Month: December 2008

Categories
Success Mindset

Reasons and Excuses

Whenever we’re faced with a failure, we can have one of two default reactions:

1) Make excuses

2) Identify reasons

And there’s a world of difference between the two!

Making Excuses

Excuses are attempts we use not simply to explain why we managed to fail, but to justify the failure, as though it could not have been avoided.

The motive behind excuses isn’t to overcome the failure, but to not feel guilty about experiencing that failure. We do this by:

– Blaming external factors (such as luck, the stars, the weather, our upbringing, etc)

– Feeling helpless and, therefore, trying not to be held accountable for the failure

I remember several (come to think of it, many) occasions when I would go to work around an hour late. Whenever I would get stuck on a traffic light I would immediately think to myself (i.e. by default) that I was late because I got stuck on a traffic light.

This would explain a minute of my lateness, but what about the other 59 minutes?

That’s not a question for excuses to answer. That’s where reasons come in.

Identifying Reasons

When you set your mind to identifying reasons, you begin by trying to understand the reason for the failure, without passing judgment or looking for someone (or something) to blame. You simply want to understand.

Having identified the reasons, you take responsibility for your contribution to the failure and look for ways to learn from this experience for the future.

When going late to work, rather than scan my environment for excuses, I can look for the factors that contributed to my lateness: drinking coffee the night before, sleeping late, pressing the snooze button, pressing the snooze button again, taking a long time to get ready, etc.

I can then identify the ways in which I can eliminate these factors, so that I would not go to work late.

A person who aims to identify reasons isn’t afraid of the truth and is willing to accept his faults, so that he can overcome them.

A person who seeks to make excuses takes the truth as his enemy, because it might reveal something about him that he does not wish to discover.

To be successful in life, you can never create excuses. You must always find the reasons for your failures and your successes no matter how hard they are to swallow.

“There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.”
Mark Twain

Categories
Productivity

Web Weavers and Busy Beavers

There are two main categories of workers: Web Weavers and Busy Beavers.

Knowing the distinction between the two can help you boost your productivity and enjoy more time off!

Web Weavers

Spiders tend to spend some time carefully weaving their web in order to catch their unsuspecting prey. But once their web is weaved, they no longer need to work at it. It works on its own. This means that they can, technically, do whatever they want while the web takes care of their next meal.

With human beings, a Web Weaver is someone who sets up a system (or systems) to handle his work, so he can free himself up for other tasks, or even take time to rest, knowing that his systems are handling the work for him. Systems can involve other people, softwares, services, policies, processes, etc.

Busy Beavers

Beavers are known for their hard work and the effort they put in to constructing dams, canals and being involved in other tasks that keep them busy. While the outcome of their work helps them a great deal, they have to put in a lot of effort to get it done.

Busy Beavers, in the human kingdom, are those who are constantly involved in work, and are ruthlessly expending their effort and their time in getting their work done. They are not known for their outputs (i.e. results) as much as they are recognized for their inputs (i.e. time and effort).

The Difference

Web Weavers can get the same (if not more) results as a Busy Beaver, but with much less effort. They can then move on to pursue other tasks or to leverage their existing systems in order to boost their results exponentially.

By relying on systems outside of themselves, Web Weavers can get results with ZERO ongoing effort! Their systems do the work for them.

They can enjoy more time off, pursue their interests, do high-level thinking, etc, knowing that the day to day activities are taken care of, and that they can handle their inputs more effectively.

Making the Transition

In order to become a Web Weaver, you must accept the fact that value isn’t determined by how much effort you put in, but by the results you get out.

Busy Beavers are proud of putting in more hours into their work, and often feel jealous of those who seem to be working less, but getting promoted faster: “How come he gets the promotion when I’ve been working so hard?”

But in order to make sense of this seeming unfairness, you have to accept that results matter more than effort. Effort is often needed to get results, but it’s not what you strive for. You want to get more results for less effort.

Think of your work habits and see which type of worker you lean towards.

Find out what you can do to set systems up that can support you in your work in order to free more of your time.

Categories
Productivity

Priorities are Misleading

One of the traditional ways of managing workload is to organize tasks based on their priority. Tasks of high priority make their way up the work pile, and tasks of low priority sink down to the bottom of the pile.

The rationale behind this is that if you spend your time attending to the tasks with high priority, you will be able to make better use of your time and get better results than spending time on tasks with little return.

While there is a lot of truth to this, it’s not the whole truth.

Priority is Relative

The first fact we have to acknowledge about priorities is that they are relative. A high priority task must be done prior to (i.e. before) low priority tasks. You judge the priority level of each task compared to all other tasks.

Although this seems sensible at first, but consider what will happen when you always have high priority tasks taking up all your attention, while low priority tasks go unnoticed at the bottom of the pile.

You might think: “Who cares! They’re low priority tasks, anyway!”

Which brings us to our second point…

Priority and Importance

Priorities make you assume that low priority tasks are of little importance, and can be ignored as long as you are getting high priority tasks done. But as we’ve already pointed out, relative to high priority tasks, low priority tasks are of lesser importance.

This does not mean that they are not important. They may not be important, but since they made their way to your work load, there is a likelihood that you need to get them done.

