Time to Check Your Track and Recalibrate

The end of May seems to be rushing towards us at a rapid rate of knots, and the end of the second quarter of 2019 is now more relevant than the first!  Time goes quickly when you’re having fun.  Wink, wink; raised eyebrow.  “Fun?!”, you say?

We’re far enough through the year to have encountered more than one or two challenges and have built up some considerable stress.  Some had managed that within the first month or two, and most of us are on a completely different track now to where we started the year.  New possibilities have arisen, decisions have come and gone, courses have changed.

It’s not rocket science to know that you need to check yourself occasionally, but our human nature often overtakes us, especially when we’re under pressure.  Sometimes we’d rather just keep our head down and carry on busying ourselves with what’s immediately obvious.  Pausing means the emails build up; someone will think you’re not busy and need something; or a whole herd of other problems may present themselves.

But we’re cleverer than that.  We know the dangers of allowing ourselves to fixate on what’s immediately obvious so that we forget the bigger picture or don’t see the traffic on a direct collision course with us.  We know that circumstances and factors change and that we’re more effective at reaching our longer-term goal regardless of these roadblocks if we look up, shake ourselves, and recalibrate occasionally.

Mid-second-quarter makes it a great time to pause and consider our track compared to the destination we’d decided we were aiming at previously. 

In aviation, we do this regularly because we know that small changes in direction over an extended period of time are enough to land you on the other side of the planet from where you’d intended if you don’t correct the error.  We have a specific rule for it that allows us to calculate how far off track we are and how to get back on to that track.

I’ve spoken about the 1 in 60 Rule before in a previous article.  This is the rule that tells us that if we’ve been flying for 60 nautical miles and we’re pointing only 1 degree off our intended track, that error in heading is enough to take us 1 mile away from where we intended to be after that period of time.  If you’re flying a long-haul flight, then it all adds up and, without correction, you could be landing in Brussels rather than London!  In my previous article entitled When Life Knocks You Off Course – Use THIS To Get Back On Track, I talked about a couple of considerations that would help you discern getting and staying back on track.

Your business, your goals, your relationships, your intensions are no exception.  If you’ve been under pressure and some of the influencing factors have changed, then it’s time to check yourself.  Look up.  Remember what you’re heading for.  Define what’s important and why and recalibrate.

The chances are good that if things have changed for you, that they’ve changed for others too.  Check that your agreed upon destination is still the same.  Talk about what’s needed to get there, what the stumbling blocks are and what you CAN control.  Let go of what you can’t, or at least acknowledge that allocating energy to it will change nothing and focus instead to the left or right of it.  Ask others what their needs are and make sure you’re all on the same page.  Blow off some steam.  Remember why you’re doing this.  Define what’s important, and head for that.

If you’d like further inspiration about getting back on track, read the previous article.

by Christen Killick

May 20th, 2019