Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Mindfulness”

Our Simple Minds: Mind Tricks

Sorry that I’m struggling to shake the simplicity theme that underpinned the Play/ Game posts earlier in the

Person at Desk by Sigurd Decroos

Person at Desk by Sigurd Decroos

week. I feel this will be a recurring theme throughout my exploration of conscious vs. other-than-consciousness as it is at the heart of our self-management.

The whole idea about tricking or ‘blatantly’ nudging yourself into change is a strange one when you consider the supposed power of the intellectual conscious. Back to the ‘remembering to take something to work’ example that I have mentioned before and that David Allen uses so well: how could such an intelligent human animal really rely on leaving something by the front door in order to remember to take it into work the next day. Why is NLP and hypnotherapy so effective in enabling self-change when analysed, it is clearly so simple: all about beliefs and mental associations. 

I was struck this morning how we can trick ourselves into working. How we can fool ourselves into addressing challenging tasks just by being a bit dumb about it.

Put simply: if we remove the conscious barriers or layers between identification of the need for the action, and the action itself, then it appears that we get more done with less resistance. I sometimes think that Forest Gump is an ideal role model for all busy people who want to achieve more in their lives.

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Balance between Focus and Multi-tasking II

Lens by Craig Jewell

Lens by Craig Jewell

I wrote a piece on the balance between Focus and Multi-tasking in which I was challenging my own views (and the views of a number of personal productivity systems) on the value of multi-tasking.

I also wrote a piece last week on leaders learning skills from their teams.

These two sets of thoughts were fused marvellously at the end of this week when I was holding one of my six-monthly catch ups with one of the Madgex team where they can get anything off their chest that they haven’t managed to do in any other way.

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Good Habits, Bad Habits and the Breaking of Both

Deadly Habit by Sanja Gjenero

Deadly Habit by Sanja Gjenero

I’m continually interested by habits. Both good and bad.

In previous posts recently, I‘ve been thinking about the power of chaining, nudging and game playing. At the heart of these three areas is a fairly simple, lighter-touch approach to the creation of good habits and the removal of bad. This light touch approach I have frequently contrasted with more of a top-down, intellectually controlled approach.

Two thoughts have been rattling around in relation to habits, and I’m not sure how they fit in (if they do at all)

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