Month / April 2016

Ticking the Box

Keeping the streak going is one thing. But don’t do it just to tick the box. That’s not a reason for anything.

If you’re just ticking the box, stop, step back, and decide if it’s worth doing at all. You have to rediscover why you’re doing it. The excitement you had for the task when you started won’t always be there and you’ll need to put in the time when you won’t want to. But not just to tick the box. There has to be another reason. If not there’s no point.

Tick the box by all means, but for a reason. Not “just”.

by Colin Brosnan

Gear Drop

You can’t keep working at the same pace day in, day out. But you don’t have to stop either. You can just drop a gear.

Maybe you’re feeling unwell. Maybe you’re stuck. Maybe you don’t have the time.

Drop a gear, or two, and you still make progress. You’re pace will drop but you haven’t stopped, you’re still moving forward.

Don’t let the day defeat you. Drop a gear and get over that hill.

by Colin Brosnan

Proportional Time

Our time is important. It’s a scarce resource. One we often spend haphazardly.
Yes, we’re allowed time off. Yes, we’re allowed breaks. I’m not suggesting that every second of our time must be spent on something deemed productive. Too much time in productivity mode and not enough in rest mode will see us run down and unable to continue.
No, I’m talking about something else. Proportional time. The time we spend on a task should be more or less depending on how important it is to us. Or the impact it has on our lives.
If we spend a lot of time on something we are saying it’s important to us. If we don’t spend a lot of time on something we are saying we don’t care about it.
It is easy to get confused and spend the wrong amount of time on something. Sometimes we become trapped spending time on something we don’t care about. More often we spend too little time on the things we say are important to us.
It’s important to take a moment every now and again to realign how we spend our time.
The proportion is important.
by Colin Brosnan

Well of Ideas

Our ideas spring up from the depths of our mind and pool together in a well. We can dip into that well when we need an idea.

Sometimes though we fear the well will dry up so we hoard what we have. We ration it. We save it for another time.

We believe a time will come when we need that idea more. We tell ourselves we’ll use the idea then. We dare not use it before then. That time never comes. Or it did and we didn’t recognise it so caught up are we in saving it for our day of need.

The idea goes unused.

Instead of running dry from overuse the well stagnates from lack of use. The ideas we hoard go stale. Thick weeds grow up around the well, hiding it, making it difficult to get to, impossible to dip into.

Don’t let this happen to you. Keep the well fresh, use it.

by Colin Brosnan

Great, But…

Friday was the 40th anniversary of Apple’s founding. A milestone. A time for reflection on the road that led to now. An opportunity to look at the possibilities of the future.

The news report I watched did look at the achievements of the past. But there was also something else. A look at the future, yes, but a particular sort of look to the future that dismisses what has already been achieved. The sort of thing that’s done with a shake of the head and a sigh that implies the person is saying, “Yeah, that’s all well and good but can you do it again?”

What the report actually said was that Apple must now prove it can keep innovating in order to continue growing for the next 40 years. It’s not that the question is invalid or can’t be asked. It’s the context of the question. Throwing it in at the end of the report, as a throw away statement, implies that Apple are screwed. It’s the same as congratulating a married couple on their first wedding anniversary and implying, without evidence, that they’ll be divorced by their second anniversary. “Congratulations to them, but will they be married this time next year?”

To me that’s a real indictment of our way of thinking as a society. We no longer take a moment to enjoy what’s been achieved. Instead we look back and say “Great, but it’s not really good enough is it? What you’ve done in the past doesn’t matter. It’s only what you do next that matters”. Except when it comes to that next thing it’s not good enough either. So that in the end nothing is ever good enough. It’s the kind of outlook that denies us satisfaction with our lives and achievements. As a society or as individuals.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look to the future, or that we can’t set goals. Not at all. It simply means that as individuals we need to learn to take the time to enjoy a milestone before moving onto planning for the next one. Hopefully society will follow.

by Colin Brosnan

Critical Evaluation

This morning I came across this tweet:

April 1st is a day on which we expect to get fooled. With that awareness comes an alertness we normally don’t bother switching on. But we should.

We should not accept every bit of information we receive without question. Not all news is neutral and unbiased. Not all news sources are neutral and unbiased.

Switch on.

by Colin Brosnan