MiraNous Coaching & Consulting

Professional Development for Groups and Teams

Without Clarity, You Cannot Lead Yourself or Others

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“We see in order to move; we move in order to see.”  William Gibson

 

Without clarity, you cannot lead yourself or others. I would like to invite you to think about the role of clarity in your leadership, your professional life, and your personal life.

Yo-Yo Ma, Special Forces, & Clarity

 I love the coincidence in this, just as I started to write this article and I was contemplating these words by Yo Yo Ma “If you don’t have clarity of ideas, you’re just communicating sheer sound” the Amazon “Classical For Focus” Playlist began to play Yo-Yo Ma’s rendition of the Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 Major.

 

Clarity is beautiful. Clarity makes all the difference. Clarity is a matter of life or death. I have heard it said that men in Special Forces have lower heart-rates and cortisol levels when an attack is imminent instead of when they are partaking in “hurry-up and wait.” This is because they have clarity of what they will do in the attack situation, it is the ambiguity that creates doubt and thus tension.

 

So when you think about clarity, you can visualize Yo-Yo Ma on the cello and Special Forces troops on a mission. If your approach to something does not evoke either of those, then you might not be clear. If you want to be a high-performer, Brenden Burchard gives us this to think about: “Our research shows that compared with their peers, high-performers have more clarity on who they are, what they want, how to get it, and what they find meaningful and fulfilling. We’ve found that if you can increase someone’s clarity you up their overall high-performance score.” (p. 59)

 

Seeking clarity does not mean that you have to wait until you have it before acting. Sometimes as you act, ambiguity dissipates, and clarity ensues. Burchard tells us that “Clarity is the child of careful thought and mindful experimentation.” Moreover, he wrote that you generate clarity by asking questions, researching, trying new things, sorting through life’s opportunities, and determining what is right for you (p. 59).

 

How to Develop Clarity

One way to exercise and develop clarity is to journal about it. In this previous article, I wrote about the benefits of journaling and how you can use a systematic approach to journal and reflect. Every day I journal a few sentences about clarity, focus, and intensity in things that were important that day. I also have a practice of checking-in on clarity before, during, and after a task. This can take as little as a few seconds. However, I imagine that it saves me much time and energy.

 

Here are questions that help one become clear

 

  1. What do I want as a result/outcome of this?
  2. Why do I want that result or outcome? What will that do for the situation or for me?
  3. Is my approach the best way to achieve that result or outcome? Alternatively, what else might be more effective, easier, faster, or impactful?
  4. How is my clarity as I move into action, during the action, and at the end of action?
  5. What can I do differently next time, to have greater clarity and get better results?

 

I ask myself all or some of these questions. As I enter the gym, I want to be clear as to why I am there; what I want as an outcome. This often makes a difference between just going through the motions or pushing myself.

 

When interacting with individuals, I try to get clear on: how I want to come across? What does the other person need? How do I want the other person to feel/how do I want to feel? What is the outcome that we want?

 

Before starting a project, here I am more methodical, I take time to ask myself the five questions above. Yes, it takes time. Time and energy are precious, and I want to make sure that I am clear on how to spend those as I maximize what I want to accomplish. We do not want to be busy about things that do not matter, that do not make a difference, or that could have been executed more effectively in an easier way.

 

Peter Economy has this to say about clarity: “[Leaders] are clear and concise at all times–there is no question of their vision and what needs to be accomplished. This gives others the opportunity to digest their goals and decide whether or not they will support their cause. Generally, very few people know what they want, much less how to get there, so they will gravitate towards those who appear to have a clear picture in mind–good clarity leads to great achievement.”

 

I am curious, as you begin to engender more clarity in your life what image will surface? Will you hear the haunting sound of a cello, perfectly conveying human emotion? Or will you have the intensity and focus donned by someone on a mission.

 

References

Burchard, B. (2017). High performance habits: How extraordinary people become that way. New York, NY: Hayhouse Inc.

 

Economy, P. (n.d.). The 5 Essential Qualities Of A Great Leader. Inc.com.  Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/the-5-essential-qualities-of-a-great-leader.html

Reclaim Productivity, Flow, and What Matters with a Master Weekly Schedule

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“Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg

There are many productivity hacks. Few of those hacks ensure that you are being productive with things that truly matter. Reclaim productivity, flow, and what matters with a master weekly schedule.

You are likely to benefit from a Master Themed-Weekly Schedule if:

 ·         You have asked yourself, “What should I be doing right now?”

·         You have wondered if you are using your time well.

·         You begin to work on one task only to find yourself switching back and forth between three different tasks.

