WORK IN PROGRESS
THE Personal Effectiveness E-zine
Vol. VII, Issue 19, December, 2003 ><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>><<>>
Are you driven or driving?
Most people today are busy. There is too much to do, there are too many options, and few of us are as capable of saying "no" as we might like to be. Sometimes it seems that saying "no" would be downright inadvisable... perhaps for a career, perhaps for a budget, perhaps for the growth of a fledgling business... Every "yes" seems to be a "yes" to a potential opportunity - and many of us grew up hearing that we must be ready to open the door whenever opportunity knocks, for if we don't she may go on her merry way, and may never return to visit us again. So this is not yet another plea to learn to say "no" to things, to downsize, simplify, and reap the resulting serenity. All of those things are good, but I know that for some of us, it seems that they have to be somewhere in tomorrow, and that for today we "must" continue to be busy.
Yet, do we really need to live our lives as though we were on a production line gone mad? Some readers will remember a classic episode of the television show "I love Lucy" in which Lucille Ball goes to work in a factory, and is put to work on a candy production line. Needless to say, things start to go wrong, she can't keep up, but the conveyor belt keeps on delivering with relentless regularity and she becomes steadily more and more frantic as she tries to keep up... even keeping up seems impossible, let alone ever catching up with the already existing backlog.
Sound familiar?
There are two ways of being busy. The first is to live our lives being driven, feeling like Lucy while life, deadlines, crises and even routine tasks come at us willy-nilly, unsought, seeming to have a life of their own that is outside our control, so that we can operate only in reactive mode, trying to keep up, trying to cope, and wondering how much longer we can survive without falling apart.
The other, which takes some effort and discipline, is to choose to take the driver's seat. It is not easy, nor is constant success assured. But it feels a lot better than being on the receiving end of a conveyor belt!
The fact is, although emergencies do happen**, much of what comes at us IS predictable. We could take steps to prepare for it. Whether the deadline involves a report to the Board of Directors, a term paper, a presentation or speech, or having the house cleaned in time for visiting relatives, we do usually know that the conveyor belt that we call a calendar is in process of delivering it to us.
In order to bring about this change, I have four main suggestions, plus a fifth...
First, make friends with time - stop thinking about it as your enemy.
Second, give each project the respect it deserves and approach it as a project.
Third, insist - INSIST! - upon creating mental and physical downtime for yourself.
Fourth, never forget why you are doing this, what will be the benefits that you get from doing it, and that, despite how it may sometimes feel, you do have choices, and you are doing this by choice.
Fifth, find ways to avoid emergencies (yes, really!)
What do I mean by approaching time as your friend? Haven't you done battle with time ever since the deadline for that science project - back when you were in elementary school - somehow snuck up on you unexpectedly? Ever since some special event arrived before you had saved up enough money for it? Ever since your short legs and childish hands tried frantically to keep up with impatient adults or older siblings? Hasn't time been your enemy from that day forward? That, my friend, is the result of allowing yourself to be driven instead of moving firmly and gently into the driver's seat. That is the result of waking in the morning and trying to hide under the blankets so as to avoid whatever the day brings, instead of welcoming it. That is the result of imagining that you have no choices.
Most of us have elements of life that we see as enemies. For some it is direction, and they get lost frequently, living their lives uncertain of north, east, south and west, and regarding maps as advanced versions of the New York Times crossword puzzle - designed specifically to confuse and confound them. For others the problem covers a smaller space - their own surroundings. Things are not where they should be, where they should be changes frequently, and most horizontal surfaces are covered with objects awaiting a return to wherever it is that they belong - if the individual could just figure out where that is. But for the folks to whom this article is addressed, the enemy is time, and they often live as though battling upstream through an onslaught of tasks that threatens to sweep them away. They often arrive at events late and feel rushed and unready much of the time.
No matter what the enemy may be, in point of fact it is neutral. It is neither friend nor foe until we make it such by our own thinking. You may decide to define any form of structure either by its limits or by the space within those limits. If you are confined to a room, you may beat upon the walls and see them as imprisoning you, or you may survey the space between those walls and calculate how superbly you may dance within that space. The first makes the structure your enemy, the second makes it your friend.
So it is with time. We may see only that it is moving inexorably forward, bringing down upon us deadline after task after deadline so that we are focused on its limits. Or we may see every blank space on the calendar, every moment between tasks, between meetings, between classes, as a space in which WE get to decide how and where we may dance. We may bless and welcome every new 24 hours as an opportunity to become more of whom we are becoming.
