“Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself – only with yourself. Therefore, thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.” Gurdjieff
The world of work has never been more intense.
You’re more productive than ever. Even so, if you aren’t multitasking every second, you’re weighted down by the belief that not enough is getting done.
More than 8 out of 10 workers say they are stressed out at work. Being human has become all about doing in your real-time, 24/7, 365 always connected life. Keeping your mind above water is increasingly difficult. Forget work-life balance, embrace work-life blend.
Noise
Think about the vast quantities of content that you consume on a daily basis via email, text messages, social networks, the internet, television, radio, meetings and conversations. You’re swimming in a contextual field of data.
We have too much information, not enough transformation.
How much of this does anything to improve your life?
I have asked this question to thousands of business and education professionals. The most consistent answer is less than 10%.
Despite extensive information, education, learning and development, you think, feel and engage in the same ways over and over.
External Disruptions
Here’s a snapshot of your external noise:
You check your email approximately 36 times per hour at work. An executive in a large organization recently told me that she receives over 300 emails a day, seven days a week.
There are meetings. And, meetings about meetings. Emails remind you about upcoming meetings. Emails summarize what happened in meetings, filling the gaps when you were spaced out and disengaged.
People engage their cell phone 300 up to times each day.
Over 90% of employees day dream during meetings.
Over 37 billion dollars is wasted for unnecessary meetings in the US annually.
Colleagues have questions and gossip. People talking to you about what they did, or what they’re going to do, or what they would do if they could.
During one of my presentations, a manager revealed how stressful it is to engage with colleagues about non-work related topics knowing that work is piling up by the second. He said, “People are talking to me about trivial personal stuff, but I can’t hear them because all I can think about is the work I need to get done.”
Interruptions are continuous in the workplace. People who are interrupted take 50% longer to complete a task and make 50% more errors. It takes you sixteen minutes to get focused after each disruption.
All this external noise leaves you with an insistent feeling of incompleteness. You rarely feel a sense of completion about anything. The moment something is finished, you rush to the next thing. Occasionally, you stop to briefly ponder about why you’re always feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.
You switch tasks about every three minutes, and spend less than 60% of your day fully engaged and productive.
Internal Disruptions
Your consciousness is flooded with thoughts, emotional states, sensations, reactions and choices. As if the present moment isn’t enough, your mind drifts to the past and future.
Brain research has proven that we have approximately 70,000 thoughts per day. You’re capable of experiencing 411 different emotional states. The five senses are delivering additional content every moment.
Here’s a snapshot of your internal noise:
Your attention is dragged into a head trip about what happened last night, replaying the experience. In the next moment you’re stuck in a negative emotional state lingering from critical comments made by your manager. Next, your stomach rumbles with hunger pangs. Where to go for lunch?
This internal noise happens in less than sixty-seconds while you’re attempting to get something completed. You’re mostly unaware of the absurdity of this situation.
External disruptions are minor compared to the internal disruptions we experience every moment.
Intensity Avoidance
You carry wrong views about life intensity. Your habitual reactions are to avoid intense situations and people.
You’re irritated, angry and judgmental about the difficult people in your life. You think, “My life would be great, if only I didn’t have to deal with __________. You fail to notice, as soon as a problem is resolved; you’re immediately obsessing about something else.
One Critical Insight
The intensity happening in your life delivers the energetic opportunity to become more. You’re running away from the things you need to realize your next levels of success.
Intense situations, persistent challenges and diverse people are the best opportunities we have to transform engagement.
Transforming engagement is the most essential now-next skill. There is unstoppable power in learning how to use intensity to think, speak, feel and choose better and faster.
3 Things
You need three things to create and sustain engagement transformation:
Insights
A steady stream of insights delivers knowledge for creatively managing and transforming your engagement. Without insights, you’re stuck in habitual ways of thinking, speaking, feeling and reacting.
Power Tools
Power tools enable you to use intensity to create transformation. The x-factor for creating and sustaining positive change. Too often, learning and development lacks practical tools. It’s essential that you have a “toolbox” full of tools. Use the ones that work; forget the ones that don’t; keep acquiring more. Power tools convert insights into transformation in the moment.
Real-time Strategies
In order for insights and power tools to be effective, you must know exactly when, where and how to engage. The more you can determine this in advance, the better your chances of making positive change in the moment.
Without insights, power tools and real-time strategies, distractions, disruptions and intensity are reduced to noise.
Insights + Power Tools + Real-time Strategies = Better-Faster Engagement Transformation
“Do it. Be it. Become it. Don’t stop no matter what happens.” Michael Clark
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