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

Unleash the power of full engagement

During my recent travels, I spent a lot of time on airplanes (let me quickly digress, by a lot, I mean I did two monster round-trips to—literally—opposite sides of the planet). To keep myself sane and entertained, I listened to bunches of podcasts. One of the most thought-provoking was this episode. In short, the idea is that the primary obstacle that most people face is that they hold back.

Holding back means not giving everything you have. What might that look like? Think of the last time you told yourself not to get your hopes up and you probably have a good idea of what it means to hold back. Anytime you find yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop, you’re probably holding back. Got talents you’re not using, even though the opportunity is there? That’s holding back. But so what? Does holding back hurt anything?

When you hold back, what you’re telling yourself is that all those activities aren’t worth your full effort. If you hold back long enough and often enough, it gets to be a habit. It’s like you’re saving yourself for something. But what is it you’re saving yourself for? Something that’s worth your effort? And what might that be?

One thing I know for sure is that everything counts. Every tiny step brings you closer to success. And who knows which step will be the one that really puts you into supercharged momentum? The only way to give yourself a shot is to be fully engaged. If you can’t bring yourself to participate fully, maybe—just maybe—you shouldn’t be doing it at all. I mean, really, if you’re not going to give something your real effort, why waste your time?

On the other hand, if you are serious about moving forward, being productive, realizing your dreams, then live like you mean it. The next time you feel yourself pulling back, reserving your time and talents, ask yourself: what am I saving myself for? If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing fully or not at all.

Get back on track

If you find that your train of thought is often derailed, you’re not alone. A study of people’s ability to pay attention to what they’re doing showed that about 30% of the time, on average, you’re probably not thinking about what you’re doing. That’s if you’re lucky. For some folks, up to 80% of the time, their minds are elsewhere. This phenomenon of being preoccupied, distracted, and generally mindless can lead to all sorts of difficulties, not the least of which is the inability to get things done. However, a recent study of meditation—mindfulness training—showed that you can teach your mind to get back on track. This simple technique may significantly improve you ability to focus, pay attention, and work more effectively.

There are a lot of ways you can learn to use mindfulness for yourself. One of the best I’ve found is to listen to one of the podcasts from Zencast.org. This wonderful site includes an entire (and free) course on mindfulness meditation as well as abundant resources to help you learn to calm your mind.

Before you blow the idea of meditation off as hopelessly woowoo, consider what you miss by speeding blindly through your days. If you find that you’re having trouble sleeping, can’t settle down to work, or obsessively check your email or Blackberry, creating a habit of stopping to focus on your breath may be a genuine lifesaver for you. For certain, you’ll find that when you stop to simply breathe, you are much more present, relaxed, confident, and grounded.

Don't try!

Do or do not. There is no try.--Yoda

When making a commitment, particularly a commitment to yourself, it’s often put as “I’ll try.” I’ll try to exercise. I’ll try to eat right. I’ll try not to turn into a pig in front of the TV when football season starts. Yoda, however, had a good point. There is no try. In trying, no action takes place--you’re either doing or not doing; you never get to try.

What I think people often mean when they say “I’ll try,” is “I’d like to but I don’t know how.” Don’t know how to start. Don’t know how to keep it up. Afraid to start because what if I don’t do it right.

A while back, I was musing over making mistakes. It dawned on me that the only way to avoid making mistakes was to do nothing. Mistake-free performance generally means nothing happened. To try means delaying until mistake-free performance can occur. Which is another way of saying “when hell freezes over.”

The next time you think about saying “I’ll try,” consider saying “I want to,” instead. By stating a preference for doing, you’ve put into your mind a very different picture that includes a action instead of stasis. Once you’ve stated that you want to do something, the likelihood goes up that you will actually do it. And that beats trying every time.

Debriefing can help you grow

When something significant happens in your life, what’s the first thing you want to do? Most likely, it’s tell someone about it. Not just anybody, either. You want to tell a friend or a family member, somebody who cares. This is a form of what is often called “debriefing.”
Debriefing is an often overlooked method to clarify understanding and to reflect on what’s happened, what it means, and gather insight and learning. I was chatting with a student in my genetics class recently and he told me that his understanding of the subject was greatly improved by chatting with a co-worker about what he was studying. Just the act of thinking aloud, transferring the knowledge to another, made all the difference in his ability to grasp difficult concepts.

