Every single person I talk to these days tells me how busy they are. Nobody can quite believe that the first quarter of the year has passed already, and everyone laments how time seems to be hurtling away from them.
This is not a new conversation or feeling. It seems to be an on-going steady state now and has been for a few years already. The world, our work and our lives feel like they keep accelerating. Messages need to be replied to immediately. Decisions are asked of us every minute, problems need to be fixed right now. And when we have a moment of respite, we fill it by scrolling endless feeds of stimulation.
My clients have often forgotten what it feels like to simply be. They are chasing achievements, ticking boxes for tasks completed from various lists, when what they really need is to stop doing for a moment.
The fifth step in my de-cluttering method is Evaluate. This effectively creates a pause in our constant activity to simply become mindful of where we are at the moment and how close this is to where we want to be. It allows us to take stock and notice our patterns, paying attention to where we are putting our time and valuable energy, and to make corrective choices if needed.
This Evaluate step is a small circuit-breaker, taking us off the treadmill for a moment to contemplate the bigger picture that can become buried under the clutter of managing our day-to-day work and life.
And the biggest secret of all is when everything feels the most busy and overwhelming, that is precisely the very best time to step away for a moment and regroup. The best thing to do when everything feels just a little bit out of control is to evaluate, reframe how this busyiness is serving you, what really matters right now, and come back to it all with renewed energy.
So to re-cap:
- The world will continue to speed up and demand more from us than we can give.
- Remember that we are human “beings” first, and then doers.
- Experiment with stepping away from tech every now and again.
- Notice and pay attention to the passing of time.
- It will be the most urgent for you to step away when it feels the least possible to do so.
Don’t allow time to disappear on you, but instead watch it closely and evaluate if you are where you want to be. If not, start planning how you will get there.
And if you need some help carving out this thinking space, get in touch and let’s talk.