You WISH You Were A Honda Motor

May 18, 2012 By Shanna Mann 2 Comments

It’s become a major ambition in the personal dev world to relentlessly optimize every aspect of your life. It’s not enough to optimize your business, your finances, your exercise regime, but you should also optimize your meals, your recreation, and your sleep.

Man is not a Honda Engine

I know it goes against the entire culture of success, but a person is not really at their best when they’re operating at peak capacity. It’s just unsustainable.

But we tend to think for maximum effectiveness, we need to fully exploit every moment of our day. That’s complete bullshit. (I should do a list post on all the things that are bullshit. What do you think?)

You’re Not Even THAT Efficient

TeamHondaRacingNSX 300x183 You WISH You Were A Honda Motor

Since we like to compare ourselves to machines, let’s take one we’re all familiar with: a car motor. On your dashboard it shows you the RPM gauge. On the one side, usually about five thousand RPM and up, you’ve got a red band. You know, of course, that if you run the motor up there, it’s not going to last very long.

But based on the logic by which we run our bodies, you’d think the motor would run about 4,000 rpm. You know, not redlining it, but pushing it about as far as you can without causing permanent damage.

But that’s not how an engine works. In fact, if you pay attention, it rarely hits four thousand, and when it does, it’s only for a short burst before it chooses a better gear and it’s back down at the sensible, efficient 2,500 rpm. Even at 70mph.

Over-optimizing Leads to Burn-Out

I’ve lived the optimized life. I was a paragon of efficiency; no wasted motion, no excess energy spent. I ate, slept, and breathed efficiency. It’s no way to live. And even worse, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. You work so damn hard that you need a break, so you work even harder to get ahead – but when you work even harder, you start redlining– and you know what happens next.

It’s a hell of a struggle to build white space into your life and I can’t give you any specific guidance how.

All I can tell you is, you’re not a Honda motor.

And even Honda motors don’t work as hard as you do.

***

Your Turn

How do you over-optimize? How did you (or do you plan to) stop?

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, How-to's For Life, Practical Philosophy

It’s Not You, It’s Me: Breaking Up With Non-Priorities.

May 14, 2012 By Shanna Mann 10 Comments

It’s taken me a long time to admit that every thing I do necessitates me saying no to a dozen other things. It’s just not a priority. It’s not that it isn’t cool, fun, or worthwhile, it’s just that I have a limited amount of attention, and it can’t go there. And yet, it’s so seductive to think that if I could just do things more efficiently, be better organized, I could shoehorn it all in.

Your Energy is More Precious Than Diamonds

whitespace by Jeff Heaton

Time and again, I’ve found that I’m most productive, relaxed and happy if I have a lot of unscheduled, unearmarked time in my day. But keeping that time footloose and fancy free? It requires constant vigilance. I have to be in touch with more than what I want to do…. I have to be in touch with what I’m willing to let go of in order to acheive what I want the most.

The Importance of White Space

White space is a design term for the empty space in a layout. It’s absolutely crucial, because the more you add, the less enjoyable the overall effect is– in fact, the white space makes the important stuff more impactful.

And so it is with white space in your life. The more you take on the “hey, why not?” stuff, the more it detracts, not only from your priorities, but from the important stuff in your life.

Everyone Will Try to Tell You What’s Important

It’s so important to figure out what YOU can’t live without, because unless you’re vigilant, you’ll end up adding all sorts of stuff that only seemed important. And the reason it seemed important is that it’s important to someone else, and they’re trying to impress its importance upon you. Look up the old fashioned definition of ‘impress‘. That’s not something you want to have happen to you.

I like having long conversations with friends, cooking good meals, leisurely drives to nearby towns just to have good coffee in a quirky atmosphere. I like to teach, and I like to learn from people. I like to help people. I like to read, do yoga, garden, and write. I have three businesses to run, and to top it all off, I like to take road trips.

If I’m not careful, every waking minute will fill with a range of want-tos. So many that it will obsure the really important ones.

It’s Time To Make A Clean Break.

You know how, when you clean your desk, the first thin you do is take everything off of it, and then only put back the things you need?

InsideInside Tumblelog1 232x300 Its Not You, Its Me: Breaking Up With Non Priorities.

What happens when you don't use white space

Same thing. Imagine a wide-open schedule. Then, put in only the things you can’t live without. Your work, since you need to pay the bills. But not more than what you need to pay the bills. Family probably is next on the list. Then maybe one or two things you’re really passionate about. These are the things that if you didn’t do them several times a week your life would start to really suck.

Everything else? Brunches with the girls, spin class, art gallerys, all that sort of thing: That’s garnish. You get the most impact from the most sparing use of it.

So, with that list, start scaling back. Which, for most people is way, way back. People brag about how busy they are, and that’s just weird. It’s like a design that has way too many whozits and curlicues and popouts and cool fonts. It all seems like a good idea…but it’s not.

It’s like when you go on vacation and hustle around to so many things that it all blurs together and you come home tireder than when you left. Don’t do that! At least not any more often than you have to — hey, if you’re in Paris, you’re in Paris, bay-bee.

But let’s face it: While there’s nothing wrong with most of the stuff that fills your day — – It’s fun, or productive, or whatever — – it’s also not the thing that makes your life meaningful. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be, y’know?

Personally, I try to stop at two “garnishes” a day. Any more than that and I barely enjoy anything, let alone the white space itself. Like working on a screen porch, listening to the frogs sing in the rain, and the way the texture of the carpet feels against my feet, and the taste of a cup of coffee after an hour of satisfying work. Does that really sound like it needs flourishes?

White space, my friends. White Space is the answer.

Your turn:

What are some ways you incorporate white space in your life?

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, How-to's For Life, Note to Self

Tempo Giusto

May 11, 2012 By Shanna Mann 2 Comments

Italian has given me many excellent words. Words like chiaroscuro, to express the worth of our darker sides. Words like sprezzatura, the codification of effortless coolness that is so damaging to the process of growth.

And now tempo giusto. It means: Just the right speed.

Because we have a little problem, as humans on this big blue ball of mud: Things aren’t happening fast enough.

Unless they are, in which case we want everything to slow down.

The view from my desk...

I do this all the time. I’m flat-out terrified of getting too busy, because if I do, the things I enjoy most about my life are the first things to go out the window. I sometimes feel like I have one foot on the gas and the other on the brakes. It’s a weird sensation, this “Let’s go! — – just not too fast” mentality.

That’s why tempo guisto is such a great concept. Instead of having to choose between “overdrive” and “driving on a donut” you take a deep breath, and go at the speed that seems right.

Simple concept, complex execution, I know.

Still, now we have a name for the target we’re aiming for. Tell me I’m prim, but being able to articulate your goal helps, I find.

Your turn:

How do you walk the line between, too-fast and not-fast-enough?

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, Mindfulness, Note to Self

You’re Not a Hero. Boo-Frickety-Hoo.

May 7, 2012 By Shanna Mann 26 Comments

I’m watching The Wire right now.

It’s powerful. It’s challenging. It makes you think.

I fucking hate it.

