Category Archives: Discipline

Posts relating to the First Resolution:
“To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to exercise self-discipline and self-denial.”

NEVER Mind the Gap. (I’m proud of this one….)

23 Thursday Jan 2020

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I’ve been cogitating about another space. Not the one between stimulus and response, where we can choose that response and, in that choice, choose wisely or otherwise. There is another Gap, which must be important because I used a capital ‘G’.

The self-help (ugly term) industry is designed to help people close the Gap between ‘where they are and where they want to be’, as Jack Canfield trademarked it. This is the Gap of which I write.

In my latest rewrite The Three Resolutions, which I regularly review as my understanding of the contents improve as my experiences and studies dictate, I reminded myself of a time when I was providing personal development to police colleagues, and in one of my lectures I drew a diagram which illustrated the Gap. It looked a bit like this

The Gap

and was also intended to show how some of us have a HUGE gap between where we are and where we (careful…..), some of us are lucky and have a smaller Gap to close.

And it struck me, counter-intuitively, that the larger that Gap the easier it was to make it smaller, whereas once the Gap narrowed to a sliver its closure was harder to achieve. Which meant I had to figure out why this was.

My conclusion was this: when we start out in that HUGE Gap, we believe we have a million things wrong about our lives that need correction. As time passes, we tick off the faults which are easy to correct, and each closure has a massive effect on our lives. But as we get ever closer to our ideal ‘self’ we start to address the harder challenges, the ones which cause us the most stress, the ones we avoided earlier but which are also, by their very nature, the biggest of our problems.

But here’s the kicker. Despite that remaining Gap and the challenges it represents, we have become better individuals through making the Gap that much smaller. But we tend to forget how far we’ve come. We get so focused on the last 10 yards we forget we’ve travelled miles and miles.

Now and then, I suggest, look at what you were and compare it to what you are.

Not just in terms of wealth and professional standing, but in terms of knowledge, relationships, freedom and some other immeasurables. Are you better than you were at 25? Are you better after closing some of the Gap? In which case, CONGRATULATE YOURSELF.

Then set about that last bit in the knowledge that you are more capable of closing it now than you ever were. Celebrate the fact that you even know that the Gap exists, because penny to a pound you didn’t recognise it when you were younger/less experienced/alone or skint.

Yes, there may be one or two challenges left, and they may be the hard ones, but what have you got now that reflects your progress?

In 1995 I was a sit-at-the-back, let it happen of guy. Now I always sit at the front, I can think and write at a level I would never have thought possible even in my 30s, I have pursued things rather than waited for them.

So I’m a bit broader in the beam than I ought to be.

My family loves me and I love them. I am financially secure. I can read, write, count and argue with people and yet happily lose an argument.

Yup. Today, I like me. Like yourself, see how far you’ve come. Then gird your loins for the next bit……

The hardest 100% Pass Mark you’ll ever achieve.*

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

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In his book ‘The Success Principles’, coach Jack Canfield wrote about a principle he called ‘99% is a Bitch, 100% is a Breeze’. The idea was that once you make a self-growth (denial or discipline) decision you act on it 100% of the time. This is because acting in accordance with your decision 100% is easier than doing so for 99% of the time for a simple reason that is both philosophical, and surprisingly logical.

With 100% there is no need to apply any further mental or emotional effort to the decision and its subsequent consequence. There is no reconsideration, doubt, angst or time wasted. With 99% you have to reconsider that decision every time you have to decide whether or not you should apply your standards/discipline/denial/values/principles ‘this time’.

For example, if I decide I will write 500 words a day (like Ernest Hemingway, apparently), then if I am taking the 100% route, that’s it– I will write 500 words a day, come what may. I’ll make sure I have my laptop with me, or I will write longhand on paper and transcribe it tomorrow, along with the 500 words for that day, too. If I go ‘99%’, then I have to decide, each day, if I am going to bother. That’s when the easy excuse will be ‘I have to go shopping, instead’. Or ‘I don’t have a pen’. Or ‘my laptop’s battery is a bit low and I’ll never make it’. Or ‘just one packet of crisps/pie/cigarette won’t hurt’.

(As I it here considering if/when/how/where to ride my bike I feel that pain.)

The same applies to not doing something (self-denial). If I decide that I will no longer eat chocolate eclairs, then application of the 100% principle means just that – never.

