The clock and the compass

THE CLOCK AND THE COMPASS

Mario D’Couto

            The best among us are not more gifted than the rest. They just take little steps each day as they march toward their biggest life and then the days slip into weeks, the weeks into months and before they know it, they arrive at a place called extraordinary. Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you craft your life. What you do today is creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the action you take our defining your destiny – shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences over time. There is no such thing as an unimportant day.

            Yet we struggle each day. There is a constant struggle between what we desire and what we should do. Our struggle to put first thing first can be characterized by the contrast between 2 powerful tools that direct us: The Clock and the Compass. The Clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities – what we do with and how we manage our time. The Compass represents our vision, our values, principles, mission, conscience, direction – what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.

            The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the Clock and the Compass – when what we do does not contribute to what is most important in our lives. For some of us, the point of the gap is intense. We can’t seem to walk our talk. We feel trapped, controlled by other people or situations. We are always responding to crises. We are constantly caught up in the ‘thick and thin of things’.

          We have defined happiness solely in terms of professional or financial achievement and we find that our ‘success’ did not bring us the satisfaction we thought it would. We have painstakingly climbed the ‘ladder of success’ rung by rung – the diploma, the late nights, the promotions – only to discover as we reached the top rung that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Absorbed in the assent, we have left a trail of shattered relationships or missed moments of deep, rich living in the wake of intense, over focused effort. In our race up the rung, we simply did not take the time to do what really mattered most.

            Some people feel disoriented or confused. At times, there is a lack of purpose that lingers in one’s busy schedule and consequently they are not able to put ‘first things first’. When one does not know why one is doing what he/she is doing it, it can be a frustrating experience.

            Scott Peck writes in his book, “THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED,” “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we know that life is difficult – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” With this being said, once we have learned to accept the situation or acknowledge it, the next thing is what we do with it.

Peter Drucker, the management expert, gives us the apt answer, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Every time you say ‘yes’ to something that is unimportant, you say ‘no’ to something that is important. You can’t be all things to all people. Sure, some people around you might not be happy. But would you rather live your life according to the approval of others or align it with your truth and your dreams?

Being thoughtful and strategic is step number one as you walk to greatness. Clarity precedes success. By thinking more, you will have a better sense of your priorities and what you need to focus on. Your actions will be more crisp and deliberate and intentional. You will make better decisions and wiser choices. More time thinking will make you less reactive. You’ll become clearer on the best use of your time and your ‘think time’ will provoke some amazing ideas and inspire some big dreams. Making the time to think is definitely a superb strategy for success at leadership and in life.

There is an old phrase that says, “What you’re doing speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.” You can say that your primary value involves putting your family first but if time with family is not all over or on your schedule, well then, the truth of the matter is that your family life isn’t your priority. You can say that being in a world – class physical condition is another top value but if there are no 5 or 6 workouts etched into your weekly schedule, then the reality to be confronted is that your health just isn’t as important as you profess it to be.

There can be no authentic success and lasting happiness if your daily schedule is misaligned with your deepest values. That’s a big idea! If there is a gap between what you do and who you are, you are out of integrity. It is called the “integrity gap”. The greater the chasm between your daily commitments and your deepest values, the less your life will work. Why? Because you are committing the crime of self-betrayal. The witness that lives within the deepest part of you – your conscience – sees it.

Your schedule is the best barometer for what you truly value and believe to be important. Too many people talk and talk is cheap. So, talk less and do more. Your schedule should be aligned with your priorities.

Stephen Covey writes in his book, “THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE” about a thought which he came across while reading a book which changed his life. This is what he said, “There is a gap or a space between stimulus and response, and the key to both, our growth and happiness depends on how we use that space.” Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” As noted before, every small action that we do contributes to the bigger scheme of life. Hence, it is important to choose our actions wisely. Good thoughts precede good actions.

Getting into a habit is a mammoth task. Ask anybody who has tried to break an old habit and tried to acquire a new one. Yet, the end result is worth the effort. Robin Sharma and Stephen Covey cite the example of the rocket launching into space. To get into space, the rocket has to break gravity which is the most difficult part in the launching process. But once that is done, the rest is smooth sailing. Studies in psychology tell us that it takes us almost around 15 days to a month to form a habit and through constant reinforcement and repetition, our habits become instinctual or second nature.

Now you may probably undermine yourself and say, “Oh no, it’s too hard to achieve it,” let me share what Jeremy Bennett has to say about the human mind. In an experiment, a professional skier was hooked on to a device that measures the muscle fibre. The skier was just asked to think that he is skiing without actually moving an inch of muscle. The results were shocking. It was found that the mere thought of skiing fired off or consumed the same amount of energy from his muscle fibre which would have been used had he been actually skiing. In psychology, it is called the placebo effect. To quote the words of Anwar Sadat, “He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change the reality and will never therefore, make any progress,” when we persist in doing a particular task, it becomes easier not because of the nature of the task has changed but because our ability to do has increased. So, stop selling yourself short, believe in yourself. Trust yourself! If you don’t trust yourself, how can someone else trust you? Quit talking and start doing!