David Simon, how dare you make me care about these people and then not at least give me the foolish comfort that it will all work out in the end? This is a tried-and-true Hollywood formula! Why are you denying me? I want redemption. I want reconciliation. I want an emotionally satisfying happy god-damn ending and WHY won’t you give it to me??? And how dare you inflict the senselessness of reality on me? I DON’T WANT REALITY.

This is the power of a narrative. We crave it.

We know deep down that life is meaningless and random, but we refuse to accept that. We HAVE to make sense of it all, somehow.

And that’s why we tell stories.

We tell ourselves stories all the time: This happened, then this happened, and this was the result. It’s an over-simplification, sure, but how could we ever really be aware of, let alone understand all the contributing factors?

So we don’t… We tell ourselves a story.

And over last eon or so, we’ve gotten really, really good at crafting just the kinds of stories that we like to hear.

Like the Hero’s Journey. Campbell posited that almost every tale that has captured the human imagination through the ages has followed this formula, give or take.

heros journey218 Youre Not a Hero. Boo Frickety Hoo.

I don’t think he’s far off.

A story, a narrative, makes sense of the senseless. It’s how we grapple with information. We can’t read a grocery list without thinking, “scallops? salsa? mango? What the hell are you making?” The human brain will try to make sense of it all by forming a narrative.

Nowadays there’s movement to make sure your life makes a good story. I can really relate to that, because, that’s pretty much a mantra of mine: “It might be shitty/stupid/ridiculous right now, but someday it’s going to be a great story.” I mean, shit, I’ve got some pretty good stories right now.

So as much as wanting to be epic sounds like a really great idea, life really doesn’t work like that.

It’s a myth we’ve built up throughout the modern era. And the only reason it could exist is because mere survival stopped being the metric of a satisfied life.

It strokes our vanity to imagine that the universe loves us and wants us to be happy and fulfilled. But what of the child brides in India? What of the victims of ethnic cleansing? What of David Simon’s project kids, half of whom don’t see their 20th birthdays?

Life is senseless.

It’s a complex interplay of causality and probability, shattering predictions with casual indifference. We tell stories not because they’re true, but because they satisfy our need for meaning.

Let me make that plain: They are not true.

They do not exist, in any objective sense.

Now, this is always the part in stories, where the hero has this crushing crisis of faith. It nearly destroys him, because he is the hero and if the story isn’t real, then neither is he.

BULLSHIT.

Yeah, the reality is, nothing and no one has meaning, in the great, cosmic scheme of things.

In the words of the illustrious Dr. Evil: “Boo-frickety-hoo.”

But here’s the thing: If you want to tell a good story about your life be a good storyteller.

Tell a story that’s REAL. Tell a story without the fairy tale tropes, where maybe the girl didn’t get her prince, and you know what? Life went on and she was happy anyway.

Tell a story about despair and how it changes you. Don’t tell the story of how you’re a better person for it– — – that bullshit’s all relative. Tell the story of what’s different now, and that you survived.

Tell me a story that makes me understand what you went through. Don’t tell me there was glory! I know there wasn’t. I know you did what you had to do because it was all you could do. But I still want to know that story because I want to know YOU.

We all want to be epic. We want to leave our mark– we want that affirmation: Here’s my life.

This is what it meant.

But we keep thinking in terms of Hollywood tropes– of good triumphing of evil, of things all working out, of happy endings of every shape and kind. Like the sunshine coming out after a rain. Black and white.

We need to write other kinds of stories.

Stories that are real. Stories that are true.

Sarah Goshman and I are running a new class: Permission Slips for Epic Goals on May 15, 8pm EDT. You should check it out.

Filed Under: Blog, Human Potential, Practical Philosophy, Rants

The Myth of “Hard Work”

May 4, 2012 By Shanna Mann 3 Comments

I want to talk about the myth of hard work.

images5 The Myth of Hard Work Wait. That doesn’t sound right. Hard work is real. The myth is the idea that working hard – specifically if you work hard enough you will succeed. This is treated with the certainty of mathematical principles.

It’s even framed in simplistic turns of phrase, “All you need to do…” is one that comes up often. This is the sort of pablum that gets touted as “self-help.” As if it were remotely helpful!

Show me an example of someone pulling themselves up from their bootstraps and I’ll show you a confirmation bias. No one wants to put it down to luck, and to be fair, hard work is an important part of the equation.

Opportunity shows up in Overalls

Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it shows up dressed in overalls, looking like hard work.” Of course it does. But it’s not a guarantee.

People often look at hard work as if it’s a contract they enter in with the universe. If I work hard enough, I will reap the rewards. Now, maybe that’s a useful thing to believe and maybe it’s not, but regardless, you must admit you don’t have as much so much as a handshake to document the validity of this agreement.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t work hard

This is not to say you shouldn’t work hard. This is just to say that hard work doesn’t guarantee you shit. It’s the best chance you have, but it’s not a guarantee.

There’s an oft repeated meme that, on their deathbed, nobody ever wishes they’d spent more time at the office.

So if you’re killing yourself, deep-sixing your relationships, working every hour god sends, keep in mind: You’ve got no guarantee.

Working longer hours doesn’t make success get here any faster.

Pushing yourself ever-harder won’t make you exponentially more successful

And ‘paying your dues’ doesn’t buy you stardom.

Feeling Lost? Don’t worry.

Once you accept that ‘working hard’ and ‘hustling’ isn’t some kind of quid pro quo you have with the universe, you can start doing the things you were going to do after you got done paying your dues.

You can enjoy the finer things of life, like a glass of wine on the back porch after supper. You can prepare and eat good meals because the time it takes to do that is no longer threatening your imaginary “billable hours”. Same goes with hobbies, spending time with friends, or even just doing nothing.

I know, right?

When you come to terms with the idea that the success you’re sweating so hard for is more of a gamble than a sure thing, perhaps you can bring yourself to enjoy the process of work more.

Another completely bizarre premise, I know. Isn’t work just a means to an end? Well, sure, maybe, if the end was to get paid. But the other stuff? The glory? The recognition? The quote-unquote “success”? No guarantees, baby.

So make sure you let yourself enjoy the work— and everything else too. There’s no guarantee you’ll have time later.

Your Turn

Do you think working hard is its own guarantee? Tell me what you think.

Sarah Goshman and I are running a new class: Permission Slips for Epic Goals on May 15, 8pm EDT. It’s about a flexible approach to self discipline and an expanded view of what it means to be epic. You should check it out.

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, Practical Philosophy, Rants

I’m Broke but I’m Happy, I’m Poor but I’m Kind

April 30, 2012 By Shanna Mann 12 Comments

Incredibly interesting article from Steve Pavlina last week.

When I was broke and deep in debt and about to declare bankruptcy, I asked myself what I’d want to do with my life if I knew for certain that I’d always be broke.

Isn’t that an AMAZING question? Because the question is not, “What would you do with unlimited riches?” but, “What would you do with your time if you knew your striving for money was pointless?”

What a fascinating idea.

That would change everything, wouldn’t it?

blowing bubbles with children Im Broke but Im Happy, Im Poor but Im Kind

via crossingthecongo.wordpress.com

Once you became aware that you would never scrape together enough money to matter, you would quickly put all the things you’d want to spend your money on out of your mind and put your attention to what you’d want to spend your time on.

I’ve been around long enough to know that it’s not so much what you get, but what you do with what you get.

