Author Archives: threeresolutionsguy

WIGs Work.

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A couple of the core messages of the book “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” (McChesney, Covey and Huling, Simon and Schuster, 2012) is that first of all, people and organisations who want to achieve success should focus on what they call Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) and secondly, that they should not have more than three of those goals.

For most organisations the idea of achieving ‘just’ three goals would appear to be counter-intuitive, I know, but it’s really in the drafting of what the organisational goals should be, that would allow multiple directions to be taken towards achieving the same three ends: by multiple departments and by a multitude of teams and individuals. The idea is that once the organisation has set its three carefully drafted goals, the organisation/departments/teams/people direct their activities towards executing their part in achieving them. Got it?

The concept works for individuals, too. At the start of the year, as I have done for the past ten or so, I used the Best Year Yet®  process set myself about ten goals. Then, every year, reality kicked in and once ‘a’ goal was achieved I’d replace it with another. Or, more often, I’d change my mind about an expensive or difficult goal and delete it. 2021 was a cracking year – I did a lot of the things I wanted to do. So the idea works.

However, there were still some goals which I set every year – and manifestly fail to achieve. Yes, you’ve guessed them correctly – weight loss and physical fitness goals. As usual, these were part of the ten I set in anticipation of the start of the New Year. And, as usual, by the middle of January I realised that I wasn’t doing anything about them.

Cue WIG thinking.

I deleted many of the goals and set just three. Lose the poundage (again), get Cycle Fit, and write another book. Just three WIGs.

Every day, I plan so that those three goals will get the focus that their hoped-for and worked-for achievement demands. Everything else – and I mean everything, including this blog – gets fitted in around the activities that address those goals. I’m doing this blog during the pre-exercise session; I’ll do some training at the planned time, then settle down while I consider exactly what the next book will be. And then, and only then, will I do any reading, chillin’, administerial tasks, etc.

(To be honest, this blog relates to my writing goals, too, so is technically counted within the WIG, as will be the continued practice of public speaking.)

One side benefit of this approach is this – I no longer feel guilty about the things I don’t do that aren’t related to the Big Three.

At the end of my day I think to myself, “So I didn’t wash the car. So I watched two episodes of something. So I didn’t go shopping. Big Deal.

I trained hard. I ate wisely. And I gave due consideration to my writing.

Doing that, I know I’ll be lighter, fitter, wiser and, most importantly, happier than I have been since my last blog.”

Peace.

At last.

You don’t need time management training? Yes, you do. It’s common-sense.

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Jim Collins, author of business books “Good to Great” and “Built to Last” once wrote:

True discipline means channelling our best hours into first-order objectives.*

Just to be clear, he was not promoting blind obedience to the Empire’s replacement in the latter Star Wars movies. That’s not the First Order he meant.

He was promoting the idea that success in any venture is best achieved by making the best use of time available, and wasting as little as possible. He also suggested that the better use of time was a discipline. Not desirable. Required. And, by implication (if you define discipline accordingly), difficult.

The truth is that time management as a discipline isn’t physically hard. It’s just seen as mentally draining. The simplest time tech – the To Do List – is draining because it constantly expands and is a visible reminder of all the things we haven’t yet done, along with all the things we know we must do, but don’t want to.

However, like any discipline – and I am positive that I mean any discipline – once the basics are learned and applied there is less and less need for ‘discipline’, because it becomes second nature. But until it becomes second nature, it seems hard.

Returning to the quote – what is so profound? If you think about it, that’s one of the most common-sense pieces of advice you’ve probably ever heard. The more time you spend on ‘doing’ something directed towards ultimate success, the quicker that success will come about. But no one ever thinks that learning a methodology that will help you apply that common-sense, is common-sense. (Sorry to labour the point.)

Moreover, many public organisations don’t seem to think that training in time management should be made available to anyone earning less than £80k per annum, in my limited experience. They provide that kind of training only to people who can delegate their work downwards, meaning the people to whom that work is delegated – the front line, coal-face operative – aren’t provided with the training that they need in order to cope.

