In the area of your growth:
A person who never tells you that you are wrong is of little value.
A person who incorrectly tells you that you are wrong is of some value.
A person who correctly tells you that you are wrong is of great value.
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Why you should never, ever start something tomorrow
Somewhere along the road, we seem to have adopted the idea that tomorrow is a great day to start something new. How many times have you heard — or said — something like this?
- I’m going to start that new diet and make it to the gym tomorrow.
- Tomorrow I’m really going to stop wasting so much time at work.
- I’ll finish this pack of cigarettes today and then will never have another, starting tomorrow.
- Honey, I know you’ve been wanting to talk about this. But maybe tomorrow; I’m so tired.
But here’s the problem. It doesn’t work. Tomorrow is the absolute worst day to start anything new. Here’s why.
First of all, planning to start a new goal tomorrow leads to an indulgence mindset today. “It’s my last day eating sweets. I can pig out a bit today because I’ll be eating healthy tomorrow. Pass me another cupcake!” But then life happens. Tomorrow doesn’t come — at least not for our new goal. Instead, we simply used a vague notion of being good in the near future to justify harmful behavior in the nearer present.
Secondly, the habit of putting off a worthwhile endeavor until tomorrow conditions our mind to view the action as unimportant. If we were really serious about something — if it was truly crucial to our success and happiness — we wouldn’t wait. We’d dive right in. But instead we back-burner the issue without taking any action. We’ve told our mind that it’s not really that urgent and can therefore be postponed easily again tomorrow.
Finally, putting off a worthwhile activity creates stress and anxiety. You wouldn’t think about the goal at all if it wasn’t somehow connected to your desires and values. You think about getting in shape because you know it would be beneficial to your overall happiness. But by failing to take immediate action, you’re creating discord between your actions and what you believe to be right. The heart and mind suffer; apprehension creeps in; we don’t feel at peace about how we’re living our life. This condition further demotivates us from achieving our goal.
I’m sure you can see the solution coming a mile away, so here it is: if a goal or activity is important to you, DO SOMETHING TODAY. Take a measurable step that brings you closer to what you desire. If you’re struggling with diet and exercise, go to your cupboard and throw out the unhealthy food that will be tempting you for a late-night snack. Drive — better yet, walk — to the bookstore and start reading a fitness book. Get a friend on the phone and see if she’s up for an evening bike ride. Roll a pair of dice and run around your house that many times.
Whatever it is, take action today. Then take a moment to savor the feeling of accomplishment. Then, and only then, decide on what your next step will be tomorrow. The joy of having made a measurable step will provide more motivation for further action than all the “tomorrowing” of the world ever could.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly
Yes, poorly. The old adage is of course that “anything worth doing is worth doing well” — which is very true. But if we walk around with the notion of only taking on things we can do well, we miss out on incredible opportunities in life.
You won’t complete new tasks the way you’d like to on the first attempt. You may have a dream and vision for how to master this new area of life, but it won’t feel that way when you start. It will feel awkward and unpracticed. You’ll question whether you are really cut out for this type of thing. And you’re likely to be VERY concerned about how your efforts will be viewed by others.
Such is the way of growth. We have to make the mistakes that teach us what not to do, and thus what to do. A technique can fail in a new endeavor, and we can gladly say, “Excellent! I’ve eliminated one way that will not work for what I’m trying to do. How will I change my approach tomorrow?” A partial success should find us saying, “Hey, this might work. I need to PRACTICE. But if I keep this up, I could really make progress.”
People who have achieved great success know this lesson through and through. T. J. Watson, then president of a thriving IBM, once said the formula for success was to “double your rate of failure.”
Now, you’ll excuse me, but I’m going to get a little mathy on you. Imagine you’re trying to solve a problem — business, family, relationship — doesn’t matter. You are looking for solutions to the problem. We’ll say for the sake of the example that 1 out of every 20 of the ideas you consider would actually be useful in addressing the issue.
If you consider or attempt 1 idea per day, you have a 5% chance of success and a 95% chance of failure each day. You’re statistically likely to fail once per day. Now, attempt 2 ideas per day. You’ve gone up to a 10% chance of success and a 90% change of failure. You’re still very likely to not find your solution on a given day. But by doubling your rate of failure, you’ve also doubled you chance of success!
Work at this for 5 days in a row. Tackling 1 solution a day, there’s only a 25% chance you’ve solved the issue. The 2-a-day method has you up to 50-50. Now, imagine you tripled it…
If we desire a new skill or activity greatly enough, we have to be willing to do it poorly for a time. And you can start by practicing alone or with a small audience. If you want to learn to play the guitar, you don’t practice on national television. You practice for yourself, your spouse, or the squirrel sitting outside your window. Better to play poorly in reality and improve daily than to play perfectly in your mind but never pick a guitar.
Why, with a wife, three girls, a home to maintain, a job to do, and dreams to chase, I make time to blog
For those of you who may not be familiar with him, Seth Godin is one of my favorite writers and thinkers in the world today. In this great clip, he summarizes well why I’ve decided to make time to write:
Vision is a rectangle; Leadership is a square
Rectangles are shapes with four sides and four right angles. Squares are the same deal, with the added requirement of having all four sides the same length. Thus the adage we learned in geometry class: “Every square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares.”
A similar relationship exists between vision and leadership. In business and in life, vision is the ability to imagine a reality different — better — than what currently exists. It’s the stay-at-home mom who dreams up a new way to teach her children math. It’s the dedicated entry-level employee who spends his free time designing a new business process for the office. It’s the manager who imagines a new relationship with her employees and their customers.
But that’s where vision ends. Vision dreams, imagines, and designs. It’s the rectangle.
Leadership adds one essential quality. Leaders create action in pursuit of the vision. They drive themselves toward their goals; and when they’ve powerfully communicated the vision, others around them can’t help but take action as well. If who you are and what you do are not causing action in others, you’re not leading.
From the examples above, the mom takes her new method, teaches her children to love it, and shares it with other moms to use in their homes. The entry-level employee increases productivity by teaching coworkers his newly-designed process. The manager connects on a genuine, personal level with her employees, laying the groundwork for them to build the same type of relationships with their customers.
As there are no squares that aren’t rectangles, there are no leaders without vision. But there are many with vision who do not lead. There are many reasons we fail to lead; most of them connect, somehow, back to fear. Fear that our vision isn’t good enough; fear that we’ll be ridiculed; fear that no one will follow.
But we can all lead. In big ways or small, we see the change the world needs and have the power to act. The problem may seem too large for us to tackle or too far beyond our area of expertise. But we can all lead. We all have the power to take the first step.
Take a step today. See who will follow.