So as much as I like to learn, and if I gave up all hope of ever earning more than minimum wage, ever, I would probably read a bit more. But, I would also make sure I did something with it. Test that knowledge, or teach it. Write a book on it or something.

Because I know learning alone won’t fulfill me. I’ve got to do something with it. Even experience alone isn’t enough– I love to tell a good story as much as the next person, but if I can’t take something away from that experience and use it to enrich someone else, well— doesn’t seem to be much point in jumping out of airplanes and touring the Amazon.

Here’s what I suggest. Write down a little vision statement for yourself, perhaps a few sentences or a paragraph about how you’d choose to live if all of your expenses were covered.

I’m going to write more. I’m going to teach more. Using this metric, all the mentoring in forums I’ve been doing seems less like a waste of time and more like answering an unconscious calling. I’m going to take my eye off the long-game of financial security long enough to make sure what I’m doing in the present moment is exactly what I’d do with the rest of my life.

So tell me, my precious ones:

What would YOU do if you knew for sure you would always be broke?

Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, How-to's For Life, Human Potential, Self-Knowledge

Tear-downs are Not as Negative As You Have Been Led To Believe

April 27, 2012 By Shanna Mann 19 Comments

Ya’ll, I have to tell you about the MOST unbelievably effective practice I’ve started.

Tear downs.

courtesy Renato Ganoza

Now, my language-sensitive readers might have a bit of a problem with the wording here. Tear-down sounds so negative! So do some of the other names for the process, like post-mortem, or debriefing.

But the main point is to analyze your completed projects, regardless of the actual outcome.

In particular, I’ve taken to analysing projects that aren’t completable in a week, as part of my weekly review.

Doing this is a crucial way for me to assess what needs to be done yet, and whether the project is still worth my continued effort.

This is the template I use:

Name of the Project:

Completed?

If yes, recurring?

If yes, do optimization procedure

If no, archived? Summarize for documentation binder with links to supporting material

If no,

What’s been accomplished to date? Is there a deadline?

Where is it going?

What will be the benefit?

How does this tie into the overall system?

Notes/Thoughts

Analysis:

What’s smart about this? What’s dumb?

Where’s the bottleneck? The inefficiencies?

Where’s the particularly elegant or clever solution?

What have other people overlooked about this problem? What am I overlooking?

What’s the underlying system? (How would you teach this to others?)

Now, each of these questions is nothing special in and of itself, but as a whole it leads to cohesive, strategic, executive thinking. It takes you out of the doing mode and prompts you to figure out how to do things better.

It’s incredibly effective and is well worth the time I spend on it.

Why?

tear down 300x199 Tear downs are Not as Negative As You Have Been Led To Believe Because if you spend your days simply doing things, you’re essentially just doing the bare minimum. Even if you tell yourself that’s all you can do, there’s an immense amount of leverage to be gained from the practice of analysis:

Taking the time to note what worked and what didn’t in a systematic manner means that you’re going to be that much faster working out similar problems, and that over time, you’re going to refine that knowledge and become extremely adept. This is similar to the concept of deliberate practice.
Some problems only need to be fixed once in a long while, and the incidents are so few and far between that you pretty much have to reteach yourself every time. Like replacing the toner in the printer. Documentation is your friend! This is similar to documenting bug fixes in tech support.
Sometimes you’re doing something that sounded like a good idea at the time, and you didn’t think through whether it was really necessary or not. This will solve that problem before you put too much work in.
You need a win. It’s awesome to be able to pat yourself on the back for a job well done, particularly if it was an elegant solution. You should take note of these occasions if you have a job with a review process, hope to ask fora raise one day, or have occasion to market yourself. So, basically everybody.

I know these bloodless articles are never enough to really persuade a person to do what seems like a lot of extra work for marginal benefit. So instead, a challenge: try it for just two weeks.

See if a ritual teardown doesn’t actually give you a tremendous feeling of accomplishment, control and a template for doing things better next time.

Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, Experiments, Hammers and other Tools

My Love Affair with Discipline

April 23, 2012 By Shanna Mann 34 Comments

(Ooh! Sounds kinky, don’t it?)

9 12 257x300 My Love Affair with Discipline

I’m writing my new book, and the concept of discipline is a central theme.

Self-discipline, as most people envision it, is a cross between the class bully and the tattling teacher’s pet.

Discipline is no fun, goes the thinking. It ruins good times. It kills creativity and spontenaity. It makes you stiff, uptight, and probably jealous of the happiness of others.

A little discipline is alright, I guess. Turn in your work on time, don’t spend all your money, don’t be late, drive safely. But don’t, like, kill yourself doing it. Life is short!

I don’t have much of an argument with this, actually. In examples like that, “discipline” is sheepskin coat for perfectionism, which is nothing more than the effort to be demonstrably worthy of esteem.

Discipline is the Mindful Practice of Focussed Effort

But I still love the word discipline. For me, it brings up the vision of a dojo, of a person kneeling on a mat in a gi, meditating on the nature of water and preparing, once again, to strive for a perfect control over body and mind.

To me, discipline implies that the effort is its own reward. You’ll never get to a point of perfect discipline, in the same way that you’ll never get to perfect satisfaction or perfect happiness.

meditation old dojo 838x1024 My Love Affair with Discipline

photo -- Chris Barense

Discipline is Not Just a Means To an End

Most troubling to me is when I talk to people for whom discipline is a means to an end: “I just have to go hard for a few more years, get some experience, it’ll be tough man, but it’ll all work out.” Hmm. Something’s not quite right here.

The first assumption is that it will be hard work in the short run, but after a while you’ll be able to slack off. There’s a conflation issue here: Working hard is not the same as “the mindful practice of focussed effort.”

When I turned twenty-four, I realized there was no way I wanted to be working as hard as I was for the rest of my life. But I took a look at my trajectory, and naturally, doing what I was doing would continue to get me the same result. So I realized I had to work smarter, not harder.

It’s funny that it’s called “not harder”, because working smart, in our culture, is a really fucking tough row to hoe. You’re getting undermined at every turn. People denigrate your results because you didn’t put in the hours they did. If you did this good a job in 10 hours, why didn’t you put in 20 and make it twice as good? There’s continual pressure to put in “just a little more time,” or “do just a little more” when in reality, a little more time, or a few more non-essentials, is not only not going to help, it’s going to actively hinder your process. Why? because your mind actually uses the white space that free time provides to learn better and think more creatively.

The second point is that discipline is a life-long effort. The reason it’s lifelong is because there’s a basic human drive towards security, comfort and safety.

The means that it will require persistent effort, every day of your life, or you will inevitably sink back to sea level, with sea level being defined as doing well-defined work, for a well defined wage, deeply in denial about the probability of change and the mechanics of entropy. Just saying…

“Become who you are.” Nietzsche

3705624061 e88a4d979d o My Love Affair with Discipline But discipline doesn’t mean being a hard-case. Necessarily, at least. The nature of water, remember? Infinitely adaptable.

Who do you want to be, really? A good father, a passionate defender, a true person of integrity?

A luminary in your field? Stylish? Serene? Down-to-earth? An adventurer? An iconoclast?

I don’t mean the sort of airy-fairy “I want legs like Angelina Jolie, as wealthy and connected as Arianna Huffington and as respected as Steve Jobs.”

