The 10 Signs of Complexity Overload
Posted on September 27, 2012 by Simon Tyler, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Complexity can diminish who we are, restricting creativity, connection and deeply desired results. How do we know if we are caught in complexity?
Subscribers of my Simple Notes know that the focus of my work is to suggest and inspire simple ways for you, colleagues and teams to approach everyday challenges anew. In preparing my book, The Simple Way, I actively observed the signs of complexity in the many situaitons and contexts I find myself. Everywhere I go, and in every encounter, I am alert to complexity, where it comes from, how it manifests itself in people’s activity and how it impacts human capability.
This Simple Note has two objectives. The first is obviously to help and inspire you in some way. The second is to clarify the signs, by asking you to examine the list below, then confirm and add to it, from your experience of complexity.
My coaching experience has confirmed that personal development action is absolutely necessary if you are experiencing one or more of the following signs of complexity overload:
1. Your levels of stress and anxiety are increasing
2. Your ‘fuse’ seems shorter (before your react inappropriately!)
3. Your ability to motivate yourself is more difficult and burns for less than a few hours at a time
4. Your ability to motivate others takes more effort than your seem to have available
5. Your work environments are increasingly disorganised
6. The number of tabs/files/emails open on your pc screen at any one time is more than three
7. Everything you are working on, everything in your in tray/in box, everything you are focusing on seems urgent
8. Your ability to truly and completely concentrate on a task is down to 10 minutes or less at a time
9. You get entangled in minutiae which on reflection was largely irrelevant
10. You hesitate and delay decisions (and the deferred decision list is accumulating)
There are many other signs of complexity overload but my research suggests that these 10 are the most frequently occurring.
My book, The Simple Way, focuses on the 11 most common complex situations people find themselves in and the matrix at the beginning links the Simple Notes that work in each area (e.g. Overwhelm, procrastination, lack of purpose)
How many of the signs are you displaying? How many do you notice in friends and colleagues around you?Ignoring them and ‘coping with them’ can only ever be a short term strategy. Buy the book or visit the Simple Note archive (www.simontyler.com/blog) and find one that works for you and your colleagues and inspire the change!
Good luck and keep it simple,
Simon
