So did you meet the August 8 deadline? Apologies for my lateness! With all good intentions, I failed to take into account that some parts of OZ have no mobile or internet coverage! I guess better late than never! So onto Step 2.
Step 2: Uncover what you are getting out of procrastinating?
So what did the previous exercise tell you? What insights did you get I wonder?
Now it’s time to understand what you are actually getting out of procrastination! This takes some in-depth exploration. You may find it useful to discuss your answers with someone who knows you well and has had the opportunity to observe your behaviour consistently for at least six months. Otherwise, a good coach will speed this process up and help you get these answers quickly and efficiently. A good coach nails this stuff with you in a few sessions if you really want to overcome it!
What pay-offs are you getting? You really need to understand these. The obvious ones are what positives you get out of procrastinating, and more importantly what you get to avoid doing!
More often than not though, the REAL pay-off is an unconscious motivator. By virtue of it being ‘unconscious’ you are unlikely to be able to point to the answer quickly. A pay-off is generally associated with a negative driver (significant negative subconscious self belief). This subject is too sensitive and involved to discuss in a blog. However some of the more obvious and more common ones are “I’m not good enough”, “I/things must be perfect”, “I’m not strong enough”, I can’t cope”, “I can’t do anything right” etc.....
Be careful not to just accept what comes to you first up. This is just your psyche dishing up the same old same old. The real insight is harder to grasp! This is where a skilled and experienced coach can help you nail the REAL reason for your behaviour.
For instance, you may perceive that the pay off you get by not doing your admin tasks every week in your small business, is that you get to AVOID BORING TASKS and you have WAY more important tasks to do. But actually the real meaning you are attaching to it, when you really drill down is that you are fearful that your profit is not on target. So whilst our logical mind knows you may have a financial issue, thinking that its probable and knowing for a fact are two different things!! Because the latter actually means you will need to do something about it if you do not wish to make the situation worse, procrastination is helping you put off the pain of knowing! So the real reason is your fear of serious financial loss!
I know most people dislike the idea that their behaviour is often motivated by fear, and many out-rightly reject it (which is just a resistance mechanism) but most of our behaviour, particularly behaviour that is a disservice to us is motivated by fear!!
Without going into a great deal of explanation about it, there are 7 main fears that drive most of our behaviour. If you keep drilling down and asking yourself honestly what you fear, your answer will be based on one of the following:-
1. Fear of breaking away from a value system held by society (e.g. law, church, professional)
2. Fear of poor mental capability (e.g. not smart enough, not educated enough)
3. Fear of failure/success (coming up short, not good enough)
4. Fear of financial loss (e.g. bankruptcy, not enough money)
5. Fear of losing loved ones (e.g. death, disownment, leaving you)
6. Fear of societal rejection (not fitting in, not being liked)
7. Fear of poor physical capability (e.g. not strong enough, not tall enough)
Now it may seem to you that fear driving your behaviour doesn't make sense, since procrastination is just putting off the inevitable. Well you'd be right! It doesn't to your logical mind!!! But your psyche (sub conscious mind) is trying to protect you from having to face the pain of your fear, so procrastination is the key strategy of avoidance it uses to achieve that goal.
However procrastination can be a highly effective strategy. Many people delay pursuing their dreams and allowing their fears to run their whole life without ever acknowledging they lived out a fear based protection mechanism. Think about those people you've heard say, I would have, could have, should have done x, y, or z - yes, they are living examples of this process in practice.
So the REAL question is, do you really want to be doing the woulda, shoulda, coulda gig for the next 10, 20, 30 - 70 years or do you want to live your life and achieve your dreams???
If you are about the latter, then you really need to work out what is really driving your procrastination? Get to the answer and release yourself from this current level of procrastination!
More explanation on this next week. Until then....
Get Cracking ;)
Showing posts with label behaviour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label behaviour. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
TIME EFFECTIVE OR DEFECTIVE – PART TWO
Please read part One of this blog first and then complete the Time Effective Template Exercise, to gain the most benefit from this blog entry.