No. I mean, who are you, really?

What are you capable of, profound or petty, bold or meek?

And what is the best, most distilled version of you, each brilliant facet lovingly carved and polished, each flaw seemingly designed for the sole purpose of adding character?

Whatever it is, get clear on it. Carry an image of it in your head, like a hologram, a skin that you’ll someday embody.

Every choice you make does one of two things: It either brings you closer, or further away from that hologram of who you want to be.

And that’s where discipline comes in. Without it, you’ll be the most flat, vapid, lackluster version of yourself.

But it requires you to overcome both that basic drive towards comfort and the deadly pull of inertia.

Discipline is needed in even the mundane decisions of the day. It’s me going to bed at my bedtime every night because it improves my productivity. It’s making the effort to eat vegetables instead of the easy and prevalent starches, and it’s treating my body right by letting it move and stretch.

Without the hologram to guide my focus, those actions would seem onerous or petty, depending on my mood. They definitely wouldn’t be worth the effort.

I struggle with them, and many others besides, every single day. Sometimes I fail. I mean, lets face it, there’s not a single day that I actually nail every single aspect of my katas. Even if I did, that’s not the point. Culmulatively it’s enough that I made more steps towards the hologram than I did back. See? No drill sergeant necessary.

But discipline isn’t tough, I don’t think. It’s kind of annoying, in that I-know-better-but-I -wish-I-didn’t way. I know I feel better if I cook real food and don’t eat the sort of thing that comes in a box. I know I should stop when I start to feel signs of fatigue, instead of powering on. I know that allowing too many obligations to pile up not only reduces my results in all of them, but gouges big chunks out of my quality of life.

I know all these things. I have an iron clad case for every one.

But it still. takes. effort.

20070520 104119 LesAyesJenny 200x300 My Love Affair with Discipline The funny thing about true discipline — not control-freak-perfectionism– is that it’s exhilarating. It’s joyful. It’s like hauling yourself up a rock face… yeah, it’s 88% pain in the ass, but then you get in the zone, and you realize, you’re about to do this thing. You get excited. You get fierce. There is no fucking way you’re not going to make it to the top of this cliff.

Discipline gives you experiences like that all the time. It gives you a sense of accomplishment, agency, and confidence.

It doesn’t make you feel bad when you fail. If you tried your hardest, you didn’t fail. It doesn’t make you feel bad when you eat that bag of chips — you make you feel bad over that bag of chips. Your misguided sense of perfectionism is what does it. Discipline knows you’ll have the opportunity to make a better decision the next time, and it doesn’t worry about what’s already in the past.

There’s about 80 more pages like this one in my book, but I wanted to hear from you– what’s your concept of discpline? You like it? Hate it? Mixed feelings? Did my article change any thoughts on the concept for you? I’d love to hear what you think.

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, How-to's For Life Tagged With: Choices, disci, excellence, frameworks, Growth, Human Potential, self-discipline

Breaking the Rules, Bearing The Consequences

April 20, 2012 By Shanna Mann 6 Comments

My parents will deny they taught me any such thing, but one of the noteworthy things I took away from my childhood was that rules are in place for a reason. Mostly, that reason has something to do with control. You can break the rules, but if you do, you have to be prepared to take the consequences.

By and large, I’ve always found that whenever I wanted to do something against the rules, the consequences were rarely much of a deterrent. I kind of thought of them as taxes– they were just the price I paid for getting to do what I wanted, and compared to the alternative, following the rules, it was a little enough price. So now I hardly ever think about ‘the rules’ or ‘how things are done’ because there’s just ‘Things I Want To Do‘ and ‘The Price I Pay To Do Them‘. And the price is nearly always peanuts.

For some reason, most people who find themselves in conflict of the rules have a kind of 1984 mind-block about the idea that rules are breakable, especially what I call the implicit rules. There seems to be this unconscious assumption that because everyone is doing things in a particular way, it simply can’t be done any other way.

Or, that the consequences are just too dire to even contemplate. People in authority like to perpetuate this mindset. The looming or else keeps people in line far better than any clearly delineated consequences do.

It sounds so ridiculous when you look at it that way, and I think everyone feels a little foolish when they realize they’re doing it. It becomes obvious that the cage door is open.

So the trick is to realize you’re doing it.

bird cage Breaking the Rules, Bearing The Consequences

Notice Your Constraints

The first step is to identify the places where you feel hesitant or constrained. That’s a pretty good indication that you’re running into conflict with a rule, implicit or otherwise.

The truly humbling part of this exercise is realizing how many of your implicit rules have no foundation outside of your head. These are sometimes known as limiting beliefs.

Identify the Consequences for Rule-Breaking

The simplest way to do this, in a way that will avoid engaging a bunch of emotional, change-averse biases, is to simply sketch out three scenarios:

Worst case
Probable case
Ideal case
Compare to status quo

These are your benchmarks, and will allow you to gauge your risk tolerance. In most cases, the space between worst case and probable case is vast. Identifying your ideal case is usually self-fulfilling because as soon as you name it you suddenly see a half a dozen ways to tweak your execution to make your ideal outcome more probable.

And, as always, your status quo sits there in silent reproach to demonstrate the risk you take in not acting.

Bearing the Incredible Burden Of Destroying The Very Fabric Of Society

Have you ever had a teacher or a parent who always threatened dire, TERRIBLE things if you didn’t do as you were told? Did you ever reach a point where you decided to do what you wanted anyway, and it turned out they were completely full of shit? That they didn’t really plan to punish you anyway, or if they did, it was something laughable, like not ‘letting’ you do what you didn’t want to do anyway?

Yeah. I hardly ever take the putative ‘consequences’ of my actions. There’s no one to enforce them! They have no more substance than a frog fart.

What rules have you broken that didn’t have the consequences you thought it would?

Filed Under: Blog, How-to's For Life, Practical Philosophy

Not Knowing What You’re Doing Is The Very Definition of The Human Condition

April 16, 2012 By Shanna Mann 9 Comments

I get angry at the self-help/personal dev industry sometimes. Success Strategy this and 5 Ways to Transform Your Life that, all so much garbage in that it perpetuates the idea that someone, somewhere has all the answers.

It makes me feel stabby.

112310buffy2 300x210 Not Knowing What Youre Doing Is The Very Definition of The Human Condition

But for the sake of keeping it classy, I’m going to spit out some Latin. You will ignore the pretentiousness of this and agree that I am classy. I’m stabby, remember?

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

There. That’s what a university education in the humanities gets you– — – a seven-syllable phrase in a dead language that says, “You pulled that explanation out of your ass.”

More kindly stated, it means that just because b followed a, does not necessarily mean that a caused b.

Bear with me, this is complex.

This means that when you say things like “Do X to get Y results” even if you say “I did X and got Y, so you can too,” it doesn’t constitute proof.

FURTHERMORE:

Having tried a whole bunch of stuff, some that worked, some that didn’t, and eventually working your way to the place where you feel qualified to say what does and doesn’t work, based on your experience, doesn’t mean that your experience is objectively true.

Now, I’m not knocking people (people like me!) who say, here’s what works for me, here’s why I think it worked, maybe it will work for you. Even if you state it really strongly, like “The 5 Traits You MUST Have to Succeed in this Economy!”

