Most of us begin our days fired up with the best intentions. We slurp our coffee and compose a Todo list that is longer than a child’s wish-list at Christmas time. – and gawd, we haven’t even made it past the middle of the week. (yet)
By midday, our attention gives way to far more important pursuits, such as liking the new profile picture of the doe-eyed Slovakian Facebook distraction, wondering what she needs your Whatsapp deets for. (airtime?!) lol
Oh, the life force we squander by giving in to our whims…
3 hours a day or nearly 100 hours a month can easily rob us of a quarter of our waking year.
This said, would you
a) hire yourself to work for yourself?
b) would you want to work for yourself?
There are 2 sides to every story and while we may be tardy employees of “Me Inc”, we’re also our own bosses. (Yeah, I just split your identity in two) Perhaps it’s time for a little performance review with our BOSS selves.
“Do this!, Remember to…! Don’t do that!”
…is fine, but no wonder we balk, faced with yet another HAVE-TO’s-LIST of our own making.…
What about all the things we WANT to do?
You won’t do what you tell yourself to do, and you can’t fire yourself from yourself, – but perhaps you’re someone you can negotiate with.
Maybe if you hit the gym, not because you’re fat and you have to, but rather because you have this machine called a body, and you get to mold it as you please and watch it get stronger…
Steven Pressfield (author of The War of Art) said it beautifully …”On the field of the self, stands a knight and a dragon, and every day the knight must do battle and slay resistance.
Each day, the battle begins anew and we must endeavor to slay them dragons, not only for ourselves but because what we do as individuals, affects us collectively too.
What you do for yourself has an impact on those around you.
Most of us have about 1000 acquaintances in our lifetimes. Each of these knows another 1000 people. This means we’re 2 connections away from a billion people. You’re a node in a network. What you do affects everyone around you, like ripples in a pond.
So, as you go about your gainful employment of “me Inc” remember that you’re part of a much larger corporation and how you manage your own day, is going to affect how the corporation moves ahead.
If you don’t have a good employee/boss relationship with yourself, remember that your personal progress is also the progress of your company. When you goof off, remember that you’re goofing off on those who depend on you to bring your part.
So for the next performance review, aim for something like this:
Boss:“You have great potential, but I see you’re not using your day to its maximum”
Employee;” Well, it’s because I’ll never get to the end of my ToDo list. Every time I’m close, you just throw more at me.”
Boss:” Maybe I’ve been a bit harsh on you. How about you pick 3 things that will absolutely move this department forward?! Do those. After that, do whatever cranks your crank. We can meet again tomorrow and let’s see if we can get you to do 4 things.”
Suddenly your Boss doesn’t seem like such a slave driver, and presto… the day looks doable…
Become a good employee of yourself. Be an inspiring employer of your own rebellious self, and know that your growth, whilst appearing to be a personal journey, also affects those working in other departments of this great big corporation we call humanity.
At the very end of it all, we’re all a unique composition of the life circumstances that have molded us. There is a caveat… We are also a collective of individually peculiar souls whose lives improve in the proportion to which we improve the lives of others.
