The Value of Stillness (Redux)

Will your vacation capture the value of stillness?

Last summer after a short vacation near the epic Lake Tahoe I read this:

Three months at Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. — Mark Twain

Tahoe is a special place and you should consider taking a vacation there, or like Mark Twain — or maybe 3 months?

While I did not have the privilege of spending 3 months, I came back much refreshed.

This got me thinking about the value stillness, reflection, rest, and restoration. I resolved to improve in this area. And, I’m happy to report, even in the craziest year of my life, I’ve seen improvement.

To illustrate this, in April 2015 I almost burned out. In April 2016, under much more challenging and stressful circumstances, I stopped for some quarterly rest and reflection — which proved essential to helping me re-calibrate and get clarity on what I need to be doing for the next 90 days (which are almost up).

Greg McKeown is author of the book Essentialism.

Here is how he defines it…

Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.

In an interview about his book, he said the most important thing he’d learned since writing the book was personal quarterly off-sites are the key to essentialism.

Here are some ideas discussed in the interview on what these off-sites should look like.

• They need to be digital free.
• They need to happen every 90 days!
• You need to evaluate and review the last 90 days and ask probing questions.
• What is the news in my life?
• Am I spending my hours in the right place?
• What are the 3 most important goals for my life?
• What is ultimately most important?
• For the next 3 years? Next year? The next 90 days?
• Set and re-set goals.
• Am I committed to the right things — the essential items?
• Eliminate commitments while still making the greatest commitment.
• Schedule “bounded give back days” (i.e. don’t neglect to give back, but put boundaries on your time, but commit to them by putting them in your calendar) for the next quarter.

I’ve taken this a step further and now think in terms of monthly, weekly off-sites too. Even if you have a daily, weekly, monthly planning routine, it might make sense to combine those with vacations and weekends to extract as much time for stillness and reflection as you can. For me, my workouts are off-sites because there is simply no better time and place for me to do my best thinking than when out on a trail.

Stillness provides the space to figure out what is essential, something not easily done in the hustle and bustle.

In business surely, AND in life, if you don’t make time for stillness we are being negligent.

These times of stillness could be the most valuable hours of your life.

So capture some stillness. Its free, but can have great value.

NOTE: Since the quarterly off-site alluded to above, I’ve decided to identify and read a key book read or at least start it while on my off-site. The last one was The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. You can read my takeaways here. The next one is Essentialism. Stay tuned…

Originally Published on here on Medium.