Dream Alchemist’s Book Review

By Maria Mar

Author: Michael Linenberger

Book: Master
your Workday Now

If you are experiencing stress and worry or feel overwhelmed by all your work (and life) load, or if you are frustrated by goals that keep being postponed beyond an ever receding horizon due to daily urgency, this book is
your lifesaver. Or should I say timesaver?

The tools that Michael Linenberger teaches in
Master your Workday
Now truly work! I cleared the clutter on my desk and released the clutter in my mind by the second day of reading, while still in Part 1 of the book.

Befriending Time

One of the constant patterns I see in my clients and peers these days is that
they have made time their enemy. Time is life. The day you don’t have time
is the day you die. Yet, people are constantly saying “I don’t have time to
do this”.

Guess what is dumped in the “no time for it” zone? Dreams. Desires. Vision. Goals. The stuff that gives life meaning, direction and flavor. The stuff that brings quality into our life. The stuff that feeds our Soul.

No wonder we fall asleep and live an uninspired life! In our modern culture, we have managed to blame time for our constant frustrations, procrastinations and inability to manifest our dreams. I work with my readers and clients to restore their quality of life, to awaken to their Soul’s purpose and delight. Therefore, I am curious about any tool that can help my clients, readers and me to restore our harmony with Father Time,
so that we can flow effectively through our day, living graciously and manifesting our goals and dreams. This book is such a tool and I highly recommend it.

Beyond
the Traditional To-do List

By the end of Part 1, I already experienced a clearance in my mind and an emotional relief and release. I realized that I was carrying an overload of to-dos that I had not committed to paper because all of my previous attempts at effective to-do lists had failed. Michael helped me realized WHY they had failed.

Michael throws out all the “shoulds” that keep us trying to do things in inorganic ways. Instead he works with what works. He works with how our psyche works, instead of how we are supposed to prioritize. He works with how the workplace really works, instead of having us trying to fit into some theoretical management structures. As a result, his Master your Workday Now system is easy, organic and effective. I have already created my “Now Task List” and I feel less mental clutter and stress. This system is so simple that at the beginning it seems silly. But it works like magic!

Email Addiction and Crutches

The Email section gave me some excellent tips that I can implement quickly and helped me examine how ~and most importantly, why~ I waste time in email handling every day. Recognizing how I use email as an emotional crutch was truly liberating.

Debunking the not-so SMART goals

In my business training I had learned a definition of goals that did not sit well with me. They were the popular SMART goals (S = Specific, M =Measurable, A = Attainable, R = Realistic, T = Timely). This goal definition was upheld as the only and undeniable nature of goals. Though specificity and measurability are helpful, I found that this rigid definition of goals created a gap between my vision and mission and the execution of my goals. As a result, I had basically given up on writing down goals. I have a clear vision and mission, and SMART goals were somehow not working to manifest
them as a daily action plan. Thanks to Michael I now validated my intuitive knowledge that what was drilled into me as goals where not really goals, but what Michael calls Target Goals, which is only one aspect of goals.

Reclaiming creative leadership

Goals were vindicated to their higher order as a “self envisioned aspiration to excel.” The Master your Workday Now system returns creativity and vision to the work place and with that, allows you to reclaim purpose and leadership in your life and your career.

When creativity and vision are restored to our goal-setting, it re-connects to our Soul and our inner life. Dead, gutless, on-paper only goals come back to life as passionate affirmations of our desires and purpose. Our workday gains a sense of purpose and magic, and we come to life as a full-fledge creator, a transformer of life. Michael helps restores this magic in simple, clear, common sense knowledge. I love it!

Restoring the Sacred Feminine to goal setting

As always, what was missing or had been devalued in traditional goal setting was the Shakti element, the creative, soulful element. With this missing, we had been left only with the measurement tools, the how-to, which is the Shiva element, the action-oriented element in goal setting.

This devaluing of the Sacred Feminine shows up in every aspect of life that is deficient. Here it shows as the creation of goals degutted of their essential, passionate purpose, the Vision Goals. Michael brings back this vision element and then calls the action-oriented measurable goals Target Goals, marrying the Shakti and Shiva elements in goal setting. With this refinement, Michael restores wholesomeness to the workflow.

I believe that his vision can be applied at a larger scale to our lives, to the obsessive action that is killing us with stress, to the loss of vision, passion and purpose we as a society suffer, to the obsession with quantity over quality, to the divorce between our Shakti and our Shiva Powers.

Demystifying money

Another element I like in Michael’s approach is that it addresses a terrible misdirection that is generating stress and confusing many a life mission: the obsessive pursue of money as an end result, as a goal. Michael prompts us to consider money a way to enhance your description of a vision, and not as the vision itself.

Organic task management

One of the key elements that make the
Master your Workday Now system so organic is that it is based on our mental plans, the way our mind actually works, the way we see and experience time, priorities and urgency. The other element that rocks in this system is the recognition
that most workplaces prioritize by urgency, not importance.

Tension is created when we try to prioritize items by their importance and bump against a workflow that keeps putting urgency ahead, so that our “important” priorities keep being pushed back in time, until we give up on them and simply live managing emergencies. By recognizing urgency and teaching us how
to manage it effectively every day, Michael frees our time and attention, so that we can then address our vision and the goals that inspire us to grow and transform our lives and our world.

Transforming Organizational Goal Setting

There is an aspect of the Master your Workday Now system that has the potential to vastly improve the way we are funding and measuring goals in our organizations and in the
workplace. Michael emphasizes the need to hold the vision at a higher esteem than any human-made numeric measure, for sometimes you can achieve the vision while not achieving the target numbers.

This is true of corporations as well as organizations. But as a corporate
CEO who was a non-profit director in another life, I feel that this system
can prevent a pitfall that I consider tragic in traditional non-profit
funding and its requirements. Sometimes, funders’ obsession with measurable quantities, while intended to ensure effectiveness, may inadvertently thwart the true vision and even the mission of the organizations they are intending to support.

Our rigid focus on quantifiable goals, a remnant of the limited application of the SMART goals, can be expanded with
Master your Workday Now system. The vision-rich, still measurable and daily workable goals that can come of this shift of perception make the Master your Workday Now system a truly world-transforming tool.

Activating the Law of Attraction in your work day

Though Michael prefers to play this down in favor of focusing on attention~ he has created a system that perfectly aligns with the principles of the Law of Attraction. No wonder it works like magic!

I like Michael’s system so much, that I donated a live coaching session for the lottery he’s offering to those who purchase the book during his book launch.

Read more or purchase this book at:

http://masteryourworkday.com/

Dream Alchemist’s Book Review

****
4 stars. Excellent read. Excellent transformation tool.

This is a great gift for your friends and peers

Do you have friends, co-workers or loved ones who are overwhelmed at work or are having trouble manifesting their
resolutions because they can’t find time?

If you place your order onMarch 9 (TODAY!) you will
get a fabulous package of support tools when you purchase just ONE book. You will also have a chance to win a lottery that includes thousands of dollars in products, including a Sony Vaio Netbook.

http://masteryourworkday.com/

Does this help? Let me know! Leave your comment.

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Maria Mar

The Dream Alchemist

Maria Mar is an author, speaker and ceremonialist poet. She is also a spiritual teacher and an internationally known shaman who inspires women to manifest the life of their dreams. She offers books, digital products and coaching, art that heals and transforms as well as performances, speaking engagements and other live and online events to help you become the protagonist of your life and the creator of your destiny. Find out more at Catch the Dream Express.

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