Squiggly Shortcut: How To Move From Complexity To Clarity

0:00Hi, my name's Sarah and this is a Squiggly career shortcut. And in today's shortcut, I'm going to be talking about three ways that you can move from complexity to clarity. So this is for those moments when work is feeling overwhelming and messy and you are struggling to make sense of it. This might just be because of volume. You've just got so much on and you're thinking, I just don't know where to start. That happens to me relatively regularly. Or maybe just something feels hard. You don't know what you don't know. Maybe you're doing something for the first time. Maybe there's lots of different people involved.

0:36And again, you're just struggling a little bit with seeing the wood from the tree. So you know that you need some clarity. This can also be a really good thing to do as a team. So before I go into my ideas, one of the things I often ask in a workshop is what helps you? What helps you to move from complexity to clarity? How do you make sense of things that feel hard? And people have some really good ideas. So maybe if you're watching this as a team or you could talk to your team about what tools and techniques do people already have so you can borrow brilliance from different people. I love asking that question because people always come up with things that I've not thought of.

1:11But here are three things that I do. First thing, empty your head. I often think in these moments it just feels like stuff is rattling around your head and going in so many different directions. And I think you've got to start writing things down. Two different ways that you can do this. One, just do a mind map, put the topic or the theme or the question in the middle of a page and just get everything down in a mind map. Second way, which I probably use more often, is I write at a think list. And a top tip on writing at a think list is structure that list as questions. When we write things down as questions, it kind of activates the curiosity and inquiry part of our brain.

1:52We automatically sort of start searching for answers and we start exploring. Just doing that helps us to kind of create some clarity by just having that list of things we want to think more about. So that's kind of getting everything out of your head onto a bit of paper, however you might want to do that. The second technique that I use, a lot more over the last six months since I started to talk to people about this, but I really like this. This has really stuck for me. It's trying to figure out what matters most. So you've emptied your head and then you're like, right, I've got loads of stuff here.

2:22So what do I do in what order? So this is really about prioritizing. Where do I put my energy and effort at the start? And I use this technique called the bird and the worm. And what this helps you to do is to zoom out and to zoom in at the same time to have the agility to see both of those time frames. So the bird's eye view is you zooming out and kind of looking ahead. So maybe asking yourself, well, what matters most over the next month or what matters most over the next three months? or perhaps you're looking further ahead in terms of a project. What do I want to be true in three months time that isn't true today?

2:59That's the kind of the bird eye view. They can see how different things connect. They can see further into the future. And you then want to have the worm's eye view. So that worm is down in the detail and they can see kind of the actions that are immediate, that are urgent and that probably you need to move forward on fast. and I think by balancing those two areas by asking yourself both of those questions what matters most maybe today or this week and then what matters most over the next three months it can just help you with making sure you don't do just firefighting and troubleshooting but that also you don't just do the work that you want to do because you're like oh maybe that's more interesting but actually then you miss on some you miss some stuff that kind of does need to move forward like in the here and now.

3:47And I think most of us are naturally either slightly more worm-like or slightly more bird-like. I'm definitely slightly more bird-like. So I think this helps you to achieve a bit of balance when you're trying to make sense of a lot of stuff that's happening. And then my final kind of top tip is find someone or something, because you could use AI, you could use a GPT for this, who can hold a mirror up to your messiness. So until this point, you've got stuff out of your head, you've taken the bird's eye view and the worm's eye view, you've not really talked to anyone else. So you've not really kind of got any feedback.

4:19No one else has helped you to kind of make sense of the situation. So if you talk something through with someone, often I think it's helpful to have someone who doesn't know the situation as closely as you do. So they've kind of got that distance and we know distance always gives you a different kind of data. Or ask some questions of a GPT this is what I'm thinking what questions might I have missed what questions do you think I should be asking myself just so that you're getting a bit of kind of playback and a bit of feedback to stress test some of that thinking and it's always really good to have that thought partnership I think this is really getting somebody to kind of act as a thought partner for you so I hope that feels helpful I know when everything does feel like a lot you can it's almost sort of hard to know where to turn.

5:03But I think if you sort of have some of these go to strategies, tools and techniques that you can kind of rely on and keep trying out, it can actually just help you to almost quite enjoy, dare I say, that process of going, right, I know this is feeling difficult, I can notice that I can spot something. And I can actually I can take some action that's going to help me feel more confident and more in control. Thanks so much for listening or watching. And And don't forget to check out the other shortcuts where we talk about things like how to get a pay rise or why we should maybe van busy.