Of course, they could seek out time management input themselves, and I would encourage them to do so. But there is one problem – it isn’t common-sense.

My goodness, what a convoluted, Mobius Strip. “I don’t know I need this, but I need this, but I won’t learn this because it’s common-sense and therefore I am expected already to know it, but I don’t.” (Don’t analyse that sentence too deeply.)

I stress. Yes, it may seem to you that time management training is either unnecessary or too hard, but a workforce trained in time management, that is using common language in its respect, can massively improve productivity simply because it is psychologically committed to what it has been taught. Each individual empowered to say to another, “I need you to be proactive in how you deal with this. Begin with the End in Mind and do First Things First.” No need for further explanation if everyone knows what you mean.

But if all you do is say, “Make a list,” everyone knows what you mean – but hates you for it!

*In his foreword to the 25th anniversary edition of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Conscience – the Key to Success.

20 Thursday Oct 2022

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In First Things First, Stephen R Covey asked the question (sic) “How can we implement the choice to be congruent in life – to have greater personal integrity?”

How often do you sit there, trying to decide whether or not to do something that you know will be good for you, but which you know will be hard? How often do you find yourself rationalising the easier option? I know I do that. I repeatedly commit to doing some exercise every morning, but when the alarm goes off I enter into analysis mode: what’s the temperature/weather like? Can I get away with not doing it, today? Is it more likely that I can exercise later?

Anything to avoid exercising now.

Covey’s solution to this lack of integrity is to consider and apply a three-step, self-analysing process.

First, Ask with Intent. To quote Covey, this is to “ask our conscience, not out of curiosity, but out of a commitment to act based on the wisdom of the heart.” You see he knew, as do I and as do you, that there is often only one, true, conscience-derived answer to the question we are asking of ourselves. And it is all too frequently the answer that we don’t want to hear. The Hard Choice. So, when you truly ask your conscience for guidance, it will always tell you what you, yourself have instructed it to tell you. The answer you don’t want. The one that will serve you best of all.

But finding the answer to the question you are asking of yourself may require deeper thought, which Covey admits. So further questions may be asked, in addition to or in lieu of the first. They are:

“Is this in my Circle of Influence?” Can you actually take action, or are other influences going to affect your decision? It happens. You can’t ride a bike in a snowstorm. Do you even have a bike?

“Is it in my Centre of Focus?” This question, which relates to the tinier circle at the centre of your Circle of Influence and which was only written about in First Things First, can be answered with your mission in mind. Is it the best thing to be doing or is there something better that will move you closer to your Primary Objective?

If the answer to those questions is No, or even Yes No, then your integrity is intact if you choose the more objective-focused action instead of the one you don’t want to take. But only the true answer works that way – any other answer is procrastination.

In any case, the second process is Listen Without Excuse. Maybe following this advice answers those mini-questions already mentioned above, but what Covey means is that you don’t ask the question, only to start the excuse-making so often associated with taking the easy way out. As he puts it, “If we choose the first option, we feel peaceful. If we feel the second option, we feel disharmony and tension.”

This may seem counter-intuitive, in the moment. If we take the easy option, the stress of acting on the harder option goes away – for all of a few moments. Then we feel the guilt. Taking the first option creates immediate tension – which may go away once we start acting on the Hard Choice, and which certainly dissipates when we complete what it was we were trying to avoid.

The last element of the process reads Act with Courage. Covey writes not of acts of extreme bravery, but courageous acts taken in the gap between stimulus and response. In this context, it means acting on the better (harder) choice made between the ‘I don’t want to’ stimulus and the ‘I wish I had’ response that gets you nowhere. It means acting in the knowledge that acting on the Hard Choice is routinely more self-serving (in a good way) than delaying or failing to take that action.

In a sense, the whole chapter in First Things First, which is entitled “Integrity in the Moment of Choice, represents the key to the difference between failing in your objectives, and succeeding. It reflects the advice provided with less depth, but equal accuracy, in any personal development book you read. It identifies the key difference between a life of mediocrity and one that is values-driven, principle-centred and truly successful.

