Time to stop?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, time management

stopAlison Smith runs a great coaching programme (so do we – but that would be blatant self-promotion!).

I was speaking with her a few months ago when she mentioned something that awakened in me this morning – the need to stop occasionally.

We lead such busy lives, filled with all sorts of activity, that sometimes and perhaps especially when faced with a personal/life challenge the most effective thing to do is get off the roundabout altogether.

As long as we stay on the roundabout our view of the world is constantly changing – OK we may come round to the same point again, but something ‘out there’ will have changed while we were having our ride. How important it might be to take real time out – STOP completely – to look at ourselves, our situation, our connections, our aims and goals, our personal vision?

…and I do not mean ‘stop doing this task and start doing another..”, I mean STOP. Take time out, away from where you normally do your work or live your life. Take time to reflect on what really matters to you, whether how you do your work and live your life is really serving your greater vision. Take time to decide what to drop, who to drop, what to change and what action you are going to take to improve your lot. Always remember:

life is not counted by the number of breaths you take
but by the moments your breath is taken away

Are you Browsing or Seeking?

Geoff Roberts choice, flexibility, focus, opportunity, selection, time management

browsing
I am one of those people who sometimes challenges stereotypes and this is one of those occasions. This man is happy to admit that, on occasions, he just loves shopping. I would like to talk about that phrase “on occasions”. In my head, there are two types of shopping – firstly those occasions when I am quite happy just wandering around window shopping and possibly coming across something that interests me that I might or might not buy. Secondly there is that sort of shopping when I am going out to buy something specific and that is when I become a man on a mission.

The first type of shopping I am browsing, the second I am seeking. When browsing, the pleasure is in browsing in itself and not necessarily in making a purchase. When seeking, the pleasure is finding an item that meets my needs (and there is even greater pleasure in finding something that exceeds those needs).

So, how is it for you? Do you wander through life with no particular aim in mind, perhaps picking up the odd gem on the way but generally letting whatever happens happen? Or do you set out every day with specific aims and goals in mind, with your brain primed to look for opportunities and your body ready to take action on those opportunities?

There is certainly room for both of these approaches, however my challenge to you is to be clear which you are doing when and to be certain that you are doing the right one at the right time. If I want to buy a pair of shoes, it is no good me going to a food store and if I want the pleasure of just wandering, visiting a carpet warehouse is likely to be limiting my pleasure.

Without a vision and without goals all we can ever do is browse; indeed, without that vision and those goals operating in the background we might miss major opportunities whilst we are browsing. Once we are clear what it is that we want we can actively choose whether to go and explicitly seek that or just put it in the background whilst we are browsing in case some opportunity comes up. Living a life without goals is a bit like being a tumbleweed, blown where the wind takes its, trapped in some windowless corner and slowly decaying until point at which it disintegrates and is spread to all corners of the wind.

Which is relevant to your quest for a new product or business or job or mate or project worth working on…
If you’re still looking around, making sure you understand all your options, getting your bearings or making sure you’re well informed, you’re most probably browsing. You missed the first, second and third waves of the internet; you missed a hundred great jobs and forty great husbands.; you missed the deadline for that course and who knows what else while you were just browsing..

Quit looking and go buy something.

On avoiding procrastination

Geoff Roberts procrastination, time management

I have just said goodbye to a friend who lives in the most wonderful location across the river from Edinburgh – her (big) front window looks across the estuary into the heart of the city, spectacular on an evening. As she left, the usual stuff came out of my mouth “We should come up again…”. I just know that all I have to do is ask and the door will be open and I also know that it was just 2 minutes’ work to get out our diaries and arrange something there and then, yet we didn’t, we procrastinated.

Why? What is it that leads us to say “I should…” and then not do anything about it?

Well, I can also think of other times when I managed to get huge amounts done in a limited time – typically those last few days before a holiday when the ‘To Do’ list shrinks at a rate of knots, or when there is some other drop-dead deadline. What can these times tell us about how to make more effective use of our time?

It seems to me that the difference is something to do with committment. The drop-dead deadlines (which, of course, includes catching that flight to the sun/snow/sand…) somehow generate that sense of ‘must do’ which has a more compelling force than ‘should do’.

So perhaps there are (at least!) two things to think about when deciding what do do with your time:

1) How important is this appointment/meeting/day out/etc to me? The more important it is, the more likely the job is to get done and the more likely I am to start early just in case something comes up at the last minute. I am saying yes becasue it seems like a good idea, or because someone else thinks it is important – or because it meets my needs?
2) Am I hoping for something better to come up? Maybe the reason we did not arrange that weekend in Scotland was that we were not willing to commit in case something else came up that was more compelling. And of course if something else does not come up then we have missed an opportunity!

Whatever I face, if it matters enough to me I will organise around it. So decide what really matters, get those things in your diary first (Stephen Covey’s large stones) and then arrange everything else around those personal committments.