Monthly Archives: September 2019

Making a start is the hardest part…

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I’ve had a job to do for weeks. A report to write. I need to have it done for a meeting tomorrow. And I’ve kept putting it off! Why!? Once I got down to it I actually enjoyed writing it and it took me about an hour an a half… that was all… and now it’s done and I feel great!

Caroline Webb in her great, highly recommended book, How to Have a Good Day, says that most of the jobs we avoid are ones that have a long term benefit. This report I had to write had no short term benefit in doing it a few weeks back but now, given the meeting is tomorrow (!) it does have a short term benefit. This, Webb tells us, is an evolutionary mechanism that sees the trade off between short term and long term benefits lead to procrastination. She says “it’s easier for our brains to assess the known present than to consider the unknown future” (pg. 104) so we tend to give more priority to the here and now than to the future.

The problem with this is that it means things get left until the last minute. What if something had happened this morning that meant I couldn’t write the report. I’d have either had to stay up late (never the time to do your best work) or look unprofessional tomorrow. I say to my adult children that there are 3 things that get you to where you need to be – the first two you will recognise – inspiration and perspiration. But there’s a third – reputation – particularly in professional work where people expect you to ‘show up’ ready to go. Don’t let yourself down by not leaving enough time to get the job done so you are prepared.

Picturing the benefits, Webb goes on to say, is the way to beat procrastination. For me, in this example, the benefit would have been a job done, ticked off my list, and not waking up every day for the last week or so thinking I must do that report. What we know is having ‘open loops’, as David Allen (The Getting Things Done Methodology) calls them erodes your psychological capital. An open loop is a thing that goes round and round in your brain that gets in the way of focussing on the task in hand. So by not doing the report I have a constant nagging ‘you need to do that report’ going around in my head when I should be applying my psychological capacity to other things! This is downside of inaction.

What is useful for some larger tasks is to break them down into smaller tasks. So with regard to the report I needed to write. I needed to find the document on line and appraise what I needed to do. I needed to read some evidence that I needed to be aware of to write the report, and then I needed to write the report. A concept called “The Power of Small Wins” tells me that if I’d broken it down into steps a few things happen. The first step suddenly seems more manageable than the whole task and then when each step is completed you get a psychological buzz of satisfaction. If you leave it as one big task you only get the buzz when the task is finished. Psychological boosts at the end of each step motivate you to move onto the next step.

Easy!

  • So, break the task down into small steps and diary them all.
  • By putting them all in your diary you remove them from your brain – so they are no longer an ‘open loop’. You will get to the step in your dairy and be reminded of what to do – you don’t need to remember what to do when.
  • Plan a ‘pay-off’. If it’s something you really are struggling to get on with plan a treat when it’s done, or a little treat when each step gets done. Treats are good!
  • Consider the downside of not taking action – this may well motivate you.
  • Remember – we often overestimate how long something is going to take. I set aside 3 hours to write the report (it had turned into a monster in my head) and it actually only took an hour and a half! I suddenly had some free time… so I wrote this blog!

Two things done when I thought I’d only get one done!
Now that’s productivity!

Sounds a bit scary!

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If, like me and lots of others I talk to, the idea of meditation sounds a bit scary and unachievable… worry not… it is a difficult business. “Just sit there, on the floor, cross legged, in your linen garb, and clear your mind… think of nothing” ……of course this is one version of meditation that we could maybe strive for. But don’t be put off if you want to sit in a chair, wear your scruffy joggers, and find that after 20 seconds of clearing your mind your wondering what’s for dinner!

Keep persevering though as it has benefits for your mental health, psychological welfare and productivity that you need to tap into. Meditation, or its less scary cousin mindfulness, has been shown to actually change your brain structure. In drawing together literature on mindfulness Jacky Thomas of California State University found an amazing array of benefits from engaging in the activity. She found that it fosters self-awareness and regulates thoughts and feelings. It activates feelings of kindness and empathy, providing interpersonal attunement. It develops ‘presence’ and promotes more skilful emotional responses to people. These things have been shown to improve personal performance as well as enhancing the performance of teams through the development of feelings of safety.

