The New Year: Prospects, Resolutions and Pain

As I write this article, gingerly using just one hand, my body is reeling from yesterday’s shock visit to the gym. The first session of 2016 (after a year’s hiatus mind you) has left me with various aches and pains that I would rather not have. Muscles I had forgotten existed are reminding me that they did not like being woken from their sedentary slumber. Combined with this is the inability to supplement my deadened energy levels with caffeine as I am on a detox program for the start of the year. As you can tell I am in the grip of New Year’s Resolution fever. This malady sees individuals attempting superhuman feats of denial and strength at the start of a year until the pain sets in and reminds them why they have failed to attempt this is the past.

Firstly I am not a resolution person; I prefer setting goals. Common resolutions are often set in the negative (quit, lose, give up are all negative ideas) and can be temporary (diets are short-term). Goals on the other hand are more positive and have a sense of achievement to them. Regardless of what you call your New Year decisions sooner or later a degree of pain is going to set in. Exercise requires effort. Losing weight requires sacrificing food. Writing daily requires cutting something else out to make the time for it. Bigger goals, like starting a business that aims to break even in Year 1, require even more effort. At the point of pain is where most resolutions fail. They fail because you can no longer rationalise that they are worth it, instead the effort outweighs the benefit and you throw in the towel.

Today I want to touch on a massive mental shift that can get you to push past the pain. Everything we do can be seen on either a ‘Have-to’ or a ‘Want-to’ mentality (except dying-that is a guaranteed ‘Have-to’). When faced with a task or a goal examine your speech. It will take one of two forms. Either ‘I have to do this...’ or ‘I want to do this...’. Even if you do not verbalise them the rest of the sentence in your mind is ‘or this or that will happen’. I can look at gym, for example, as ‘I have to exercise to lose weight or else I will stay fat and maybe die early.’ The flip side is ‘I want to exercise because I will be fitter, trimmer and have a great quality of life’.

The ‘have-to’ is followed by a negative consequence and is an attempt to motivate yourself out of fear. Fear is a poor motivator. Think back for a minute on times that you have had to do something. How well did you perform? Yes, you may have achieved the goal but you would have done the bare minimum required to do it. A ‘have-to’ is like a massive stick beating you from behind as you try climb a hill. You spend your life running just ahead of the pain of failure. Then when you hit the real pain-the effort required to succeed-you make a choice between the pain of the effort and the pain of the ‘or else’. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, the ‘or else’ just seems the less painful option.

‘Want-to’ has a positive consequence, a desired outcome. Rather than try pushing you from behind, the ‘want-to’ leads from the front and draws you to the goal. The pain of failure is so far behind you that when you hit the effort you push through keeping your eye fixed on the prize ahead of you.

Set some bold and realistic goals this year. Then make your goals into ‘want-to’. Alongside each goal set the positive benefits of achieving each one; how you feel, what you will have, what will have been achieved, the benefit to others. The brighter and bigger you can make this picture the more likely it will come to pass.

As a side note, if you are trying to get people to do something (like pay you) then incentivise it for them rather than just penalise it.

Now where did I put my gym bag? It is time for the second session.

The Art of Giving: The Practice in Business and Beyond

I have just closed my internet browser after an expansive and varied trawl through the web that may have seriously dented my data cap. What was I looking for-well almost anything really. It is Christmas time and with the holiday comes the expectation of gifts. There is this list of people that I want to give presents to so I was meandering through websites looking for things that may do. Amazon, ThinkGeek, ModCloth and other shopping sites are filled with more ideas that I could imagine-it opens your eyes to what is truly out there outside of little ol’ Zimbabwe. There are still two weeks to go in The Giving Challenge, the dare to give something away each day until Christmas-mine this last week included giving to a charity benefit for which I got rewarded with an electronic, virtual pet (at least I don’t have to clean up after it).

Gift giving is an art. It is easy to dash into a store late on Christmas Eve and load your trolley up with a bunch of chocolates and cheap bottles of wine that can be bundled into generic gifts for every member of the family. Real gift giving on the other hand takes time and effort, thought and planning; sounds a lot like running a business.

A gift communicates something. It communicates whether or not you really know the person you are giving the gift to. It communicates whether or not you have heard their needs-even if those needs are unspoken. A gift communicates that you may actually care. Wow would you look at that list of things a gift does- it looks rather like the same list one would attach to a great product that you are creating for your customers. Thinking of your product as a gift to your clients alters the way you do about creating it. A truly great product gives far more than any financial benefit that you may receive in exchange for it. Your product communicates something to its users-it is up to you to make sure that it communicates what you want it to say.

