You are introduced to a new contact through a mutual friend. After a great conversation, they offer to contact you for a coffee to follow up.
They take your card and commit to following up in the coming days.
And then……. nothing.
This phenomenon of people not following up on promised actions staggers me.
I would estimate that between one in ten to one in twenty people actually follow up on these commitments. That’s just 5-10% of people.
The follow up presents itself in many forms.
I was listening to an elite sport coach talk about big moments.
Big moments are what you train for and spend your career preparing for.
All of your training, preparation and time is put into being your best in these big moments.
Then the parallel to business hit me.
Most of our weeks and many of our days in business live within the bell curve of normality.
‘Business as usual’ is the norm.
This is universally the same for all of us.
I spent four years writing my book The Fourth Moon and I learnt a lot of things. Not all of them were about writing and publishing.
Many of the lessons equally apply to business.
I’ll never forget a lesson I learnt from the Senior Editor of my publishing company.
Don’t edit when you are creating.
Let me pull this apart for you.
I’ve been helping clients with their annual strategic planning for the start of the new financial year.
It’s always a busy period but I enjoy the renewal of looking ahead at a new year of possibilities.
I too have been reflecting on the year ahead and what I want to achieve.
What projects do I want to work on?
Which projects go live and which projects stay on hold?
And this got me thinking about todays topic - the head and the heart.
Confirmation Bias is our subconscious tendency to favour information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs.
For example, ‘left-handers are more creative’.
In life, we often seek out people that share our views which helps to reaffirm our beliefs.
When accessing stories in the media, we interpret them in a way that supports our opinions.
And we all do it.
Without knowing.
So, is Confirmation Bias a help or hindrance?
How often do you feel like you are on a merry-go-round of never-ending tasks and priorities?
Each day more projects are added to your onerous workload.
You suffer increased anxiety as you work through an endless list of tasks, feeling you have completed all of them poorly.
Aiming to please you say’ yes’ to everything and suffer the consequences later.
Enter essentialism.