Time will be your friend if you stop thinking of it as your enemy. Focus on the blanks spaces and the fact that you can CHOOSE how they may best serve you. Remember that the choice is yours unless you give it up by waiting until deadline, until everything is URGENT. If you do that, then you give away your power to make those decisions.
Second, give each project the respect it deserves and approach it as a project.
Maintain an overall calendar so that you can see at a glance when what will need to be done. Perhaps you use a calendar that shows a week's events, or a month's. My suggestion is that you also use one that shows the entire year - either in fold-out form for a paper organizer, or perhaps a wipe-on/wipe-off version to hang on a wall or notice board.
When you look at that calendar, visualize yourself stepping back from it. Time flows, and sometimes it feels as though we are caught up in its stream. In order to become proactive we need to think as though we were above the stream (or the conveyor belt) taking the long view. What is coming at us? What do we need to do in order to be fully and calmly prepared for it? How can we break up each task into small increments that will fit in the sometimes small white spaces on our calendar.
Whatever you need to do, if it will take more than 15 minutes, if you don't anticipate completing it today, give it the respect of treating it as a project. What do I mean by that? First, know exactly what you want from the project. What does the result need to look like for you to know that you are satisfied - or, preferably, elated - by the results? Use some visualization here. Close you eyes and experience yourself enjoying the completion of the project. What does that look like? More importantly, what does it FEEL like? Approval from the boss? Your own sense of pride? An A or a "well done" from someone? The reward of shining surfaces and an environment that glows? Whatever it is, know what it feels like.
Then decide exactly what needs to be done to get you there so that you can have that experience in reality. I sometimes suggest that rather than starting at the beginning of the project as you plan it, you may find it easier to start at the beginning - just one step back from that feeling of completion and pride. What was the last thing you did to bring the project to completion? What was the step before that? (You will, of course, be taking notes as you go through this process.) Walk yourself backward, step by step, from their until you get to where you are now, this minute.
Now go through those notes to see if they are complete. Did you leave out a step? When you are satisfied that you have included everything - the preliminary research, the decision-making, the obtaining of needed resources, the actual beginning of the work, piece by piece, the ongoing evaluation to be sure that you are going where you intend to go with it, all the way through to completion, then you have your project plan.
Now, you may think, you are really ready to begin the gathering of the supplies/resources and to move forward with the project. But wait! Remember the calendar! Here is where the project and the calendar meet. Set out your deadlines - not just the final one, but the break-points. When will you have achieved step one, step two... Set it out in the white spaces of your calendar so that you know what you will do when. This way, you will know on an ongoing basis how fast this particular part of the stream will be coming at you, and how you will cope with its approach. The looming deadline will no longer be an object of fear and loathing because YOU will be in control.
Third, insist - INSIST! - upon creating mental and physical downtime for yourself.
Some of those downtimes need to be placed on the calendar white space also. They have a wide range, from a few moments (not on the calendar) to the event that you know will renew and refresh you - which does, regardless of whether it involves a fifteen minute walk or an evening out. When you get busy, if that time is not on the calendar, you probably will not give it to yourself. Result - another part of the oncoming stream will include burnout. You are your most valuable resource, and just as you maintain the result of your equipment and resources, you need to maintain yourself. A pause to look out of the window is not daydreaming, it is a needed break. (I remember reading somewhere that the muscular changes needed to focus on a distance horizon rather than something close actually have beneficial psychological effects, though I don't remember the source of that concept.) Pause to stretch, and give your mind a break as well as your muscles. Know, for certain, that you will take time for you at some point today, every day, regardless of deadlines.
Find someone to talk with, to laugh with - not someone who will drain your energy. It may be wise to keep the break complete by not talking about the project - unless you need a sounding board or to brainstorm. Then be sure you have picked a person who does not habitually rain on your parades.
Fourth, never forget why you are doing this, what will be the benefits that you get from doing it, and that, despite how it may sometimes feel, you do have choices, and you are doing this by choice.
Sometimes we feel that we have no choices, but we always have choices. If we think we have not, what we mean is that we have ruled out the alternatives as unacceptable. That, too, is a choice.
** There is a fifth suggestion, but this piece is already too long so the full article, including the fifth suggestion, is at my website. Just click on www.choicecoach.com/4Writer/WIP.htm#WIPFollow
to get to the end of the article, or on www.choicecoach.com/4Writer/WIP.htm#Article
to read it again in its entirety.
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