How do you use your Windshield Time? You know, the time you spend alone in your car. Many use it to listen to music or talk radio. Others may catch up on phone calls or, faith defend us, email and text messages! If you tell me you don’t use it, you’re wrong. Even using it to contemplate is using the time, and you have consciously or unconsciously chosen to use it in that particular way. But maybe that’s not the real question. Meander with me for a bit…

This week I engaged a business coach. This is my 3rd foray into this realm. I used coaches two separate times while running my old business, but those experiments ended in failure. We communicated, or at least I think we did. I learned things, although perhaps not what I expected to learn. The engagements ended amicably, and I still enjoy talking to both coaches when the opportunity presents itself. However my business was not changed, at least not for the better. Together, we plotted tactics to change the business, but in the end all that changed was me. I learned much, but became frustrated in doing so. That story ends in the sale of the business so I could focus my efforts elsewhere.

I didn’t see the ways my thinking was impeding my success. I envisioned a series of stages that would eventually allow me to do what I enjoy most in business: Creating elegant software solutions which solve problems or create opportunities. After I sold that business I immediately started another, but without a clear concept of what it would become. Then came a Moment of Clarity™; Move immediately to the finish line, do not pass go, do not collect $200. That ’series of stages’ was only necessary to transform a business that was holding back my dreams, and I justified it to myself and others as pragmatism. When you have a Moment of Clarity, the Head Trash™ you carry recedes for just a moment. You may see an opportunity. You may realize a mistake. A Moment of Clarity alters your fate.

Over the past year or so, I’ve come to realize that it’s not my so much my actions that control my destiny, but the thoughts behind those actions. A course of action that feels wrong might or might not BE wrong but your mind will betray you, wreck your execution, and doom your plan to failure. If you believe in your plan with all your soul, you’ll win the hearts and minds of those around you, and together you can reach your goal. Whether your plan was the ‘best’ choice is immaterial.

Moments of Clarity –> Dynamic Action –> Transcendent Results

Which brings us back to business coaches. My new coach is my friend, mentor, and sometime drinking buddy Tony Scelzo. His approach to coaching is atypical, which is to say typical for Tony. It’s a good fit for me because one of the traits we share is neither of us feels bound by convention. Tony focuses his attention, if I can put words in his mouth, on assumptions and accountability. All your decisions rely one way or another on a set of assumptions. Challenging the assumptions you’ve made is a necessary step to reach your potential, and it’s very difficult to do by yourself because you’re too close to the problem. In fact you probably ARE the problem. Tony helps you see your situation more clearly, define a course of action, and holds you accountable for carrying it out.

But I digress…

One of the the actions I committed to was to read a particular book. There are many highly regarded business titles I’ve been meaning to get to, and Tony has recommended for several years now that driving time should be used for audio books. I’ve always preferred killing trees, but I’m so energized lately that I’ve started to see my driving time as wasted. The last barrier in my head was my CD-player-less vehicle. But why have I allowed that to continue? Yesterday I took action. My 1998 Honda CR-V with $2000 worth of accident damage now sports a shiny new CD & iPod playing Alpine stereo. I get a little crazy sometimes in bookstores and spent more than I’d like to say on audio books, about half of which have been gathering dust for months in paper form at my home. It may sound frivolous to buy a title I already own, but the key part of that statement is “gathering dust for months.” Those books contain the seeds of the next Google if they trigger a powerful enough Moment of Clarity.

So how do you use your Windshield Time?