Okay, so I’m still very sore around the ribs after my horse kicking last week. I’m pleased to say (and pleasantly surprised) that my bruised ego has healed much more quickly. You see I was very embarrassed and frustrated that I’d gotten a kick in the first place. I mean, I know that horses can kick and I know to be careful behind a horse. I never actually stand behind any horse and tell the kids the same repeatedly. Last week I was standing next to Robert’s rear leg to give him his penicillin shot (a consequence of a late night bout of ‘choke’ that we had to call the vet out for). I had just gotten the needle in and was about to connect the syringe when he went off. Before I knew anything he’d shifted and all I can remember was seeing his hoof coming toward me in a flash. It thumped into my rib cage, skidding off with a thwack into my right bicep. The force threw me backwards and to the ground. I realise now that I had been severely winded but for one split second I thought “Oh my God, he’s cracked my ribs!”. The only thing more crushed than my ribs was my pride - I had failed to administer the injection that Robert needed and was now having trouble breathing. I didn’t get angry at Robert - I know his actions weren’t intentional. I made sure I gave him a pat before retreating inside and leaving Alyson to put him away.

Alyson rang the vet the next morning and explained what had happened. “Oh, it’s easy to do” says the receptionist. Fantastic. It seemed easy yesterday too, until it all went wrong. The vet agreed to come out that afternoon and administer the next injection, showing us what to do. Apart from the extra expense this really underlined that I had not been able to do something I thought I could. Slightly depressing…. not a nice feeling. I’m going to get out my violin and start playing to myself. The vet came and as we’re walking down to the bottom paddock he says “so, you got a kick did you?” To my confirmation he then added “yeah, I’ve been kicked many times”. I’m not sure if this was meant to help but two things occurred to me straight away: first, I wasn’t getting any sympathy from the vet and second, I wasn’t looking for an encore performance. As the violin kicked in again I watched the vet administer the needle with ease and control. As he explained everything step by step he actually stuck the needle into Robert a second time to show how easy it was and to rub salt into my wounded ego.

The next day came and Alyson and I were very nervous. My confidence was at rock bottom. After Alyson had spent quite a bit of time grooming Robert I joined her. The vet had said to grab a fold of skin in one hand and to squeeze hard - “think of an old teacher you didn’t like, pretend you’re wringing their neck!” My first grab was half-hearted, Robert tried to pull away. I remember the vet then squeezing harder to assert who was in charge. I didn’t feel in charge but I squeezed harder. He remained still. With the other hand I quickly reached for the syringe in my back pocket, popped off the lid and injected Robert just behind where I had a tight handful of skin on his neck. The needle went straight in, he didn’t move. I plunged the penicillin in and removed the needle in a fluid movement. We had done it!

Elated and very pleased with ourselves I wasn’t at all bothered that I had achieved something that many people do every day without thinking twice. For me it was a very satisfying achievement, a challenge met. As we relaxed later I said to Alyson “well it’s true, you do learn something new every day…….”. That was a great feeling.

It’s Father’s Day today here in Australia. What a privilege it is to be a father. As a consequence I feel slightly uneasy with all the fuss that’s being made this morning. After all, I’ve had this job for 13 years now and am only just feeling like I’m hitting my straps. It can be hard, it can be challenging, it can be complicated. Of course it can also be immensely rewarding, fun, exciting and uplifting. It’s the one job I have that when I die I want to have the ‘360 degree feedback’ say he always tried his best and did an excellent job.

My youngest, 8 years old, surprised me with a poem she had hand written. I learned afterwards she had searched the internet and decided this met her needs. I’d like to share it. It says:

God took the strength of a mountain,

The majesty of a tree,

The warmth of a summer sun,

The calm of a quite sea,

The generous soul of nature,

The comforting arm of night,

The wisdom of the ages,

The power of the eagle’s flight,

The joy of a morning in Spring,

The faith of a mustard seed,

The patience of eternity,

The depth of a family need.

