The past two days I have literally been chasing a rabbit. Saturday morning I noticed a rabbit in the yard and I soon discovered it was Ellesie’s favorite, Princess. Doing whatever it took to catch this rabbit was the only option, but this is not what I woke up planning to do Saturday morning. It brought new meaning to the old saying “chasing rabbits,” where you forget what you set out to do and end up somewhere else doing something totally different. A certain woman that lives with me, which may or may not be my wife, will tell me she’s going to clean the kitchen one morning and when I get home from work the kitchen looks the same…but we have 42 candles made out of old baby food jars…If I don’t post a blog next week you know what happened…I love you Christi! I have to admit, I personally struggle with this as well. Many people blame this on ADD/ADHD whether they have been diagnosed or not. Regardless of what causes your lack of focus, in order to be truly successful at what you set out to accomplish, you are going to have to learn how to avoid chasing rabbits (preferably without medication). Lack of focus and the ability to follow through with what you originally set out to do is a trait I see in many of the young people that work for me. I coach several of them on a monthly basis and I share with them how I overcome my tendency to chase rabbits. Although the tools I use have evolved with technology, there are two basic things that I have used over the years to keep me on task: a calendar and a to-do list. I personally use Google calendar and sync it with my iPhone calendar. What I love about google calendar is that it can be shared with anyone, I can have different colors for different calendars, (I have 15 different calendars; a few examples – my CFA Calendar, personal calendar, Christi’s calendar, etc) and it’s free. The other tool I uses is Wunderlist, it too is free. I have 31 different list on Wunderlist, I know that’s a little extreme, I like lists…but I encourage you to read carefully what I am about to share with you, this is one of the keys to eliminating rabbit chasing in your life. I have a “work” category of lists. Inside that folder, I have a separate list for each of my key leaders. That way when I think of something I need to talk to that person about next time I see them, I put it on my list. I also have a list of long term projects, and things that need to be done this week. On my calendar I allocate time to work on long term projects, and just go to this list and pick one. Things that need to be done this week, I put on a specific day and time on my calendar. Under my personal folder, I have a list for projects around the house and the farm, I also allocate time on my calendar for time to work on these projects. If I’m working on one of these projects and I see something else that needs to be done, I simply pull out my phone and add it to the appropriate list. Christi and I have some shared lists like our shopping list for Sam’s club or the grocery store. That way she can put things on the list and I can pick them up on the way home. The most important thing here is that whenever a rabbit pops up, you have list to put that rabbit on, if frees up your brain from worrying that you will forget it and you can continue to focus on what you were doing. As I type this blog, I still haven’t caught the rabbit, but it ran under the playhouse and I took some wire and stapled it all around the edge of the bottom of the playhouse to fence it in. The only place it can get out leads to a trap. I didn’t have time yesterday to spend my entire day chasing the rabbit, but I know it safe right now and I will get to it later. Now it’s time to actually catch that rabbit!
UPDATE: I finished typing my blog, went outside and Princess was in the trap! Now I can do what I actually planned to do today.
