Posts filed under 'Improvement'
I slept very badly last night. I don’t understand why, I even went to bed earlier than usual, but when the alarm clock rang I was dead to the world. And as a result I drug through most of the day.
I wasn’t planning on stopping to fit a power nap into my schedule because my time today was rather pressed with some issues I needed to resolve on projects that are almost finished. So I decided early today I would put off my power nap today in favor of trying to wrap up some lose ends.
This afternoon I hit a wall like I haven’t hit in a long time. I was pooped and could barely keep my eyes open. Not only did I have the afternoon in front of me, I also had a 3.5 hour long night class with which to contend when the “working” day was done!
After struggling this afternoon with some problems I couldn’t find the solution to, a pending night class and running into the wall and being unable to keep my eyes open, I opted to take my power nap after all.
During my nap, I found that I almost immediately started dreaming. I must have been seriously tired to actually fall all the way asleep - that hasn’t happened before. In the dream I remember sitting down and writing on a piece of paper. I was watching from behind myself - so I didn’t see what I was writing. It was an odd perspective - to watch myself write as I tried to look over my own shoulder.
After some time passed - I don’t have any idea how long but only likely a few minutes - I got up and walked away. Once “I” was gone, I zoomed in to try to get a look at the paper. The words and drawing on the page swam and changed as I tried to look at what it said, but I noticed what appeared to be a few key words that remained steady.
Almost with a jolt I awoke. I looked at my PC and the timer said I officially had 2 minutes and 3 seconds left on my nap. What I remembered though were the key words from my dream. They gave me an idea about one of the problems I had been trying to solve before my nap - so I started fresh trying to solve my problem and within 10 minutes I had taken a new approach that I was so very close to before my nap and I had solved the issue.
I think if I hadn’t taken the time to squeeze my nap in I would still be fighting with that problem and I would be having a hard time keeping my eyes open to boot. It also provided the added benefit of allowing my brain the time it needed to digest the problems I’d been facing and provide me with a solution. Hooray for power napping!
March 1st, 2006
Zero-sum is an interesting concept. It’s the idea that you can only have gains or losses that are balanced by gains or losses by others. Poker is a zero-sum game; if you win $10, someone else has to lose $10. If three people in a five person game win $10 each, the other two people had to lose $30 between them.
Of course, this is game theory and not everything in life is a game. But using the concept of “zero-sum based thinking” can help you gain clarity and make decisions - or at least make it a little easier to decide on a decision. It’s still difficult to actually make some decisions.
It’s easy to use zero-sum based thinking too. All zero-sum based questions should begin, “Knowing what I know now, and all things being equal, would I make the same decision?”
It’s binary - yes or no - all you have to do is answer “yes” or “no” to the question. That’s the easy part. The difficult part comes when you have to actually make a decision based on the “yes” or the “no.”
Zero-sum based thinking is a good tool to use when evaluating making a change. If I were torn between staying involved in a business relationship or leaving, I might ask, “Knowing what I know now, and with all things being equal, if I could start over would I get involved with this business relationship again?”
It shouldn’t be very difficult to answer this question. If things are going well, you would likely answer “yes!” If things were going badly or you dreaded getting up in the morning and facing your business relationship you would probably whimper, “no.”
Again, it’s easy to come up with your “yes” or “no” answer. Actually making the decision to terminate your business relationship will likely be a much more difficult decision to make.
The reason this is zero-sum is because you’re going to make a decision that causes a gain for one party and a loss for another. In some cases both parties will be you, but the net result has to balance out. If you to say “yes” to one option, you have to say “no” to the opposite when making a binary decision.
I can give you a good example of this working in my own life. Some months ago I had become extremely frustrated by some circumstances at my day job. I finally asked myself, “Knowing what I know now, would I take this job offer if I had to make the decision all over again?”
In light of a question like that the answer was “yes.” In general the job was great, it was just a small, but extremely frustrating set of circumstances that had me completely boxed up and ready to walk away. I wasn’t able to make a rational decision because I was far to emotionally involved.
