Tag Archives: brexit

Is your time style in 2020? Or, better still, 1944?

31 Friday Jan 2020

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Today’s the day! As of 11pm tonight (GMT) the United Kingdom will no longer be part of the EU – sort of – and we will be the masters of our own fate.

And guess what? The Earth and the clocks will continue to turn regardless. They will turn at the same rate that they have done for millions of years (Earth) and since 1511 (clocks – I checked). Yet for some reason, time these days seems to go slower in some cases, and faster in others.

Let me take Slow. In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. War was declared, although a bit of a phony war took place for a while. By the middle of 1940 it was in full swing. By 1942 it was all over the world, and by 1945 it was over. Entire countries recruited, trained, transported, equipped, managed, tended, repatriated and de-militarised in about 4 years. Computers, the internet, robot-based mass production – none of those existed, yet when it had to be done, it was done in the same 24-hours-a-day we have in 2020.

We are told that negotiating a treaty with the EU will take 10 years. With ALL the aforementioned infrastructure.

Now, Fast. When I was young I recall that a programme timed to last an hour, nearly did. Now a programme that lasts an hour on commercial TV takes just 43 minutes when streamed. Yes, you can save 17 minutes an hour by NOT watching adverts. A trip to London took 4-5 hours, now it’s about three – two and a bit if there’s no traffic. Buying unusual stuff took planning – now it’s at your door in 24 hours or less.

Same. Time. Available.

Which raises the question, when you say you haven’t got time to do something, are you in 2020 or 1944? In 1944 they must have had looooaaaaddddssss of time because they created and executed so much. In 2020 everyone is in a rush to achieve bu66er all.

Truth be told, when we say to someone we don’t have time we are usually lying. Not always, because if you genuinely don’t have time for something asked of you, you should, if telling the truth, be able to state exactly what it is that’s stopping you, and why.

If you can’t state that, then what you are really saying is, “I don’t think that what you want is important enough to me to justify my taking part.”

Why not just honestly, sincerely and where necessary apologetically, say, “No”? It’s not against the law.

It’s because we don’t like confrontation and we perceive that a simple No will invite comment, usually negative. I don’t think it’s because we don’t like to offend – Twitter suggests that offending is all most of us want to do. But it might be. 😊

Next time someone asks you to do something that might slightly delay or divert you but which would, in all honesty, allow you to provide a small service that really isn’t that inconvenient, just say, “Yes.” It’ll surprise a lot of people, mind, so use it sparingly.

If you genuinely cannot, respectfully decline and explain why.

In time, you’ll find people only ask you to do important things. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you become effective.

Have a great weekend.

Where ARE you?

17 Tuesday Dec 2019

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Taken from the book Police Time Management, by me.

 “We need a sense of vision of we are to get something worth having. We need to have a goal or goals towards which we can strive. But in order to know where we are going, we also sometimes need to know where we are.

I remember many years ago when I was driving “The Big Van” in support of officers anticipating the usual weekend public disorder in what was euphemistically referred to (in those days) as a Cowboy Town. The Big Van would drive around the extended Division, crewed by two divisional officers whose remit was to attend any disorder in support of local officers. This involved the van being staffed by officers from different town sections so that we could safely be expected to know the expanded area which we were expected to patrol.

One night, my partner and I stopped in what was ‘his’ patch, and a young lad walked up to the open window on the driver’s side, apparently to ask my driving partner for directions. No sooner had my partner started to provide advice on how the lad could get to his stated destination than the said lad knocked my partner’s hat off and ran away. Naturally my partner pursued him, alighting from our Van in order to do so. And equally naturally, they ran the way we had just come so I could not simply follow in the van.

I scooted over into the driving seat, laboriously turned the van and drove in the direction they had run, driving around a roundabout in order to do so. Then the call came that my partner had apprehended his prey and a struggle was taking place. He named the street he was in – which was familiar to him but not, as luck would have it, to me. He’d run after the lad in ‘his’ town leaving the officer from abroad (me) in the van.

