Can you hear the countdown to 2020? For some, it’s the sound of excitement: new opportunities, goals, and adventures. But for others, it’s more like a quickly accelerating timer in a frantic game show, ticking down to the last final seconds. Where did the time go?
I hear about this all the time in the work I do as a coach. It’s easy to get caught in the trap of wheel-spinning. While we assume we’re doing our best to juggle work, family, and friends, we often move along a path that isn’t quite right.
Even when we recognize this aberration, we don’t do anything about it. Or, we let ourselves intentionally become distracted. We instinctively know, nonetheless, that we can improve.
I don’t think reading another “do-it-now” time-management book is the answer. We need to break our self-sabotaging patterns.
- How can we ward off the unimportant?
- In what ways do we interrupt our inertia?
- How can we start feeling good about our accomplishments?
I like what Peter Bregman wrote for Harvard Business Review: “Reducing your forward momentum is the first step to freeing yourself from the beliefs, habits, feelings and busyness that may be limiting you.” This resonates with me, and reminds me of the importance to pause, reflect, and assess. Have you cultivated this practice?
Pause, Reflect, and Assess as You Countdown to 2020
In his book 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (Business Plus, 2011), Bregman offers four starting points to pause, reflect, and assess:
- Where are you now? Are you doing the right things, with the right people, in the right way to make the most of who you are?
- What is this year about? On which five areas of focus (work and personal) do you want to spend most of your time over the next year?
- What is this day about? How do you concretely structure your day so it’s productive, satisfying and capable of measurably fulfilling your five identified focal areas?
- What is this moment about? How do you get started, manage distractions and stay on track?
You’ve probably known for some time that you need to apply focus and make smart, thoughtful decisions about what’s worth doing (and what’s not).
I invite you consider these questions, and if you’re game, I’ll give you some simple tools and tactics to help follow through on these decisions—and even enjoy the process. For now, think about where you are as you countdown to 2020. Are you on the right path? Are you doing the right things?
I’d love to hear from you. You can call me at 561-582-6060, let’s talk. And as always, I can be reached here, or on LinkedIn.
