Live coaching conversation from the Optimize Coach program where Michael Gelb coaches Kate, who has many diverse interests. Gelb recommends mind mapping to visualize and connect interests, choosing the 'juiciest' priority that generates energy, carrying a notebook (e.g., by the bathtub) to capture ideas, and translating a chosen interest into a specific measurable goal with a timeline. He references historical geniuses who kept notebooks and emphasizes integration of interests.
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The content you're about to hear was captured during a live coaching session in the Optimize Coach program multiple times every month. Coaches Connect live with Brian, Michael, Alexandra and members of our world class luminary guest faculty for wisdom, guidance and encouragement. For more head to optimize me coach.
As someone with just so many interests. My partner, when we started dating, actually made a spreadsheet of my interests because she couldn't keep them all straight, just constantly adding to it. How do you coach and advise people to best juggle and prioritize those interests and those projects? Say, in a world where I don't quite have a patron like Leo did and do have to also work. Although I do love my work and you know, especially as someone who wants to learn and do each of those to a high level so that I don't get frustrated with a lack of time and instead maintain that sense of wonder and excitement.
Wow. Thank you. I love that. Well, you know my advice on juggling lots of things. Right. Hey, Kate, do you know your enneagram type?
I am enneagram4 with a strong wing. 3.
Aha. Okay. So the complex artiste. Yes, I'm married to one.
There you go.
Do you play the harp?
I do. Yep, I have. I. I love the mention of Albert Schweitzer. I have degrees in music, medicine and theology, so.
Fabulous. So what's wonderful is the healthy four. First of all, ask this kind of question has the kurio sita. Instead of just assuming I'm doomed to be a misunderstood artist, let me share this sad poem which so we want to. The healthy four laughs at herself or himself and then lives this question. Curiously, this may sound like I'm giving the same answer to every question, but mind mapping is fabulously helpful, especially because it allows you to be more artistic in expressing all of the things you want to do and then seeing how they all relate and then asking yourself the question, which one's the juiciest? Which one gives me the most energy and will generate more energy so that I can fulfill as much of the other as I. As I want to. And well, maybe that's enough to say, I mean, it's.
I love juiciest. It's such a, like, empowering kind of way of looking at it. I started mind mapping after you started talking about it. It's very rainbow at the moment, but I love that and looking for the connections and kind of which ones could. Could take me into the other ones.
And then the other thing too is where are you when you get your very Best ideas. Where are you actually physically located?
That's a good question. You know, we just moved, and so I'm having a little bit of, like, disconnect there as the fours, like, are really connected to aesthetics. And we love our house, but it was decorated, probably the bathtub, which is not that convenient for writing, but there we go.
So have a notebook next to the bathtub and just have it available. And as you hold this question of all these gifts that you have and all these diverse interests, what's the way to optimize your relationship with them? What's the one to translate into a specific, measurable goal with a timeline without the feeling that, oh, I'm abandoning everything else because that's the tension. Right?
Yeah.
So it's just, okay, I'm going to realize this one by this date. And in the process of figuring out which one that is, you carry your notebook with you. You have it by the bathtub.
And.
And don't expect fully formed thoughts or conclusions to arise, but just err on the side of writing. And if you write a little bit every day, inviting your inner wisdom to express itself in, helping to guide you through this time, as you're, like you say, juggling these different things, you may be delighted to find that your intuitive voice speaks to you more clearly through this simple modality. Leonardo kept a notebook. He carried it everywhere. And he suggested that that's what we all do. So did Marie Curie, so did Edison, so did Darwin, so about every other great genius. So.
I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I tend to separate out my notebooks, so I have one for everything. But then it doesn't allow actually for some of that coming together because I always feel like I'm leaving something behind.
It's the integration we're after. How does everything connect to everything else? This is Connezione, the seventh principle for thinking like Leonard.
We hope you enjoyed that. Part of a live coaching session from the Optimize Coach program. For more info, head to Optimize Me Coach.