I called for directions and was told by a control room operator to ‘go to the roundabout and take the second exit’. I started driving back towards the roundabout, and it was only as I arrived at that hazard that I realised that the person who’d given me the directions hadn’t a clue where I was because I hadn’t told him – so how could he possibly have known which exit I had to take? In order to accurately get me to the required destination, he should first have asked me where I was. (Which may have explained my accident with a taxi, but that’s another story.)

This is true in all journeys from where you are to where you want to be, both physical and metaphorical. If I want something, I need to know how to go about it, and I need to know what skills, knowledge and interest I have NOW that may need to be complemented if I am to achieve my desired result.

If I want to lose weight, I need to know how much I weigh NOW so that I can identify how much I have to lose, how I should lose it, and how I am progressing as time passes. I may also need to know why I am the weight I am so that I don’t repeat the mistakes that got me overweight in the first place. I need to look at what has led to NOW so that I can discover my route to the outcome sought.

In other words, in order to get to where I want to be, I have to take a moment to ascertain exactly where I am in order to deduce the route I need to take. The same applies in all areas of life, personal and professional.”

 

Take a moment to identify where you are now in terms of where it is you are going – you might find out you need to change direction if you’re going to get there.

Team Time Management. Easy.

24 Thursday Oct 2019

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We still use the term ‘time management’ even though we all know you can’t manage it. It’s accepted that we don’t have enough time, but we have all there is, as Alec. R. McKenzie wrote.

The truth is that we don’t manage it – we manage ourselves in the context of time available and the people with and through whom we create results. Which makes it a little bit odd that the average time management book doesn’t really address time management for teams.

My favourite ‘AHA!’ moment was when I discovered, for myself, that everything we do we do with, for, or as a result of someone else. Which means that to all intents and purposes, there is only team time management, not personal time management. We rely on the latter term and methodology because it is easier to learn and easier to apply, whereas team time management is halfway to a nightmare.

Getting other people to fall in with our plans is occasionally the biggest challenge to our own results. So why try?

The simple answer is – we have to, for the reason outlined in ‘;my’ discovery. I repeat – everything we do we do with, for, or as a result of someone else. Everything.

Try and think of anything that doesn’t. And before you think “I’ve got one!”, remember that any infrastructure, equipment, location, tool or other resource is the result of ‘someone else’ either designing, supplying, selling, building or lending you something, or even merely opening the doors to somewhere you’re using to help you achieve your outcome.

They influence your time use.

You may not realise it, but when you make appointments you are already executing on team time management. You have liaised (even if through a computer) with another party to make sure that your combined interests are executed upon at the same time.

But we rarely do that outside an ‘appointment’ system. We turn up for work and make phone calls expecting an immediate response. We even expect immediate responses to emails and texts, which is a societal silliness if ever I saw one. “I plan to MAKE my calls between 0815 and 0900, so all other people must plan to TAKE phone calls in that same period.” But life isn’t like that.

(As an aside, I am also extremely amused when people have 20 minute text conversations that would have taken 30 seconds in a phone call. Do YOU do that?)

The simple truth is that managing teams’ time can be quite hard. But it doesn’t have to be.

Team time management is easiest within a close kit, geographically convenient situation. People can talk and arrange their plan for the day around each other, but that requires one pre-condition.

You have to know what your goals are, as do your colleagues.

Once that is done, planning a day around each others’ needs is easy. If you have no idea, the day is spent changing priorities, interrupting each other, rejigging plans and procrastinating.

Inter-departmental team time management is slightly more complicated but, looked at logically, not much. Again, the pre-requisite is having a knowledge of what our department’s objectives are, but then designing a communications strategy whereby a time and method is created which allows the separate units to help each other in achieving those objectives. Police call them daily briefings, hold them at a certain time of day (usually), and hold them about 30 minutes after the start of the day to allow attendees to identify their objectives for the day so that they can communicate them to those other people/teams/resources.

One thing is essential, however.

Once the teams have had that meeting and designed their day, leave them the hell alone to get on with it.

