Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the category “Time Management”

16 Jul 2008

The Balance between Listening to Thoughts vs. Feelings

This is very much a catch-up post. A statement of current feelings on a set of issues that have historically vexed, and continue to, vex me.

A series of thoughts captured in my Happiness System posts concerned a simple ‘brain-led’ set of principles to increasing happiness for me. Things that if I could set into habit, in my mind would make me happier. The problem – the resistance between head and heart. The failure to enter routine or habit. The lack of ‘draw-to’ the thing that I intellectually flag as being good for my happiness.

The Objective of Reading

A classic 24hrs of my RAS in full effect in relation to reading and knowledge management (see the Encyclopedia Brittanica explanation of the reticular activating system or Karen Lynch’s post for views on how it’s tied to vision and goal-setting)

But rather than a full alignment of views, I’m feeling nicely conflicted. As always, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s challenging book, Fooled by Randomness, which I am reading, seemed to reach out and slap me this morning. A couple of comments initially made me question my aims for excellence in knowledge management yesterday. Particularly my assertion that ‘I need to be able to access the greatest pool of knowledge, thinking and contacts possible’.

Taleb writes ‘I was at the age when one felt like one needed to read everything’ and just prior to this, ‘I do not know if it applies to other people, but, in spite of my being a voracious reader, I have rarely been truly affected in my behaviour (in any durable manner) by anything I have read. A book can make a strong impression, but such an impression tends to wane after some newer impression replaces it in my brain (a new book)’

First point is that, again, the feeling of immaturity/ inadequacy is good because it drives me forward. I still feel like I need to read everything. Yes, in relation to accessing the best knowledge for my objectives, but I have yet to shake a sense of panic that I’ll miss something important. Something that will materially impact me…

Why Do Personal Games Work?

So, building on the shift I identified in my randomness post, I’ve been thinking a lot about lightness of touch. I’m contrasting this against the heavy-handed ‘mental edict’ approach of thinking that I can affect change in my consistent, persistent behaviours by instructing myself to do so.

It really brought me back to what my coach, Alison Down, highlighted when we first started to work together. That I had to start feeling instead of thinking. That I had to trust my gut rather than analysing and planning.

Even before starting to read Fooled by Randomness I had started to question what was obvious to me as an internal lack of commitment to top-down (brain-first) change. I recognised the cycle that I tend to enter of creating a structure to achieve what I want. I then try and apply the new routine. And then it fails. Invariably however I have noticed that some elements of the desired change have stuck. This tends to be the reason why I have continued trying:

Because some things do stick
I learn a lot during the analysis and creation of the structure to achieve what I want

Also invariably, I endeavour to create tools as part of this top-down process. Checklists or time tables to ensure my compliance.

What I’m now starting to question is whether these are something that I should avoid dismissing as being part of a top-down approach that will invariably fail. Jim Estill’s CEO blog post led me to NSC Blog by Nathan Collier and a post on Making it a Game. Both of which talk about how the simple things are the things which can harness change, or help you to make a change. They reminded me of Allen’s point at the start of Getting Things Done about the way in which we leave things by the front door to remember them the next day. The point being that the mind seems to work in simple ways.

So what does this mean for me? Well I’m going to see how relaxing the pressure on myself to change/ improve has an impact. How the use of games or scores/ scorecards can simply prompt me to incrementally achieve. Watch this space….