As I drove along the M4 the thought crossed my mind that I have no idea what the next 3 days would involve. The M4 soon turned into the A40, then the narrow, winding lanes of the A478 to Cardigan, and I really started to wonder.

I suddenly got the WTFAID factor; what the ffff am I doing. Followed by the WFI fear – wont fit in fear. What had I signed up to? I realised I had no agenda, no seminar itinerary, the only instruction was to bring a wet suit if you want to go wild swimming! A slight terror came over me, what if everyone is super cool, what if they all are really successful, what if they are all doing amazing things to change the world, what if… they all can all do a yoga head stand.

It was too late to turn back – I was committed, I was on my way, and I was booked into a lovely hotel in Cardigan Bay and was looking forward to 3 whole nights of uninterrupted sleep – no toddlers poking, snoring, peeing every hour. So it would be worth it whatever happens when I get there.

‘Feel the Fear Elle, Feel the Fear…’

I arrived, met nice, normal looking (most) people, talking about normal (mostly) things – what is normal anyway? Sun was out, birds were tweeting, it was a beautiful idyllic location on David Hieatt’s family farm. David Hieatt and his wife Clare, are the founders of Hiut Jeans and the Do Lectures. He and Clare have an inspirational back story of growing a business, selling it, starting again. And they have a passion to share their experience, while constantly developing themselves, and so founded the Do Lectures as a response to sharing and learning from others. It’s an impressive line up from past Do Lectures.

The other thing about David is he is ex Saatchi, there around the time that, had my teenage dreams come true, I should’ve joined their graduate programme. I was looking forward to hearing time from a person who worked at a place I used to obsess about, and was the answer to the question “what do you want to do when you leave school?”, “I’m going to work for Saatchi & Saatchi, Sir John Harvey Jones or Richard Branson”. As it turned out Saatchi had a different opinion about that. But at least one of those things happened!

The Lectures began…

David began by telling his story, making us feel comfortable, letting us share stuff about ourselves. It was clear that ‘getting shhht done’ comes in many forms, for many different reasons for people. David talked about being emotionally fit, physically fit and financially fit, “unless you master all three, you will never do your best work”.

“We all have that moment when we say ‘enough’… that moment when change has to happen, when we have a breakthrough, but putting that moment in action and making in work for us can be hard” The Do Lectures

It was an intense 3 day long event (must not use word seminar, David said). To say it was a journey is a cliché, but that’s what it was. At the end of each day people were full of thoughts. The camp fire was a reflective place to watch flames flicker, and let possibilities begin to form.

It’s now been a few weeks ago since the bootcamp. And I’ve been reflecting on what I took from the 3 days. There was so much, but I thought I’d share the 3 stand out messages that stuck in my mind.

1. The power of reframing

‘We cant change events, we have to change how we interpret and react to them’

So many things happen to us that are out of our control. But just because we are done to, doesn’t mean we are done. We always have control of how we respond. David talked about ‘the power of reframing’ to help us use that control to a positive, powerful effect. His examples hit home… how many times have we written ourselves off with a negative thought. ‘I’ve missed the bus this morning, today is going to be a bad day’. Done. Let bad day commence.

David challenged us to use reframing to look at failure different, to look at fear differently, to look at guilt differently.

I am not smart enough to… to I don’t know much about … but I can…

I am too much of an introvert to be successful … to I have unique skills that are valuable to people

When you start reframing, your story starts to change. Instead of being immersed in all the reasons why things can’t, won’t, don’t happen, you start to see all the things that might, that can, that will. We were encouraged to rewrite our story. Rewrite our thoughts.

After all ‘we are the thinker of our thoughts’.

2. You are what you repeatedly do

David talked about this in every sense, business, emotions, physical fitness. “What we repeatedly do shapes our days, our bodies and our minds. But breaking or making a habit is harder than just carrying on with it” We were all given a habit calendar, inspired by Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret, ‘Don’t break the chain’.

The aim is to spend time on the desired activity ( in Jerry Seinfeld’s case, write a joke each day) , and when you do, mark the day with a cross, creating a chain. The more crosses, the more motivated you become to keep the chain going, ‘the loss aversion’ effect kicks in and your sense of coming so far now, you have to keep going – I haven’t come this far to give up.