Otherwise you completely undermine the effectiveness of the process, the morale and involvement of the team members, and the ultimate success of the plan.

In conclusion, then – plan your tie with an awareness that there are people absent that your plans will have an effect upon; then involve those others in a spirit of co-operation, utilising a systematic approach for the necessary communication required.

Already doing that? Look again at your system and see if it can be improved – involve the other teams in that conversation, try the results for a month and then have an inter-team review of what’s working and what isn’t.

That will ‘save’ time. Hionest.

If only Stephen Covey had been available in 2016.

11 Friday Oct 2019

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In his great book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, Covey split the Habits into three areas. The first and third were very personal and I shan’t repeat them here, but Habits 4, 5 and 6 covered the way we work with others once we have (in Habits 1-3) mastered ourselves.

The Habits were:

Habit 4 – Think Win-Win.

Habit 5 – Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood.

Habit 6 – Synergise.

For this article, I’ll focus on 4 and 5.

In 2016, the British electorate shocked the establishment and, much to their shock and chagrin, decided to leave the European Union. What happened next is still causing problems three and a half years later and is the direct result of a failure to execute on those Habits.

First of all, and bear in mind this is my take on things and you can juggle around your own interpretations, the two sides went into Win-Lose and Lose-Win. The EU decided (and have been caught saying out loud) that Britain must be punished for deciding to leave. The UK, in the form of a Remain-biased Cabinet, decided they should bend over backwards to avoid further offending their future pension pots neighbours. The result was an agreement, hated by most, that meant the UK ‘pretended’ it had left, while subserviently making itself subject to all EU rules without having any say in how they were formed.

Secondly, then PM Teresa May failed to seek to understand that as all parties were responsible and accountable to the electorate that had decided to leave, she should have started a cross-party consultation in order to achieve that end. In failing to do that she alienated practically everyone.

At the same time, perhaps the EU could have considered this as an opportunistic challenge, rather than as a punitive exercise, and started the negotiations with that approach.

In other words – if both sides had approached the exercise with an attitude of ‘what can we do about this that brings the best of everything to both partners’ then perhaps we’d all be less combative about the whole thing. But that required Statesmanship of the type not clearly seen since Churchill, and that’s no longer evident, anywhere.

But here’s an additional thought. In Think Win-Win, Covey – an expert with no political objective – opined that one option, one that takes more courage even than Win-Win, is

Win-Win or No Deal.

In other words, if we can’t agree, let’s agree to disagree, agreeably. And then have No Deal, after which, as we both identify what does and doesn’t work for both of us, we can slowly come back to the table with a still friendly, open-minded, constructive attitude borne of the desire to be better, again. No Deal isn’t a weapon to be used as a threat. It is a position that recognises there are challenges, and that if both sides can’t meet that challenge in a way that suits both, to not do the deal.

If the EU/UK had done that, perhaps we would have gone, sooner, to WTO rules, be well on the way to a new, better, respectful and synergistic trade deal that is still as far away from being agreed as it was in June 2016

President Clinton used Covey for counsel, as did many other heads of state. Many leaders have read the Seven Habits and yet still fail to consider just how useful it is in dealing with ‘life’.

I think this stuff ought to be taught in MP/MEP School……..

It’s good to be back.

Aristotle – as true in 2018 as in 364BC.

30 Saturday Jun 2018

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“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.” Aristotle

Izzatso? Was Aristotle right and, even if he was in ancient Greece, would he be right now?

I think so, and this is why – let’s look at each and consider an example that illustrates how sound his thinking was. (Although I am surprised he said it in English as it predates that language by hundreds of years.)

Chance: does anything happen that arises unexpectedly and gives rise to a response? Do events occur that no-one anticipated? One word: Brexit. ‘Nuff said. This is something that even the most devout EU-phobes would never have thought would occur, but now the Remainers who thought the same bitch about the Government’s failure to have a plan ready in advance. Heigh-ho.

Nature: if you accept that nature can pre-determine behaviour, you have to acknowledge that nature can pre-empt response. It isn’t obligatory, of course, because the next cause is the counter of this one.

