Box
I recently read about thinking in the box.
Strange isn't it?
At least to me, it was. I have been inculcated for the longest time to think outside the box, to not repeat the ordinary and to impress with a new way of looking at any and everything - including how we look at things. To then read about thinking in the box triggered memories of my childhood and early years in school. I remember being told that I daydream too easily and too often drifted away when in class. True to my character of never wanting to be criticised, I set out to change that. In very little time, at least as I remember it now, I found that I could focus on things at will. In fact, I could switch focus quickly and give the moment my full concentration. I only realised more recently that ability is one of the qualities experts identified as an admirable one possessed by most very successful top level executives and crucial to enable quick and well informed decision making. I thought I might have lost that ability but that might not necessarily be the case. Just little more than a month ago, I found 5 things that took my fancy at once, including things in my dayjob; and was able to juggle them. I was elated and found myself performing better at each task throughout each day. I felt alive!
But I digress.
Thinking in the box was brought up by a goalkeeping coach writing in a broadsheet about how a goalkeeper needed a day to focus and to 'get in the zone', in relation to the fact that MacLaren announced that Manchester United goalkeeper currently on loan to Watford would start yesterday's friendly against Spain at Old Trafford a day before. Reading that, I contemplated the possibility that I am underperforming at work for the simple reason that I am too easily distracted! That my short attention span is my undoing. Or that given a tasks, I seldom focus on the end goal and stop thinking laterally so as to try and reach that end. I drift as I zoom in to the task and in the time that it takes me to act, I am already dreaming.
So, I should try focusing on finishing tasks - take KN's advice and get things checked off the list each day and consider a job done. It is well done if I do that well.
Strange isn't it?
At least to me, it was. I have been inculcated for the longest time to think outside the box, to not repeat the ordinary and to impress with a new way of looking at any and everything - including how we look at things. To then read about thinking in the box triggered memories of my childhood and early years in school. I remember being told that I daydream too easily and too often drifted away when in class. True to my character of never wanting to be criticised, I set out to change that. In very little time, at least as I remember it now, I found that I could focus on things at will. In fact, I could switch focus quickly and give the moment my full concentration. I only realised more recently that ability is one of the qualities experts identified as an admirable one possessed by most very successful top level executives and crucial to enable quick and well informed decision making. I thought I might have lost that ability but that might not necessarily be the case. Just little more than a month ago, I found 5 things that took my fancy at once, including things in my dayjob; and was able to juggle them. I was elated and found myself performing better at each task throughout each day. I felt alive!
But I digress.
Thinking in the box was brought up by a goalkeeping coach writing in a broadsheet about how a goalkeeper needed a day to focus and to 'get in the zone', in relation to the fact that MacLaren announced that Manchester United goalkeeper currently on loan to Watford would start yesterday's friendly against Spain at Old Trafford a day before. Reading that, I contemplated the possibility that I am underperforming at work for the simple reason that I am too easily distracted! That my short attention span is my undoing. Or that given a tasks, I seldom focus on the end goal and stop thinking laterally so as to try and reach that end. I drift as I zoom in to the task and in the time that it takes me to act, I am already dreaming.
So, I should try focusing on finishing tasks - take KN's advice and get things checked off the list each day and consider a job done. It is well done if I do that well.
1 Comments:
Well written article.
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