Tag: achievement

Taking Time to Soak It All In (7-20-26)

This is a bonus blog about taking time to soak in where you are and what you’ve done.

Last Friday, my boss sent me some recognition about something I recently delivered.  Within a few seconds I had read the email, thought “that’s nice”, sent a quick reply, filed it away into a folder where I keep the recognition I get, and started to move to the next thing.  The email was already sorted into the folder when I paused for a second.  I decided to stop rushing to the next thing.  I sat there for a moment and let myself absorb what I had delivered, the feedback, and the recognition I had received.  I allowed myself to feel proud and accomplished.  I slowed down and spent a few seconds taking it all in and felt all the better for it.  Then, and only then, did I move to the next task.

Let’s connect dots.  Has anything like this ever happened to you?  Have you ever been so lost in the grind that you just keep moving from thing to thing?  Are you ever so lost in the grind that you don’t let the achievement and recognition sink in? 

If this has happened to you before, I’m sure you can also attest to how exhausting and mentally draining this is.  It’s so easy to get lost in all of this.  Sometimes, we just need to slow down.  Sometimes, we need to take a deep breath, look around, and be proud of where we are and how we got here.

The challenge: Will you take a moment to soak in what you’ve achieved and what you’ve done?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

What would cause me to miss achieving my goals? (1-28-26)

This week will be the last in our series about questions we should ask ourselves at the beginning of the year.  This week I want us to ask ourselves, “What would cause me to miss my goals?”

In January we spend time outlining goals and objectives.  We focus our efforts on identifying what winning looks like.  It’s easy to assume that things will go well, but the chances of everything going well is slim to none.

Recently, I asked myself, “What would cause me to miss my goals?  What would cause me to lose?”  I quickly identified a few things.  I will miss my goals if I don’t invest my time in the right things.  I’ll miss if I don’t carve out the time to do the right things.  I’ll miss if I’m not being intentional about orchestrating change management efforts.  I’ll miss if I don’t get certain projects moving in Q1.

After identifying the things that would make me lose, I took a second to look at my plan for the week.  I quickly realized that I had been caught in the swirl.  I was doing a lot of things, but they likely weren’t the right things.  They were a distraction.  As a result, I moved a few things around on the calendar, blocked time for key work, and I gave myself permission to be slow and non-responsive on a few other things.  Ultimately, I was able to make good progress on things that mattered.  Looking forward, I’m already blocking time and thinking about other things I can do to minimize my chance of missing and increase my chance of being successful.

How does this connect to work?  The world moves fast.  If we aren’t intentional about things we might end up participating in behaviors that will lead to us not reaching our goals.  Spending time doing a pre-mortem and identifying the key things that go wrong brings awareness and gives us a chance to gameplan on how we will handle these things.  Be honest.  Take a look at this month.  How much time did you spend on things that will lead to you being successful vs how much time did you spend on things that will result in you missing?  What is getting in the way of you making progress?

The challenge: Will you identify what would cause you to miss your goals and then take action?

Bonus- You can apply this thinking to your personal life.  Something that will make me miss my physical health goals is pushing myself too hard too fast.  My shoulders aren’t what they used to be, and after pushing them too hard with weight that was heavier than I should have been doing I needed to take a few weeks off for them to heal.  I’ll go a lot slower from here on out.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry