โReason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” โ David Hume
Our action lists are often an emotional hodgepodge of different projects and action items.
Some are must do. Some are might do.
Some are need to do, but don’t want to do.
Some are need to do and want to do.
Some are on the list because it’s supposed to be there but I don’t really want to do it.
Some are on my To-Do list because I don’t know where else to put it for now.
And so on.
When people share their action lists with me, they often just see tasks, but I hear an emotional orchestra: hope, fear, dread, joy, excitement, overwhelm, confidence, shame, and love. In reality, that orchestra is providing the rhythm and mood for the top-level cognitive melody that shows up as words on paper or screen.
I often feel like the conversations about productivity completely overlook the emotional orchestra that’s doing the driving. At some level, we all know it’s there, but given that we prefer the social level of communication that avoids revealing what’s going on inside, we don’t address it. Not with our colleagues. Not with our partners. Not with our friends.
Not with ourselves.
To be honest, I had a completely different idea of where today’s reflection on productivity was going to go. I was going to write about strategies for eliminating things from your To-Do list so that you can focus on what matters. To eliminate items from the list, though, I’d have to talk about the reasons why things that shouldn’t be on the list are actually on the list in the first place.
But those reasons aren’t really reasons. They’re emotions. A beautiful, cacophonous, dissonant, and complex orchestra of them. An orchestra that is much like the air in front of our face โ because our eyes don’t see the air, we forget that it’s there.
So, rather than jumping to the cognitive conversation about elimination, I’d rather just have us practice noticing and listening to the emotional orchestra for today. Let’s acknowledge that beating hearts are more powerful than thinking heads. Our heads may get us what we want and need, but our hearts are what set the agenda.
Here a few things to listen for as you look at your action lists:
- Which items sound clear notes of joy, hope, love, excitement, and confidence when you consider them?
- Which items sound the dissonant notes of dread, fear, shame, and overwhelm when you consider them?
- Which items have both?
Sometimes we’re aware of the emotional orchestra being played and other times it’s below our conscious level of thinking, but, nonetheless, emotion drives action. (Tweet this.)
Make listening your next action and see how it informs you about the action after that.
Charlie,Thank you for your insightful post today. Emotions do run us and amen to taking the time acknowledge and honor them.
Thanks for the comment, Beth. I’m glad I went with where the post was going rather than where I thought it would go.
I like where you are going with this. There’s definitely a lot of concealed angst behind many to-do list items.
This dovetails nicely with my recent idea to apply the 5 whys technique to projects and to-do list items. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys. That definitely gets you into the space of what put that item on your list, why you’re doing it at all, and how it should be prioritized.
Hey Mike! Long time, no see!
As you well know, I end up asking people that dreaded and powerful “why” question as we’re talking about goals, strategies, projects, and actions. It’s amazing how much cruft gets added to our wetware.
Hey Charlie,
It would be great if we could work with Spock’s precision, but unless we become Vulcan, we will need to take a rain check and examine our emotions while trying to become more productive!
Great post!
Arijit
Yea well mine are saying I am overwhelmed..lol I guess I need to find a better way of segmenting my project.