Tools of Control
5/12/2007In western culture the word “control” has an undeserved bad rap. It quickly conjures up the image of a type-A personality gone wild with power who, while headed down the road of personal self destruction, cuts wide swaths of anxiety among all those encountered. “Control freak” is a term that often surfaces. But then again, if hyper-control is a bad thing do we really want the opposite: to be out of control? As we search for a middle ground, let’s not forget this brutal reality: each of us will ultimately lose control of all that we have. Everything is ephemeral and temporary. We will die someday. Still, this doesn’t mean that our day-to-day lives in this temporal world should not be navigated with reason, care and attention to detail. I tell you this: Control’s four horsemen of planning, self-discipline, efficiency and consistency go a long way toward securing freedom, peace and lower general anxiety today.
Notwithstanding the Type-A’s in our culture, it is my contention that most people don’t spend enough time focusing on the methodology of control. There is a science and an art to it. And yes, like everything else, moderation is the key.
In your business and your personal life, are you ready to devote some energy and time to gain more control of your day and ultimately your destiny? Then let’s get technical and talk about hard details. Center your efforts around three primary tools: PDA, digital voice recorder and cellular phone. None of these tools is new and they all stand on their own. However, it’s when they are used together that a new and powerful sense of control and freedom ensue. These tools are about the following:
- Having a goal-oriented, consistent strategy. You already know this: we must have clear goals with strategies to get there.
- Having what it takes to accomplish all necessary tasks and to accomplish them now.
- Not suffering the effects of what I call “errors of omission”: ineffectiveness due to events that never happen. I believe most of our failures lie in what we fail to do, not in overt mistakes that we make when we do take action.
These tools are about immediately capturing thoughts as they pass through the mind and they are about event control. Think of the mind as an endless film strip spewing out a wild stream of thoughts, rushing downhill with nearly no rhyme or reason. Good and bad thoughts, pointless thoughts, historical anecdotes dredged up from the past, future events in vivid Technicolor arriving before their time, hazy wistfulness and beautiful, brilliant insights when we least expect them. Coming hard and fast, thoughts pass through consciousness in relentless sequential order, many of them repeating themselves over and over and over again. It’s crazy! But in Western culture, that’s generally how our minds function.
How to trap the good ideas and at the same time slow down the incessant mind-noise? Very simple: start by carrying a digital voice recorder (be sure it’s a digital recorder, not a tape recorder which is cumbersome and imprecise). When an idea worth remembering appears, pull out the recorder, press a button and record the thought into the device. For me, it doesn’t matter whether I am driving, walking, working, sitting in the theater, having lunch with a friend, briefly waking in the middle of the night, reading a book, skiing or climbing a mountain: the thought is captured and my mind is free of one less detail. Nothing more to ponder in this moment, nothing to remember later: the thought is captured and the mind is free to move on.
The PDA, my second essential efficiency tool, has a huge advantage over the classic paper-based day planner that I lugged around for twelve straight years. Keeping it handy every moment of the day and integrated with my Outlook desktop organizer, the PDA is fast and logical as it provides key information, organizes and consolidates. It’s a colossal timesaver and a potent time/event manager that offers advantages so far beyond paper-based systems that it’s impossible to be too enthusiastic. One vital habit that remains from my former paper-based Franklin planner routine is my daily Planning & Solitude session. In the quiet early morning it’s time to download the voice recorder information into my Palm Pilot. It’s the day’s most significant act of personal control. It’s not always easy: these tools won’t add a thing to one’s life unless there is the strong thread of consistent self-discipline.
The third efficiency component is the cell phone which has replaced my Qwest home telephone. My telephone number doesn’t represent a place any more, it represents me. After all, people aren’t looking for the place where Sam is located; they’re looking for Sam. And remember that the cell phone’s best feature is that it comes equipped with an off switch. The always-on cell phone can raise the level of chronic anxiousness for not just those in close proximity, but for the user too. In my own day, the primary purpose of my cell phone is to make calls, not receive them; the phone spends some of the day turned off as incoming calls are diverted to voice mail. This way I can focus on the task at hand without interruption. Integration is key, as I retrieve a prioritized listing of the calls that must be made while I have my digital recorder handy to quickly record vital information from a caller as we are conversing. Nextel is a step up from the traditional cellular phone. With the “Direct Connect” feature, each of our management people has instant and unfettered access to one another. Again, it’s about control.
So, that’s it! Three integrated communication tools to help you smoothly seize control of the day. If you can muster up some self discipline and have the patience to work out the details of how the tools interface with each other to suit your own style, you can fully expect a new and profound sense of control and peace in your day.
