Andy Inman

Andy Inman Tells The Story Of A Young Man Who Was Transformed By Mentoring

hrs, having achieved little. He would repeat the routine daily, to the extent that he had lost track of the days and was growing despondent with “life going nowhere” and achieving little of substance each day.

The issue with a lifetime is that it can pass at such a gentle rate that we often fail to notice it is passing. But it’s the one certainty in life and pass it surely does!

Retiring from a 30-year career in the military I had been well trained in making good use of time! From the very early days at Sandhurst getting out of bed at 04.30 hrs to make my bed, to more recent needs to rapidly come up with a workable plan on live operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, I knew that time can work for you as easily as it can work against you.

Now that I own a small company that delivers military training to overseas customers, I have been able to take a huge amount of the skills acquired in that career and use them in a new and closely aligned environment. But having benefited enormously from mentoring help before I started my career and knowing what a huge difference it made for my life, I was delighted to learn of the work done by Finito. It resonated with me, and I realised that my hardearned skills could be beneficial to an entirely different set of people.

Having already mentored a number of the Finito students, the Covid-19 lockdown period came with its own challenges! One of my students, let's call him Simon, having been furloughed from his job, had altered his daily routine to such an extent that he was getting up in the early afternoon to play games online, message mates and eventually get to sleep at around 05.00

I had already discussed with a number of my students a technique taught by the military to deal with isolation and imprisonment and let’s face it Covid-19 lockdown was that for many. By building structure to a day and including four simple elements we can ensure we feed the mind, body and soul and use the time that is forced upon us usefully. Simon and I discussed a way to bring his body clock more in line with the outside world. By sleeping through the morning he was experiencing disturbed sleep because of the noise going on outside, and so over the next several days via short WhatsApp discussions we were able to get Simon to a point where he was getting up at 08.30 and going to bed at 11.00 pm, a significant improvement on where he had been!

With the first step working we went on to build the four elements of his routine that would help him add value to each passing day. We came to an agreement that Simon would spend at least 45 minutes per day doing each of the following;

Skill building

By finding something that Simon was interested in learning he could exercise his brain. He eventually went for an app that taught him French, a subject he had learnt at school but hadn’t worked on for years. As with all of the elements it was vital that this was not a chore but something he would enjoy and saw the point in doing. Plans to holiday in France were all the reason he needed to make it work.

Creativity

An element of each day that gets the creative juices flowing exercises a different part of the brain, and while we aren’t all budding poets or painters there are countless ways in which creativity can be expressed. Simon was like me, in that attempts at anything we would call art didn’t sit easily with him, he was not keen to display his writing skills either, so we settled on cookery. While not the first thing that would spring to mind when looking for a way to express creativity, by coming up with recipes and cooking some meals he was able to complete this element of the routine as well as help his parents by taking on the chore of feeding the family in the evening. He did admit that some of his creations were less successful than others, but using a variety of resources he became quite adept at creating dinner for the three of them.

Physical activity

With both sides of the brain busy with the above two tasks, the third element was to exercise the body. This could have ranged from daily yoga to a brisk stroll, but Simon opted for taking the dog for a run, again ticking off a household task while completing the activity.

Productivity

The final piece of the daily routine was to “achieve” something, not necessarily completing it in a day, but at least spending the allotted time working towards the completion of a project, before moving onto a new one. Once again the breadth and range of possibilities in this element were huge, Simon started off with reorganising his wardrobe and eventually went on to painting a wall and digging a new vegetable bed in his parent’s garden. This created valuable self-esteem, and a sense of accomplishment.

Simon with his delightful candour and open honesty would report via short WhatsApp chats every other day between our regular mentoring chats on how he was doing. Initially he was only able to weave a couple of the elements into each day, but over the following fortnight he got used to ticking off all four, with the weekends being days where he could drop the routine entirely if he wished.

Remember this is a young man who a couple of weeks before had not been getting out of bed until after lunchtime. I worked for a few weeks more before moving Simon onto another Finito Mentor who had significant experience in the industry where he wanted to work.