This week’s leadership challenge is going to be short and sweet. Some time ago I had been lamenting that every time my iPhone notified me of how much screen time I had in the past week, it was always much higher than I wanted it to be and often times the culprit was social media.
It doesn’t matter what time a day or what season we are in, it seems like there are always a multitude of fires to put out. Whether it’s the daily mundane of the dog barking because it’s time to eat or something much more complicated, there are 100s of things we are thinking about daily.
Procrastination is a gift of mine. I love putting something on the bottom of my list that needs to be done but I don’t want to do. I mean it’s on my list, but I will find 30 other things that absolutely have to be done before that task that I loathe.
Starting a new habit may be one of the harder leadership challenges but perhaps one of the most important. Learning how to start a positive habit is key to being able to follow through in doing the things you want to do to thrive and feel fulfilled. As James Clear writes in his book, Atomic Habits, it really is all about starting the action that makes sure you get to the finish line.
Another day, another meeting. When done wrong, meetings might be the one of the biggest barriers to productivity in modern history and it has gotten a lot worse in the last five years. At least it used to be a little bit harder to hold meetings, but after the pandemic the use of video conferencing exploded from something that used to be a novelty to integration into everyday use.
Hustle culture is killing us, both literally and figuratively. This is a product of societal norms imposed on us by a system that values numbers over people. If we aren’t constantly raising the bar at all times then we are expendable. Companies and organizations use people until they burn out. Then they replace them with someone who has yet to burn out. Good for the numbers, terrible for the culture.
This moment represents the most time you will ever have left on this Earth.
If that cold hard fact doesn’t freak you out, then you might want to check your pulse. The honest truth is that time is always running out on us. We don’t know whether or not we are going to walk out on the street and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Very comforting.
That is also very inconvenient for us as we need time to become successful, develop relationships, and ultimately end up where we want to be on this Earth. So why then is so much of our focus when it comes to success focused on money instead of time?
Originally written May 16, 2022
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There never seems to ever be enough time to accomplish everything we need to get done. Yet there are activities we do every day that continually waste our most precious resource because we have built them into our routine and they have become habit.
In order to unlock more time in our day, we have to take a hard look at what we are doing and how it plays into our daily balance of activities. For me, time sinks usually fall into to a few major categories. Work inefficiencies, pleasure binging, and boredom.
Originally written January, 2021
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The concepts expressed in this article are derived from James Clear’s “Atomic Habits”. Check out his work here.
Welcome back for a new and exciting year, and for most people that simply means putting 2020 behind us and looking forward to what should be a brighter future in 2021. The problem is that although the calendar has turned, a lot of the issues we had still remain. Those difficulties are different for everyone but it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t been affected in some ways by the pandemic.
Originally written December 3, 2020.
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I’ve stared for many months trying to determine what this blog was going to look like, what it should focus on and who my audience would be. After many months of staring at a blank page, it is time to get off the fence.
I still don’t have answers to any of these questions but after listening to one of Tim Ferriss’ podcast episodes with best-selling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, something struck a chord with me. He said “Writer’s block is something that exists but isn’t real. What writer’s block really is, is a fear of bad writing.”
I think that is true of so many people wanting to do something but being afraid to fail. Godin makes a good point that not everything that comes out will be good. It’s impossible. The bad has to come out with the good. It all comes down to simply putting in the work. Just writing these words on a page, no matter how bad they are is light years ahead of a blank page.
This blog will evolve over time as I see what works and what doesn’t, who my audience is, and how I feel about my writing. I can’t possibly know what those things look like unless I take step one.