Something magic happened. I skied for the day and came back to an empty to do list 🤔

Weird ayh?! But that really is how it felt.

You know that feeling when the weight of the world is on your shoulders, you’ve got ‘deadlines’, loads of emails in your inbox, thoughts popping into your heads about the different things you need to do and projects that need looking after and people to call and and and and…

Well, it’s made up 😇 All stories we make up in our little heads 🤕

It’s all stories

They’re stories, that our minds starts telling us and we tend to think that the solution is to go through that long to do list and keep chipping away at it. The thing is though that every action we take has a ripple effect which will create a new task in the future. This problem comes from the fact that we tend to attribute disproportionate importance to utterly irrelevant nonsense.

The solution isn’t to do more, it’s to go for a long walk

Just leave it all together. I’ve known this for a while and have experienced it a lot but last week felt different. I woke up anxious about all the stuff I needed to do and even considered not going out for the day and just staying on my laptop. I chose to go skiing instead. And by the end of my ski, I only had a couple of things to do. One or two ‘important’ pieces of work that needed my attention.

The list went from about 50 to about 2 just by gaining perspective and that is because the number of things we have to do are just that: perspectives. The idea that X was chasing me for Y, wasn’t actually true, I’d made that up in my head. And even if they did chase me up on something ‘urgent’, maybe they were making that up in their heads 😋 Maybe, maybe not, but going for a good walk helps have clarity on that too.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

The business won’t fail if I don’t act on the 100s of ideas that pop into my head everyday, in fact, the business has been getting healthier and healthier as I’ve decided to do less. Because in 2017, every action we take has a disproportionate reaction so actually, going for a walk and doing one thing well when we get back is exactly what is needed to build a business strong, not build it fat.

I feel clear on what is important and what isn’t and can now allocate my energy accordingly. And that feels awesome. I went out into nature and came back having magically completed my to do list. Double bonus.

Be well.
Jon

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