Of Omelettes and Productivity
The other morning I decided to have an omelette for breakfast. I cracked the eggs into the bowl, beat them, then poured them into the warmed pan. As they began to cook, I sliced cheese for the filling.
I fiddled with the eggs a bit, pushing the uncooked egg to the edges. But mostly I was listening as they cooked.
Then I heard it, a slight change in sound that let me know that it was time to flip it, (By the way, I’ve learned that a successful flip requires a full commitment to the flip. Do it halfway and you wind up with a muddle of egg in your pan.)
My omlette came out looking just the way omelettes are supposed to look - cooked enough but no more.
Over the past week I’ve set some personal records for productivity. In less than seven days I:
Finished getting paperwork to the bank for transferring a nonprofit to my name
Finished the Edgebrook.org workshop website
Contacted people who’d expressed interest in upcoming workshops
Set up domain forwardings
Wrote a guided imagery script
Recorded the guided imagery and edited it (including taking out the background noise of traffic, loud motorcycles, an ambulance siren, and oddly, enough, a plane flying overhead.)
Found just the right music for the guided imagery (which took longer than writing and recording the script), added the music and edited the final recording.
Came up with a name (Navigating Clergy Grief) for the group of resources that the guided imagery will be a part of, a name that connects this project to two other projects I have.
Developed a logo for the project
All of this was in addition to the normal stuff of my days -- coaching and counseling clients, a monthly team meeting, walking my dog, and leading a group of teenagers on Sunday morning.
So here’s how this relates to cooking omelettes.
I completed these things in the last week, but I didn’t do all of these things in the last week. I’ve been working on the website for a while. I’ve been thinking about what the guided imagery might look like while walking my dog.
Much of the content has been cooking for a while.
I was also able to do some of the creative things because I’ve learned the tools over the years, like how to record and edit in GarageBand. In a real sense, I spent years working on these things without knowing I was working on these things.
This week was the time when the omelette started making a different sound. The eggs were ready to be flipped.I committed to the flip and went for it.
We stop ourselves from starting because we don't know what the whole road looks like. We don't have the front of the puzzle box to show us how things will look when all of the pieces are together.
The thing is, we don't have to know.
The thing is, sometimes we can’t know because what we’re doing hasn’t taken form yet.
I’ve been puzzling (see what I did there?) with what I wanted to do to address the grief that clergy carry, the grief from having to push their own grief to the side as they tend to the grief of others. Because I didn’t know what it all looked like, I couldn't get started on any of it.
On Monday I was challenged in my group coaching class to set a goal for the week. The guided imagery, I thought. I can do that much.
Before the week was out, it was done. Not only did I have the recording done and edited, but the process of naming it organized my thoughts for the other pieces of the project. Now I’m excited and eager for next steps.
What’s stopping you?
It can help to have a coach to help you figure out the roadblocks and move them out of the way. The simple fact of accountability can go a long way.
If you're ready to stop stopping yourself, get in touch.
