Alignment, Intro

Over the last several months, I have mentioned my journey to regain a sense of focus, re-energize myself, and begin accomplishing the purpose I believe God has for me. Over the last couple of weeks, I believe I have begun moving in that direction again and feel good about the progress I have made. Along the way, I have promised I would share a few specific insights. In this post, I begin to share the importance of alignment which will be further detailed in subsequent posts. Overall, as I share these insights over the next several weeks, I do so with the intent that what I have learned may help someone else.

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know that my primary mantra for life is “When you stop learning, you start dying.” I believe this is true for several reasons, but one primary reason is that when we believe we know it all, we are unwilling to listen to others. When we stop listening to others, we no longer process new information – some of which may give us insights into improving our lives. I enjoy reading, but nearly all of the reading I do is to be encouraged or inspired. That is, I read books that will encourage me to grow in my ability to lead, to organize, to teach, etc. and to be inspired by seeing how the actions of others might help me better understand a situation or a person. This latter bit is usually through history and/or biographies (Currently, I am working my way through American history splitting time between biographies of the presidents (in order) while sprinkling in books about the society and wars during their terms.) So, my reading is meant to learn, which you might recall from my series on vision last year is an acrostic for my personal strategy.

Thus, it only makes sense that I would turn to books to help me move beyond my current rut. Last year, I read Matt Perman’s excellent book (“What’s Best Next”). I made it a goal to return to that book each year to make sure that my intentions were not slipping. The date set for that is July 1 of each year, so I am just now getting to it. But this Spring, his next book (“Unstuck”) was released and the timing of the release coincided with me beginning to seek answers to why I was stuck (although, that was not my word choice – I thought “distraction” was better at the time). But before Unstuck was released I began reading Duhigg’s instant classic on habit (The Power of Habit). And, because I had a fresh understanding of Duhigg’s work, I decided to begin his next book (Smarter, Faster, Better) immediately after finishing the first one. Then, finally, I turned to Unstuck. If I had to do it over, I would read Unstuck before Smarter, Faster, Better because you cannot move faster while you are stuck – you simply spin your wheels more. Nevertheless, having worked my way through these latter three books, and now reviewing What’s Best Next, I am no longer stuck, and a big part of that is alignment.

Alignment is the word I have ascribed to my current state. A couple of posts ago, I used the word “Focus” which is more common in society, and is prevalent in Unstuck, for instance. In fact, a couple of sentences from the latter third of the book speak to the idea of focus in a manner which has already benefited me.

“If you work with a low degree of focus, you will have to work a much longer time to get the same results. Conversely, if you work with a high degree of focus, you can do the same amount of work in much less time.”

– Matt Perman, Unstuck, p. 192

This statement is not from the pages of a book on rocket science. But sometimes getting unstuck is simply returning to principles we know to be true, but have forgotten to apply. Thus learning is only the first step...application must follow. And effective application of what is true is wisdom. So, for me it was a call to return to focusing on the right things. But as important as focus is, over these last two weeks, I have discovered that what I had considered to be focus, has actually become alignment. Focus is definitely a critical component of personal effectiveness, but focus is about the task at hand. For me, I needed to connect tasks from differing areas of my life into those specific areas. Connecting related ideas is known as alignment, and thus, while I agree wholeheartedly with the need to focus, it was not until I adopted an attitude of alignment that I truly began to move forward and accomplish what I need to accomplish.

Next week, I will share how I began to align my time.