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20% Time: Week 3 Results

January 14, 2012 By 5 Comments

I had a considerable stumble this week with time tracking. Several days I forgot to begin time tracking, and the rest I petered out part way through.

I still got done everything that needed doing, but it didn’t feel like a good use of my time, and I didn’t feel the sense of accomplishment and control I had the previous two weeks.

I think this was a function of having a lot to manage. I took on a short-term project for not-very-good reasons, and there was so much resistance around doing that work that my focus was diffused and tracking that lack of enthusiasm was especially difficult.

In addition, my focus for other projects was not very good, which may or may not have been a function of soul-sucking project I undertook. I had a lot of trouble keeping my attention on one task, even if I enjoyed it.

 

I learned one thing, though: Doing things I hate kills productivity dead. I’ve felt this throughout the years, but I’ve never had so much data to back it up.

pencil drawing line graph on grid 20% Time: Week 3 Results

I was disappointed, however, to see my time tracking slip. It has always happened in the past, of course, but I had felt somehow that this time would be different. I need to test more, to see if doing what I hate is what spoiled the broth, or if it was a larger function of my lack of focus and short attention span.

 

Conclusion:

I’m going to do another week or two of time tracking to see if I can stay on the wagon once this Very Bad, No Good project wraps up.

Because overall, I think 20% time has made me into a much more well-rounded person. I felt much less guilt over time that wasn’t strictly spent on business, and paying close attention to how I spent my time and how much of it I was spending made me a lot more efficient.

In fact, when I did 20% time properly, I was so incredibly efficient that the ”work hard, play hard” Entrepreneurial model is not really appealing to me. I strongly feel that I’ll be like Bill and simply burn out, and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be very effective anyway.

The trick appears to be reducing friction in my time tracking; remembering to do it, and making it easy to do it. I’ll be brainstorming ways to refine my tracking methods, as well as my analyses.

Filed Under: Blog, Experiments

Why Review? In Defence of Weekly Reviews

January 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

weekly review Why Review? In Defence of Weekly ReviewsThe other day I wrote about my routine Weekly Review. Every time I write about something like that, something that’s routine, but crucial to my productivity and the orderliness of my life, I struggle about whether to write about it.

 

One of the things I love about my Mastermind group is that we have a forum to discuss the way we handle universal struggles. I was suprised to learn that my “Get it Done” resources were so useful to them that I wrote a blog post on it last week. And in October I ran a whole series on crucial, but unsexy tools and routines.

 

There are tons of articles out there about hacks and tips for staying on top of things. I think that’s mostly an oversight – productivity experts take it as a given that you have some way of checking to make sure nothing is slipping through the cracks, the way that fitness experts seem to take it as a given that you’re warming up and cooling off properly before working out.

 

This is patently ridiculous.

 

Why Would You Want To Do A Weekly Review Anyway?

 

The reason it’s assumed that everyone does a weekly review is because there are so many good reasons to do so. People who’ve done weekly reviews for a long time feel nervous and out of control if they don’t use them – and assume everyone else feels the same. Lets call them Group A.

 

In reality there are lots of people who don’t use weekly reviews.

 

A not-insubstantial portion of people don’t find their duties and responsibilities so onerous that it needs a formal review process. These are people who don’t get busy enough to need weekly reviews because they refuse to take on more than they can handle in an unhurried and deliberate manner. These people have probably chuckled comlacently under their breath at the people who, in their view, overextend themselves to the point where they can’t enjoy life. Let’s call them Group B. Most of them have likely stopped reading by now.

 

This article is actually for Group C, the people unlike Group B, take on more than they can reasonably keep in their heads, and unlike Group A, haven’t been indoctrinated into the wonderful world of Weekly Reviews.

 

Group C has almost certainly heard about weekly reviews, and thinks they’re a good idea, but has never managed to successfully bolt the routine onto their busy lives.

 

scedule Why Review? In Defence of Weekly ReviewsOf course they haven’t! They’re busy, and it’s pretty damn hard to make time for all the things you should be doing. Then they meet up with Group Aers, who smugly declare “I don’t know how you get along without it! Dahling, I would give up my weekly manicure before I’d drop my Weekly Review. I would never be able to sleep, thinking of all the things that might slip through the cracks.”

 

Then, of course, the Cs retort, “I’ve been doing fine, thankyouverymuch. I don’t let things slip through the cracks either.” But it must be stated (and I hope you don’t take this too hard) that if Group C is not letting things fall through the cracks, they are micromanaging relentlessly in order to do so. It’s very tiring, and of course, once you get tired, the process starts breaking down.

 

The only difference between the As and the Cs is the weekly review, and I’ll tell you the main reason no one bothers to explain it: It’s too simple. Cs think As are being smug and self-righteous, but As are actually a little bit ashamed to admit that a simple tool like a Weekly Review makes them an order of magnitude more productive.

 

Ready for this?

 

A weekly review is a very simple system that, once set up, allows you to simply check once a week, to make sure nothing has slipped through the cracks. The difference between As and Cs is that Cs spend a lot of effort and brain power to make absolutely sure nothing slips through the cracks, and As have confidence that if anything slipped though the cracks, they’ll catch it at the Weekly Review. Otherwise, they don’t pay any attention to anything other than what they’re doing.

 

The sucky part, and the reason why the weekly review is a tough sell, is that setting up a system – any system – is a huge amount of work. It’s a “block off two full days to set this up” sort of job. When David Allen consults, he makes his clients take a long weekend to set it up- -he says it’s the only way people can get out of the day-to-day operational mode in order to free up the necessary mental resources.

So if you were trying to bolt it on in half an hour once a week, give it up. I’ve been doing Weekly Reviews for years, and it still takes me two or three hours. Its just that I make up that two hours several times over between the lack of dithering about where I should be spending my time and the lack of anxiety that I’m forgetting something.

 

I’m not saying this to evangelize Weekly reviews. I mean, I do evangelize them, but I realize not everyone needs them. But, if you’re in the group of people who think they’re a good idea but haven’t been able to figure out how to actually get them done I hope I helped.

 

So, if you want to give weekly reviews another shot, the two best resources I’m aware of are Getting Things Done by David Allen and The Tao of Awesome by Johnny B. Truant. GTD is the Holy Bible of Productivity, it’s widely available, and so are tools and groups specifically for GTDers. On the other hand, the Tao of Awesome is more expensive (it’s an e-course) but I like it better (review here) because I find it easier to implement and maintain. 

Filed Under: Balance, Blog, Hammers and other Tools, Practical Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Review: The E-Myth Revisited

January 11, 2012 By 2 Comments

theemyth Review: The E Myth RevisitedFor the longest time, I put off reading this book because I thought it was about online business, and since it was written at the height of the dot-com period, before there really was any e-commerce to speak of, I figured it couldn’t be very relevant — – this in spite of the fact that its perennially listed among the best business books to read.

 

It’s not about e-commerce. The E in E-Myth stands for entrepreneur, and Gerber’s premise is that people completely misunderstand what it means to be a successful entrepreneur. Since he and I agree on that point, I settled in to give his words some serious thought.

 

 

Who should read this book?

 

If you own your own business or dream of owning your own business– — even if you’ve only considered it once. It’s my considered opinion that this book will silmultaneously fire your imagination and make sure you’re serious about it.

 

What hole will this fill in your education?

 

Entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs face a serious obstacle simply by having to learn the nuts and bolts of running a business. As Gerber points out, most entrepreneurs are technicians who struck out on their own to avoid the red-tape, interpersonal irritations and oversight required to be an employee. However, creating a business from that motivation only serves you, not your customers, and if you’re not serving the desires of your customers first, ultimately you’ll fail.

