New Term, New Techniques

I have been away for the last couple of weeks for a holiday in Italy. Now as September gets into full stride, schools are starting up again, universities will be underway soon too. The roads will fill with traffic again and from space we will all look like we are rushing around again. How much of this frantic activity has real focus and purpose?

Usually it takes me a few days or even a week or more to clear away the email backlogs and get to grips with things again. As a result, my productivity dips until I am back on top of things. This time it doesn’t feel like that.

Perhaps this is because I have learnt in recent years not to switch off entirely. So, I do keep an eye on the email stream and delete all the junk as it appears, dealing with the urgent things when they appear too. This requires self-discipline – but it can result in a more relaxed holiday as there is no fear of the unknown lurking in the in-tray. And there is a much smoother transition on return to work.

It may also be because I am much clearer what I am trying to do – over recent months I have worked hard to create a real focus on the key objectives and stick to them. There is always room for bright shiny things to distract me if they look like they will be too good to miss. But focus is becoming the real key to getting things done.

Amongst the techniques that I am using to get this focus is the 100 Question exercise developed by Michael Gelb. I use this to open up my thinking and then from that I generate key things I want to achieve in a 3 month period. Regularly looking at these key things enables the unconscious mind to keep working on them. It’s always a surprise to sit down and look at the list and find that I have made real progress even on things that I thought I had forgotten.

So, nothing startlingly new here – but the real focus on objectives enables me to shift gear up and down between holiday periods and work periods without the usual problems.