{"id":6532,"date":"2016-02-23T10:07:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T10:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/?p=6532"},"modified":"2017-07-17T13:17:27","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T12:17:27","slug":"you-dont-have-problems-only-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/2016\/02\/23\/you-dont-have-problems-only-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"You don&#8217;t have problems, only projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/6\/files\/2016\/02\/iStock_000037096568_Small.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6534\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-6534 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/6\/files\/2016\/02\/iStock_000037096568_Small.jpg\" alt=\"iStock_000037096568_Small\" width=\"606\" height=\"403\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Christmas is a time for sitting around and pondering.\u00a0 So when my wife, Denise, asked if we should all go trampolining on Boxing day I should have said: &#8220;That sounds like an interesting idea, let me think about it &#8217;till Easter&#8221;.\u00a0 Instead, I said: &#8220;Sounds good!&#8221;.\u00a0 A decision we\u2019d all come to regret.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re going to break your leg trampolining, you\u2019ll hopefully at least come away with a good story to tell. \u00a0&#8220;She was performing a triple back-flip with a twist and went so high she hit the ceiling.&#8221; \u00a0Not as our story goes. &#8220;You won\u2019t believe it. She was just walking off the trampoline to get a coffee, tripped\u00a0and her leg broke in three places.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And so we found ourselves in the back of an ambulance, Denise giddy on gas and air and me wondering whether there was a clause in the marriage vows that allowed a partner to continue with the skiing holiday in the event of the other being in a trampolining accident. (It turned out there wasn\u2019t).<\/p>\n<p>The surgeon delivered the bad news with a joke. \u00a0&#8220;We\u2019ll have to raid B&amp;Q for metal and screws to put you back together&#8221;, he grinned. Oh how we laughed.\u00a0 But bad news it was. Six to eight weeks in a wheelchair, and it wasn\u2019t just bad news for Denise; I was just about to get so busy I\u2019d need to hire David Allen himself to get me through the month.\u00a0 And as he came to mind I asked myself a question &#8211; &#8220;What would David do?&#8221; \u00a0I remembered his advice: &#8220;We don\u2019t have problems, only projects&#8221;. &#8220;Yeah right&#8221;, I thought.<\/p>\n<p>However, two cups of coffee and bar of Galaxy later, I realised that as much as I wanted to pull the duvet over my head till spring, hibernation was not an option. \u00a0So I started to get things out of my head and down in writing.\u00a0 Whole pages of stuff came out. Here\u2019s the tip of the iceberg:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Arrange a wheelchair<\/li>\n<li>Sort out grab handles for the shower<\/li>\n<li>Get the childminder to increase her hours<\/li>\n<li>Cancel the skiing holiday<\/li>\n<li>Get the money back from the skiing holiday<\/li>\n<li>Tell our friends we weren\u2019t going skiing<\/li>\n<li>Try to get a sneaky skiing weekend with a pal<\/li>\n<li>Change one of our cars to an automatic (I don\u2019t need much of an excuse)<\/li>\n<li>Take over a couple of Denise\u2019s consulting assignments<\/li>\n<li>Cancel any plans we have with friends in January<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2026and so it went on.<\/p>\n<p>Soon, I had 18 projects; their subsequent actions and a further 10 next actions which, given what I already had on, made me see that I really did have too much to do.\u00a0 I quickly froze a few my projects and let those parties know what was happening.\u00a0 I felt much better.<\/p>\n<p>January was still busy and I still got a wee bit stressed but I never dropped the ball once.\u00a0 And so once again I pondered David\u2019s advice &#8211; &#8220;You don\u2019t have problems, only projects&#8221;. Actually, yeah\u2026 you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas is a time for sitting around and pondering.\u00a0 So when my wife, Denise, asked if we should all go trampolining on Boxing day I should have said: &#8220;That sounds like an interesting idea, let me think about it &#8217;till Easter&#8221;.\u00a0 Instead, I said: &#8220;Sounds good!&#8221;.\u00a0 A decision we\u2019d all come to regret. If you\u2019re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":7244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_eb_attr":"","gtp_columnspro_styling":"{}","gtp_paragraph_styling":"{}","gtp_heading_styling":"{}","gtp_spacer_styling":"{}","gtp_video_styling":"{}","gtp_group_styling":"{}","gtp_cover_styling":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[310,319,311,323,940],"tags":[250,62,360,82,1592,100],"yst_prominent_words":[1231,1591,620,1588,1582,1580,1576,1585,1581,1577,1289,1583,1584,1579,453,1586,1578,1590,1587,1589],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6532"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}