminder on my iPhone the application is called alarmed and I'll put a link underneath the video later and there's many different types of reminders in fact I'll put other links to different hourly reminders if you don't use an iPhone if you don't use a smartphone there's Android I'm sure has hourly reminders the computer has hourly reminders so I'll put some links later underneath the video there you can look for it but when the reminder pings me the pleasant ping 55 minutes before every hour if I'm not recording a video if I'm not on a call here's what I'll do I'll literally stop what I'm doing I'll back away from the computer even if I'm typing a comment on Facebook I'm having a great discussion on Facebook or whatever I step away from the computer and I go up okay and then what I do is I step away from the computer and I'll face the I'll face the outside face the window if you can and I'll take three nice easy breaths and with each breath I relax a bit more I go okay and then I'll stretch I'll stretch okay I'll stretch my arms and what I'll do is I will stretch my arms behind me we often times you know especially those of us who work at the computer all day we're basically just having our arms at the computer typing typing typing what we rarely stretch our arms up and even behind us so we rarely do certain things with our body that we should do more often so that's we have maintained balance in our body so I stretch and also roll my neck very gently roll my head very gently around my neck and as I do that I close my eyes and I'll actually even roll my eyes very gently all around so I can balance my brain did you know that when you close your eyes and when you make your eyes go you know up very upper left very bottom left very bottom right very bottom upper right do that with your eyes you actually make your brain more balanced that's wonderful next thing I do is I go to the kitchen to go get a nice glass of water to drink but as I walk to the kitchen I'll do my mantra practice my mantra practice is I've got my five fingers and my each finger represents a particular mantra so for example one of one of my fingers says it represents that the mantra of you are completely loved you are completely supported you are completely guided way beyond your imagination well of course I would say I but I would say I am completely loved surrounded by love guided uplifted supported way beyond my imagination so I have five mantras and that's one of them so as I walk slowly to the kitchen I will read one of my five mantras and I can remember memorize them just by my five fingers that's what my five fingers represent many things mantras is one of them and then after I do that mantra of course I'm in a beautiful space of calmness and love and as I drink the water I picture smile I picture the water going to my body and creating a lot of smiles and all my organs this is a Taoist practice is called the inner smile and this actually creates health within your body is to imagine each organ in your body smiling smiling to each organ and having the organ smile because each organ in your body represents various emotions I'm going farther than I really meant to go but as I drink the water I imagine that kind of smiling all throughout my body sometimes I even imagine the water being this golden water of light healing my body and as I walk back to the office here's what I do I pray I pray for certain people in my life again representing my five fingers each person each finger represent a person or one of my fingers represents my parents so both my mom and dad you know so pray for people who are suffering in your life pray for people who need help pray for your family members people who depend on you and on whom you depend pray for your enemies people who have rubbed you the wrong way recently pray for them pray for their happiness and well-being because they are probably a actual they're probably a soul sister or soul brother that was sent into this life to play a role to trigger you so that you can learn more on conditional giving unconditional love they're after you all this carnate from this life you're like oh my god my my dearest brother you're my soulmate that you are actually my quote-unquote greatest enemy in the previous life that those are my beliefs hopefully that will make some no inspiration inspiration to you and finally the last thing I do is I will either meditate for a minute or do some spiritual reading for a minute or two so meditate or do some spiritual reading for a minute or two connection to spirit to round it all off in that kind of way all right so what is your hourly practice you can perfectly to borrow mine if you want this one has worked really well for me for months now I probably owe almost a year now by the way so it works really well it usually takes five to seven minutes but it's really beautiful thing to do okay let's go on to the next practice I'm gonna share with you about balance and that is to create recurring spots on your calendar for your personal time so remember the big rock story right if you don't schedule if your day is not punctuated by things that make you healthy and happy and balanced then the sands of life the sands of the internet the sands of time will get you off balance will fill your jar so that you can't have practices that bring you top it bring you happiness health and balance so let me share with you the practices that I calendar in and by the way in a future session and a more advanced series for joyful productivity I'm actually going to show you my calendar my email etc okay that's where that's where the joyful productivity those of you who are going to be in the private coaching program I'm going to share share my private calendar and email I'm a little bit shy of sharing that with the whole world right now but I will be sharing in the private program so but you don't have to see my calendar if you can imagine recounting spots for yourself okay so here are the things that I calendar in okay and not not all obviously not all these are every single day some of these are weekly activities some of these are you know monthly activities okay some of these maybe even yearly activities make your own checklist of personal time items to counter in to your obviously I don't do OBGYN but maybe you will okay I certainly do the eye doctor I certainly do the dentist I certainly do my my annual physical exam but yeah my wife I would sometimes remind her to do her OBGYN appointments etc so but spiritual study meditation prayer I actually have a half hour slot every single working day besides my hourly pause I have a half hour spot for this during my working day because that makes me happy that makes me connected to spirit that reminds me of what this all is about that work is really just a stage for a spiritual road not the other