11th September Thought for the Day
Do you complete tasks? Do you make your bed each morning?
My tool for jotting my ideas is the NOTES App on my iphone. I now have 409 notes, some of them are lists, some are conversations and meetings I have taken notes in. They all felt very important at the moment of writing them.
Occasionally I sit on the train and review them all, they go back to 9th November 2012. A walk down the memory lane of my mind.
This weekend I was at the Roger James Hamilton Fast Forward event. 800 Entrepreneurs gathered from many co
rners of the world. One constant reminder for me about Roger’s message is how the differing personality types make their wealth. It seems when I meet entrepreneurs, many of them are “Creators”. Inspiring minds that can constantly create new, innovative ways to go to market, deliver their services or new products and services.
The draw back is whether they complete the idea. ‘complete the task’. The temptation when we hit a brick wall or don’t get the immediate result is to turn to another idea rather than complete the task of the inspiration we originally came up with.
If we worked in LargeCo, we would present our ideas with statistics, research, delivery and capacity and resources budgeted in. The idea would be considered with the ROI and timeline and we would be given time to prove its worth. This makes Large Co appear as a slow ship, trying to turn, however, there is a danger in being a speedboat that turns at every wave.
When I was in Australia speaking at the Accounting Conference in April, one of the speakers was a Buddhist Monk, he captured the audience with his calm considerations and simple mmessaging. It was here that I learned why making my bed with precision and scraping the water off the shower door each day meant so much to me. It was the first way I could discipline myself each morning to complete.
I Googled this simple concept and read this paragraph, I think this puts it better than I can, taken from William H. McRaven’s bestselling Make Your Bed
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed-
Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. (end)
Today, on the train, I am going to review the meeting notes I have made this month so far and make a commitment to compete more of the ideas I capture, giving them a tag of ‘later’ or ‘now’ or ‘never’.
How do you focus, do you complete? do you find it hard?
I would love to hear your tips,challenges and even your ideas from today.
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