Choose Your Elephants

 

Choose Your Elephants Wisely, Feed Them Jealously.

Peter Turla says ‘Don’t be stomping on ants when you’ve got elephants to feed’

There is so much that demands our attention every single day. It doesn’t matter how much time you have, there will always be more to do for as long as we live.

In the beginning we look for things to keep us busy. There is a certain pride that comes from being occupied and engaged. Before long however, we come to the realization that busyness shouldn’t be our goal at all. Productivity becomes more important because it is the only thing that makes sense. It doesn’t matter how busy you are, if you are not producing the kind of results you are looking for, you are wasting your life and time. When all you care about is activity, you become like a rocking chair. A lot of motion but zero progress like Alfred A. Montapert puts it.

You need to come to a point where you choose where you will focus your attention because it would yield the greatest return on your time and other resources. Nobody wants to spend their resources where they are going to waste or yielding less than ideal outcomes. You have a choice to spend your time on ants or elephants.

When there are so many things screaming for your attention, you need to pose and ask yourself what the most important ones are. I like what Stephen R Covey recommends in his famous book ‘Seven habits of highly effective people.’ He insists on the significance of knowing who you are and what your values are as a person. The reason why we fail to stay focused on our elephants is because we do not know what they are. The one takeaway you should have from this article is that you need to decide what is important to you. Forget about what your peers are doing right now. Forget about the fad of the moment. Don’t get side tracked by the excitement of the crowd. Don’t be moved by whatever challenges you are facing at the moment or what needs your attention right now. Concern yourself more with what is most important when all is said and done. Think about what you would never give up no matter where you find yourself. There are certain things that have refused to go away. You can’t seem to shake them off your mind. Think about what you want to do in your times of peace. What makes you fulfilled beyond anything else? What would you still wake up to do when you do not need to work for money? Therein lies some hint of what your values are.

Once you are clear on your core values, it is time to look at your activity so that you begin to align it to your values. This is what it means to feed your elephants. Elephants are those activities that have the greatest impact on you living out your deepest values. Let’s say for example you value the dignity of every child and as such you want to see all children wherever they are living well. For you as you pursue money, the end is not money per se. You see it as a tool that enables you to live out your deeper value of dignity for all children. You will want to make money so that you can contribute to the taking care of the lives of children as much as you can. Any activity that impacts negatively on your ability to generate money for this cause, will not find room in your schedule. In the same breath any activity that propels you further forward in your quest to reach your goal will find room recurrently in your schedule.

The question then becomes, what elephants are on your schedule right now? If you can reflect back over the last month or so, what do you see taking up most of your time and resources? You have to do an honest assessment so that you are clear on where your priorities lie. Those represent your elephants.

The truth is that sometimes you won’t like what you see. Many times, there is dissonance between what we say we value and what we value in action. Your greatest task then is to identify this dissonance and take corrective action. You have to become deliberate in choosing items that are a reflection of your values to fill up your calendar. Everything else can be done when you have that 25^th hour in your day or that eighth day in your week. The same must follow when it comes to your other resources. You can only spend them in the areas that align with you values.

It comes as a shock to some of your associates and close friends when you choose to adjust like this. All of a sudden, they realize that you are not as available for some activities as you used to be. The good ones will have no problem with this. Friends who have a problem with you taking steps to make your life better are no friends at all. You should not be troubled about such after letting them know the reasoning behind your shift.

As I finish this, suffice it to say that your elephants are your own and you should be proud of them. Give them the best and choicest of your resources. Feed them regularly and do not spare anything from them. As for everything else, let it fit into schedule as it unfolds. There is an analogy that would represent the best way to wrap this up. You have to look at your tasks as rocks, stones, pebbles and gravel of different sizes that you need to fit into a container. You have to start with the biggest rocks-Those are your elephants. The little ones and the gravel are all the other things you can do. They should be allowed to slip in and fit within the container but only after the big rocks are in. Choose your elephants wisely and feed them jealously.

Article by: Samuel Mwinamo Asena

Author: Blessed to be a Blessing. Check out intro here:

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Founder: Optimize Institute:

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Photo Credit: UN.ORG 

 

The Pit Stop

 

It’s ok to make a Pit Stop.

