Strategy for Snails: Stop!

Continuing in my series of blogs on strategies for snails, today I will focus on the concept of "Stop!".

Stop?  That seems counter intuitive for a "slow" person, does it not?  However, the inability to stop doing something at the appropriate time was a tendency I observed about myself.  It was a behavior that prevented me from accomplishing the things I needed to get done.  All too often I thought, "I just want to get this one little bit done and then I can go,".  Fifteen minutes later, I was fifteen minutes late for whatever I was supposed to be doing next.

Here is a classic example.  My husband and I work at the same company.  For many years, we worked in different buildings at different locations in the city.  We commuted together and he dropped me off at, and picked me up from, my building.  At the end of the day, he would text me to let me know he was on his way to pick me up.  I would be working furiously to finish up whatever I was doing, but somehow NEVER made it out of the building at the time he arrived.  He sat and waited 10 to 15 minutes for me every night.  This made us both unhappy and got the whole evening off to a bad start.  The usual time it took him to leave his building, walk out to the car, and drive over to my building was about 15 minutes.  What I should have done was work for 5 more minutes, shut down, gather my things, and walk out to meet him in the parking lot.  In reality, there was rarely anything I worked on that couldn't have been carried over to the next morning.  Or, worst case scenario, I could have continued my work at home.

There are countless examples I can give of activities that I (and maybe you?) do beyond when I should stop.  Here are a few of those:  Reading the news, reading ANYTHING, lingering at the dinner table, watching the birds at the bird feeder, reading email, lying in bed in the morning, working on any given task once I get started, watching TV if I allow myself to get started, brushing my teeth, looking at items that are not on my list at the grocery store, picking clothes for the next day and on and on.

Just take some time to observe yourself and how long you continue to work on something when it probably could have been considered finished already, or at least at a point where you could have finished it at another time.

Try this mantra:  STOP! when you are supposed to stop.

See how that works for you for a while.  You might be surprised at some increased efficiency!

As I always say, Snails, keep moving forward!

Strategy for Snails: Count Backwards

This strategy sounds so simple and so straight forward that everyone must think, "Cha!  Duh!  Of course this is how you do it!"  But, you might be surprised by how many people think only in vague terms regarding the time element in any particular event.  Those who are chronically late are almost assuredly people who do not delve into the details of what it takes to make a plan come together.  I used to be one of those people.  No more!

So, here is how it works.  Let's take the very simple example of arriving on time for dinner reservations.  Dinner will be at a very fancy restaurant in downtown Indianapolis.  Reservations are for Saturday night at 7:00 pm.  I live in a northeastern suburb, 30 minutes from downtown in good traffic.

Timeline

7:00:  Check in at the host stand
6:50 - 7:00:  Walk from parking to restaurant
6:40 - 6:50:  Find parking
6:00 - 6:40:  Drive from home to downtown (allowing for Sat night traffic)
5:50 - 6:00:  Take care of pets and make sure everything at home is secured
5:35 - 5:50:  Style hair, put on jewelry and perfume
5:20 - 5:35:  Make-up
5:10 - 5:20:  Get dressed
4:40 - 5:10:  Shower/wash hair
4:30 - 4:40:  Pick out clothes

From this exercise, I can see that I need to start getting ready by 4:30 if I am to make it to dinner downtown, looking my best, and arriving cool, calm, and collected by 7:00.  Who knew!?  Now, if that is just too much time, I can evaluate this plan and decide where I can possibly take short cuts.  Maybe I don't wash my hair.  Maybe I pick out my clothes a day ahead of time.  But, until I looked at the details of the steps involved in getting from one point in time to the other point in time, I had no idea I needed to allow that much time for it all to come together.  I would have been late, as usual.

So, Snails - try this out on a few easy targets.  Then start applying it to more detailed projects, such as planning a party or going on a vacation.  It will save you so much grief!

Until next time...keep moving forward!

Strategy for Snails: Introduction

Over the years I have discovered various strategies that have helped me manage my time more effectively and, hence, fit in more comfortably with societal expectations.  And, truth be told, they've helped me fit in better with my own expectations of myself.  It is frustrating for a person with big dreams and big goals to come to the end of a day and feel like nothing of significance was accomplished.  In that way, snails can be as tough on themselves as the rest of society can be.

So, I intend to write a series of blogs to share with you some of the strategies and techniques I've discovered that help me organize and use my time most efficiently.

Strategies:

1. Count backwards
2. Stop!
3. Don't wait for anything ever again
4. Focus
5. Plan and plan and then plan to plan
6. Use every minute with INTENTION

How to Determine if You're a Snail

Okay, it probably goes without saying that if you have to ask this question, you probably are not a snail.  If you are a snail, it is probably painfully obvious to you.  But, for the sake of defining some of our characteristics, let's delve into this a bit more deeply.