If I was to summarise this article in a few words, I could only repeat my interpretation of it, as already stated within these paragraphs. I suggest that when you ask yourself if you are going to Act with Integrity in the moment, and in doing so behave in compliance with your own conscience, then it is:

Make the Hard Choice.

(Which, coincidentally, is in keeping with the First Resolution. )

Are you ‘You’, all of the time?

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An interesting quote, today, from Covey’s ‘Principle Centred Leadership, made me think. It read:

“One common reactive pattern is to live life in value-based compartments, where our behaviour is largely the product of expectations built in to certain roles: spouse, parent, child, business executive, community leader, and so on. Because each of these compartments carries its own value system, reactive people often find themselves trying to meet conflicting expectations and living by differing values according to the role or the environment they are in at any particular time.” (Covey, Stephen R.. Principle-Centred Leadership (p. 20). Rosetta Books. Kindle Edition.)

Years ago, when I was a serving officer, I considered myself to be quite competent. Something would happen and I would quite easily approach and deal with it using my training and experience. Then, one day, something happened to one of my kids – and I was completely lost. I called a colleague, who dealt with it very well indeed, but I remember thinking, afterwards, “Why didn’t I do that?”

And, reading the above quote, I think I might have an inkling as to why. I was in Parent/Daughter mode, and applied a different kind of thinking than I would have, if I’d gone into Policeman/Victim mode – which was more objective, less emotionally involved. In that moment, I was probably applying a different role, and subsequently different values.

Which was odd, because I believe that the values we have are applied universally to ‘us’, and that experience suggested otherwise. It suggests that look at our Roles through different, role-related spectacles, and act accordingly. The question is,

Is that the right way to live?

It is certainly a common way to love, as shown by athletes with drinking problems, politicians who seem to be honest but then get caught out, married people who excuse one-night stands with strangers when out on business junkets – the ‘what goes on tour, stays on tour’ perspective.

For me, the ideal is that you/we have ONE set of personal values or Unifying Principles which apply whatever we are doing. The only ‘but’ being that some values may never apply in particular roles, although I am at a loss to conjure up an example for the sake of illustration. I suppose (looking at my own) a value of ‘Be an Intellectual’ might not really apply to a parenting role, except to the degree that role-modelling intellectualism may benefit a child. ‘Be organised in the home’ has little to do with work – except you tend to be more organised at work than you do at home. And role-modelling organisation benefits a messy child.

Looking at those ‘buts’, I think I’m still plumping for Values applying all the time because for every role I can think of, one of my values applies if I think about it deeply enough.

It reflects what Ghandi said. “A person cannot do right in one department whilst attempting to do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole.” Which addressed people who lacked integrity and misbehaved in some fashion, but also supports the idea that our values apply universally, not on a role-by-role basis.

Are you who you are all of the time?

I’m trying to be. And while it isn’t easy it must be worth it. Ask my kids.

For more on this subject, buy my book at AMAZON, available in Kindle or paperback.

Needs vs Wants.

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I read last night, in the Covey/Merrill book ‘First Things First’, about why otherwise successful-looking people were unhappy despite their success. They wrote, “—it became evident that there was a real difference between what people wanted and what they apparently needed in their lives. Many were achieving more and more goals…and feeling less and less happy and fulfilled.”

Probably belatedly, because of how many years I have been ‘doing’ this stuff, I realised that when people write down their values they often put down the things they are ‘supposed’ to value and neglect what they (a) truly value and (b) what they should value, but don’t write down because they perceive that they are fluffy, or too hard to meet.

Moreover, family, society, communities and organisations dictate to folk what they believe that those folk should value, and it doesn’t necessarily meet those folks’ needs. In fact, it may oppose them in some fashion. (And off I drift into the divisive Identity Politics of 2022….no.)

Anyway, I made a written note:

Meet a valued NEED over a valued WANT = success. Longer life, better relationships, the leaving of a legacy.