So how can you go about getting that perfect gift for someone or creating a phenomenal product?

Listen to people; and not just with your ears. Take in their words, observe the behaviour, look for where they are struggling. The grandmother who is telling you she needs nothing but a hug for Christmas while she struggles to open a tin of beans with a blunt can opener and arthritic hands really could do with a new tin opener (or a new set of hands but I understand that those are a little harder to come by). Look for the problems people are facing-a great product solves a problem or meets a need.

One of the greatest needs people have is time. It is a finite commodity and saving someone time opens them up to doing so much more. That is why the smart phone became so pervasive so quickly-it saved time (and space in your pocket) as you could do multiple things from almost any location. Time-saving devices are the perfect gift for the person who ‘has everything’.

I mentioned ModCloth at the beginning of the article as one of the sites I visited. They are a ladies fashion online store and when they started they were a game changer in the fashion world. The reason was they started a client-centric program to get feedback from their customers and relayed this on to design companies. This was the total opposite for an industry where fashion was a top down funnel (i.e. a large firm would decide what it would sell to its clients and the customers would be stuck with that range for the year). Taking time to be client oriented flies in the face of the ‘take-what-we-offer’ mentality that pervades many large scale corporations.

Gift giving should be an experience. We wrap presents to see people get the pleasure and surprise of ripping off the paper on Christmas Day to see what is underneath. We create an elaborate hoax around the figure of Santa Claus complete with milk and cookies laid out the night before to heighten the wonder and emotion for our children. Utilising your product, however mundane it appears, should have an experience attached. Maybe it is the ease of using the spare part you manufacture, or knowing that the plastic ware you sell will not crack in the sun. There is a story attached to your business-work on telling it well this festive season. And practice the art of giving great gifts-so few people do it that if you do then it will make you stand out even more.

The Myth of Working Smart

It is amazing how sometimes a little phrase can sneak into your mind, take root there and grow in completely the wrong direction and meaning. One of those mantras is ‘Work Smart not Hard’. The problem with the expression is that it is easy to look at it as an ‘either-or’ option as if you are faced with making a choice between working hard and working smart. Somehow people equate working smart with not working much at all which is an excuse for sheer laziness. You still have to work hard; you just work better at it.

The primary difference between just working hard and working smart is productivity. It is easy to work hard and produce nothing concrete at the end of the day. The aim of what you do is to have something that you can ship at the end of it; a product delivered, a goal achieved. Smart workers ship and ship fast because they work hard.

Do not mistake being busy for working hard. I can be busy on Facebook, Twitter and every other social media platform I can think of. I can be busy in meetings that do not really require my presence or input. I can be busy on the fluff of the day that actually does not matter. Let us be honest with ourselves we can all think of an occasion where we have avoided a task and managed to get ‘busy’ doing other stuff in order to evade the actual task.

In order to work smart you need to work for a reason with a clear vision and objectives. Productivity is enhanced by having small ‘victories’ during the day. This is one reason why a daily ‘to-do’ list is an effective tool to generating positive momentum. Each item ticked off the list creates a small but powerful emotion of achievement inside you which fuels the drive to do more.

Declutter your life, delegate tasks, and outsource that which others can do better. Get rid of the fluff that hinders your productivity. Unless your role is to monitor the social network no Facebook during work. Aim for high impact tasks, those which have the biggest effect on what you do. As a writer this means I have to write, not spend hours answering emails. It does not mean I will never answer emails, just that I will set the task of writing a priority. Delegating does not mean that you do less work; it merely allows you to do more of the work that matters.

Structure your life and business to maintain flow. One way for this is to set aside time that is uninterruptable for key tasks. No phone calls, no emails, no visitors, just you and your work.

Work when most effective for you to do so. A friend of mine wrote a book by setting aside a minimum of twenty minutes dedicated writing every night before bed regardless of how the day had been. Some days he wrote more than others, some nights he would take longer, but he was diligent at doing the hard work of writing. The project took him 18 months, but he shipped.

Set your iteration cycles and feedback loops correctly. Do not double your workload by stupidly asking for opinion at the wrong point that sends you back to the drawing board for unnecessary changes. Get the key deliverable points from the person who signs off on the project before you start. Then when you need that final approval point out exactly how you have fulfilled what they asked for. Get mass opinion early in the project while you are still brainstorming, then trim the number of voices down to a few key, select individuals that matter and have solid wisdom.

