If you are like most small business owners and leaders, you have too much on your plate. You are constantly juggling priorities. After all, your company, employees, family and, sometimes it feels like, the whole world is depending on you. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling in “IF” - “It is tough to keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”. So what is a person to do?
For our EOS clients we recommend scheduling a clarity break. A clarity break is a regularly scheduled appointment on your calendar with yourself. You define what regular is – a half hour daily, two hours weekly, a half day monthly. It’s up to you. The doing of it is what matters.
Next find a place to meet with yourself. EOS founder Gino Wickman finds a Starbucks near his home. I like Panera Bread personally. Clients of mine go to a library at a local college or in their town. You may even be able to use the living room in your own home if there is a time of day when you can be alone and uninterrupted. Wouldn’t Tranquility Base on the moon be ideal?
Finally, clients ask, what do I do on these clarity breaks? As Gino say, just take a blank pad with you. Using technology tends to become a distraction. We are tempted to just do one email or just surf the web for that one project back at work. Don’t do it. Put your phone and other devices in airplane mode after arranging a fail safe method for your family or assistant to notify you in case of dire emergency.
Back to you and that blank pad. Stare at it and your mind will help you. The important things will surface. Ideas will pop up. Try it. You’ll be amazed.
If you are fearful that this won’t go well, Stephanie Vozza wrote an article in Fast Company entitled 5 Steps To Finding Your Focus which has some ideas which might help. You can read the whole article here.
