
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
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Some Costs of COTS
- As a way of managing risk, we sometimes steer our organizations towards commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
components, methodologies, designs, and processes. But to gain a competitive edge, we need creative
differentiation.
Choices for Widening Choices
- Choosing is easy when you don't have much to choose from. That's one reason why groups sometimes don't
recognize all the possibilities — they're happiest when choosing is easy. When we notice this
happening, what can we do about it?
Embolalia and Stuff Like That: I
- When we address others, we sometimes use filler — so-called automatic speech or embolalia —
without thinking. Examples are "uh," "um," and "er," but there are more
complex forms, too. Embolalia are usually harmless, if mildly annoying to some. But sometimes they can
be damaging.
False Summits: II
- When climbers encounter "false summits," hope of an early end to the climb comes to an end.
The psychological effects can threaten the morale and even the safety of the climbing party. So it is
in project work.
Contextual Causes of Conflict: I
- When destructive conflict erupts, we usually hold responsible only the people directly involved. But
the choices of others, and general circumstances, can be the real causes of destructive conflict.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming July 13: What Do We Actually Know?
- Precision in both writing and speech can be critical in determining the success of collaborations in the modern workplace. Precision is especially important when we distinguish between what we surmise or assume and what we actually know. Available here and by RSS on July 13.
And on July 20: Overt Verbal Abuse at Work
- Verbal abuse in the workplace involves using written or spoken language to disparage, to disadvantage, or to otherwise harm others. Perpetrators tend to favor tactics that they can subsequently deny having used to harm anyone. Available here and by RSS on July 20.
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Decis
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- A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
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- A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
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