Meet a valued WANT over a valued NEED = fleeting satisfaction. An adrenaline rush, a new toy, five minutes on a  zip line for the price of half a tank of petrol.

 ‘Wants’ tend to reflect an emotional attachment to a ‘thing’ or state of being, whereas ‘Needs’ tend to reflect the true, underlying, psychological musts that are to be met if we are to stay sane.

The problem is – identifying the difference.

Meeting Wants is often easier, occasionally requiring nothing more than a matter of spending a bit of cash. (Occasionally foolishly spending money we don’t yet have.)

But meeting Needs requires more effort – yes, we need to live (buy food, fuel, etc.) but there is more to a Need than there is ever to a mere Want. Meeting a Need often requires properly identifying what is behind a Want, and focusing our efforts on meeting the Need another way. And that, my friends, is hard work!

I’ve written before on replacing the value ‘Excellence’ with the value ‘Effort’ because the former is often judge extrinsically – “Do you think I did an excellent job?”; whereas the latter is measured internally – “Have I put my all into this project?” I have control on the latter, but limited control over the former. The latter may influence the assessment of excellence, of course, but doesn’t determine it. I can work really hard and still do a poor job. And thus still fail despite meeting a personal value.

But I now find myself asking, “What need am I addressing when I value effort?” And I find myself asking whether it is because I really want others’ approval. Which means my value is not the want of effort, but is, in fact, the need of approval. Which may not be a good thing to value. On the other hand, if I need to know that people have benefitted from my work, then it’s an opportunity to redefine my values

Yes, this article’s a bit of a ramble. It’s intellectually challenging to realise that your long-standing list of values may reflect wants over needs, and that you’ve been labouring under a misunderstanding for years. And don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with wanting, but as Covey and the Merrill’s have suggested, if you Want at the expense of your Needs, then there be dragons.

Review your values. Ask yourself: “What is the need behind these things I want, and are they the same?” If they aren’t, you are truly on the way to a better life.

Why I am writing my autobiography – and you should, too.

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I am currently engaged in writing my autobiography. I am not a person of great public note, but I recently found myself making a speech about my beloved father, who passed away in 2002, and in doing so I realised just how little I knew about him. I knew what we’d done together over the years, of course, but apart from a few stories about his war-time experiences – and I mean a few, as he seldom spoke of them – I didn’t know much about ‘him’. I decided that I would not leave my kids and grandkids wondering who I was and what I did. So I began writing.

I thought I would do about a hundred pages, but owing to having been a police officer I possessed about forty notebooks for work experiences, supported by about twenty years’ worth of planning systems and diaries with associated entries, plus the occasional journal writings. As of today I’m probably well over the 300-page mark, and I’m only up to 2005.

It occurred to me that we all have a story to tell. I bet, when you’re out with your friends, you tell personal stories as a matter of course. Sometimes you’re the trigger for someone else’s stories, and a competition begins over who has the better tale to tell. (Although I do hate it when someone presages their story with ‘the best one was’ and follows that sentence with an utterly uninteresting and badly told fable.)

It would be true to say that I have two intended audiences – my family, and my old colleagues. Those colleagues will all have similar stories to mine – some will be more interesting, too. But the beauty of a biography is that a relatively common experience, properly told, will still be interesting to those who have ‘been there and done that’, because it triggers their own amusing anecdote. They laugh as they think, “Yes I did that, too.” And thus begin their own musings.

Which begs the question: Why aren’t you writing YOUR story?

One of Stephen Covey’s four human needs he identified as Leave a Legacy. Famous people leave public records – but you have a story to leave your descendants. You can’t rely on the BBC to select you for an edition of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, and they certainly won’t do the research for you. To be frank, the pre-history they discover is interesting – but not much. I find that is a failing in many biographies – the fluff that is put in to make a relatively short biography bigger. A book about a celebrity who hasn’t done much is often padded out by irrelevant social commentary, describing the council estate in which they grew up – no one cares, and anyone living in a council estate already know.

