Pacing

Through work and life, you need to be able to pace yourself.

Visualize a bottle of water that’s full in the morning. Slowly water starts emptying out and by end of day there’s almost nothing left. In the night and during early morning of next day you fill up bottle again.  This cycle repeats itself every day.

Let’s visualize another scenario. Same bottle of water has an equitable inflow and outflow through the day. There might be slight variations in water level but overall water level remains constant. 

Which scenario is more sustainable?

I vote for second scenario. 

First scenario will work in a situation where you know that you will have enough time every day to fill bottle back again.  But that may be a flawed assumption – we may not have the dedicated time available every day.

Second scenario requires self-awareness- you need to know how to ‘pace’ yourself so that outflow and inflow rates more or less match. Secondly you need to know ways to ensure adequate inflow.

Both of these – self-awareness and skills at ensuring adequate inflow – can be worked upon by individual and hence are controllable by individual.

So how do you pace yourself through the day?

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Sourav

 

Contributions

Best ideas are best implemented ideas!

I do agree with statement above. The value of any idea is derived only once it has been implemented.

But does this mean you always should be in implementation mode? I don’t think so.

There are 3 different stages for an idea – ideation (or creation stage), building base (fleshing idea out), and implementation.

All 3 require their own space and time.

A good way of knowing whether you are doing all three adequately is to reflect on your workweek and see whether you got enough of all 3 in week.

Additionally you can pace yourself on different days – spending some days exclusively on one or more of stages. Else you can split day into periods and work on different stages exclusively during each period.

Implementation is important. But each of 3 stages require its own space and time.

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Sourav

Different Planes…..

At any point of time, you work on different planes.

You leverage your strengths to deliver a set of engagements. You pick up a set of engagements to hone areas you are looking at developing on. You work on a few assignments to explore previously unchartered areas or to work on ‘what’s next/leadership’.

It’s important to be able to look at mix of your work and to pace yourself. Compass to anchor oneself around is ‘does all this today keep me on track towards where I want to go?’.

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Sourav