After three amazing months in Italy, it’s now back to working and living in Australia. One of my goals for the trip away was to improve my almost non-existent Italian, which I felt was important because my partner Vera is originally from Milan. Well, the time away has certainly got me heading in the right direction. I’m definitely a long, long way from being fluent, but it was an excellent start, and I now have more confidence and knowledge to continue my journey to la dolce vita. What I do next will determine my eventual level of Italian expertise.
I suspect the same is true of our productivity training. Certainly, some of the people that attend our training have life-changing experiences, adopt every lesson and strategy immediately, and completely re-engineer how they work. They become “fluent” in Smart Work almost overnight. However, for many others the training is a starting point. It sets them off in the right direction. I am completely OK with that, so long as they work to sustain their new behaviours, and to build on them incrementally over time. That is the key for me. Are they still applying their important learning takeaways six months, or a year, or five years later?
If you have attended an Adapt training program, ask yourself, ‘What were the key changes I initially committed to making?’ Am I still applying them? If not, what do you need to do to get them back on track? Some strategies might be:
- Read the Smart Workbook again (You did read it right?)
- Review the online resources from the course
- Go back to your course notes
- Recommit to your initial intentions after the training
- Get the inbox to zero
- Clean up your to-do bar, and get all your current tasks in there
I don’t think it’s realistic to expect everyone to achieve overnight and sustained changes when we attend training or learning events. But we can all commit to revisiting the ideas and strategies that hit the mark at the time and adjusting our behaviours accordingly. It doesn’t matter how long ago you attended one of our programs, it’s what you do next that is what really matters.
Ciao a tutti, arrivederci in Australia.