 

I’ve run several businesses, and using this distinction, I can plainly see the difference in the success of those businesses between the ones where I was running the business in order to be free to do my own thing, and the ones I’d created in order to fill the needs of customers.

 

How long will it take to read The E-Myth Revisited?

It’s 266 pages, so it’s around a three-hour read, but if you plan to, as I do, reread it with an eye to applying it to your own business, it will probably take several weeks, depending on how much time you can devote to it.

 

THE GEM

The one jewel of a takeaway I got from this book is also the subject of this quotation from Flaubert:

Be regular and orderly in your life so you can be bold and violent in your work.

Everybody wants to be creative, innovative, unique. But you will crash and burn outrageously if you don’t have a solid foundation under you. This book, better than any of the others I’ve read, shows you how to build that foundation under your business so that you can make it truly stand out.

 

 

 

Now, into the meat of it…

 

Make your Business into a Turnkey Operation.

 

I have to tell you, I reacted really strongly to that idea. I’m a systems junkie, and yet I did NOT like the idea of prescribing every interaction and system within my business. Where was the flexiblity? Where was the magic? In the end though, I became convinced.

 

Two reasons:

 

  1. It makes you really examine how you do things – and why. How do you treat your customers, how do you do your record-keeping– everything. It makes you mindful and conscious of every aspect of every process. In recording it, you internalize it, and by revisiting this SOP, you not only maintain and retrain yourself in these high standards, if you ever need to train anyone else, that information is at your fingertips.
  2. Devising and refining systems makes you a student of your business and your customers. Gerber describes the business as a dojo:

 

…a business is like a martial arts practice hall, a dojo, a place you go to practice being the best that you can be. The true combat in a dojo is not between one person and another as most people believe it to be. The true combat in [a dojo] is between the people within ourselves.

 

It’s only by training and planning meticulously that you can ever really trust yourself (and others) to be able to be flexibles and yet maintain your vision for the company. Speaking of visions…

 

The Business must grow from the vision, not the other way around.

 

“I once heard a story about Tom Watson, the founder of IBM. Asked to what he attributed the phenomenal success of IBM, he is said to have answered:

The … reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way in the very beginning, we would never get there.

In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company, it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. And at the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference.

Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business.

We didn’t do business at IBM. We built one.

 

So how do you construct a vision?

The whole third part of the book is devoted to outlining how to go about it, and I personally can’t wait to try it.

I could easily spend another thousand words breaking it down, since it’s a fairly sophisticated section, but it would be much more purposeful for you to just read the book.

 

The Weak Points

Michael Gerber is certainly a man who likes the sounds of his own voice. He’s a born storyteller, and the style of the book is rather parable-like. Because of this I expected exaggeration to begin with, but since he brought in solid studies and examples where it counted I forgave his ebullience. Still, I found it tiresome from time to time.

I suspect the book was written the way it was in order to demonstrate what it’s like being an actual client of theirs. So I suppose you could say they practice what they preach.

One of the weaker points he makes is talking about “subconscious triggers.” Some examples he uses are “using circles in logos instead of triangles” and  ”wearing blue instead of black or red”. He does not, however, suggest how you might go about getting expertise in this field.

Update: I’ve found an article that shows how a real person tested his logo. I know it’s not much, but it’s the only example I’ve ever found that uses actual data

For most things, though, you should be able to test for effectiveness. It won’t be scientific quality results, but since most people never test at all, the insights will likely be worth the effort. Challenging your assumptions usually is.

 

There is so much useful material in the The E-Myth Revisited Review: The E Myth Revisited, I would consider it THE BOOK to recommend to people who hope to own their own business one day. If you already have a business, my recommendation only gets stronger. You won’t be sorry you took the time to read this book.

Filed Under: Blog, Book Reviews

Making Changes: Maintenance

January 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

You’ve spent three weeks doing a proof of concept of the change you want to make in your life. If you did the planning stage well, chances are good it worked out okay.

So what’s next? Wait– — no, stop! You’re not on to the next thing already, are you? You haven’t solidified your gains yet.

 

The next stage of the game consists of refining and solidifying the change you set up. You’re in the nascent stages of a habit change right now, and it won’t take much to boot you off the wagon.

 

Refinement

 

Unfortunately, western culture has led us to believe that whenever anything isn’t working quite as well as it should, what it really needs is a good shake-up in order to knock out the useless parts. Then, when everything settles, you’ll have a tight, efficient system again.

 

That might even be true (for about five minutes, at the rate this world is going) but even if you didn’t have any bugs to work out, it’s highly inefficient to be knocking down your systems every time you become dissatisfied with them.

Sure it’s sometimes necessary, but it can also be an insidious form of Resistance.

 

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of kaizen.

 

Kaizen is a philosophy of continuous, incremental improvement. It’s a system of tweaking, polishing and refinement that allows a system to grow and evolve because of its users’ persistent attention to the reason for the system.

 

However, this is not so straight-forward as finding the best way to construct a VCR.

 

The way we construct hard strategies in our life for ephemeral things like happiness, fulfillment, and self-care means that it’s all too easy to lose sight of why we’re doing what we’re doing.

 

I knew a woman who, in an effort to take better care of herself, vowed to do yoga for an hour every day. Four days into that challenge, all she wanted to do was have a bubble bath and go to bed early.

 

It’s not in the spirit of the Why of your change to persist when your methods aren’t working.

 

PortTack2 300x195 Making Changes: MaintenanceMaking change is not a set-it-and-forget-it thing. Would that it were so easy.

 

After you’ve spent time getting your new habit into place, spend some time, perhaps a week, thinking about the why behind the change, and if it’s really being served. If it is, (and it probably is, or you wouldn’t have lasted the three weeks) ask yourself if it’s the only way to serve that why.

Routine is great, but you’re going to want ways to switch up that routine in a manner that stays true to the Why. To use the example from above, maybe my friend should make a list of good, supportive self-care things to do, so that she’s never at a loss for those times when yoga just isn’t happening. It’s not even that you need the list around to look it up. You just need to take the time to consider what would also work. This makes you flexible.

 

And tweak your system. Maybe stealing an extra hour at night to work isnt working for you. Try early mornings. If that doesn’t work, try a twenty minute nap or some exercise right after work to improve your stamina. Track what happens when you eat different foods, or drink coffee or wine. How does music affect your ability to work? Test, and tweak. Test, and tweak.

 

That way, you avoid the killer drawbacks of routines; they’re always the same, they no longer best serve the purpose they were designed for, and they become arbitrary placeholders. That’s the maintenance part of making changes. A change isn’t like flicking a switch, it’s more like tacking a sail. It’s working on your behalf, but you have to pay attention.

 

Not to mention, keeping a higher-level focus on the purpose behind the action is great mindfulness training. You know, if that was one of the changes you were looking at making.

This is the third part of the Making Changes series. Read part one and part two.

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

20% Time: Week 2 Results

January 7, 2012 By 4 Comments

After the first week, and the mind blowing proposition that I had been doing time tracking ALL WRONG for YEARS, I think I might be working too much. (Stop snickering, you!)

No, seriously, I’ve noticed from time to time over the years that when I’m really on fire, totally in the zone, uber-productive, know exactly what I’m doing and why, 8 hours is the absolute outer limit for me. I am whipped. 

This article on the 99% has a great breakdown on exactly how and why working longer hours produces diminishing returns.

