Blog – Page 14 – Tahmid Chowdhury

How to make your tasks feel more effortless

Post author By tahmidchowdhury
Post date September 30, 2022

Do you find yourself constantly at the wrong side of a never-ending to-do-list? The stress and overwhelm can take a massive toll. Worse, without remedial action we’re doomed to a cycle of overwork, burnout and always needing a holiday.

People often talk about prioritisation as the key to a good life – indeed I’ve even posted around that recently. If we don’t prioritise things, we’ll end up getting spread too thin. No matter what our abilities, we cannot do anything and everything.

But one thing that is less talked about is how we make the process of living our lives far simpler. In other words, how can you make your daily tasks feel far less burdensome, leaving you feeling lighter and in control of your life, rather than being controlled by your tasks.

I once joked to a colleague that the best way I keep on top of my to-do-list is to simply not have one. I said this in jest, and obviously I sometimes do make a note of the things I’ve committed to, but in general I keep my ‘to-do’s’ to as empty as possible.

You might be thinking ‘oh what a luxury, I wish I had such an easy life like you’, and perhaps you’re right. But I also think that we have a far stronger

ability to manage our tasks in our life than we realise.

For example, the reason I can get through life without having a big to-do-list hanging over me is because I tend to deal with things as I see them. A classic case in point are emails. I sometimes look at people’s inboxes and am shocked at how stressful it all looks. Hundreds of emails with no sorting system, leaving a constant sense of never-ending work.

When I get an email, I tend to sort it in my head in three different ways – action, archive or flag. So this means that if an email is for information, I read it and I archive it (the shortcut for this is backspace in Outlook. You can thank me later). If I want to reply, I tend to reply there and then. After which, it is ‘dealt with’, and I can archive it. In the rare occasion I have something I want to dedicate more time to (e.g. to review a document), I will flag it and come back to it. To note, this is fairly rare, and at the moment I only have one flagged document in the whole of my inbox, and the rest of the inbox stays below 10 emails nearly all the time.

Considering we spend most of our time on emails, the shift I made when I read about this as an effective system was life changing. I feel far more in control, and people know that they will get a response from me very quickly. I also save an unbelievable amount of mental energy by not having to return to an email for a second time. When we put emails into a ‘I don’t know what to do with this’ bucket, we tend to return to it and have to spend more mental energy deciding what to do. This accumulates to become extremely draining.

I’ve gone quite specific with the email example, but the truth is that this optimisation can be said of most things. We can make our lives far easier by making the way we respond to them simpler. And the best thing is that you already know how to do this – you’ve already learnt to optimise many things already. Think about when you first learnt to ride a bike or drive a car. It was an arduous task of learning, with intense concentration throughout. Yet as you got better, the skills became automatic. Now you can get to where you want to go without even thinking about it. You also know how to turn on the TV, use the toilet or run a bath. These do not require your active effort.

Within work, when we know we have a discussion to be had with someone, we can just put it in the calendar. That saves us having to hold it in our heads, and gives us peace of mind that we aren’t going to forget anything. Outside of work, many of us have goals of wanting to eat healthier or exercise more. These days, I commit to going to a yoga class when I book it. I don’t overthink it or decide how I’m feeling just before (unless I’m genuinely injured). I plan it, book it, forget about it then check my diary for the day and get dressed and go. I spend little time debating whether I should or not.

The underlying shift is moving to a state of overthinking to one of graceful action, making our tasks feel like we are doing it without putting effort in. The biggest blocker of our activities is when we stop to think about them too much. How often have you found yourself putting off something you feel you need to do, only to find it not that bad when you actually do it?

Fundamentally, there is an immense power in realising that our thoughts do not have to dictate our reality. When we think something might be hard, we might be tempted to succumb to that idea. But these are thoughts, and the reality of it can be drastically different.

But this is also not saying that we should just simply try to block out thoughts – that doesn’t tend to work too well either. It’s very hard to actively stop thinking about something. Instead, it’s accepting that our thoughts are just that – thoughts. They can help, but they can also hinder. We have thousands of thoughts everyday, most of which we let drift away harmlessly. But the moment we fixate on the idea of all the things we feel we need to do, we suddenly give these thoughts an incredible power over us. This can leave us in debilitating anxiety.

So my invitation to you is to find ways in which you can shift your activities to this state of graceful action, rather than one of paralysing overthink. Even a small change can make a massive difference to your life.

If you’d like to explore more around this idea of changing our relationship with thoughts, drop me a message.

The limits to intellectualizing our life decisions

When we make decisions, many of us try to look at things very logically. We research information or ask friends for guidance. Maybe we’ll write a pros and cons list.

But can we really make a pros and cons list to as big a life decision as getting married? How about having kids? How about moving country? How about doing what you love?

