insight

September 27, 2018

Improving on Improving

Time2Improve

People want to improve.  Well, most people do anyway.

They’ll talk the improvement game.  They’ll go to conferences.  They’ll read those books.  Most will target a start date of January – the official biggest improvement month of the year.

Or you could target Chinese New Year and give yourself about an extra month to procrastinate.

The trouble is I see too many people who talk about improving, but, by the month of February, they regress to their tried and true habits.  They do the same things the same way they always have.  Routines are grounded into most folk’s normal day.  And change is hard – really hard.

Make Time4Improvement

A friend of mine recently commented in an off-hand way, “If someone never sets aside time to improve, they’ll never improve.”  It was a simple statement, but as soon as I heard it I knew I had to write about it. In previous B2Seed entries, I’ve shared about how busy people in the world are today.  There are fewer of you working in companies and you’re doing more and the deadlines seem to come quicker and quicker.

You move from crisis to situation to trouble to meeting.  It’s just the way it is whether you are in marketing, leadership, medicine, human resources, running a non-profit, or consulting other businesses.

So here is my challenge to you.  You’re not going to magically make yourself better.  You’re only going to get better if you carve time out of your calendar to do so.  Make it a routine and start this week.  No matter how much pressure you get from clients, bosses, or the teams you lead, it is critical you create space to actually improve.  You owe it to your people, your company, and – most of all – to yourself.

Block out thirty minutes twice a week for the next three weeks.  Plan it right after you finish reading this article and before you begin your next task.  At this point it doesn’t even really matter what route you select to improve. You’ve marked a start and starting is the most important step.  After all, you can always improve at improving once you get that habit changed and make time for it.

other similar insights

Check out these related insights from deep within our archives!

April 20, 2017
Kindness Counts
July 20, 2014
Parallel Problem Solving