Having a morning routine might get you well started on your day, but what happens when something unexpected pops up?
You can have your priorities prioritized and be setting your pomodoros to maximize your minutes, but then something happens… like having a dozen deer in your garden and then just watching them for 30 minutes.
I am still getting used to living out in the forest. Wildlife do make the days feel very special as do the power outages and having a very long driveway to shovel. But I have found that the those interruptions have become some of the best parts of my day.
My past lives spent in cubicles/ open spaces / private offices are not missed at all. Those days were about getting certain things done no matter how many hours it took. I absolutely thought that I loved those days until they finally stopped. Then I realized who I was within those spaces. I had to be focused on company bank balances, client reports and inter-office politics. It was soul sucking stuff.
Scheduling was the way I used to get things done, but now I see tasks differently…
- Parkinson’s Law – tasks expand to fill any amount of time we give them
- Law of Triviality – we spend too much time on tasks that don’t matter
- Procrastination – exists when we don’t find a good enough reason to do a certain task
- Perfectionism – if you try to over-control the outcome of a task, then the process becomes the tragic flaw
- Pareto’s Law – 80% of tasks do not matter…so figure out the 20% that does
Some people want a time based schedule as a way to control their very important and/or urgent tasks list. And being rigid might get things done. But the overly scheduled person I was required to be in order to get those tasks done was someone who was not being true to me.
Being a coach means my days are split between a lot of travel, multiple shooting ranges and competition venues all over the world. Each client needs something different so every day is highly unpredictable. No matter how much time is scheduled, I never know how the session will go because each client seems to come up with something that will interrupt the pre-planned tasks.
At first, these interruptions to the scheduled training plan caused frustration. The coaching skills previously studied never answered all the questions. I realized that I had to change my approach and stop trying to control the task list. I needed to find a new way to approach each session.
When interruptions happen – good or bad – the session has to keep going…
- whatever time exists to do something then something gets done
- whatever gets done matters no matter how small it is
- everything that deserves to be done gets tracked
- stupid stuff is always a waste of time so it does not get done
- if the interruption is awe inspiring then it gets appreciated and tracked as GOLDEN
This ability to adapt in any session has become a much better way for me to coach and to self train. Performers burn out quickly when there is no adaption. It takes solving unexpected problems with a huge amount of creativity in order to keep performers performing. If sessions feel like a fight, then the day will come when either the performer or the coach will choose not to fight those battles anymore.
Interruptions exist. Do not let them become your unsolvable problems. Do not let them become your excuses. Do not stop because something got in your way, took away your momentum or destroyed your special flow.
You can have the perfect power breakfast and pretty colour-blocked schedule and even activate the airplane mode… but then life happens and you need to adapt… even out in the forest.
Kelea Quinn 