I’m rapping my knuckles on the skulls of those who feel like failures because what worked for some other guy didn’t work for them. It’s ludicrous!

This is why Logic should be a curriculum class.

All anybody who gives you advice is working on is a theory. It may be an extremely strong theory, with a lot of evidence to back it up (I like to think mine are).

It may be a crappy little theory with holes big enough to drive a bus through (here’s one I saw last week. Do NOT get me started.)

Even this article is merely a theory. I could be wrong. I could be right. Most likely, I’m objectively neither of those things but I’m hoping the theory has enough merit to overcome its obvious drawbacks.

And what’s the moral of all this?

Nobody Knows What They’re Doing. Nobody Has the Answers.

At best, they’ve got a working theory.

SNN2137B 682 737969a 300x175 Not Knowing What Youre Doing Is The Very Definition of The Human Condition

The reason this is applicable is that I see people shooting themselves in the foot every goddamn day because they don’t know what they’re doing and they think this means they’re not ready; not ready to start, not ready for success, whatever.

Now, I realize that few people actually come right out and say, “Yeah, I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Pretty much winging it, if you want to know the truth. I hope it’s going to all work out, but your guess is as good as mine.”

But that’s the reality. We’re all just doing the things we figure will help us create our desired outcomes.

If we get success, however we define it, we then turn around and start reverse engineering our success. Why? Because we’re all a bunch of control freaks. We can’t stand the idea that we didn’t directly influence our success by something we did or didn’t do. We refuse to believe it was a complete fluke.

And what’s more is nobody wants to believe it might be a fluke. Even people who are like “haha! what do experts know?” (people like me!) still obsessively create theories about what works and doesn’t work about their lives.

I’ve ranted way too long about this already, but here’s what I came to say:

Darlings, if you’re holding back on anything until the day when you feel like you know what you’re doing, please know, that day will NEVER come. Never.

You’ll just get used to winging it.

Sarah Goshman and I are having a free teleclass on the subject of dealing with overwhelm: Permission Slips for Perfectionists, Overacheivers and Control Freaks: Strategies to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Your Own Success. If this sounds like a topic you’re familiar with, we’d love to have you along to jam with us Wed, April 18. Click the link to sign up!

Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, How-to's For Life, Practical Philosophy, Rants

What’s the Worst Part of Overwhelm?

April 13, 2012 By Shanna Mann 6 Comments

Reprinted from the Catalyst by request.

When I was a kid, my mom had a sneaky way of giving me chores. First, she would ask whether I wanted to learn whatever it was. Vacuuming, lets say. I loved to learn, so I would invariably say yes. So she would patiently show me exactly how she wanted it done, and praise me when I got it even half right.

carpet vacuum cleaner hoover girl house chores Whats the Worst Part of Overwhelm?

The next week, though, there was never any of that `Do you want to?” just a flat, “Shanna, do the vacuuming.” And there was never anymore praise, either. I knew how to do it– what did I want, a medal?

And to this day, that’s how I feel about taking on new projects– is this going to turn into one of the things I have to do? And more importantly, is it going to be one of those things that people take for granted to the point that they only notice when I don’t do it.

Worst of all, is my own work ethic, my dedication to doing things right, going to work against me?

Every single, solitary time I’ve felt overwhelmed it was because I didn’t think I had enough time to do what I wanted to do RIGHT.

On one hand, it`s good to know your limits, and when to say `No’. There’s a lot to be said for sticking to only that which you can accomplish without working yourself into an early grave.

But, there’s also the opportunities you turn down because you’re already doing too much– most of it unimportant, or for other people. But they depend on you. You made a commitment. You can’t just walk away from that, can you?

Actually, you can.

If it’s impinging on your development, your dreams, your work or your challenges, you absolutely can.

We often get into the habit of making things easy for others, and making them harder on ourselves. We persuade ourselves that doing so is the right things to do, but it’s actually wrong on two counts– for others, you deny them the opportunity to solve their own problems, which they may thank you for now, but ultimate resent or come to take you for granted.

Two, you deny yourself countless opportunities because you refuse to put your own growth first. If you have children, or are a leader of any kind, you are modelling the behaviour you least want to perpetuate. And you stunt your own growth as you undermine the growth of those you’re trying to help.

At the basis of all these complicated processes is a fear of disappointment. Having disappointed or discouraged children, disappointing the Rotary Club who’ve come to rely on your leadership and willing labour, disappointing yourself when you try something and fail.

Worse, worst– is when that labor of love, that long shot, that I’m-not-going-to-expect-too-much-from-thisproject starts taking off and you realize that you can’t keep all these plates spinning indefinitely. You realize that you’re going to have to disappoint someone.

And you decide to disappoint yourself.

disappointment1 259x300 Whats the Worst Part of Overwhelm? You backburner it, telling yourself you’ll come back to it when things aren’t so hectic. When other people don’tneed you so much. But that time will never come because you’ve trained them to need you.

I’ve heard this story over, and over, and over. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it play out in my family time and time again. I’ve done a ton of work on my own to make sure this cycle stops with me.

Sarah Goshman said to me, almost randomly, “I need to give an overwhelm course. You know why? Because I need to take an overwhelm course— I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.” Damn right, sister. I’ll give it with you. And so this class was born:

Permission Slips for Overachievers, Perfectionists and Control Freaks

Strategies to Avoid Becoming A Victim To Your Own Success

Sound like something you might benefit from? Click the link to read more a bout it, and to sign up. We made it free, because the more people we can help out from under the crushing dread that is overwhelm, the better.

If you can’t make it to the call, Wednesday, April 18 at 8pm EST/5pm PST, sign up anyway and we’ll send you a copy of the call when we’re done.

http://nohelphere.com/permission-slips/

What’s the worst part about overwhelm for you?

Is it the dread? The panic? The tears? The compulsive screwing around on facebook instead of taking action? Hit the comments section to let me know what you’d most like to mitigate, and Sarah and I will address that in class.

Filed Under: Blog, How-to's For Life, Musings

Open Letter To Coaches

April 9, 2012 By Shanna Mann 12 Comments

I recently discussed the emotional complexities of hiring a coach with two different coaches. It’s something I realize I feel strongly about, and I want to share it here. Because, really, what’s the point of having a blog if it isn’t a modern-day soapbox? Exactly.

The First Step

6920161535 21c3af8287 n Open Letter To Coaches

by imanka via Flickr

As coaches, we see it as an empowering step to hire a coach. We assume– and we assume you feel the same way– that hiring us is the best damn decision you’ve made in a long time.

And for some clients that’s true. Certainly of the ones who actually make it to the point of talking to us.

But there’s a not-insignificant number to whom hiring a coach represents abject failure. It means that they are admitting defeat.

They have publicly acknowledged that they don’t have the tools to help themselves.

For these people, asking for help is not empowering.

It’s humiliating.

Their sense of self-sufficiency, a trait they strongly identify with, is threatened. The sense of shame and unworthiness can be nearly overwhelming. Depression threatens to swamp them. They may retreat into anger or resentment.

And for the most part, we coaches are oblivious.