So my book is going to be a chronological history of who I am and what I did, with anecdotes about the funny, tragic, and occasionally routine things I experienced. It’s as much a tribute to those I did those things with, as it is an attempt to flatter my own ego. I’m writing it mainly because of the funny things that happened to me, in the hope that my descendants will laugh at their ancestor – so that they learn to laugh at themselves. My legacy will be – have fun, laugh at yourself, and seek out what you want.

You are the hero of your own legend, as I am in mine. Start writing now.

On Getting Better When You’re Too Tired

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I’m tired. Not having properly trained on my road bike for this year, I went out last Sunday with friends and rode 56 miles. It was evident fairly early on that I was lagging behind, although in my defence I was following a friend who’d just completed a two-day, 60/40 mile ride up the Marmotte in the Alps. In fairness, then, he was much better prepared for the day than me.

But that was four days ago, and I’m still tired. So what, I hear you ask?

Being tired is no excuse for being lazy. It is tempting to give a task less than you would if you were feeling hale and hearty, but doing that serves no-one. As I sat at my desk preparing to write this blog I was soooo tempted to put it off until I felt better or, failing that, to just look up an old entry and regurgitate that, instead. But you’d have not learned anything new – well, when I say ‘learned’ and ‘new’, perhaps I’m looking more towards providing a new perspective on old learning.

And I wouldn’t have ‘got better’ in the competency sense. Added to that, perhaps my conscience would have screamed at me.

Being tired is only an excuse – nay, reason – for taking longer to do a job. The reality of personal development is that people do get tired, they do lose their sense of motivation, they are affected by moods and circumstances. Neither of which excuse largesse, but they will certainly affect performance.

But how big an effect those influences have on performance, is up to the performer.

Making the proactive choice to put in the effort required to do the better job is key. Deciding to perform at the required level – even at the highest possible level – is the first step to overcoming the drag created by fatigue. It might not be the only step, I admit. If the task to be done is a physical task, then the effect of fatigue will be more obvious and impactive than if the task to be done requires a mental approach more than a muscular one.

But if you’re thinking “I don’t really want to do this,” then the answer is to decide that you will, and to decide that you will do it to the best of your ability even if it takes a little longer than it usually does.

And if you’re experience is the same as the one I’ve just had in writing this blog after thinking about whether or not I can be bothered to do it at all, you may well find that it didn’t take as much time or effort as your brain initially calculated it would.

Because 10 minutes ago I was too tired. Now, my work here is done. Including a review and an edit and posting onto this website. Ten minutes from ‘Not Today’ until ‘Done’.

Do you have days/jobs like that? Days when you just can’t get started because you are tired? Make the decision that YOU are in charge, not your emotions.

And as a bonus, here’s another tip for when you have started but are flagging. It’s one I used when I was trying to keep up with the King of the Mountains.

SEAL Team trainers have discovered that when a candidate has ‘had enough’, the successful candidates can still find another 40% – forty   percent – energy left, if they just dig deep and find it. On my bike, really feeling the fatigue from about 35 miles in and knowing I had 20+ left to go, I just reminded myself that if I wanted it, the energy was there. I knew I’d feel it later, but my body would recover to a better base level afterwards. (Hopefully, soon!)

Maybe that’s the ultimate reward. The reward for applying the First Resolution.

The harder you try to overcome not feeling your best, the better your best becomes.

The Key to Success in Everything.

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This week I have been mostly taken by a concept that the ‘better’ coaching writers espouse as a specific, rather than ‘work it out for yourself’ idea. The oldest writing I find about this is from the 1930s in the name of Napoleon Hill. It was later reframed in 1989 by Stephen Covey, and Jack Canfield provides the same overarching advice in his 2005 book “The Success Principles”. It is an idea that underpins any level of success in business and personal relationships, and without it everything else fails.

Napoleon Hill, paraphrased it thus: “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” Covey calls it ‘Be Proactive’ and Canfield calls it ‘Take 100% Responsibility.’ All have the same meaning.

They mean that in order for things to happen, it’s all down to you. You either do it, or you cause it to come about.