One of the biggest downwards spirals I had with my life was trying to logically decide what I wanted to do. I would turn my brain to overdrive to figure out what the answer to my career and life were. I saw life as a puzzle – if I simply stared at it longer and spent more time trying to figure it all out, I would know what I was meant to do.

When I found myself unhappy with how my life was unfolding, I decided to figure out why I was unhappy. I thought that if I could understand the why, I could then go to the root of the problem. This would allow me to solve the issue. That’s the general logic we learn to cherish – analyse the problem and then find a solution.

What I did not anticipate was that trying to figure out why I was unhappy only served to make me more unhappy. By focussing so much time on what was wrong in my life, I just gave more power to the idea that these outside forces were the reason for my woe. My conclusion was that my life was unhappy due to my job, so if I changed that I would get the happiness I sought.

When I did change my job, I found a lot of the same issues still existed. Sure, the circumstances were different, and some of the details also changed, but ultimately when I was relying on my job to give me my sense of happiness I was putting my wellbeing in the hands of my circumstances rather than myself.

It reminds me of a story one of my old yoga teachers once told during a class. She recalled the tale of an apple on the tree. The apple sat on a tree branch, growing bigger each day. One day, a bird flew and landed on the tree branch. The next day the apple fell to the ground. So what caused the apple to fall – was it the bird landing on the branch, or was it the time for the apple to fall anyway?

It does not matter. Either way the apple is now on the ground. We do not need to understand why things happen, nor do necessarily benefit from satisfying our minds craving for clarity in things that we can never fully understand.

I learnt that the mind is not always the best tool to understand or decide bigger things in life. It can be an extremely powerful tool for digesting and analysing information to make a criteria-based decision, but it will also quickly get overloaded and succumb to traps of negative thinking when we attempt to comprehend something as big as the meaning of life. In other words, deciding what I wanted to do with my life wasn’t a decision that had to come from intellectualizing the question.

But if we don’t use our brain, what do we use?

There is something deeper than our thoughts which can tell us what we are meant to be doing. I am best guided by a deeper knowledge and power. This shows up when I quieten my own mind and go within to really what my inner wisdom is telling me.

For example, when I was ready to resign as a full-time Government employee, I knew it was the right thing for me. It was not a case of spending more time thinking about it, doing a SWOT analysis, nor project planning my future. It was a sensation that went deeper than my thinking and feeling – the connection between what I saw, felt and thought came together to recognise that there was a future for me outside of the comfort zone I had created. I understood the opportunities out there by going out and experiencing them, and now I wanted more. I saw that the future of staying in my job was not one that would allow me to live my life how I wanted to. So I knew. And I left.

The best part of this is that it means I don’t live with regrets. Our thoughts can create all sorts of alternative paths or reasons why what we did might have been wrong. But the reality is that any decision we make will be the right one if we make it so.

So if you’re finding yourself in the space of making wider life decisions, I would invite you to pause and look at how you are approaching it. If you are looking to stop and think your way to a solution, maybe you would benefit from taking time away and connecting to something beyond your thoughts.

Because when you know the decision you are meant to take, you will know.

Life is an ever-shifting enigma. Embrace it.

Photo by Bhavya Pratap Photography on Unsplash

What is change?

There’s been quite a few notable events in the UK over the last week – The Queen’s passing, Liz Truss as the new Prime Minister, and most dramatically of all, Thomas Tuchel being sacked as Chelsea Manager.

I joke with the last one (well, somewhat), but sometimes it can feel like a lot of things are changing. The idea of change can quickly feel overwhelming, as if we are being washed up in a tidal wave of uncertainty and the comfort blanket of normality is being tugged from our clenched fists.

What we don’t often think about is how every day our cells are renewing themselves, and we’re experiencing a new rotation on the earth each and every day. The way we experience the world will always be unique based upon the exact moment we are happening to see it. So it’s not that things are necessarily changing more, it’s that I’m spending more time focussing on the change.

The more I’ve focussed on the idea that everything is changing the more jaded I feel. The human mind looks for patterns to explain why I feel the way I’m feeling – if I feel a sense of insecurity, I look for a reason. So I can then explain to myself that it’s because of change. My brain then looks for all sorts of change (including a new Chelsea manager!) which helps explain this to myself. This is the weird and wonderful way our brains work.

If we look for change, we can find it everywhere. I changed what I had for my breakfast this morning. I travelled, so was in a different bed yesterday. I had a different set of meetings and responsibilities this week. I can use these changes as a reason that everything feels insecure.

But when examining this thought process, I can reflect that I’ve had many weeks before where I’ve been doing lots of different things without feeling insecure by change. Two weeks ago, I met a bunch of people, did some writing and did some additional yoga classes I’d never done before. I didn’t go on about how much my life was changing then.

So perhaps it’s not really the change that is making me feel jaded. Perhaps instead it’s how much I’m thinking about how everything is changing. In reality, not much has physically changed in my life. I’m still doing pretty much the same thing – sitting in front of the computer, writing emails, reading, watching old youtube videos and sometimes writing this blog. It doesn’t seem all that different when I put it like that.

So I’d prefer to reframe this idea of scary ‘change’ as life slowly shifting like waves in the sea crashing on the beach. The waves never truly stop, but sometimes can go faster. Even when there’s a storm, ultimately the water and the beach are still there, come what may. We can choose to try and stop a storm from coming, or accept that the next day we will have sunshine anyway.

When I accept life as a beautiful, ever shifting enigma, I can let go and simply enjoy life. I don’t need to get caught up in my own thoughts around insecurity.

From this space, I have the freedom to do what I want.

How do you view change?

Clarity of thought will drive your life to its highest level

How much time do we spend questioning ourselves around what we should be doing?

Should I go to the gym today? Should I find a new career? Could I be more fulfilled right now?

At some point, we all go through a period of questioning ourselves. Sometimes life throws us curve balls which make us reassess what we want – I questioned what I wanted to do with my life after getting turned down for numerous promotions whilst working in Government. But I was unclear of where I actually wanted to go. I was spiralling around the different possibilities and feeling lost.

without clarity of thought, it was hard for me to focus on any single thing. I thought about whether I might want to move to a different job, sector or country. The possibilities could sometimes feel overwhelming because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was basing my life upon a bunch of general job descriptions.

Later down the road, I became clear that I wanted to move to Brussels. Partly through circumstances of Brexit putting a deadline on my decision, partly because I wanted to build a new life for myself. Once I had made the decision, I put a lot of commitment behind it. In total, it took me about four months from working through my CV, applying for jobs and practising my interview skills before I ended up making the move. I had to be very intentional that I would prioritise finding a job that I wanted, whilst also being open to the possibility that it would not fit exactly into what I might have imagined. Without this clarity of thought, I probably would have questioned myself mid-way through the process. I may have simply gave up, returned to the drawing board and looked at plan B, C or D.

Unsurprisingly, being unclear on what you want makes it hard to ever achieve it.

Evidently being clear is an extremely beneficial thing. It means we have figured out what we want. But people often don’t know how to get this clarity of thought.

Clarity comes from all sorts of places. Some people have divine inspiration which demonstrates to them what they want to do. After all, there are many stories of people who simply wake up one day with a grand vision that they dreamt of, after which they go ahead and put all their effort into it and often even achieve it.

But this inspiration only comes when you’ve immersed yourself enough in a field to understand about it. I’m not going to suddenly wake up tomorrow believing I want to be a carpenter. I know nothing about carpentry, nor have I ever examined a piece of wood with any particular fondness or inspiration. But if I were to spend time around carpenters in my spare time, or get more into crafting as a pursuit, it makes it much more likely I might consider it.

Unlike carpentry, Moving to Brussels was something I’d thought about for some time, and my background was in EU affairs. I visited it for work several times and did a Masters in Belgium already. It wasn’t some crazy decision that I chose by throwing a pin on a map, but rather a related activity to what I’d already been doing that would set a new, exciting chapter of my life.

If you want to know what you want to do, but you’re not sure about how to go about it, then its perhaps time to go out into the world and explore the options out there. There may be something that you want to do that you simply do not knows exist, or do not know enough about. So go out, speak to people. Go out and explore. Get out of your thoughts and into the real world. See what people are up to. See what makes them happy, or makes them unhappy.

It’s best to do these things before you find yourself in a crisis of confidence, so that you have places and people to call upon when those moments might hit. Equally, now is better than never.

Over time, you will start to gain an idea of the different options you have in your life, you can start to look at what those might mean. You may expect to simply find something that captures your imagination – a new hobby or cool sounding job – and are clear straight away. For many of us, this’ll take more time. Quite often, we need to dedicate ourselves to a pursuit for a while to genuinely learn to love it. Professional cyclist would have probably not enjoyed biking too much when they were kids and were constantly falling off their bikes. It was probably frustrating and may have left them hurt. But once they got the flow of it, that’s when it got interesting for them.

When we’ve done the process, it becomes a lot easier to get clarity. I started writing and coaching just to try it. It was okay at first, but it wasn’t amazing. I actually stopped for a long time because I got in a rut. I ended up feeling pressurised to do it, and ended up losing the enjoyment of it all. But once I had a break, I got back into it, and now am really committed to them because I have built a genuine enjoyment out of doing both. From there I’ve seen how I can fit my pursuits into my life – hence the birth of this newsletter.

I now have absolute clarity that I want to be writing these articles weekly. I have no intentions of stopping for the foreseeable future. I also made a clear commitment to finish the book I’ve been writing by November, and to have more coaching conversations with people over the next few months.