By continuously working on high priority tasks, you may be completely ignoring low priority tasks, and the consequences aren’t always pretty.

Priorities and Catastrophes

Given the fact that organizing tasks based on priority is relative, and that all tasks you have consciously taken on are important, neglecting low priority tasks may evolve into catastrophes.

One way this can happen is when the deadline for a low priority task may have been encroaching on you without you being aware of it, since you were too busy working on high priority tasks.

This isn’t to say that you should ignore task priority, but that priority should not be your only consideration.

Your entire workload should be put into a system that aims to get all work done, rather than risk ignoring tasks that are important, but may be filtered out from the perspective of priority.

Categories
Balance

Personal State of Emergency

In politics, a State of Emergency is a government declaration that extends the authority of government to a scope beyond its normal bounds. In effect, a democratic country can enforce dictatorial policies to respond to a threat.

This is something we’re hearing more about in recent years because of the threat of terrorism.

What distinguishes a democratic country in a state of emergency and a dictatorship is that a dictatorship is in a constant state of emergency, whereas democratic countries can only go into a state of emergency for a limited period of time.

So what has this got to do with personal growth?

“State of emergency” and “dictatorship” are useful terms to use when trying to understand how we can achieve balance. Our lives involve a number of areas, such as professional work, family time, etc (I will reveal the Seven Life Areas when I launch the Personal Growth Map E-book :D).

When we struggle to achieve balance, we are essentially giving one area of our lives more time and attention than it deserves, because it is taking our time and attention away from all other areas. This is how one area of our lives can act as a dictatorship. It prevents us from having balance, from giving our loved ones the attention they deserve, from pursuing our interests, etc.

However, it is sometimes unrealistic to expect to have balance when facing an emergency. To strive for balance would mean that you are not giving the emergency the attention it deserves, because it now deserves more attention than all other life areas. This isn’t to say that the other life areas should be completely ignored when faced with an emergency, but that they would not receive as much attention as you would like to give them.

When you are starting a business, for example, there are many, many things you will need to manage in order to set up a stable business. You cannot prolong the time you take to address these issues, because you might be in desperate need of cash. Therefore, you need to enter a Personal State of Emergency in order to effectively manage this life area.

This means that you knowingly go into a state of imbalance, grant a single life area more attention, while reducing your commitment to all other life areas. But this state of imbalance can only be done temporarily, until you manage the emergency, and can return to normal life.

What’s important about distinguishing between a personal state of emergency and a personal dictatorship is that you do not feel guilty for being in a state of imbalance when the circumstances you are in demand that you give more attention to a single life area. If this imbalance happens to be a chronic situation, then you are living in a personal dictatorhip, which isn’t a pleasant way to live.

Make sure you limit your states of imbalance to definite time periods so that you can manage your emergencies and get back to normal life.

Categories
Productivity

To-Do List and To-Keep-Doing List

There’s a difference between tasks you need to get done, and tasks you need to keep doing. Mixing them up on a single list is detrimental to both types of task and, therefore, to your own progress.

What’s the difference between the two? And why should they be kept apart?

To-Do List

The tasks that have a place on your to-do list are those that are done to achieve a particular goal. They may be part of a larger project, but once a task is done, it doesn’t need to be re-visited. You simply cross it off your list and enjoy the feeling of getting things done and being in control of your workload.

An example of a to-do list item is calling a plumber to fix a burst pipe. Once you make the phone call, you don’t need to keep calling the plumber on a daily basis (provided he comes by to fix your pipe!).

To-Keep-Doing List

But there are tasks that need to be done on a regular basis. You can’t simply get them done once, then check them off your list, because they will pop up again, and again, and again.

Even if THEY don’t make an appearance by themselves, YOU need to keep doing them on a regular basis. You need to keep a constant reminder, especially if it’s an action that’s associated with developing a habit.

Take exercising, for example. You can’t exercise once in your life, then forget about it. You need to have a routine of how often you exercise. This means that this task can’t be crossed off your list. It needs to remain on your list as a reminder of something you need to keep on doing (which you would otherwise forget).

Why Separate the Two

Lists are generally used as reminders. A to-do list is used to remind you of the tasks you want to get done. But you don’t read everything that’s on your to-do list. You scan through the list for what’s left to be done, and you can forget about the tasks that have been successfully completed.

This means that if a task is to be done on a regular basis (e.g. exercising, writing blog posts, etc), you cannot cross them off and forget about them.

Besides, if you know that a task will be repeated, you can’t cross it off your to-do list! Imagine how frustrating that can be! You go through your to-do list, only to mentally filter through the tasks you can do and cross off, and the tasks you must keep and never cross off. This defeats the purpose of having a to-do list!

A to-do list can, therefore, be used for the tasks you can forget about once done, and the to-keep-doing list acts as a constant reminder of the things you want to do on a regular basis.

You can even have several to-keep-doing lists based on how frequently you repeat the task (on a daily, weekly, monthly, whateverly basis).

This way you acknowledge the difference in the type of tasks you are dealing with, and to handle them accordingly. You’ll be surprised by the effect this will have on your productivity and clarity!