Depending on where and when you are as you read this, you may just have experienced either the longest or the shortest day of the year, over the Solstice on December 21st.

I sometimes find the solstice points a useful time to change the way I’m looking at or thinking or feeling about something that might be bothering me at work or in my life generally.

If there’s anything you are struggling or having problems with, see if these questions from my thoughts about the solstice have anything to say to you:

• at work, or in your life generally, how do you know what the season is right now? Are you paying attention to the evidence around you, the changes in the length of the day, the reactions of others, the results you’re getting (or not)?

• one part of the Earth is experiencing the dark of the shortest day, and another part is at the start of summer, with the longest day; some parts of your work are in the dark but some will be in the light - which are they and which most needs your attention?

• although winter and summer can seem so different, they are actually just two sides of the one world - in fact, in some parts of the world, the dividing line is not so clear anyway; what if your problems and opportunities were also one and the same, without always a clear distinction?

• the solstice reminds me that we’re clinging to the surface of this beautiful, spinning world, hurtling through vast space at thousands of miles an hour! That usually puts my small problems into perspective, how about you?

• seasons change and in six months I’ll be putting on sunscreen for the longest day instead of remembering to wear my warm hat for the shortest; how will things be for you in six months?

Hope that’s of some small use. Happy Holidays!

A quick and easy, bite sized message this week, and a simply inspiring workshop recommendation for January.

If you’re feeling like you’ve got too much to do before year-end, and you maybe can’t see a clear way through, I’ve got a quick-fix that just might ring your bell. And there’s a graph!

Maybe you’ve heard of the 80:20 rule or the Pareto Principle before? Pareto was an Italian economist studying the distribution of wealth back in 1897. Along with other subsequent academics, he observed that many things are not distributed equally.

So, for example, it may often be the case that the first 20% of your effort on a particular task will produce 80% of the desired result.

Or, if you have ten things to do, it may often be that the top two things together are four times as important as all the rest.

Conversely, if you’re ‘chasing the tail’, you may find that the last 20% of the results on a task take 80% of your effort.

If you click on the chart, you should be able to download a bigger version.
At this time of year it becomes so important to keep prioritising using the Pareto Principle:

• Select the most important 20% of tasks first
• Give them focus, but only for the first 20% of your effort, to get 80% of the result
• Move on to the next most important task.

Sometimes people are concerned that this is cheating, or that it will never produce a perfect result. Well, I have a newsflash for those people - look at the top-right tail-end of the chart - you’ll never produce a perfect result either, but while you’re fussing over getting something perfect, I’ll have produced four times as much as you and it’ll be 80% right!

How’d you like to be able to find your passion and follow it in 2009?

If you’d like to get 2009 off to a fantastic start, two of my friends who are extremely experienced at helping people do just that are running an unmissable workshop. It’s from 9th-11th of January at the inspirational Commonwork Conference and Study Centre in Kent. To find out more or to go right ahead and book a place, you might want to browse on over to www.redkitecoaching.com

See you next week,

Nick

Some readers might recall that in January last year, I said that I wanted 2008 to be my “Year of Living Dangerously“. Living Dangerously for me is about choosing to do the things that hold the most fear for me - in particular, those where I’m at risk of being rejected, of failing, of looking stupid or of getting hurt emotionally.

I’m pleased to report that I have been doing pretty well with this. Indeed, as you read this message I may well be on my way back from a fairly spectacular metaphorical crash’n'burn as a result.

I’m going to be presenting the results of a learning project and being assessed on it over the weekend and I have:

• picked a topic to present that is painfully close to me - how people can learn to not try to do everything on their own.
  During the project I did have a small go at asking for help myself along the way, but not nearly as much as I should have done. Pretty big risk here of looking very stupid at not taking my own advice and I am not looking forward to it! Living Dangerously points: 3/5

• instead of just using my mates as research guineau pigs, I had to go and research high-flying people that I didn’t know all that well. Risk of feeling rejected when I eventually get around to showing them the results = beyond red, into infra-red or whatever comes after that! Living Dangerously points: 4/5

• set the scope of the whole project waaaayy too big, because I really wanted to get my teeth into something meaty and which meant something personally to me. Risk of failing entirely - off the chart! Living Dangerously points: 4/5

• had a fundamental difference of opinion with my lead assessor about the methodology. I genuinely believe that this is not a ‘I’m right/they’re wrong’ thing, but I’m sticking to the methodology I chose anyway because I feel I have to be in charge of my own learning. Potential emotional hurt from disagreeing with someone who has power over you = high. Living Dangerously points: 4/5

So, on the whole not bad then. Now, will somebody remind me why I didn’t just play it safe?…

And how about you? What did you want for 2008, and how’s it going?

I’m driving at night along one of the many, twisting country lanes here in Cheshire and I catch up with a small car doing about 20-25 mph. There’s no moon, no streetlights - it’s dark. And from the driving style I would guess that the driver is a little nervous or maybe somewhat elderly. There’s no way to overtake on these narrow roads, so I drop right back, put the music on and relax.

Then we pass a car coming in the opposite direction and the driver in front of me turns their headlights OFF - completely! The oncoming driver flashes at them; so does the next one, and the one after that, and eventually they turn their lights back on. Then we pass another car - and the lights go off again.

I must have been behind this driver for about 5 or 6 miles, and for about 75% of that time they drove along in the dark with no lights. There was no way I could reach them to say something about what I was seeing and I had to turn off later in a different direction. I hope they got home safe and that so did all the drivers coming the other way.

So this experience raises an interesting metaphorical question for me.

In life, at work, if you see someone going along in the dark, and it seems like there’s no way you can talk to or reach them to let them know that they’ve got their lights switched off - what do you do?

I like helping people but finding people in the dark and not being able to communicate with them when I think I’ve got access to the light switch really frustrates me. But, having given it a lot of thought, it either means nothing OR it’s a signal to ME, that I’m somehow in the dark or unconscious about something. I thought about my driving that night; maybe I needed to examine my own driving for something I was doing unnoticed? But nothing came to light.

That drive is a journey that I make 3 or 4 times a month. There’s a stretch in between two wide-open fields where on a clear, starry night, the view can be breathtaking. I got home from my meeting to realise that I couldn’t remember that stretch; in fact, there wasn’t much of the drive home that I could remember. So, that was it, a theme of the moment for me I now realise, about being consciously present.

And how about for you? Do you notice any other people in the dark who you can’t quite reach? And what does that tell you about yourself?