However once I realized that, overall, I enjoyed the job and I didn’t want to have to go find another position in another company I realized that I just needed to get a handle around the circumstances that were causing me pain. It took me some time to do that, and it involved some not-so-comfortable conversations with people regarding the cause of my frustrations, but ultimately it worked out and now I’m much happier.
And I didn’t just make a snap decision and walk off the job because of frustration. I analyzed my stay/go options and realized that I didn’t want to go. Once I had made that decision, I could focus my choices on how I could limit my frustrations and fix them.
It’s a useful tool to use when you’re struggling with a decision because zero-sum based thinking allows you to take at least 50% of your options off the table. If you’re struggling with your relationship with your spouse and ask, “Knowing what I know now, would I get involved with this relationship if I had it to do over?” will net you a very clear “yes” or “no” answer.
If the answer is “yes” then you can 100% clear out worrying about all the questions and decisions you would have to face if the answer were “no.” Instead you can focus on finding the root of your disagreements and fixing the gaps in the relationship.
The next time you’re stuck and frustrated, see if you can break your options down to a “yes” or “no” question and try applying some zero-sum based thinking to your own situation.
February 28th, 2006
I have been, at times in my life, a spectacular failure. I’ve had a business fail. I’ve had friendships fail. I’ve had ideas fail. I have had personal financial crises stemming from failure. I’ve lost friends over performance failures.
I have experienced a lot of failure in my life, and I’m willing to bet that since you don’t settle for a mediocre life you’ve had your share of failures too.
The important thing about failure is not the failure itself - we will all fail at something, sometime in our life. If you’re not failing, you’re not setting the bar very high. The important thing we learn from failure is the lesson of why we failed, and how to bounce back from failure.
There’s a saying I like; fail faster. Basically, when you undertake a new challenge, you need to get to and through your failures as quickly as possible because you’ll get them past you, and you’ll learn what didn’t work. Learning what doesn’t work can be just as important as learning what does work and you’ll only learn this lesson when you fail.
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high be bounces when he hits bottom”
–General George S. Patton
What’s important is to bounce back after you fail. It’s not just important, it’s vitally critical to future success.
Thomas Edison is a great example of someone who bounced. He tried hundreds of times to improve the light bulb and make it practical and workable. He was fond of telling people that he hadn’t failed 700 times to build a better light bulb, rather he had just found 700 ways to not build a better light bulb.
Edison bounced when a design change for a light bulb failed. And with each bounce he moved closer and closer to his ultimate success. And what did his ultimate success entail, a little company you may have heard called General Electric.
It’s the bounce that counts. So, how high do you bounce after you fail? Are you an “Edison” and keep trying over and over until you get it right or do you adopt the slogan, “If at first you do succeed, change your definition of success”?
Learning to bounce up after a defeat isn’t hard, but it’s not fun. When we try to achieve, and get met with failure, we have a tendency to want to stay down and lick our wounds. Years ago I had a bad business breakup because of my own failure to be something I didn’t want to be (a salesperson). I stayed “down” for a couple of days, licking my wounds, until I realized I was only making myself feel worse.
I was dwelling on something I couldn’t change, so I looked at my failure and tried to learn what I could from it. I realized that I didn’t enjoy being a full-time salesperson. I didn’t enjoy cold calling (and that’s putting it mildly - I hated it). I was able to evaluate my situation and then make an intelligent decision to move my life in a direction that I would enjoy much more.
That bounce landed me at my now-present position; in a job I love, working for a great company. It also afforded me the ability to create this web site, not because I have a great insight to life and success, but because I’ve been at the bottom and had to crawl back up.
I bounced.
And throughout my life I’ve bounced. As I said before, I’ve suffered failed businesses, failed personal finances, failed relationships - all standard fare for someone with an entrepreneurial streak.
Do you bounce?
Do you take the time to evaluate your failures to see what you can learn? Every failure is really just a teacher in disguise. The trick is to get past the pain of failure that you’re feeling and uncover the lesson and learn from the “teacher” that’s hidden. Don’t just bury your failures and move forward like they never happened, take the time to really evaluate what led to them. You can only really learn from a failure when you take the time to dissect the failure and understand it.
