Debra Morrison ~ Learn to Lead by Following

What's Your Day Been Like?   Complicated? Simple?  

Mine's been good cuz I'm a POD ~ a Personal Organizational Diva :-)

I like keeping my eye open for ways to Simplify ... and Carmine Coyote of Slow Leadership, Hit a Home Run with this one!  

Can you imagine someone waking up one morning and saying to themselves, "My life is far too simple.  It's high time I complicated it more"?   I can't either.

Like many organizations, our lives pick up all sorts of 'overheads'--extras and complicating factors we pick up as we go along and never remember to set aside.   After a while, we forget what they were for, but there they are, still demanding time, energy and attention, even when they have long ago stopped providing anything useful in return--if they ever did.

Now may be the time to do some serious 'spring cleaning' to get rid of anything that you don't need any more and which may be holding you back.   Not only will it make your life simpler and less costly of time and effort, it will also help you focus better on what is most important in moving forward.

Ready to do one thing at a time?

I was one of the first to point out that so-called multi-tasking, which was once all the rage, is guaranteed to make you less effective. I won't go over the arguments again, since they have since become commonplace. But it is worth pointing out that many people would benefit from taking some time to sort through their priorities and decide which one or two are worth following.

I do mean 'one or two'. The more priorities that you have, the less any of them are truly priorities. If you have six priorities, even if you put them in order, how many are you able to work on consistently for more than an hour or so in any week--maybe in any month?  How much priority is that?

Often the best way to make your life simpler and more effective at the same time is to choose a single priority, devote enough time to working at it to have an impact and get it done before moving on to anything else.

If, for example, you want a better job--or a new job--in current circumstances, and that is truly a priority for you, trying to handle other things at the same time will make it much less likely that you will get what you want. It will probably mess up whatever else you tried to do at the same time as well.

Omit everything unnecessary.  Our lives are like ships at sea. In time, they become encrusted with barnacles and other attachments, each one slowing progress and adding to the effort it takes to move forward.

From time to time, they need a good scraping to get rid of all these 'hangers on'. Most of us have half-completed projects, partial ideas and once-important activities that we hold onto--usually because, like lost puppies, they look at us with big, pathetic eyes whenever we think about letting them go and we can't quite bring ourselves to harden our hearts and walk away.

The trouble is that we never bring any of them to the stage where they might add something useful. They are perpetually 'in progress', never ready for use. Instead of adding anything useful to life, they hang around the edges, begging for attention and never leaving us alone.

Everything extra you carry drains energy, time and attention from what matters most. Get rid of it. You'll be glad you did.  If you aren't going to do it, forget it.  All those things you are intending to do, but have never got around to doing just another common source of extra "weight".

If you are honest with yourself, you know that you aren't going to turn them into action. If you were, you would have done it by now.   I mean those expectations you formed once, long ago, and still carry about with you. Those plans you made, but never acted on.  Those achievements you boasted you would deliver, but which proved more difficult--and far less interesting--the longer you lived with them.

I'm often amazed at how many of the so-called failures people feel bad about were never more than pipe-dreams. How often the gaps that depress them are only there because they made a statement of what they would do and could never bring themselves to admit it was a crazy idea, best set aside.

Life will bring you more than enough genuine failures and problems.  Don't add more by clinging to silly promises, just to avoid the embarrassment of admitting to a mistake.  

Spring cleaning time is here.   Spring is the traditional time in many cultures to clean the house and get rid of all the mess and dirt that built up in the cold days of winter. It's a good idea to take the same approach to whatever has built up in your life between the red-hot times of the former boom years and the bitter winds of recession that have come around since.  

If you want to see any tiny shoots of hope that are appearing in the gloom, you won't do so if they're covered with 'stuff' you no longer need.  Get to it!

Take some time out to put your life and career in order:

1. Limit yourself to a single priority (two at most) and focus on getting that done before thinking about anything else.

2. Dump whatever threatens to distract you from that aim.  

3. Decide what is necessary for you and dump all the rest. Be brutal. We all carry around far more than we will ever need.

4. Clear out all the half-completed projects and 'things you will get around to'. Let them go. If you were ever going to do them, you would have done so. You haven't, so you won't in the future either.

5. Lighten your load by cleaning off what has got stuck to you and is slowing you down. Don't allow anything to waste your time, attention or energy, just because it's there.

6. Do it now. Procrastination is what produced most of the rubbish. Don't wait another day.   

Enjoy Spring Cleaning and I want to personally thank Carmine Coyote for a Phenomenal Article!  

Remember this ... "WHAT YOU IGNORE EXPANDS!" and here is a PAPER WORK TIP:  Mail It, File It, Shred It!

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