One of the questions people ask of hard workers is ‘How do you get balance in your life?’ Usually this refers to keeping time for family, friends and vacations as well as managing a crazy 18 hour a day schedule during a start-up. Firstly I am not sure that balanced people change the world. Passion and unrelenting drive to a goal are necessary to getting there. There are phases in life when balance is just not realistic. Studying for a degree? Then believe me come exam time balance goes out the window temporarily. Remember that life is not an ‘either-or’ scenario but a ‘both-and’ and set the goals for your family as strongly as you set the goals for your work and then you will not treat them as fluff.

Getting the hard work done, paying the price, allows for success. Do not be afraid of putting your hand to the ploughshare in order to reap results later. Perhaps the mantra should read ‘Work Smart and Hard’.

Doing More in Order Do Do Less

Morning to all , I am of course making the possibly false assumption you are reading this in the morning.
I want you to take part in yet another challenge. Put down the paper and stare at the watch or cellphone for an entire minute.
Do not do anything during this minute, except maybe sip coffee. After a minute continue reading. Go!
Would you look at that, I got you to spend an entire minute doing nothing. I just made you spend a precious minute of your life on a random and futile task.
The sense of urgency associated with time usage is so deeply engrained in us that you are probably experiencing a mini-apoplectic fit at the fact that I made you “lose” a minute of your time. Some of you will probably never forget this lesson. That is probably worth the minute you spent doing nothing.
We spend our lives trying to fill our time with meaningful activities. We start each day with a precious 24 hours and try to cram as much into it as possible.
We are taught that you can never recover time once you have lost it, that time is money or time is important. Above all, we are told to manage time wisely.
You cannot manage time. Think about it; you cannot tell it to slow down or speed up, you cannot tell it what to do neither can you place it somewhere else.
Time is the immutable trundle of seconds flowing past you into the waste basket of “then”. You cannot waste time either, you merely waste yourself.
What we term as “wasting time” is merely our failure to achieve more or to be better people during our lives. You cannot manage time. You can only manage yourself.
Today, I would like to share with you two tricks to enhancing self-management. I learnt these from Todd Henry’s book ‘‘Accidental Creative” and have found that when I engage in both regularly I am much more relaxed and effective.
Both come out of the fact that due to our pre-conceived training on time usage we feel the need to fill every available moment with productivity.
We cram our time with tasks and projects. Most of these are aimed at fulfilling some deadline at work or the appearance of being busy (checking emails every 10 minutes falls under this category).
We get to the end of a day with checklists that are incomplete, actions that will occur again tomorrow and a false satisfaction that comes from being busy.
Busy does not mean productive, nor does it mean money.
What I am sharing with you will not make you less busy, but it may make you more productive. A warning though, these are not quick fixes. They will not work unless routinely applied. The first thing is set time aside each week to think. Diarise it, stick to it and use this time to be creative and to think about solutions to problems.
This is not a time to plan, do that elsewhere. This is thinking time not design time. Take a problem or problems and think about creative solutions. One way to look at this is to outline the current problem, describe it. Then flip it and describe what it would look or feel like if it were not there or solved. Then let your mind churn through creative and innovative solutions.
For example, how can a supermarket improve the checkout experience of its clients? What does the presence experience look like bored customers, long queues, tellers looking sour, card machines often offline.
What would it look like if solved: smiling customers leaving the shop feeling happy, short queues with quick turnaround?
Solutions, there are hundreds, give away random prizes at the till, put up televisions with fun stuff to watch, jazz up the waiting zone with lights on the floor that change colour when you walk over them, hire a random celebrity to come chat to customers for the day, have a trolley queue race. Creative time is important.
We all know this. How many of you believe that ideas are key to your business’ survival? So why aren’t you taking the time to generate them not as a group either.
You need your own thinking time not a company brainstorming session. The second thing is to do something for yourself. I’m not talking about treating yourself to a shopping spree.
Take up a hobby or activity that requires you to be creative, not for anyone else’s satisfaction but yourself. Find something you can lose yourself in for hours.
I said earlier that most of our tasks are aimed at fulfilling some deadline at work. They are aimed at fulfilling something external to us, for an organisation, company or client. Pick something you can enjoy for you. Now it needs to involve creativity or something challenging, preferably something using your hands.
Watching television does not count. Take up writing, art, pottery, do jigsaw puzzles, take dance lessons, woodwork, gardening, learn to code a computer game.
There is an endless list. Why is this important?
Firstly, it makes you value time spent on you. It also allows your brain to meander and flow while you engage in something with no deadlines and no external pressures. It helps to foster and stimulate creativity.
I know that I seem to be asking you to do more in order to do less, but if you can engage in these two activities on a regular (think weekly) basis you will find that your creativity and idea generation is enhanced, your management of yourself will improve, you will be more effective and more fulfilled.