In This Episode…
In today’s episode I share my experiences from today – a day I had intended to begin my research on defining the Main Thing. However things did not go according to plan. There were a number of reasons for that, all within my control. These included:
- Getting distracted by an e mail I had not planned to deal with.
- Not making the research activity today’s Main Thing.
- Not being clear enough on what the activity entailed.
- Not being committed enough to the outcome.
Episode Show Notes…
00:09 – Background to this episode. Yesterday I talked about the importance of refocusing myself onto my Main Thing. Today I was going to do exactly that. The trouble is…. I didn’t.
00:28 – There were a couple of things I let get in the way.
00:32 – Over the last few weeks I have developed the habit of only checking e mail twice a day for 30 minutes at about 11.30am and 3.30pm eery day. It’s been working very well for me.
00:59 – This morning I had to get an e mail I needed for the first task I was working on. Unfortunately I got distracted by the e mail at the top of the inbox and spent 20 minutes crafting a reply to it. This had nothing to do with what I had planned.
01:26 – I was two thirds through typing my response to this e mail before I realised I’d allowed myself to get sucked into something I had not planned to do.
01:50 – The other thing I let get in the way of researching the Main Thing was actually getting on with something that is my Main Thing for today. It’s preparing a seminar I am delivering in Paris in a month’s time.
02:06 – So whilst I had set the intention at the start of the day to research the Main Thing, it was little more than an idea rather than a concrete “must do”.
02:39 – I am sharing this because I want to demonstrate that developing these habits is not a walk in the park. You have to try these things out and learn from your mistakes. This is the Growth Mindset.
02:50 – If I look back on how I actually planned my day, I see that I specifically had a post it note for me to work on the Paris Seminar (I am using the Personal Kanban approach to managing my activities). For my podcast, I just had a post it note with “Today’s Podcast” on it. I had no clear intention of what I was going to do.
03:14 – In a desperate attempt to recover the situation, I did a quick Google for the term “Main Thing”. All I could come up with was a track by Roxy Music I’d not heard before.
04:52 – So whilst I recognised it was a good idea to research the Main Thing, I didn’t really have the level of commitment [or accountability?] necessary to make it happen.
05:21 – Because I’ve had a busy day with other stuff, I let this task get pushed back towards the end of the day. And I was not clear on what I wanted to achieve.
06:06 – To have achieved this, I needed to have got very clear on what my outcome was and identify the steps necessary to achieve that outcome.
06:57 – There is a lot of stuff going on in my professional life at the moment and it seems I am letting that run away from me. So this episode is a bit of reflection about that.
08:23 – Moving forward I am going to redirect my focus back onto understanding the Main Thing.
Until tomorrow…
