August 2010 – Debby Hallett

Eat that frog, first thing

There are lots of people giving advice on how to be more productive, get more things done, stop procrastinating. It does seem like we all share the desire to be more effective in our daily lives.

I discovered something that’s helped me a lot!

Brian Tracy is a well respected and prolific productivity guru. His book Eat That Frog, was first published in 2004, and this link points to a newer edition.

The idea is simple.

Frog: any task that you’ve been putting off, where the consequences of putting it off are BIG. The consequences could be good, or bad.

If you don’t do it, you’ll see BAD consequences. For example, don’t file your taxes and just watch that Frog hop into your life take away some of your hard-earned money!
If you DO do it, you stand to win BIG! For example, you’ll never get the lead role in that film unless you go to the auditions!.

Eat: take care of it. Show up and do something about it.

Here’s how it works.

1. Every morning when you wake up, identify your biggest Frog, and then first thing, eat that Frog.

2. If you find you have several Frogs, eat the ugliest one first.

3. If the Frog is particularly ugly, don’t spend too much time thinking about it. Just gobble it up.

And that’s all there is to it.

I think I heard that Brian Tracy thought of this when he was watching a jungle reality TV show, and the contestants had some really awful, creepy things they had to eat. He thought that if the first thing he had to do in the morning was to eat a live frog, then the rest of the day could only get better. Or something like that.

So, tomorrow, awaken to your gently chiming Zen alarm clock. Then, first thing, think: Do I have any Frogs today? Ah, yes. I have two of them: ring the doctors for an appointment for that test, and finish that work I said I’d do this month (because it’s now the last day of the month!)

I find this is just the best for reminding me to get done first thing the most important thing.

What do you think?

Notice how you feel – satisfying moments

The main idea behind these Noticing exercises is that it’s a good thing to know how you feel about things. But so many of us are seriously out of practice in noticing how we feel. One of the basic intentions of Action Inquiry is for us to become better at noticing how we feel, naming how we feel, and then doing something to change how we feel (when we don’t like it).

Noticing and naming how we feel leads to more clarity about what’s really happening in our life, in the moment that it’s happening. It’s a skill anyone can acquire — it just takes practice.

This exercise is from Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry.

Check in with yourself daily at each mealtime and bed time to identify the moment that was the most satisfying to you since the last check-in, and pause to articulate to yourself what made it the most satisfying. In the same way, identify the moment that was the least satisfying to you since the last check-in, and what made it so. Recall if you were aware of these reactions as the moments actually occurred.

All of these exercises point to the same thing: being more aware of how we feel. This awareness is the first step toward personal development.

Why don’t you try one of these exercises for a few days, and post a comment here about how you feel about it? 🙂

Notice how you feel – transitions

One of the hardest things we try to do is to describe to someone else exactly how we are feeling. Skillful actions require a clear understanding of how you feel about what’s happening.

In Action Inquiry, one of our goals is to be able to quickly and accurately assess how we are feeling, so that we can more skilfully decide what’s the best action to take. It’s part of the Inquiry before the Action in Action Inquiry.

Bill Torbert, in his 2004 book, Action Inquiry, gives us a few exercises intended to improve our ability to notice how we feel. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But once you try these exercises, you’ll probably find that it takes practice to notice how you feel.

So, here is another practice made to help us learn to notice how we feel.

As you transition from one activity to another, bring the transition into your awareness by noticing how you feel about ending the previous activity and beginning the next one.

The intention here is for you to develop triggers to help you notice how you feel. “I ran out of time. I have to put that task down before I finished it, and I feel frustrated.” Just like that.

Try it for a week. You might want to let me know how you get on with it. Why not leave a comment?

Living in the present

I’ve been paying attention to how much of my waking time I spend doing something other than being in the present moment. At first glance, it may not seem that important to live in the present in your life. But think: every peak moment in your life happens in the present moment. Go back (yes, to the past) and recall: when were you the happiest? When did you feel most connected to the world? What are your most cherished memories? They come from an almost indescribable moment in time where you were present to all that was happening within you and around you, and you felt totally, completely alive. In the present moment. Not when you were remembering what happened yesterday, or last year, or a decade ago. Not when you are planning for tomorrow, or dreaming of next year, or imagining how wonderful it will be when this or that particular dream comes true.

Your joy happens in real time. Your sorrow happens now, as well. In fact, it all happens now. When you feel sadness at something that happened in the past, it’s really your thoughts about what happened that cause the feelings. And when is it that your thoughts happen? In the present moment.

If I had some sort of measuring device, I think it would show that about 75% of the time I am thinking about the past, which is gone, over, done with, never to be seen again. About 24% of the time I’m imagining a future that may never arrive, dreaming, planning, following long imaginary conversations to some conclusion that is SO not real, and I get lost in it. The scant 1% left over is what I devote to my ‘real’ life, as it is happening with me (to me?) right now: how I feel, what I’m seeing and hearing, what people are saying and doing, how I relate to others in my world. Just being generally useful and kind. (Or unhelpful and grumpy — it depends.) I’m uneasy with that 1% figure. I’ve heard that life is what’s happening while you’re busy making plans. Indeed.

A mindfulness meditation practice can help us be more gentle with ourselves, but at the same time, to notice when our minds wander to the past or the future. My mind goes off on its own, habitually, and makes up stories: I say this and then she says that and takes this thingamajig and throws it over there, and I say ‘Well! Hmmph!’ and off my mind goes until I notice that I’ve gone somewhere else and gently say, ‘Hey. Come back. Focus on right here, now, in this moment.’

It’s amusing, really. I find it hard to hold my attention deliberately in the present moment for more than a couple of seconds. Once my mind wanders off, it can be off on a jolly for many minutes before I realize it and call my mind back to Now. I have to laugh. It’s just the way our minds work. But if we can develop a bit more awareness of how our thoughts take on a life of their own, we can feel quite a bit more patience with ourselves, and with others. And our compassion will grow too. And that’s a good thing.

Notice how you feel – periodic check-ins

One of the hardest things we try to do is to describe to someone else exactly how we are feeling. One of the aims of practicing Action Inquiry is to become more aware of how we feel, in the moment, so that we can gauge whether we need to change something, do something different to get a different outcome. Skillful actions require a clear understanding of how you feel about what’s happening.

But before we can describe how we feel, we need to notice how we feel. It’s surprising how many people hurry through their busy days and never really notice how they feel. Until there’s something drastic, that is. When something drastic happens, we do notice how we feel, and it can be overwhelming. I think that overwhelm comes partly from not being very experienced in noticing how we feel, so when we notice it, it’s kind of surprising to us.

So, here is a practice designed to help us notice how we feel.

This exercise is from Bill Torbert’s 2004 book, Action Inquiry.

At home and at work (to the extent possible), set your watch alarm or cell phone to go off every 60 minutes. When it does this, take 30 seconds to notice how you felt mentally, emotionally, and physically at the moment the alarm went off (including any irritation that the alarm went off!).

The intention is for you to more quickly be able to identify how you feel in any given moment, to be able to describe to yourself how you felt. “I’m mentally stimulated, emotionally calm, but my left leg hurts behind the knee.” Just like that.

Try it for a week. You might want to let me know how you get on with it. Why not leave a comment.