How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 340

Rest – Activity Cycle and lasts between 90 and 120 minutes.
That’s why breaks are necessary to give us energy and refresh
us.
Take Time to Plan
In the West, we prize action over inaction. We, therefore,
complete one task and hurry on to the next. In the East, by
contrast, non-action is prized as highly as action, if not more.
These cultures like to measure progress by more means than just
results. They spurn impatience and hurry, knowing that, if you
prepare well, a moment eventually arrives when things are
ready for implementation and they practically complete
themselves.
Take Time Out
It is when you work in fast-moving environments that you need
to remember to take time out. Time out enables you to get away
from all the problems that usually clutter up your work and see
things more clearly. When running Microsoft, Bill Gates, used to
take a week out of his schedule every year to go somewhere
where nobody could reach him just to think things through. This
habit made him into one of the richest people on the planet.
Meet with Yourself
Just as sufficient planning before action can reduce the time a
project takes, so can review after the action. In fact, in repetitive
tasks it is vital. Review, or meeting with yourself, enables you to
look back and learn. You can see the big picture and put things
into some kind of perspective. It also enables you to see the
mistakes you made and to consider how you can do things better
next time.
Non-doing work isn’t just thinking and planning; it’s also
recuperating and refreshing yourself. In his bestselling book,
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