Reason: something happens, and we approach it from the perspective of curiosity allied to logic – this has happened, so what can we do about it?

Compulsions: ask any addict.

Habit: how often have you been driving from A to C for a change, and found yourself heading to B like always?

Desire: you want it so you get it. This happens consciously as in having a plan that needs execution, but it also happens psychologically when you see/hear something and conclude it has a meaning that suits your viewpoint. For example, you conclude that anything Trump does is bad, even if it isn’t.

Passion: this happens when you have created a vested self-interest in an outcome and you pursue it single-mindedly.

Applied to ‘life’, we can see:

Shopping – desire, habit. Driving – habit, desire, passion (okay, maybe just me). Getting angry – nature, passion, chance. Maths exam – reason.

You know it makes sense: there are certain principles behind human behaviour that dictate our response. If we let them.

I say ‘if we let them’ because although there may only be 7 causes for action, we can use any of the 7 causes to precede our actions and are not obliged to use the one that involved no consideration at all. That is the essence of proactivity – turning ‘I have to do this because (cause)’ into ‘I am going to do this because I choose (cause)’.

I did that once with a b411-aching job, where I turned a habitual response of ‘this will be tedium’ into a passionate response of ‘how much of this can I get done to the point it will be a spectacular result’. It worked for that day, at least.

Study your own life – how many of your actions have been influenced by Aristotles’ causes? All, some, or none? I’m guessing all.

And where you think you need to – can you identify a better ’cause’, one that serves your purpose rather than obstructs your success? It may take discipline to execute on your new ’cause’, but it’ll be worth it in terms of self-esteem when you realise you control life, and it doesn’t control you.

Politicians – read and learn.

26 Friday Jan 2018

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The annoying things about politics and politicians.

They never apologise. Do you know why that is? It’s because other politicians don’t understand gratitude or humility in victory.

For example, party A has a policy, and a policy is usually well considered by many before it is announced. Party B decries it and demands changes.

Now, for all the best will in the world, there will be factors Party A didn’t consider because of a lack of omnipotence, and there will be factors they considered because of their value structure. (That is, the right tends to promote personal responsibility and conservation of what is, while the left tends to promote societal responsibility and want constant change in that direction.)

With that in mind, something comes to light or an alternative viewpoint is acknowledged and accepted, and Party A adapts the plan. Immediately, Party B rips into them for ‘U-Turns’ and ‘lack of leadership’ and ‘strife within the party’ and all that cobblers.

Try managing with that over your head. It is exactly like you making an honest mistake at work, apologising, and then being punished, attacked, demotes, moved, etc., despite correcting your error.

So instead of apologising, you try to justify yourself. Like any political party.

They don’t tell the truth. Occasionally, they do lie. (See above.) But one thing I learned from a lawyer years ago is that professional ethics occasionally mean they have to take a certain line – in the lawyer’s case I discovered that if a client tells them ‘I did it, get me off’ then they cannot sit there and listen to them lie. They have to go no comment. When I learned that I changed my approach from “solicitors are gits” to “No comment, eh? I must be on to something!”

 It is fair to say that senior politicians are privy to secrets and confidences, just like us. And just like us, when asked about them, they have to avoid answering ‘correctly’. Which means avoiding the question or using another tactic. Bear in mind that even the answer, “I can’t tell you that, it’s an official secret” breaches the Official Secrets Act as it (usually) confirms a presupposition in the question asked.

Occasionally, they don’t know the answer. Of course, ‘we’ know everything and expect the same of them. When they say ‘I don’t know’, the ‘examiner’ with the answer in front of them attacks them for not knowing that random statistic. Then the press joins in. Now, if the subject of the interview is clear and it is an obvious question, the politician should have prepared. But surprise questions with stats held by the interviewer shouldn’t be abused by the press. Anyway, they aren’t allowed to not know the answer, so they avoid giving one, which looks like avoidance of a truth.

