The cost of leaving the room

What’s the cost to your attention and cognitive load when you leave a meeting room, to step outside to take or make a call?

If we knew, we may think twice about even looking at our devices or having them near us.

Breaks are good, yes, and responding to an emergency, we have to.

But ‘just stepping out for a moment’ creates ‘Swiss cheese moments'. That yummy cheese has holes in it. So will your sense, the threads of understanding you’ve been holding together!

It’s not only that you miss content when you leave, it’s the switch of context and the impact on your attention, thinking and focus.

- A leader stepped out of a one-day workshop six times last week.

- Another leader thought they could be in 2 meetings at once: one via a webinar/online coming in through a single ear pod, but sitting at the table of the other meeting they’re trying to attend.

No wonder why:

😩we struggle to make sense and manage information overload

↩️ we need to go over information again and again, and

🐢why meetings take so long!

The cost of overwhelm

When it hits you, that information overload feeling, what do you do? Panic? Get a coffee? Look at your phone?

None of these are helpful.

The feeling of overload, that ‘full sponge’ feeling isn’t pleasant.

Disengagement, distraction and withdrawal are all behaviours connected with information overload.

We try to cope. How often do we nod to say we understand something or have the information in hand, but in reality we're scrambling to catch up, struggling to stay awake or fed up with feigning interest?

Could it be career limiting if we don’t appear smart, sharp and “all over it”, having all the information under our control?

Enough.

It’s time to call out when something doesn’t make sense or the pace, quantity or style of information is overwhelming us.

It’s most likely overwhelming others too. We have a responsibility as communicators of information to guard against information overload in ourselves, and creating overwhelm for others.

We don’t need to suffer. Cognitive load coping is very much a skill for today....and the future.

The cost of confusion

How much time do we spend trying to make sense of things, re-reading, scanning, skipping through information trying to piece it all together.

While the world’s productivity gurus are keen on selling us a new app or habit, what if we looked at the cost of confusion and sought to reduce the time we spend confusing people.

Rather than acting like we’ve got it together, what if we set aside a few minutes in a meeting to make sense? What if, instead of saying ’Now, let me give you some context’ and embarking on a 15-minute explanation of the history going back to the 1900s (yes this happened recently) we asked, ‘What do you need to make sense of?’

What if we shut up first.

What if we asked them about the parts they need to make sense of.

Imagine all the unnecessary detail, the overly long ‘context’ monologues and the long-winded ‘let-me-tell-you-about-the-history-of-this-thing’ stories.

Check first. What do they need? Where is their knowledge now; where does it need to be? Don't add to the overload; make sense instead.

Q: What’s a topic you’re confused about right now? 

ISH: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough’

It’s natural to want to do well - at work, in study, in life, to do our best But what happens when striving for the best becomes more; the pursuit of perfection?

Perfectionism is on the rise and has dire consequences for how we think and feel about ourselves and others, how we think, live, and work. It's causes over-thinking, over-working, burnout, sleeplessness and mental health issues like depression and anxiety.

We can’t keep going like this!

But what’s the alternative? In 2019 I released ‘ISH: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough’. It uncovers how to think, work and achieve in clever ways adapted from the worlds of software development, and improvisation. How do they get things done? What can we learn from them?

In ‘ISH’, I explain:

🔅The problem with chasing perfection and why we seek it

🔅The mental loop that traps us into thinking perfection is the answer

🔅The idea of ‘ISH’ which means somewhat, near enough

🔅9 ways to think and work that provide a healthy and productive alternative to perfectionism.

Excellence, quality and continuous improvement are important. But the pursuit of perfection … not so much.

Q: Do you 'ish'?

Agile, Agility and Business Agility

Agile, it’s 'a vast global movement transforming the world of work. And spreading rapidly. So said Steve Denning in Forbes, 'Explaining Agile' article.

While agile was born in software development, other industries, projects and teams the world over are seeing the productivity, customer value and engagement benefits to having an agile mindset.

After years working with a number of agile teams, I wrote 'Agile-ish: How to create a culture of agility' in 2017.

If you’re embarking on an agile journey, you need to start with yourself, your mindset and how you think. As with all journeys, a change to agile and newer ways of working takes time, and might not go as perfectly as you imagine it will. So how you respond to that is what also makes for an agile mindset!

My book 'Agile-ish' acknowledges that:

🌕 experimentation and imperfection are incredible learning experiences;

🌕 getting into action and momentum outweighs time spent over-planning; and

🌕 delivering value to customers sooner is what's making many of today's businesses more successful.

I recently shared these ideas keynote speaking at CPA Congress across Australia. Yes finance/accounting folks are getting agile too!

Q:How about you?