This is the third post in a series about this dad-gum bad habit I have been struggling with of not keeping commitments to myself. For background, you might want to read The To-Do List Stampede followed by Keeping Your Promises (to Yourself).
In the last post, which I'm doing a bit of self-shaming over since it's been over a month since I posted, we were looking at keeping our promises to ourselves. Hence the self-induced shame because I've missed four weeks of blog post commitments while focusing on keeping my commitments. Eh, I'm a work in progress, as we all are.
In these four weeks, I have focused a lot of energy on that hefty to-do list for the month of August that took me an entire day to put together, prioritize, and calendar. How did I do? Well, as I've already noted, I wasn't perfect but I accomplished a great deal of work and made a lot of progress on my goals! The remaining items have been included in my September list and will be complete by the end of this week. I call it a success.
I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes at me now, wondering how on earth I could call the month of Keeping My Commitments a success when I didn't keep all my commitments. Let me tell you why I absolutely do think it a success: With every failure I experienced this month, I learned something about myself that I could tweak to be better the next time. For example, I scheduled a TON of reading to finish in the month of August--books I've started that I wanted to write reviews of, books with content I wanted to include in the programs I'm developing, professional development content to continue to improve my coaching skills. I realized during this month that the time of day I had the reading scheduled was an important factor to consider, as was the amount of new content my brain could realistically process. I also learned that jumping from subject to subject or task to task (akin to multi-tasking) is not something my 40-something brain does as readily as my 20- and 30-something brain did and this, too, affects my mental fatigue and efficiency. I realized just how important breaks were in between tasks to keep my brain fresh. I learned more about how my body and mind and brain work so that this month I can plan better. Every failed attempt to keep a commitment to myself taught me how to be better able to keep my commitments in the future. So, yes, I consider the month of August to be a success.
Diagnosing the Stumbling Blocks and Obstacles
I've already mentioned a few of the obstacles I encountered regarding my reading goals for the month of August. The other obstacles I encountered were the infamous "more important tasks" that popped up and the "toddler temper tantrum" when my mind was tired and just did. not. want. to. budge. on a particular task.
One of the "more important tasks" that came in was a call from one of my corporate consulting clients who had a short turnaround deadline with which they needed my assistance. While I had a very busy two weeks planned when I received that call, the fact of the matter was that it was all overhead work. It was still Quadrant II (Important and Urgent) work but was not something that would generate quick income. And I like to be honest here: I am still a young business so getting billable work is a high priority and it's not an option to turn it away. The timing of this new work happened to fall on a couple of weeks where I had pre-planned to be a hoss and not have much free time. As odd as this sounds, this was a difficult decision to make because it was at the beginning of the month and I was so disappointed that my plans and commitments were already "falling apart." While I did need the income, I also fully believe in Covey's Quadrant II Important and Urgent work and had a ton of "move your job forward" tasks lined up for that time. I ended up moving the pre-planned work to different times and decided to be more forgiving to myself (remember, I'm a recovering-perfectionist so this "fail" would have sent me into a shame-spiral of depression for not being good enough to "do it all anyway" a few years ago). Things will come up and sometimes they really are important and need to be taken care of. While my mentor coach, Brooke Castillo--who makes millions of dollars a year, by the way--has the ability to delegate this type of "more important task" to her staff and she has the income flexibility to turn away paying clients, I'm not at that stage yet. So no shame, this was one of those good exceptions to the commitments that will allow me to continue to stay in business and provide value to my coaching clients.
Another obstacle was having my sweet nieces and nephews nearby for a week during Camp Grandmomma. As you may be aware by now, part of my life's vision is to live the farm life while being an encouragement and helping others. So about ten years ago, after my father passed away a couple years prior, I had the opportunity to rent the cottage behind my mother's house on the 20 acres I grew up on. All of that to say, Camp Grandmomma meant I had 4 cutie-patootie kids (plus a 5th one later in the week) running around having fun and being adorable on the new zip line my mom put up right outside my house while I had less exciting things planned at my desk. I think this obstacle can be classified as both a "more important task" (we're supposed to prioritize time with family, right?!?!) and a "toddler temper tantrum" (you try concentrating on work when squeals of delight are happening 20' from the window by your desk). I do have to give myself credit that I knew in advance it would be hard NOT spending time with my loved ones while they were around so I planned a couple of Aunt Lacey outings with them thinking that would do the trick. It mostly worked, but I should add that my nephew's actual real-life toddler temper tantrum helped me refocus my energy on my work tasks more than anything else (haha! "Send the kid back to Grandmomma's house! I can't take it anymore!" Lucky for him he's cute.)