Then God combined these qualities.

When there was nothing to add,

He knew his masterpiece was complete,

And so,

He called it…………Dad.

I was so humbled and at the same time daunted. I aspire to be all these things for my children and hope that each day my actions take me steadily closer to this picture.

This morning I’ve thanked my kids for the opportunity to be their dad.

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Dear Robin

I had the very great pleasure of attending your all day workshop in Sydney last week on ‘Leading without Title’ and wanted to write a quick thank you. I was surprised when you said you only conduct about 10 of these workshops each year. However, by the end I understood why. As you had promised up front, you gave all your energy and focus to the day resulting in an awesome experience for every one of the 100 or so people in the room. I had a diverse range of talented, interesting people at my table - a partner in a law firm, a very successful advertising exec, an IT project manager, a marketing and promotions expert and a management consultant. What a great journey you took us all on where, quite frankly, those backgrounds were irrelevant. What united us was your concept of leading without title, of being the best that we can be, regardless of our station in life.

I took so many notes on the rich information you shared - so many that I need to now sit down and work through them to reflect and determine what they mean to me, what I want to do about them. I am excited and inspired to do this. Some random jottings I see include:

“The job of leadership begins with looking in the mirror”

“Beneath every excuse lives a fear”

“Leadership is about personal responsibility”

“No-one will ever forget how you make them feel“

“Create space to ideate”

“NSI - Never Stop Improving!”

“How hard do you play when no-one’s watching?”

“Reward intelligent failures”

“Run toward your fears”

“Your father’s words to you: always be dreaming, always love learning and find a cause larger than yourself and give yourself to that cause”

There’s so much more and it’s all powerful, thought-provoking stuff. Genuine wisdom.

I got up at 4:15 am to travel to Sydney for this day and didn’t get home again until 9:15 at night. I had flight delays at both ends and as you know it rained solidly all day in Sydney. Yet I wouldn’t change anything. It comes as no surprise to me that as my taxi back to Sydney airport crawled along a crowded expressway, and I stared out the window at the gloomy wet sky, the sun broke through briefly behind me and the most complete, bright rainbow appeared. I haven’t seen a sight like that in a long time. It was the perfect end to a fantastic day.

Best wishes.

Simon

]]> http://freeflowlife.net/2008/07/27/an-open-thank-you-to-robin-sharma/feed/ Simon http://freeflowlife.net/2008/07/17/gtd-hybrid-system-30-day-trial-complete/ http://freeflowlife.net/2008/07/17/gtd-hybrid-system-30-day-trial-complete/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:15:48 +0000 Simon http://freeflowlife.wordpress.com/?p=69

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For those of you who haven’t been following my trial of a GTD Hybrid System - that is, one using paper combined with electronic tools - you may want to check out my original post on the subject first. To read some of my observations as the trial unfolded please check out my first update, my second update and my third update.

Let me say upfront that this has been an interesting exercise for a person like me who loves electronic gadgets and is around technology all day. However, I have had just as much fun writing in my Moleskine Cahier and I’m very pleased with this choice. I looked at bulkier notebooks initially and they didn’t feel right. This was slim, light and yet not so tiny that I felt like I was writing on a postage stamp. Using a good pen made a difference too.

The page divisions by context worked quite well - at this early stage I haven’t used too many pages for each one and so haven’t come close to running out. The small Post-It tabs have not bent or frayed. My most recent weekly review flowed really nicely using my Moleskine, my BlackBerry to access my calendar and a coffee in a noisy cafe. The last point is not trivial. My hybrid system is very portable and allows me to leave my workspace more quickly, easily than my all electronic one did. And by changing locations, even to a noisy cafe, I was able to really focus, uninterrupted. It was a great feeling when I walked back into work an hour later.

