“The Great Recalibration” (Part 3): You Reading This, Be Ready

“If everything is important, then nothing is important.”  Patrick Lencioni, author and leadership consultant    

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that “words matter.”  This is not only true in our communication with others, but also and perhaps more importantly, in the dialogues we have within ourselves.  After my blog last week, one of our PeerRx colleagues asked me what I thought the difference was between “reprioritization”, which I’ve written about in the past, and “recalibration” which I’ve been writing about over the past few weeks. 

Prioritization for me involves an explicit alignment of attention around the “Big Rocks” in life, and therefore where one focuses the bulk of their time, energy, and attention.  The process of reprioritization becomes necessary when there is a sense that something is “broken” and therefore frequently requires a significant shift or “fix”.  For many colleagues over the past few years, doing so has involved de-emphasizing their professional life for the sake of their life beyond medicine.   

“Recalibration,” on the other hand, is more about “fine-tuning”  Professionally, it involves determining “degrees” of importance and requires making continual adjustments of our time and attention so that we don’t get distracted by less important things.  What makes recalibration challenging for many is the need to say “no” regularly.     

So, why my present need to recalibrate?  While I continue to greatly enjoy my work and feel no need to “reprioritize,” I recognize if I am unwilling to regularly discern the various levels of importance of the daily demands for my attention and allocate my time and energy accordingly, I will be constantly pulled in too many different directions and therefore be left feeling scattered … ungrounded … ineffective … or just plain weary.  . 

It is during such times that I find the wisdom contained in the word play of a poem can shake me out of my scatteredness and weariness as I allow the flow of images to help me regain perspective and recalibrate what really matters to me, and for me … right now.  

With the poem below, they did.  Perhaps they will for you as well ….  

You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?