I made these commitments because I was clear in my head that this is something I want to do. Without the noise and doubts in my head, it’s a lot easier to be bold and ambitious. Writing a book or setting up a coaching business was not something I would have seriously considered a few years ago. Yet I am very clear now that this is something I want to do. Because I have this commitment, I’m willing to do what it takes to make it happen, even when that means working on them in evenings and weekends.

What you want to do will look very different to me. You may not really know exactly what that this right now. But if you follow the process you will get there. Being clear with yourself doesn’t mean you have to make grand life decisions forever – committing to something does not mean you can never change your mind. In fact, sometimes being clear of what you want actually means deciding to stop doing something. Yet, the clarity is so beneficial because it takes the focus away from ‘should I be doing this’ to ‘what do I need to do to make this happen’. And this is an extremely powerful shift.

When you are clear on what you want to do, the biggest barrier to achieve it – your mind – is no longer an obstacle. You then are in a space where you’re ready to go out there and do it.

How clear is your thinking?

Starting Fresh – how to handle starting a new job

It’s officially September. Summer is over. For some of us, that also means a fresh start in a new job.

A new job can be a daunting process. We are entering into a new role with a new team, new area of work, as well as potentially a new organisation and location. A year ago I experienced these changes when I left the UK to come to Belgium for a new role in a different sector.

Understandably, getting off on the right foot brings a lot of anxiety to people. Often, people want to make sure they make a good impression and are keen to demonstrate their competence as early as possible.

But do new jobs really need to be that stressful?

I’ve previously started new jobs where I’ve spent an incredible amount of mental energy in trying to understand as much as possible. I wanted to make sure I put my best step forward and learn the cultural norms as soon as possible. By the end of it, I was exhausted, and within three weeks I felt my energy levels drop. The amount of effort I put in trying to plan my first few weeks meant that I felt exhausted within a month. It also ate into my personal life. I would often go home and crash, clearing out my diary of recreational activities because all my focus was on my job.

In hindsight, this is probably not the best thing to do. It’s when we first start our job that we get an opportunity to set how we want to work, and give the impression of how we want to work. If we give the impression that we are want to people-please from the beginning, that will probably be the lasting impression you will give for the first six to twelve months. This isn’t the worst thing, but you may suddenly find yourself having a harder time getting your points across, or being given more menial tasks if you’re viewed in that way.

Furthermore, if I didn’t illustrate the point enough, it’s also very tiring to start a job being on edge across a whole work day, let alone doing that for several weeks. Whilst in the short term you may find you get more out of yourself, if you start with unsustainable behaviours you will likely inevitably crash. This will affect your performance longer term.

So instead, I recommend seeing a role as a new opportunity. Each day is a chance to learn something new and speak to different people. The best starters I saw came with an enthusiasm and open curiosity for the job. Rather than being so keen to impress, they take the time to learn the ropes by talking to different people and learning what they need to do, whilst also getting the lay of the land through private conversations. For more senior hires, this is particularly critical. I can recall several times in Government how I had a new manager who was so keen to impress on their first day that they wanted to change everything. It was a nightmare for me and my team, and actually led to difficult relations with them for at least six months. It was difficult to point out that they basically didn’t understand their job yet without looking like I was just trying to frustrate their wishes of change.

Personally, I believe a lot of this behaviour comes from a sense of inadequacy. Having gone through an intense interview process, it can feel like we are still under trial when we start. Indeed, in the UK we have probation periods and in certain team environments new hires can be pushed into contributing rather quickly.

But it’s important to recognise that once you have gotten a job offer, you are now officially a member. It’s therefore an opportunity for you to bring your knowledge and experience as a value-add, and you don’t need to wait 6 months before sharing ideas. A lot of the time, the pressure comes from ourselves – this inadequacy (often from imposter syndrome) keeps us in a state of perpetual stress. You don’t need me to tell you that being in perpetual stress is not a recipe for excelling in a role.

Naturally there is a fear that we just aren’t up to the job we are hired into. And yes, that sometimes is the case. People can be mis-hired or poorly managed, which certainly does happen. To be honest with you though, if you’re in a situation where this is happening, it may just be a toxic environment where people often join and leave with high frequency. If that’s the case, there’s probably not a lot you can do. That said, if you are in this situation, you’ll probably see the warning signs quite quickly. If a job isn’t meant to work out, it’s not meant to work out. So relax – the chances are you were hired and can do the job. Now it’s for you to manage the situation to do the best you can.

So I would recommend that you give yourself plenty of space to engage with work. Coming in fresh with enthusiasm, but also not getting too caught up in impressing on your first week. It’s okay to ask questions. Take the time to speak to people and learn what they do. A new role is a great time to build relationships that you would otherwise forego with work colleagues. Likewise, feeling overwhelmed with new information can be a normal part of the process. It’s okay if you don’t get thigns in the first go. You have time to settle into your role, so there’s no need to put yourself under additional pressure.

Finally, remember that you’re in this job probably because you want to be. So you may as well enjoy it. Many of us forget that once we get our dream jobs that the point of it is to enjoy actually working there. Instead, we fall into a cycle of stress and unhappiness as we feel like this is how we are meant to react. You get to choose how you want your relationship with work.

So if you’re starting a new job, I hope this article helps you. I’d love to hear what you get out of it or any additional tips you would give to someone else.

Balancing between mastery and being a jack-of-all-trades

I was in a conversation this week with someone who talked about having many different interests. It prompted me to think about my own experience and the guidance I got – on the one hand, people talk about it being good to have lots of different skills. On the other hand, am I meant to be ‘settling down’ on one thing and becoming the best at that?

Like most things in life, the answer depends. It depends on you, and what you want to do.

I’ve had coaching conversations in the past of people regretting the fact they hadn’t focussed on one subject – they saw their peers progressing in the field that they had devoted most of their time into, whereas this person didn’t have a clear direction as they did a mix of writing, politics and other hobbies. It was only when I pointed out to them that they were not like their peers that the lightbulb kicked in: they wanted to be good at lots of stuff, so they would not have been satisfied with the idea of a one-track-career anyway.

Traditionally, the general mantra is that you should pick a career and dedicate your life towards building mastery. The theory is that you’ll only become the best athlete, manager or salesperson by buckling down and dedicating your life to constantly improving in that area.

I’ve seen plenty of happy people who broadly follow this mantra. They often find a pursuit that they really enjoy, even if at first they only fall into it by chance. The are then happy to buckle down and work to improve at it, slowly progressing the career ranks too. If you feel like this category fits for you, then great.

It is important to push yourself to continue learning, even if you’ve been in a job for decades. Time in a job does not equal being better at it, and many people stagnate. If you really want to get to the top of your game, keep on striving to learn more. Also, just because you are striving to be the best in one field, it does not mean that you cannot learn about other things, or pick up hobbies you care about. You’ll probably find that this will give you new perspectives and enhance your work. It will also make you a more rounded and interesting character.

What about people who don’t want to be type-cast into one box? You may feel that the system inherently dissuades us from doing different things – when it comes to job applications, it’s hard to show a dedicated interest in one field when you are doing several different activities. It can also be unclear as to what you really want to do, which is not necessarily the best when being interrogated about your future by family and friends.

The good thing is that if you want to do lots of different things, you are likely a curious person who is open to experimenting with a mix of ideas. You can benefit from learning from multiple different fields and pick up quite a variety of skills. Whilst it may take a while to settle on where you start, if you ever wanted to change it makes it a lot easier as you may have spent more time dabbling with other things to learn what really makes you tick. The people that have multiple pursuits can be some of the most interesting, and they are also willing to challenge the status quo as they have a wider set of experiences from different fields.

If you see yourself as a jack-of-all-trades, it can be tempting to constantly want to try new things. There is always some new cool career or hobby that people talk about. If not kept in balance it can mean constantly pursuing something new. If you find yourself in this space, you may find you get bored quickly with what you are doing, and are constantly looking for the next thing to conquer. This means that you might not actually be dedicating enough time to one thing to actually get good enough at it to qualify for you in a career. It’s like learning 5 languages at a basic level versus getting conversational fluency in two or three (with mastery being full fluency in one). You can’t do much with a basic level of understanding, no matter how many languages you start, but you can do quite a lot with an intermediate understanding.

I personally like doing lots of different things. I work in public policy, but I also write and coach. I started a podcast too, and have a few other whacky projects in the background, including my book which is hovering around 40,000 words. However, I found that if I wanted any of my projects to actually have meaning and impact, I had to focus. I’ve put a pause on the podcast for now, as I found myself stretching myself too thin. I also found that I needed to dedicate more time to my coaching if I wanted to get to a proficient level with it to genuinely help people. So for me that meant dedicating more time to honing my trade over the last six months, whilst also pushing back some of the other things I wanted to do.

Whatever way you see yourself, the important thing is to understand what you want. People are different, so one path might inherently appeal more to you than the other. There is no heirarchy – we need both types of people in the world. So don’t feel guilty if you want to become the best at a niche field in a family of entrepreneurs, nor if you want to start a few different projects in a family of specialist doctors.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do for yourself and the world is to realise what you want to do. Then, it’s about being as good as you can be in the path you’ve chosen.

Which path are you on, one towards mastery, or a jack-of-all-trades? Comment in the messages below!

How to be more social on Social Media

I’ve been more active on social media in the last year than I have been since my time at University. In between these years I slowly regressed into a social media hermit that would rarely interact with others and only respond when someone reached out to me. It had similarities on how my own social life dwindled at the time.

Social media is a tool. I see it as something that is neither inherently good, nor bad. It can help connect us to people we would never speak to otherwise and help us keep in touch with people we’ve known for a long time but no longer see on a daily basis. It also has a darker side, which can lead us to addiction, and constantly comparing ourselves to idealised versions of others.

If we see social media as a tool, it makes it easier to understand that we can use it in a way that makes us take advantages of it rather than suffer the negatives. However, this requires a level of intention in how we use it, rather than falling into a negative pattern that I believe many of us do.

So how did I make using social media a lot more fun?

I. Start having more conversations with people.

Many of us move into lurker mode. It is the same as sitting at the side of the party, quietly listening to everyone else have a conversation. We don’t interact with people unless they interact with us, but considering we never say anything, there is no reason that they would speak to us anyway. Instead, we end up spending a long time just following other people and seeing what they’re talking about. This experience actually makes us feel more lonely than social.

To break this cycle, you can simply reply to more people’s posts, and put out more posts yourself. You can perhaps reach out to people in messenger if you want to start a conversation. It might feel a bit scary, but it’s no different to approaching someone in real life for the first time. Sometimes it won’t work, but many times it will. If you feel like you don’t have many people to speak to, this could be the way to have more.

II. Curate your own social media feed

Social media feeds can quickly get out of control. When we don’t interact with anyone or anything, the algorithm guesses what we might like or not like. This means we get a weird assortment of things on our news feed which we don’t really want to see. But we can be a lot more active. If we don’t like the content of someone or something, we can simply unfollow them. The more we comment on the things we do like, the more we will see them. As such, if you’re commenting on something you don’t actually want to see more of to be polite, you’re telling the algorithm to show you more of it. So instead, be really clear of what sort of content you want to see. If you’re tired of influencer-style posts or want to see more dogs on instagram, change the accounts you follow and you will get more of the content you’d like. It made a real difference once I did a curation of my news feed, now I get a much more interesting, mix of posts.

III. Be clear on what you want to use social media for

It’s important to be clear as to why you’re using social media. If you spend hours ambling around because you’re bored, you’re not likely to get a whole lot out of the platform. If you want to use LinkedIn to connect with more people in your profession, that makes it a lot clearer of what you want to do. So you can act accordingly – reaching out to find people who might be similar to you. If you want to simply meet more people, you can start a conversation with them. If you’re deliberate in what you’re using the platform for, you’ll find you’ll enjoy it much more

IV. Don’t worry about the likes and other vanity metrics

We are no longer at school trying to win a popularity contest. If you’re looking to have meaningful interactions with people, then it doesn’t actually matter if you get no likes or one thousand. Often the posts that have deeper meaning or a more subtle message are less popular, but lead to people thinking more deeply. I find that it’s the ones that react to these posts who you can have a really interesting conversation with. There’s certainly a space for wider-appeal posts that attract more people to interact with you, but if you only focus on the numbers rather than the genuine relationship you’re building, it can become a very joyless game. The numbers ultimately odn’t matter that much. People don’t count how many friends they have in real life.

V. Put healthy limits around how you’re using social media

Like anything, social media is best used in moderation. One of the big downside of social media is that it can be addictive. As such, it can quickly be a place to fill a void of boredom or loneliness. How often do you check your phone when an ad is playing? I had to deliberately move my phone away from me to stop me checking my phone so many times in the day. It can also be something we turn to when we’re feeling low, which can inevitably lead us to comparing ourselves to those who are doing much better through the lens of social media. It’s no wonder that this can lead to a lot of mental health issues. You’ll usually know you’re overdoing it if you feel tired or anxious, so if that’s the case, it may be time for a detox.

So that’s how I’ve shifted my use of social media. How about you? What did you take from this article, I’d love to hear from you, drop me a comment below!

What game are you playing in life?

I’m in Italy this week. We’ve spent the last few days going into different towns in Puglia. It’s been refreshing getting out of my own comfort zone and awakening to a different culture I hadn’t properly seen before.

Yesterday, we played a few rounds of a card game called Scopa. Each player gets three cards, and the aim is to collect cards by either matching a card with the same value, or collecting several which add up to the card value you have. For example, if you have an eight, if there is an eight on the table you can capture the card. If there is no eight, but there is a five and three, you can capture both these cards instead. These go into your collection and the totals are counted at the end of each round.

The scoring system is based upon several different criteria. You score a point based on each of the individual criteria: who has captured the most cards; who has the most sevens; who has the ‘sette bello’ – the seven gold coin card; and who has the most sevens. During a game, if you also capture all the cards remaining on the deck this is ‘scopa’ which means you also score a point.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t particularly good at this game when I first played. Some of the faces of the cards can be confusing as to what number they correspond to, and I didn’t really get the rhythm of the game either. I often took a few cards off the table, leaving only one or two left, allowing the next player to clear the table and get a point through ‘scopa’.

I did wonder whether this was a game of luck. After all, it’s based upon a shuffled deck, and each player gets three random cards. The cards at the centre are also random. Yet I learnt that there are some people who get very good at this game. A bit like poker, the trick is to memorise what cards have been played, that way you can understand the odds of different combinations work.

I found playing a new game a really interesting analogy of trying new things in life. Firstly, I wasn’t particularly good at it (aside from a round of beginner’s luck). Secondly, the rules sounded completely alien when explained, and it was only by playing that I got the hang of it. Thirdly, it was fun to play, which is what made us continue. The picture above is us playing it at the beach.

The funny thing is that life works in a remarkably similar way. We get to choose what we game play in life, and how we want to play it. Like any game, it has some general rules. We are all players, and although some of us may start luckier than others, and we are broadly confined under the same metaphysical boundaries. But the way we want to play the game is up to us. We can be reckless or cautious. We can be bold, or timid. We can be inquisitive or uninterested. It’s really up to us, even if it does not always feel like it.

Like scopa, it can take a while to get the hang of this game of life. It can take a while to figure out what even the point of it is, but the more I play it as a game, the better I get at understanding how it all works. Whilst I could also read a thousand text books on the art of living life, ultimately I just have to live it to understand how things work. By playing it as a game, rather than a very serious, pressurised obligation, it also can be fun. For me, that’s what keeps life enjoyable.

But there are more games we can play. In fact, we can create a game for pretty much anything. There may be the game of chess, but there is also a game of becoming a chess grandmaster. For that, we go and understand out the broader rules to become a ‘grandmaster’, and what this means in practice. For example, what someone has to do to become a grandmaster. We then figure out how we make this happen, which is a mixture of playing a lot of chess games mixed in with a lot of practice. By making it a game rather than somethign we merely pursue, we can make it fun. This then shifts the labour of practice from being boring to one that’s actually rather enjoyable.

Maybe you don’t want to be a chess grandmaster. Maybe you want to be the best singer, manager, salesperson, spouse or any other thing. So instead, you can play the game of becoming that thing you want to do. You’re probably already doing it – I play the game of coaching, and if you have a job you’re playing that game too.

Looking at our jobs as games can make them a far more enjoyable experience. Games in of their nature are structured and can be repeated. Practicing to become something beyond ‘average’ (like me as a Scopa player) is also rather repetitive and requires a level of dedication and commitment. But if we can make a game out it, suddenly it becomes a lot more fun. Athletes and professionals in sport often rise to the top through a love of the sport they play, and so they generally enjoy going to training every day. It’s no wonder that they rise above their peers, because to them it’s just fun. And if you find something fun, you’re

much more likely to get up at 6am to do it.

Games can be incredibly powerful. It’s just a choice for you to decide which one you want to play. So if you don’t feel like you’re currently consciously playing one within your life, you may consider doing so. It will make things far lighter and more enjoyable, whilst also keeping you on track to meet the goals you’re aiming for.

What game are you playing?

If you got anything from this article, I’d love to hear from you. Drop a message below or feel free to send a message to me direct on LinkedIn or via email.

What does working with a coach look like in practice?

You may have come across the idea of a ‘coach’. You’ve certainly seen sports coaches too. But what does it actually look like to work with a coach on personal development?

People use coaches for all sorts of reasons – common themes include wanting help to improve a skill or get support with finding a new job or pursuing a promotion. It might also be that someone is struggling with a particular area of their life such as anxiety, confidence or imposter syndrome.

Coaching gives time and space to go deeper into conversations around subjects which you otherwise wouldn’t. For example, I’ve had conversations around how the issue of confidence has really held back a client in speaking up in their team meetings. This has had a subsequent negative effect on their career trajectory, further knocking their confidence.

When we explored the idea of confidence, this came from the idea of not belonging in where they worked, which actually came from their personal life and how they had felt left out when younger. After we had spent time reframing the issue, speaking up in meetings wasn’t so nerve wracking anymore. The effect also had a wider positive impact on their life outside of meetings too. So it can really help, and it’s common to explore multiple subjects with a coach over different sessions.

Different coaches have different styles. It’s why it’s important to find someone that you feel will genuinely help you. Like any profession, unfortunately there are coaches which give it a bad name. It doesn’t take long to find get-rich-quick schemes or people who get their sales by pressuring people into paying for something that isn’t right for them.

I take the time to speak with people several times before even looking at the idea of a client relationship. Coaching is a personal, transformative experience, and you would only want to do that with someone you can genuinely trust and you think can genuinely help you. If I believe I’m not that person for you, I’d much prefer you find someone else who will fit what you’re looking for.

My style goes into the inner depths around mindset and our perceptions of the world. I do this because I believe this has the biggest transformative effect. If we shift the way we see our own existence, suddenly possibilities appear that we never noticed before. This can be incredibly powerful, and can really change people’s lives. It then has the desired knock-on effect of greater career pursuits or simply a happier, more fulfilled life.

