Turning the No.1 Excuse into a Mindset of Opportunity through Focus

There is one single, key reason, or excuse, given when I ask an audience: “What is stopping you from paying more attention to your professional career or your ambition to attract more professional opportunities?”

You probably know it already, the answer is “Time!” If this does not relate to you, let me be the first to congratulate you on a fantastic window to explore your next professional adventures. But if the answer resonates with you, you may find the below suggestions helpful.

We all know the response given to us by Time Management consultants countless best selling authors and experts on personal effectiveness: “Sorry to break the news to you, but you won’t get more time now or in the future, it’s how you decide to use your time that is key to overcoming your challenges on time constraints.”

So, focus seems to be the key to take more control of the things you actually may control during your day. How often are you ringfencing your time to reflect, explore and act on your professional decisions? Are you aware of the rituals supporting you in prioritizing these activities? Personally, I know exactly which room I will be in and which coffee I’ll drink when approaching my own professional exploration.

What about your response time on other people’s demands on you? What would it mean to you if you could put a least a 24 hours response time into play so you could remain focused on what you planned doing today? The classical coaching question “What is the worst thing that could happen” may prove useful when testing this out.

Finally, instead of trying to complete the never ending TO DO list in front of you, would it make sense to turn the perspective and use a STOP DOING list instead? I heard about this from Per Frykman, one of my business partners, a couple of years ago, and today I can’t imagine a better way of getting more time to do what I want to do. And the more my STOP DOING list grows, the bigger the smile on my face.

The STOP DOING list has proven so useful that I find it hard to stop using it…The same goes for an old African saying: “Time does not pass, time appears”. These two pieces of mindset allow us to focus on what we are stretching for, what we have undone in our lives and what’s waiting for us if we make conscious decisions to look harder.