Bill spends 10 hours on the job. He begins work at about 80% of his capacity, instinctively pacing himself rather than pushing all out, because he knows he’s got a long day ahead.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? Yeah, me too. It’s not even that I mean to do it; it’s that I know that if I flame out in the morning, I don’t have anything left in the tank by lunchtime. Sometimes I produce enough in the morning that it’s worth it. But mostly what I find is that medium priority, unsexy maintenance-type tasks bear the brunt of this. These tasks are too important to do when you’re zonked, but not work burning precious flow-time.

Keeping all this in mind, I’m working on cutting back my hours, planning those working hours better, and planning renewal time in there. 40 hours a week. Lets see how this works out.

 

But let me spare you the math, and just hit the high points of my second week of 20% time.

 

Weekly Reviews

Sunday was New Year’s Day, and although I didn’t do anything crazy like party the night before, I again took the day off. I’m not really comfortable with taking the weekends off. It seems kind of arbitrary to me. Why can’t I just take time off when I need it? But, since I’m not hella good at scheduling renewal time, I’m trusting the decisions Past Me put into place — and she scheduled the weekend off. I did a little writing, but nothing really serious.

But since I took the weekend off, on Monday the first thing I had to do was a Weekly Review.

It takes me 2-3 hours to do a thorough review, and the reason I do it on the weekend is because I feel like I’m burning daylight if I do it during weekdays. I felt the same way on Monday, so in the future, even weekends off will include a weekly review, because an important part of the weekly review is a sense of spaciousness, and I just don’t feel it if I’m chomping at the bit to start my real work.

A weekly review is one of those really, really unsexy but productive-in-the-long-term tasks, kinda like checking your tire pressure and balancing your check-book. But doing it first thing in the workweek still isn’t conducive to feeling expansive and far-seeing. After a couple days off, all I wanted was to tackle things. Planning is for slow days, I think.

 

Notes on Writing

 

Because most of my productive time (after the review) was spent writing, there’s actually a lot of dead air, as I tend to putter aimlessly in between sections of writing. Not productive, per se, but necessary.  Without the multi-tasking cluttering things up, I can see that I write in bursts of about 40 minutes, followed by 10-15 minutes of blank-minded puttering while the tank fills back up.

This has implications about how I organize writing tasks, but I’m not sure what they are yet.

The other thing I’ve noticed is, the more I write, the more I write. On one hand, this is great. But on the other hand, spending a lot of time capturing ideas isn’t conducive to actually finishing anything.

Work calls are another fruitful source of writing ideas; so many, in fact, that I hate having more than two calls in a day, for the simple fact that I don’t have enough time to write down everything that occurred to me from speaking to others.

 

planning 20% Time: Week 2 ResultsSpace to Plan

I had a cold for a couple of days this week, and not being able to type coherent sentences has allowed me to do a fair amount of journalling about the tweaks I want to make going forward.

These aren’t resolutions, because resolutions are kind of a ridiculous set up for making changes, but it’s a kind of overall refinement of my life, that I plan to write about in more detail soon.

 

What I did with my 20% time

Most of my 20% time was spent journalling. Some of it was for my own personal use, as mentioned above, but some of it was a sort of DaVincian journal where I examine ideas and concepts that are too raw to release yet, but will probably yield some gems in the future.

I also wrote up an essay on my guesses for the future of the book industry (as it applies to my business there) and outlined a business plan. I didn’t need a business plan; I’m not applying for any loans, but I’m in a partnership too, so not having a written, shared vision is folly — – but it would never make it to the top of the priority list if not for 20% time.

I did a fun project where I wrote down the things I owned and evaluated them. This is because, frankly, most clothing and goods are disposable, and I am tired of buying shoddy goods only to have to replace them within a few years.

Clothing, especially, tends to show wear rather quickly, and besides inventorying my wardrobe, I fleshed out actual outfits (which get put together right on the hanger, since my wardrobe is not so well designed yet that everything goes with everything). In addition,  I spent some time researching where to purchase high-quality replacements as they wear out, and collected them in an Amazon wish list. (By the way, if anyone knows where to find good yoga wear that is NOT lululemon, I’m still looking for that. I like alternative fabrics like hemp and bamboo, but the main requirement is that it wears like iron.) This is a form of minimalism, not materialism, and if it sounds an interesting project, check out these sites.

The other thing I did was look into affiliate partnerships, which you will see popping up in the coming weeks. It’s been a long time coming, since I couldn’t be bothered to sign up for affiliates when I only mention things in passing, but since some of the stuff I’ve recommended has been up on the site for a year and I still recommend it, it’s pretty silly to feel like I’m doing some kind of money grab.

 

The Metric System

It’s a productivity truism that what gets measured gets managed, but what I noticed was that it wasn’t enough to measure it: simply tracking my time was useless. What was important was analyzing it, distilling some meaning from it.

I’m going to have to think about the ways to inject that analysis into my life habitually, but 20% seemed to be a pretty good way to do both fun stuff (like analyzing my wardrobe) and important-but-unsexy stuff, like writing a business plan.

 

 

This has been week two of my 20% Challenge. Read the cri de coeur here, and the first week review here.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Experiments

Three Great Ways to GTD in 2012

January 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment
392366 2723527460303 1620621274 2497111 894431921 n Three Great Ways to GTD in 2012

image by Emelie Rota

Ok, I know spurn date-related goal-setting. Call it a character flaw. But what I hate is waiting for a certain date, circumstance, or other benchmark to make changes. I wrote this post just so I could use this image. Yep. I’m that profound.

There is only one change I highly recommend everyone make at this time of year: Keep good records. Good record-keeping is one of the best investments you can make! But I digress.

I’m here to offer you a few tools to just do it! in 2012. I hope they inspire you. Add more in the comments section if you have your own go-tos.

 

Keep the Magic Alive

Does everything go great for a few weeks? Do you feel the spirit move you and inspire you to great change? And then do you inevitably fall off the wagon and have trouble recapturing the feeling, the focus, the vision?

Then try FutureMe.org. It’s a free service that allows you to send an email to yourself in the future. So when you’re flying high, feeling good, and making magic, write about what you’re feeling. Share your dreams and your vision with your future self. Tell them why you’re doing what you’re doing. Because you’ll forget. You’ll get bogged down in the details. You’ll fall prey to the naysayers. You’ll start to doubt your worth and your ability to forge change.

So what if you can’t see the future? That you won’t be able to foresee the problems your future self faces? Project your confidence in Future Self. Project your confidence in the vision. Write the type of letter that makes your Future Self say, “Damn. Past Self, you inspire me. Hey, wait. That’s ME!”

 

A Virtual Kick In The Ass

Maybe you know what you need to do, but you’re waffling. For some reason, you just can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger. Sure, lots of us have friends who fill this role, but you’re a big girl now. You can motivate your own damn self. So put on your big girl panties and type in this URL: doitmotherfucker.com. Now, go forth and conquer.

 

Are You Getting Things Done — Just Not The Right Things?

Are you a victim to your own high standards? Do you want to accomplish more than you are, but still find yourself wasting time on stuff that’s not a priority? Take heart. It’s probably your productivity model that’s to blame. I recommend Structured Procrastination.

Look. You can beat yourself up for operating the way you do, or you can use it to your advantage. Which sounds like a better way to kick ass this year?

 

Will 2012 be your bitch, too?