I have taught this in personal development classes and often met resistance. It was understandable: in reality, other people and circumstances do have an influence on what we do. In truth, our success relies on us making ourselves relevant, and it relies on us dealing with those external influences. Which is where the resistance loses the argument.

Whatever happens, we have a choice. That choice is to deal with the circumstance, fight it, or accept it. As Covey described it, we have Direct, Indirect, or No Control over what happens to us. Direct Control means we can deal with it ourselves, and overcome the challenge. Indirect Control means either we deal with it in concert with other people, or we nudge it in the direction we wish to go, adapting as we do so. No Control means we smilingly accept it, rather than waste time and emotion fighting the insurmountable.

But we aren’t only talking about severe challenge. We are also talking about little things, small annoyances. I can’t tell you how much emotional effort I find myself putting into the avoidance of a two-minute annoyance! This morning I have hoovered, dusted, stocked, emptied and sorted multiple little things that really have always been someone else’s responsibility. But today, I chose responsibility and it’s all been done.

Have I gone from serious stuff to trivialities? Maybe.

But how about you? What things are you avoiding because they are annoying, in the knowledge that the person responsible is you – but you really don’t want to do them? And is ‘not doing them’ creating the result you want to achieve?

Here’s an example. I am an introvert. I’m reluctant to mix. I have found that most people are: when a group of strangers assemble, there is abundant awkwardness until – I start the conversation and introductions. Me. Shy bloke. Until I, or someone like me, starts the mixing off, it’s awfully quiet. I take 100% (etc.) for communication.

Other things: Paperwork. Cleaning. Maintenance. Shopping. ‘That’ conversation’. All yuk jobs, but all necessary for a smoother existence. All or some of which are things which you think you have delegated, but which the delegate ain’t doing.

Of course, I haven’t yet mentioned the moral victory when you make it plain that you’ve briefly, and pointedly, taken responsibility for someone else’s work. Rub it in their faces. Let it be known far and wide.

Sometimes, the mantra ‘I will take 100% Responsibility’ means doing the ‘thing’ so that you can move on from it, and move closer to your desired outcome. Even if that ‘thing’ just means clearing the dishes from the work surfaces you won’t need for three hours – but will now be clean and ready when you get there.

Take charge of as much as possible. Even if you don’t want to do it – do it.

Believe everything you hear? I hope not – for your sake.

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Today, I want to write about objectivity. Objectivity is a discipline, and one that is not easy to execute because we are all biased by our experiences, upbringing and value systems. What we see, we see through a lens that has been fogged to some degree, unless we occasionally choose to clean it in an effort to ensure that some clarity is possible. I raise this issue because what I see going on around the world is, it appears to me, the result of deliberate fogging of lenses by interest groups that have become so powerful because of social media that we risk going down a path that could so easily be avoided if we just asked better questions when ‘facts’ are trotted out for us to gullibly accept.

I heard a statistic the other day. The speaker (a socialist) was upset that 1 in 5 children lived below the poverty line. I thought, “Is that possible? That would require 8 houses in my street to be ‘in poverty’, and for every street that had no poverty there would have to be streets with massively more than one in five.

Of course, if you conclude that children don’t earn any money, and that relative poverty is defined as poverty created when people earn less than 50% of the average wage, then that statement could be true – but the kids weren’t necessarily poor or living in a poor household.

Another one – According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales year ending March 2020, an estimated 5.5% of adults aged 16 to 74 years (2.3 million) experienced domestic abuse in the last year. Extrapolated, that means that domestic violence takes place in two houses in my street, or more in other streets. Or is it more likely that the same victims are being abused by the same perpetrators and this isn’t reflected in that figure? A third – and a remarkably consistent one – is that 250,000 people go missing from home annually. When I was a cop, the same girl went missing from a children’s home every day – are those separately counted, or is each a separately counted incident?

Of course, I don’t know. I do know that figures can be warped; as I say, I was a copper and crime figures – well, least said, soonest amended. The COVID stats are hilariously warped – crushed by rocks but died within 28 days of a positive covid test? Boom, another covid death. And more justification for lockdowns and other restrictions on freedom. (The Sue Grey Report came out yesterday. Ironic.)