And this process can take time. When one of my businesses failed, I didn’t admit the real reasons of why it failed for a long time. It took me years to really be able to look back and realize and understand all of the minuscule bad decisions that added up to the colossal failure.
Now that I’ve been in that position, and I’ve looked back at my mistakes and my partners’ mistakes, I realize what I wouldn’t do the next time I open a business.
You can remember what to do when you fail if you know the acronym “FREE”.
FAIL
You have to fail to learn from your failures. If you’re not failing at something then you’re either a) Superman or b) not setting your bar high enough.
Go raise your bar and fail, then come back to the FREE acronym.
REVIEW
You have to dissect your failure and identify what caused you to fail. Was is self-sabotage (it happens more then you think), was it a bad market, was it bad decisions? You need to review your failure and get to the root cause(s) of your failure.
ENLIGHTEN
You know what caused you to fail, so now you need to figure out what you can learn from your failure. It’s time to enlighten yourself. I’ve learned that I detest cold calling and being a “pushy” salesman. It’s not for me. I learned this by reviewing my failure at being a “cold calling” salesman.
EMPLOY
Once you have learned from your failures, it’s time to make changes and employ those changes. I can’t do cold calls. I hate, hate, hate it. I am fine calling on a warm lead or having a sales meeting face-to-face. So I have put myself in a position where I am only really faced with having to do warm sales - that is sell my ideas to an already warm audience. I’ve decided what I wanted to change from my failure, and I’ve employed it in my life.
Now get out there, fail (faster!), learn from your failures and bounce baby…just bounce as high as you can!
February 22nd, 2006
About a week ago Brad Issac had an article up on his web site titled How to Take A Caffeine Nap - and the timing was a bit uncanny with my own experiments with napping and power napping.
So today I tried combining my power nap with a shot of caffeine.
To put things in perspective, I’m not a big consumer of caffeine. I drink the occasional diet soft drink or iced tea, and very little coffee. My drink of choice is ice-cold water.
So today when I sat down for my power nap, I preceded it with a “Biggie” diet Coke from Wendy’s, and tried to get restful and relaxed.
One thing that really struck me was how vivid the images in my mind were - even more than usual. I never felt like I was completely asleep - I teetered right on that edge between sleep and wakefulness - but the images were very vivid and “real” and the thoughts just seemed to flow and swirl around in my head.
I had a bit of grogginess when I first roused myself, but it’s been about 15 minutes since my nap and I feel completely alert and fully rested. I’m not ready to attribute the experience fully to the caffeine after just one experience, but today’s nap was certainly a different experience than my previous naps.
I think some more experimentation with caffeine and napping is required, but after just one go at it I feel like there is something to the idea. If you’re into napping, you might want to give a caffeine nap a try yourself!
February 17th, 2006
Yesterday I had the opportunity to lie down in a comfortable place while taking my nap. Let me forewarn you that unless you have immensely strong will power, this might not be the best idea.
I got comfortable, set a timer for 20 minutes and stretched out, ready to relax. Within minutes I was sound asleep and instead of power napping for 20 minutes, I slept for an hour and twenty minutes! I didn’t hear the timer I set, and finally was awake enough to look at my wrist watch and realize how long I had been out. I felt groggy and “thick headed” because it was too long of a nap.
So a word of caution if you’re power napping; don’t get to comfortable and fall completely asleep. If you’re not careful you’ll end up oversleeping and groggy at the end.
Today was much better - again I didn’t use any music of other aids to take power nap. I’ve found that after a day or two of it taking me longer to get settled down and relaxed, I so far feel like I get a deeper nap when I don’t use any music of the Pzizz software. Today I even noticed some hypnagogic images float through my mind. You can experience hypnagogic images and sounds when you’re right on the edge between being awake and being asleep. They’re sort of a dream you have while you’re awake.
I don’t really recall any specific details, but I realized that I wasn’t asleep and I was dreaming. It was a very surreal experience, not unlike a lucid dream.
I feel much more refreshed this afternoon.
So far power napping is getting two big thumbs up from me. I don’t feel like I’m quite as cranky and crabby in the afternoons because I’m more relaxed. Taking a 20 minute break in the middle of the day for “me time” has also a great stress reliever as well.
February 16th, 2006
We are creatures of habit; for many of us, consistency makes us feel all “warm-n-fuzzy” inside. And we like avoiding pain in life, so we tend to gravitate towards habits that build consistency, which makes us feel “warm-n-fuzzy.”
To put it in layman’s terms, we let our desire for comfort let us get ourselves stuck in ruts.
Five weeks ago I started attending classes in management and mathematics. I happened to sit in whatever seat was available in the first session of each class. At the second session in both classes I noticed that I, along with almost everyone else, was sitting in the same seat we had the week before.
That got me thinking about our unconscious drive for consistency and it got me paying attention to my own behaviors as well as the behaviors of everyone around me.
During the third week of classes - I broke out and sat in a radically different place during my math class. I not only changed my perspective, but I created some dissonance for everyone else! The previous two weeks I had been sitting near the front of the class, right in the middle of a group of students. The third week I choose to sit near the back of the class, in a more sparsely populated row.
Almost immediately I started getting odd looks from those around me who were not used to me being there. I also had a few students I had previously sat near at the front of the room ask me if I wanted them to save “my” seat near them.
The same thing happened in my management class. When I moved radically away from the seat I generally sat in, I got uncomfortable looks from the people I moved near and confused looks from the people I moved away from.
Neither of my classes has assigned seating, this behaviour happened organically. Students picked “their” seat during the first class, and with little exception they haven’t moved since.
I’ve noticed this behavior all my life, but my awareness of it has been more at my periphery - sort of there but not fully in focus. At multi-day conventions I’ve seen people gravitate to the same seats and the same groups. At office events cliques form and hold together at work, during company events, and even at non-company events.
I’m guilty of falling into these ruts, as I’m sure we all are.
And as I think about the people I know who don’t seem to let themselves fall into such ruts, I come up with a list of people which compares almost directly to my list of successful people I know.
My mentor and coach never sat in the same place twice, and never hesitated in introducing herself to new people. She was the very definition of not being stuck in a rut. She was also pretty darn successful.
I look at some of the high-level salespeople I know who have had impressive financial success and they’re the same way. They can reach out of their ruts and connect with new people constantly. They never sit with the same groups from one company function to another.
These people, all successful, have made a habit of not getting stuck in habits. They have identified ruts all around them and they have worked to avoid them. In some cases I’m sure it’s unconscious behavior - some people are just wired that way. But I know for myself, I have to make a conscious effort to identify my ruts and avoid them. I suspect there are a lot of people out there like this too.
How do you identify your ruts?
The first step is awareness; you have to be aware of your physical, mental and spiritual environment and your place in it. If it sounds like I talk about awareness a lot it’s because most people are not aware of their physical, mental and spiritual environment and you must gain awareness before you can begin to make meaningful changes.
So gaining awareness of yourself, your desires and planning an aware-destiny is a key in every improvement or development you’ll make in yourself.
For the next week try to be conscious of why you make the daily, routine decisions you make. Why did you go to lunch with a certain group of people? Why did you sit in your usual place at the staff meeting?
What do you do to get out of your ruts?
At home, my wife is constantly in a state of re-decoration. It seems every week there will be a new rug on the floor or different throw pillows on the couch or the curtains have been changed somehow. She desperately wants to re-paint the main rooms of the house. She does this because it keeps her perspective and her environment fresh.
What would happen if you went to lunch with a group of people you’ve never gone to lunch with? What would happen if you moved the staff meeting from the conference room to a nearby coffee shop?
Would making a change like this change your patterns? Would it force you out of your daily rut - even if only for a short while?
I argue that it will. It might be a little uncomfortable at first, but nothing truly great was ever achieved by someone stuck in their comfort zone.
I challenge you to first work to become aware of the ruts you’re in, and second to create unique and creative ways to get out of those ruts.
When you do, you’ll be in a higher state of awareness than 99% of the people you see around you who are just action out their daily routine; and you’ll be poised to improve and develop yourself at the same time!
