- Distance: whatever the circumstance, take a step back and observe the whole set. Consistency: do not confuse speed with precipitation. Relevance: distinguish what is important, priority and urgent.
Far from the natural resources and technological advancement that our society is already achieving, there are two curious and somewhat elusive resources that have a decisive influence on the progress of our careers and, consequently, on our daily life and the organizations to which we belong. Also… we are rarely aware of it.
Those resources are complementary, but have opposite formats:
One of them is abundant, renewable, unlimited. We are very likely to end our lives without being able to use even half of its potential, even if we are using it tirelessly.
The other resource that we have, on the contrary, is limited, scarce, non-renewable, therefore it needs to be administered in a highly professional way, to be given in an eyedropper, so that there is no waste.
NEURONS are the abundant resource (especially in the right hemisphere), the ability to create, to find innovative solutions, to devise, fantasize, dream, imagine, in a word CREATIVITY. The other so precious and special resource is TIME. Those two resources are the foundation and the measure of our potential. The good administration of these resources makes us to be effective, efficient, effective, in a word… "productive", and what I call PPV, ie "Productivity for life". With this we enhance our talent, assertiveness, creativity, cunning, recursion, intuition. The constant application of these "virtues", plus the already traditional intelligence (in any of its "modern" meanings) obviously places us on the threshold of success.
Thus, the administration of time and neurons is the direct reason and the just measure of our happiness. We therefore have to be specialists in the management of these resources. Here begins our ordeal by the challenge of change.
Considering that TIME is a good with such fleeting characteristics, it would be logical to think that the economic and adequate use of it is a frequent practice, however… it is not. The first mistake that is made is not to perceive it as a scarce resource. We believe that we will always have enough time to do everything we want. We waste our precious time, as if it were unlimited. We lose time, a sin… There are days (and as we are unconscious!) That we want time to pass faster. We pray that the week ends. Being such a perishable good, we should never waste even a minute, but we throw out the window of our days the valuable TIME that can lead us to achieve all the success we long for. Its administration is a challenge,Although it is better to say "manage ourselves" in the time we have, because this is the only resource that we all have equally. In addition, as I usually point out in the seminars that I give on the subject: there is a "vertical time" made up of those counted 24 hours a day, and a "horizontal time" that lasts for the duration of our existence. That is, "what you could not do today,… because tomorrow you have another chance, of exactly the same duration, this is 24 hours", and so on !!!.… Because tomorrow you have another chance, of exactly the same duration, this is 24 hours ”, and so on !!!.… Because tomorrow you have another chance, of exactly the same duration, this is 24 hours ”, and so on !!!.
The paradox is to know that with NEURONS, such an abundant resource, just the opposite occurs. We save ideas, we maintain the same routines for years, we have difficulty altering methods, we remain tied to old habits (Einstein said: "… it is not difficult to incorporate new ideas, the truly difficult thing is to discard old ideas").
Our ability to come up with ideas and develop solutions is limited by our current structures. However, we can calmly waste ideas, have useless ideas, get rid of ideas without fear, because there are always possibilities of having more and more. And another thing, what is most impressive in this resource is that the more we activate our Neurons - through learning, tuning in to the world around us, with reflections on cause and consequence - the more ideas we have and the greater our ability to having ideas (Linus Pauling used to say: to have a good idea, you have to start by having many ideas. And in other words: the most dangerous thing about an idea is that it is the only one). Neurons are a fabulous resource. They can even maximize the use of the TIME resource. They can transform all our results,create opportunities, point ways, find unusual solutions. Most of the time, we don't even use that vast resource. We hope that (scarce) time solves all problems, and we leave (abundant) neurons out of action.
A reflection of this is the way in which the market markets these resources. Organizations hire us because of our NEURONS resource, however they manage our TIME resource. They want to know what time we arrive, they check what time we leave, they are focused on the number of hours we sell to them per week. They get to pay for overtime that we can offer them, but very hardly, they reward our ideas, they almost never measure our use of neurons, they never pay for extra ideas.
In this practice -head down- of the market, we sell our scarcity, TIME and save our abundance, NEURONS. We assume with the organizations a commitment dictated by the clock, not by the project. We work for the number of hours, not for the task. We have dates, times and deadlines in our work commitment, but if we do not have original ideas, we do not invent any extraordinary method or find solutions never thought of before, there is no problem. Most of the time, no one expects you to give in neurons the value they receive as compensation. But everyone is going to be worried if you arrive an hour later, or if you don't return from lunch on a rainy Tuesday. They will deduct from your salary the time that you did not give to the company,but it does not cross anyone's mind not to pay your salary, if during the month you had no new idea.
The worst thing of all is to perceive how much we are immersed in that model. Unaware of the value of the resources we have. We should never sell our time, being such a special resource. We should be intelligently preserving our time, managing every moment, deciding what is valuable, what is most important, what must be done here and now; choosing how to live every minute, doing the right thing according to our life purposes. We should, yes, sell our neurons, offer the market creative ideas. Produce customized solutions, with global quality standards, in a just in time system. Why should we give up a whole month of our time, to give birth to a single valid idea, produced in just half an hour? The focus is in the wrong place.
We don't have that much time to sell to the market. There are always countless things we want to do, learn, develop, enjoy, but there is never enough time, not even for the family, which should come first and cannot be postponed. Which is contradictory, as it is a fact known to all, that we do not use 100% of our time in organizations in a productive way. And it is also clear that organizations are much more interested in NEURONS than the TIME of their collaborators. Minztberg says that "Perhaps the most important resource the manager assigns is… his own time." In addition, today the concept and practice of TELETWORK takes strength.
Synthesis by way of conclusion:
It is the neurons that can obtain results, achieve goals, produce with quality, generate profits.
It is the sum of the neurons operating in an organization that gives value to the brand and creates future possibilities.
It does not matter how long people give to a company, but the effective use of neurons during that time, that is, CREATIVITY at its best as a way to success and happiness in our projects.