Sometimes in life you just can’t go on. You run out of breath and you need to catch some breath. Just like machines we too need our downtime for maintenance. The best run machines have regular intervals for shutdown and maintenance. It is wrong to wait for life to stop you by force. You are better off taking a break on your own terms because then you might never need to take forced stops.

From the bible we see God working consecutively for six days then he rests on the Sabbath. God did this not because he was tired. He did it as an example to us to know that we must set aside time to unwind, refresh and recharge.

During a pit stop in motor sports, a lot happens. It is a time for refueling, change of tyres, repairs, mechanical adjustments and even a change of driver as a penalty. It looks insane to stop in the midst of a race because there is time spent in which you would have been racing as a driver. However when you think about the activities in a pit stop, you realize that they are essential if you will finish the race and have a shot at winning. What is the point of racing if you will run out of fuel? How far can you go with worn out tyres? What is the cost of not making the necessary mechanical adjustments to the car before you proceed? What looks like a waste of time, ends up being one of the most important things you can do to ensure you win the race or at worst finish it. Many of us need to get comfortable taking time in the pit stop during the race of life. Without it, you’re likely to lose for a number of reasons. It could be because you run out of fuel, you suffer a tyre burst or race with deflated tyres, your mechanical problems would slow you down and so much more.

Stephen R Covey has an interesting way of looking at it. He says that some people are too busy driving to stop for fuel. As ridiculous as it sounds, we find ourselves operating like this many times. We think that it is too much to ask if we take time off to recharge.

Question? Is it time for you to take a pit stop? When did you last take a scheduled pit stop? Some people take pit stops at the end of every day. Some do it weekly and some need a longer duration. If you can do it daily, great go ahead and schedule time to do it so that you keep your engine in tip-top shape. With the little regular checks, you will find you do not need so much time and effort when you are doing the longer stops where you need to go in-depth.

It is also important that you are clear on what your checklist is during your pit stop. There is no point topping when you don’t know what you intend to check or examine, The clearer your checklist the higher the chances that you will do what is needed to make things work well going forward. It needs to capture all the little things that could go wrong during the race. A lose bolt somewhere, a little  oil to lubricate the moving parts look like small and insignificant thing s but in essence they determine how well your machine will handle the race. What is on your checklist for the pit stops of your life? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Have you had an opportunity to attend any of my Unleash Hour sessions? If not let me know in the comments so I can send you an invite for the next one this Monday. 

You can also check out my book Blessed to be a Blessing using the link below

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Photo credits:Analytics Magazine. 

Don't Quit

 

You’ve come too far

I just can’t give up now, I’ve come too far from where I started from, nobody told me, the road would be easy, but I don’t believe you brought me this far to leave me-Mary Mary

Sometimes all you need to keep going is realize that you are not where you started. Quitting now simply means you are throwing all your good work down the drain. Giving up now means all your investment was in vain. You might not be where you want to be, but you definitely are not where you used to be. Appreciate that and carry on.

Think about what it was like when you started out. Even if there is nothing in the physical to show progress, if you look carefully, you will realize that you have grown in character, in wisdom and as a person courtesy of being in that grind. No effort is truly wasted until you decide it is so.

Learn to think of it in terms of what gains you have made instead of what you have lost. It may be true that you have lost some things along the way but your focus has to be on what you are moving towards and not the other stuff that deflates you. 

You either live in the gap or the gain according to Benjamin Hardy. In old parlance you either see the glass as half full or half empty. At the end of the day, you see what you are primed to see by your predisposition. The truth is that if you look keenly, you will realize that you’ve covered enough distance to keep going.

What you need is to tell yourself the truth about your situation. The truth is that you have moved quite the distance. Most people quit on the verge of a breakthrough. The problem is that sometimes we can’t tell which blow will effect the change we are aiming for. Because of this you have to keep on hitting, jabbing and swinging. If you can only push a little bit more, maybe you will find yourself on the other side of your dream.

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You are also invited to check out my Book Blessed to be a Blessing here

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