Day 16–100 Days Being Visible
We don’t see things as they are
A colleague I spoke with yesterday mentioned he dedicates one-third of his workweek to learning and development. He consciously limits the amount of client-facing time to about three days out of five. I was reminded that in early December when planning 2021, I promised myself I would keep one day per week for my learning and one day per week for marketing and development of an online training course. I blocked out my calendar so my biggest contract could not schedule me on Thursdays or Fridays. My plan was to establish a weekly rhythm of learning and course development.
In late December I realised that a project promised to a client was going to take far more time than I had allowed. I cleared from my calendar all the learning and development days from January until mid-March. I rationalised that I would delay these projects until the April to June quarter. It’s now late March and my calendar looks full for several more weeks. I say yes to nice-to-have coaching work and I am at the edge of over-commitment. Overcommitment will cost me family time, exercise time, and time for learning and course development. Overcommitment is a way to stay safe in familiar territory and avoid being visible in unexplored terrains. It is a way to set my self up to lose the being visible game I declared and consequently fail to launch my online course before the end of June.
A single three-month delay would not be an issue. The issue is I have delayed this project by three-months - several times already!
I spent time today reviewing my calendar out to the end of September and scheduling my known commitments. I blocked out an optimistic 60 hours for course preparation and marketing before the end of June. I assess it is real to keep more than 45 hours of these in place after allowing for emergencies if I protect the time. This is enough time to win bronze and have a chance at gold.
I also see that winning my being-visible game is not just a matter of planning and scheduling (which are important) but more importantly of deciding who I will be as I play the game. I am winning the game of ‘getting enough paid coaching and consulting work to support my family’. However, I am experiencing my success as weight and not to be celebrated. How strange to have achieved a significant business goal and almost be resenting the success.
Writing this article has given me a new insight which is that the most important activity I can now undertake is to shift how I am seeing the situation of my life right now.
Knowledge
Setting aside the time and having a plan is not enough, what is missing is a resourceful way-of-being to transform how I am observing my situation. This is a matter of what Rafael Echeveria called second-order learning (Sieler, 2003).
We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are. (anonymous)
In my interpretation, shifts in our way-of-being change not only how we observe the world, but the actions that we see as possibilities for us. If the results we generate in the world come from our actions (which include our conversations) then the actions we see as possible come from our way-of-being (see diagram in the title image).
Transforming my way-of-being is a work in progress and I will return to this theme when I generate my new way-of-being.
Progress
I missed publishing an article yesterday, otherwise, I assess I am on track.
16/17/100 (Number of days goals met/ number of days into project/ 100)
References
Sieler, Alan, 2003. Coaching to the Human Soul: Ontological Coaching and Deep Change Volume 1. Newfield Australia.
Quote Investigator. 7 <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/09/as-we-are/ >[Accessed 24 March 2021].
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