What's the next action

How is your comfortzone?

30 04 06 - 21:51 - Bookmark this post

The last couple of weeks have been a rollercoaster ride. Again. It just doesn’t seem to stop and yeah, the first I seem to do is fall back in old habits. I forget I have a Next action list. I haven’t looked in it for a couple of weeks but I just look at the work at hand when I arrive at work and start right away. Weekly review? Nah, forget it. Didn’t do that one in a month of two I think. Is that bad? I don’t know. I still get some projects done and I do feel I have enough balls up in the air to keep some projects going. Okay, i need to look at my mails a few times more than usual (now, where was that answer from Jeff I need for this task…) but since I know I can only have it in a couple of places, it doesn’t take me long to find it.
One other thing is my comfortzone and my changing internal standards. I feel it dropping for the stuff around me and how I feel I need to do something to change. Let me explain this in the way The Dave does this in his GTD Fast series (Disc 5 track 4). This CD serie is not for sale any longer.

How many times a day do you brush your teeth? Once? Twice? Ask around in a room of people and you will find a big difference between the groups of people. Some people think that once a day is enough, others need to brush after every meal. That’s a big difference in motivated behaviour. And it all comes down to your internal standards of the level of “scuzz” you allow in your mouth. But motivated behaviour is what it comes down to. How big is your comfortzone? How long does it take for you to not brush your teeth untill you can’t stand the taste in your mouth? Now, no matter how busy you are, you will always find time to brush your teeth. You don’t need to cheerlead yourself into brushing your teeth. You just build in the motivation through life and how you were raised.
The same thing is happening with my comfortzone. I don’t feel fine when I have all sorts of thoughts running around in my brain and have a bursting Inbox with emails. I just need to clean it out, have it all filed, delegated or tickled into my trusted system.
I feel I have created a new standard for myself on how I want to do my work and how I want to organize my life.
But for some reason every now and again I get myself all out of control again and just work whatever comes into vision. I just listened to a bit further on the GTD Fast series and I would like to quote David Allen on the following

The biggest barrier to all of this is your addiction to stress. Addiction not meaning you have to feel stressed. But addiction meaning if you start to get rid of that feeling of stress you are so accustomed to, some part of you will unconsciously will feel uncomfortable and then will go do unconsciously what you need to do get yourself back out of control again and get back into the level of stress you feel yourself so familiair with

There you have it…How true is that. And very true for me at this moment in my life and work. I have planned some time for me to get out of the rollercoaster and try to get some projects back in line again. I hope I can give you some updates on this site along the way!

Heh, indeed very recognizable. Sometimes my “addiction” creeps into my conscious mind, makes me think “hmmm am I not doing enough?”. Usually though, I find something I forgot and get back into stressmode as soon as I can ;)
Ruben Timmerman - 01 05 06 - 11:17

Thanks for the story. I have a similar thing happen, and I just try to get back on the horse again. Any tips are most welcome.
Matthew Cornell - 01 05 06 - 18:01