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, Practical Philosophy, Rants

Announcing Book Reviews

January 4, 2012 By 4 Comments

StackOfBooks 000 Announcing Book ReviewsI’m a big believer in auto-didactism. Let’s face it, the world is changing, and standard education is increasingly out of touch. If you’re out of school and you don’t make a concerted effort to keep learning, you’re being swept out to sea.

But the plethora of information available to us is a double-edged sword. We have no idea where to start, and very little time to devote to figuring it out.

Sure, there are cool blogs out there like Personal MBA, where someone who took the long way around (traditional education) tells you what you need to read to achieve the equivalent. But most of us neither want nor need an MBA, most of us just want to feel up-to-date and in control of our lives. 

 

So What’s the Point?

 

I recommend books to people all the time. Most of the time, though, they’re not convinced, they don’t know why it would work for them, why they would need it, and usually, it’s not my place in casual conversation to extoll the virtues of the book.

Plus, life is busy, so even if I got the book and put it directly into their hands, nothing would likely come of it.

That said, most of the serendipity of finding the right solution at the right time comes from exposing yourself to information and ideas that you don’t need yet.

So each review will break down who needs the book, what you’ll learn, why  it’s worth reading, and some of the broad strokes of what you’ll learn. At the least, I hope the review will be moderately educational, and worth reading for that reason alone.

If the book sounds cool, you can buy it, take it out from the library, put it on your wishlist, or just keep it in the back of your mind to pick up if you see it somewhere.

 

The Best Education is Interactive

If you have a book that you’d like to sing the praises of, I’d love it if you’d submit your own book review. There isn’t enough time in the world to sing the praise of everything I’d like to, so please, if you know of a really worthwhile book, I want to heard about it.

Tentatively, I have decided to post reviews every other Wednesday. We’ll see whether that will work out, since I don’t want to review books that aren’t worth recommending, in my opinion. So while I have a backlog right now, I might wind up kissing a lot of frogs. We’ll see. Hope you guys enjoy it!

 

Filed Under: Blog, Book Reviews

Making Changes: Implementation

January 2, 2012 By 7 Comments

 Once you’ve examined this new idea from every angle and decided it’s for you, you need to flesh it in and figure out exactly how it will need to fit into your life. Don’t worry about getting it perfect; this is something you’re going to have to tweak at least several times.

 

There’s no point in using up your political capital by announcing to all and sundry that you’re going to make this sweeping change. Think of it as a test phase. If you like, you can even give it a time limit. Don’t bother telling anyone. Just do it.

I know this goes against a lot of people’s advice. Their argument is that it creates accountability. Mine is that it makes you defensive and you’re less likely to acknowledge that something isn’t working. Furthermore, you don’t expend any energy managing other people’s reactions or expectations.

 

How Best to Implement Change

 

For me, this is a largely intuitive process. I think this is true for most people, but you wouldn’t know it, looking at most people’s advice on the topic. The standard advice seems to be: Decide the results you want. Make the change you need to to achieve those results. That’s it! No details, no commentary on how to come to these decisions; just get out there and do it, ya slacker!

 

How it works for me is I decide I want to change something. Late this fall I decide I wanted to get fitter. But I hate sports, and I hate sweating for no reason. Hence, most forms of exercise piss me off. So, for lack of any better ideas, I tossed “Walk more” on my projects list. This is how most changes start out.

Now, that’s a pretty shitty goal. It’s not measureable, and there’s no way to really say whether I accomplished “more” or not. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to get it on the list where I would look at it regularly.

I’ve been through several rounds of abortive attempts to “walk more,” but now I’ve tweaked it to the point where I’m walking pretty much every other day, and it fits into my lifestyle not too badly. It’s still something I’m working on, but at least I’m enjoying it now. But first I had to try walking on the treadmill. Then I tried while watching tv. Then I tried jogging. I tried walking outside. I tried walking dogs. I tried getting others to join me. I tried everything but audio books, and that’s only because I don’t have an ipod. (Figured out a way around that, though. I’ll try it out this week.) This is not me “failing” at a goal. This is me finding dozens of ways that don’t work.

 

The point is, YOU did not fail if the first goal you tried didn’t work. You simply found a way that didn’t work. Make a note of it and try something else.

 

Working Out The Kinks

 

When you’re deciding to make a change, don’t turn things upside down and change everything. This is the main benefit of writing out your new idea. You’ve ironed out what the really crucial aspects of this new idea are for you. And then you can brainstorm a list to figure out what might fulfill that goal for you.

 

For instance, a few weeks ago, I suddenly realized I did not have enough fun in my life. I was getting decidedly one-dimensional. So I jotted down what “fun” really meant to me, how “fun” showed up when it wasn’t attached to work, and what I would do to find “fun” if I were alone and knew no-one. In one afternoon, I looked up the local community calendars and the parks and recreation website and scheduled events for five different community organizations. That works out to at least 8 different events a month to go to, plus daily occurrences like museums, art galleries and exploring historic sites. Now I can pick and choose what I do; I don’t just fall into the same activities and events out of habit.

I’m still working on the system to make sure those “fun” events make it into my calendar on a regular basis, but that’s the point of a goal. It’s a work in progress, not a destination.

 

Picking Your Battles

 

cla253f Making Changes: ImplementationIn your quest to make changes, you might have to make certain concessions. If, for instance, you want to work on a side project during evenings, you might need to clear it with the spouse to take care of bath time. Standard negotiation tactics apply — – find a way to make it a sensible decision for them, and failing that, at least not an irreversible one.

If that means making compromises, or setting a strict time limit, do so. You don’t have to campaign for sweeping changes. Sweeping changes probably won’t work for you, either, and they are never embraced by someone who likes the status quo just fine. That means that if you need this person’s cooperation, choose wisely; make a meaningful (to you) change as non-threatening (to them) as possible. Don’t expect them to like it. You only want provisional cooperation. Anything else is icing.

 

Free Trial Period!

 

I recommend about three weeks as a good trial period. It’s long enough to get you out of the novelty phase, long enough that you could conceivable form a habit, and short enough that you can make a judicious decision about whether the change is just ‘hard’ (ie, resistance) or if it’s legitimately not working for you. I recently dropped goallessness rather unceremoniously because it bored me to tears. It also seems reasonable to others; even someone who firmly resists change will likely accede to this ‘trial period’ on the assumption that you’ll drop it on your own account soon enough.

 

But what happens after the three weeks? That’s the next article… Maintenance.

Did you miss part one? Making Changes: Conception

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, How-to's For Life, Practical Philosophy

20% Time: Week 1 Results

December 31, 2011 By 4 Comments

Here’s how I have this figured out.

  • 50 hours a week~ 8hr x 6 days
  • 20 hrs a week on Change Catalyst/Coaching
  • 20 hrs a week on my other business
  • 10 hrs a week on productive time that isn’t directly related to targets for the first two. In other words, no cramming the stuff that belongs in the first two categories into the third. 20% projects can be in service to either business, or they can be totally separate, but they can’t be something I was going to have to do anyway.

 

I’m aiming to average these over the days, as mostly I spend 3 days a week on one business and three days a week on the other. However, I also have the suspicion that there’s more bleed-through than I think there is. Mainly, I’m trying to keep the ratios the same: 2:2:1

 

Day 1

Sunday (aka Christmas Day). Not only is it Christmas, Sunday is my nominal “day off”. It doesn’t always fall on a Sunday, sometimes it falls on Monday, but I try to have one day a week where I don’t plan to accomplish anything. I’m not saying I don’t sometimes work anyway… I just don’t plan to accomplish anything. It’s my “goal-less” day.

