Supercoach - Michael Neill [45]
When you’re willing to consistently not do what you don’t want to do, you may find yourself:
• Doing less but accomplishing more
• Spending more time with fewer people
• Burning more brightly without burning out
This is the discipline of trusting yourself—of consistently choosing your inner knowing over outer knowledge. It’s the discipline that keeps your kids from drinking or doing drugs even though their “friends” are telling them how cool it is, and that keeps you from jumping into business (or into bed) with the project or person who looks right but feels wrong.
In fact, in Marcus Buckingham’s recent study of people who had made a consistent positive contribution to their fields over a period of at least 20 years, the popular management consultant and best-selling author discovered that the one common element underlying their sustained personal success was this:
They figured out what they didn’t
like doing and stopped doing it.
I remember one journalist confronting me about this during an interview.
“It was my boyfriend’s birthday last night,” she began. “I didn’t want to go out for the evening, but I knew he’d be really mad at me if I didn’t. Are you saying I shouldn’t have gone? He would have had a fit!”
I smiled at her earnestness. “Perhaps,” I suggested as gently as I could, “you could begin by not doing the things you don’t want to do that no one else really cares about. Sometimes it’s easier when you’re the only one who knows. Besides, have you ever really regretted not doing something you didn’t want to do in the first place?”
While she did acknowledge the commonsense nature of my reply, there are a couple of things my clients and I have learned that make it easier to not do what you don’t want to do:
1. Need less. So many of us have learned to motivate ourselves through our apparent needs. The idea that “neediness” is a more powerful motivating force than inspiration is rife in our cultural mythology. In fact, many of us have spent so many years motivating ourselves through our apparent needs that being “needy” almost feels normal. But if you want to experiment with a simpler, happier way of going for, getting, and having what you want, begin by examining how many of your “needs” are simply things you want and have promised yourself to feel bad about if you don’t get.
2. Love more. While I’m not a gardener, I’ve been told on many occasions that if you pull up weeds but don’t fill your garden with flowers, the weeds will come back. In a similar way, if you develop the discipline of not doing what you don’t want to do without simultaneously doing more of what you love, you may find the same unsavory choices continuing to fill your action menu.
When you’re doing what you love (and loving what you do), you’ll naturally tend to engage in each of the main time-management strategies currently being touted in the marketplace:
• You’ll say no to most things (because you’re already doing what you love).
• You’ll schedule your day (because otherwise you’d work all 24 hours).
• You’ll gladly sacrifice a bit of efficiency (for the joy of getting to indulge in your passion).
• You’ll get help with the stuff you don’t love (so you can spend more time with what you do).
• You’ll do one thing at a time (because it’s so wonderful for you to take the time to do it).
Loving What You Do!
If you’re not already doing what you love, choose a mundane task (washing dishes, watering plants, or something similar) and practice loving doing it.
Just as an experiment, do the task with energy and enthusiasm—as if it’s the most wonderful and important thing in the world!
The Last Word on Time Management
The best time-management systems, or so it’s always seemed to me, are the ones that take