Personal management – Page 5

Beds in Mind

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The duvet cover on my bed has poppers that hold it closed. There are about ten of them. If one opens, they will eventually all open. Last night, as I got out of bed to close four of those fasteners, it occurred to me that they are a bit of a metaphor for life. If you ignore the small things you know you should take care of they can expand to become more problematic. In this case, ignoring one open popper will result in feet being tangled and general discomfort. From a “duvet cover of life” perspective, it can result in more than a potential trip hazard getting out of bed. Ignoring small, but necessary things can result in less desirable outcomes.

Beating the regret cycle

We are creatures built for regret. We procrastinate, avoid and sometimes fail to begin at all things that we know, deep down, we should do. There is a class of regret that comes from unwise actions or poorly chosen words, but this is not the worst. It’s the things we don’t do that cause the most guilt and regret. So how do we avoid the regret of things undone? Start. Something. Somewhere. Start now.

Managing your responses, and keeping an open mind

Life is full of surprises – how’s that for a clichéd start? The thing about clichés is that they hold more than a grain of truth, which is why we have so many of them. What matters isn’t that we’re exposed to unexpected occurrences in our personal or professional lives – it’s how we respond that counts.

Steps to becoming an exemplary human

I took a long walk today by the seafront in Malahide, a charming coastal town in Dublin. The sun was shining, and there was a cold easterly wind. I wasn’t in top mental form – I’ve been in a good deal of pain following a recent surgery, and frankly, I was feeling grumpy. I thought the walk would do me good, and I had a podcast for company – Jocko Podcast 174. If you’re interested in leadership principles, I would strongly recommend a listen.

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The value in living a small life

From an early age, we are encouraged to “dream big”, “be ambitious” or otherwise supersize our mental and physical lives. Those of us who think in larger terms are often those who, being unhappy in the world, or unreasonable in the right way, find ways to better it.

For today, I want to focus on why it’s sometimes ok to live a smaller life.

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Practice, obsession and the catch-up game

I’m currently reading Bounce, the book by Matthew Syed that debunks the “Talent Myth”. It’s a well-written exposition of how the individuals we think of as being child prodigies or otherwise abnormally gifted, often had circumstances that were highly conducive to their later success.

He writes convincingly of the 10,000 hour “rule” for developing expertise. This states that in order to develop world class expertise in a particular field, one has to apply focussed practice for around 10,000 hours in order to achieve it. In the case of many of the highly recognisable names, they had accumulated that level of practice by their late teens or early twenties.

So what do we do if we want to become expert-level (not necessarily world-class) at something later in life? How do we accumulate the expertise when we are typically much more time-poor?

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A Death at Christmas

On the day of my daughter’s 15th birthday I stood in the cold in the local churchyard with her, and well more than a hundred others, and waited for the body of her best friend’s father to arrive.

A very private man, I had met him only once, and didn’t know him at all. Despite his private nature the crowd of people there was testament to the impact he had on many lives. We were there to offer our support and consolation to his family, and to say goodbye to a brother, husband, father, co-worker and friend. While we waited there, I thought that while it may not be obvious to us as we travel through our lives, the decisions we make have lasting consequences, and those consequences live beyond us.

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