way around we don't work so that we have time to do spiritual practice we work because it's a stage for unconditional learning how to do unconditional love and conditional giving and learning about being more wise and being more disciplined all that stuff so I actually have a half hour in my calendar for spiritual study meditation prayer I also have a spot on my calendar every week for basically stream of consciousness writing now you can call that contemplation call it I have actual spots appointments with myself in my day for breakfast the nap after breakfast half an hour my lunch which is about an hour during which time I do some business learning and some social media stuff and also the nap after my lunch I need those things if I don't do those things I'm kind of in a gray zone most of my day okay so I have to do the nap after my breakfast after lunch if I go get a job full-time job I'm gonna before I take the job I'm gonna say are you okay with me taking that after lunch okay there's gotta be a place for me to take a nap if not I can't take the job I literally will not be able to perform at my best for you you know that kind of thing I do my daily walk an hour is my afternoon break where I do my daily walk which I might walk to the library to get some you know I have reserved some DVDs or books at the library I'll go and go to my PO box so these are different days one day I go to library one day I go to PO box one day go up on a hill to see a beautiful view another day I I'll go and run another errand to get something anyway also water plants that's my job part of my chores and I also get a little afternoon snap time with significant other make sure you calendar that in calendar that in don't just assume it happens of course it happens you might see each other during the day but we get so busy counter that in a date pay or a walk or something family and friends volunteer time errands etc. rest and relaxation blank okay this is important blank hours and days so be sure I have an entire day in my calendar words literally there's nothing on my count is completely blank I keep it that way I try to do two days a week if I can okay blank hours and days so that you can let let it flow during those days during those days you don't practice self-discipline you don't practice self-control you practice flow both things are important to practice life isn't just about going with a flow I mean okay let me just I'm not making fun of that but I'm just saying that a lot of people do it the wrong way I think do it in a way that's not optimizing their spiritual development spiritual development is both about self-control and discipline you'll find that in all the most profound spiritual texts self-control is not an evil thing discipline is not an evil thing you'll find that in Christian Buddhist Hindu all of them talk about self-control and discipline but also all of them talk about being like a child so going with a flow so I think both are important balance in other words right health maintenance I've talked about okay trips let me keep going because we're running a bit short on time here oh it's just a quick reminder thank you for those of you who are commenting as you're watching this video there should be a there should be a section underneath for you to comment really appreciate your commenting the ideas that you're liking so I hope I'll know this basically gives me really really valuable feedback ideas you're liking what you're confused about or questions you have and any ideas that are coming to you that are beyond what I'm saying please feel free to comment that too so others can benefit next practice is recurring calendar spots for business maintenance now if you have a job is basically maintenance activities in your job okay for me it's it's these things and I know that this is in a more advanced session in the Georgia productivity series I will go more into these things but I just want to suffice to say that I have calendared out daily buffer times I actually counter out up to half-hour slots in my calendar called buffer and I I don't use up those spots until the day out when the day comes around I am allowed to use up those half those two half-hour buffer times these are not the spiritual reading times this is separate times of my calendar called buffer okay two half-hour times I have my beginning of day checklist and if they check was including getting my email to zero again in the private coaching program I actually show you my email I'm not ready to show that to the whole world but I do show that in a small to small groups here and there I have time set aside for business learning do you just randomly watch videos when people send you videos you see videos on social media or do you randomly read articles or do you feel pressure to read an article when someone posts it or whatever or when you get in by email if you don't have business learning time or learning time in your calendar you'll feel the pressure oh my god this article I've got to read this article sometime I've got to watch this video sometime I don't feel that pressure anymore because I have an actual business learning time every day during my lunch then I don't feel pressure I basically have a long-running list called learning and I basically just hey I'm gonna just relax and if I can get to it I'll get to it but I have my learning time I do my learning during that time now just go to the next one that I'm interested in so what about you and I have all these other things that I do as basis maintenance that I have scheduled in my calendar okay and I hope you'll do the same thing recurring calendar spots for your projects and these are just some examples okay module preparation for program a I mean I'm not I don't have a program called program a but these are just program a bnc just to give you a sense of variety there module preparation time you have presentation lecture time obviously I do because that's kind of my type of business do you have product development time or a product improvement time sorry for the neighbor the dog there funny thing when I'm recording video all kinds of things happen do you have calls for your team do you have time to do forum response forum engagement for your various forms that you are dedicated to participating etc etc etc okay okay final principle that I want to share with you today is always return to balance because because balance gives you health contentment and perspective and I hope you always remember that your work your work is really just a stage for spiritual development for personal growth for for learning balance actually so in my opinion I think balance is more important than getting things done again I take a more multi-generational multi-lifetime view of getting things done and getting things done in the ultimate picture is really just