How my life fell apart due to my addiction

I confess. I am an addict. I have been addicted to it since I tried it in January this year and I didn't know the extent of my addiction until this week.

I am addicted to my Blackberry.

About three years back, I attended the neuro-linguistic programming certification course. During the course, my single-minded focus was on searching for a personal success process, whereby every individual, if they were to follow this success process will experience success.

I wanted to derive my own success process as I see myself as a creator and its what I enjoy doing a lot. So instead of going through a series of trial and error, the process of literature review commenced.

Essentially, the review led me to Anthony Robbins, Robin Sharma, Stephen Covey, and eventually David Allen.

The final conclusion was to follow the FranklinCovey's method where one would divide his world into four quadrants, where the emphasis is to focus on the important but not-urgent quadrant. This is where it all matters because it is where these are areas that do not act on us and hence we must act on them.

There is the FranklinCovey planner where it is designed to get you started by crafting your personal mission statement and clarify your values. From there, you set your goals and based on your different roles you decide what you'd do on a weekly basis.

The trick is not to fall into the trap of spending all your time on the important and urgent quadrant; where eventually you may get a lot done but not move towards your goals.

When I got my Blackberry in January this year, there was a Google ad that appears frequently about "Covey on Blackberry". After clicking on the ad, I was more convinced than ever to get it. It was an amazing tool (ToDo Matrix) as it allows me to set up tasks and reminders.

My reliance on it was like clockwork. Until the Blackberry suffered over-heating problems (other than dropped calls, track-ball issues, and slow browsing speed) where it forced me to bring it in for repairs.

That's when my life really start to fall apart. There is no system now that reminds me of what I need and must do and also the lack of proper task management really caused a great disruption to my life.

That's when I decided to review the FranklinCovey planning system. Perhaps its the way I've organized it but when things happen during the week (which they do rather frequently) I find myself sometimes not being able to complete some tasks and over time it caused me to feel lousy.

And feeling lousy because of task not done is further fueled by the fact that each week, I see that task again and again.

Hence, the fact that my Blackberry was being sent for repairs was in a way a blessing in disguise! Yes, I am using a loan set but its never the same unless it is your own phone.

So, that's when I decided that a refinement of the process to allow for things to happen is way due! Hence, in my recent assessment and review of my planning process, I decided to re-read David Allen's Getting Things Done.

This time round, what appeals to me was the concept of "defining the work that you do".

He quoted Peter Drucker, where "in knowledge work... the task is not given; it has to be determined. 'What are the expected results from this work?' is ... the key question in making knowledge workers productive. There is usually no right answer; there are choices instead. And results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved."

Upon reading this, it was like an enlightenment for me! As a result it led me to re-think the FranklinCovey's planning system.

And I think I got it down like this:

- Personal mission statement is still important and must be crafted, reviewed, refined over the years. It is also a statement that tells us what our purpose in life is and by that extension, who we are (our identity).

- Our identity speaks about who we are. And who we are is determined by our purpose in life and will also determine the values and beliefs that we embrace.

- Our values will determine our actions. And we all strive to behave consistently with our values. The more consistent we are, the more trust people have in us. And the more trust we've earned, the larger is our circle of influence.

- However with the best of intentions is not enough. We must certainly have the necessary competency to undertake a task. Hence, we will need to "learn and grow".

- And then faced with two category of "things", we need to make our choices. I see that because of what our purpose in life is, we would have a set of goals that we want to achieve so as to make our lives meaningful. That is one set of "things". And in our weekly planning, we need to allow for such events to take place or else we will always be faced by the other category of "things".

- The second category falls into what I'd call goals that were assigned to us. Unless you report to no one, then this category does not exists. But if you are like me, this category not only exists, it sometimes consumes us. It is here where we can, nay, need to ask ourselves, 'what are the expected results from this work?' And unless we are clear on the expected results, we cannot choose the most productive way to handle it.

Your friend,
Melvyn
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)