So how did you go with completing the template? To get the most out of the exercise you need to do it for at least 7 days, ideally 14 days! If you did the exercise for at least a week then you should have some very interesting data to say the least!
The first step is to analyse your data in terms of themes. Break down into themes and number of hours you spent on each theme. Make sure the themes are distinct (e.g. team meetings, project meetings, writing reports, HR admin, email etc...) This will give you some great analysis in itself!
Now ask yourself the following from your questions. Be very honest with yourself as it is only you, that you will be fooling ;) -
What are you spending your most of your time, energy and effort on?
Are those tasks absolutely critical to overall achievement of the big picture goals? I.e. The big picture goal may be to grow the business by 20% this financial year – are all the tasks you focused on delivery you that outcome or are they time distracters and wasters?
How important REALLY are the tasks you rated as important, relevant or critical? Be ruthless here! If it didn’t get done what is the absolute worst thing that happens?) If you are convinced that all these tasks are important, then the next question is do they really need to be done by you?
If you have rated the majority of tasks on your list as important talk it through with someone who will play devils advocate for you. We so often kid ourselves about our reality. Getting an external reality check is vital – especially when YOU think you are RIGHT and not fooling yourself!! You may be filling your life with little tasks that you convince yourself are important, to avoid something more significant! Be honest with yourself here, because the only person you are kidding is yourself!
Or are you spending your time on low importance, cumbersome tasks? If so, ask yourself why? What exactly are the benefits of you doing this? ALL behaviour has benefits, even the negative ones like procrastination! Are the tasks even actually worth doing in the first place? We so often waste time on idiotic tasks – like reading a 150 page report that is exceptionally interesting but actually has no application to the achievement of my goal. These things are the greatest time wasters. Facebook and other social media can be put into this bucket. Yes, I know there is a whole industry on how to make money via social media – but are you really making money? If you are making money on social media tasks then one assumes you would have classed it as critical not low importance!!!!
You may have caught onto a theme here. Your thinking and your perception is what is causing you to be time defective! As mentioned in my last blog in literally took me years to get real and work out that time effectiveness is a state of mind, a mind discipline exercise not a process or step by step how to!!!
In his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey has a great model to help you work through what to focus on as important.
Covey states we each have a wide range of concerns in our lives – everything from our family, health, careers, work problems, national and economic problems etc. This make up your Circle of Concern. The things that concern us make up our Circle of Concern. Clearly everyone’s circle of concern will be unique to them!
There are things within our Circle of Concern, that we have no power over, real or otherwise. The things we do have power over become a smaller Circle of Influence. Control falls into three categories – “direct control (problems involving our own behaviour); indirect control (problems involving other people's behaviour); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past, or situational realities)”.
To become more effective, the trick is to focus your energy, time and effort to ONLY focus on those things that sit in your Circle of Influence. I.e. the things that we can do something about! Things that you can do and be. As you focus on your Circle of Influence you create more positive, enlarging, and magnifying energy, causing it to increase”.
Basically the model reminds us that any problem is ultimately within, not with-out or external to us! Therefore, we can empower ourselves and create and control our reality. By empowering yourself from the inside-out you permit yourself to be different, and thereby affect positive change in what's out there! For example, I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be a better delegator. You then back it up with skills and action and you change your reality!
We can break down things within your control or Covey’s Circle of Influence, to three main areas of focus.
Effective Attitude/Mindset – E.g. Managing your thoughts around fear, motivation or lack thereof, procrastination, perceived importance of tasks, perceived control over the environment, perceived pressure (time or otherwise), seeking perfection when good enough is good enough!
Effective Managing Tasks – Manage your Meetings, Interruptions and Diaries/Schedules
Effective Skills/Behaviours - Setting Goals and Priorities, Delegation, Communication, Discipline
In the next few blogs I discuss how to be more effective in some of these areas within your control.
If you do these exercises and are still having issues with time management, you have a deeper meta program operating that is self sabatoge. The best way I know to deal with that is through a qualified NLP/CBT Coach.