February 16th, 2006
I’m starting my second week of taking power naps during the day. For the last two days I’ve been napping without using any music or the Pzizz software I had been using last week. I want to have a control to see if I find a certain method works better for me.
I have noticed that when I “go it alone” I have been having a much more difficult time getting settled down and actually relaxing. My office is on a busy hallway and there is a lot of foot traffic and noise outside my door all day long - it’s very noticeable even when the door is closed (apparently because my door is made of balsa wood!). Couple that with the general noise of our warehouse (it’s on the other side of my back wall) and you end up with a pretty noisy environment in which to be resting and relaxing.
But I’ve been doing my best and while I find it’s taken me long to get relaxed without headphones and Pzizz playing, I can do it. I’ve also noticed that once I do get relaxed I feel like it’s at a deeper level. By the end of my nap I’m almost completely asleep and after stretching and “waking up” I find that I have more energy.
I think it’s possible because there isn’t anything other than normal office noise that my brain is concentrating on (and it’s learned to tune that out for the most part). When I used Pzizz last week I felt like I was able to get settled down much more quickly, but when I don’t use anything I feel like my naps have been deeper and more restful.
My plan is to finish out this week with no music or Pzizz while I nap. Next week I’ll use some soothing and relaxing music from a CD I own which doesn’t promise any specific restful results. My quest is to find out the best and most restful way to power nap. After doing it for the last week, I’m confident as I start on my second week of power napping that it’s a very valuable tool. I feel much more relaxed and energetic during the day, and I feel like my stress level is lower too. I highly recommend you give it a try if you’ve been reading these articles, but haven’t yet tried it for yourself.
February 15th, 2006
Just the other day one of my colleagues came into my office and asked me, “If I know my average demand for a product, do you know how to calculate how much I’ll need to have a 95% certainty it will be in stock?”
I opened my mouth and said, “Yes, I can help you…wait…I used to know how to do a calculation like that. Let me think about it for a minute.”
Back in high school I fell in love with probability and statistics and took all the courses my school taught. That was almost twelve years ago. Since graduating, I don’t know that I’ve really had occasion to do many statistical calculations. It’s a skill I was once pretty proficient in, and now I’m so rusty and out of practice it’s embarrassing.
I didn’t use it and I lost it.
The same was true for my colleague. He was a management and quality major who had studied EOQ models and statistical analysis of inventory while earning his degree. It was also about ten years ago for him that he did all of this work and he too was rusty and out of practice with statistical analysis of inventory. Between the two of us we managed to scrape up a formula that might be right - we’re still working on it.
When we learn skills, but tuck them away and don’t practice them we eventually forget enough of the “how-to” that after a long enough time has passed we’re essentially starting from scratch. We remember learning the skill, but we often don’t remember enough details to make the skill immediately useful. This includes obscure grammar rules, science, math, chemistry, you name it. It also includes personal development ideas too.
I think it’s even more likely that most “don’t use it and lose it” when it comes to learning personal development ideas. We find an article with some great tips or we hear a speaker with amazing passion about an idea and we get charged up and excited! We stock the idea away in the back of our mind and maybe even practice it for a few days.
For a lot of us - I know for me personally - many of the great ideas I read will make it into my brain to be filed away. And when this happens I will usually “lose it” to the dustbin of my memory.
How many times have you been super charged up and excited about an idea, but were at a place where immediate action was difficult to take? I’m willing to bet a shiny quarter that you very likely didn’t take any action and you probably let the feeling and the excitement and the passion die down a little.
After a little more time went by, I’m willing to wager you didn’t take any action at all. You had this great idea or you read this amazing article or you heard this amazing speaker, but you didn’t use what you learned and you eventually lost it.
I’m not pointing fingers at you, I do it all the time myself. It’s easy to let things like this slip out of grasp unless we followup and take immediate action.
Our minds are great at consuming huge amounts of information and sorting it around into patterns. But if we don’t follow up on that information and reinforce it to ourselves our mind figures it must not really be that important and it eventually discards it.
First it moves the information from ready-access to storage a little deeper - you can usually still recall what you want, but it takes a little longer.
