Thought Tweet #463 At work, empowerment is about significance, competence, quality relationships, & positive feelings.

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

If it can't be measured it won't get done. If it can't be defined it can't be measured. So, it behooves us to define empowerment and measure it. Empowering people, that's one way to Inspire People & Grow Profits. 

The business world rewards clarity.

Brain-energy: we should put that to its best use.

When people, processes, and situations are clear business can be both effective and efficient…and all that leads to pleasing bottom-line profits.

When people are not clear other people misunderstand them and their messages. Misunderstandings add distraction to an already-complex-enough world and workday. Misunderstandings are time-wasters and money-wasters and, even worse, they are energy-wasters. Specifically, when people are not clear brain-energy is wasted because it is consumed by confused thoughts.

When processes are not clear they are not understood and they are not followed. This creates confusion and it multiplies the amount of decisions required. This consumes and wastes brain-energy. To the extent people disagree with one another’s interpretations of processes or decisions about processes, again, brain-energy is wasted.

When situations are not clear the people in those situations must use extra brain-energy to get their bearings and determine proper actions. When people deal with unknowns it places special demands on their brains and it often triggers negative emotions and mindsets such as fear, doubt, worry, frustration, and anger. These negatives consume brain-energy.

Every person has a limited amount of brain-energy. Experts say the human brain consumes about 20% of the energy consumed by the human body. The brain represents about 2% of body weight…yet, it consumes 20% of the energy.

Where does all that energy go?

In simple terms, the brain uses up the energy doing 4 things:

1. Overseeing the operations of the body…all those involuntary but necessary  things we take for granted…like breathing, growing fingernails, and digesting food
2. Handling other subconscious things…all those things that few if any of us really understand…like, emotions, where do hunches come from?, and how did we ever come up with that weird dream?
3. Processing incoming stimuli…what we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste…perhaps more?
4. In conjunction with the mind, processing conscious thought, which leads to conscious action and more conscious thought 

These 4 things are ranked.

Conscious thought doesn’t get the gold, or the silver, or even the bronze. Thought sits in fourth place.

That’s why people say they do not have enough time.

The neurons in their brains are very busy doing lots of other things.

Link to An Introduction to Time Management - Part 1

Link to An Introduction to Time Management - Part 3

Link to 'Time' Management 

Link to Successful People Have More Time

Time Management...even though those are the wrong words...you know what I mean. I'm talking about feeling good about the pace of your work and the pace of your life. I'm talking about feeling you have control over the things you face.

A need to have a feeling of control: that's the root we are trying to get at when we work at time management. 

When we believe work and life are reeling out of control, we feel uncomfortable. We feel uncomfortable because we feel rushed, confused, and too busy. When we feel like that we complain we do not have enough time. We brainwash ourselves into thinking and saying 'time' is at the root of our problem.

Let's take a more objective approach.

We know many or most of us are naturally inclined to skirt the blame for things and place the blame on others. Psychologists, for example, talk about attribution bias. Also, for some reason, when we feel we are too busy we blame it on 'time'...we say we don't have enough of it.

Time, or lack of it, is not our problem. On top of that, even if it was the problem we cannot manage time.

Time is beyond our control.

We can, however, control what we are thinking and what we are doing as 'time passes'.

Really, those are the only two things we can control; we can control the way we think and we can control the way we act.

If we want to feel less rushed, less confused, and less busy then we need to do the following:

• stop blaming the problem on ‘not enough time’
• start treating the problem as an issue of self-management
• realize self-control is one of the most important capabilities in life
• treat the symptoms of the problem: Habits – that is, replace Bad Habits with Good Habits

Link to An Introduction to Time Management - Part 2

Link to An Introduction to Time Management - Part 3

Link to 'Time' Management 

Link to Successful People Have More Time