When I asked the larger Get Momentum community to submit “a couple of questions,” I was overwhelmed - but overjoyed! - by the response. You can see all those questions here…
And, slowly but surely, over time, I’m chipping away at the answers to their questions.
This one came from Kyle:
“How do you best reorient your energies when you’ve had to give up on a project, goal or job/school due to life?”
There are three things that come to mind when I read this question:
1. We don’t “give up” on projects
You don’t have one without the other. You don’t give up on something without something else coming in to grab your awareness. You don’t stop doing one thing, without starting to do another one. That, to me, is perhaps the most important lesson you can take from the entire “productivity” movement. And, it dates back before Stephen Covey and his highly effective habits.
Once you know what your “Big Rocks” are, you know how to organize your town. Sure sounds simple, doesn’t it? Here’s the test: Open your calendar for the past week. If you can print it, do that. If it’s hand-written, make a copy of the last 7 days. If you don’t keep a calendar, I need to do - from memory - draw out where you’ve gone and what you’ve done for the past 7 days.
Next, I want you to color-code (with a crayon, pen or highlighter - the following three activities:
RED: a waste of time, a draw on resources, and energy vampire
YELLOW: didn’t move the mission forward, didn’t hurt
GREEN: this is THE reason I’m on the planet; why I am here is to do this MORE
You see, you aren’t “giving up” on anything, you’re just doing too much yellow and red…
2. Some things are in the way others are along the way
This is tough to know in the moment.
Did you see that super-awesome, super-popular, super-short speech that Steve Jobs did at Stanford University a while back? (It’s on YouTube; just do a Google search for “Steve Jobs” “Stanford Commencement” and you’ll see it right there. In that heartfelt presentation he made to the graduating class, he discussed the importance of “connecting the dots.” That looking forward, it’s tough to see how what we’re dealing with right now is at all on track toward where we are going. But, it’s when we look back that we realize that some things - indeed - helped us get to where we are today.
At the last Ojai Leadership Retreat (www.OjaiLeadershipRetreat.com) we spent an entire session looking at how our past influencers - those people along the way whose leadership qualities influenced in positive AND negative ways - serve us as markers along the way. Looking back, we can “bookmark” certain conversations, certain events, certain experiences as how we wanted to be more (or less) like as we grew through time.
This, by the way, is the #1 reason I have for keeping some kind of daily journal. It’s in this kind of daily collection that we create the data set we can use a year, a decade, a quarter century from now to look back and realize how far we’ve come.
3. Our work is to continually look out over the near/mid/long term and decide what our work is
From it’s root, the word “decision” has to do with “cutting something away or off.” Literally, when you decide about/on something, you’re cutting other things out. So, our job is to continue culling, quantifying, qualifying and going for exactly what it is that we DO want. Knowing full well that with a next phone call, a mid-flight trip to a state or country far, far away, o
Consider where you want to be 36 months from today. ext, what class can you take? What online program can you enroll in. Who can you invite to have lunch with you 5 times over the next 10 weeks. What book can you check out of the library?
I know many people who have had the experience of “responsibility thrust upon them.” Suddenly, they’re out of a job, they realize they’re having another baby, they get called to do something unlike anything they’ve done before. In all but the most extreme of cases, I can look back and unpack how certain choices, certain decisions, certain “overlooking” led them to the moment when and where they became accountable to the work they suddenly inherited.
Your job is to ABT - always be thinking. Benjamin Franklin taught us that any decision we need to make can be more easily managed by making a list of “Pros and Cons.” Personally, I use that PLUS an approach I call, IF this THAN that…
If I do THIS…what might it lead to? If I do THAT…what might come to be? This is what I call being a futurist; there’s always a part of me living 36-60 months in the future. So, the reorientation of my energy, my focus and my time is simply a matter of asking myself, “if I do one of these choices, what might come to be?”
Am I always right? By no means always. Am I more prepared than I think I would be had I not done some kind/that kind of thinking? I believe so…