That’s not totally our fault. After all, most of these clients never actually make it to hiring us. It is so uncomfortable for them to acknowledge their (perceived) weakness that they simply disappear, often with a great deal of bitterness, feeling like a failure.

But, coaches, we are also not helping. And isn’t that what we’re here for?

These clients, these-potentially-but-not-quite-there-yet clients. They’re not really angry. They’re not unteachable.

But they’re scared. They are very, very scared.

3622827250 79311c1d73 n Open Letter To Coaches

courtesy Alyssa L Miller via Flickr

They have a deep pit of inadequecy in them that they fight every waking minute to keep at bay. They view it as a deep moral failing. They think of the acheivements of others as being relatively effortless, and themselves as worthless for not being able to do what seems so natural to others.

People in this place often read a lot, and follow blogs like this one, trying to figure out the secret. What have they been missing? They often search fruitlessly, becoming discouraged. This misery goes on and on and on. The seemingly unattainable knowledge and success that others appear to possess torments them. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I figure this out?

Empathy and Encouragement

As a coach, it’s important to realize these people exist. You don’t want to marginalize them any further. Ultimately, it is their journey, their process. But you can help them by affirming that knowledge and understanding does not spring effortlessly for you or for anyone else. You can be sensitive to the emotional state wherein asking for help implies a personal failing and address that from time to time in your marketing.

This knowledge may not change much of anything overall. Mindfulness rarely does. But it will bring you closer to the spirit of your practice:

Helping people find the tools to help themselves

How are you mindful of all the people who turn to you for help?

Sarah Goshman and I are having a free teleclass on the subject of dealing with overwhelm: Permission Slips for Perfectionists, Overacheivers and Control Freaks: Strategies to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Your Own Success. If this sounds like a topic you’re familiar with, we’d love to have you along to jam with us Wed, April 18. Click the link to sign up!

Filed Under: Blog, Mindfulness, Musings, Rants

Don’t Shoot The Messenger

April 2, 2012 By Shanna Mann 8 Comments

I got an email from a client voicing his disappointment in his progress, and also in his inability to make efficient use of his time. Specifically, he was disappointed in his “inability to control his emotions.”

I thought my response might strike a chord with others as well.

legionariosencombateseg 300x221 Dont Shoot The Messenger I think you’re forgetting to take a couple of factors into account. The first is that no one can be productive all day every day. The goose and the golden eggs, right? Learn to recognize the symptoms of tiredness and overwhelm, and accept them. Yeah, yeah, push your limits, blah, blah, blah. That’s only a short term solution, one that ends in burn out. Sustainable progress is about discipline, and being attentive to the point of diminished returns. Once you get there, turn off your brain. It takes more discipline and control to do that than not, let me tell you.

Second, emotions are not there to be controlled. They’re sources of information to be interpreted. It’s only by disciplined use of the messages your emotions have that you can make the best decisions.

Look at it this way. If you were a general in the Roman army, and a messenger came into your tent to tell you that the second division had broken formation and was about to flee, what would you do?

Are you going to:

kill the messenger for informing you that a division of your men are failing you?
go out and shout at them? (er, sorry “rally the troops”)
dispatch a different unit to help them so that at least the ones that haven’t fled have a formation to join?

Obviously, option one is just dumb. And yet, that’s essentially what you do when you ignore your emotions.

Option two, browbeating yourself into doing what you think you ought is not a very good plan, because of how humans react under stress. Please note, you are a human.

Option three, send help is the only effective response you have. If your subconscious is sending signals that point to trouble, whether it’s fear, frustration, boredom, anxiety, or anger, ignoring or bullying it in the name of maintaining control won’t work.

Messenger 640x430 Dont Shoot The Messenger

You have to figure out the reasoning behind the emotion. What’s triggering it? What can you do to correct the trigger. If you’re bored, why? Would racing the clock to get down be enough to mitigate that? If not, what would?

I know it’s a bit of a leap to go from buttoning down your emotional responses to listening to them, so don’t expect a change overnight. But ignoring them, while it sounds like such a good, sane, effective, reasonable choice on the surface, is fraught with all kinds of problems. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Sarah Goshman and I are having a free teleclass on the subject of dealing with overwhelm: Permission Slips for Perfectionists, Overacheivers and Control Freaks: Strategies to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Your Own Success. If this sounds like a topic you’re familiar with, we’d love to have you along to jam with us Wed, April 18. Click the link to sign up!

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, Hammers and other Tools, How-to's For Life Tagged With: advice, emotions, false prophets, self-discipline

Creating a Vacuum

March 30, 2012 By Shanna Mann 4 Comments

Ok, I want you to try something. Like really try it.

Take a deep breath. On the exhale, vocalize. Say “Om” or “ahhhhh” or if you’re in a public place, hum. See how long you can hum for.

When your chest has all but collapsed and your blood is pounding in your ears, take another deep breath.

On the very next out-breath, make sure to hum.

How much longer did you make it this time? Did it feel easier?

5605093210 5fecb71c61 300x197 Creating a Vacuum

courtesy Robert Couse-Baker

The same is true of life. Just one more thing isn’t feasible. If it were feasible, it wouldn’t need to be carefully scheduled, it would just happen, naturally filling the vaccuum.

Besides, I’ve come to realize that people don’t necessarily want more activities in their lives. What they want is the space to allow spontaneous activity to arise. That’s where a lot of the joy comes in. That’s the freedom you crave.

But to get there you need to discipline yourself to let go of the stuff you don’t need.

Sarah Goshman and I are having a free teleclass on the subject of dealing with overwhelm: Permission Slips for Perfectionists, Overacheivers and Control Freaks: Strategies to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Your Own Success. If this sounds like a topic you’re familiar with, we’d love to have you along to jam with us Wed, April 18. Click the link to sign up!

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, Musings, Practical Philosophy Tagged With: advice, excellence, how-to, insight, self-discipline

On Life’s Fairness

March 26, 2012 By Shanna Mann 3 Comments

I read a tweet the other day: Do you deserve happiness?

pick up bar 300x168 On Lifes Fairness

This concept of deserving things is a pretty dangerous path to walk. It encourages flawed logic. My personal favourite example of this are these so-called “nice” guys who are incredibly bitter and think that because they’re “nice” they’re entitled to female attention.

First of all, “nice” as you are, you evidently think you’re owed my attention, without doing anything to earn it. Second, when you have a chip on you shoulder that big, and I’m not going to believe you when you tell me how nice you are.

But I digress.

The concept of deserving this or that implies a certain fundamental fairness about life. It’s the kind of idea that looks good on the surface, but when you take it to its logical conclusion it all breaks down.

What did you do to deserve being born in a civilized Western country with universal education and access to health care?
Who deserves a tumor in the spine? Who deserves a miscarriage? Who deserves to lose a loved one?

Religions are born around this topic. Hindus developed a caste system due to the belief that something one had done in a previous life had warranted the station you had been born into in this one. Christianity uses the example of Job to teach that God is testing your faith. Do you deserve eternal life?

I hate this thinking because it leads to uncharitable thoughts: People with liver disease must have drunk too much or done drugs. People who are unemployed were too lazy or merely too mediocre to keep. Women who get abortions are promiscuous and must be made to understand the consequences of their actions.