You can set your own rules for applying this principle. You can, if you wish, go ‘never’ – or you can include justified exceptions to ‘never’. You can decide not to eat chocolate eclairs ever again, or you can add an exception – but it must be a specific exception, and it must be observed. In the case of the eclairs you may elect to eat one on a new moon, your birthday, the 1st of the month, or whatever exclusionary rule suits you provided that it does not excuse you. That’s the material distinction. If you have a rule it must be specific and it must not undermine the original intention, nor can it allow for or provide excuses for non-compliance. 99% or less doesn’t cut it.

99% doesn’t work because it allows for mistakes, errors and, most of all, excuses. 100% not only disallows excuse or failure but it also demands creativity, imagination and discipline. If you ‘cannot’ execute on your disciplined objective for some external reason, the 100% rule demands of you that you find a way to overcome that temporary barrier/obstruction. Wayne Dyer, famed writer on metaphysics and life philosophies, overcame a ‘cannot go for a daily run’ when flying by running up and down an aircraft’s aisles. (BTW – not recommended!)

This concept, when fully applied 100% (see what I did there?), covers the appropriate application of both self-discipline AND self-denial. The only caveat I have to add here is this – don’t commit to 100% compliance until you are absolutely certain that you want to. This is because without that commitment you will make excuses the first time you are required to make decision whether to comply or not. And as soon as you make the decision not to comply that ‘one time’, you are already on the path to failure and guilt. It’s already 99%, or even less. And the next time that decision arises it will be even harder to make the right choice and the downward spiral speeds up. Momentum works both ways.

My final piece of advice? If you want to try the 100% Rule – only commit when you are truly ready. If necessary, prepare your environment (fridge and kitchen cupboards?) before you commit.

Then go for it.

 

(*An excerpt from The Three Resolutions book.)

 

Save money through Time Management. But not how you think……

20 Monday Jan 2020

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Anyone who has ever read about time management will be familiar with the Time Matrix. You know, the one which is segmented to identify Urgent v Important, and looks like this.

TM Matrix

Have you ever thought how applying this same Matrix to your financial habits might just make you more wealthy?

Think about it. You have a spending pattern. There are things you like to buy, things you have to buy, things that you want to buy but can’t – a whole range of purchasing options based on the same two criteria you use when spending ‘time’.

There are Quadrant 3 things – you ‘want’ it now and so you buy it ‘now’, even though a sober reflection may have said it wasn’t important enough to spend hard-earned cash on, but you (or someone you love/like/respect) suggested it was NOW or never.

There are Quadrant 1 things – things you genuinely have to buy now because they are vital to something in which you are presently involved. For example, I recently had to buy longer screws to fit a light switch that stuck out just too far for the provided screws to reach the fitment. (I know it’s an off example but read on.)

There are Quadrant 4 things – things that aren’t urgent or important but your heart overrules your head and you buy it because it’s pretty or funny or quirky or you’re just so fed up you need to demonstrate your personal power by possessing this bauble.

And there are Quadrant 2 things – things which aren’t necessarily urgent but which are, or may be, urgent now or in the future. Back to my screws. I needed 50mm screws, but could only get 75mm screws, which, it turned out, were far too long. I therefore had a Q1 need for a pair of pliers strong enough to cut the screws to length. Looking around, I realised that I anticipated a need to cut even bigger metal rods, so I bought bolt-cutters, instead. And that made me realise that notwithstanding the urgency of the screws, now would be a good time to make an anticipatory spend on a toolkit and, being Christmas, there were many good kits available at a discount price. The bolt-cutters were Q1, but the extra purchase was Q2.

What else can we allocate to these Quadrants?

Q1 – unexpected fines/bills, repairs to broken electronics, fuel for an empty tank, fast food when we’re hungry.

Q3 – tips for surly waiters, money for chuggers (charity muggers).

Q4 – extra SkyTV channels, that emergency pasty fat people buy at 9AM, our expensive Starbucks coffee to carry to work – the one that we worked 20 minutes to afford, a copy of OK magazine.

Q2 – fuel for the car before we run short, household bills, a 30th anniversary copy of The Seven Habits (I am genuinely excited), good food, investments and savings, tithing if that’s what you do, etc.

Where do you spend most of your money?

Don’t worry about it to stress-point. As with time, occasionally what looks like a Q4 spend is, in fact, a Q2 spend if we genuinely need something to de-stress ourselves, for example. A Q3 spend on a friend may hurt but may pay dividends in terms of that friend’s realisation that they are loved, making it Q2, or even Q1 spend.

Have a think – do you have foreign holidays because other people do, when you could spend the same on personal development? Do you have a plan to buy a new car on a monthly rental when buying an old one outright could leave you with money you could invest, and an asset to sell if you wanted to?

The Time Matrix – a way to save money. Who’d have thought it?

Do you treat yourself like you do your car?

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

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Does anyone else think their car feels cleaner, faster and snappier as you drive away from a passed MOT inspection? Or is it just me?

By the same token, how do you feel when you leave the dentist after a clean and polish? Or when you’ve filed all your paperwork?

The reason for all this contentment is because your essential maintenance is finally complete and you feel that you have a fresh start available to you. Despite the fact that most of us consider ‘maintenance’ to be in the pile of ‘things I HAVE to do but which don’t achieve anything meaningful’, our brains recognise that completion of those things is an enabler to carrying out of more important things. Our brains are cleverer than we are.

Think about it. How well could we do what is important if we didn’t, at some point, carry out the foundational ‘unimportant’ admin and saw-sharpening that supports us? How well could we write and research if we didn’t maintain our computers? How could we get around if we didn’t maintain our transportation? How could we charge clients if our billing records weren’t up to snuff?

How embarrassing is it when your pen runs out of ink just at the signature stage of a contractual negotiation?

Maintenance is a way of ensuring effectiveness at the front end, folks.

That goes as much for ‘you’ as it does your ‘stuff’. It’s all very well you accepting this advice and setting about checking your pens for ink, your pencils for lead and your car’s service schedule for late oil changes, but what about you?

Your body needs to be properly maintained constantly if it is to enable success and effectiveness in all of your roles. Eat too much and you slow down while your body digests it. Poison it with alcohol or excessive caffeine and you make it jump before it plummets again. Fail to exercise and the lubricants clog and congeal and eventually need changing. If they CAN be changed.

Your brain needs to be fed and nurtured, too. That doesn’t solely mean intellectual data input, it also means that stuff which calms the neurons, like music and (paradoxically) silence in nature. Although from a work perspective, keeping up to speed with practice and protocol changes is a necessary activity if we aren’t to become redundant in an intangible way – or worse, a tangible, ‘go-work-somewhere-else’ kind of way.

Take a few minutes today to find out if there is anything you need to know or do to improve your relevancy at work, and to ensure that the only tool through which you do everything – your body – will remain capable of serving you for longer. Like until you are 101, not up to ‘65 and knackered’ There are plenty of apps, books and facilities providing advice and equipment for these purposes.

You can also ignore all three of those and just take the odd moment to sit quietly and enjoy the silence.

Keep your saw sharp. It’s a cutting edge philosophy.

Put your focus on focusing.

03 Friday Jan 2020

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Last October I wrote about the Circle of Influence, and in doing so I made a fleeting mention of the briefly identified but ne’er seen again ‘Circle of Focus’.

Just to recap, Covey had detailed the Circles of Concern (everything affecting our lives) and Influence (things upon which we can have an effect) in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In his later First Things First he and his co-authors went further and defined a further, inner Circle of Focus.

They defined it as ‘things we are concerned about, that are within our ability to influence, that are aligned with our mission and are timely.’

He went on: ‘When we operate within our Circle of Influence we do some good, but what we do may be at the expense of something better. When we set and achieve goals that are in our Centre of Focus, we maximise the use of our time and effort.’

The question arises, therefore – how much time do we spend administering, pandering, diverting, interrupting (and being interrupted) and time-wasting at the expense of the time we should spend within that focused centre?

Life gets in the way. Professionals who once had staff to assist with all those things now find they have to do their admin (etc.) themselves and so their focus has become blurred as a result. But that doesn’t mean we can abandon the Focus at the expense of the mundane. It just means we have to manage our selves better.

Now, what tends to happen is that we do whatever arises as it arises – an e-mail pings, someone pops by, the phone rings – and we redirect our (very important) focus away in their direction.

Stop it. Stop it now – or at least as much as the Gods of customer service allow.

A thing that pings or rings or is passing(s) should be given only appropriate attention, not undivided, immediate attention if you are to maximise your productivity and effectiveness.

I suggest that you do a couple of things which might help you do that.

  1. Ignore emails, and plan to deal with them at a time which suits your responsibilities – maybe at the start of the day, immediately after lunch or last thins as part of tomorrow’s planning.
  2. Shut your office door if you can. People won’t interrupt if they can’t see you. Honest.
  3. Turn your smartphone off if you want uninterrupted time.
  4. Block time out for uninterrupted, focused thinking/doing time in your planning system Or, put another way, make an appointment with yourself and keep it inviolable.

