Time for Spring Cleaning… Your Mind!

The leaves are on the trees and the flowers are blooming.  Spring is here and for many people, its time to shake out the cobwebs of winter and do some spring cleaning.  Opening up the windows and washing things down is a great way to get your house in order after being closed up tight for the winter.  But your brain needs to do the same thing!

How many times have you passed through a room in your house and said to yourself “Man, I need to do something about that” – whatever “that” is. But you don’t do anything about it – just keep saying that to yourself.  Now is the time to get it out of your head and into your system.  It will free your mind to enjoy the flowers and the birds or whatever you enjoy most about this time of year.

So do your mind a favor and do a Clean Sweep.  Go through each room of your house and write down anything that needs your attention. Don’t forget the outside too.  Fix this, throw away that, change out the other thing… Get it all down and out of your head. Put it in your system and determine whether what you’ve wrote is the next action you need in order to complete that item. For example, I have a shed that I need to complete the electrical wiring in.  Is that it – just complete the wiring?  No.  I need to determine what materials I need and whether I have them on-hand.  If not, I have an errand to complete to purchase those materials.  THEN I can complete the wiring and consider the job done. Always think it through and boil it down to next actions – you’ll do a lot less of what I call “pass-overs” where you look at something and say “nope, can’t do that now” if you’ve distilled it down to Next Actions.  And don’t forget your categories too!

Happy Spring.

Does A Job Give Meaning To Life?

I have stumbled upon this concept many times in my travels along the tubes of the Internet. Does a job give life meaning?  And/or does a job control your happiness? 

At first glance, people may think that there is an obvious connection between a person’s job satisfaction (do they like their job, etc.) and their overall happiness.  After all, you spend more of your waking hours at work than anywhere else.  It would stand to reason then there is a connection, right? According to the Brazen Careerist, (A job does not give life meaning » Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk ), one doesn’t really have anything to do with the other.  This web site has some very interesting and thought provoking articles that I would encourage you to read at your leisure.

In my mind, the trick to the whole thing is that you really need to mentally un-hook your personal self from your job.  There have been many times when I’ve wanted to quit my job. Wasn’t “happy”, didn’t like my boss, etc. And it often bled over into my personal life (kick-the-dog syndrome). Penelope’s opinion is only YOU can make you happy and its a when given lemons, make lemonade situation.

This also feed into the Attraction Principle, upon which the hit movie and book “The Secret” is based.  When you’re unhappy and negative, you attract “bad” things.  When you’re upbeat and positive, “good” things come to you.  Your happiness is up to you.  The ball is in your court – are you going to play ball or sit on the sidelines and mope?

Have All You Need To Get The Job Done

Back on April 20th, I talked about Contexts and being able to determine what can be done based on your particular circumstance of the moment. (http://richtech.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/make-your…) Being able to filter down to what you can do in the moment really amps up your list from a basic to-do list.

But there is another step to this process that really makes you effective.  That step is having all of the information you need in order to complete the next action on your list.  I’ll use an example from my personal life to illustrate.  I have a shed in my back yard and I have extended the roof line in the back to cover my lawnmower, snowblower, etc.  We’ve decided that we want to enclose the sides to make it more attractive.  Great.  So the “Project” is to enclose the back of the shed.  But if that was all I had on my list, I would by-pass it a lot of the time because its not my next action.  So I’ve got it broken down and I’m at a point where I’ve got to shop for the materials.  Good – that’s the next action.  But if I don’t have my materials list with me, that next action isn’t going to do me any good.  I have to have the information I need WITH me or attached to that action item in order for me to actually accomplish it.  So in the notes for this action is my shopping list for Home Depot.

Another example is when you need to call Customer Service for something.  You need a phone number and usually an account number.  Having “Call electric company” won’t help you if you don’t have all you need to complete the action.  Put the phone number either in the task or in your phone book along with the account number and now you can complete the action when you have the opportunity.

Take a look at your action list and determine whether you have everything you need to complete that action.  If not, take a minute to collect it all so you can be better prepared for success.