 

Day 2

Monday (aka Boxing Day)

Instead of using my time-tracking spread sheet, I’m using a scratch piece of paper to note my working times.  My first realization is that I actually work a lot less than I think I do because I’m trying to multi-task; usually, I’m juggling a conversation while I’m trying to work, or while I’m waiting for a page to load (my netbook is super-slow) I’ll click over to an article I’m reading. Measuring the time actually spent working is an eye-opener.

Also noticing my brain sparking with the various things I can do with my 20% time as I go about household tasks. I have the sense of not wanting to waste this glorious opportunity.

Finally, I noticed the recurring thought, “There’s enough time.” This is new. I literally just noticed how very little time it actually took me to complete my tasks, and by midmorning I felt an incredible spaciousness around my time that I’ve never before experienced. I hope it holds.

In spite of that sense of spaciousness, I did 40 minutes of work on Change Catalyst and 3:40 hours of work on the other business. The rest of the time was spent multitasking in the manner described above, so I didn’t feel quite right calling it “work”. That, and I spent four hours taking a very unhappy dog to the vet, so I figure I wasted about two hours today.

Change Catalyst: 20 – :40 = 19:20

Book Business: 20 – 3:40 = 16:20

20% time: 10 – 0 = 10

 

Day 3

(Dec 27)

Change Catalyst: 19:20 – 2:05 = 17.15

Book Business: 16:20- 4:00= 12:20

20% time: 10 – 0 = 10

 

Not writing down multi-tasked time is hurting my numbers (and my ego) because while I was out getting office supplies and running errands, I also got groceries and so forth. When I got home it was 5, so I ‘multitasked’ a few admin chores while making supper and reading columns.

And, as yet no 20% time has been used. Still, the week is young.

 

Day 4

(Dec 28)

Change Catalyst: 17.15 – 3:35 = 13:40

Book Business: 12:20 – 2:30 = 9:50

20%: 10 – 1 = 9

 

This was a good day. I cut back on the multi-tasking time, and I put in a solid effort in all three categories. I spent my 20% time researching a new income stream I’m looking into. It was great to be able to have a category to put that kind of activity into without feeling like I was short-changing the other two categories.

 

Day 5

(Dec 29)

Change Catalyst: 13:40 – 1:10 = 12:30

Book Business: 9:50 – 6:10 = 3:40

20%: 9:00 – 3:55 = 5:05

 

Thursday was a long day, as I was doing bookkeeping. I actually don’t mind doing bookkeeping, as it soothes my little micromanagerial soul to know exactly where the business is at. My 20% time was spent in research, and I did a little writing for Change Catalyst. I’ve figured out a way to adapt my time-tracking spreadsheet to this method, which is good, because the scratch pad is kind of driving me nuts.

 

Day 6

(Dec 30)

Change Catalyst: 12:30 – 1:55 = 10:35

Book Business: 3:40 – 1:55 = 1:45

20% = 5:05 – :30 = 4:35

 

Day 7

(Dec 31)

 

I opened my calendar today and discovered that it’s a designated Day Off. I’m not really sure why I took today off, but it probably had something to do with this post. Now it seems like aqua-coloured days off are just littering my calendar.

So, being as it was a day off, I didn’t record how I spent my time, but I did spend a couple of hours researching/writing a 20% project, spent some time on this article, and working out the calendar for the next month.

I did all this from my bed, since, damn it, it’s a day off. Then, in the afternoon I went to the matinee showing of A Winter’s Tale, and in the evening I finished up the year-end records.

 

So all told, I think it went like this:

  • Change Catalyst: 10:35 – 1:30 = 9:05
  • Book Business: 1:45 -1:40 = 0:05
  • 20%: 4:35 – 2:00 = 2:35

I daresay it doesn’t seem like much of a day off, but I really did enjoy myself.

 

Summary

 

I really like having a time budget. Manually deducting the hours I’ve worked from the hours I have alotted is surprisingly effective for a workaholic like me. I especially like having a category for productive tasks that aren’t really neccesary. Those 20% tasks are invigorating and fun, and they have the potential to grow into something useful. But they’re not quite ‘leisure’ tasks, so it’s tough to find a good spot for them where they get the attention they deserve.

Most surprisingly was the fat that I was able to cut away. Previously, I had tracked my time in 1/2 hour blocks, writing down the gist of what I was doing during that time. For this experiment, I tracked only the time I was actually working. That made multitasking labour-intensive from a data-entry point of view, so I made a point of focussing on one task at a time. And wow, did that ever improve my productivity.

Looking forward to week two.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Experiments

Making Changes: Conception

December 30, 2011 By 2 Comments

It’s great when you read an article, or a book that brings you a crystal-clear clarity about what you’re aiming for and what needs to shift in your life.

But then work gets in the way; the people you care most about aren’t convinced that this change is a good thing, or is even warranted. What was so bad about our life before you got this idea in your head?

download Making Changes: Conception

It would be great if we all had a supportive, empowering eco-system within which we could thrive. Instead, most of us live in the proverbial bucket of crabs.

 

So what do you do if you want to achieve lasting change?

So what do you do? Assuming that cutting ties with everyone in your whole life isn’t going to work for you….

 

 

The first stage of change is the idea that things could really be different than they are now. In other words, conception. For many people this is the most exciting time. It’s intoxicating, the very idea that things could be different infuses people with energy, desire and enthusiasm.

 

Wait.

Stop right there. The first person you share this with can make or break this idea for you. Think carefully about who you want that person to be. Is your significant other a bit of a stick in the mud about new ideas? Or possibly a bit too prone to debate? Maybe you’d be better off having coffee with a friend to share these fabulous ideas.

 

If there’s literal no one in your circle who would be as excited by (or at the very least, supportive of) this thought as you, then do yourself a favour and journal about it. If you’ve never journalled, or don’t consider yourself a writer, go here and write a big huge stream of consciousness. Every thought you’re having about this new idea, write it down.

 

Write down everything

Two things will happen. First, your whirling brain will slow down. I guarantee it was going a mile a minute, and this will force you to find and articulate the main point and fill in the gaps from there. After that you’ll be able to see whether this new idea is worthwhile or feasible or whether it’s just not you.

Secondly, you’ll start to get an idea about how this new idea will work. You’ll probably have even more clarity about what will not work.

Part Two: Implementation

 

Part Three: Maintenance 

Have you ever had an experience like being a ‘crab in a bucket?’ Have trouble gaining support for change? Tell your story in the comments.

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, How-to's For Life

“Not having goals is still a goal, you know*”

December 26, 2011 By 2 Comments

It’s been twelve days since I went “goal-less,” and I have the following to report:

I’ve had enough of that.

It’s been refreshing, no doubt. I’ve had more fun in the last week or two than I can remember having in a long, very long time. I imagine it’s what a vacation feels like. I get the bare minimum done I need to do on my business, plus a little more. And I walk, do yoga, read, watch George Carlin marathons, eat way too much pizza, discuss bad philosophy, and research different ideas I have.

Don’t get me wrong, this has been awesome, but I’m starting to feel a bit…bored? I just haven’t been challenged. I can feel a bit of ennui or existential crisis slipping in, something that I’ve never wrestled with in my whole life, because I always had a goal. As fun as it is to go from one enjoyable activity to another, it just feels … aimless. And I guess I just don’t do aimless very well.

 

Effing the ineffable

 

The big question is why don’t I get this kind of free-wheeling vacation-y feeling when I’m working? It’s not like I have anyone telling me what to do and when to do it.

