The blog

If you are like me, the sum­mer vaca­tion works as a cleans­ing bath for the thoughts regard­ing your job.

If so, just like me, you think more clear­ly about your job after a few weeks of the hol­i­day has passed, when you have got­ten per­spec­tive on what you are so immersed in every work­day for the rest of the year.

Isn’t it as if that which is usu­al­ly whirling around you in your work­day set­tles and you are able to see what is impor­tant and what is mere­ly noise?

I would like to com­pare it to a snow globe, the orb of glass in which the snow whirls about the char­ac­ters with­in when you shake it. When you go on vaca­tion, you set the snow globe down and grad­u­al­ly every­thing that has whirled around you falls to the ground and the vis­i­bil­i­ty improves.

Take advan­tage of clarity

Now as sum­mer is com­ing to an end, when you are about to get things going, shake the globe again, make sure you take advan­tage of the clar­i­ty you have acquired dur­ing your break.

Let us say that it has become clear to you what you want to focus on for the next six months.
It can be about you as a pro­fes­sion­al, as a busi­ness­man or ‑woman, but it may just as well be about the orga­ni­za­tion you are work­ing in or lead­ing. Per­haps it is about how you man­age your e‑mail, maybe about the new prod­uct you are sup­posed to devel­op, per­haps about what direc­tion you wish to cul­ti­vate your skills and com­pe­tence in, or about on what mar­ket you want to estab­lish your busi­ness next.

Since none of this is some­thing you can do in a blink of an eye, in a sin­gle go, you will need to define every­thing you want to put your ener­gy into as a project, i.e. a to-do-task which con­sists of sev­er­al steps.

Do this

1. Take out your project overview, that is, the place where you can see all the large and small projects you are involved in at the moment simultaneously.
2. If they are not already there, add the projects you want to invest time and effort in, in the next six months to the overview.
3. Make sure to for­mu­late every project con­crete­ly and in terms of how you desire the sit­u­a­tion to appear when the project is com­plete, for instance, ​“Open the first Ger­man office”, ​“Launch prod­uct X”, ​“Launch­ing of the new orga­ni­za­tion”, ​“Suc­ceed in hold­ing a 24 hour dead­line for respond­ing to e‑mail for a month ​“or the like. This is intend­ed to ensure that you eas­i­ly can deter­mine whether the project is com­plet­ed or not (and if you there­fore can remove it from the overview).
4. Give the projects you have cho­sen a unique posi­tion in rela­tion to every­thing else on the overview, so that you can focus on them eas­i­ly. For exam­ple, label these with a spe­cif­ic col­or, place them under the head­ing ​“Autumn 2009”, hide all oth­er projects which you do not want to focus on in the next six months, or use some oth­er method which suits you.
5. The last thing you should do before let­ting this exer­cise go is to define a con­crete, next step for each and every one of the projects you have selected.
6. Make sure that these next steps are for­mu­lat­ed as clear to-do-tasks which you can com­plete in a sin­gle effort.
7. Put these to-do-tasks on your to-do-list, and take action!

In spite of the whirling winds around you, focus

Since you are focus­ing on a few projects as opposed to try­ing to have a go at absolute­ly every­thing whirling about you, the like­li­hood that you are suc­cess­ful in what you have set out to accom­plish increas­es. The fact that you have clear­ly deter­mined what to con­cen­trate also increas­es the chances for suc­cess, and it makes the way to get­ting there more inspiring.

How do you do it?

What is your method of tak­ing max­i­mum advan­tage these epipha­nies, the moments of clar­i­ty when every­thing falls into place? Leave a com­ment to let oth­ers know!