What do you do instead of what you are supposed to be doing?

What do you do instead of what you are supposed to?

Top 10 Things You’re Probably Doing Instead of What You are Supposed to be Doing:

10. Eating something bad for you

9. Checking your email every 3 minutes

8.  Looking for inspiration from others’ work

7. Reading just one more article about “how to do …”

6. Checking LinkedIn for who’s viewed your profile

5. Replying TY for RT’s to all of the Twitter Followers in the past 3 days

4. Looking on Facebook to find people you went to high school with you never really cared about anyway

3.  Cleaning your house

2.  Watching the news to find out the horrible things that are happening today

1.  Editing the promotional page for your upcoming program for the 7^th time today

I have a confession.  With transparency and humility (Dan Rockwell, Max Brown and Chad Balthrop will appreciate this) but most of all because I am also one of the co-authors of The Character-Based Leader I have to walk my talk.  Ironically, just last week I delivered a presentation to hundreds of HR Professionals at a Leadership Conference on how stress negatively affects productivity and teamwork.

AND I am guilty of doing all of those 10 Things instead of what I should be doing at one time or another.  In fact, it happens much too often.  Maybe I should re-title this:  10 Things I Do Instead of What I Am Supposed to be Doing.  At least then I could add Personal Integrity to my list, too.

I could take this a step farther and feel guilty or ashamed about being so imperfect – and we could take it one step beyond that and say I’m a hypocrite.

Yet I choose not to … I choose instead to offer my human-ness up to you as an opportunity to learn and grow, for myself and most importantly for you if you so choose to take on the challenge.

When the shoe is on someone else's foot 

It often surprises me when an apparently very publicly respected and successful executive coaching client says, “If people only knew what a fraud I am (or feel like at times), then the secret would be out.  I would finally be discovered for who I really am.”  After years of hearing this fear coming from powerful, influential business people, I now recognize where this shame and fear comes from – it comes from BS. Fear is far easier to recognize when it comes from someone else's mouth rather than from inside your own head.

My next post will focus on how to respond to this B.S. But before we proceed further, do you catch yourself doing this? I'm not the only one, am I? What are some other things you do that keep you from spending time doing the things you know you should do? Add those to the comments below and watch for our next post!