Commitment, Responsibility and Proactivity: Starting my 30 day challenge
Why
Every journey begins with the first step, and often those are the hardest; obviously save the ones where we need to sit down and eat and after lunch get up again.
But what does get us up?
Typically, we call it motivation, drive or passion.
Over time though, motivation can be bogged down by days, nights and general drudgery; drive will be interrupted by pit stops, breaks and traffic jams; passion will be curbed by the grovelling day in day out.
About myself
For over a decade I’ve been following my passions and allowed my drive to take me places.
I consider myself aware of and lucky, that I could turn my passions into a more than suitable day (and night) job.
I’ve worked as music journalist (unsuccessfully), software developer, software engineer, tech and project lead, project manager, agile coach, consultant and top management consultant.👨💻
On top of that, I count myself even luckier having three (most of the time) adorable kids 👧 🧒 👶 , a wonderful partner 👩 👩💻
Since I’ve been a teenager, there rarely wasn’t a time, when I wasn’t scheming or working on some kind of enterprise; in the last decade alone I count six more or less serious attempts at starting a business.
Almost all of them I would have to write off financially, but they all have something in common: I took the opportunity to learn, to grow, to turn even mistakes into future success.
These days, considering myself a family person as much as a poly-whatever and entrepreneur, I find it increasingly hard just to keep up.
I have obligations on all sides, dismembering myself for clients, employees, extra-curricular commitments, pet projects, and said family, I find it almost impossible to keep enough energy just to react, let alone act. I find myself driven by others more than I drive myself, and I loathe that feeling deeply.
What now?
In times like this, I often turn to books for comfort (my fancy way of saying procrastination)
One I wanted to read for a long time was “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey, a classic of the genre if there ever was one. His work was highly determined by the philosophy that one should take control of their own destiny and mindset instead of manipulating others or “hacking” their way through life. I will highlight more aspect of his writing later, but let me just state, that his first habit is being proactive about what defines our day-to-day life.
Covey uses the model of a “circle of influence” to illustrate this.
The metaphor is simple:
- There are things we can influence (aptly placed in the Circle of Influence)
- There are things we care about (Circle of Concern)
- There are things we do not care about (outside our circle of concern)
The critical question now is how we spend our focus. There are only so many hours in every day, and there is only so much energy available. According to Covey we can do one of two things:
- Being reactive by focussing “on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which we have no control”
- Being proactive, and working on things we can actually do something about
Working in either mode decides whether we are driven by positive or negative energy. Think about the relation of those circles as a measure, how much time and energy we invest in actually reaching goals.
As an entrepreneur it’s particularly important to spend your time wisely (same applies for parents). If you don’t, you will not drive what’s important to you and instead be driven by others.
Personally, I quite like this way of visualizing time spent well, and want to use it to determine whether I achieved my short-term goals or not.
Covey actually proposes challenging ourselves for 30 days to overcome the typical reactive pattern, and very consciously leaning towards proactivity. (given that he wrote the book in the ’80s, this is probably one of the earliest popular instances of such a challenge. Find them today on topics ranging from food & health over reading & mindfulness to video games). From a behavioral science perspective, this makes a ton of sense, since our brain is actually a little bit like a muscle including muscle memory. Means we can retrain our behavior to our needs and wants.
Covey feels that commitments and promises kept are the stimulus our brain-muscle needs in order to retain the new behavior.
It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It’s how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It’s how we view our problems and where we focus our energies. It’s the language we use.
and
For thirty days work only in your Circle of Influence. Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
My personal 30 day challenge
What Covey writes strikes a deep chord with me, and also gave me a way to voice my current unhappiness. I thought long and hard about what I want to achieve, where my current issues lie and what I could do about those. Let me give you an inside view into the framework I came up with
Dimensions for 30 Day challenge
So for the first week, I challenge myself to pick three out of those each day, and make small commitments to myself. My list for the first day reads:
- Social — Partnership: At least twice today, instead of blaming my partner for something, I want to see whether I can help you instead, maybe even eliminate the source of your struggle
- Network — Business: At least 30 minutes today I want to focus on staying in touch and following up with contacts I made recently
- Health — Sleep: I want to be asleep by 11 to get a full night’s sleep and wake up refreshed in the morning.
All of those are things, I am struggling with personally from time to time or regularly. Your mileage will vary, but the framework could help you get started.
I’d like to hear from you, I’m especially interested if you’re also a parent or an entrepreneur.
What helped you getting out of such a situation?
Ron
