Habit of Thought

10 Reasons Why You Don't Need a Coach

I'm often asked what coaching does for people. The coach's favorite answer is, it depends. It entirely depends on what the person being coached (PBC) wants or needs. The outcomes vary tremendously from PBC to PBC. (I will address what coaching does for companies in a separate post.)

I find a good way to answer the question of what coaching does for people is to describe situations I've encountered where the person didn't need a coach. The list below, in no particular order, contains a sampling of reasons why they didn't.

Time Management

1. You manage how you spend your time by managing your goals and priorities, not by how much you can cram into a given day. You have a system of some kind in place to handle all the incoming stuff yet retain peace of mind.

Physical Health

2. You are physically healthy. You have daily routines for exercise, sleep, and diet that increase your capacity and restore it.

Social Life

3. Your social life is in good order. You connect with people in a meaningful way regularly. You have a good support system of people you love spending time with, who have your back, who push you when you need it, who leave you feeling happier and more alive after spending time with them.

Family Life

4. Your family life works for you. Baggage from the past rarely influences your outlook, relationships or responses today. Family needs are one of the big rocks that go on your calendar and spending list first.

Personal and Professional Development

5. You believe in and routinely engage in some sort of personal and professional development through regular reading, additional education, hobbies, conferences, seminars, or a mentor. If your employer doesn't pay for these things, you invest in them yourself at an affordable level.

Productivity

6. Your home, your office, your workspace, your car, your garage: anywhere you spend a lot of time is organized to meet your needs. You can lay your hands on important paperwork in a matter of minutes. Clutter is managed and purged regularly.

Career

7. You have a handle on your career. You stay up with trends in your field, your industry, your customer base. You watch for the effects of technology in your work and take every opportunity for training that comes your way. You take full responsibility for improving your current skills and learning new ones. You also routinely work to improve your people skills--listening, communication, managing, delegating--as well as any technical skills involved.

Finances

8. Your finances are solid. Will, health proxy, living will are in place. Short- and long-term savings and investments are in progress. You have a good credit rating. Your life, health and belongings are protected at the right level by insurance. How you manage your money works for you.

Leadership

9. You regularly apply your leadership skills in your life and work, regardless of your level or title in a company or your role in your family. You understand leadership is a life skill, not something you only do at your job. You think strategically, respond with emotional intelligence, understand your role, and fulfill your responsibilities.

Values

10. You know what your values, ethics and beliefs are. You make virtually all of your daily choices and decisions in accordance with what's important to you and what brings meaning to your life. You know how to quickly assess requests for your time, money, or energy before saying "yes." You know how to say "no" gracefully.

Perfection Is Not the Goal, Progress Is

This list doesn't mean a meaningful life is possible only if all 10 things (or others you can think of) are in place. For many people, getting one or two of those things in order is enough.

How about you? Are the blessings you already have in your life enough to keep body, soul, and mind together and functioning?

Delete Prior

I had my first BlackBerry cell phone for a year before I found the "Delete Prior" function that allowed me to delete a range of the emails on it.

Before that, I had to delete all the emails individually. It was tedious and painful.

(If you don't know how to find this function on your BB, see instructions at the bottom of this post.)

Click a Button and Get a Clean Slate

Sometimes when I press that BlackBerry button, I wish I could just as easily wipe out all the mistakes and mis-steps and poor decisions of my life and start over. Other times I'd like to do major housekeeping on my to-do list in the same way. Or I might just wish I could start that day over.

Anne Shirley, the feisty heroine of Anne of Green Gables, has an interesting approach. She sees each new day as a fresh start, with no mistakes in it. (She constantly gets into trouble, though her escapades pale in comparison to what kids today get themselves into.)

A Symptom, Not a Treatment

In working through a recent book I read, I've come to understand that impulse as a symptom of a lack of balance, a lack of energy, or both. When I feel that way, I set aside time as soon as I can to assess my commitments and goals at a higher level than managing them day-to-day. That "reset" function clears out the underbrush and helps me remember how much I love my work.

My Actual Reset Button

The real cleanout happens before we go on our two-week vacation. My favorite day of the whole year is the night before we leave on our trip. By that point, everything that's going to get done is finished. Anything that couldn't get done has been scheduled for the days and weeks after our return. Expectations and commitments have either been met or reset or renegotiated.

Something To Think About

How often do you feel overwhelmed?

What do you do to reset commitments and expectations when that happens?

What kind of positive ritual could you create for that reset?

How often do you think you'd need to do it?

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How to Mass Delete Emails on Your BlackBerry

1. Open your mail function on your BlackBerry.

2. Scroll to and highlight (with the rolling ball) the date header for the day where you want to delete all emails before AND INCLUDING that day. For example, let's say you want to keep only those emails that came in today, Oct 17, 2010. Then you would scroll to and highlight the date header for Oct 16, 2010.

3. Press the BlackBerry menu button to the left of the rolling ball. Scroll to the "Delete Prior" menu item. Click on that item.

4. A confirming screen asking "Delete all prior items?" is displayed with the options to Delete or Cancel.

5. Click Delete. All emails prior to that date will be deleted. If you select today's date, all emails that came in today plus all previous emails will be deleted.

Balance Part 2: Managing Your Energy

Time isn't the only limitation on your personal capacity and sense of balance. Our lives are powered by energy, both external and internal. We push through our day as if both were unlimited.

In their book, The Power of Full Engagement (link goes to my review of it), authors Loehr and Schwartz make a convincing case for understanding we are personally powered through four levels of energy.

Physical energy runs our bodies, emotional energy comes from positive emotions, mental energy gives us the ability to concentrate, and spiritual energy provides the motivation and direction for how we spend what we have.

At face value, this sounds like everything we've heard before. The difference is in what Loehr and Schwartz observed about how professional athletes improve their performance. The point of the whole book is

"To build capacity, we must systematically expose ourselves
to more stress--followed by adequate recovery." (Emphasis is the authors'.)

I don't know about you, but I don't lack for sources of stress. There is so much to do and so many people depending on us, it seems self-indulgent to rest and recharge before your body demands it. I think of interviews I've read about successful people who claim to get by on 4 hours sleep at night and the occasional power nap. (How much sleep we need is a controversial topic with conflicting advice.)

But do we build in time to recover from periods of stress? Rarely if at all.

The book offers a systematic yet flexible approach to building your energy capacity in all four dimensions. There are no quick fixes, but there are simple things you can do, and you must start with managing your physical energy. Without that, there isn't any other kind.

One of their clients, William, made one relatively simple change in the way he worked. He began taking a break every 90 to 120 minutes, during which he ate something, drank some water, and took at least a brief walk. Based on this strategy alone, within 2 weeks William estimated a 30 percent increase in his energy in the afternoons.

I could use a 30 percent increase my energy--how about you?

What would it take for you to factor in a break of some kind every 90-120 minutes during your day?