Workout/Diet Audit 1

I read an interesting blog post this morning (I subscribe to Seth Godin’s website, so technically, I read it in my email).

Go find a geek. Someone who understands gmail, Outlook, Excel and other basic tools.

Pay her to sit next to you for an hour and watch you work.

Then say, “tell me five ways I can save an hour a day.”

Whatever you need to pay for this service, it will pay for itself in a week.

What makes it interesting is the context I read it in. In the last 24 hours, I have:

• Signed up for a training symposium.
• Read two issues of TrailRunner.
• Helped Susan prepare her slides for an upcoming talk she is doing regarding helping nurses keep themselves healthy.
• Talked with Susan about the THREE people who have contacted her for personal coaching (yes, three people in 24 hours!).
• Talked with a friend about a significant change in his business. Why he lost half of his customer base and what he is going to do to get them back.
• Made an appointment to find out more about getting our customers a few “kickbacks.”
• Made an appointment to interview an assistant.
• Talked to my dad about Islam
• Read this blog post.
• And, of course, coached 5 or 6 hours.

Yes, all of these things have one commonality. I always find it interesting when I read something that succinctly captures something that I have been thinking about but really haven’t fully digested.

Coaching is hard and getting coached is hard. Learning and improving involves some bumps and bruises to the ego, the pocket book, to “fun” things like following The Tour and City Pub, but mostly, the hardest and most painful part of being coached and coaching is listening to the other person.

As Mr. Godin implicitly states, sometimes the cost is higher than what we think is reasonable, while we have to carefully consider what you get for that “high” price, the most important thing to consider is what are our options?