Agility in a Fast Pace World. How Are You Adapting?

Keeping Up

Do you feel like the world keeps moving faster and faster? Scientists actually have confirmed Einstein’s calculations showing that time is speeding up. But here we’re not focusing on the science; rather, we’re talking about the “feeling” that the pace of life is increasing.

Fast Track Change

I know that feeling. Lately, things have picked up in my life professionally, educationally, and personally, and this has impacted my sports training. In the last few years I’ve been able to balance the key areas of my life to include a pretty robust training schedule, one that allowed me to complete marathons, ocean and bay swims, as well as a few triathlons. But now I’m struggling to keep everything going.
How do you keep up: at work? at home? What strategies do you use to adapt to a changing environment? How do individuals who do sports training adapt?

Developing Agility

One competency that effective leaders develop is leadership agility. Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs in their book Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery explain that leadership agility is not a single competency but rather made of the following competencies: context-setting agility, stakeholder agility, creative agility, and self-leadership agility. They go on to state that highly agile leaders realize that we live in an era of permanent change, rapidly adjust their behaviors, and are resilient. In short, agility is the capacity to creatively navigate and adapt effortlessly to new circumstances.
I am looking for an agile mindset, agile exploration, and an agile body to carry me forward this year and sustain all of the professional, educational, and physical goals I have set for myself. I will be starting this by first following one of my basic principles: “when depleted, go resource and renew yourself.” I will be doing this next month through traveling, surfing, and spending time with friends.
My clients also need to master leadership agility in their professional as well as their personal life to attain the goals they set for themselves. A few have had to adjust physically their daily regimen because of sports injuries, others have had to work on their self-leadership upon receiving 360 feedback. Many are dealing with complex changes in their organizations and their companies as well as on their teams, requiring them to flex their leadership agility skills.

This year I wanted to try an Olympic triathlon. I’m not sure it will be possible, but I haven’t given up yet. Still, my hour or 2-hour runs have turned into 30-minute runs, and I’ve even started moving towards doing running streaks (a series of 1-mile or more runs daily over time) instead of my long runs. Where has my time gone? A new, more demanding schedule of full-week delivery for clients, which then requires night and weekend preparation. Plus an Emotional Intelligence year-long training as well as a few other trainings—this is what has captured a lot of my life and my time.

I know that exercising tends to give me more energy, so I am really looking at how can I keep training with a very demanding schedule and hope that I will find some agile ways to do so for the rest of this year. I’ve been able to complete a half marathon and a 2.5 swim but have had to skip a few runs, a 2.4 swim, and am wondering if I’ll be able to do one or two triathlon this summer as well as my two end-of-the year marathons.

I have clients continually dealing with this, the juggling of their professional life, personal life, and robust self-care regimen. I like to suggest to them to read the Tony Schwartz book The Way We Are Working Is Not Working as well as to start one sport of choice to help them find strength and energy. They also explore ways they can make sure to find renewal strategies throughout the year that it is taking a weekend away from their cell phone or taking a few vacations. I am now having to do the same for myself.
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If you would like some information about coaching, training, or facilitation services, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].