The Uncluttered Mind: Part 2

Don Scott

Slowing Down to Create More
Big things happen through this powerful, albeit counter-intuitive, way of thinking and being. It’s truly transformational.

Transformation?

I throw the word transformation around because I believe in it. Nibbling around the edges. Trying something new for a couple of months and then getting back to the same old same old. Isn’t that what often happens? Rather than transforming. Rather than going to a new place in a new way, we humans naturally love the familiar. Guess what? “Do more of what you done, get more of what you got!”

So, let’s talk about transformation. Let’s talk about slowing down to do more. From my own experience, here are some of the things I know. Never lacking conviction, I don’t think or suspect, I know “the more” I have gained by slowing down.
· More powerful performance and impact.

· More financial success.

· More peace, joy, and fulfillment.

· More time to think.
I could make this list longer. Observe though just what we have here. Would it be a surprise that one might be a more impactful performer by slowing down a bit? Might that create more income and financial success? Is there more time to think and enjoy? It seems obvious.

Slowing Down is Creating More

Slowing down is nothing about being a slacker. Not about being lazy. Of course, I have to remind myself of that every now and then. I spent about 25 years chasing as hard and fast as I could chase. I am still working the last bits of that out of my own programing. Slowing down is about making different choices. It is about being different.

I work with CEOs of middle-market companies, family business owners, and others. For the most part, they have one thing in common. They are chargers! They are busy. They think fast. They never have enough time.

There are reasons, I get that. This is your programming. You probably had to run fast in the beginning just to keep your nose above the surface of the water. Your programing didn’t start there, but it was definitely supercharged during those years. I am thinking back to one CEO client who told me about his “three-page to do list”. He said he never got past page one in the first place. Then, he’d go off to their weekend place to hammer through the to do list for the things to be done there. (An interesting notion of a weekend recharge.) All so he could get back and start on the company list again on Monday. I recall him telling me a little later about how his company would “pretty much run itself”. We got a good chuckle out of that one!

More Time to Think

What a novel idea. I can recommend a good book here called More Time to Think, by Nancy Kline. Query: If you truly got excited about creating something way beyond the success you have had so far. If you wanted that additional 20%. If you wanted to ferret out the 20% that wasn’t working for you and replace it. Would you need more time to think? Would you need some space to do that?
The answer is yes. If you are going to shift some things and you are busy all the time, how is that going to happen? It will feel like you are adding in more to do. Busy people are loath to add more. They first need to subtract something. You want to create some space.
Sub-optimized. It goes without saying that when someone is running a thousand miles an hour he or she is missing out on opportunity. If you could sit and dream about what an optimized you would look like, what would that be? What are you leaving on the table? What would happen if you took 20% of your time from your lowest yielding categories and reallocated that to “time to think” and to your other highest yielding opportunities?
Life is supposed to be fun. Of course, we have jobs, businesses and things we “must do”. But it really doesn’t need to be such a grind. I used to live in what I call “event happiness”. Certain parts of life were really good. Some was a lot of fun. Events or circumstance, like vacations, my daughters, getting career recognition. Those were fun and happy. On the other hand, a lot of life and career was frustrating, boring, stressful, etc. I was always running faster and faster to try to find a solution on the outside. Thinking that if I could create the right external circumstances, I’d be there.

The Uncluttered Mind

When I figured out the answers were on the inside. When I figured out that I needed to start slowing down and relook at everything I thought I knew from the prior 40 years. Then a whole new way of walking through life began to open up. Then, magically, the stage began to be set for an outside life I couldn’t have imagined before.

Recommendation #1:

Consider what it would look like, what it would mean, if you could truly transform. In whatever way you might like to experience transformation. Just let yourself imagine what that would be and how you would feel.

Recommendation #2:

Contemplate what it would feel like to decide on a new mindset around busyness, stress, complexity, and creating space. If you could get there, where could you go from there?

Recommendation #3:

Develop three meaningful action steps. Hire someone, fire someone, allocate some time for yourself, stop some busyness habit – whatever it is. Then, act!

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