Writer: Dr David Mukunya. PHOTO/FILE/COURTESY
As a medical doctor, heart failure is one of the daunting conditions you come across. One thing that is counterintuitive in the management of a failing heart, is that for most patients, slowing the heart makes the heart pump better. Let me say it again, if your heart is not pumping out enough blood; instead of making your heart to beat faster, we give drugs to slow the heart. The logic is subtle and yet genius; the heart fills when it slows; and the better it fills up, the more blood it can pump out. So, when your heart is pumping so fast, it does not have enough time to fill up, and soon it will fail, and you will die. I posit that pausing not only enables the heart to fill up, but it also enables your brain to fill up. One thing that separates successful people from less successful ones, is that the successful have learnt to pause and reflect. Pausing is not new.
One of the earliest places we see intentional pausing is the story of creation. Gen 2:2 says, “and God rested from all his work, and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made”. We can all agree that God wasn’t tired, because He was mostly speaking; let there be and there was. So, pausing was not to renew his strength. So, why did God rest from working, and bless the day of rest (please note that he didn’t bless any other day). Management scientists have referred to this as a strategic pause. The simplest analogy is the story of two men, each cutting down a huge tree. One periodically pauses every couple of hours to sharpen his axe, the other keeps cutting.
It is obvious that the one who keeps pausing to sharpen his axe will fell his tree earlier than his colleague. What if, I told you that you are cutting a “tree” every day, as a businessman or as a professional. Unfortunately, 99 percent of people don’t take intentional pauses to “sharpen their axes”. When you take a moment to pause, you do this primarily to reflect. Like John Maxwell says, reflection turns experience into insight. So how can you practice pausing and reflection. Firstly, set time to do this every day. You could start with 15 minutes. Choose a place, a quiet place, preferably the same place every day and finally get yourself some pen and paper. Oh, need I mention that you should switch your phone off or put it in silent!
After sorting out the above, ask yourself questions such as what went well today? What did I learn? What could I have done better? What should I focus on tomorrow? Are the things I spend time on the most important or the most urgent? What was I supposed to do that I did not manage to do. Use moments of reflection to examine the past, appreciate the present and plan the future. Please write down these reflections. Reflection helps you to remove unnecessary baggage from your shoulders and dust from your feet.
Use reflection to sharpen your saw, so you spend less energy accomplishing your tasks the following day. A story is told of how Elon Musk almost burnt out until he started blocking off the first hour of his day, to reflect on how to do his most important tasks better. He mentions that he was already working too hard, almost 12 hours a day, but he wasn’t making much progress until he decided to protect and guard that hour daily. You might not become the next Elon Musk, but I can guarantee that you will become a better version of yourself taking off time to reflect.
The author is a medical doctor and associate Professor of Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology at Busitema University
