Activity vs Accomplishment

First thing each morning I have a little ritual.  I read the front pages of CNN and People and my Facebook and LinkedIn pages before going to the Seattle Times to read the headlines, then do the crossword puzzle, Jumble, and Sudoku.  After that it’s over to the Seattle P-I to do the Sudoku and crossword puzzle.  Depending on the day of the week (and therefore the degree of difficulty of the puzzles), this can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.  I cozy up in my PJs with the hot cup of coffee and settle in.

When I first started working for myself at home, I actually felt like I had done something after I had gotten through it all.  Doing all those puzzles required brain power, and once they were done I felt a sense of completion and felt I deserved a break.

It took me a few months to figure out that this misplaced focus wasn’t helping build my coaching business.   Different personal practices were needed.  Now I get up, make coffee, read the headlines, do the puzzles, then get dressed, make the bed, and it’s time to start work.  I no longer confuse doing the puzzles with value-added work.

How about you?  Are you super busy, swamped in fact, but not getting anywhere?  The first time I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey I was really struck by the distinction between ‘urgent’ and ‘important.’  I know I wasn’t alone in having missed this important distinction.  And it’s getting harder!  In our current environment of 24/7 email, phone, and instant message full-frontal access, we feel obligated to be plugged in and respond RIGHT NOW to every communique we receive and to even initiate communications just for the sake of communicating because it makes us feel connected and important.

It’s also a bit of an addiction and definitely a way to distract ourselves from doing something new, or challenging.  Like my puzzles.  I could feel like I had accomplished something, but it was really blatant  procrastination – a distraction from doing the really important but scary stuff like  going to networking events, selling, and marketing my coaching services.

I’ll bet a lot of us could be less busy and create more space in our jobs and our lives for the important things – the things that matter most to us – if we stepped back and got clear about the distinction between urgent and important, and better utilized our time by not confusing activity with accomplishment.

Seth Godin had a great post on his blog last December about the worst and most ineffective boss we’ll ever have: ourselves.   Check it out:

Seth Godin - The world's worst boss

One way to dig yourself out of this corner can be summed up in one word:  impact.  What is the impact of your activities on your goals?  My goal is to grow a thriving coaching business that helps people create the life and career of their dreams.  What impact is an hour of doing puzzles having on that goal?  None, zip, zero, nil.  It’s relaxing and gets my mind working in the morning, so I don’t deprive myself, but I also no longer confuse that activity with accomplishment.  I also have a really long To Do list, but I now put that list through the filter of the goals I have for this ‘growing’ stage of my business.  The questions I ask are all about impact not about how quickly I could cross lots of little urgent-ish, but not important things off my list leaving only one or two monster tasks.  It’s those monster tasks that will have the most impact and are therefore the most important.

Try this approach at home or at work if you’re having a hard time creating space for what matters.   If you need help, give me a buzz.