I love a meme that a friend showed me that said something like “you should spend 20 minutes a day in meditation, unless you are really busy, when you should spend an hour”. This slightly tongue in cheek statement has resonance. The more you have to do the more you have to psychologically ready for the doing. And meditation and mindfulness, I feel, are on a continuum.

You can sit and attempt to clear your mind of everything for half an hour. You will probably fail! But if you want to meditate this way then accept that you may not succeed in clearing your mind. But each time you notice your mind wandering return yourself to focus on your breathing and try to clear your mind again. Despite my negative assertion at the start of the paragraph you will get better with time.

Or try mindfulness. For me (and there are various interpretations) it is about focussing on the moment you are in. So, I love a mindful walk with the dog when I simply focus on the environment around me, focus on what the dog is up to, and simply delight in what I see. I do this while deep breathing – especially when I’m walking across the fields adjacent to my house, breathing in the fresh air and visually absorbing nature – wonderful!

My favourite and most effective exercise is the shortest one I do. If I feel myself getting wound up or anxious about something, or in the moments before I deliver a lecture, I stop my mind, apply the breaks, breathe in for a count of three, hold that breath for three, and breath out for three. I repeat maybe 3 or 4 times…. and the feeling borders on magical!

Try it now and feel the wave of calm!

Have a good day!

Discipline! Let’s get to work!

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Last night felt like a watershed moment in some ways. Although as with most things about self care these moments are simply reminders of things we already know either instinctively or because we’ve been told them and are choosing to ignore our knowledge.

I was reading Daily Self Discipline by Martin Meadows and he said simply that succeeding in anything is about discipline. And I thought – you are so right! Think about sports men and women. We often fall into the trap of thinking that people are just naturally talented – and there is an element of that. Some people have the physiology or the genetics that maybe gives them a leg up. But none of the great sports people have got to where they are without sheer hard work born out of discipline. In Mindset, Carol Dweck, talks about having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. The person with a fixed mindset says – this is the life I have been dealt and nothing I do will change it. The person with the growth mindset says by diligent hard work, exploration, education, and discipline I can achieve anything. And this is true! She talks about a conversation with tennis superstar John McEnroe who explained that he had a fixed mindset and that he feels, looking back, that this led to his on court tantrums and antics. He felt he was gifted and had a right to win simply because he was John McEnroe. He skipped training, didn’t focus, because he felt he would win no matter what because he had ‘it’ and others didn’t. He feels he would have been even better, making more of what he had been given, if he had a growth mindset.

We can achieve a great deal with discipline. The other example would be eating a healthy diet. It is so easy to give into temptation and can feel so hard to prepare food in advance to take to work or make the healthy choice. But if we do this we will feel more positive and more in control. I know that my healthy choices slip when something is going on that I don’t have control over. It’s then a vicious cycle. I eat something unhealthy or I have a few glasses of wine on a night, and before I know where I’m at my diet has shifted away from my usual healthy eating and a measures approach to being negative in terms of my well-being.

Discipline is easier when you have a plan and integrate things into your routine. I was thinking of all of the positives of my morning walk with the dog. I use it as a kind of meditation, more like mindfulness really. I love just watching the dog being a dog. She loves just doing what dogs should do – without a care in the world. The morning walk with the dog (or without for that matter) has lots of self care pluses! Here they are:

Being outdoors is good for beating stress
Being outdoors in the early morning sunlight primes the process for sleep at the end of the day
Walking for 30 minutes beats stress and means you’ve already had some great physical exercise without barely trying
Walking mindfully, and deep breathing, is good for you. Research with social workers who engaged in mindfulness showed a reduction in sickness and stress levels…. suck in that fresh air!

But, it takes discipline to get out of bed early enough to do this and to undertake the walk without cutting it short or rushing it. Here’s the rub when it comes to discipline. You will feel better if you focus and get things done. Be that walking the dog, or getting that report written, or saving a little money every month, or preparing healthy food to take to work. Life is not easy, happiness is not a given. If you are disciplined in the way you approach the elements of your life you will initiate change…. and then you need the discipline to keep going. It’s hard, not going to lie. But keep going, and when you fall, pick yourself up, refocus, and crack on!

Have a great day!