There was a part of ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’ by Dale Carnegie that stuck with me. All about living each day as a watertight compartment.
This analogy refers to bulkheads on a ship – bulkheads are a series of internal dividers in a ship which mean that if the ship is holed, the water doesn’t spread throughout the whole thing and sink it.
This stuck with me, as I’d just come away from reading a particularly challenging email, and needed to switch back to ‘family mode’ in order to show up for the kids and have a great day.
How many watertight compartments?
Thinking more on this analogy… at work, it’s not enough to live each DAY as wtaertight compartments… as a CEO/boss this can sometimes be minute by minute.
- Dealing with internal issues
- Picking up a client emergency
- Jumping straight onto a pre-booked sales call
- Heading out to client meetings
It got me thinking – on the one hand you really need to practice the ability to keep showing up, as the right person at the right time. On the other hand, you need to carve out time to process everything so it doesn’t take you down.
So, returning to the ship analogy – as a business owner, you need potentially hundreds of watertight compartments. This can be a key technique to avoid letting problems spill over into other areas…
… but…
You also need techniques to process / review all the leaks!
A sinking ship…
Left unchecked, and you’ll soon be underwater… lots of little compartments, with lots of leaks.
I find it helps having a few resets –
- Mini reset (a few deep breaths / quick 5 min walk)
- Middle reset (shower / exercise / longer walk)
- Big reset (off-site day / writing day / strategy morning)
Of course, in addition to this, you need somewhere to note down your worries and tasks. Keeping it simple, a single note on your phone notes app can act as an ‘inbox’ for you to deal with later, but a welcome relief from not having stuff rattling around in your brain.
These two simple techniques combined have helped me stay sane and keep positive, optimistic and moving the business (and myself) forward.