spiritual growth learning more wisdom and more love and balance so always return to balance what I mean by this is if you find yourself going off of your schedule if you want to follow a schedule like I do you find yourself falling off of the schedule it's not the action is not to beat yourself up or to you know blame yourself no those are not the actions to take when you fall off your schedule or fall off balance the action to take is very simple just return to balance that's all you do so in other words I've been falling off schedule what I do I don't blame myself my god I didn't do this and that I just come back to oh what's next on my schedule let me do that let me go back to my schedule just return to balance it doesn't matter if you didn't get some things done what's more important is health contentment and perspective it makes sense if you're feeling off balance emotionally whatever just try to return to balance you do your hourly pause practice or whatever practice you you take to return to balance I love this image and this quote life is like riding a bicycle to keep your balance you must keep moving Albert Einstein in other words don't get stuck don't get stuck working for six hours not get up and you know go and do some always keep moving always keep moving from thing to thing I'm not saying don't focus I'm saying that in your calendar I hope you don't have a calendar spot called six hours of working on this XYZ project I don't I keep my calendar pretty flowing I I have work spots that are up to one hour long but not more than an hour on working any on any one project and even during that hour I might be working on something I might walk around a little bit to brainstorm because I know it helps me brainstorm when I'm moving when I'm walking okay alright so finally just as a reminder these are the principles we covered today big rocks hourly pause personal time business maintenance in our private coaching program I do Q&A calls I'm very happy to go into deeper in any of these I also in a more advanced session I'll cover more on this stuff implementation creates success let's talk about what you can implement today or this week in this program projects I encourage it complete one or maybe a few this week create your hourly pause routine your your you can use mine if you want to make it meaningful to you okay or create a totally different one it doesn't have to be five minutes it could be one minute but please do an hourly pause please don't just work through without coming back to consciousness about balance don't let yourself be taken over by the consciousness of work always at least once an hour come back to the consciousness of what life is all about and in your balance okay create personal recurring items for personal time for business maintenance for projects just like I suggested to you but again these are all different projects so just try to complete one this week and something I want to cover is this series is meant for you to come back to again and again each time you come back maybe you go through this series of videos you know once a month and each time you come back you do another project or you do another metric tracking okay so the metrics that you might want to track based on this session is how many times did you do your hourly pause routine if you have an accountability buddy or accountability team that you're doing this with you could you could share that metric during your daily check-in this week how many times you do your hourly pause or how many times did you stick with your recurring calendar spots okay or how many times do you get your to catch yourself off balance and then gently return wonderful metrics to track you might have other metrics you want to track related to balance it's up to you quick reminder of the vision of this program is to give you deeper joy and greater productivity okay to do the things that really matter and to have joy and doing all of it that's the this what the point of this program is the values again is openness to learning and trying new things please be open and open to others as well supportiveness of yourself gentleness of yourself and support in this of others in this program and gratitude for the opportunity to do all of this grad when you when you do a daily check-in say oh I'm so grateful I get to do this I get to be in this accountability group so that I can I can habituate something that's good create good habits accumulate great habits my life to have gratitude when you do check-ins have gratitude when you're when you're doing a practice okay program design watching all four sessions attending or listening to Q&A calls if you're in the in that pride program do the daily check-in if you're in the private program we have a groups for you checking with of course or if you're doing this just with friends please do try to do a daily check-in engage in the forum or engage with your friends what's coming up is commitment we'll talk about that how that relates to your for productivity and of course a summary of how everything fits together and lastly I also wanted to say that I'm grateful for your support those of you who have benefited from this series who want to support me in my work I've got some ideas for you go to georgecow.com support how you can support you want to share your gratitude basically I invite you to go there and one of the support one of the ways to support me is actually to join our private coaching program where I do a lot more support of the private group work because I'm earning money and I'm able to have spend more time obviously to support the private group because it because they're supporting me financially so if you want to do that go to georgecow.com support or go to georgecow.com services services I'm gonna spell that right and that's where you can basically find out how to join the private coaching program if you want to do that and I even have a link there for how to afford the the private coaching program if you if you can't afford that there's there's ideas for for how to work how to fund raise there too so I hope you're enjoying the session I'm looking forward to our next video together and again appreciate your comments below the video letting me know what you in fact I'm just do a quick let me do a quick copy and paste so any any ideas you've liked any ideas you have as a result of listening watching this any questions you have I'm not able to answer all the questions just because of time management but I'll do my best I'll check into these videos these public videos every now and then try to answer questions here and there you can all who knows others who watch this video may be able to answer your questions too so please do feel free to ask questions there too thank you for being part of this community and I'll see you in the next video take care