One may well wonder if I have been locked away in ‘whitespace’ for several months. Alternatively, since my last post finished with ‘just about to board a plane in Singapore’ you could be forgiven for thinking I may have got off the ground but not back on.
The reality is – and it is a lame excuse – that I just got too busy, and then I got distracted, and then I found it hard to make the time to get back to blogging. This was probably the hardest part – regular blogging.
But I am writing now to ‘close out’ the project and highlight some of my key learnings.
My trip to London last year showed that I was more dependent on technology than I thought – checking bus and travel schedules, finding out where the meeting location was, tracking down an ATM, … In addition as the business grew and staff were added I found us using the cloud for all our documents, and communication. It was no longer feasible to take whole days offline.
I completed 50 days of my 100 target, and decided at that point to change my approach. No longer did I seek to have complete days off, but I sought to apply what I learnt – and still largely do today.
What did I learn?
- Batch process email. Don’t check email every few minutes, or even every hour. Set aside a specific time – first thing in the morning, then noon, then late afternoon – for doing email. Much faster. I can delete what no longer matters, deal quickly with what takes a few minutes, and allocate time to others
- Turn off email on iphone/ipad/blackberry after hours. This stops me ‘inadvertently’ checking my mail and having the buzz tone go off
- Don’t run Outlook (my email client of choice) in the background. I find it more efficient to check mail on my iphone and then go to Outlook to download if necessary. Outlook is much more distracting than the iphone in that situation
- Block time to think/write/meet/talk … and do not allow any idistractions during thinking time. I enforce this with myself (ok, I try hard) and with clients – particularly in workshop type settings where people are prone to rush out and ignore one another during the breaks.
Everybody (I know that is a generalisation) feels overwhelmed by the tidal way of data and is seeking ways to manage it. Many started talking about creating ‘whitespace’ in meetings to adopt a similar practice, which was very encouraging.
In countless way the internet has become a utility, and needs to be treated in this way. Turn on the light, knowing that electricity flows at the flick of a switch, but don’t leave it running all the time, and don’t use it when you don’t need it.
Thank you for your support. Keep an eye on our main site at The Confidere Group, where we are mentoring influential leaders to build better societies by building better organisations.