I think there are two fundamental differences in mindset. A goal-oriented mindset is by definition centred on delayed gratification, whereas a goallessness is ‘in the moment.’ And there is so much joy and fulfillment available in the moment that the decision matrix is swamped — – it’s really, really hard to think about long-term fulfillment or gains.

 

 A goal-oriented mindset is by definition centred on delayed gratification, whereas a goallessness is ‘in the moment.’

 

I’m sure Sebastian Marshallor Ramit Sethi or Tim Ferriss would have something to say about creating systems so as to get around the decision tree, but here are the options I’ve come up with to up my productivity and make more gains on my long-term goals WHILE STILL providing space for the fun I’ve had over this past two weeks of vacation.

  1. 20% time. Like Google and any number of hip companies out there, I can block off 20% of my time to do whatever the fuck I want. This would require sticking to very strict time-tracking, which I’ve never been able to do long term.
  2. Work hard, play hard. Work as hard as I want, with whatever targets I want for a short period of 6-8 weeks, and then take a MANDATORY 10 day vacation. This would require a few tweaks to my calendar — I can’t decide when booksales are, after all, but there are enough mysterious dead zones in the schedule that I might be able to do it.
  3. Do pretty much the same thing as I’m doing right now with my goallessness, but go back to having a few goals… Johnny B Truant’s Tao of Awesome,essentially. Strictly curtail my todo’s, doing just enough to protect my long term interests, and then leave the rest of the time wide open.

 

Why obsess over this?

lap swimming swimmer 300x199 Not having goals is still a goal, you know*I’m commited to having a full and fulfilling life. I mean, I have a hell of a lot of fun working. That’s the main reason this has gone as far as it has– the last time I wasn’t actively working on big goals was… at least ten years ago. Probably more, because I was still working on my writing craft at that time.

A theory is nothing without an experiment behind it. So for the next three weeks, I’m doing option 1. On January 15 I’ll switch to option 2. And on March 7, If all goes as planned, I’m going to switch to option 3.

While the dates might seem random,  there is method to my madness. For starters, it’s going to be tough for me to track my time for three weeks, but it’s a relatively slow time for me, consisting mostly of being proactive about things, so I have the best chance of maintaining that 20% ratio as I move into a busier season.   January 15 is coincidently 6.5 weeks before I have already scheduled myself a vacation, so I can be all RAWR! for 6 weeks, and then take a vacation. 10 days is about as long as I have been goal-less, so I estimate that’s about how long it will take for me to finish decompressing, enjoy my freedom, and start itching to move onto the next thing.

Finally, in March I will move into the balanced lifestyle laid out by Johnny B. Truant in the Tao of Awesome. I’ve been following this plan for the last 6 months or so, so I’m leaving it til last because in reality, I’m doing a modified version of it in the first two segments. I would never give up my purposes and my master to-do list ever.

 

Want to play along?

I’ll be posting my progress on Saturdays,  outlining how things are going, from my personal notes. I know everyone is beating you over the head with the planning you “should” be doing to Make! 2012! the Best! Year! Evah! but if you want to, in this lull between Christmas and New Years, you could think about how you would organize your life if you had total editorial control. Because even if you don’t right now, it helps to know where you’re aiming, right?

*The words of the Vile Scribbler, when he heard my plan to go goalless.
Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, Mindfulness

Common Mistakes When Turning Over A New Leaf

December 23, 2011 By 6 Comments

resolutionsbokken 300x210 Common Mistakes When Turning Over A New LeafTis the Season for New Leaves, right? (I’m guessing nobody is reading this on the Friday I posted it, because even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, there’s no reason you can’t take advantage of the seasonal slack and get the hell out of Dodge early, right?)

 

So, it’s Boxing Day, at least, and your thoughts have started to turn to New Year’s Resolutions.

That, or you’re hungover and having trouble buttoning your jeans and you’re thinking, “I am never going to do that again.”

 

Lots of people are going to give you advice on how to set your goals. It’s been done to death. I am just going to remind you of the common ways you can screw those goals up, so you can mitigate those tendencies early.

 

The Stupid Things We Do When Turning Over a New Leaf

  • Mistaking Novelty-Driven Immersion for a new habit. Like buying a gym membership and going every day for a week (Ahem.) Most recently I’ve taken up (and given up) morning pages, cooking meals from scratch, baking regularly, strength-training and reading every night before bed. And these are all things I enjoy.
  • or the flipside, Tossing aside my routine to do my New Thing, rather than building it into my existing routine. The things I don’t want to do? They seem to stick, because I make a much stronger effort to plan them into my schedule at a time where it will actually get done.
  • Changing too many things at once. I’m never really too attached to my routine, so I’ll chuck it with very little encouragement, reasoning that there are a million ways of doing something, and that starting from scratch might be the best way to achieve and optimal arrangement. No matter how many times I disprove this in real life, it remains so gloriously plausible and logical.
  • Expecting it to go smoothly. It won’t. Come on. Take off those rose colored glasses already and plan for life in the real world.
  • Beating up on yourself when the learning curve gets steep. I recently spent an entire week trying to get some new hardware and software to work together. The only thing that kept me going is that I refuse to believe that I’m too dumb to do a task that other people have apparently accomplished without trouble.
  • Giving up too soon. It’s one thing to try something new just to see if you like it. But when you decide to do something, something that you decided was such a good thing to do that you made a resolution about it, don’t allow the little setbacks to discourage you. It doesn’t matter how many times you slipped up on your new diet as long as you treat every decision as a new chance to do right by yourself.

Did I miss any? Answer in the comments!

*

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, Practical Philosophy, Rants

No Goals? No Problem

December 19, 2011 By 7 Comments
leo No Goals? No Problem

Saint Leo

I recently decided to go “goal-less,” something Leo Babuta sets great stock by.

 

Why Mess With a Good Thing?

 

Over the last little while, I’ve noticed that while I’ve been more productive than ever, I’ve actually been less engaged. I’ve noticed that doing what I needed to do to meet my targets was actually pulling me OUT of the zone– — – I have been leaving aside activities that I’m very engaged with in order to go do some other thing that I said I would do.

I find this troubling. I’m either getting bad at picking goals, or I’m out of alignment with my work. Or, at the very least, I’m out of alignment with how I’m doing it.

 

Follow the Fun

 

So if my goals aren’t bringing joy, I need to change how I do goals, right? Well, that’s what I would have thought, too, until I read this post on ZenHabits. I’ve heard Leo talk about this before, but I always thought, I love accomplishing goals! Why would I give that up?

Upon reflection, I realized that what I like is accomplishment. The goals are an external metric. I get real joy from tackling things– — – it doesn’t seem to matter what they are.

So I’m going to try doing what I want, when I want to do it.

 

Oh, Yeah? How’s That Supposed To Work?

Well, it’s easier than it sounds, actually, because I’m doing work I already love and I’m an organized person.

I already keep a meticulous list of what I want to do — – so there’s never any risk that I’m only going to do the loudest, most urgent tasks. If there’s something I particularly want to do, I do it. If I’m open to suggestions, I sit down and flip through my todo list, and do what seems appealing. I’ve already ensured that my list ONLY holds important items and I keep a pretty good running tally of what things are due when.

 

So, How’s it Going?

Pretty good, so far. I don’t think my productivity has dropped any, and I don’t have the constant itch of things I “should” be doing. My Master To-Do list keeps me nicely on-track, and having a fixed schedule of what needs to be delivered when does the rest.

But I will say, I’m not sure this would work until and unless you’ve gotten super-organized and you have a real working system. I’m not sure. Maybe it would, for a certain kind of person. But I think you’d have to get to the point where you had things well in hand before you could take off the goal-setting training wheels.

Because I’ve come to realize that goals are only targets– they’re there so that you can measure what you’ve accomplished. If you’re confident enough in what you’re doing and where you’re going, I’m starting to think you can dispense with micro-managing your goals.

 

What do you think? Have I made a good argument?

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Epiphanies, Musings, Note to Self, Practical Philosophy

Open Thread: Struggles with Personal Mastery

December 12, 2011 By 3 Comments

33851 Open Thread: Struggles with Personal MasteryHave you heard about the Marshmallow test? 4 year-olds are seated at a table with a big, fluffy yummy marshmallow. They aren’t told they couldn’t have it. On the contrary, they are told they could have it, BUT if they wait until the researcher comes back, they can have TWO marshmallows.

This test tracks the ability to delay gratification. Four year olds that could successfully hold out against temptation would later go on to be successful adults — whatever that means.

 

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not then an act, but a habit.                 ~ Aristotle

 

 

This means that habits of self-mastery start early. But that cannot be the whole story. I have no problem with patiently building a business, rather than taking the easy win of a job. But I don’t have the discipline to maintain a fitness regime when there are other things I’d rather be doing. By this standard, do I pass or fail an adult version of the Marshmallow Test?

 

Why Do We Fail?

 

The plethora of made and often-broken New Year’s resolutions demonstrates that we all struggle, somewhere, with some aspect of discipline.

My own struggle with self-mastery is allowing myself to fiddle with details and chase easy wins while allowing the bigger (harder) things to slide.

 

I’m working on a resource on the topic, and I want to know where your struggle lies. Is it knowing when to quit? Is it distractions? What would you find most useful in a resource like this? Please leave your answers in the comments!

 

Filed Under: Blog, Musings

The Misery of Being Misundstood

December 9, 2011 By 8 Comments

I have a guest post up on Cordelia Calls it Quits right now. I’m talking about how I’m quitting justifying myself.

I feel pretty good about the whole switch, but family being family, and so skilled at button pushing, I still slip up from time to time.

You know what the hardest thing about not justifying yourself is?

You have to allow yourself to be misunderstood.

images3 The Misery of Being MisundstoodThat is so, so hard.

Because what we’re doing when we justify ourselves, aside from defending out decisions, we’re also begging for understanding. We made a decision. We took action.

And it wasn’t the popular choice, evidently.

Were we wrong? We don’t know. Maybe? There’s probably no way to know yet. What we want is for our listeners to put themselves in our shoes, to say, I see where you’re coming from. I understand your reasoning. Maybe even — – I would have done the same thing myself.

We think — – we hope, that if we were right, everyone would be able to see it, if we just explained it to them thoroughly. And so, to reassure them, to reassure ourselves, we explain. We expound. We justify.

The worst part?

We’re not going to get what we want. Almost by definition, if we have to justify our reasoning to someone, they Just. Won’t. Get it. There is a fundamental disconnect, an uncrossable chasm. History might prove you right in every respect and they will still maintain you should have done things differently; better.

But here’s the up-side:

When you come to terms with the utter futility of explaining yourself, it becomes easy to resist. You know unequivocally that you won’t get the empathy and understanding you desire, and you stop flailing for it.

Most of the time. :)

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

A Change is as Good as a Rest

December 5, 2011 By 5 Comments

You may have noticed that it’s December. (Yeah, no kidding, right?) Suddenly, in addition to your normal workload, there’s shopping, party planning (and party-going), gifts to wrap, foods to bake, a whirl of “optional” activities in a month that by rights should be calm and cozy.

 

368664471 66c95f095e A Change is as Good as a Rest

courtesy el_eduardo

Calm and Cozy?

 

Seriously! Because of the cold and the long nights, in times past, people just hunkered down with family, kept a good fire going, and went to bed early. They’d been working almost non-stop since the ground warmed up in the spring, and they were due a rest.

 

Nowadays very few of us follow the rhythm of the seasons our agrarian forebearers did. There’s not real reason you have to, if you have your own season of rest. But most people don’t and that’s the problem.

 

Sure, you say, I’ll relax after the holidays. In January, we things aren’t so crazy.

 

That’s not going to happen.

 

You’re not going to make New Year’s resolutions? You’re not going to notice the pervasive Hoo-Ah! atmosphere of the entire Western world girding its loins to do better this year?

 

Nope. Your only hope for Calm and Cozy is this:

 

Purge.

 

 

Does it sound extreme? It isn’t. You have 3 weeks til Christmas. THREE. WEEKS. Statistically, what are your chances of doing everything you wanted to do this year, in that time? Nil.

 

I myself had airy-fairy plans of clearing my to-do list and starting the year with a blank slate. Common sense re-emerged to remind me that I over-schedule myself now, and I will over-schedule myself in 2012 too.

 

I won’t rest in December. I won’t rest in January. I will never, ever rest — – — unless I change something now.

 

I need to get rid of the old to make way for the new; projects I’m not excited about, maintenance I might as well farm out, great ideas that just aren’t me. I need to clear all that away so the fun re-emerges, like the sun on the Winter Solstice.

 

Maybe a change is as good as a rest.

 

 

How about you? What do you need to change to make room for what you really want?

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Note to Self, Practical Philosophy, Rants

“Pain is Temporary. Quitting Lasts Forever”

November 30, 2011 By 5 Comments
This is a reprint of a CataLyst letter I sent out. I’m reprinting it here because it got such a good response and so you can see what you’re signing up for. :) —->
 

One of my friends and I have an ongoing argument: Does putting yourself through a grueling challenge make you tougher?

I talked about this a couple weeks ago in the post ”On Doing Things (to) Yourself,” but this is a bit more nuanced version.

His whole premise is that, if you have to put yourself through pain and suffering in order to prove yourself, your self-esteem is not high enough that you would ever be satisfied that you are tough “enough.” You will want to be the best, and the fact of the matter is that there will always be somebody who has gone through more than you. And if you’re bull-headed enough, you’ll test yourself to destruction trying to attain the unattainable.

 

I disagree. Like in most things, motivation is everything. Are there a number of people out there who do things for the reasons he describes? Yeah. For sure. But not everybody is like that.

 

My Story

I have always dived headfirst into adversity because I desperately wanted to know what I was made of. I left academia because I became convinced it would make me soft. I was already so good at politics and bullshitting, I knew I had more of the same to look forward to. But was that all I was capable of? I was scared that it was.

So I went to get my truckers’ license. Not many people know that I failed the test 6 times. It was the most humiliating thing I had ever done. Me, who had never failed anything, ever. At $300 per test, it might have been more rational to quit. But at least it wasn’t that most humiliating failure of all: admitting defeat.

 

After I finally passed, I set my sights higher. I was going to the oilpatch. Conventional wisdom was that women couldn’t get a job there. The work was too tough. They couldn’t hack it. So of course I was determined to do it.

I got a job (an office number cruncher pointed out that I would work more cheaply than a man. And he was right). It took me another month to get into the field, and only because a man got hurt on a rig and they were desperate. I took over.

The rig really needed two guys. It was moving too fast. But I couldn’t have another guy because it was a liability issue. I knew at that point they were trying to break me. You don’t put a greenhorn on a rig that fast. I worked 21 hour days all that summer.

ignore bleeding hands Pain is Temporary. Quitting Lasts ForeverI quit to go back to school, and I immediately fell ill. Adrenal fatigue. I had run on fumes for so long, there was nothing left in the tank.