To successfully debrief, there are several conditions you need to meet:

• Someone to listen. The person doing the listening doesn’t really need to do anything beyond be present and pay attention. Listening for insight means listening without urgency or agenda, with nothing added. No problem-solving. No advice. Finding such a listener may be a bit of a challenge. One way to get a listening relationship like this is to agree to provide listening for each other.
• Speaking at length. This is an often overlooked skill. When what the last time you spoke at length to someone who was listening intently? When I say at length, I mean ten or fifteen uninterrupted minutes. That kind of speaking may take some practice, but once acquired, you’ll find that being able to speak with authenticity will improve every interaction you experience.
• Trust. Both speaker and listener need to be able to trust each other. Admittedly, this is a hard one to come by. Sometimes, however, all that’s needed is for you to ask for what you need. The request might be something like, “I need to talk about what happened. I don’t want you to ask questions or try fix things. I just need to sort through my thoughts out loud. Is that OK with you?” If all else fails, you can hire a trained listener, like a coach, to help you debrief.

When you fail to debrief, many opportunities for learning are lost. You often have terrific insights immediately after events or experiences. If you debrief, whether aloud with a trusted listener, or on paper, debriefing can help you to live your life more fully and more consciously.

Changing Lanes

I’ve changed careers twice. My first career was as a nurse. I was good at nursing. Yet, I wrestled with a deep yearning that said I was supposed to be doing something else. The something else turned out to be a very dramatic change. I literally ran away from home to become a rainforest biologist. My second career culminated in professor-hood at a large university in the Pacific Northwest. I was a “trailing spouse,” a euphemism used in academic circles which roughly translates to ‘the one who wasn’t hired.’ The transition out of career number two contrasted sharply with my first switch. The first time, I looked after I leaped. The second time, I looked for a long time before deciding which direction to jump in.

I’ve learned a lot from my two career changes. As a coach, I apply that knowledge plus some to help other folks make successful switches of their own. To that end, here are some ideas to contemplate if you’re thinking of a career change.

Get ready to be passionate.
This is the most important piece to have in place before moving toward a new career. If you’re not moving toward a future you are passionate about, the going will get impossibly tough before you arrive at your destination. This message was driven home over and over as I was slogging through grad school. If I hadn’t loved what I was doing with all my soul, the torture would have burned out my enthusiasm in short order.

Play to your strengths.
When I became a biologist, I got to live out a deeply held love of learning. In many ways, I was very lucky. When I chose to go whole hog and pursue my passion, I unwittingly played to my strengths which included acquiring knowledge, teaching, and writing. One plus about making a career choice as an adult is that you know yourself in ways now that you couldn’t have when you were younger. You already know what you’re good at. The secret to making your strengths work for you is harnessing them in service to your passion.

Treat it like a band-aid: rip it off fast.
Ever had a band-aid on a hairy spot, like the back of your arm? How did you get it off? Well, one way is just to rip it off fast and get it over with. Career changes can work the same way. Yes, you may hit a very steep learning curve, but there is truly a magic in being totally committed to a particular aim. Certainty and decisiveness can pay huge dividends if you are not averse to risk. Remember, however, to choose rather than pick. The distinction is that choice is a decision based on what’s important to you rather than picking from a set of available (but perhaps limited) options. Once you’ve chosen, you can make a change very rapidly.

Treat it like a band-aid: peel it away slowly and gingerly.
On the other hand, a slow transition can provide a sense of safety that a rapid, no-holds-barred approach cannot. The upside to a slow transition is bet hedging. The downside to a slow transition is bet hedging. What I mean by that is that you incur less risk if things don’t work out; by the same token, you may not incur enough risk to give your new career a chance to work out. That said, a slow, careful transition can let you iron out a lot of difficulties in relative safety. There are quite a few studies that show that lingering over a choice for a long time does not result in greater satisfaction, however. So don’t dither around forever. Once you’ve studied the details and made a choice, get on with it.

