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S.P.A.C.E.

 How to get more of it into your work,

 your life and your mind.

I once had a client, let’s call her Carrie, who wore many hats. She was a therapist, musician and budding screenwriter.  She had to network on many fronts and she was always meeting someone or other who could do her some good ,but her follow-through was non-existent. 

She had lint-covered business cards in every pocket of every article of clothing she ever wore.  If she hadn’t worn a jacket in a while, chances are by time she came upon the dog-eared card again she she had no clue to whom the card belonged or why she would contact them. 

She had no structures in place for dealing with the flow of information. To make matters worse, she was resistant to structure and hated the idea of lists, daily planners and calendars.  

We set a series of sequential small structures in place. One big monolithic plan of action wouldn’t have worked for her. It would have been overwhelming and unmanageable. I approached her as I would a frightened stray dog. Only instead of a pocketful of kibble, I trapped her with little innocuous tasks. 

First structure was to load up her environment with pens.  Pens in the car, pens permanently in every purse so that even if she switched purses she always had access to a pen. She bought pens by the dozen.  

Secondly, we established the habit of her writing on the back of a card before it made the fatal trip into her pocket. She was to write the name of the person she met, the date, one or two words as to the significance of the meeting (“owns club”,” needs co-facilitator for group”) and, if possible, one or two personal things about the person. (Had 2 year old son, Josh with him).

 It was too much to hope that she would then rush home and write a journal entry of the meeting either that day or any time in the near future. Instead we established a place (the P in S.P.A.C.E.) for the cards . For Carrie, that space was a delicate American Indian basket on her desk.  She was to clear out her pockets each night and throw the cards into the basket. 

None of these little structures by themselves was particularly onerous or activated her resistance. So, all of a sudden, within days she had her cards, carefully notated on the back, in a safe, conspicuous place.   

From this point it was only a hop and a skip to her making an appointment with herself on Tuesdays and Thursdays to follow up on the cards with e-mails and calls. These follow up procedures were, you guessed it, duly noted backs of the cards. If she got a response the cards graduated to her rolodex; if she didn’t get any response she trashed them.   

Carrie, it turns out, was a poster child for the Space Program.  Look for her  ingenious solution to paying attention to her “To Do” List in PLACE.

The acronym, S.P.A.C.E., stands for Structure, Place, Attention, Commitment and Energy. For more information about the S.P.A.C.E. Program, contact me and I'll drop you an e-mail when the book comes out.

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