Lessons from a Pebble in My Shoe

Have you had situation where you delayed acting on something and it became something bigger and difficult to handle? Have you had experience tackling issues just in the nick of time?

From the time I signed up for #leaninnetworkwiti #empoweredvoices circle with Preethi Guruswamy Sobhitha Neelanath Surabhi Kumari Divya Rao Deeksha Jaiswal Shilpi Mitra, I must say I’ve been more conscious and observant of my experiences through the day. I am seeking opportunities to write about them and my thoughts and learnings from it.

Recently, I was taking my daughter out for a class. I’ve a pair of shoes dedicated for driving — my favourite pair of Skechers. (No, I’ve not yet reached the stage to get sponsored ), this was bought few years ago during the Independence Day sale and still going strong). During the initial days of learning to drive a car, I used to drive with different footwear and found it very inconvenient adjusting to it. Advise came my way that it is wise to stick to a specific footwear, preferably shoes for comfortable driving.

Fast forward to yesterday, after I started to drive, I noticed that something was poking my feet and felt really uncomfortable driving with that mild pain. I believe I am a very focused person, unless I am done with the task at hand, I don’t like to deviate or rest. Here the task at hand was to arrive on time safely for my daughter’s class. I endured the pain and continued to drive. I had the strong urge to remove my shoes and get the thing out that was poking me. I was getting distracted by the pain. I was driving through narrow lanes and finally after driving for about 4KM I reached a spot where I could pull my car to a safe spot. I took off the shoe and noticed a pebble and got it out. I continued to drive and reached the class on time.

My key learnings from this.

1. One famous phrase that I’ve read in my childhood — “Stitch in time saves nine”. In my case, if I had delayed acting on getting the pebble out, I would have hurt myself. It is important to act on time, delayed actions could have caused undesirable consequences.
2. Sometimes, it is important to take a pause or step back and review how you are doing. These small breaks gives you renewed energy and productivity. When there is a deadline approaching, we have the habit of working non stop without a break.This becomes counter productive. I could drive smoothly and safely after I got the pebble removed.
3. At one point or the other, we end up procrastinating an important thing we need to do. Analyse, what is the root cause of this? Could this be due to fear of failure, feeling overwhelmed about the end goal, feeling under equipped etc? It’s better to do your best and learn than it is to do nothing, or regret not doing anything. Break down complex tasks into smaller chunks and complete one chunk at a time if your end goal looks like an herculean one. These small wins will motivate you to complete the whole task in the end.
4. Maintain a list of activities you want to accomplish in a day/week/month. I maintain an excel sheet where I note down the tasks that I would like to accomplish prioritising basis their impact and easiness. This reduces the mental load of having to think of all the actions that you need to take and you have them ready to be accomplished one after the other right in front of you.
5. I follow pomodoro technique for those productive burst of time followed by short breaks.
6. Lastly, but not the least, retrospect and understand how you can prevent or equip yourself for such situations in future. “Prevention is better than cure”.

I’m eager to hear about your experiences in handling similar situations and what you’ve learned from them.

#100daysonLinkedIn #leanin #leaninnetworkwiti #leaninwiti100daysonlinkedin #TuesdayTips

Preethi Guruswamy Sobhitha Neelanath Surabhi Kumari Divya Rao Deeksha Jaiswal Shilpi Mitra