Walt Hampton, J.D.

Creating the Work & Life You LOVE

Space The Final Frontier

by Walt | May 18, 2023 | Success | 1 Comment

I’ve been puttering in my garden. I love my garden. But I find puttering to be a challenge.

You see, I’m a big believer in action: Doing, achieving, accomplishing; moving like a shark lest I perish from inertia.

Steeped, as I am, in the cultural paradigm that, in order to succeed, I need to work longer, harder, faster, it is difficult for me to slow down.

Puttering sometimes seems aimless; pointless; wasteful.

But it’s not.

By puttering, I open up space for myself. I allow my mind to relax. I give myself the opportunity to think, reflect, create… and be.

Just be.

Every business leader we consult with, every professional we coach wants more time; they want – they yearn – for space.

The greatest crisis of our age is not terror in the world; it is the terror that we allow within ourselves.

The greatest crisis of our age is not that we don’t have enough, but that we have too much: too much information; too much noise; too much stimulation; too much to do.

The greatest crisis of our age is that we have lost touch with that that place of quiet, that still point within us.

We’ve lost the capacity to sit still, to be still, to know the beauty and the grandeur of the here and now.

We’ve lost the capacity to be: To just be.

When you give yourself the gift of quiet, when you open up that space, your sense of possibility expands. You see the opportunities that you miss when you are racing to that imaginary finish line.

When you allow your mind – and your body – to relax – ideas flourish, insight lights, you create the ground for moments of “ah-ha.”

Commander Mark Divine, author of The Way of the Seal, teaches that we need the power of silence in order “to set the conditions to win.”

“Silence creates the space for you to think and thus see reality more clearly.”

“If you’ve ever noticed how good you feel after coming out of nature after an extended stay without your cell phone and laptop,” writes Devine, “here’s the reason why: It’s because you’ve slowed down enough to quiet your outer mind, allowing your inner wisdom to poke it’s head out a bit.”

And it is that inner wisdom that truly sets you apart; that allows you to excel and truly succeed at extraordinary levels.

Habit 7 in Stephen Covey’s celebrated business classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is Sharpen the Saw. “Sharpen the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have—you,” Covey said.

Self care, self-renewal.

Opening up space.

Puttering.

Quite A Terrible Cost

by Walt | May 11, 2023 | Success | 0 Comments

Sometimes, I like to pretend that I can multitask. Except that I really can’t.

No one can. It’s not physiologically possible.

Certain repetitive, habitual type things, of course, can get done at the same time, like tying your shoes while carrying on a conversation. But two or more things that require focused attention simply can’t be done at once.

What happens, really, when we attempt to do two things at the same time, is that we handle them sequentially; our brains toggle between the tasks.

Some of us can toggle fast.

I’m a really fast toggler.

But there’s a huge cost to toggling.

There’s an energetic cost. It’s wearing to toggle. We end up feeling tired and overwhelmed when we’ve spent our day toggling.

There’s an acuity cost to toggling. It’s not possible to focus well when we’ve got a lot of balls in the air. We make mistakes when we toggle; sometimes catastrophic ones.

There’s a time cost to toggling. Studies show that it takes anywhere from 12 to 20 minutes to re-attend to a task once we’ve been distracted by another task. We’re actually less efficient when we toggle.

There’s a productivity cost to toggling. When we’re trying to do lots of stuff, few things get done to completion; and little gets done well. We’re actually accomplishing less when we toggle, not more.

There’s a human cost to toggling. Toggling causes us to be fragmented, distracted and superficial in our relationships. We fail to show up; we fail to be present; we fail to listen deeply. We dishonor our connection with one another when we toggle.

Toggling causes us to live in a state of continuous partial attention. Distracted. Stressed out. Spread thin. Mentally blurred.

“Deep thinking demands sustaining a focused mind,” Goleman writes in his bestseller Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence.

Peak performers know the power of focus; they harness the power of attention.

They do just one thing; the most important thing. And then they do the next thing. And the next.

If you want to be a peak performer – or if you only want to restore some sense of sanity to your life – stop multitasking.

It costs way too much.

Why

by Walt | May 4, 2023 | Success | 0 Comments

Why?

Why do you run?

I get this question a lot.

Especially when it comes to running long distances.

I could give a George Mallory-like response when asked why he wanted to climb Everest: he said, “Because it’s there.”

“I run because I can,” I might say.

Which, like Mallory’s response, is shallow and stupid.

The real answer is much more complex; and a bit paradoxical.

I run because it draws me into the present moment.

When I’m running trails or in the dark or even dodging traffic along a busy road, I must be wholly present; for if I’m not, I’ll trip on a root or get hit by a car.

I run because it connects me with me: my lungs, my heart, my limbs, my joints. Am I thirsty? Tired? Hungry? What is my body telling me? How shall I care for it?

I run because it connects me with my awesome running partner, my beautiful wife Ann. We’re there in the moment. Just the two of us. We can deconstruct western literature or talk politics or religion or just be quiet. Together.

I run because it grounds me: literally. I am aware that I am connected to the ground. I experience my body running across that ground.

I feel the earth and air and sky. I feel the sting of the cold and the warmth of the sun. The rain, and the wind, and the snow. I see coyote and antelope. I see towering peaks; hear the sea crashing along the shores. I see the stars in the sky; bear witness to the waxing and waning of the moon. I revel in the magnificent dawns; watch the light fade at dusk.

And running connects me to that greater ground. The Ground of All Being.

Source for me.

Spirit. God. Creator.

I experience the “thin places” where the “I and Thou” dissolve.

And Being is all there is.

In all these moments, I remember that I am Alive.

In this precious fleeting gift that is my life.

Howard Thurman once wrote: “Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”

What makes you come alive?

Running is my jam.

What’s yours?

Push Pause Right Now

by Walt | Apr 27, 2023 | Success | 0 Comments

You get to stop from time to time.

In fact, you need to stop.

Our technology, meant to free us, actually enslaves us. We’re ‘on’ 24/7/365.

There’s no space; no respite.

We’re expected to be at the net ready to volley. We’re expected to react: Immediately.

Forget about consideration; forget about reflection.

Everything is urgent. Everything is now.

Except that it’s not.

You’re not a trauma surgeons. (Well, maybe you are. But the trauma surgeon I trained with to become an emergency medical technician was a pretty chill dude.)

Many of the lawyers I work with exist in a near-constant state of anxiety and stress. Everything appears to be an emergency; everything seems dire. Every day, they feel as if they are fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun.

No doubt, they have some pretty important deadlines to keep in mind. We all do. But for the most part, no one dies if we slow down the pace for ourselves. No one dies if we take the time to give a considered response.

No one dies if you take the time to pause.

But endeavoring to slow down in our culture of overwhelm can be one of our most daunting challenges.

It’s not really in vogue.

In fact, if you’re not ‘busy,’ if you’re not ‘flat out,’ if you don’t have your calendar jammed, if you don’t have stuff scheduled back to back for yourself (and your kids), something’s wrong with you!

But that’s not sustainable. (Would you run your high performance car that way?)

You cannot thrive without a pause. So pause you must.

Create time and space for yourself to think, reflect, create; take the time to decide how you want to impact, who you want to serve, and what you want your legacy to be!

Take the time to consider the beauty and the grandeur of the here and now.

Take the time to nurture and care for yourself.

Take the time to me mindful.

Take the time to be; to just be.

You will enjoy the rewards of a peaceful, grounded, joy-filled life that is productive, resourceful and resilient.

Your life is your masterpiece.

Artur Rubenstein once said, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides.”

That’s the power of the pause.

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We have a powerful training program, Mindfulness For Peak Performance, that will transform your workplace: Beat back burnout, improve retention and deepen the engagement of your team. We can customize a program to fit your needs. Email me: [email protected]

A Terrible Cost

by Walt | Apr 20, 2023 | Success | 0 Comments

There’s no way to justify it.

Yet you indulge it in nearly every minute of every day.

Distraction.

Distraction is a thief and a killer.

It robs you of your focus, your attention, and your precious time.

It robs you of the capacity to read, write, and reflect.

It robs you of your ability to be truly present in the most important, yet so fleeting, moments of your life.

Distraction kills your productivity.

It kills your energy.

It kills your capacity to do deep work.

The perpetrators, villains?

All of those who covet, compete and pay vast sums of money for your most precious asset: your attention.

Yet you leave the keys in the car with the engine running; you leave the front door to your house wide open.

Stop it.

Interruption science say that you are interrupted or cause yourself to be interrupted every 3 minutes of the day; and that every interruption in your day has a “cost” in terms of lost focus and productivity. Researchers have measured the cost. It’s between 11 minutes and 25 minutes.

So, let’s do a conservative calculation: An interruption every 3 minutes would be 20 interruptions an hour x a 10 hour day x 11 minutes of cost = A lost 2,200 minutes of productivity each day! (Yes, friends, that more than 36 hours. No wonder it feels like you can never get caught up. You never really can.)

Annie Dillard wrote, “How you spend your days is, of course, how you spend your life. What you do with this hour, and that one, is what you are doing.”

Don’t do distraction.

This isn’t a polemic against smartphones or tech.

It’s a rallying cry: Take back what is yours.

Your time.

This moment.

This one and only precious moment.

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