I remember listening to a Zig Ziglar audio cassette 25 years ago. He said [paraphrase] – “We spend all our time at work thinking about home and all our time at home thinking about work. It’s no wonder we don’t get anything done.
When I think about moving through a day, a week, a month (or life in general), it feels like it’s a multi-dimensional world. Time moves forward of course, and along that path, we have multiple responsibilities and aspirations we’re trying to balance.
I’ve got my family life, my work life, and my Self life. Then within each of those categories sit multiple responsibilities and aspirations.
For example with my family, there’s my wife and then her responsibilities and aspirations – her work, caring for our numerous farm animals (horses, goats & chickens), and her own fitness and exercise. My son has his day-to-day school routine, plus now we have middle school coming around and all the prep for that. He’s got soccer, Fortnite tournaments, and time with his friends. Both my wife’s parents and my parents are aging and there are issues that pop up with health and their aging.
At work, I’ve got multiple clients, workshops, events and conferences, travel, marketing, sales, finances and team management.
Within my Self, I’ve got soccer coaching, diet, sleep, exercise and training for the next ultra-marathon and training Brazilians jiu-jitsu.
Then there’s all the external forces – the economy, the election, the weather. Whatever might impact one’s day to day.
It gets overwhelming.
That’s why it’s important to focus on Now, now and worry about Later, later. I came up with this 10+ years ago when I was teaching a business school class. Students were talking about how they had projects, finals, internship interviews, visa applications, and everything else that goes with being a business school student.
Before I started the lecture, I could feel the tension and these words just came out.
Multitasking is a myth – it’s been scientifically proven. As humans, when we think we’re multi-tasking, we’re just task-switching, and task-switching is expensive for our productivity.
When you’re on a Zoom with a customer, focus on that customer. When you’re preparing for the next big meeting, turn off your email and Slack and get it done. When you’re exercising, don’t check your phone for emails. When you’re sleeping, put your phone in airplane mode.
Focus on Now, now. Worry about Later, later.
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