Checking the sails: the power of self-auditing

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is step 7 and it’s about finding some time for reflecting on the way you get things done.

Asking you become an observer in your life seem like anathema to everything I’ve written, but you don’t necessarily have to take action all the time, there are singular moments where it’s more beneficial to reflect.

During the previous articles, we have been developing two behaviors: Thinking/Planning and Doing. This is one of the keys achieving responsibility, by separating these processes you give your system some flexibility and adaptability to the constant tide of commitments.

But you still need one more behavior: by Reflecting you can achieve an objective “second opinion” about how you are getting things done.

It’s impossible to get a complete view of a situation while you are immersed; it’s like trying to evaluate the decoration of a building while locked up in a bathroom, you need to see the big picture, and to do that you have to take a step back from all the action and get a clear view; this is the power of self-auditing.

This step is a bit less concise than the rest, it doesn’t require complex lists or predefined steps, but it does require the courage to recognize some hard truths about your life.

What you need to do this week is easy, simply take an hour to do nothing… just one hour in a whole week shouldn’t be too hard. Take this precious time to observe everything as a visitor. During this time, I would recommend going to the place you usually feel the most “stressed out”.

For example:

Go to the place where you do the most work, put your cell phone on silent and unhook the phone, tell your co-workers that you need to attend to a delicate situation or any other explanation that will buy you some time to reflect.

Now observe your desk, the shelves…the cabinets…your folders stacks… the computer desktop… your email inbox… the post-its… don’t do anything about the things you notice, taking action is prohibited during this hour, just observe.

Now consider on what tasks you under or over delivered this week, what worked about your methods and what was a flop.

When there are 15 minutes left, write down what things worked and what you need to change, dedicate this week to reinforcing the methods that are being effective and modifying those that are not.

You can do this exercise anywhere and in any way, as long as you keep to the core idea: Take time to observe and think.

It’s quite surprising when you consider how little time we dedicate to thinking these days, in the middle of day to day living we react as best we can to incoming commitments with very little reflection. By the time you notice, 5 years have passed and you aren’t really sure how you got where you are. But if you just dedicate 0.6% of your week (1 hour) to reflecting, you might find ideas with potential to change your life 100%.

I’ve been told that my notions of work are utopic, and I admit it with pride. The fact that utopia is unattainable does not mean we have to stop trying; abandoning the eternal search for perfection is losing the sense of art in life… that would be a tragedy.

But there are days when no system works, the chaos is too much to even try,  when that happens it’s important to know how to react so you don’t miss anything truly important… that is the purpose of the next step: weathering  the storm.

For now, take your time to observe, I would love if you could share your observations with me on my twitter @alexmrv or on the comments sections of this post.