Don’t put it in the trunk and take it on a road trip with you.
Don’t let it ride shotgun and for sure, don’t let it drive.
Welcome to another year of working. If that thought didn’t make you leap out of your chair in delight, you’re not alone. For knowledge workers and pretty much everyone else too, overwhelm, constant distraction, workload and navigating around coworkers seems to suck the joy right out of our work.
What is a poor IT dude to do? We can google time management, find a productivity system, look for an internet guru – hello, nice to meet you – or just throw the covers over our heads and listen to that inner voice that tells us to forget it, we’ve done it all before and it – never – works.
That, my friends, is past- based thinking and it was helpful for cavemen but it’s not serving you now.
Past failures don’t mean you’ll fail tomorrow – unless you’re telling yourself they do. Our brains are geared to seek out stuff…like berries, water, predators, tools, solutions and confirmation. So if you’re telling yourself you’ll probably fail at your new year’s resolution, your magnificent brain is going to get busy confirming that awesome understanding of the world.
Too bad, because that’s faulty logic you got there. If we could only do what we’ve done before, none of us would ever even have a job. We wouldn’t find housing, we wouldn’t learn to drive or improve ourselves. We wouldn’t invent things, like cars, geothermal systems or social media. But we do. Humans do that marvelous magic all the time.
Humans find ways to change the world and themselves all the time. Good thing you’re human, huh? Why aren’t you telling yourself that? Tell yourself you’re human. You fail forward. It’s the human condition and it’s the most awe-inspiring thing ever.
Write that New Year’s Resolution
Don’t be wimpy about it. Don’t play it safe. Safe from what? Failure? Who cares? Not being willing to try is exactly the same as failing but it’s way less likely to succeed.
Did I lose you there? Failure is the fastest way forward. You learn what doesn’t work. The critical piece is to be willing to fail, not quit, fail – again and again. Here’s something else cool to know: no matter what your goal is, it will help you with work. Just trust me on that one for now. What your goal is? Not so important. What’s important, is to have one. Be bold.
Drop that past based thinking and start over. Start today. Ask yourself,what is the one thing that would be fantabulously magical to have done this year? Let your mighty brain work on a solution to THAT.
Here’s another suggestion: ask your brain what you actually do like about your current work. How can you do more of that this year?
But what about February? Whose gonna love you then?
I’m not going to give you a bunch of tactics for managing work or achieving goals.
There are thousands of people out there who can help you with tactics and, ok, maybe I’ll give you some links to my favorites, but where are they when your motivation flags and you fall back into your old, dull, stressful and frustrating routine? I’ll tell you where… they’re dreaming up new tactics.
When the novelty of your resolution starts to wane, and your old patterns come up, and they will, how are you going to break away? What you need is to understand why you’re back where you started and how to break the cycle. The answer isn’t not setting goals. The solution isn’t another system. The key is to understand that this is normal, why it’s normal, and why it’s not permanent. The key is to change the way you’re thinking.
You’ve heard that before, right? Here’s the news – I know how. Someone taught me and I can teach you. I’m going to spend a year of Mondays doing it… right here… on line… for free.
You’re welcome.