 

Living on that rig, going without sleep, disciplining myself to drink a bottle of water and a granola bar every hour on the hour even though the sleep-deprivation made the thought of food repulsive. Never ever shirking, never whining, winning the respect of the riggers by sheer force of will– that changed me.

 

Learning from Pain — Or Not

Even though my body ultimately gave up on me, it didn’t fail me when I needed it. It waited til I had the space and time to give out. I finally know I can trust my body when it counts.

 

Of course, now my body is not nearly so forgiving of ego-stoking stunts like that. Having proven itself once, it’s not going to go through it againunless it’s truly necessary.

 

I learned a lot from that suffering. But I don’t need suffering to learn. And that’s the essential distinction between what I believe about grueling challenges and what my friend believes. I can learn about myself from that kind of pain. But I don’t have to. I can also learn from love, from vulnerability, from cooperation and from leadership.

 

Where could you make your learning process a little less painful?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Hammers and other Tools, Practical Philosophy, Self-Knowledge

On Character

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The thing about character is that it doesn’t really draw much attention to itself.

Actually, I once heard somebody say cuttingly about an executive who’d bailed on her company and set up an eerily similar company with an identical product-line, “I guess anyone who lectures on integrity all the time is probably covering his own deficiencies.”

Ouch. If I were inclined to be cynical, I would agree. But since I want to talk about integrity, I feel compelled to come to my own defence.

 

I have integrity. So far. There have been a couple noteworthy slip-ups in the past, but I made amends, learned from my mistakes, and moved on.

So I acknowledge both my desire to have character, and my ability to fall short. That, in my opinion, is as solid an acknowledgement of character as I am aware of.

 

 

Because everyone can be put in a situation that, at least in theory, can force them to betray their principles.

 

 

 

Let’s say you catch a good friend stealing. You have two competing principles here: loyalty, and justice. Now, if you don’t think stealing is wrong, for instance when it’s done against a large institution, you don’t have a problem. If you can prevail upon your friend to return his ill-gotten gains and make amends, you might feel you navigated that well.

o5cfxbbw8ishs6tavdint05qo1 400 On CharacterBut what if your friend refuses? What if admitting to (or getting caught) steal means that he loses his kids, gets disbarred, or goes to prison? What happens to your principles then?

If you value justice over loyalty, well, I hope you’re in law-enforcement. If you value loyalty over justice, I’m sure you make a valuable friend.

 

 

 

But usually it’s not that clear-cut. To resolve the cognitive dissonance, we begin to make judgements. Maybe your friend is not deserving of loyalty, if he could brazenly steal. Maybe, though, you decide he has a point. He’s really more like Robin Hood.

Either way, you’re put in a tough spot.

 

 

 

I’ve liked these sorts of see-what-you’re made of situations because the insight into other people’s thought processes is just as useful as my own. I told the story of Felicia here, the very first time that I realized that someone could have all the same information as I did, and come to a completely different conclusion based on their own value system.

 

This is the sort of thing my clients often share with me – these “no right answer” situations. They’re tough to navigate, no question. That’s why getting to the core of what you really think, and what’s a conditioned response, or what you’ve decided is the most defensible position, is so crucial to living your live in congruency. Because having that kind of cognitive dissonance in your life is kind of like constantly hearing the frequency that shatters glass. It’s just harrowing to live like that.

Filed Under: Blog, Musings, Practical Philosophy

Gratitude

November 24, 2011 By 2 Comments

Gratitude is not something I spend a lot of time on. I thank people for their kindnesses when they happen. I tend to notice when people go out of their way for me. I especially notice when people do me an honor, like when a particularly private friend shares something intimate with me. But I don’t have a gratitude journal. I’m not really mindful about the practice of gratitude. I’m just kind of … polite about it. It’s the Canadian way.

And sometimes things catch me off guard. I recorded some meditations. Not because I liked them– just to prove they could be done better than they generally were. I succeeded, but because I generally do, I didn’t really think much of it. Some friends of mine told me I should release it widely. So I made plans to… but first I had to explain how guided meditation, which often is like going on the slide at the playground as opposed to the cannonball drop at the summer fair, was the very least that they could do with meditation. It grew from an essay into a little book, and it was just the right size.

I liked the little book, because it was unlike anything I’d seen before, and I like to be original if I can. Beyond that, though, I had no conception of whether it was good or not. There’s just no way to judge your own work. You have to kick it out into the world and see how it fares.

4979586231 dc5de880e1 b 300x225 Gratitude

photo courtesy gisele13

But I was completely floored at the heartfelt testimonials I got. They knocked me back a little bit. People needed this? That much?

It reminded me of when I first started my practise, and my clients would tell me their secrets, and cry, and heal, and move forward. How honoured I felt to be a part of that. How wonderful and uplifting and compelling it was to change people’s lives so profoundly.

Today is American Thanksgiving, and though it’s not really my holiday, I feel so grateful and humble right now. As a healer and coach, I touch lives on a tiny, tiny scale, and at any given time there are multitudes I can’t help for every one that I can.

 

But giving birth to a little book that gave people peace, that forged change – there’s no higher result to live for.

For that I give thanks.

Filed Under: Blog, Musings, Note to Self

My Latest Foray into Pendantry

November 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul.

~ James Allen

Part of what I find so troubling about the search for truth, or of someone to bestow it on you, is that it impugns your own reliability and discernment.

While most people don’t think of themselves as an expert, especially at living a fulfilling, rewarding, balanced life,  you also have to realize — – — No one else is, either.

Sure, you can look at someone like Leo Babuta, or the Dalai Lama, or anyone else you aspire to be like, and you can listen to their advice, try out their techniques. But not only is their method not the only way, it can only be fully guaranteed to work for them. Not for anyone else.

If GTD doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. If the idea of pampering yourself strikes you as frivolous and wasteful, go to a museum instead. If you want to get fit, but all the ways you’ve tried haven’t worked keep trying. Don’t limit yourself to other people’s “foolproof” methods

I feel this is all the more important to say as I launch my newest foray into pendantry, an e-book, launching today, called “Crash Course in Meditation: The Healthful, Spiritual Exercise You Didn’t Know You Were Already Doing“

varanasi monk 388 My Latest Foray into Pendantry

I think meditation is vitally important to your mental and physical health. But a lot of people can’t/won’t/don’t meditate and why? They don’t want to do it wrong. They don’t know how to do it. The sheer pressure of the possible benefits combined with the crushing weight of their bewilderment means they simply play dead.

The stupid thing is, most people are already do something that resembles the restorative powers of meditation. They just don’t recognize it as such.

Meditation is simply a combination of self-reflection and relaxation. I’m sure you’ve done both today. My e-book shows you what you’re already doing right and how to expand and improve on what you’re already doing. It shows you where to go from there into the meditation-that-looks-like-we-think-meditation-should-look-like. And from there it just barely touches on advanced meditation. Hell, I’ve even recorded two 30-minute guided meditations, even though I loathe guided meditations with all my heart, in order to show, not tell, some things you can try.

I think it’s a pretty cool little book, and it’s totally unlike anything out there I’m aware of.

But in spite of all that, it’s not your fault if it doesn’t work for you. It’s not anybody’s fault. If you want to meditate, I have just one piece of advice: Keep meditating.

If you’re interested in my book, go here. It’s pretty cool, it’s on sale til Friday, and half the proceeds go to Kiva.

Thanks for reading.

Filed Under: Blog, Musings, Practical Philosophy