After the information has been in second level of storage for a while, your brain decides it needs more space - new information is coming in all the time you know - and moves it into long-term storage. You can usually recall bits and pieces of the information, but there are substantial gaps.
Finally, like old receipts, you brain decides that that long-term storage could really stand to be cleaned out to make room for new items that are ready to go into long-term storage. So it saves the file folder that says “Probability and Statistics skills” and throws everything else away. About all I remember is that I had taken classes in probability and statistics, and that I enjoyed it, but little else.
The good news is that since our brain keeps the file folders around, picking up the skills a second time is usually much simpler. Our brain already has a place to stick those skills and information and it picks up on them much more quickly. But you still have to invest the time to re-learn (or re-remember as it were) the skill.
This is why it’s so important to form good habits - to get regular reinforcement of skills that are important - and to remember that not using it is just inviting your brain to lose it.
How do you “use it” on a regular basis when it comes to self-improvement and development information? I think this will vary a little for every person, because every person is unique.
There aren’t really that many truly new ideas in the world of personal development. If you read enough books and listen to enough audio programs you’ll eventually see the patterns of truth that are in every respected self-improvement teacher’s material. What is unique is how these core truths get repackaged by different teachers. For example, you may really “click” with my presentation of an idea when you didn’t “click” with the very same idea presented a different way by Napoleon Hill.
I think that the first step to really internalizing these core truths of success, achievement and development is developing a habit of reading. There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of books and web sites out there with articles and information on goal-setting, success, achievement, wealth creation, self-improvement and development. If you read enough of these resources, you’ll begin to learn what the core truths are, and it will give you a good framework on which to hang information.
The second step is to discipline yourself to keep positive, success-building and self-improving material in front of you on a regular basis. When you discipline yourself to do this, and actually do it on a regular basis it will transform into a habit. Once you are habitually taking in positive material (both new and re-read older material) you’ll have that constant reinforcement to keep the concepts and ideas fresh in your mind. By making a commitment with myself to start this web site, I’m forced to keep such material constantly in front of myself - your method will probably be different.
Finally, you need to take action on those ideas that strike a chord within yourself. When you find a really good idea, or a unique approach to an idea that really resonates with you - find a way to implement it or take other action on it. This will cement it in your mind and taking action on it will increases the chances of you eventually turning it into a habit. When you take action on it, you begin to practice it as a part of your routine.
When you’ve made it all the way through this cycle, it’s time to start over; this will keep you in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. If you stay diligent in doing this, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about when it comes to “losing it.”
February 8th, 2006
Don’t review your goals on a regular basis? If so, don’t expect to achieve them.
Most people - once they actually get started - enjoy the process of goal setting. When done properly it’s fun, self-reinforcing, and allows you to dream big. The hardest thing is get people started actually writing their goals, but once they’ve started - watch out! - most people can fill pages and pages with goals.
And that’s super, it really is, but how many of you write out wonderfully detailed and thought out goals - goals so real you can taste and feel and see them - and then stick them in a drawer, never to see the light of day again?
Can I get a show of hands? Yep, I’m raising my hand too; I’ve been guilty of spending time on the “fun” part of goal setting (the actual “setting” of goals) and then skimping on the regular review of my goals.
And you know what? I find I don’t usually achieve those goals, or if I do it’s at a level much lower than it should be. So why do we do this to ourselves?
Our brains are amazing works of biology and engineering. When we ask our brain for an idea it’s like that take-a-number dispenser at the license branch, always ready to spit one out. Our brain is also muscle-like; the more we use it the stronger it gets. As we strengthen our imagination, we get stronger and stronger ideas.
So when we set goals our brain has a grand time. It revels in the good feelings that really visualizing our dreams, wants, and achievements create. When you visualize a goal using NLP (think, Tony Robbins) you are flooding your brain with signals that it likes. You are literally creating a reality in your brain that it doesn’t know isn’t real…yet.
But once your goals are written that sense of excitement and pleasure passes. It may last a day or a week, but eventually it passes. This is why you see 5,000 people in the gym on January 1st, but by the 7th the gym is empty again. That sense of excitement, motivation, and action has become routine and our brain is off to find something else to give it those pleasurable feelings again.
