Category: Blog

How busy are you? And if you’re not busy, what’s wrong with you?

For many of us, being busy is a badge of honour we’ll happily wear. Over my 20 years working as a trainer, coach and facilitator, I’ve found helping others to work out what they want to focus on can actually be straightforward – the biggest challenge is often holding them accountable and supporting them to take the time to deliver the outcomes they said that they wanted.

The investment of time and energy that we make today can often be for a long-term benefit. However, it can be very easy to get distracted by the immediacy of today’s world and the electronic devices that go ‘ding!’ and demand our immediate attention. We all face this challenge: if we’re not taking the time to think about and prepare for our future today, then when the future does arrive, will we be ready to face it?

To see if you are future-ready, use that device of yours to invest a few minutes in completing our free quiz.

Are you asking yourself the right questions? If there’s one skill I’ve learnt in my business and coaching career, it’s the impact of asking a good, quality question. The questions we get asked – and the questions we ask ourselves – focus our attention. Yet when it comes to developing ourselves, the default question is usually: “What training do I need?”

The problem with this question is that it makes several assumptions. Firstly, that you’re in the right job, secondly, that you have the time and are motivated to learn something, and finally, you actually have some idea of what you want to be when you grow up.

The free quiz we’ve developed asks you a series of questions designed to help identify what is going on in your life today. Our free short course builds on these questions and challenges you with a couple more so you think about your future. We also offer practical, road-tested solutions and suggest actions that you can take.

We’ve done the work for you, so the only question you need to ask is: “When will you do the quiz?”

Could you be replaced by a robot? Apparently, the robots are coming for us. Tasks and functions that created jobs for us human beings are being automatised and digitised. Though this doesn’t mean we’ll be thrown on the scrap heap, it does mean we will have to continually upskill and develop new skills that the robots are not very good at. Skills such as being a reasonably good person, working with others and solving complex problems – all the things that computers can’t do as well as we do.

It’s an interesting exercise to take the time to go through what skills and capabilities you have today and what skills and capabilities you will need for the future.

Take our free quiz and see how you compare to others in terms of being future-ready.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I remember being asked this as a child and having no idea.

I’ve only met a few people in my career who have been able to answer this question. Often, they’re driven by a calling or a vocation, and they have the clarity of thought that’s allowed them to work towards living their dream. For the rest of us, I think it’s a work in progress. We’ve made decisions along the way, not guided by some pre-determined master plan, but to take advantage of situations that have presented themselves or because we’ve been forced to think about it as the environment has changed around us.

So is this still a valid question? I read a statistic recently that said 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately work in completely new jobs that don’t exist yet. It would seem that the ‘what do you want to be?’ question may be a little bit out of date. Maybe there are some better questions we can ponder: “How do you want to be living your life today?” and “How are you going to future-proof your life?”

Whether you consider yourself a grown-up or not, it’s worth checking out our free quiz.