Hiring an outsider (e.g. a coach or a psychologist) to go through all relevant and most time consuming parts of your work / life. Just explaining each stream to an outsider is likely to help clarify your priorities, leave out less important ones and make sure you really are doing the most important things.
Also, hiring someone to support working on any addictive tendencies. Intentional and supported work to improve your self-directedness is likely to pay off.
These might not save time immediately but save a lot of time over the years.
I’m curious to hear more on an example of hiring an outsider, if you have one. I’m not sure I can see the value of it.
I’ve done therapy and it had immense value for me to work out through my issues. However, it seems like you’re talking about a different scenario here. Perhaps more in the life coach realm?
As a psychologist myself, I fully support anyone engaging in longer therapeutic work.
My point for suggesting “lighter” options in this thread stems from the observation that many relatively healthy and functional people that might not be considering starting a full course of therapy would nevertheless benefit from discussing their practical, everyday challenges with an outsider. The topics, and therefore the most suitable person to discuss with, might vary.
One of the latest personal examples is a discussion with a colleague about my career directions. After a brief standard intro of my current thoughts, she happened to ask a few very insightful questions that helped me to completely cross off a few suboptimal options out of my considerations. Please note that I had put quite a lot of time into considering options myself and talking to my closest friends about them. I’m quite sure this particular discussion saved me a lot of time as I didn’t need to consider those options further, let alone take steps that might have sidetracked me from things that I’m much more passionate about.
It’s not a cure for all and here are some situations where such discussion might not be so beneficial:
the problems are more deep-rooted and require longer therapy
there are just too many interrelated things to be meaningfully considered in a short session
the person we’ve chosen to discuss with is not a very great fit to support us in a very useful way
using the available time for self-reflection, meditation or other private self-reflective practices might provide more value, especially if time otherwise spent in them is scarce
However, the more general point is to invest in your own self-development, in any way that one considers to have the best expected value in terms of future well-being and efficacy.
[End note: despite being a psychologist with a clinical background, I’m not currently providing nor planning to provide such coaching or therapy in private practice. So while the content of the comment is related to my work, I’m not advertising my own services nor anyone else’s in particular.]
Hiring an outsider (e.g. a coach or a psychologist) to go through all relevant and most time consuming parts of your work / life. Just explaining each stream to an outsider is likely to help clarify your priorities, leave out less important ones and make sure you really are doing the most important things.
Also, hiring someone to support working on any addictive tendencies. Intentional and supported work to improve your self-directedness is likely to pay off.
These might not save time immediately but save a lot of time over the years.
I’m curious to hear more on an example of hiring an outsider, if you have one. I’m not sure I can see the value of it.
I’ve done therapy and it had immense value for me to work out through my issues. However, it seems like you’re talking about a different scenario here. Perhaps more in the life coach realm?
As a psychologist myself, I fully support anyone engaging in longer therapeutic work.
My point for suggesting “lighter” options in this thread stems from the observation that many relatively healthy and functional people that might not be considering starting a full course of therapy would nevertheless benefit from discussing their practical, everyday challenges with an outsider. The topics, and therefore the most suitable person to discuss with, might vary.
One of the latest personal examples is a discussion with a colleague about my career directions. After a brief standard intro of my current thoughts, she happened to ask a few very insightful questions that helped me to completely cross off a few suboptimal options out of my considerations. Please note that I had put quite a lot of time into considering options myself and talking to my closest friends about them. I’m quite sure this particular discussion saved me a lot of time as I didn’t need to consider those options further, let alone take steps that might have sidetracked me from things that I’m much more passionate about.
It’s not a cure for all and here are some situations where such discussion might not be so beneficial:
the problems are more deep-rooted and require longer therapy
there are just too many interrelated things to be meaningfully considered in a short session
the person we’ve chosen to discuss with is not a very great fit to support us in a very useful way
using the available time for self-reflection, meditation or other private self-reflective practices might provide more value, especially if time otherwise spent in them is scarce
However, the more general point is to invest in your own self-development, in any way that one considers to have the best expected value in terms of future well-being and efficacy.
[End note: despite being a psychologist with a clinical background, I’m not currently providing nor planning to provide such coaching or therapy in private practice. So while the content of the comment is related to my work, I’m not advertising my own services nor anyone else’s in particular.]