Living In The Moment As A Leader
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 28, 2014
I'm at the age where I walk into rooms, or get up from my desk, and in seconds can't remember why I'm doing it. I sometimes don't remember if I went to the bathroom or not, or if I ate or not. Medication might or might not be taken, and that's never a good thing.
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I've been thinking about this type of thing more and more lately as I wonder if I'm missing out on something. Whereas multitasking used to come quite easily to me, these days it's hard to get anything done correctly if I'm not really paying attention. Well, that's not fully true. I can still listen to music or audio and get things done, but I'm not always sure I'm taking everything in when something gets a bit more complicated or when what I'm listening to hits a critical point and I have to listen more than work.
There's this concept that's been around for some years now that talks about "living in the moment". In essence, the goal is to find more things that we kind of take for granted and instead focus on one thing at a time, even something we do without thinking, to feel it and to memorize it and to get it right. There was even a recent article on Huffington Post that talked about 15 Unexpected Side-Benefits To Living In The Present Moment.
This topic comes to me as I get to spend a little over a week at home for the first time since the Christmas/New Years holiday and I've found myself trying to remember lots of things that I need to do while I'm home, lots of things I want to do, and trying to manage things that pop up here and there that throw other thoughts out of my mind. Even Sunday night, as I was putting a list together of appointments and such (which is up to 19 so far and included writing this post with this title) I had to stop and go to the bathroom, and after washing my hands realized once again that I'd forgotten to put towels back on the rack since I'd put the others in the washer... 6 hours ago.
This time I stopped, because it was on my mind, went to the dresser and pulled out both a washcloth and a big drying towel and put them on the rack. I thought about what I wanted to put up because my last set was burgundy and I wanted to change to a different color, and went with dark blue. I hung both towels in the proper manner for me (my wife hangs things differently), stepped back to look at it, and came back, looked at the last thing on my list, and started writing this; powerful stuff, right? lol
Actually, it's more powerful than one might imagine. By the end of my writing this post I'll add an image, which you'll see above, schedule when I want it to go live, and I'll have accomplished something I can remove from my list. The list has allowed me the first steps towards being able to focus on what I need to address, but each item also allows me to live in the moment and work, as a leader, on parts of my business, since not everything on my list is personal.
Back in the days when I was an everyday director, I almost always had one thing I wanted to address for that day. It might mean putting together a report, setting up a meeting, or maybe even just sitting at my desk thinking about ways to improve or stay right where we were. Even when I had to help put out fires, I always had my one goal for each day to come back to, and in my own way I was living in the moment as a leader. Knowing what I wanted to address kept me on point and allowed me to actually be a leader as opposed to someone always fixing problems.
What's funny is that, back then, even though I typed a lot, I also wrote more often. I loved pulling out a yellow legal pad and writing out ideas, because it was easier then to look at a pad and make corrections than it was reading a computer monitor. I loved writing things and practicing the art of writing, and producing work that was visible, not only to myself but to others. If I ended a day with 4 or 5 pieces of paper in front of me, even if it was all personal brainstorming, it looked impressive, and it felt impressive.
How often do you feel like you're not living in the moment? Does this concept seem like something you might like to try, if you're not doing it, or if sometimes you feel as though you're not concentrating on something as well as you know you should? Let me know, and enjoy the process.
I can completely relate with you here Mitch. I have begun to realize I need to write things down and make lists. I dunno if it is because I am now closer to 50 than 40 or if it is because technology has us moving SO fast and doing SO much more than 20 years ago.
Have you tried Evernote? It is free and will free you of all those scraps of papers with your notes and you can use it on any of your mobile devices and they all sync up too each other. Have a look at it.
Oh and living in the moment… Yes, I think it was my Grand Pappy who said- “Stop and smell the roses.” Actually it was probably someone else but he did say it to me.
Howard Jones sang, “Don’t try to live your life in one day. Try to enjoy the here and now the future will take care of itself somehow.”
Hey Troy. You must have missed my post on IJS talking about Evernote; I actually had a couple. Thing is, that only works if you remember to write all your notes down. lol And I think it has more to do with age, though probably not as much on what I wrote about as much as deciding that suddenly you might not have all the time in the world to get things done and you start trying to pack everything in your head that you hope to do, with lousy results. Yeah, that’s it. 🙂
I think I must have missed that one Mitch. I apologize. I am trying to catch up on your posts but there are SO many and all SO very valuable.
Trying to get to them though, ’cause like we say back on my block – You da Man!
In the past, I was very disorganized. Often colleagues, have wondered, how I get things done in time without any schedule. Now, I am several years older, even still young, I forget many things and now I am keeping notes on everything. Multitasking have never been an issue though, but destruction from different factors, have always been my worst enemy. Often destruction based on multi-tasking and attempts to try something new.
Carl, I think it hits all of us as we get older, though I’m not so sure it’s always a bad thing. I’d like to think that parts of our concentration are better, to the extent that our minds throw out some of the stuff that it doesn’t consider as crucial to what we need to do. Of course, eating and going to the bathroom… I think they’re pretty crucial. 🙂
Living in the moment equals being present. It’s called Mindfullness.
I’m exploring this topic in one of my coaching classes.
Mindfullness means being fully present.
Ellen Langer is widely known as the master on this topic.
I’ll admit I’m not sure how to respond to this Steve. lol You’re right; I guess that’s all I have.