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Good Day!

This whole week is heavily influenced by the sign Virgo, with the Moon transitioning into Virgo where it will join Venus in Virgo today, Mars in Virgo tomorrow, and Saturn in Virgo on Friday.  Soon the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Saturn will leave Virgo.  This is our last chance to work with this particular combination of energies in Virgo for 28 years, the next time we’ll see Saturn in Virgo!

We can all use a dose of Virgo these days.  Constant influx of new information and relentless change has become our norm.  We see this astrologically with the recent ingress of Jupiter and Uranus into Aries, with the Eclipse, the Cardinal T-square of the summer, and the general hyper-exposure to information brought on during the transit of Neptune through Aquarius.

I have a friend and colleague, Lindsay Satterfield, who is a genius at helping busy professionals increase their effectiveness.  She teaches international productivity courses and does individual workflow coaching.  Her work brings the energy of Virgo into focus for leaders, so they can manage the ever-expanding & changing influx of commitments, responsibilities, priorities, and demands.

Lindsay speaks about a startling statement from a video called “Did You Know?” that went viral on YouTube:  “The amount of unique information generated this year will equal the amount of unique information generated in the previous 5000.”   She says that we assume that there must be something wrong with us that we can’t keep up with it.   It’s important to recognize that it’s not personal.  We’re the first humans ever to deal with this much information.  So, the question is, how do we survive and thrive in a world in which the size and speed of information is nothing short of overwhelming?  Lindsay says the answer isn’t fancy –   we need work routines that are user-friendly and energy-efficient.

Don’t you love that – user-friendly and energy-efficient?  It really expresses the Virgo love of practicality, usefulness, and conservation.  It brings the global energy efficiency focus right into the middle of our workday and personal routines, and suggests that we can find a way to retain enough of our own energy for creativity and innovation.

So I asked Lindsay for tips that she teaches in her courses and coaching work.  This is our tip for today:

Take a load off the mind/Define your work.  It’s astounding how the majority of our mental space is consumed with rehearsing our to-do list.  David Allen makes the case for getting stuff off your mind in his book Getting Things Done.  (If you’re interested in personal productivity, be sure to read David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, 2001.)  Instead of the ad-hoc to-do list or even the revered daily to-do list, try getting down on paper the full scope of your work and the actions associated with it.  This is a one-time investment in clarity and ease.  After you create the first list, it morphs incrementally as you complete things and add things.  When you have a comprehensive list, priorities become clearer, faster.

With the Moon waxing and a relatively light astrological week, can you take some time to follow Lindsay’s advice?  Having worked with David Allen’s method for some time, I can attest that taking even a small step in that direction pays big dividends.  Take an hour each day this week and see how far you get with the help of this Virgo energy.

Let me know how it goes.  And if you have other productivity tips you use, share them with all of us in the comments section.

Have a productive day!

For the first post in this Virgo Productivity series, see this link:

July 14 Sort It Out!

For an overview of the week, see the Astro4Business Weekly Forecast – July 12-18

For an overview of the month, see the Astro4Business Month Ahead – July 2010

For more info on the business descriptions of the planets influencing today, see

The Moon

Venus

Pluto