I know someone who still manually runs an anti-virus programme on their computer every day, also defragmenting their hard drive. This is so outdated that I’d imagine anyone younger than their mid-40s probably is asking “what does defragment” mean, whereas those older are thinking “who still does that?”.
Also, the post linked above refers to a public board appointment law drafted and signed into law in 2019 that still requires posts to be advertised in newspapers, and so, in addition to publicising in such archaic media, they also choose not to publicise positions anywhere else, not even on their own website.
How many tasks and responsibilities do we unconsciously retain because “we’ve always done it this way” (my “six most dangerous words in business“).
To test this, I like James Clear’s thought experiment. If you gave yourselves a clean slate free of every task and responsibility you currently have, which ones would you add back?
Another thought. When we run this thought experiment, not only may we free ourselves up from a whole lot of “busy work” that is of far less value (or even no value) compared to when we put it on our task/responsibilities list, but we may also create space and time to think of new and better tasks and responsibilities that match with our purpose, intention, vision.
A personal example is that when I chose to simplify and focus my own client work, this created more time for me to look at new and different things. One of those is this daily blog, which at this stage I have been doing every day for over 1400 days. Last year I then started a weekly podcast show called WhatComesNextLive that now has 50 shows in the archive.
Over this summer I am also collaborating with some amazing women leaders to produce a special podcast series with the working title of: “Elevating Leaders – the power of being supported”, which has sprung out of fresh conversations around the value of having a coach/sounding board of a different gender. I’ve been asked to talk about this, but instead we evolved the idea of having a different interviewer talk to people who have had that experience.
This is one more thing I can look at that is new, created in no small part by me keeping not a blank slate, but one that is not cluttered wtih outdated and outmoded tasks and responsibilities.