They waffle. It’s often quite funny watching this. A question is asked, and it is immediately answered with ‘Let me clear (about something else)’, or ‘The reality is (party political broadcast)’ or ‘The real question is (combination of both)’.

 Nobody likes to answer uncomfortable questions, least of all us. Politicians are made up of ‘us’ but with the added expectation that they ‘must’ be transparent. Give them some slack and know when they are uncomfortable. They don’t want to offend the voters, even while offending the Opposition.

They have no manners. To my mind, there seems to be a complete – and ineffective – lack of manners when it comes to politicians and political interviewers. Interviewer asks a question, and as the interviewee draws breath they start attacking the answer not yet given, or the ‘opposing’ guest butts in. How wonderful it was to see Jacob Rees-Mogg and Vince Cable debate Brexit politely and intelligently without interrupting each other.

You can’t challenge a viewpoint or opinion effectively without listening to it, considering it, and seeing the holes. The ‘loudest shouter’ isn’t necessarily right. Make notes, wait yur turn, and then state your views. They are a lot easier to hear when you’re not arguing over each other.

What has all of this got to do with The Three Resolutions?

The Second Resolution argues for Character and Competence. For politicians, the spin doctors have invented a new competence – political avoidance, with training provided. (I find that non-pointing fist thing annoyingly inane, most of all.) Every statement must be slapped down and ridiculed by the opposing party, even when their own point of view is equally unclear through the same prevarication, avoidance or opinion. ‘The end justifies the means’, they say: but this means attacking the ‘enemy’ for doing what you would do yourself, but in the belief that their motives are evil while yours are good. Your ‘bad’ means are done for good ends, while their ‘bad’ means are done for ‘evil’.

Poppy-llocks.

What I would welcome is an improvement in the Character Ethic of the politicians and the media. Ask open questions, listen to answers quietly and respectfully, and then challenge in an appropriate tone and with considered responses where necessary. Acknowledge and respect the willingness or reluctance of the interviewee to provide answers and see things from their perspective, even if just at first. Just like Jac and Vic. Let your intellect say what your emotional outbursts actually obscure.

As a police officer, I was expected to do that when dealing with rapists and murderers. Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians and newsreaders gave the same respect to each other that I was expected to provide to the worst in society?

Let people change their minds; let them have secrets but let them say why it is a secret; interview them politely and challenge waffle – let them say ‘I don’t know, and I’ll find out’. It’s supposed to be about discovering the facts, not necessarily about finding them out in a convenient TV slot.

Let politicians rediscover Character as an ethical approach to politics, instead of perpetuating the ethic of Personality, where looking good is more important than being good.

Attendance is optional, productivity is not.

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

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Larry Winget, American motivator-with-attitude, says in the introduction to his book, “It’s Called Work for a Reason!”,

“Bye honey, I’m off to work!”

Oh, bull! You aren’t going to work at all. You are going to the place that isn’t home, where you have to dress a little better than you do around the house. You are going to a place that is full of other people who also just lied to their significant others. You are all liars – you AND those people you say you work with. You say you are co-workers, when the truth is you’re only co-goers.”

I admit I chuckled a bit at that. I am in an envious position where I can manage my workload and, getting it done quickly with (slightly imperfect) time management expertise, I have more down time than most. I try to do an excellent job, but am most challenged when I, like you, are trying to do an excellent job when another expectation-of-an-excellent-job rolls up, closely followed by more. It’s hardly surprising that we want a quiet 10 minutes to prepare for more work.

But Larry does have a point. We are paid to do more than turn up, we are (as my first employer actually told us on an induction course) to put in a good hard day and go home pleasantly tired. Unfortunately, the world has changed and that is now harder to do.

I’m not talking about back-breaking manual labour, even though that is ever-so-slightly less back-breaking than even it was.

The world has changed in that our ability to focus on ‘work’ has been severely compromised by our inability to focus properly on anything! Mobile phones pinging, bleeping, ringing or just being in view mean we MUST check them several times an hour – even if only to see why we HAVEN’T heard a ping or a bleep or a ring. Downtime also excuses a quick Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/WhatsApp session, doesn’t it?