Good Luck
So how did you go with completing the template? To get the most out of the exercise you need to do it for at least 7 days, ideally 14 days! If you did the exercise for at least a week then you should have some very interesting data to say the least!
The first step is to analyse your data in terms of themes. Break down into themes and number of hours you spent on each theme. Make sure the themes are distinct (e.g. team meetings, project meetings, writing reports, HR admin, email etc...) This will give you some great analysis in itself!
Now ask yourself the following from your questions. Be very honest with yourself as it is only you, that you will be fooling ;) -
What are you spending your most of your time, energy and effort on?
Are those tasks absolutely critical to overall achievement of the big picture goals? I.e. The big picture goal may be to grow the business by 20% this financial year – are all the tasks you focused on delivery you that outcome or are they time distracters and wasters?
How important REALLY are the tasks you rated as important, relevant or critical? Be ruthless here! If it didn’t get done what is the absolute worst thing that happens?) If you are convinced that all these tasks are important, then the next question is do they really need to be done by you?
If you have rated the majority of tasks on your list as important talk it through with someone who will play devils advocate for you. We so often kid ourselves about our reality. Getting an external reality check is vital – especially when YOU think you are RIGHT and not fooling yourself!! You may be filling your life with little tasks that you convince yourself are important, to avoid something more significant! Be honest with yourself here, because the only person you are kidding is yourself!
Or are you spending your time on low importance, cumbersome tasks? If so, ask yourself why? What exactly are the benefits of you doing this? ALL behaviour has benefits, even the negative ones like procrastination! Are the tasks even actually worth doing in the first place? We so often waste time on idiotic tasks – like reading a 150 page report that is exceptionally interesting but actually has no application to the achievement of my goal. These things are the greatest time wasters. Facebook and other social media can be put into this bucket. Yes, I know there is a whole industry on how to make money via social media – but are you really making money? If you are making money on social media tasks then one assumes you would have classed it as critical not low importance!!!!
You may have caught onto a theme here. Your thinking and your perception is what is causing you to be time defective! As mentioned in my last blog in literally took me years to get real and work out that time effectiveness is a state of mind, a mind discipline exercise not a process or step by step how to!!!
In his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey has a great model to help you work through what to focus on as important.
Covey states we each have a wide range of concerns in our lives – everything from our family, health, careers, work problems, national and economic problems etc. This make up your Circle of Concern. The things that concern us make up our Circle of Concern. Clearly everyone’s circle of concern will be unique to them!
There are things within our Circle of Concern, that we have no power over, real or otherwise. The things we do have power over become a smaller Circle of Influence. Control falls into three categories – “direct control (problems involving our own behaviour); indirect control (problems involving other people's behaviour); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past, or situational realities)”.
To become more effective, the trick is to focus your energy, time and effort to ONLY focus on those things that sit in your Circle of Influence. I.e. the things that we can do something about! Things that you can do and be. As you focus on your Circle of Influence you create more positive, enlarging, and magnifying energy, causing it to increase”.
Basically the model reminds us that any problem is ultimately within, not with-out or external to us! Therefore, we can empower ourselves and create and control our reality. By empowering yourself from the inside-out you permit yourself to be different, and thereby affect positive change in what's out there! For example, I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be a better delegator. You then back it up with skills and action and you change your reality!
We can break down things within your control or Covey’s Circle of Influence, to three main areas of focus.
Effective Attitude/Mindset – E.g. Managing your thoughts around fear, motivation or lack thereof, procrastination, perceived importance of tasks, perceived control over the environment, perceived pressure (time or otherwise), seeking perfection when good enough is good enough!
Effective Managing Tasks – Manage your Meetings, Interruptions and Diaries/Schedules
Effective Skills/Behaviours - Setting Goals and Priorities, Delegation, Communication, Discipline
In the next few blogs I discuss how to be more effective in some of these areas within your control.
If you do these exercises and are still having issues with time management, you have a deeper meta program operating that is self sabatoge. The best way I know to deal with that is through a qualified NLP/CBT Coach.
Good Luck
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