I’ve started doing the 7 minute exercise app every morning, using the habit calendar (it’s meant to be a red cross to keep you going – never miss a cross, but my habit involves my 3 year old daughter also joining the 7 mins, if only to crawl under me as I try to do a plank, so my habit calendar has stickers – you make things work for you!). So far I haven’t broke the chain, and the sticker collection is coming on well.

‘Habits create time for other things’ Katie Elliott shared her philosophy around creating rituals that serve you. Katie explained there was no harm in automating some parts of your life, freeing up thinking space, the less decisions needed in a day would lead to better decision making.

Creating habits in your life has more benefits than just doing the habit, having structure and habits in some places helps facilitate free thinking in other areas, and who knows what that will result in!

3. Create time to do your best work

When it’s my daughter’s bedtime (she is 3 years old) she becomes the master of distraction. She can find so many things she needs to do, has to do, knows that I want her to do, she can easily put off going to bed by an hour. Now as the ‘adult’ in this story I should have more control, structure, routine to help make bedtime a more systematic experience – so I hear. The problem is my daughter is a human, and so am I. Most bedtimes end when she is too tired to think about it anymore, or I’ve managed to execute some sort of parental genius and convinced her the consequence of not going to bed immediately is far greater than staying up (usually consequence is not watching Peppa Pig).

Anyway, back to discipline and the art of distraction.

This was the fact that stuck in my head, David said ‘ For every distraction we get caught up in, it takes 22 minutes to get back into the flow’.

We all know the worst offender of distraction (no, not Joyce from accounts wanting to talk about how much a cup of coffee is in the canteen) it’s of course, the smart phone. Its estimated we use it, check it, on average 221 times a day. That’s about 16 times every hour (if you are awake for 14 hours a day). That’s a lot of distraction!

You have to create time to do your best work. You have to become ruthless at blocking out distractions.

The good news is that David reassured us that it works. If you create space to do something, and you then use that space to do it, then things get done!

David shared with us a book by Cal Newport called Deep Work, where Cal says ‘find 2 – 3 hours a day with no Wi-Fi, no phone, no other people and build it into your routine. Those 2 – 3 hours will be more productive than the 8 hours spent in an open plan office where people work longer, but shallower.’

Living in Cumbria, the land that BT forgot, it’s pretty easy to have no Wi-Fi and phone signal for more than 2 – 3 hours a day, but it often doesn’t feel that productive! So this needs a bit of thought and planning.

The message that I took away is to deliberately create space to think and having uninterrupted time to work on problem solving is more valuable than just putting in the hours. A trap I definitely used to fall into in my early career. I used to work until at least 8pm every evening, one because I enjoyed it, but two because I thought it made it more productive.

Now I find at least one day a week to work from home and I smash my to do list. The more things on my list, the more I get done. The thing I need to work on is creating that to do list – the message of Cal’s Deep Work book is about focusing on 1 or 2 things to produce quality solutions, not so much about powering through a list of stuff made up from other people’s requests. So I’ve created the space, but now need to work on what I do with it.

David’s message is ‘ You can do a lot more in time than you think. You don’t need to work longer, you need to work with less distractions, and more focus. Be disciplined and work on the things that will make the difference’.

I could go on but…

There was so much covered in 3 days its hard to sum up in a blog. And that’s probably right. The lectures are about you spending time on yourself, and discovering things for yourself. And it’s definitely a case of ‘you had to be there’ – as I’ve since discovered when trying to share my experiences with others, who just look slightly concerned for my general health while leaning in to see if they can sniff vodka.

The Do lectures are a cleverly executed business and mind retreat, designed without pretension, not over promising magic solutions and no hard sell at the end! They have been created as a space for you to think, with inspiration to help motivate you and practical tolls you can use to help shift things on.

At the end we committed to things we’d do in the next few months. I cant remember what mine were but I know I’ve made a few changes already, made some decisions, and made positive moves to getting shhh done.

It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision to sign up for the 3 day retreat. But it was definitely a spur of the moment decision that has changed my course of direction.

Eleanor

Sign up to Another Door membership community for further support and inspiration