I had thought I would miss the ability in Outlook to drag an email and automatically create a task out of it (which is a great feature). Instead I have found that I’m really focusing on what the next action is from the email and what I write down to accurately, succinctly define it. I didn’t pay that much attention previously. I am definitely reviewing my next action lists more frequently than I was and as a consequence getting more done. Next actions that have been hanging around a while stand out and I have been having lots of conversations with myself to work out if I’m still committed to them or if they should be moved to Someday/Maybe….or even deleted!

So, overall this trial has been a great success for me. I was feeling no attraction to my electronic lists and therefore not feeling good about what wasn’t getting done. Now I feel reinvigorated. I feel like and I am getting more done. I think it has been important to allow enough time to really evaluate a different way of working properly. It does feel like a habit now to use my Moleskine for next actions and I am going to continue my GTD system this way for the foreseeable future. At some point I am sure my circumstances will change and I’ll need to re-evaluate my setup again.

Now if I could just work out a reason why I need an iPhone……

Got any thoughts or ideas of your own on the shift to paper?

Please use the comments area to discuss.

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As the past (very cold) week has unfolded it no longer feels like a “new thing” to be using my Moleskine Cahier to manage my GTD Next Actions and Projects. It feels quite normal. The GTD part paper, part electronic system I’m trialling seems quite viable for my circumstances. My original thoughts are here with my first week here and my second week here. Next week I’ll need to make a decision on whether to make this a permanent change. In the meantime here are three more observations I’d like to offer about my trial:

1. I have not been re-writing my lists as part of the weekly review to make them neater or to group all the current next actions for a context together. This wasn’t deliberate but I have now discovered I like leaving them as they are because it gives me a very quick visual appreciation of which tasks have been around longer. There are no dates and I don’t feel I need them. Simply seeing an older next action active on a list causes me to ask myself what I’m doing to move on it so that I can get it done. When I created my paper lists I committed to myself that if I was going to spend the time and effort putting the next action on the list then I better be prepared to do something about it. Some of my stale next actions have caused me to re-assess this and in some cases I have realised that I am no longer committed to them for one reason or another. So, they move to Someday/Maybe or they just get deleted.

2. Consistent with previous weeks I am finding I’m naturally reaching for my Cahier to determine what to do next. This is a good feeling as I know that I’m not being distracted by latest and loudest which, particularly at work, is quite easy. More than before I believe I’m capitalising on those little gaps of time before meetings much better. This is in part because I’m not turning to Outlook for my lists and then getting sidetracked with email. Even though I open a separate window for the Calendar and Tasks and one for Email it’s often proved a trap in the past.

3. Related to the last observation is one I’ve made that I’ll need to work on fixing this coming week. That is, I have found I’m not as attuned to my Calendar in Outlook as I sometimes need to be. Whereas before I made the Calendar the centre of my GTD universe now this emphasis has shifted and my Next Action lists in my Moleskine are. The outcome has been not quite enough consistent attention on those next actions or tickled reminders that are day specific sitting atop the calendar. Nothing has been missed at the end of the day but the focus hasn’t quite been there.

Okay folks, I’ll offer a final post on my trial next week including my decision on whether to make this change permanent.

Got any thoughts or ideas of your own on the shift to paper?

Please use the comments area to discuss.

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Okay folks, another week has gone by and I’m still going with my trial of a GTD combined electronic and paper system. Last week I wrote about some of the set up experience and of some initial reactions. This week I want to make three more observations which are focused on day to day use:

1.  During the week I have felt more in control in that sense of knowing exactly what is I’m not doing compared to when my next action lists were electronic. I’ve been very comfortable committing to unplanned things that were more important as it was easy to make that call. My electronic calendar in Outlook still contains fixed time and fixed day commitments and I have transferred a couple of things from my paper lists to specific days as circumstances have changed.

