Your Changing Direction

Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play [Amazon.co.uk link]
Get Everything Done: And Still Have Time to Play [Amazon.com link]

If you feeling pressured with having too much to do in too little time you’ll be relieved to find that this book is not only easy to read and is full of down to earth and common sense.

This is also NOT a time management book that is the size of a phone book! It is a short read so that you can start applying the content to your life to make a difference to your time crisis.

“Our aspirations are our possibilities.”

(Samuel Johnson)

Have you noticed that sometimes the answer that you get will depend upon the question that you’ve asked?

I don’t know if you actually make any New Years Resolutions or set any goals for the year ahead but if you did how would you do it? What questions would you ask yourself?

If you are not aware of asking yourself any questions then you may like to look at previous new years resolutions/ goals and see what question they are answering.

Your answer will no doubt have depended upon the question that you asked.

This week I will talk about some of the common questions that people use when making New Years resolutions, setting goals and generally deciding what they want to create in their lives. (Oh OK a couple may not be so common but can be useful ) I invite you to use these questions to come up with some possibilities. You can then use your answers to decide if that is something that you would actually like to turn into a reality.

Why does it matter what questions are asked?

While some things may happen because of external things that are completely outside of your control, others events happen, at least partly, because of actions that you choose to take.

Earlier this year I was assisting on a couple of Michael Neill’s trainings where he stated that for most people the future they imagine is approximately plus or minus 10% of their past. That is, the future they imagine falls somewhere between 10% better or 10% worst than how they see their past.

But the future hasn’t actually happened yet so the future holds infinite possibilities that fall outside that 10%. (Unless you are a time traveller and you’re reading this on a trip into the past!) Sometimes, the questions that you use help you to see more of those possibilities so you can choose if you want to take action to make them real.

I invite you to play with the following questions and just notice the answers that come up for you.

You’ll probably find it easier if you don’t jump ahead to figuring out what the next step is to making your answers into a reality – I know it’s tempting but you may miss including some really cool things by doing it that way. It’ll be like only watching the first song of your favourite bands music concert and then leaving because you thought you had heard all they had to offer.

Besides, I’ve put together a list of resources that may help you with the next steps but I’ll tell you more about that after you’ve played with more possibilities.

(You may want to have a pen and paper handy to answer them)

What New Years Resolutions should you set?

What New Years Resolution do you want to set?

What New Years resolution would you love to set?

What New Year resolutions will you set?

What goals do you want to achieve in your future?

What goals would be fun to have in your future?

What goals are the next logical things to do in your future?

What would you love to create in 2010?

What would put a huge grin on your face in 2010?

What may seem impossible and/or impractical but you’d still love to have it in 2010?

If you know that you would be loved unconditionally regardless, what would you choose to do?

If you knew money was no object what would you choose?

If you know that it didn’t matter if you didn’t get it, what would you love to work towards?

Once you have answered these questions, and any other that spring to your mind, read through your answers. You may notice that you have similar or very different answers to how you normally do such things.

It’s now up to you, which (if any) you want to pick to use in your future.

Bonus tip

Sometimes your initial answer to a question is one that is influenced by how you think what you actually want can be done i.e. winning the lottery is one way of creating more money in your life.

To open up more possible answers, you may want to ask, “What would that give me” about your initial answer. Keep asking yourself for each level of answer that you come up with (even if it feels like you are making it up) until you can’t answer anymore.

For example, what would winning the lottery give me? More money

What would more money give me? I’d feel like I had more freedom to do more fun things easier.

For any that you would like to include in your future, now is the time to consider what the next step is to travel towards it.  For further resources that may be relevant for you click here. Then you can choose if that is something you want to do.

Have a week full of more infinite possibilities

Love

Jen 

PS For more resources compiled to make your New Year resolutions, your 2010 goals and generally to create the life you’d love easier click here.

“As for your future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.”

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

This is the third piece in a series of pieces inspired by the festive story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If you missed the first one you can read it again here and the second one can be found here.

The third and final Ghost to put in an appearance in the story is the Ghost of Christmas future, who perhaps would be more accurately named the Ghost of Christmas future that may be – though I’ll admit it doesn’t have quite the same ring! As Scrooge found out the future that he was shown was one possible outcome if he carried on taking the same action.