It leads to judgement.

harder work 300x260 On Lifes Fairness Listen, you didn’t do anything to deserve most of your life. It was lucky that you were born here, that you found people to help you, that you got the opportunities you did. In many cases, early ‘successes’ made you feel more confident, and deserving of more successes, and it became a self-fulfilling prophesy.

By the same token, some people were not so lucky. I am always so moved by reading this account of inner city kids, too old to be put in foster care, left to survive however they could. Or read about this man, born to prisoners in a North Korean work camp. Read about the horrible rules he learned ruled his universe– every person for himself.

Most interesting are the people who did get a bad hand dealt to them, but somewhere along the line still got the idea that their circumstances weren’t personal.

Because if you don’t deserve misfortune, you also don’t deserve good fortune.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t aim for it.

It’s true that the harder you work, the luckier you get. It’s also true that seeing yourself as lucky improves your luck. But throw out that concept of “being deserving” because it’s nothing but quicksand. If you allow yourself to believe your good fortune, you will allow yourself to believe you deserve your bad fortune.

Both rob you of agency.

And agency is the key here. If you can wrap your head around the vastness of the machinery of the universe, and how utterly indifferent it is to your individual life, and then you resolve to make your way in this world that has no rhyme or reason, you will be able to greet people with the grace of your humanity, as people at the mercy of the same cosmic dice game you are in.

The more philosophical, the better you are. I love the story about the wise farmer who refuses to characterize any particular turn of events as good or bad, in spite of prevailing opinion. I tend to see anything that happens to me as good. Not because they are good or they feel good, but because I’m pretty sure I can find an opportunity in any circumstance. And that mindset is part of what makes me so damn lucky!

It’s one of those unified dichotomies I love so much: You must acknowledge that life is essentially random and uncontrollable, but never give up the conviction that you have agency and you can turn any circumstance to your advantage.

Want more mind-bending stuff like this? Subscribe to the CataLyst.

Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, Hammers and other Tools, How-to's For Life, Human Potential Tagged With: critical thinking, how-to, reflection

Coaching is available again!

March 25, 2012 By Shanna Mann

I’m a fickle soul, I know. Depending on when you’ve checked me out, my coaching page is either politely or not-so-politely chasing you away. What can I say? I’m not really the nurturing sort.

baba yaga small rima 297x300 Coaching is available again!

Drawing by Rima Staines, whose work is fabulous

You want to know my coaching alter-ego? Baba Yaga. Yeah. That should tell you something about me.

Baba Yaga is fearsome witch from Russian legend who rides around in a mortar and pestle and whose sentient hut wanders around on chicken legs. But she’s as powerful and wise as she is dangerous, so both men and women will occasionally seek her aid. She’s always willing to exchange something for the help they need. That should tell you something about me, too.

So if you’re brave, and strong, and willing to do what needs to be done, drop me a line. I’ll be happy to talk. But it would be best if you both know what you want, and what you’re willing to do to get it.

Filed Under: Blog

You’re better than an expert.

March 23, 2012 By Shanna Mann 5 Comments

You’re better than an expert, you know.

I realize you may have lived your whole life and never heard a notion like that directed at you, so I don’t blame you if your first reaction is skepticism. Hear me out.

2623417242 eaccc7b696 n Youre better than an expert.

courtesy eyeliam

We live in a world that values authority. You might even say we worship it. We like it because “authority” is the final word on the subject. It ends the discussion.

Of course, it doesn’t always work. Don’t like your diagnosis? Get a second opinion! Don’t like the way a case went? Appeal!

We even do it when we’re not even realizing it. The salesman says, “This is the TV for you!” and you say, “I’m just going to shop around some more, thanks.”

In some situations we still realize that we’re better than the experts.

But somewhere along the line, we stop applying this autonomy. We kind of just… defer. Occassionally, we will override our own instincts because our position isn’t the same as the experts’.

We don’t give ourselves enough credit.

A client of mine (call him Tom) was telling me about his studies of body language. It’s not an academic field that he’s involved in, he’s not a scientist. But this is an area of study he’s devoted quite a bit of time to, and he’s about to invest in a course to get certified to practice the techniques as a professional body language interpreter.

He was very, very excited about it, telling me all about the guy who designed the course, how hard it was to get into, how much previous training you have to have demonstrated.

“Is that the guy from Lie to Me?” I asked.

“Paul Ekman? No, he does mostly facial expressions. Micro-expressions, they’re called,” Tom said, “This guy, he’s actually more about the feet than the face. Or even the whole lower body. He says that people can learn to mask their facial expressions, but they normally don’t learn to control the rest of their body, so you get better information from that.”

He gave me some examples, and talked a little bit about how he planned to use his training.

I said, “It seems to me like most people don’t even bother to school their features. I know I don’t. I have a terrible poker face. Couldn’t you use both techniques, and maybe test them to see what works in which situations? I mean, yeah, these guys are experts. And they clearly each developed techniques that work.”

In response, Tom gave about six examples, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each technique.

“That’s what I mean,” I said, “You can see the weak points and drawbacks already. And as you hone your craft, you’ll only get better at it. So use that. Figure out what technique works when, or work out a way to tell which will work better on what person. You don’t need to stop where your training ended. You can see the bigger picture better than either of the experts.”

Why We Give Away Authority

The thing about authority is that we believe it can only be granted. Someone comes along to give you authority, and from that annointed state your opinions are now worthwhile.

Of course that never happens. You take authority, by taking a position. And some people will believe and trust you, and some people won’t. You didn’t change. Your position didn’t change. Nothing changed except you owning the idea that you have a decent head on your shoulders, and you don’t need to neccesarily need someone to tell you what the right thing is. You’re perfectly capable of figuring it out on your own.

The only problem with authority is that it makes you vulnerable to criticism. You, personally. Your beliefs. Your values. Your decisions. The buck stops with you.

And some people don’t want that authority. Or they can’t be bothered to do the research. Consumer reports says that’s the right car? Alright, I get that one then. My business should have a social media presence? I don’t know what that is, but I’ll get that too. My mom says I should get a degree in engineering. That pays well, right?

But then, those people are the ones who are riding for a fall. And they’re the ones who’ll cry the loudest when it all goes south. “It’s not my fault!”

You’re better than an expert. If only because you’re the one who has to deal with the consequences of your decisions.

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, How-to's For Life, Human Potential, Practical Philosophy Tagged With: advice, critical thinking, experts, Human Potential, Responsibilities

Review: Rogue Warrior’s Strategy for Success

March 21, 2012 By Shanna Mann 2 Comments

The Rogue Warriors Strategy for Success, by Richard Marcinko. Pocket Books, 1998.

This is not your usual leadership book. I guess I really like military leadership books because they harbour less bullshit.

Richard Marcinko was a Navy Seal and operated the infamous Seal Team Six during the 80s.

In short….

The book is terse, and contains a lot of italics. You can easily imagine him looming over you with a finger poking at your chest.

He goes over the problem of business like it’s an operations debriefing. Here are the chapter titles:

Assess Your Mission: Goals, Tactics and Resources
Dictating the Rules of Engagement
Building a Team with Character
Training for Victory
Mistake is Not a Dirty Word
Rewriting the Rules of Engagement
You Can’t Keep it if You Don’t Risk It
Lead From the Front
Killing Complacency
Change or Die

Business strategy, at least as described in the books I’ve read, doesn’t seem to emphasize the importance of not doing what your competition expects of you, refusing to play on a level playing field. They tend to be very focussed on soft skills, marketing, HR. This is not that kind of book.

