Is Your Comfort Zone Your Hide-away?

What makes us the most comfortable may be what stands in the way of our progress. Our comfort zones are our habits that help us reduce stress in the moment. When overused, our comfort zones contribute to loss of productivity. They become our extended or habitual escapes from our realities.
 
When we engage in many of the activities listed below too often or for too long, we feel good about ourselves, we seem busy, we enjoy our mental get-away, and in some cases we avoid conflict. However, we miss opportunities to meet our goals, become more self-motivated, enhance our emotional growth, and make ourselves accountable.
 
If you find a comfort zone activity in this list that you overuse, perhaps this is an opportunity for self-improvement and accountability. Take a look. See if you have an opportunity to improve your use of time.
 
Task-related

• Accepting tasks when saying "No” is more appropriate
• Seeking the opinions of others to slow down your decision-making
• Postponing your work by allowing interruptions
• Creating elaborate to-do-lists with color-coding and complex tables
• Lack of delegation to others
• Multitasking – stalling progress by incorporating an additional task into the same time slot
• Working on an enjoyable but low priority task when there are important deadlines

 
 
Time Management-related

• No established routines for daily or repeated activities
• Perfectionism, checking and rechecking making timely submission difficult
• Postponing difficult and unpleasant tasks while opting to focus attention on easier and enjoyable tasks
• Procrastinating in order to create a crisis requiring you to drop everything and put out fires
• Wasted time with disorganization -- and inadequate preparation, prioritization, and planning

 
Personal Escapes-related

• Socializing
• Snacking
• Planning an imaginary get-away
• Daydreaming
• Watching television
• Streaming videos
• Taking a nap
• Tidying up your office, home, etc.

 
Relationship-related

• Welcoming drop-in visitors and dropping-in to visit others
• Taking every telephone call and making unnecessary phone calls
• Volunteering to “help” others
• Unnecessary meetings, telephone calls, text-messaging, and drop-in visits

 
Technology-related

• Checking voicemail and e-mail when you don’t have time to reply
• Checking emails and social media too often throughout the day
• Procrastinating with social media browsing, posting, sharing, commenting, liking, and updating
• Playing games on your laptop, tablet, or cell phone

 
You may have a comfort zone that’s not included on the list. Add it to the list and make a decision about how you will use each of your comfort zones. Perhaps they can be used as rewards for a job well done and not an escape from doing a job.
 
Best wishes!
 
Want to schedule a brief no-judgement discussion of your current situation? Contact my offices at (336) 999-4533 during regular business hours (Eastern Time), email me at DonnaColes.Coach@gmail.com or, Click the following link to schedule
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=18102228 

Until then…

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