The end of the year is nearly upon us and many people use the New Year as a time to set New Years Resolutions, set goals for their future and evaluate what they would love to create in the year ahead.

Unless you are a clairvoyant then our perception of the future is all best guesses about the chances we believe something will happen based upon experience and the action to be taken.

And sometimes this can be an incredibly useful way of behaving, for example the chances are very high that you will burn yourself if you stick you hand on a hot stove. For the record, it’s something I personally recommend that you don’t do J

You may have noticed that how we imagine the future can have an impact upon what we do in the present. If you played with last weeks piece you may also be aware that sometimes we also place restrictions upon ourselves by the stories we tell about our future.

I don’t know if you have ever listened to the way that some people describe what they want in the future but the language they use and how they describe it to themselves can make a big difference to how easy they find taking action to make what they are describing a reality in their future.

Have you ever heard someone say a variation of “what I want is to get back to …”?

For example I want to get back to a size 12

I want to get back to sleeping 8 hours a night.

I want to get back the confidence I had 10 years ago.

Maybe you have your own version of something you want to get back to …

What I’ve noticed is that when people include that “get back to” in the description of what they want, the focus is upon the fact that they have lost it rather than the outcome. This may be an accurate description of what they are feeling. However, I do know that it is often easier to get the result you want by just tweaking the language you are using so that you loose the “get back” bit without loosing the result that you want.

For example, I want to get back to a size 12 becomes I want to be a size 12,

Or

I want to get back to sleeping 8 hours a night becomes I want to sleep 8 hours a night.

In both examples the focus has shifted to totally being upon the outcome that you want.

Sometimes as you tweak, it may be appropriate to add more specifics of what you want in the future.

For example, I want to get back the confidence I had 12 years ago can become I want to be feeling confident as I return to work.

This week as I know the festive period is often a busy one I invite you just to notice the language that you use and to play with the description of anything you want to “get back to”.

Next week I will stick to the theme of how we predict the future and get more specific about New Years Resolutions, goal setting and creating the year that you want.

I hope that you have a fantastic Christmas week

Love

Jen

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I love now.”

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

This is the second in three pieces that uses the Ghosts that appear in Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” as inspiration. If you missed the first piece about the ghost of Christmas Past then you can still read it here.

The second of the Ghosts to visit Ebenezer Scrooge was the Ghost of Christmas Present, and I invite you this week to play with the concept of being in the present.

One of the dictionary definitions of the word ghost is “a duplicated image in a defected telescope or television picture.” Maybe you’ve had the experience of plucking up courage to do something or talk to someone and find that it really wasn’t as bad as you imagined. That is often because the image or story that we have projected about the future wasn’t particularly accurate.

I’ll talk more about the future in next weeks message but often you can scare yourself in the present with the story of what the future brings.

Maybe you’ve constructed an entire story around what will happen if you stand up in front of the group – it’ll be a story unique to you, but perhaps it includes the audience not liking your message, the throwing of rotten tomatoes and generally being forced to leave the country!

Or perhaps the story you’ve constructed about asking that person out is that they will say no and then mount an entire award winning international marketing campaign to advertise the fact they said no.

Yes, I know that they are extreme examples but it’s the story told before hand that leads to comments such as “It was nowhere near as bad as I imagined” or “I don’t know what I was worried about” when someone actually goes and does the activity they were afraid of doing.

One of the cats that shares my home has set places around the house where he pauses and checks that there is nothing about to pounce on him around the next corner.

In reality the only thing that is likely to be ready to pounce is one of the other cats in a playful mood but he still checks before going on his way, presumably in case there are any assassins or cat eating animals in the present moment.

One day maybe he’ll decide that the check is no longer needed but he doesn’t let it keep him penned into one location, as he checks and then carries on his way.

This week I invite you to play with something that you’ve been putting off but the only thing that has stopped you is fear and we’re going to use similar checks that my cat does as he goes about his travels.

It probably goes without saying, but pick something to play with where there is no life threatening consequences – standing in the middle of the road as a speeding lorry heads in your direction is not the time to play!

