Zugunruhe: Helping great people get [good] things done: Zoog.un.roo.ee

Enjoy the taste of gratitude!

Free cookies! To show my appreciation for you, my readers, I’m going to send one lucky someone a dozen Zen Rabbit Baking Company's wonderful Gratitude Cookies. I’ll draw one name from my newsletter list on Friday, May 16. To be eligible to win, sign up now using the link in the sidebar (look at the top left). No matter what, I’ll send one dollar in your honor to charity!

Turn off the fire hose

“Indeed, the river may rage, yet [she] is not disturbed; [she] is confident, though the [River] Jordan gushes into [her] mouth."—The Book of Job

One thing I hear in conversation after conversation is the longing to live a life in accordance with purpose and vision. People long for lives of meaning, they really do. Lives that have impact and significance, doing things that have positive effects on others. Yet most of us are drinking from the fire hose, so to speak, overwhelmed by the daily demands and torrent of information coming at us all the time.

I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time on what David Allen of GTD fame calls the “runway,” the factory floor where the stuff actually gets done. Some days, there are lots of fires to put out. Other days, my ability to focus is nil and distraction is at an all time high; I can’t stay on task to save my life. It’s not that I don’t know what’s important to me or that I lack a sense of vision. It’s that my priorities sometimes get driven from the bottom up. Whatever is most urgent or easiest gets done.

A while back I read a wonderful book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art. Pressfield describes the struggle against Resistance--that force that opposes the completion of all great works from novels to the war on poverty and everything in between, mundane or divine. He points out that Resistance only acts when we attempt lofty goals: “[Resistance] kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.” What this means is that when you attempt to order your priorities from the top down, you’re going to meet with significant amounts of friction. Staying on the runway all the time is easy; getting sufficient speed to get off the ground, turn off the fire hose, tame  the River Jordan…now that takes effort.

The other day, I was out hiking with my dogs. I went hiking because I needed to get away from my desk and do some higher level thinking. I’d been contemplating some the areas of focus and responsibility in my life. What I really wanted to was to get some clarity on my goals for the next year or two. Frankly, as I was hiking, I was feeling a bit selfish. What  right, I asked myself, do I have to take off and go hiking just because I need to think?

That’s when it hit me. That kind of thinking couldn’t happen in my office. There were too many things calling for my attention there. I had to get off of the runway and out of the river. Literally.

Ultimately, your priorities are what you do. Regardless of what you say or think about what’s important to you, if you’re not doing it, it’s not a priority. You have gifts and strengths, talents and abilities, a unique role that the world is waiting for you--and only you--to use for some great purpose. The only way you will get to manifest that calling is to order your priorities from the top down.

So turn off the flow, and dam the river if you have to. Take one big step back: what is really important? Attend to what’s most important to you today.

Feeling no friction? It could mean you're standing still.

Friction is a good sign. It means you’re moving.

Ever noticed that as you work at something, it seems to get harder as you go along? Take weight loss, for example. As you get closer to your goal weight, progress slows. You have to amp up your workouts and be even stricter with your diet to hit the mark and maintain it. The same is true for just about any lofty goal. Inevitably you hit a steep curve, encounter lots of resistance, and progress seems to slow to a crawl.

It’s tempting to think that because things are getting more difficult to move forward that you’re getting nowhere. Encountering friction isn’t a lot of fun. But you only generate friction when you’re moving. That’s a simple law of physics.

Think of pushing a heavy couch across a carpeted floor. When the couch is just sitting there, it’s subject to the law of inertia: an object at rest will remain at rest…unless acted upon by an outside force. To get the couch moving, you’ve got to overcome inertia and friction. Paradoxically, the harder you push, the more friction you generate. This an another simple physics law, one you’re probably very familiar with: every action is met with an equal and opposite reaction. The greater the force moving forward, the greater the pushback will be.

When you encounter resistance with whatever you’re pushing forward on--whether it be a sticky work situation, starting a business, or creating a better life for your family, to name a few--keep in mind that friction is actually a good sign. No friction means you’re standing still. Standing still equals no progress. The other thing to remember is that there are more ways to overcome friction than just pushing harder.

Attention to the details is one way to reduce the friction in your life. Being well organized means that fewer little obstacles litter your path to increase friction as you go along. Delegating (aka simply asking for help) is one way of increasing the energy input without burning yourself out in the process. Look around. What can you do to reduce the friction in your life? Increase the energy inputs? Polish the surfaces so that there’s less rub?

And remember, friction is a good sign. It means you’re moving.

Mind like Puppy

David Allen of GTD fame talks about cultivating a mindset that makes you ready for anything. He calls it “mind like water.” It’s an idea from martial arts. It goes like this: if your mind is like water, you’re constantly in a relaxed state. When some disturbance comes along, you absorb and respond to it with ease. As David put it when I heard him talk about this concept last summer, water doesn’t tense up when it sees the stone coming. For getting things done fans, having a mind like water is nirvana; it’s the holy grail. Instead of getting tense over work, the mind-like-water GTDer simply absorbs and responds to the demands on his or her time. I don’t have a mind like water. I have a mind like puppy.

I realized my “mind like puppy” state the other day when I was watching our new fur-kid playing. If the puppy has two or more toys, he plays with each one in succession for about two seconds a piece. He finds each toy with great joy and pleasure, as if he’s never seen it before. He pounces on the toy with immense enthusiasm and just as he’s really getting into playing with it, he spies another. Wow, a new toy! And so he drops the one he’s got and rushes over to get the next one. The secret to my having a calm puppy, one completely absorbed and contented in his play is to give him only one toy. One toy means there’s nothing to draw his attention away and, lo, he plays contentedly for quite a long time without interruption.

My brain works just like my puppy’s except that I’m rushing from one idea or task to another. Just as I get really involved in one thing, something else vies for my attention. Look! Something else that needs to be done! And I’m off, pouncing on that new activity with the same enthusiasm my puppy has for his slobbery toys. And I’m no sooner into my newfound pursuit than something else shows up and I’m after it like a puppy on a tennis ball.

My puppy sometimes tries to multitask. He grabs his gigantic toy bone and then tries to stuff a tennis ball into his mouth as well. It doesn’t work so good; his mouth is too small to get around them both at the same time. Same here, too. Too many things in front of me at once leave me feeling frustrated. Why can’t I play with all my toys at once? Because there’s just no room for me to carry them all in my mind at the same time.

Puppy training, I’ve learned, is all about patience. I take it easy with correction and choose to use praise and treats instead. I reward our dogs when they do what I want them to and carefully fail to reinforce the behaviors I don’t want. I wish my mind would get the picture and fall into line as quickly as my dogs do. Still, I think there’s something to the one toy at a time rule. One toy, one task, one goal in front of me with no other stuff to distract me away from whatever it is I choose to work on. And of course, treats to reward me when I sit and stay and get something done.

Now, if you’ll excuse me—I have a slobbery tennis ball in my lap and a puppy at my elbow asking me for a game of fetch. In this case, multitasking would mean puppy slobber on my keyboard taking distraction to a whole new level. Besides, the advantage of having a mind like puppy means saying always being ready to play, right?