When coaching others, I use an analogy of the decks of an old galleon where the lowest deck was called an orlop while the captain spent his time up on the bridge. In truth, when charting our way through life we all spend time on every deck – sometimes doing the reassuringly mundane chores of the orlop but also visiting the bridge for those important decisions. I’m living through just such a stage – and its time to get back on the bridge!

One task is to update my computer – simple enough you say, get a new one and copy over everything from the old one – bang – off you go! But the view from the bridge is different there are strategic questions to answer – why are you keeping these gigabytes of data? Do you really need those endless drafts of in-house newsletters? Look at what you plan to do next and suddenly the vast majority of all that data you have been backing up every hour for the last six years has no value or purpose – let it go – its time to let go to create space for whatever comes next.

Now that’s why you climbed up on to the bridge…!