2.  I have found myself scanning the lists in the morning and picking next actions that, all things being equal, I want to get done that day. I tried doing that with my electronic lists but it never came together in the same way and I don’t feel the commitment was there. I have therefore made movement on things that were stuck on my electronic lists. I’d stare at them as they went stale. This has meant that my sense of achievement has been high and psychologically I get a kick out of crossing through the task when it’s done.

3.  This one is in the weeds. It’s about the physical set up of my Moleskine Cahier. It has 80 pages so I have allowed roughly 8 pages for each context that I have. My tiny Post-It soft tabs with a single letter (double for Projects) for each context are going well. They’re not getting dog-eared. I ordered my context lists with Calls at the front followed by Home, Office, Computer, Errands, Waiting For and Someday/Maybe. Then I have three sets of Project lists - Personal, Work and Delegated. The order works well for me because the ones I will need are grouped near each other. I have not, as I had planned, been synching to Outlook by copying next actions as part of the weekly review. This is partly because I did my last weekly review in a cafe without a computer (only had my BlackBerry with my calendar). It’s also because I’m not seeing the value in it. I may make a photocopy of various pages as a precaution but I think that’s all I’ll do.

Click here for Update 3 of the trial.

Got any thoughts or ideas of your own on the shift to paper?

Please use the comments area to discuss.

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When you rush from one place to the next how often do you stop and take a moment to enjoy the beauty of your surrounds? Can you even see this beauty or are you already numb to it? Do you pause to enjoy your day?

We spotted this sea lion on our last holiday quietly snoozing on the rocks in a popular area of the coastal town we were in. We’d walked in this area before and quite possibly he’d been there too. My younger son noticed him first. We stopped and watched him for almost 15 mins. He’d stir occasionally, adjusting his head and giving us a glance in the process. This simple, unexpected siting became the highlight of the day for us. I am so glad we stopped to enjoy it. He seemed pretty relaxed too!……

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Well I promised I’d provide a weekly update on my trial of a GTD hybrid system. Details on what I was planning to do are covered in this post here. So far so good. I missed doing a formal weekly review at the end of last week so I haven’t backed up my paper system to Outlook as I’d planned. I’m not the least bit concerned though. I have been simply entering my Next Actions and then striking through them when done.

Three observations I’d make so far:

1. The initial exercise of transferring all my Next Actions, Someday/Maybes and Projects from Outlook to paper provided a great opportunity to really think about my commitment to each of the items I was transferring, particularly those that had been on the list for a while. Essentially I committed to myself that if I was going to spend the time and effort writing and maintaining this item on paper then then I’d better be planning on actually striking it off sometime too.

2. Linked to the first observation, I have found I have had a really increased focus on my lists day to day, particularly my @Home list. I refer to them much more often and am attracted to looking at them. It has changed where I spend my time, for the better. I refer to my electronic calendar as need be and it seems easier to carve out the time each day to define my work.

3. The Moleskine Cahier is working well for me. I like its size and weight. It is not multi-purpose as I still capture Next Actions elsewhere and this suits me. I don’t feel the need to change that.

I’ll provide another update next week.

Got any thoughts or ideas of your own on the shift to paper?

Please use the comments area to discuss.

I got tagged by Laugh in the Sun to answer a few questions that (may?) shed a little different light on who I am and, in the spirit of having a little fun, here goes:

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?

I was working as the leader and manager of a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency team of approximately 50 people. I was in my late 20s and I found it quite challenging to deal with the volume and variety of ‘people’ issues that were thrown my way. I had been used to focusing almost exclusively on operations to that point. No two issues were the same and I often felt like I was on the back foot in trying to make the right decisions. For example, I had to deal with a chronic under performing staff member from overseas that everyone previously had put up with or overlooked (the individual was sent home). I had to help people cope with the aftermath of a head-on collision involving my people that resulted in two lost lives and three critically injured others. I chose to push for certain people’s promotion in spite of their outdated personnel systems that said it couldn’t be done. I learned a lot.

