The goal will not transform you, the process will.

Unlocking Your Hidden Power: The Art of Slowing Down

Slow down. Simple.

What a great way to end the first month of 2024!

It’s time to evaluate and measure progress or a lack of it.

It is easy to get wrapped up in focusing on the heavy-lifting that we miss to align our strategies; plans that will keep us grounded for the end goal.

You’ve got so much to do and only so many hours in a day.

Remember the time you bought that home appliance and without giving it much thought you got straight into using it. You have waited for months to have it shipped and when it finally arrived at your doorstep, you couldn’t wait to get it up and running.

And the user manual? Nobody reads that nowadays.

The On-Button is a no-brainer. There are arrows pointing to the left and right probably the increase and the decrease buttons.

“I’m good to go!”

The appliance gets you started on accomplishing some tasks. You conclude “That’s good enough”.

?***

You enroll for a course and halfway through the 5th day 4-hour class you feel confident to take on practical moves.

Two weeks, three weeks down the line you encounter a major setback.

You don’t go back to the user manual or the unfinished course.

You get another one. Maybe a shorter video on YouTube or a step-by-step quick guide on the internet.

The Fear-Of-Missing-Out Syndrome In Entrepreneurship

We are living in a fast-moving world. There is no time to waste. Right?

Or maybe you are just avoiding the process.

You are used to having several tabs opened at once with music, a sermon or a recorded webinar, or another video playing on your phone. When you’re done with your laptop you turn to your phone.

You take a needed break from work to scroll mindlessly on social media, maybe answer a few DMs, and run through a few TikTok videos.

If you have to go outside. You still carry your phone with you. There’s no telling when you’ll break this cycle.

You want to get to the final stage quicker.

In your mind, you’re being productive. Working on several tasks.

I know this coz I have lived this. Until I realized I was slowly falling into another bad addiction.

Toxic Productivity

So, yes I stopped procrastinating things. Maybe my days are filled with activities. Coz when I get to bed I am too tired to complete an episode of my favourite TV series on Netflix like I used to.

Yes, I have created systems, a routine to fill my days.

Even with all that, every time I got stuck on a project, it almost felt like I was starting over.

Why? Because I skimmed through the basics.

And now I tell my Clients every time. It Doesn’t Matter How Far you’ve gone; or how close you think you are to the finish Line. If your house is built on sand, it will eventually come down.

It is not a matter of how but when.

?***

When I went back to complete the course I had dropped halfway, it just hit me that every missing piece that I spent hours and hours finding a way around was left in the other half of the course.

And that would have saved me pockets of mental torture in some days.

When I lost almost half of a client’s week-long work. I cannot begin to tell you how devastating that felt.

It was the night I wrote the first draft of this article. But never got to publishing it.

When I closed on a big client very early in my career, only to realize I had done the pitching and forgot to lay out the onboarding process, that too was regrettable.

In all these instances, I wanted to cry, but that felt stupid coz deep down I knew this was something that a voice in my head had kept nudging me to pay attention to. But I was too “Held up” with other “Important things”.

Being Active vs Being Productive

If we neglect the basics, life has a way of pounding them back on our heads unapologetically.

I learnt from one of my connections here on LinkedIn, “Being active is getting things done; being productive is getting the right things done.”

When I don’t maximize the potential of a home appliance to serve me, when I have weak commitments and cannot get through a course to completion, all I am doing is being active.

Coz according to my friend Vartika Kashyap, being active is about getting more things done (Quantity work) but being productive is about getting only quality work through the pipeline. And here's where growth happens.

“People who seem occupied may not necessarily be concerned about the quality of work. For them staying occupied is their biggest priority.” Vartika Kashyap-Chief Marketing Officer at ProofHub

And I understand why as an early-stage entrepreneur you’d get tempted to fill up your day with activities. It’s because our minds crave order and routine.

Without order we get anxious.

That’s why quitting a toxic job, relationship, a bad habit, is not always easy even when you know it’s the only right decision left. Because our minds are attuned to an existing system; a routine. ?

You think you are focusing on what matters until life reminds you of the nobility of taking one step at a time.

And that there is no such thing as "starting late", "the world will leave you behind" or such misplaced fear appeals.

You are right where you should be. Acting as if the world will be ending tomorrow is not being productive but a sign of a lack of faith coupled with misplaced priorities.

The Underlying Fear that Causes Us to Act Without Strategy

The lingering chill of winter clung to our senses long into the arrival of spring, leaving an enduring impression that even as the season changed, we found ourselves reluctant to shed our heavy coats.

We tell ourselves, “The past does not hold me back” yet we can’t stand the silence of our present.

And maybe if we did more than is required of today’s work, we would be safer.

The thought of what we left behind scares us. It’s not the project that’s keeping you up late in the night. It is your inability to stand in a season of tranquility coz your mind was attuned to the drums of war.

So you are used to staying guarded. Fighting for your place. Sometimes feeling undeserving of rest. You think it may be taken away, again.

If only you could take a moment to take it all in. Appreciate the new season for what it’s worth.

Create new meanings of experiences.

After all, when things were bad, you couldn’t run from the days. You had to sit through the turmoil. So why not also allow yourself to enjoy Spring and all its colours?

Take time to work on things from the beginning. Just because you experienced a season of unexplained turbulence, it doesn’t mean during that time you stopped being that person with a big dream and an excellent work ethic to back it up.

Learn to live one day at a time. One step at a time. And allow the process to refine you into a person capable of reaching your goal.

Best Wishes.