While Covey and his associated training company never again seemed to refer to the Circle of Focus after the 1994 publication of First Things First’ I find that the concept of the Circle of Focus (like the short chapter on The Three Resolutions in ‘Principle Centred Leadership’) is one of the most profound time management concepts I’ve ever known.

Try it at work, if possible.

Set time aside for the most important stuff, the stuff which, if focused upon 100%, will provide the maximum bang for buck you can achieve.

Then try this at home……………………

The Painful Truth.

02 Thursday Jan 2020

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Jan the 2nd. Where HAS the year gone?

If you’re like me, you’ve already discovered that the resolutions you set 3 days ago are faltering. I think there’s a good reason for this.

You got drunk on New Year’s Eve, and your promise to do something physically or mentally challenging the following day got lost in a fog of sleep deprived, alcohol- or food-induced discomfort. If not, good for you. For the rest of us, it’s reality.

But that excuse doesn’t exist this morning, does it?

Time to go back to work unless you organised time off, and already the routines have obstructed any likelihood that a new behaviour can kick in. Your environment has, over the years, created psychological cues that dictate a conditioned response. Which is why, despite the intent to eat well, the smell and convenience of toast, bacon or a breakfast roll trump those good intentions.

“I can start tomorrow.” When the same conditions apply.

No, folks – personal improvement is never easy. In fact, it’s damn hard. But it’s also common sense.

Which is why I recommend that IF you are lulled by bookshops into buying any self-help title with the words ‘easy’ or ‘secret’ in their title, you resist the impulse to buy them with every fibre of your being. The books that promise how you’ll be unstoppable in your goal-achievement ‘in 90 days’ are also suspect unless your goal is to buy something you can afford.

Seek out the ones that make it plain that it’s going to take some effort on your part to make things happen. Recognise that anything meaningful takes effort, planning, time, occasionally money (which takes time, effort and planning to obtain), and commitment.

Commitment to The Cause, allied to recognition that you are that Cause, followed by the creation of a better, healthier more prosperous you is not selfish – because a better, healthier more prosperous you can serve other better and for longer than an ill, skint, half-arsed version of you.

Happy New Year – and Happy New You.

Now to go walk my talk………….

“It’s the most ‘orrible time of the year. (Ding Dong!)”

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

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14 sleeps.

Yes, two weeks tomorrow, it is Christmas Day. Many have been planning it since July. Christmas movies have been accompanying those who have been planning for Christmas since the start of Summer. My wife is watching one now. 10p says the girl’s cured of cancer after a last minute scare, the split family gets together and the choir wins. Or all three, and more.

The celebration, the Feast of Stephen as it were, consists of a birthday party for Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding the present giving to everyone but Jesus, part of the day is given over to a celebratory dinner. Turkey with all the ‘trimmings’, an expression that no-one can define.

Think about that for a second. A Christmas Dinner. ‘A’. Signifying ONE dinner.

Why is it, then, that right now thousands of people are clogging up the local shopping centre car parks in a mad panic to buy enough food to serve HMS Queen Elizabeth’s entire crew for a 6-month cruise around the equator?

Why is it that they are buying so much food in one go, knowing:

  1. It’s for one day’s celebration (really):
  2. They will eat it all because it’s there:
  3. With the exception of a very small percentage, it’s all over-salted or over-sugared, non-nutritional crap; and
  4. They know will later bitch about the weight they put on while eating that ‘one’ meal twice daily for about 7 days? Excluding between-meal nibbles.

How much money are they spending and how much time are they taking that could (in both cases) be better used?

How about next year (“It’s too late for me, save yourselves!”, they cry) you decide what you are going to eat on the day, buy that and get it delivered, and then glory in the way you feel better than everyone else when you go back to work?

In other words, plan the celebration and manage your time in its regard, with your common-sense personal value system dictating what you do, instead of complying with Christmas ‘conventions’ and (occasionally) a desire to compete to see who can demonstrate the most largesse and/or stupidity over Christmas.

Not to mention that, at THE most expensive time of the year, everyone wants to have an expensive works ‘do’ where you spend more on a three hour party than you will on your own present. Where people buy rounds all hoping you get as much as you give and that no-one abuses the ‘system’ – which, if you think about it, would happen if you just bought your own drinks.

And don’t forget! Most important of all!!