My 61 year old dad was also going downhill rapidly. The mesothelioma crippling his body was very aggressive. In less than 18 months from diagnosis he had become a shadow of his former self. About this time of year I flew to where he lived again with my eldest boy who was almost 3 years old, leaving my wife and 6 month old son at home. We got to spend some time together without others around which was very special. We weren’t great communicators but we were close - I am his only child. We had some special moments reminiscing about things we had done together. I said goodbye. Only a few short weeks later he passed away. We talk about Poppy so much still today that even my 7 year old daughter thinks she has met him .

2. What are 5 things on your to-do list today?

- Complete Quick Reference Guide content on how we will use Salesforce.com in my account space (am over the garbage in, garbage out situation)
- Call my mechanic to book car in for repair (head gasket leaking a little oil - am sick of smell!)
- Complete client ’supervisor’s report’ for one of my people (needed to maintain security clearance)
- Speak with kids about Parent-Teacher interviews next week (one child has brought home the note, two haven’t!)
- Book ticket to Robin Sharma seminar in Sydney next month

3. What snacks do you enjoy?

Nothing riveting here:

- chocolate
- nuts
- bananas

4. Things you would do if you were a billionaire.

- Keep working
- Help family
- Invest the majority
- Travel to slightly unusual destinations
- Test drive many different cars

5. Three of your bad habits.

My wife assures me I’ll have trouble narrowing down a long list whereas right now I’m actually struggling to come up with any! Okay…how about:

- Sometimes giving advice when an ear was all that was sought
- Driving a little too fast at times
- Losing track of the time on the computer

6. Five places you have lived.

- Melbourne, Australia
- Southport, Australia
- Guayaquil, Ecuador
- Sydney, Australia
- Alice Springs, Australia

7. Five jobs you’ve had.

- Paperboy (5am on a rainy morning - not fun!)
- Barman (at an airport - fascinating way to study people and I got to serve some really cool people - Eric Clapton was the best with former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange the worst)
- Research Officer (first job after university - there was so much I didn’t know)
- Business Consultant (problem solving for grown ups)
- Account Director (all about talking with people at the end of the day. I’m constantly learning something about myself and others as a consequence)

8. How did you name your blog

My aim is to make my life as free flowing as possible by seeking happiness, simplicity and productivity in all that I do. I also like the concept of flow as described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and think it is worthwhile pusuit. And, more than anything, it seemed a tad better than ‘Simon Hill’s Blog’ ………

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I have been pondering my all electronic GTD system for some time now. It works well and has done so for almost a year. However, as I wrote here, I feel the need to explore the incorporation of paper into the system. And today begins my 30 day trial.

I have searched the web, listened to others’ various tips and decided how I am going to do it. I’ll write about it here each week so that hopefully my experience will contribute to the melting pot of views and may help someone make up their mind on which way to go if they’re starting out.

Firstly, I am only moving my Next Action and Projects lists to paper. I will be retaining an electronic calendar - it’s just too convenient syncing to my BlackBerry plus in the work environment I have a number of people who need to be able to see my diary.

I have chosen to use a Moleskine Cahier for my lists. Basically I will keep all next actions, waiting fors, someday/maybes and projects in this. After much indecision and confusion after looking online I am going to “sync” or backup my Cahier to Outlook. That way if I lose the Cahier I am not totally stuffed. I could photocopy the pages, true.

I will “sync” as part of my Weekly Review which I’m hoping will provide the dual benefit of getting me to really focus on cranking widgets during the week so I have the satisfaction of seeing the lists change dramatically. I’ll enter a Next Action on my paper list. Once I have backed it up to Outlook I will place a dot next to it. I’ll strike through the NA on paper when it’s done and then when I have checked it as done in Outlook I will highlight it in my Cahier. That’s my current thinking. This may all end up being too much effort for little return but that’s what the trial is all about!

Wish me luck!

Got any thoughts or ideas of your own on the shift to paper?

Please use the comments area to discuss.