It’s difficult to keep a goal in your mind and keep it vivid enough to continually build this sense of excitement every day. This is why a written goal is so important.
You spend the time and energy creating a goal and you capture it while you’re brain is energized and excited. Once the goal is captured, there isn’t any room for improvisation when you come back to the goal at a later date. You’ve done all the hard work and now you can immediately put your brain back into that excited state by reviewing and re-visualizing your goal.
It’s this review process that keeps your brain (and yourself) stimulated and excited. It should consist of a daily review of your goals. Actually, it should be a several-times-a-day review of your goals.
Some people advocate reading your goals every morning when you get up, and again every night before you go to bed. I don’t have the discipline to do that - I’m not a morning person and by bedtime I’m ready to hit the sack. So here are some easy ways that I make sure I keep my goals available for daily review:
1) Keep your goals with you always.
One thing I find very helpful is to keep my key goals with me - I write them on a blank business card and keep it in my wallet. I see them as I put cash or receipts in my wallet - usually at least two or three times a day. The trick here is not to hide the card down in a credit-card slot - make it so you can’t miss it when you’re in the main part of your wallet.
2) Keep your goals present in your environment.
I have a cork-board that - when I’m sitting at my desk - fills my field of vision when I look to the right. I keep a single 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper with my goals tacked up so it’s the first thing I see on the board. I find that I look at this all day long.
3) Keep your goals present where you can’t possibly miss them during the course of a day.
I’ve also been known to write my goals on “Post-It” notes and stick them to the bathroom mirror. I see them every morning when I get ready for the day and every night when I get ready for bed. I’ve found that putting material goals on the bathroom mirror is helpful; I write a blurb on a “Post-It” note and clip a small picture from a catalog or magazine and add it. The image is usually more powerful than the words when I’m getting ready for work - and I can visualize my goals while relaxing in a hot shower. Now that’s a powerful way to reinforce your goals, the pleasure of a hot shower beating down on your while you get yourself excited and motivated by mentally reviewing and re-visualizing your goals!
4) Keep reminders in interesting and unusual places to shake up your patterns.
Finally I have written at the top of my white-board on my office at work; “Have you reviewed your goals today?” in bright, blue marker. Every time I look up to see who has come into my office I see my white-board. Every time I look to the left I see it. I’ve got myself covered if I look to the left or to the right!
As you begin to regularly review your goals a curious thing will start to happen; your perspective of your goals and yourself will change. You’ll start to notice that working on your goals just seems to happen; you find time to squeeze in a little more effort here and there.
It isn’t magic, it’s the power of you. You’ve given a command to your brain, you’ve made it “real” as far as your brain knows, and you’re regularly reviewing your goal. Your brain can’t help but make progress on your goal, it’s what it does.
As you start to achieve your goals and set new goals, you’ll naturally start to raise the bar on your new goals. You will experience growth!
After you go through this cycle a few times, the regular review of your goals will start to become a habit and it will be easier to remember to do (and actually do). As you grow and develop, you’ll find that your goal setting and goal review process becomes a feedback loop. This feedback loop creates even more growth and development.
Your growth and potential are only limited by yourself and your imagination…and the constant review of your goals that brings you constant growth of yourself!
January 25th, 2006
There is a quote I like that says, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
I often find myself falling into the trap of trying to make a plan “perfect,” often when it’s good enough. In the pursuit of perfection tomorrow, it’s easy to miss out on opportunities available today.
I am a plan maker. I love to script out a project, layout action items and milestones, and create exquisite plans that exist on neatly hand-written pages. For me the planning process and working for perfection it seductive.
And while I’m busy chasing the beast named “perfection,” my contemporaries that know “good” is what is needed are moving ahead of me.
Do you let your desire for perfection create immobility in your life? Do you wonder why you can never seem to get a thing “perfect” or why you’re never 100% happy with a project? If so, you might also be suffering from the affliction that is perfectionism.
I’m going to tell you why you should strive to be merely “good” instead.