All that food you don’t eat, which you won’t eat because of the weight you gained and the fact that you’re starting that diet ‘tomorrow’?

Don’t forget to take it to work to valiantly, considerately and generously help all those doing and feeling the same???

 

Happy Christmas.

Pay yourself what you owe yourself.

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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We are all thinking about them right now.

(Which is American for ‘now’, you know, just like the American for ‘What!?’ is ‘Wait. What!?’ And a new one I have noted is they never just call anyone in the NYPD/LAPD/Hawaii 5-0 world. They ‘Reach out’. Said no cop. Ever. I digress Moving on.)

We are all moving close to a New Year, when we consider making some promises. They are promises to do something we know we should. They are promises to behave at a higher standard than we have been doing. But they are promises that are doomed.

They are doomed because they are promises to ourselves and they are doomed because they are promises to ourselves. Subtle distinction.

(I read today that the ‘b’ in subtle really gets it. I liked that one.)

The distinction is hard to explain in separate clauses, but in essence the reason they fail is down to the fact that the person making them is also the only person to whom the person making them is accountable. (You might want to read that over a couple of times.)

In other words, if I fail to come through on the promise, the only person who has to forgive me is, well, me. And I can be very forgiving where I am concerned.

You see the challenge?

Unless we make ourselves accountable to ‘someone’ out there, there is a tendency to fail.

My own greatest successes have probably been the result of making a commitment either to somebody else, or to myself but where there would be a negative effect on someone else if I failed. In other words, I succeed only when there is direct or indirect accountability to somebody else.

But we all have difficulty keeping promises to ourselves, where only we suffer the consequence of failure.

The answer? I’m not sure, but I think two potential solutions come to mind.

The first is to make the promise more public than usual – outside the family, maybe where a failure would result in absolute embarrassment and humiliation. The workplace, perhaps! (The internet works IF your readers interact. Hint hint.) Create the external pressure – perhaps as part of a team – to make yourself and others accountable for the promises you make to yourselves.

The other – perhaps less certain, certainly less public but perhaps more suitable to those who don’t have a team to turn to, or a family that can help – is to write a journal.

First of all, say what you want and why you want it. Then, check to see if the answers to those two headings really are the right answers – remember, the wrong goals create feeble commitment and divert you emotionally and psychologically from the ‘better’ goals.

Then ask yourself – am I truly committed to the result I seek? Am I willing to pay the price, this time? What exactly IS that price?

Once you have truly looked deep inside yourself and answered the questions honestly, then and only then should you commit to the Resolution. And you support yourself by chronicling the experience by writing down daily what you did, what you ‘didn’t’, why you did/didn’t, and what your feelings are about all that happened. Detail the conversations you have with yourself and others about how it’s going, what needs doing, and whatever else comes to mind in terms of the events that are enabling or obstructing your progress.

Look. Don’t make New Year Resolutions that you know, in your heart, you aren’t willing or able to achieve. Find the ones that really, viscerally matter to you and only commit to those. Even if there are only a couple. Then work daily to their achievement. And write about it.

Make sure you pay your IOU – to U.

 

You ONLY score Own Goals.

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

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“Why aren’t I sticking to, and achieving my goals?”

Been there? Done that? Me too.

This week I are been mainly studying First Things First, as Jesse would say*, and last night I was reading about the continuity of goal planning.

(Briefly, and as many a corporate employee would understand it, continuity in goal-planning means ‘Values dictate Mission dictates Roles dictates Goals dictates Action.’)

Covey was illustrating how often people fail to come through on their goals they set because they don’t truly understand themselves, a subject he also touched upon his The Three Resolutions chapter in Principle-Centred Leadership (1991). By extension, if you are not sure what your role is (at work or in any other context), you are already hampering any potential achievement.

This all struck a chord with me. There are some goals I have executed upon – and executed well. For example, my time management book and The Three Resolutions were the result of a disciplined effort over quite a period of time. My advanced driving qualifications and the subsequent opportunities to teach others that arose from achieving that goal are also a bit of a source of smugness. The jobs I got and the professional qualifications I have – all the result of a goal set and the work done.

But there are so many goals I have made over the years that simply never get ‘done’. Or they do get ‘done’, but only temporarily.

Why is that?

I suspect it is because I can’t answer the following question in the right way. Covey asked me to ask myself

“Do I really want to do it? Am I willing to pay the price? Do I have enough strength to do it? Do I accept the responsibility for my own growth? Am I settling for mediocrity when I could be achieving excellence? Am I blaming and accusing others for my own inability to set and achieve goals?” (Covey, Stephen R.. First Things First . Mango Media. Kindle Edition.)

