As I’m typing this, it’s been 261 Days, 16 hours, and 9 minutes since my last blog post. Yes, I broke my commitment to write a weekly article on my blog.
261 days ago, was about the time I was assigned a new role in my company—or should I say additional roles. This big change in my work setting was significant which made it easy for me (or my laziness) to take over and convince myself that, “Don, you need to focus on this change and do well in it. So, stop wasting time publishing articles. You’re not getting paid doing that anyway.”
Taking on more and much larger responsibilities gave me the excuse to be lazy. This lead me to neglect sharpening my tools and refining my skills. In my mind, I’m giving my work and my team my 110%, but in fact, I’m giving them an inferior and lower version of me—incapable of elevating myself and those around me.
I basically transformed into a walking old-school factory—incapable of thinking strategically, just doing the job one task at a time. Gradually, I became frustrated, burned out, and unsatisfied of the work I’m producing. This reminded me of something our previous chief operations officer once said, (paraphrasing) “If you find yourself working past your workday and you are still not satisfied, you’re probably doing someone else’s work.”
“If you find yourself working past your workday and you are still not satisfied, you’re probably doing someone else’s work.”
Week after week, I’ve relegated my writing time to the back of my “to do” queue—too far to the back that pointless activities like watching Netflix or Hulu was upgraded to business class, where it’s close enough to be seen and attended to by my lazy self.
After watching the 4-hour Snyder’s Justice League, eight full seasons of Masterchef, and seven full seasons of Masterchef Jr (Okay, fine—Yes, I watched a lot more shows!), I’m still convinced that I didn’t have time to write any content. (Though, now I know how to make cheese soufflé.)
The amount of time I spent idly watching these shows could’ve been enough time for me to finish a manuscript of a short book. Or sleep. Or workout. Or binge the Matrix Trilogy. (Nope—bad, Don!) Though I don’t regret hanging out with my wife (Amy) watching a fewfun shows, the 95% of the other time spent doing it was a total waste.
I never stop reading. However, a third of the books I’ve read so far this year were fictional books. Nothing bad about that, but I think, like my television watching habits, I’ve been drawn to read exclusively for entertainment. Again, nothing wrong about that. I’m way past my threshold of fiction to non-fiction book ratio.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great to read those political, special forces, and secret agent dramas—but I don’t think I was learning anything new. Specifically, anything that I can use to improve my professional and my personal life. (Unless, at the age of 42, I decided to ditch my job and train to join the Navy SEALs.)
Writing is a way for us to process and organize our thoughts. In a sense, it’s a relatively deeper level of thinking. In his latest book, “Master Mentors: 30 Transformative Insights from our Greatest Minds,” Scott Jeffrey Miller quoted Bob Whitman, the CEO of FranklinCovey, saying, “Thinking is a legitimate business activity.” That’s why creating pockets of thinking time in your calendar daily (okay, we can start with twice weekly), is a good practice to become a more mindful individual.
“Thinking is a legitimate business activity.”
Intentionally creating time to think is key to process thoughts, ideas, and knowledge. That’s why you get interesting and brilliant ideas while taking a shower or doing the dishes. It’s in those moments, that you’re glued to an activity, that transports you to this quiet, meditative state. Watching Gordon Ramsey cook the perfect medium-rare steak or make an “idiot sandwich” does not even barely qualify as meditative.
In the past 261 days, I’ve been efficient but ineffective at work. Yes, things and stuff get done. Everything placed in front of me gets handled, but was the work I’m doing contributing to the bigger picture? I felt like an iRobot Roomba vacuum with a faulty mapping and navigation system. Yes, it sucks everything in its path, but is it cleaning the entire house?
To help reconfigure my mapping and navigation system, I’ll (try my best to) start committing to my habit. Releasing an article once a week—Monday evenings or Tuesday mornings—to start processing, refining, and internalizing the real “stuff” that matters in my head. Exponentially reduce or eliminate idle streaming of shows, (Except for the few viewing hangouts with my wife.) that distract me from being an effective husband, dad, and leader in my company.
Speaking of distraction—it’s been 1 hour 46 minutes since I started typing this post. No, it didn’t take me that long to write all these down. I don’t even go back to edit much. (Other than the occasional highlighted spelling errors! Give me a break—my iPad keyboard is missing the letter “v” key. My index finger keeps tripping on it.) During the almost two hours of writing, I did several pitstops to help my two older kids with homework (my son with Geometry and my daughter with Economics) and watch my youngest draw cute random stuff on pages and pages of copy paper. Those, my friends, are distractions worth having!
Hope this post is coherent enough to make sense to you. Wish me luck as I try to break this bad habit if ineffectiveness.