As a perfectionist, let me first tell you that I sympathize with the pain you’ll feel when you make sure your work is “good” and not “perfect.” It’s tough to let go and cast off the shackles of being a perfectionist.
But here’s something you should know; while you’re trying to be perfect, your competition is busy beating you to market with products and services that are good enough (sometimes even great), but never perfect.
Something that I’ve come to learn is that no matter how many hours I pour into my proposals, no matter how many expertly crafted charts I include, no matter how many perfectly worded and phrased arguments I make, no matter how many pages I write to show mastery of my subject - others very rarely care beyond what information is relevant to them. Decisions will likely come down to a face-to-face meeting anyway.
About six months ago I crafted a proposal for a new technical service I believed my company could employ to great benefit. The R.O.I. and cash analysis was a little tricky to understand, so I wanted to make sure the proposal was perfect to help our senior executive team understand all the ways the project could benefit the company. I spent two weeks writing the proposal and a third week editing and re-writing.
I left copies with the relevant members of our senior management team and I waited anxiously for their reply. After a month ticked by with no reply, I started talking to the senior executives, asking them what they thought of the proposal.
Several were able to poke holes in my “perfect” plan that they wanted to see addressed, and our key decisions makers were far to busy to do more than skim over my proposal. They wanted a sit-down meeting anyway.
When I sat down with our key senior executives and outlined my thoughts - a process that was far from “perfect” and took only 30 minutes - they said, “Why are we sitting here talking? Let’s do it!”
In my pursuit of perfection I let two months slip past me with no action that benefited the company taking place on this project. I had planned myself to death!
When a recent project appeared on my radar screen, I typed up an executive summary and passed it around with a hand-written post-it note that read, “I think we should sit down and talk about this.” I was able to get that project reviewed and approved in a week.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t create plans and you shouldn’t do things consciously and with care - you should. I’m saying you should know that a mediocre plan with action taken will beat a perfect plan every time, because there is no such thing as a perfect plan.
So how much is too much planning? That is a tricky thing to define. You want a good plan - even a great plan - without tipping over that edge towards trying to create a perfect plan. For me, there are a few tell-tale signs I’m slipping into my perfectionist habits - I suspect some will ring true for you too, and that you’ll have your own signs to add. I now try to notice when I’m acting on these behaviours and correct myself:
1) I can’t get something “just right.”
Usually I will be stuck on an aspect of something and I’ll revise it and not be happy; I’ll revise it again and not be happy. If I don’t notice myself doing this, I’ll keep doing it over and over again. When I do catch myself doing this, I put that work away for a few hours or a few days and I’ll come back to it once. If I still can’t get it right, it’s very likely “good enough.”
2) I’m getting long winded.
I never seem to have a problem filling pages and pages when I write a proposal. I am a very detail oriented person, and I have a tendency to want to fill my proposals with details. I try to employ what I call the page-to-title ratio; I limit the number of pages in my proposals to the same number of letters in an executive’s title (CEO, CFO, etc.).
This helps me force myself to be succinct, plus it keeps our senior executives happy because they are already inundated with informaiton. I’ve fount nothing makes a CFO crankier than handing them a thirty-page proposal. If he wants more detail, he’ll ask for it.
3) I lose sight of why I’m working on something.
If after working for a period of time I realize that I’ve lost sight of the end goal or I’ve lost perspective on why I’m working on something, then I’ve probably let myself get buried trying to make it “perfect.” When this happens it’s usually a good indicator that my perfectionism is starting to emerge. Always keep your end goal in mind!
With all I’ve said about the evils of perfectionism, is there any place for it? I think there is, but only when you (and you alone) control and dictate the results. If I’m trying to photograph a flower, I may spend hours getting the image I create to be a perfect match to the image in my mind. I don’t depend on photography to pay my bills, I’m creating my own vision of perfection for myself.
For the vast majority of the things you do, you’ll find that “good” or “great” is far better than “perfect.” You can take action on a good plan today. You can take action on a great plan today. If you look for a perfect plan, you’ll always be waiting to take action.
January 21st, 2006
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