It's Not Just About Calendars
In addition to keeping calendar commitments, I've also been working on sticking to my commitments regarding what I've planned to eat. My body really performs well under a type of intermittent fasting model where I only eat between the hours of 10am - 6pm and it helps me work more efficiently when I plan out what I'm going to eat in advance (the day before). At the beginning of August I made a plan to eat enchiladas with a friend on a Tuesday for lunch. Tuesday morning rolls around and she unfortunately had a last-minute deadline and we had to postpone our enchilada-eating adventure. I had two thoughts immediately: (1) "oh man, I love me some enchiladas and was looking forward to that treat," and (2) "well that's cool because this to-do list is taking a while so I can spend more time on that and re-arrange my food plan and eat tomorrow's food today." No problems right? That sounds extra productive!
Then I started getting suspicious of my brain. Remember from the last post how sneaky my brain was being after being coached and how I suddenly started rearranging my commitments to myself in the name of upholding commitments to myself? Yeeaaahhh..... It suddenly dawned on me that my brain was trying to take the familiar path instead of forging ahead in uncharted waters of commitment-keeping. So I made this a brain-training moment. Instead of foraging in the fridge for the next day's planned food, I went to a restaurant and had my chicken enchiladas to eat. It went to lunch by myself, but I kept the commitment to my food plan.
You may think that sounds goofy, and sometimes I might agree with you, but when you're dealing with life-long urges and trying to retrain 43 year old habits, sometimes you need to take seemingly-goofy action to create the new neural pathways and patterns in your brain. So I kept my commitment to my calendar and to my eating plan and really felt empowered afterward.
Added Bonus: I also accomplished everything on my to-do list for that day and felt empowered when I went to bed.
As I mentioned in the last post, whatever time management tools you use are fine. It's not so much the tool itself but your ability to stay committed to the tool and to the commitments you make to yourself on your calendar. After you create your commitments, pay attention to those moments when your brain tries to throw you a curve ball. Ask your brain why it wants to go off the plan.
Look at the thoughts you are having - "this isn't fun", "I'd rather be doing something else" - and decide if that thought is helping you achieve your goal. If it is not, develop a new thought that DOES help you achieve your goal, such as, "this task is part of <owning a business, earning a paycheck, loving my home, etc.> to which I am absolutely committed."
What are your feelings about that new thought? The old thoughts may be leading you to feelings of boredom, resentment, or something else unproductive. What feelings do the new thoughts produce? Empowered? Self-respect? Accomplished?
What actions do those feelings lead to? The thoughts we choose and the feelings those thoughts produce lead us to take certain actions (and INaction is a form of action). While your previous thoughts and feelings might have led you to skip out on your commitments, what actions do your new thoughts lead to? Hopefully it is following through on your commitments.
What results will you have if you take those actions? Instead of getting the same results of "never getting anything done," your new thoughts and actions should lead to the results you want - scratching those stinking tasks off the list and moving forward!
This is where the real work is. It's not about what tool we use, it's about where our thoughts are leading us when it's time to take an action. If you find yourself spinning in an unproductive cycle, write down the thoughts going through your head and start training your brain to take different paths. Our lives are a work in progress, let's just decide to progress forward instead of in circles. That's the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing (or in this case thinking the same thing) over and over expecting different results? Let's try a new thought and move forward.
As always, if you could use another set of eyes on your thoughts, don't hesitate to sign up for a 30-minute consultation on my Services page. Let's have a phone call and see if coaching is right for you. While you're at it, please take a second to sign up for my newsletter which will be launching this year. In it I will answer coaching questions that have been submitted and highlight blog posts from the page.
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