I really liked it a lot, and not just because it was so refreshing. I like it because he ably templates his style of leadership, and outlines why it works. That’s all he can do. It’s up to you to see the drawbacks to the style, whether it will work for your situation, and whether you want to be that type of leader at all. In other words, he gives you all the information you need, but it’s up to you to use it.

Morality in Business

This book would be interesting in counterpoint to say, a business ethics class. I personally think it should be read alongside some personal journalling, to unpack your responses to the harrowing episodes he recounts.

He talks a lot about character, and loyalty in particular. It’s a very us/them worldview because in Chapter 6, he talks about expedience.

“Whoever gets hurt by your rewrite of the rules will probably try to oppose you. They’ll dig in their heels and tell you what a bully and a cheat you are. Well, fuck ‘em. You didn’t invent the concept of renegotiating a contract or revising a strategy. People have always changed the rules, and always will.”

I think that he walks a fine moral line here, which is all any of us can ever do. He has a very strong integrity framework, but it’s just not that opaque. However, you have to have it in order to be able to navigate these difficult situations.

Because he’s right; it will be done to you if you’re not aware of how this works. And you’ll be the one whining about how it isn’t fair. So you need to have your own standards. But he also points out that morality changes depending on the circumstances. This example is from Winston Churchill.

…Churchill discovered this as a young soldier in India, fighting militant Moslems. Initially, he wouldn’t allow his men to use the new “dumdum” bullet, remarking that “the bullet’s shattering effects are simply appalling. I believe no such bullet has ever been used on human beings before, but only on game–stags, tigers, etc.”

But as the conflict escalated, Churchill’s troops began to encounter the full barbarity of the enemy, who began to attack field hospitals and to torture to death all of the wounded and sick soldiers as well as all their doctors and nurses.

Churchill then began to allow the use of the dumdum bullets.

View the same conflict from the enemy’s perspective and they would no doubt be “changing the rules of engagement” would they not?

This is a book that will make you think, because you’ll read his words and either be charmed or repelled. And then you’ll start to think about how you would go about making similar black and white decisions, and realize how tough it is to play with high stakes.

Of course, you don’t have to play at high stakes, but wouldn’t you like the option?

My Take:

The book is a kind of double-distilled liquor of 20 years of combat experience followed by 20 years of business experience which evidently didn’t shake many of the combat paradigms. As such, it’s a powerful hit that may leave you reeling, but there’s more solid advice and experience per ounce that, to me, at least, makes it worth the roughed-up feeling you get from it.

At the very least, it gives you the sense that it is possible to have integrity and play with the big boys. He ranks his loyalties, decides his objectives and then does everything in his power to achieve them, up to and including grey-hat tactics. He can do this, skate very close to the edges because he is precisely clear on what his own rules are.

People who aren’t clear on them tend to float around either avoid the edges with extreme prejudice or not see them until they’re past them.

So if this description is pushing your buttons, I would encourage you to read the book and see if you can’t reserve judgement and at least see that Marcinko does what he thinks is right by his own lights.

And if the book intrigues you, read it, but be sure to consider the other side or the issue as well.

It’s a scant 200 pages, and a pretty fast paced read. But you might have to slow down to catch all the “quotables,” because this man doesn’t pull his punches.

Filed Under: Blog, Book Reviews, Practical Philosophy, Self-Knowledge Tagged With: advice, book reviews, Commitment/Engagement, critical thinking, excellence, frameworks

Progress

March 19, 2012 By Shanna Mann 1 Comment

In the cycle of creation, there are few things more difficult than that period of progress where there is nothing much to be seen, nothing much to talk about, really, nothing to do at all except do.

In the beginning stages of an idea, you can use the input. If nothing else, talking it out lets you refine it in your own mind.

And when you’re having problems, there are few things more cathartic than telling a friend the problem you’re having and getting help solving it.

And towards the end, when you’re done with the doing, and you’re polishing and preparing for launch, the only thing getting you through those tedious days is rhapsodizing, at length, on how wonderful this thing will be when it’s finally done. How everything will change. How you’ll take a long vacation (because you’ve earned it) and what you’ll start on next.

But in between, there’s just doing.

120907 snail1 450x340 300x226 Progress

There’s a certain romance to the doing. There are certain frustrations as well, ones that can’t be shared by anyone who’s not intimately involved with the project as you.

And that’s the wonderful part.

A New Relationship

When you’re in the beginning phases of a project, there’s that whole will I/won’t I decision, which, rightly, you will talk out.

But once you commit, suddenly things are a whole lot different.

The subtleties of the project become apparent you in ways that you couldn’t explain to anyone else. You spend as much time as possible together, and it’s just as well, because you have nothing else to talk about anyway.

And anyway, you’re in the zone. You’re flying high. You’re engaged, solving problems, designing, testing.

Oh, but the testing.

Testing happens on its own schedule.

Which means that as commited and engaged as you are, you can’t do a damn thing but wait and see.

Having time on your hands, you might actually allow yourself to be dragged out on a coffee date. But there’s nothing to say. You have no results to talk about. Few people are interested in hearing about iterative modelling experiments without hearing how things turned out.

Ask them about their lives, why don’t you? So you do, but you feel crestfallen that you can’t share this wonderful project to the impressed whistles that it deserves. And at the end of it you scurry back to your lair to see if you’ve gotten results.

Doing is an individual’s pursuit.

Like many individual pursuits, it has its charms to a given individual. That’s not to say you can’t find people who share your joy in said pursuits (now that I have the whole internet to play in, I’ve found three or four) but let’s face it; if they were more popular, they’d be group pursuits, now, wouldn’t they?

So don’t expect people to be enthralled. No one cares about a half-completed painting, article, business plan, goal, or project of any kind. Luckily, you care.

And because this bit of magic is just between you and your project, there’s only one little metric that matters.

Progress.

(Let’s get back to work, shall we?)

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Filed Under: Blog, How-to's For Life, Practical Philosophy Tagged With: Commitment/Engagement, Cycles, goals, Personal Productivity, projects

Weekly Reviews Replace Bosses (but nobody likes them either)

March 16, 2012 By Shanna Mann Leave a Comment

Weekly Review Methodology

This is my weekly review. It’s … complex. It works extremely well for me, but other people would have adapt it to their needs.

The question is, did I succeed in making it sound like a useful and enjoyable undertaking, or as simply another chore? This is the best way I know of to build and maintain momentum, but I’m extremely curious about what other people do.

To my way of thinking, this one simple process is what replaces all the oversight and management that any traditional (and many non-traditional) jobs necessitate. It’s difficult enough to do and plan at the same time. It’s even harder when you combine analysis and review. But it can be done. And I think that it’s very worth doing.

What methods do you use to chart your progress and see whether you’re on the right track?

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, Mindfulness, Practical Philosophy, Self-Knowledge Tagged With: aspiration, Choices, critical thinking, excellence, frameworks, Organization, Personal Productivity, self-discipline, Weekly Reviews