Perhaps this is why we are now providing courses on ‘How to manage millennials’, a concept that confirms surrender to the ‘me’ generation, rather than suggesting, firmly but politely, that they are being paid to benefit the employer, they CAN be replaced if they don’t work hard enough, and the sun does NOT shine out of their baby-smooth bottoms.

You are paid to work, to produce.

Now, a slight counter-proposition, too. If you are not paid ‘just to be there’ as I suggest, then IF your productivity is good/excellent, IF your standards are high, and IF you can be seen to be a worker, THEN liberties can be given and taken.  I recall an amusing story about a CEO who wanted a manager to have a word with an employee who turned up at 8AM, but went home at 12 noon and played golf all afternoon. After some enquiry, the manager told the CEO, “He’s the most productive employee you have! Get him to teach everyone else how to do that and we’ll be rolling in it!”

Work is measured by RESULTS, not merely PRESENCE. But if you can produce the first through maximising the use of the latter without burning out, your job will be safe. Wherever you work.

 

100-Day Challenge, Day 27. Talk -or read – yourself into success.

27 Thursday Jul 2017

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I have never really been all that enthusiastic about affirmations, those sentences one states (ideally out loud) to oneself that are intended to reinforce the cognitive integrity between what we say to ourselves and how we behave. Not that I don’t believe that what we say to us influences us, but the woowaah suggestion that doing so out loud makes any difference. Until this week.

Until last week, I had got into the habit of reading my PMS daily – it was on my to-do list and the brevity of time it took, allied to the simplicity of the particular to-do, meant it was an easy ‘tick-off’ in my planner. I didn’t shout out loud (partly because I was in an office full of personal development sceptics, aka ‘detectives’), but I did focus on the reading. And for the couple of weeks I did that I lost weight, produced, and lived according to said PMS.

This week, I did not. I allowed myself to believe that I had, by now, ‘got it’ and didn’t need to read it any more. This was the week I didn’t exercise, ate too much (and it doesn’t take ‘too much’ to stop weight loss, I assure you), and didn’t study for my forthcoming test as well as I could have.

In other words, my failure to read my PMS influenced – well, my failures.

So it is back in the planner and will be read daily this week. And I respect affirmations a little bit more than I used to. And to be frank, if they are good enough for Stephen Covey, then they are certainly good enough for me.

Now, dear sceptics – you may think this silly. Now ask Lewis Hamilton, Tiger Woods, many premiership footballers, and copious other successes who you’ve SEEN talking to themselves or meditating with closed eyes just before they perform, what they are doing. And if it is good enough for the successful – why isn’t it good enough for YOU?

Values-based Time Management Means Achieving the BEST Goals.

19 Sunday Feb 2017

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“If a goal isn’t connected to a deep ‘why,’ it may be good but it usually isn’t best.” Stephen Covey

I hereby truly and solemnly declare and affirm that I want to run a marathon.

That is a true statement. Deep down I want to be able to say that I ran a marathon, that I did it in less than 4 hours, and here’s my medal on display in the cabinet with my bronze swimming certificate.*

Yes, as far as running a marathon is concerned, I really want to run one. But I am not prepared to make the effort.

The reason I am not prepared to is because such a goal is often a dream that is planted by the achievements of others, by a desire to demonstrate a high level of physical fitness when such a level is not necessary for achievement of any of my other goals, and ultimately by ego – I want to brag about it.

Let me emphasise – they would be MY motives, and if you want to do a marathon for truly personal, deeply emotional reasons you go ahead and do it, and good luck. I am not here to tread on your dreams.

The point I am making is that achieving someone else’s goals, or seeking achievement for reasons of ego, probably won’t result in the deep happiness that comes from achievement pursued for truly personal, deeply impassioned motives. On the other hand, if achieving those goals is a means to a better end and not ends in themselves, the passion for those longer-term outcomes will help you achieve the smaller steps on the road to that greater success, the success you really seek. And let’s face it, you’ll be fitter and better able to enjoy that success (provided you haven’t crocked yourself in the process). And the greater success will be the one that serves your values system.

