Two Realities: Navigating Competing Commitments

From the seemingly simple daily experiences to the bigger things we want there are inner forces that sometimes trip us up and catch us out.

I was driving home from the gym the other day, trying to listen to my playlist above the noise of the rain hammering down. I felt irritated and was literally or metaphorically, probably both, scrunching up my face, trying to both listen and also block out. In the end, I muted the playlist and focused on the sound of the rain. Instantly I felt different. Better, calmer. And I was reminded of the concept of hidden ‘competing commitments’.

I’ve written before about Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s work on immunity to change. They help us to understand why even though we may want a certain change, why it doesn’t happen and that often it’s because we have hidden competing commitments. This is when we hold a commitment to a subconscious goal, either individual or collective, that contradicts the desired change.

Perhaps there’s an area of life or work that you feel committed to but despite your best intentions and efforts you’re unable to move the needle on it?

An inner force

We all carry biases (baggage) that influence our behaviour, actions and attitudes before we even decide on action. These biases hijack our intentions and lead to an outcome other than the one we hoped for. Immunity to change is an inner force that is driven to protect us. 

When you look at your own immunity to change, those spaces where you know what you need to do but you aren't doing it, you can see two realities: 

1. the benefits of how you have taken care of yourself

2. the costs you are paying as a result of this

Over the last wee while I’ve noticed a recurring theme in coaching conversations, workshops and in fact, conversations in general - time. Basically, there’s never enough of it. We are constantly grasping at it, for it, knowing that as it passes, we can’t renew it or restock, we can’t accumulate it. We’ve got used to being able to manage, control, and manipulate so much of the world around us, yet time remains elusive in this sense.

Often there are competing commitments in a very literal sense. A bit like me in the car with both the music and the rain competing for my attention. The most common narrative I hear around time will come as no surprise I’m sure, it’s related to the challenge of too many demands. Too many priorities competing for attention. Everything is a priority.

And then there are the other competing commitments of wanting time and space to think, to focus on self-leadership or strategic development work while consistently not taking that time and giving time and attention to operational tasks, ‘busy’ work and other people’s needs. Now I’m not saying those things aren’t also important, in fact, that’s the point really. They are important and need attention but so too, do the other things.

I’m applying a little creative license to the work of Kegan and Lahey here but there’s insight to be had with this connection. Let me unpick it a bit further…

Two realities

We live in a very performative culture. We measure everything, we track everything. The things that are visible to others become important because they can be most easily captured, tracked and talked about. They become what we value and therefore also what we value about ourselves. The emails we’ve replied to, the swiftness of a reply, the problems we’ve solved, the likes or comments on a post, the number of people we’ve helped, the documents and forms we’ve submitted. Ticking them off and swiftly moving on to the next.

Time to think, how do you measure that? How do you show the value of that, because often the value and impact are not immediately visible and tangible? It is in the weeks, months, maybe even years to come.

Yet, if you make and take that time to think, how do you feel? How do you feel in your interactions and conversations, how do you feel about your decision-making, how do you feel about yourself?

Let’s look at it through the lens of the two realities:

1. the benefits of how you have taken care of yourself - you’ve done the tasks that others ‘see’ you doing and that they value or measure in some way, you have been ‘productive’ and tack some items of your to-do list (or at least add them retrospectively and then tick them off)

2. the costs you are paying as a result of this - you haven’t had time or space for strategic thinking or tasks, those things best captured by Steven Covey’s description of ‘important but not urgent’

Often we call this ‘fire fighting’, it’s a place of task-focused stress and urgency. It’s from this place we can find ourselves ‘tunnelling’, our vision restricted all we can do is simply move from one task to the next without looking up, without taking a breath.

A pause

Without a change in pace or rhythm, without accessing a different kind of being and thinking we are at risk of burnout and exhaustion. Both are things we want to avoid in their own right but also as we crawl or hurtle towards them, we find the quality of our relationships, thinking, decision making problem-solving and creativity diminishing.

A pause is an opportunity of no fixed duration. It’s an invitation and an opportunity to step out of the busyness and the often relentless activity to look at things from a different perspective. To check-in. To check in with yourself, with how you’re spending your time, to review your goals or intentions, to consider how you are relating with those around you.

Without a pause, everything continues as it was…A pause allows something to happen which would otherwise not occur, and you never quite know what that will be.

~ Robert Poynton, Do/ Pause

What do your pauses look like? How do you weave them into your days and weeks?

For more reflection on pausing why not join me in my recent conversation with

Robert Poynton

. Maybe even consider it a ‘pause’.

The power of pausing, improvisation and conversation with Robert Poynton

Trade-offs and trade-ups

I was listening to the brilliant podcast,

In Haste

with

Alice Vincent

and

Charlotte Runcie

the other day and they described themselves as ‘disciples’ of

Oliver Burkeman

which made me smile. I feel seen!

Oliver Burkeman

’s Four Thousand Weeks is indeed one of those books that will change the way you think about feel about your time and your relationship with it.

In April last year, I chatted with

Oliver Burkeman

as part of the Changing Conversations podcast I co-host, we talked about the fact that there is always a cost, a trade-off. If you are doing one thing you can’t also be doing the other, the trouble is we don’t like trade-offs, we’re not comfortable with them. We think we should be able to do both or indeed all the things.

With this in mind what we need to become good at is both trade-offs and trade-ups. Changing what you focus on means you need to learn to be comfortable with the discomfort of the trade-off. Trade-ups on the other hand help you to think about the quality of the time you spend on the work you do.

To quote

Charlotte Runcie

, what are your ‘Burkemans’? This is Oliver’s idea of a closed ‘to do’ list, either with just one thing on it or that nothing else can be added to it until the others are completed. Your ‘Burkemans’ are those ‘main things’ that need your focus and attention and when you feel overwhelmed by all the things, get them all down on a list but then feed them onto a limited list or a ‘today’ list. Your today list is the things that you’re focusing on now.

What are your ‘Burkemans’?

Back to those competing commitments

If you’ve caught yourself uttering the words ‘if I can just get to the end of the day, week, month or term’ then I invite you to first pause. Even if it’s just a moment.

Pause, hesitate, consider.

What do you want more time for?

What might you be doing or thinking that is getting in the way of that?

With this insight, what’s the single smallest shift you could make?

I’ve been increasingly drawn towards exploring time and our relationship with it, particularly in the education space. I’m not sure what that looks like yet and how that will emerge, but for now, I’m enjoying the exploration and gathering questions.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and observations around time so please let me know.

Now more than ever ~ The Thread

Now more than ever educators need the space to pause, connect, nourish and enrich their personal and professional lives. This is why my good friend and colleague, Karen and I have created The Thread for all educators who want to create a different way of being and doing during the academic year.

The thread is a thoughtfully curated series of online monthly gatherings and seasonal workshops. As educators, we know the pressure and constant demands on leaders. The Thread is a regular punctuation where you can pause, connect, and think, leaving you feeling nourished and enriched both personally and professionally.

Grounded in the principles of psychology and coaching our monthly gathering and seasonal workshops offer a sanctuary for reflection and rejuvenation. Now more than ever you need this.

When you join The Thread you will be making the time and space to nurture the things that matter to you, in a way that keeps you moving forward in amongst the busyness, the demands and the challenges.

We’d love to have you join us!

Thanks for reading and if something connected or challenged you, I’d love to hear from you.

Guiding you through the wood, the trees and the spaces in between. Join me each month as I dive into a theme inspired by my work and the conversations I have.