Before you start “check in” with how you are feeling now, how you choose to do that is up to you. You may like to mentally physically do a scan to see how all your body is feeling; maybe you just want to ask yourself or perhaps you know to do something else.

If you find that there is any fear firstly you’ll probably find it helpful to remember to breath while playing with this – always something I encourage Generally slowing and deepening your breath can have a big impact on how you feel.

Having done that let’s play, at this very moment are there any life threatening assassins with you? At the present second is there any human eating animals that are physically going to pounce?

If the answer is yes to either question then my suggestion would be that you have other things to contend with other than playing with this! Most likely (unless there is a rash of assassins or lots of escaped man-eating animals I’m unaware off) you’ll find that at this present time you are actually quite safe and OK.

Take the next small step and again check if there are any life threatening assassins or man-eating animals in this moment?

Providing the present does not have that threat check your breathing and take the next small step. Now check if there is any assassins or man-eating animals.

Keep going taking small steps and checking if there is any physical danger in any given moment.

For example, Jane wanted to explain a new idea to a team at work but has previously kept quiet because the idea of talking to a group scared her. At the next meeting she remembered to breath but also checked if there were any assassins or man-eating animals in the room.

As the meeting agenda went on she kept checking if there were any assassins as each discussion point passed, until eventually the question “does anyone else have anything they want to add?” was asked. No assassins or man-eating animals so with a deep breathe Jane heard herself say “yes”. Still no assassins or man-eating animals so she went on to outline her idea.

In case you were wondering, the idea was liked and her line manager gave her some really positive feedback about how great it was to hear her contribute in the team meetings as Jane has such great ideas she can share. The world didn’t end, nobody threw rotten tomatoes and she didn’t have to hunt around for her passport because she was being forced to leave the country.

Remember we are only playing so if it takes you a couple of attempts to get to any particular next step, as there are no assassins or man-eating animals about to pounce, just start again. For example, if you are playing with the concept of making a sales call maybe it takes you a couple of attempts to dial 10 numbers before you ring the final 11th and the phone starts to ring.

Have a week living in the present minus assassins and man-eating animals!

Love

Jen

One of my favourite Christmas tales is Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”. If you have never come across the story before the general gist is that 3 ghosts visit the principal character. The ghost of Christmas past who shows Christmases that have been, the ghost of Christmas present who shows the current situation of others in the present. The final ghost is the ghost of Christmas future who shows what may happen and become in the future. 

I was reminded the other day that this phenomenon is something that isn’t actually confined to the festive period. I’m not saying that at the stroke of a particular hour a ghost arrives in your bedroom to show you some particular event! But we can have the same effect in our own heads! Over the next 3 weeks I’m going to take the 3 ghosts as a loose theme for each of the pieces, starting today with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

The Ghost of Christmas Past.

“The one charm of the past is that it is the past.” 

(Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

As we come into this festive season you have possibly already begun to see various TV channels put together trailers full of short clips of the various highlights of their shows. You may have already seen one that specialised in a particular genre of TV, maybe it was a series of clips featuring all comedy clips, highlighting drama or animated films.

Just like the ghost of Christmas past in A Christmas Carol shows Scrooge a series of clips from his past, it’s not unusual for us to do that for ourselves with our own memories. Sometimes we place more emphasis on certain clips more than others.

I was listening to an interview with a film actor recently who was saying that out of 100 reviews 99 of them may be superb and 1 may be more critical – yet it was the more critical one that he found that he focused upon. In effect, just like the TV channels, he had created his own trailer but just choose to include the “negative” clips.

Perhaps you have done this for yourself, blowing anything that you view as “negative” out of proportion and ignored other events. This week I invite you to play with something that will deliberately create your own imaginary trailers and see the difference that has for you.

I’m going to start by saying that if you are haunted by flashbacks etc of a traumatic incident or events then I encourage you to seek the help of a trained professional. Not because I think that it means anything negative about you, but because it is often easier to be able to take a step back from anything that had a strong negative emotional impact with someone else there as a guide.

Imagine that you are creating your own trailer (that can be as long as you want) featuring memories of happy times, fun times, when things have gone well, times when you have received compliments. If this is something you are not used to doing you may want to give yourself time and allow yourself to come up with your answers.