·         You have felt that you worked on many things but accomplished little and actually feel more behind than when you started to work.

·         You spend most of your time on tasks that have little to do with your vision and goals as well as the progress you desire to see.

 

 

Imagine having a guide that informs you how to use each day and each section of the day, in a way that keeps everything progressing. Imagine all the energy you would save by not constantly second-guessing yourself. Each time to make decisions regarding what would should be working on, you contribute to decision fatigue. The more energy and time you spend on making small decisions the more you deplete your precious reserves of cognitive ability, decision-making, creativity, problem-solving prowess, and energy.

 Getting in Flow for Productivity 

Themed-days are your key to peaceful productivity because they allow you to get in a “flow.” Mihály Csikszentmihalyi defined flow as “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.”

 I treasure those times when I am in a state of flow with my relationships, with my work, with a creative endeavour. After a flow session, I feel that I have truly accomplished something and used my day well. I can see that I made progress in the things that matter most to me.

 Staying out of Spotlights 

However, the busy-ness of life can cause us to be less in a state of flow and more in a state of “spotlights.” In neuroscience, an activity that is manifested sporadically and briefly throughout the brain has been coined by some researchers as “spotlight”. When you are in a state of “spotlights” you are making your brain frantically switch between several activities including eating, writing emails, texting, talking, doing paperwork, tending to children, and redirecting the dog, all at the same time (That sentence just created anxiety in my chest. Moreover, that is how I operate more often than I would like to acknowledge when I do not have a clear plan). A brain scan during this type of multitasking would show-up as “spotlights” on the brain.

In a state of flow, the brain is much more efficient. A brain in a state of flow maximizes energy and can distinguish between what matters and what does not matter. In other words, a brain in a state of flow is highly-focused.

So how do we step out of “spotlights” and move into flow to have peaceful productivity? Well, there are several things that you can do. However, the first suggestion that I have, is to encourage you to give your days a theme and create a master schedule. These will help you have peaceful productivity. You can give an entire day a theme. Alternatively, you can divide your day into two or three themes.

 Do What Matters When You Have Little Control

 An immediate objection might come to mind. Specifically, there might be some of you in fields or leadership positions in which your days can easily be usurped by others. You may conclude that you may not be able to stick to a theme. I challenge you to give this a try.

Even if you feel that you can’t control your days with themes related to your work, you can choose portions of your day with themes such as: Critical, Progress, and Maintenance. Critical Tasks must be taken care of. Progress Tasks are those that move you forward on your goals and vision. And Maintenance Tasks help things keep moving smoothly without falling through the cracks. No matter what you do, you will deal with tasks and activities that align with those categories.

 Furthermore, research indicates that you would do well to know and work with your chronotype. Daniel Pink explains more about chronotypes on a podcast produced at Art of Manliness. My chronotype, and that of most people would have us working on Progress Tasks in the morning, these tasks tend to be creative, require high- cognitive demand, and move our goals and vision forward. In the afternoon, we would work on Critical Tasks which include tasks that are important, require our attention, but may not require high-cognitive and energetic stamina. Many times, Critical Task have little to do with advancing vision and goals and are usually externally imposed. Then, in the late afternoon and evening, we do well to work on Maintenance Tasks or routine tasks. By completing these tasks, we will not get behind and things will not fall through the cracks.

Possible Themes for the Master Weekly Schedule  

Here are some examples of themes for various roles, to give you some ideas. 

 

 

Applying Themes to Meetings  

If you want to start small, how about establishing themes for your meetings? Instead of trying to tackle sundry issues at each meeting, use themed-weeks for your meetings. Here as some examples:

 Week 1 – Meetings related to Cost

Week 2 – Meetings related to Safety

Week 3 – Meetings related to Delivery/Quality

Week 4 – Meetings related to People Development

 

 A Gift for You – Master Weekly Schedule Template 

Now it is your turn. I made an excel sheet that you can use as a template to create themes based on your roles and responsibilities. You can batch your day based on Critical, Progress, and Maintenance tasks. Or you can do both. The goal is not that you will hit this perfectly every single day, but imagine what it would feel like to have a successfully planned and executed day 50%, 70% or 80% of the time.

I have had a few inquiries from individuals wanting more support with customizing the Excel template. So I created this video. 

 

 What Would You Add? 

Second, let us learn from you. What other theme ideas do you have? Please share in the comments section of this blogpost to help inspire others.

 

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1998). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Kahn Academy. (n.d.) The spotlight model of attention and our ability to multitask. Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/processing-the-environment/attention-language/v/the-spotlight-model-of-attention-and-our-ability-to-multitask