Productivity Tips from Around the World

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BONUS FREEBIE: Travel is BACK! Click here to grab my “Trip Checklist” to be sure yours goes off without a hitch despite possible speed bumps!

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I love to travel. I’m constantly looking for new places to go and new experiences to have.

I love to immerse myself in different cultures: learning about the food and how people live and…their productivity and wellness techniques!

Here are a few of my favorite techniques from around the world.

The first stop on our tour around the world is…

1) Denmark.

Hygge is the Danish productivity method. I like to think of hygge like a hug. I talk about it in my book Listful Living. Hygge is a sense of coziness, a feeling of contentment, and wellness.

That’s the kind of feeling that you want. Hygge is a nice way of giving yourself a little wellness moment.

You can do this in many different ways: taking a break and doing something that really refills your tank. This can be drinking a cup of tea or having a game night with friends. Anything that’s sort of taking you offline can be a form of hygge.

Self-care doesn’t need to be a week-long event. It can be a little thing to look forward to like cooking dinner with friends, going for a picnic in the park, reading a book or anything that is just a little bit of time for yourself. And then, build it into your schedule every week.

For me, drinking tea is one of the things that I love to do. That for me is like the sense of this hug, this hygge feeling. For more ideas on ways to incorporate quick self-care into your life check out health coach Sharon Hazelrigg’s Five-Minute Self-Care Tips here.
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The next stop on our tour is…

2) Japan.

In Japan, they practice ikigai. Ikigai is a Japanese concept that translates roughly to: the happiness of always being busy or what you get up for in the morning.

This is about purpose. This is why you do what you do. The idea is to align yourself with your priorities. And if you’re not sure what your priorities are, I have exercises in my book in Listful Living to help you define them for yourself.

This helps you to determine where you best spend your time. And that’s what ikigai is all about.

It’s about being able to identify what, in your life, is really important to you. So ask yourself, what gets you up in the morning? What are you really excited about? And then redo your to-do list so it matches up with those priorities.

This isn’t something that you do once. You will reevaluate again and again. Because things change. Your priority today might be sleep but a few weeks from now, it could be completely different.

But if this method doesn’t appeal to you, our next stop might have more of what you’re looking for.

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3) Italy.

Italy is the place of my ancestors. What they say there is “dolce far niente”. (They talk a lot about this in Eat, Pray, Love). This translates to: the sweetness of doing nothing.

Do you know how hard it is to actually do nothing? It’s really hard! I certainly struggle with it. I’m watching TV and also scrolling on my phone. I’m supposed to be relaxing and I can’t. I have to constantly be doing something.

Doing nothing might take a little training. Because you might feel like you’re supposed to be doing something while you’re doing nothing. But it’s literally just sitting, staring and breathing. Meditation is helpful to sit and give yourself a little bit of time.

Heidi Hanna, a stress expert who I interviewed in both my books, Listful Thinking and Listful Living and my live-streaming show Inside Scoop, describes stress as constantly firing on all cylinders.

When you’re operating in stress and you’re doing a lot of things, everything can begin to be stressful. So you need to give yourself the downtime to do nothing and cool off otherwise you can get yourself into trouble.

So it’s really important that we embrace the Italian idea of doing nothing. And if you need a little help getting started, I love the Calm app.

For more about these international productivity tips, check out the full episode here.

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BONUS FREEBIE: Travel is BACK! Click here to grab my “Trip Checklist” to be sure yours goes off without a hitch despite possible speed bumps!

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