So the discipline I invite people to consider is this: to question what you are told, and not blindly accept everything you hear. I say this because I see the anger, ire, combativeness and hatred created by facts that simply aren’t yet verified.

This week, a child reported he’d been racially abused, chased, and lost a finger having climbed a fence to escape. I don’t want that to be true – the thought of kids that age being racist in 2022 is sad. If it is true, let punishment follow. But years of child abuse input (and some personal experiences) state that a child should not be interviewed by untrained staff, nor asked repeatedly what happened, because of the risk of accidental embellishment if they feel they’re being challenged.

Yet the press, celebdom and interest groups have all had their bandwagon launched, and statements have been demanded and occasionally delivered from those in authority, all of whom are angry and incensed – before any police investigation has even started. And all of them are supposed to be intellectual and objective. Their bandwagon behaviour suggests otherwise. It means either they’re not astute enough to wait for the facts to be fully provided (bad) or it suits their agenda to spout (really bad and malevolent).

So my plea today is to wait. Use the gap between stimulus and response to decide if you have enough data to believe what is being put to you.

Because that’s exactly what you’d hope would happen if YOU were the subject of conjecture, wouldn’t you?

When You’re Going to be Bored, Refocus

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When you have something to do that involves a long wait, what’s your plan? Are you an ‘unlimited coffee’ drinking Wetherspoons telly reader (because the sound’s off and the subtitles are behind the speaker)? Do you search the local shops with no intention of buying anything? Do you manically find some urgent task that you might just progress if the opportunity arises and can be taken? Or do you just chill?

Yesterday, I had a car serviced by a friendly mechanic in Cardiff and such is the distance that it’s not worth going home because as soon as I’d get there, I’d be called back to collect the vehicle. So when I’d booked the service, and in anticipation of the expected wait, I planned my day by first asking Neil (for that is his name) how long it would take. As a result of that one question I was able to make a plan as to what I’d do during the wait AND plan the rest of my post-service day.

First, I decided to go to a library and review my Personal Mission Statement and Goals, just to reset and refocus. That is a valuable activity that reinvigorates motivation and allows you to plan and envision how much better you’ll with deal with a challenge the next time someone annoys you. Then I decided to visit Cardiff Crown Court ‘for old times’ sake’, which proved to be a bust because inn the lead up to lunch there seemed to be little enthusiasm for starting the trial. (Wonder why courts are suffering delays? This is why: “Well, it’s midday, we’ll only get the jury sworn in and have to start the trial later, so let’s have lunch now and start the process at 2pm.”) Finally, I adjourned (ha!) to the adjacent museum and amused myself with some Natural History input – did you know that Wales is made up of rocks, like THE REST OF THE WORLD?

I walked 14km that morning and when I got home, I got to walk the dog, too. Yay.

But it was the first hour, the library life review, that made all the difference. No major changes in terms of my approaches to life, just a reminder where I was and wasn’t performing in terms of the person I want to be. A couple of short-term goals were identified, but the main benefit was just reminding myself who ME is supposed to be.

Beats shopping.

For those who just chill, kudos to you. Taking a break from the high demands of life is as valuable – I don’t do that because no matter how much I try I am always thinking about the next thing, so Mindfulness is a no-hoper. But for those who find meditation valuable, go for it when you have a long wait.

Charles R Hobbs, author of Time Power (best practical time management tome ever, available second hand only), suggests that when planning for a waiting period it is always good practice to have what he called a ‘High A’ to hand, meaning an important task that you can progress during your wait. Suggestions included making important phone calls or reading something related to your profession, but a good novel that lets you put the stresses of work behind you is as good a High A as a report that needs to be read but in respect of which you’re not really going to be able to provide the appropriate focus.

But the message remains clear –shopping, telly watching and other mind-numbing time fillers aren’t valuable enough for you to be wasting time on them.

What’s your High A, the one you can use to fill spaces in your day?