First, I have to issue a disclaimer.  I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or any other type of medical professional.  I am just a self-defined snail.  Therefore, by default, I will name many of MY characteristics as the common characteristics of all snails.

In searching for a reason for my "differentness", I have done a lot of reading about introverts and highly sensitive people.  I am both of these things, and you may be, also.  As introverts, we have a very rich internal life.  We think deeply about things.  We enjoy solitude - in fact, we have to have some amount of solitude to thrive.  But, we also do need connection with other people.  Having said that, being around others for an extended period of time, or under noisy, excited conditions is quite draining on our energy.  We then need to retreat into solitude to re-energize.  As highly sensitive people, we become over stimulated more readily than our non-sensitive counterparts.  We also tend to notice all types of things that others don't.  We notice the details of things and find them fascinating - and can wander off mentally, contemplating these details, while our non-sensitive, fast-paced colleagues move on to the next item on their agendas.

Here are some characteristics of mine that I didn't necessarily read in any self-help books about introversion or high sensitivity and that I am uniformly assigning to all snails.  Number one feature:  WE ARE SLOW!  There, I said it.  Isn't that hard to admit!?  We move at a physically slower pace.  We make decisions more slowly than others.  We take in and process information more slowly than a lot of people.  It takes longer to "get it" than it does for many.

Here's a litmus test for anyone who wonders if he or she might be a snail:  Do you find yourself CONSTANTLY fighting the clock?  Are you in a war against the passage of time?  If so, you are probably a snail.  I'm sorry.  Life in western society is not easy for snails.  Perhaps Tibet is a better place for us!  Ha ha!  Actually, I'd go crazy without something productive to do, so forget the Tibet idea.  Still, you get it.  Snails have to compete in our society with "FAST".  Faster is better, right?  So, we lose out on the "fast" thing.

But, there are very good reasons for our slowness, and those reasons turn out to be quite valuable.  So, take heart, snails!  We provide something to society that no one else can.  In my next blog, I'll talk about why snails rock!

Until then, snails, keep moving forward!

A Little Bit About Me

Remember the scene in Forrest Gump when Principal Hancock says to Forrest's mother, "Your boy's....different, Miz Gump"?

I first became aware that I was "different" when my mother told me that my third grade teacher said I had a problem with "day dreaming."  I had no idea what she was talking about.  I had a rough understanding of what day dreaming was, but I could not imagine why engaging in that activity would be a problem.  I just thought I was "thinking".  Thinking (one of my favorite things to do), without accompanying action, it turns out, is not valued by our society - and for good reason, I must admit.

Other indications that I differed from my school peers came from my parents' unhappy discoveries that I was always the last girl out of the locker room after track practice and that I was always the last one ready when it was time to go somewhere.  This became such an identifying feature of my being that my family created a jingle, "Who are we waiting on?", which they said every time they were waiting on me.  To get the full effect, you have to say it in a sing-songy voice and glide up the scale from the beginning of the phrase to the highest note on the word "waiting" and then drop down a note on the word "on" and hold that note for just one beat longer than the other words.  That jingle exists to this day - although my family knows they will raise my ire if they use that on me now.

Despite my physical slowness in everyday tasks, I was literally fast when it came to running, and I became a successful athlete in high school track and cross-country.  That athleticism is something I enjoy still today.  And, even though I had to stay up late into the nights to complete my school assignments, I managed to persevere through college and graduate school to earn my PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry.

It wasn't until I hit real-world corporate America, working for a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, that my snail-like pace became a real liability.  I fight the clock every single day.  But, through thoughtful strategy, focused determination, and faith in God, I am finding ways to succeed.  It is my hope that I can share some of the insights I've gained along the way and help other snails out there find their paths to success.

Keep moving forward, snails!

Happy New Year to All of My Fellow Snails

Hello all of you wonderfully slow-paced people out there.  This is going to be an adventure in embracing our uniqueness in this fast-paced world we try to thrive in.  It has been a dream of mine to connect with you and to help all of us let go of the negative labels we've heard about ourselves over the many years.  Yes, we ARE different, and that's okay!  In fact, that's fabulous!

I'm just getting started in the blogging world, so this will be a work in progress.  In the coming days I will work to customize my blog's look and give you a preview of some of the posts to come.  Actually, forget about that - I'm too excited to wait to give you a preview of blogs to come.  Here are some of my thoughts for topics in upcoming blogs:

• A few things about me
• How to determine if you're a snail (if you need to ask this, you probably aren't!)
• Why it hurts to be a snail
• Why snails rock
• Some techniques I've found to help me manage my time
• Time savers for snails
• How to help others accept and respect your unique pace

Let's see how far we get with those topics and go from there, shall we?

Until then, keep moving forward!