My approach isn’t for everyone. After all, this style of coaching requires a larger commitment – it’s not a quick fix to a problem. Some people would much prefer more targeted coaching around a skill, or one that is more focussed around getting to a certain goal as quickly as possible. That’s fine, there are plenty of coaches that do that. It’s just not my personal style.

Coaches regularly meet with their clients to talk about particular issues that the client wants to talk about. It gives an open space to co-create a session that really helps, rather than a pre-set seminar to ‘teach’ people what to do. For example, I’ve had clients who were thinking about wanting to talk about a specific skill such as public speaking, but then arrived on the day overwhelmed with their life. We ended up speaking about how they were feeling and working it through, which had a much greater impact as we could explore some of the root causes of the feelings.

I tend to work with clients on a longer term relationship, spanning several months. This allows for a continued conversation and keeps an ongoing commitment towards making that personal shift. The basis of the coaching itself is via regular sessions: 60-75 minute sessions every two to four weeks depending on the pace the client wants to go on.

Outside of the sessions, I keep an open line of dialogue throughout the time we work together. I often send resources such as books, articles and videos as additional material between sessions, as well as have space within our work for impromptu conversations in case the person I work with really just needs to speak about something at short notice.

That’s how I like to work as it keeps a sense of continuity for the client. Other coaches can work very differently. Some only speak during sessions. Some have unlimited access. It’s worth exploring this with whoever you talk to.

Coaching can be an incredibly powerful thing. It’s why so many people hire them. That said, it’s not for everyone, nor is it a necessity. When it does work, it does bring great changes at a far greater pace than going it alone. So if you’re open to the idea that coaching might help you, it might be worth exploring.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about coaching. If you’re interested in knowing more about what I do, drop me a message

Why a £2000 cheque doesn’t make you as happy as you think it would

Yesterday, I was running around a little frantically between meetings. I take my lunch breaks seriously, but I also try and cook a proper lunch within them when I can.

I saw an ominous letter on the table. It was from HMRC, the UK’s tax authority. It had been redirected from my old flat in London. Cue internal fear as to whether I had broken the law in some way, or owed a lot of money to someone, despite not having even seen the letter contents.

The reality was the opposite – I had overpayed tax in the UK over the last year. As I had left my job mid-year, the amount I was taxed was higher than it ought to have been.

in my lap sat a cool cheque for a £2000 tax rebate. Happy days. I looked at my bank and thought about how nice the numbers would be in the account (it would take away a few minuses anyway!). I then mused whether this was karma for all my good deeds, or I had manifested some money coming into my life. Either way, I created some level of fantasy to tell myself I deserved this break.

After lunch, I went back to my daily work. I had a bunch of calls and a few reporting documents to write. These can be a bit tedious, and the calls turned out to be a little tense. Truthfully, It didn’t take me long to completely forget about the happy moment of receiving the money.

I had a late call which meant I needed to rush to the cinema to get there on time. I managed to catch the bus by jogging to the stop. So as I sat down on the seat somewhat out of breath, I had a moment to reflect on my day.

Remarkably, I spent a lot of time thinking about the calls I had and the work I was doing. I had basically forgotten about this magical sum of money that had appeared on my lap. Wow – that didn’t take long.

I moved on from the positives of receiving money very quickly, instead the small negative niggles were the first thing that came to my mind. Remarkable how our mind works?

A technique I could use would be to return to my gratitude around the situation I found myself in, and relativise the negative feelings I had about the meetings – after all I had a broadly ‘good’ day of work where I got a lot done. And this would help. It would give me perspective.

Yet the fundamental point is that by relying on my day to be dictated by the events within it, I was holding myself hostage to my happiness being set by the events of the day. As demonstrated here, the human mind has a tendency to move on from the positives rather quickly, instead focusing on the negatives more intensely.

So instead of basing my sense of contentment that happened during the day of whether I got some money, or whether I had a good (or bad) day, I can reframe this to understand that I can choose to be happy either way. By shifting my mindset to see that I can be happy no matter what life throws at me, it leaves me feeling lighter and happier.

This means, when I get something like a nice cheque of £2000, it’s an added bonus, rather than relying on that to make my day. Likewise, a bad meeting or an unproductive day at work doesn’t really have to make me feel worse, because ultimately my work doesn’t derive my happiness – I do.

Happiness is something that is in our natural state of being. When we stop all the other things – the planning, the stress and the worries – we can return to it. We don’t need to do anything to ‘become’ happy, rather it’s about dropping the things that are drawing our mind away from our natural state of wellbeing. From my experience, the stillness of the mind results in a general feeling of satisfaction and happiness.

So I’d invite you to reflect on when you last felt stillness. If you’d like, I’d love if you could share when it was, and what the situation was as well. You can either drop a comment below, or message me directly if you want to learn more about the natural state of happiness.