These are your clips and your trailer so it is stuff that is important to you, it’s not being judged by anyone else so include the clips that are relevant to you.

When you have several times, imagine putting them together in your own trailer – You get to choose if you want to imagine this running on a miniature TV, as a 360 degree 3D feature or something in between.

This is your creation so by all means play with the lighting and the different shots you include, are these ones from your point of view or one from someone else’s?

You may have noticed that these trailers come with specially created soundtracks to accompany them. So what soundtrack do you want to include in your trailer – you can always play with the balance of the track(s) that you want to include.

Maybe you want a big power ballad or gospel choir. Perhaps there is a tune that every time you hear it always makes you feel really good.

Keep playing with what you include and how you choose to present this to yourself and notice how different it feels. Remember that you can play with this anytime that you want or need to

Bonus Tip

Extend this trailer to include even more important aspects of your life.

If you feel that includes the occasional “bump in the road” then by all means include that and this time you get to choose how much “air time” you want to give it and if you want to make it appear more important than other aspects. Do you really want to give 1 “negative” review more airtime than the other 99?

For example, is one occasion when a presentation didn’t go as well as you wanted it to as important as the birth of your children?

Have a week enjoying being the director of your own trailers

Love

“The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
(Stephen R. Covey)

In 1906 Vilfredo Pareto (an Italian economist) observed that 80% of the property in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

In 1941 Joseph M. Juran (a business consultant) came across Pareto’s work and expanded upon the principals to apply that 80:20 relationship to quality control. For example, 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the causes.

You may also have come across that 80/20 relationship elsewhere. In other words a small proportion (20%) of something produces/creates a large proportion (80%) of results. It does crop up quite often when you are looking. For example, the book, “The 4-hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris recommends focussing your attention on the 20% of activities that bring in 80% of your income.

At times, there maybe occassions when I question the precise acuracy of the figures where I come across the 80/20 relationship being applied.

I still haven’t found the study that confirmed those precise amounts that says that we wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time. I agree that, on average, most people wear only a small proportion of their wardrobe – I’m just not convinced it falls as conveniently as such specific and round numbers

However, rather than getting hung up on the mathematics, I suggest you play with the concept of a small proportion of something producing/creating a large proportion of the results.

So how can you use the 80/20 rule in your life? Most people use it as a way to prioritise what you focus upon.

I know that when people are particularly busy, taking 5 minutes to play with something like this can seem impossible – there is so much to do, you couldn’t possible spare any time for anything else. In reality spending a few minutes to prioritise and pick the items that make the biggest difference can be the thing that puts pay to the headless chicken syndrome, where people run around busy and stressed but not achieving much.

Here’s some questions and ideas for you to play using the 80/20 rule:

Remember, these are your answers as they are relivent to you at this moment. You may find that your answers include actions, people, qualities, information etc. There is no right or wrong answers. It’s possible that some of the questions would be stronger for you if you made them more specific. By all means play with your wording, and see what answers you get.

· If you focused on the 20% of your strongest qualities, skills and abilities this week, what would be different? What would be the outcome if you choose to do this?

· What are the 20 % of things that if you did them would make that 80% difference?

Not sure? One way of finding that is by writing down all the things you have/want to do.
Add up everything you have on that list so that you know the number you have on there.
Using a calculator or just in your head divide the number of items by 5
(If your answer is not a whole number just use the closest whole number as your answer.)
Go through your original list of things you have/want to do and narrow it down to the things that will make the biggest difference if you spend time doing them. You are only allowed to select the number you got once you divided it by 5.

This is one of those techniques which is much easier to do in practice then it may first appear.
For example, If you wrote down 55 things you have/want to do, 55 divided by 5 is 11. So you can only select 11 items from that list that will make the biggest difference.

· What 20% creates 80% of your happiness?

· What, if any, 20% creates 80% of any unhappiness?

· What is the 20%, which for you, creates 80% more energy?

· The 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s principal as it’s also known, itself was taken from someone taking an observation and running with it in their own way. How can you use this in your life to make a difference?

Use the above and any other related questions that spring to mind as being useful for you to get extra clarity.

