Tag: Work

The biggest regret

Posted on by philipdodson

Doing something that really counts involves hard work, patience, the willingness to learn, focus and sticking to the plan no matter what others think. It takes pain and a willingness to sacrifice short-term gratification and ignoring quick fixes. There is little choice in this if we want our work to stand out and make a difference with what we do.

What that work is though is entirely our choice and there is no wrong choice here. What matters to us is personal and what others think is irrelevant.

The biggest regret we will have in life at the end of our journeys is that we didn’t choose to do something that matters and we didn’t make the sacrifices to achieve this and settle for the quick fix. There it is too late, we won’t be able to turn back the clocks.

What we do today will build the future and the legacy we want and will help us avoid big regrets.

A vicious circle of guilt

Posted on by philipdodson

We have leisure time and while we watch a film, read a book, go for a walk, go to the cinema, see friends and so on we think about the tasks, chores, work etc we didn’t complete during the non-leisure working time.

Then we get to work, to our tasks, actions and so on and we resent the fact that we did not get relaxed and good leisure time, so we auto-sabotage our work and then the cycle continues because when it’s play time again, we feel guilty.

Often this is on auto-repeat through our lives.

How can we stop this?

Four things I have found that can help. Firstly set a shutdown time at which point work stops whatever until the next morning. Secondly, because of the shutdown, and once we learn to relax, we can separate work and play. Thirdly, when we are working remember the guilt feeling and focus on only the work that is super important first. Lastly, take small simple steps at work that are easy to complete and are not onerous or feel like a chore, that means we’re more likely to do it.

Simple, eh! Well as always it is a journey of getting even better and work in progress.

Four books I’d recommend for this would be Cal Newport’s Deep Work, Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit, Darren Hardy’s The Compound Effect and finally Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog.