How To Ditch The Non-Essential

Let me explain

This August I flew to Russia for the first time, and the trip required me to apply for a visa. Being British I’ve never really had problems travelling, so getting a visa didn’t seem like a big deal to me, just a simple matter of completing an online form surely. 

WRONG!

Relax, let go, and just do the necessary work. 

Here’s how it actually went:

I take a trip to the Russian embassy thinking “I’ll have my visa in a few hours or so”. But when I arrive and they tell me I need proof that I live in Sweden from the government. Well, I only arrived in Sweden about 3 weeks ago at the time of this visit, and I simply didn’t have any proof of the sort. The other option was to fly back to the U.K and wait there for a few days until it was ready. 

So all that week I was having lots of “fun” figuring out how to get a Swedish personal number. A week later, having learned a lot about the bureaucracy involved in world travel I still didn’t have a visa! 

Have you ever done this, assumed something would be easy and simply go your way because everything else does? 

In the past, this would have Pissed me off big time! And the annoyance would seep into my work and my relationship causing arguments and friction. Always a bad idea! 

Know I know better, I now recognise that frustration is a symptom of my inner judgements and that my inner judgement can, and must be sidestepped.

Knowing this allows me to relax, let go, and just do the necessary work. 

The frustration was still there, it didn’t leave! But something else did.

The Non-Essential!

Dealing with the visa situation ate into my available time drastically. But, It allowed me to remember something important that I learned about managing time; the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. 

The 80/20 Rule states that 80% of our actions create 20% of the results, and 20% of our actions create 80% of our results 

This forced time constraint allowed me to take actions on the most Essential 20% and drop the NonEssential 80%

Have you ever experienced this? Being forced into a time constraint allowed me to become way more effective and productive? Give me an emoji or me-too in the comments below.

Tools To Access The Essential

I often help my clients with this by asking them one of the following powerful questions: 

1. What would you prioritise today if they were going on holiday tomorrow for a week to a location without access to the phone or the internet?

1. What actions would you prioritise this week if you only had two hours available to do them?

These questions get straight to the most essential. 

So what about you? Do you have a task right now that’s taking up more of your time than you planned?

Don’t get pissed off, Test out the 80/20 rule to get straight to your most essential activities today by relaxing into and allowing your judgements to pass, then using the two questions above.

These tools allow you to access higher levels of thinking and elevated levels of consciousness by focusing deeply on the present moment.

This is #EnlightenedLeadership in action; taking a problem and using it as an opportunity to raise up into a higher level of thinking to solve it.

Now it’s over to you!

With love,

Ryan. 

Lift up, Light up, be the change you wish to see

E.L Insights and tools

1. Don’t assume that things are always easy just because you are good at getting what you want
2. Allowing frustration and annoyance to pass saves wasted energy and creates space for powerful action
3. Using unplanned tasks to create more efficiency allows us to be more resilient, flexible and prepared for the next time.