Running Your Personal Squirrel Cage

Have you ever noticed yourself running in a mental squirrel cage? A squirrel cage is a rotating toy for small caged animals — hamsters, mice, and squirrels. They climb aboard, and as they run the cage spins. They run, but they get nowhere.

When your mind runs in its squirrel cage, it too runs but gets nowhere. Pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow, call the doctor to change my appointment, get the lawn mower fixed, return Philippe's call, call Josh's teacher about his homework load, make reservations for vacation, pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow, call the doctor…over and over, but none of it is getting done. Each item in the list is a rung in your mental squirrel cage.

If this sounds familiar, think of the personal cost. Running the cage prevents you from being fully present with the people and things you love — your morning jog, your loved ones, the books you like to read, or even this article. Running the cage keeps you from focusing fully on what's happening right now.

To learn how often this happens for you, carry a pen and notebook or index card for a few days — everywhere. When you notice that you're in the squirrel cage, record the time and a few of the items you remember. If you're a habitual cage runner, you'll soon know it.

Running your personal squirrel
cage prevents you from being
fully present with the people
and things you loveTo spend less time aboard your squirrel cage, deal with the items that you run over and over in your mind. Eventually, you'll find methods that work for you — meanwhile, here are some to get you started.

Make a catalog of the rungs of your cage

Whenever you recognize that you're in the cage, make notes of any of the items you can remember. You can't deal with them unless you know what they are.

Recognize the hidden cost of procrastination

When we delay dealing with minor tasks, they become available to serve as rungs in the squirrel cage. Procrastination thus drains our energy and blurs our focus. Next time you're considering postponing something, remember the squirrel cage.

Make conscious choices

Once you know what items make up your personal squirrel cage, you can choose, for each one, whether you'll take action, or keep it in the squirrel cage. If you can't act right then, pick a date. If you choose consciously, you'll most likely choose to act rather than keep it in the cage.

After a while, you might notice a time that you aren't running in your squirrel cage. Congratulate yourself. Celebrate your progress in some concrete way that you really enjoy. See "Celebrate!," Point Lookout for February 21, 2001, for some ideas.  Top    Next Issue

The article you've been reading is an archived issue of Point Lookout, my weekly newsletter. I've been publishing it since January, 2001, free to all subscribers, over the Web, and via RSS. You can help keep it free by donating either as an individual or as an organization. You'll receive in return my sincere thanks — and the comfort of knowing that you've helped to propagate insights and perspectives that can help make our workplaces a little more human-friendly. More

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:

Ten Reasons Why You Don't Always Get What You Measure: II

Although many believe that "You get what you measure," metrics-based management systems sometimes produce disappointing results. In this Part II, we look at the effects of employee behavior.

Asking Clarifying Questions

In a job interview, the interviewer asks you a question. You're unsure how to answer. You can blunder ahead, or you can ask a clarifying question. What is a clarifying question, and when is it helpful to ask one?

Overconfidence at Work

Confidence in our judgments and ourselves is essential to success. Confidence misplaced — overconfidence — leads to trouble and failure. Understanding the causes and consequences of overconfidence can be most useful.

Disjoint Awareness: Bias

Some cognitive biases can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate understandings of what each other is doing. Confirmation bias and self-serving bias are two examples of cognitive biases that can contribute to disjoint awareness in some situations.

Cooperations That Need to Be Collaborations

Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them. When people are cooperating but the work actually requires collaborating, risks arise that can threaten the success of the effort.

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming May 14: Working with the Overconfident

A cognitive bias known as the Overconfidence Effect causes us to overestimate the reliability of our judgments. Decisions we make based on those judgments are therefore suspect. But there are steps we can take to make our confidence levels more realistic, and thus make our decisions more reliable. Available here and by RSS on May 14.

And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers

Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenDJpmhgyaDTwBQXkhner@ChacmGoYuzfZpOvDQdRkoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info