In this order – No. No. No. I would normally, but not here. Yes. Yes. (Ouch.)

Charles R. Hobbs also touched upon this area when he wrote how Ben Franklin set 13 values-based goals. He’d originally set 12 but asked a Quaker friend his opinion on those. The Quaker suggested he add ‘Humility’ as a value, and act accordingly. In his autobiography, Franklin wrote how this was the hardest value/goal to achieve, and he’d frequently failed to achieve anything other than the appearance of humility.

The reason for his failure? The value, and the goal – weren’t his. They were suggested by A.N. Other.

The goals I fail to achieve are the ones I am supposed to want to achieve. They’re the ones espoused by all the coaches in the civilised world – health and fitness. Even when I have achieved them – got to the target weight, trained and run the long distances – I have drifted back to largesse once the goals’ metrics were achieved.

Achieving ‘other peoples’ goals’ is rarely sustainable. (Which means when I see a colleague is ‘delighted’ to have been awarded a career-threatening project, I cringe. I always noted people had to be ‘sent’ to domestic violence units but volunteered for fraud squads.)

That said, if you can genuinely, smilingly and pleasantly commit yourself to achieving that other person’s goal because doing so satisfies your own values, then I happily salute you. While jealous.

So in order to achieve someone else’s goal, you have to find a way to make it your own. Not by force, mind. The connection between values and goal has to be genuine, or it just won’t sit right and get done well, if at all.

Today, try this: See which of your values support – or even undermine – your personal and work goals.

You might find out something that you really need to know.

 

*You have to be British and over 40

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Read three lines, then act accordingly.

22 Friday Nov 2019

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If this post just popped up in some kind of inbox and you were alerted to it, let me suggest that you open the tab and then go back to what you were doing. Read it later, when you have a clear, spare two minutes.

Can you imagine if other people did that? Allowed YOU to decide when to be interrupted?

I have noticed that people are now imitating mobile phones. (Eh?*) When a phone rings, we answer it without thought. We have adapted to the urgency implied by the self-selected, jolly amusing ringtone and, even if we are engaged with someone else, will usually interrupt ourselves and answer it.

Unconsciously, people have now adopted the belief that they are smartphones, and I bet you have experienced the situation where you are chatting to a colleague and someone interrupts – and the conversation sways that way instead of where it was. Absolutely unbelievable and incredibly RUDE.

A wise man speaking as I did a spin session said, “An interruption is something that happens when someone thinks you care.” I like that. It’s a little blunt and it doesn’t apply to all interruptions, of course – but it is funny.

Interruptions – unwelcome interruptions – are those events that interfere in an untimely way with what we are doing that is more important. If an event intercedes with what we’re already engaged in, but the new event is more important, it is NOT an interruption – it is a new priority until it is effectively dealt with, even if that only means arranging the response for a later, better time.

That’s why a firefighter isn’t ‘interrupted’ by a fire alarm – that is their job and their greater priority. And given the aforementioned definition, they care.

But a lot of ‘interruptions’ are lesser priorities, and we need to (a) manage ourselves to have the discipline to negate their impact and (b) teach other smartphone-people that their urgency is not necessarily ours. (In fact, we often need to teach people that their urgency is their fault, but each occurrence has its own characteristics and we can’t generalise. Some such interruptions need our input.)

The proper response to a needless interruption is – “I’m sorry, I can’t deal with that now*, come back at/email me about it.”

I was once asked by a manager how he could prevent unnecessary interruptions. I asked him if he, like many managers in the organisation, routinely left his office door open. He replied that he did.

“Close it when you’re busy,” I suggested. He later provided feedback to the effect that shutting his door when busy was the most effective time-saver he’d ever used.

The key to managing interruptions is to know what your priorities are, plan your time to maximise the impact you have on those priorities, and manage everything else around that plan.

And ensure you communicate that system to those around you. If they know how you manage, they can adapt their needs (priorities, plan, execution) around yours, too. And little fleas have smaller fleas, as they say – the systematic approach to work, properly communicated, cascades downhill until only those interruptions that matter come to your attention.

Which in itself frees up enough of your time to make reading this article the best use of your time – and the best thing you have learned – today.

You’re welcome.

 

*American readers – ‘Eh?’ ‘now’ is UK English for ‘Wait, what?’ and ‘now’ is UK English for ‘Right now’. I am bi-lingual.