Over the past few days I have been working with a business person (let’s call him Jim) who was made redundant from a large corporation 3 years ago and hasn’t really found his feet since then.
He is a very capable person, intelligent and seemingly confident.
He is technically very highly qualified.
So what’s the problem?
Surely he could walk into many jobs, he could set up a lone consultancy, he could do many things.
But, although he knows he could do these things, and has in fact been doing that sort of thing for the past three years to “fill in time”, he feels unhappy that he is not really hitting the heights for himself in that he is not doing what he would really love to be doing (though he isn’t quite sure what that is).
This is starting to have a detrimental impact on other aspects of his life. He is losing confidence and self-esteem, he feels under pressure financially, and he perceives that his personal relationships are suffering.
So where did we start?
He has almost too many options as there are so many things which he could pursue. He is paralysed by the possibilities, and is compounding that by never writing anything off… always keeping his options open.
In this type of situation, I follow a track which goes:
Think-Plan-Act.
And it works.
It works in so many parts of our lives on a daily basis, and it works for everything we want to make happen. Now in some instances the elements will vary in that it doesn’t take too much Planning before starting to Act, or it doesn’t take much Thinking before starting to Plan. And of course, you don’t stop thinking when you move into Planning stage, nor do you blindly act without being able to adapt the plan to meet changing circumstances.
But the process is still there. T-P-A. Think –Plan –Act.
The danger is in getting the balance wrong, and finding you are Over-Planning as a displacement for Action, or Over-Thinking as a means of day-dreaming / procrastinating.
And isn’t it so often the case that our gut-feeling tells us when we should be moving to the next stage. So it is with our business lives, our finances, our fitness / health, our personal lives… even going on holiday. Think-Plan-Act.
Back to our friend, Jim…
When I went into TPA mode with him, within 24 hours he was out of the quagmire… The Plan is clear, and the Action is happening. With gusto!!