Seeing the goal as something which serves your values is the essence of values-based time management. Selecting a goal that doesn’t dovetail your values system is futile – you won’t do it, or you will detest every moment spent in striving for it, and UN-happiness is not a normal pursuit, is it? (Masochists excepted.)

I suspect that a 10k running ability is ample for most of us who don’t enjoy sport for sport’s sake. If you can run 6 miles in an hour and have a sensible diet you’ll be fit enough for most professions. If you want to get fit enough to achieve your other goals, decide on a sensible level of fitness, pursue that, and spend the rest of the time on the actual objective.

Spend as much of your time as you can on getting the result you seek, and a sensible-but-lesser proportion of time on the ‘side-issues’ that serve that objective. Plan your time so that you maximise the likelihood of achieving the (your) Main Thing, without spending too much time on achieving side-goals that will serve the greater objective but aren’t goals in themselves.

It’s a fine balancing act and using a suitable, personal planning system will help. In that, you put your Mission and Goals to the fore, and plan to spend as much of your time not on ‘shoulds’ or ‘coulds’, but on MUSTS. The other two can be fitted in around them.

And be careful that those ‘shoulds’ and ‘coulds’ don’t become excuses for procrastination! (Next week’s subject.)

*I don’t have one of those, either. I am not a fish and if I am going two miles on water, I know people with boats.

 

For more on Values-Based Time Management, go here, or go to the Books page on this site

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Don’t learn TOO much. Find ‘The Way’ that works, then ignore alternatives.

12 Sunday Feb 2017

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I attended a talk last Monday by an excellent speaker, Jamie Denyer, whose presentation included a sobering observation. Once I got past his odd clothing choice – a bit hip-hop for a grandfather living in Swansea – I really enjoyed all of his talk, except that sobering bit. The sobering bit thrown right at me, personally. At least, I thought it was personal. I thought it was personal because the cap did fit and I had to wear it.

He described the individual who buys a personal development book, avidly reads it to the last page, then puts it down and “waits for the magic to work.” Then, when it doesn’t work because they aren’t applying it in a disciplined fashion they go out and buy the next one – and repeat. Then they repeat ad nauseum. He said that this is referred to in the trade as ‘shelf-development’, in that your book shelf gets fitter by holding up all your books.

Ouch. You should see my collection.

When I give talks on self-leadership (yes, fraudulently to some degree), one of the things I tell people is this.

  1. Choose your self-help book carefully. (I recommend The 7 Habits or Awaken the Giant Within, plus a couple of good time management books.)
  2. Apply the content religiously and don’t buy any other book!

There is a personal reason that I do this. I will sit there and read one of my books. I will then think, “This is the system I will now apply.” I will then see another book, listen to another trainer, see a new form, or just have something come to mind when I am walking the dog, and I start to think about how I will apply that instead of what I was already (supposedly) doing. As a result, instead of ‘doing’ I am perpetually ‘thinking about doing’.

The daft thing is – and Stephen Covey wrote about this in The 8th Habit – they are all saying the same thing.

  • They ALL say that taking responsibility for our thoughts is the key to a directed, patient, principled life.
  • They ALL say that having goals and a sense of direction towards a passion is key to a successful life.
  • They ALL say that relationships are important.
  • They ALL say that looking after your body enables success in the former three endeavours.

BUT they all have subtly nuanced alternatives to how to apply the philosophy to the discovery of a purpose and how to define goals.

I have suggested before that success is created by application of self to a simple philosophy.

  1. Know what you want.
  2. Manage your time accordingly.
  3. Communicate with clarity – in and out.

After that, it’s all about method, system and practices. For me, I always come back to Covey’s template because I understand it so well, teach it in schools, and absolutely believe in the systematic approach and principled teaching that it is. You could choose Canfield’s, Robbins’, Ziglars, Hobbs – whoever you like.

But just pick one. It leaves the mind clear for the important stuff. Then apply it with discipline.