Five to nine

Two-miler this rainy, rainy morning, which was fine except I forgot my gloves. Very cold hands.

I took my iPhone and earphones with me yesterday when walking a couple of dogs using the walk as an opportunity to thrash out some ideas using the voice recorder on my iPhone.

I wondered out loud why, when I had written down what I thought my goals were for the week on a whiteboard in my office, rather than feeling energised and empowered, I felt overwhelmed and confused with where to start?

Whilst talking, I remembered, from my NLP practitioner training a few years ago, the magic of the number seven.

A pyschologist carried out a survey on how humans deal with information, and he discovered that the maximum number of pieces of information a person can deal with or "process" is seven, plus or minus two, hence five to nine.

When I got back from my walk I looked at my whiteboard and, rather than a few clear goals on there, I counted sixteen items that were really things to do.

The first thing I did was wipe out anything that wasn't a goal I wanted to achieve, and I kept going until I had nine or less.

I got the list down to eight, which I thin prioritised into the top five, then the next two, and the final one.

Funnily enough, I now feel focused and energised, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of my day.