You are the common denominator in all your experiences.
If you are changing careers because your work experiences have all been awful, you’re always surrounded by incompetent boobs, and you’re unhappy everywhere you go, please note that you will be there when you get to your new career. This is another way of saying, if you haven’t been happy anywhere you’ve been, a new career may not be the answer for you. Research indicates the humans are notoriously bad a predicting how happy their choices will make them. That’s because happiness is largely determined by attitude and overall disposition, not circumstances. The take-home message is work on yourself first, then change your career, not the other way around.

The bottom line is that life is short. If the idea of looking back on your life and knowing that you gave your big dreams a shot--even if they didn’t work out--is better than never trying, changing careers may be just the ticket.

Another view on Remember the Milk and GTD

Ran across a very useful post on the Remember the Milk blog that I thought you'd enjoy. Here, guest author Doug Ireton gives all the details on setting up Smart Lists to GTD. Check out his very helpful post bearing a lot of the technical supporting details here.

Be Nice

How many times did your mom ever tell you: “Be nice.” Just be nice. Seems easy. Ludicrously simple. Not so fast, my friend!

At the recent Wharton Leadership Conference, one of the keynote speakers was there to tell the gathering that a key leadership concept is…stand back, drum roll: Be Nice.

Actually, Steve Harrison (chair of Lee Hecht Harrison) puts it a little differently. He says “be decent.” Decency, Harrison explained, creates a layer of protection around companies that cushions them from hard times and difficult circumstances, inside and out.

Harrison talked about something referred to as the “two minute schmooze.” In his example, this quick interaction was came about when his COO pointed out that he, Harrison, hadn’t greeting the receptionist. I don’t know about you, but I have an allergic reaction to the word “schmooze.” To me, schmoozing is something fake and inauthentic. Being nice is different. It takes more. It takes mindful attention. The real deal is cultivating an attitude that sees, hears, believes--one that is attentive and fully present. An attitude that cares.

So the next time you’re wondering what’s the most cutting edge idea being taught at the best leadership academies in the world, now you know. Now, go be nice to your mom. She knew it all along.

Getting in the Weeds, Part Three: Calendars

When I lead the GTD Study Group calls, I’ve noticed that for some reason folks love to get down into the weeds of other people’s systems. There’s just something about hearing how someone else goes about solving the problems of getting everything done that really appeals to people. This is the third post in my “into the weeds” series. Today, I’ll be talking about how I keep track of appointments and deadlines.

For my main calendar, I use iCal. All appointments and hard deadlines are entered into iCal as soon as I get them. If I’m away from home, I enter appointments into iCal using my iPod Touch and sync up when I get back.

I keep four calendars displayed in my iCal: my personal calendar, a work calendar, my husband’s travel calendar, and an academic calendar. Additionally, I track birthdays by entering birth date info into Address Book. Address Book and iCal automatically sync birth date info between them so anytime I add or change info in Address Book, the corresponding calendar entry is updated.

All of my calendar entries are color coded. This helps me to quickly see what is personal and what is not and makes certain info stand out. I set my iPod preferences to show items entered from the iPod in pink. I originally did this because I was still keeping a paper calendar and the pink stood out as a reminder to update the paper version, upon which I was relying.

I still keep a paper daily calendar but not to track appointment times. The iCal is my hard edge—what iCal tells me to do or expect at a certain time is what I go by. However, there is something about processing information by hand that does me good. So every morning, I physically write my appointments out into my wire bound Julie Morgenstern calendar (produced by Franklin Covey). As I write out what the day holds in store, it seems to tip off the thinking process I need to generate any Next Actions that need capturing.

I also keep a personal version of the Franklin Covey “compass.” I created a Word document with a column sized to fit the compass (which is a plastic sleeve that holds a column sized sheet of paper as a bookmark). In my compass, which is updated weekly, I track my key intentions for each week, significant projects that I want to pay attention to, and deadlines. I parse deadlines out into within 30 days and 30-90 days. Now that I use iCal more reliably, my dependence on the weekly compass has decreased but I still find it useful to process deadlines by hand—it keeps them in the forefront of my mind and also generates key Next Actions.

Thanks for letting me share my system with you. I hope you’ve found something useful here. If you have tricks or tips to share, I’d love to hear them!