I had no idea how noisy our world is until I started walking around with a sleeping baby, hoping she wouldn’t wake up in the middle of a busy store.
We are often surrounded by noise that prevents us from listening to ourselves.
Over the last few years I have come to appreciate the power of reflection. I take time to reflect on how things are going in my personal and professional life. This helps me see developments, patterns, trends but also the changes I have to make.
I want to invite you to tune out the noise or to switch it off altogether when you can. Sometimes it’s nice to work from a busy cafe or an office. When you want to do focused work it’s best to have some peace and quiet. This allows you to dive into what you’re doing and get in the zone.
When I walk around town I notice how busy and noisy places are. Shops have lots of noise and there’s a lot of traffic in the streets. I’ve only realized recently how distracting this is when you’re deep in thought.
When you reflect on the noise and busyness around you, think about the situations when you do your best work. For me, for example, I need to have peace and quiet when I work on a difficult task that requires my focus. When I’m writing, I’m quite happy to be have background noise.
I like to start my day by going for a walk outside with Annika and Maggie, listening to the birds and the sounds of nature. This gets me ready for whatever the day throws at me.
When it comes to collaboration, I am happy with a bit of noise. I love working with others, discussing, debating, and generating lots of ideas with a group.
Think about the tasks you do in a work day or week. Some lend themselves better to busy, noisy situations while others need you to focus only on a single job. How can you create the ideal environment for you to do your best work?
If you work from home some or all the time, use your home office with the door shut in those times when you need to focus. For easier tasks, head to a local cafe, a coworking space or the office and surround yourself with people.
The world has become a noisy place, not for me as a mum with a newborn, but for us in general. This makes it hard to reflect and listen to your own thoughts. Give yourself the gift of reflection and silence every now and then. This can be daily or weekly, it can be a ritual or a one-off but I’m sure you’ll be better off in the long run.
Have a great week!
Eva