You then get to choose if you want to take any action to prioritise these in your life.
(You may even want to put a structure in place – be it some form of external reminder or building it into your daily routine)

Have a week full of things of your chosen priorities,

Love

Jen

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
(Pablo Picasso)

Imagine that you have the perfect 24 hours to plan (money no object) – where and how would you choose to spend that time? Would you be waking to watch the sun rise over a tropical island or would you open your eyes to see a roaring fire in a mountain lodge? How would the rest of your day unfold?

If you haven’t already, spend a moment or two thinking about how you’d use those 24 hours.

When you have done that imagine that the one person you’d love to spend some time with has un-expectantly given you a call and said that they had an hour spare that day and would love to spend it with you – what do you do? You have already got your 24 hours planned out – do you say thanks but no thanks I already have plans or do you drop something else out of your perfect day?

After all there is only 24 hours in a day, that’s 1440 minutes – no more, no less. I came across some research a while back from the David Allen company that claimed that if you were to stop now and only work on the things that are on your radar of things to do on average you would have 300-500 hours worth of stuff to do.

So how to decide what to do now or leave until tomorrow? There are lots of different time management theories and techniques. Perhaps one of the most well known being Roger and Rebecca Merrill “time quadrants” made famous by Stephen R Covey including it in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
.

This week I invite you to play with their time quadrants and see how it works for you. If you haven’t already, grab a piece of paper and pen.

1. Divide the paper into 4 quarters.

2. Label the quarter that is top left, quadrant 1 – Urgent and important

3. Label the quarter that is top right, quadrant 2 – Important and not urgent.

4. Label the quarter that is bottom left, quadrant 3, – Urgent but not important

5. Label the quarter that is bottom right, quadrant 4 – not urgent and not important.

The Merrill’s theory is that truly effective time management happens when you work on things that fall into quadrant 2, important and not urgent.

Which may seem counter intuitive – after all surely it’s the urgent and important stuff that really needs to be done. And sometimes it feels like everything that you have on a “to do” list may feel that it fits into quarter 1 and not quarter 2.

There are a couple of things that I’ll say if you feel that most of your things fall into quarter 1 – firstly if you take a moment to take a breath and step back go through each task and check if it really does fit there or if you’ve just been telling yourself a scary story to motivate yourself to do something? (If so does it work to motivate you? Or does that lead to more stress?)

Are there actually any real world consequences if you don’t do that task today? If not then it really doesn’t belong in the urgent quadrant.

The second thing I’ll say is that you can use these quadrants as a tool to prioritise and choose what you want to focus upon and what action to take. You may find that when you first use this that you have more things fall in quarter 1 than you will have if you carry on using the quadrants.

To begin with, to enable you to start prioritising items in the 2nd quadrant, see how you can choose to do less from quadrants 3 and 4 (the not important ones.)

Let’s use this with an example from your own life:

6. What one thing could you do in your life (personally and/or professionally) that would make a tremendous positive difference if you did it consistently?

It’s your answer and it’ll be unique to you – maybe it’s going for a walk, perhaps it’s building a relationship with potential customers. The important thing is that if you choose to prioritise this, it would make a positive difference.

Your answer to that question is a perfect example of what fits in quadrant 2 – important and not urgent.

7. What is one thing that you do that would fit into the not important and not urgent quadrant? Perhaps it’s watching TV or checking your email every 15 minutes.

One word of caution here – look at the results that each item produces. If there is something that you have in the “not important” categories, but as a direct result your energy and well being benefits, then you may want to reconsider if it really is not important.

For example, if after a your morning session at the gym, or a 10 minute quiet time you are much more effective then the days when you don’t do that, consider how important that really is for you.

8. Just for fun this week take just 15 minutes a day (or whatever time frame feels right for you) and commit to replacing that time from an activity from quadrant 4 (or 3 if you prefer) with you answer to 6. (What one thing could you do in your life (personally and/or professionally) that would make a tremendous positive difference if you did it consistently?)

9. I invite you to play with the Merrill’s time quadrants this week and see the difference it makes for you. Remember this is not about doing the things you think you “should”, it’s about using methods to make a positive difference for your life.

Have a week full of time that you choose to spend

Love

Jen