I forget where I saw this or who said it, but check this out:
“The more abstract the offer, the more insincere the person. People who say "call me if you need anything" or something vague are trying to get rid of you. Those who offer something concrete, such as "call me if you need tickets for Saturday's," are genuinely trying to help.”
So, how can I help?
They say “No news is good news,” but did you know that good news is also good news? I’ll take the update if I can get one and I always appreciate hearing about how well things are going.
Nobody knows the secret to success, but I know the secret to failure. It’s trying to please everybody. You can’t do everything even if you want to. Become an expert at one or two things and everything else can be a hobby.
If you want people to pick up the phone, be easy to say goodbye to. If you want people to respond to your emails, be prompt and don’t open obligations that they will need to be annoyed by.
Your brain is never so brilliant as when you leave it alone and don’t tell it what to do. Think about a problem–but only long enough to plant a seed in your mind. Then go for a long walk or take a long shower. You’ll figure out the rest.
It’s easy enough to be pleasant when life sings by like a song. But the man worthwhile is the man who can smile when everything goes bad and wrong.
Robinson Jeffers wrote a poem entitled, “Wise Men in Their Bad Hours” and the final stanza goes like this:
The mountains are dead stone, the people
Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness,
The mountains are not softened nor troubled
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.
That’s right. The mountains do their duty and stand. They are totally unbothered by the critic. So, I believe, is a great man. Who goes about his business, not for influence or gain, but rather for the purity of doing good work.
When you do what you do for a reason deeper than how people view you, you gain an invincibility to the criticisms of those who would cast stones.
This morning you said you’d get it done before the afternoon. Then you said you’d get it done before you went to bed. Yesterday you said you’d get it done tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s here and you’re ready to push it off again.
How many days can something live on my to-do list without actually getting done?
For years, I’ve assumed that my problems getting the things that I need to get done stems from a problem of procrastination.
Lately, however, I think I cripple myself with a kind of content consumption obsession. Well, that and multi-tasking.
When it comes to multi-tasking, I know that I have a hard time just committing an hour to one specific thing. I always believe deep down inside that I can squeeze a little extra in everywhere. More often than not, this leads me to get much less done than if I had simply done one thing at a time.
When it comes to content consumption, I know that I am much, much more productive when I sit quietly and work. Instead, I reach for a podcast, a YouTube video, a pen in my hand, and something always lingering in the background just ensuring that I’m never quite 100% focused.
These two problems consistently have me leaving things on my to-do list that should have been done right away. Right at this moment I have two tasks that have been on my to-do list since November 2nd. Each task will take about 30 minutes and there is absolutely no reason or excuse for them to still be hanging around.
Some days I feel like I understand myself and other days I am sure I make no sense at all.
(Also, I’m in a hurry right now so I am not proofreading this blog post. There’s my built-in excuse for anything that doesn’t make sense.)
When I take 15 minutes at the beginning of the day, it saves me from hours of directionless wandering through work. Planned days are better days.
When you’re trying to make a point or defend your position and you find yourself complaining, blaming, or explaining, you’re losing ground–and probably the argument.
When you remain calm, display how you offer value, and confidently display your understanding, you’re winning.
Blaming and complaining almost always signal that something isn’t right. Understanding and confidence often signal that you’re headed in the right direction.
First, we procrastinate in the morning because we can get it done in the afternoon.
Then we procrastinate in the afternoon because we’re sure we’ll get it done in the evening.
But then we procrastinate in the evening because we can do it late at night or tomorrow morning.
And as you know, the next morning we simply restart the cycle.
Then the deadline looms, and we get stressed out, overworked, and irritated. We suffer the pain of regret that we didn’t just invest a few hours each day on the project. We could have had it done with just a little bit of work done each day.
Procrastination is stupid because we convince ourselves that the future us will feel different about the work than we do right now. The work never gets easier until we start doing it. Suffer the pain of working, or the pain of regret when you still have to do the work, but without the time to do it well or at a relaxed pace.
Don’t let the smoke screens distract you. The opportunist will try to blind you and confuse you into making a decision quickly or without having your senses about yourself.
The opportunist is the guy who hands out baloney disguised as food for thought. He has confidence, but not competence.
Get up early and get started fast. I’ve never been much for getting up early because getting up early is no better than just getting your hours of effective work in each day–whether that is early or late.
However, if we get started first, we don’t have to run the fastest to win the race. Getting started first establishes you as competent, confident, and someone who others can rely on. Getting started first is valuable for this reason alone.
The way people perceive you is more important than nearly anything else about your relationship with customers, clients, and co-workers.
It’s always better to worry more about the direction you’re headed rather than how fast you’re moving. Moving heavy loads means moving slowly. Just because you don’t think you’re moving fast doesn’t mean you aren’t getting things done.
Focus on where you’re headed, not how fast you’re getting there. Maybe you are moving mountains, but moving slowly.
To the extent that animals have the ability to grow and learn as a species, they are limited to what instinct teaches them and what their experience teaches them. The problem with learning by experience is that some experience leads to death. This is a bit of a problem because either that animal or one of his animal friends must die so that he can learn the right thing to do.
Humans have an advantage. They can contend on the battlefield of ideas.
Ideas can go forth and die so that a human doesn’t have to. We must argue and debate and encourage and allow our ideas to be attacked from all angles.
This is, in a sense, trying to kill our idea. If the idea survives, it’s probably pretty good. If it dies, then we can learn–in a pretty harmless way–that the idea wasn’t quite as good as we thought.
Let ideas die so that not as many people die. Never shy away from sharing your ideas. And allow your ideas to be attacked.
Be careful that you aren’t so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better. We convince ourselves that we know best and we’re dead sure of what we want. This close-mindedness can shut down the exploration and openness in negotiations or discussions that often reveal an even better move.
The advice given to all beginners in chess to find a good move first, and then look for an even better move, holds true in all facets of life.
Years ago Seth Godin wrote a blog post about the biggest risk we can take is to avoid taking risks. Not all of us have money that we are willing to risk in business ventures. But all of us have time, effort, and reputation that we can risk.
If you spend your time on something. If you apply yourself with real effort. If you become willing to “put yourself out there” and have your family and friends mock you, you can do just about anything that your money investment could do.
Take the risks that you can take. Take all the smart risks that you can take and you won’t regret it.
Strangers can wash the car, but nobody washes it like the owner. Put your skin in the game and take ownership of every single project you work on. Own that opinion. Own the room. Own your decisions. Own your responsibilities.
When you take ownership, you do better work and you gain the respect of others for having courage.
I never give up. Even when I should give up I don’t give up. I’ve been writing these blog posts since the end of 2018 and a couple of busy months that break my day-to-day writing rhythm will not deter me. If anything it’s made me realize how much I enjoy taking a few moments to scratch out something each day on this blog.
I miss it. I want to spend more time crafting and perfecting each blog post.
So here we are kicking off Monday with a reminder to myself to write more and enjoy the process of writing.
I heard a quote today, “Nobody washes the car like the owner.” Find a way to take ownership and put your skin in the game and you’ll almost always do a better job.