How To Reinvigorate Your Work

We can kid ourselves that the problem is 'other people'. We think we would be more productive, more organised and more satisfied without them. We would be able to get all the important things done without the many distractions they cause. It is certainly true that we need to be flexible enough to accommodate other working styles and to communicate with people different to us. Yet we do have a responsibility to ourselves to honour what we believe is really important - our true agenda. Blaming other people is a way of ignoring this responsibility. If this true agenda gets hidden away, we can be very busy without being consciously aware of what has happened. Instead we might feel vague uneasiness, tension or dissatisfaction without knowing why. On the other hand, if we are aware that our true agenda is on hold, we tell ourselves that we will return to it when we have finished everything else. This approach does not work because we never completely finish 'everything else'. Balance is critical here, just as it is critical in the natural world. Our physical body moves by dynamic balance: tension in some muscles alternating with relaxation in others. We need a certain balance of sugar in the blood to function but too much sugar will kill us. More broadly, balance is essential in how we spend our finite personal resources: our time and energy (and money) are not unlimited. At this point we need to be wary of the commitments we make. Commitment is what makes the difference between intention and action. It transforms the mental activity of creation into living reality. Yet committing to one thing inevitably excludes others, so it is wise to choose carefully. How often do you say 'No'? Here's a practical strategy to apply these principles: 1. Create a list of what you think is really important. This can be single words or phrases, general or specific. Spend as much time as you need to create a list that covers all that is important. Here are some other questions that may help you: What do you care about? What do you really want? What makes life worth living? What makes you frustrated or angry? What is it you can't live with? What principles are being violated? When you have finished, keep your list in a safe place. This is the essence of your true agenda. 2. Against each item on the list put a value between 1 and 10 to indicate how much you currently honour it with your own resources (time, energy, money) 3. Review the list, particularly noting the items with the lower scores. Choose one item (or more if you like) where you want to increase your resources spent on it. What do you want to achieve by doing this? 4. Make a commitment to balance this increase in resources (time, energy, money) by trimming a less important area (preferably one that is not on your list at all!). Give this commitment a time frame and a review date so you can check the balance again then. You can return to your list anytime you like and repeat steps 3 and 4. As you regain your true agenda, watch what happens to your motivation. Copyright (c) 2008 Trevor Hill