Tag: Choices

Staying Unstuck

“If you feel stuck, move. You are not a tree.”~ Germany Kent

“Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves. This is precisely why you’re stuck. …”

Seth Godin

I love Seth Godin. I took his altMBA class and learned to trust myself. Together, the other students and I learned how hard it is to get unstuck. In 30 days we shipped 13 grueling assignments that challenged our “stuckness.” We found that our growth came from getting unstuck and challenging the resistance (fear) we had as we faced change.

STAYING UNSTUCK?

Three months after graduating, I’m trying to stay unstuck. It’s hard to get unstuck, but staying unstuck — outside with the wind whipping around our psyches, slapping against our egos, and whistling the “you’re not good enough” tune is unsettling. And daunting. I have to revisit the cycle again and again and again.

Start. Work. Try. Sweat. Finish. Publish/Ship/Send. Fail? Repeat.

Start. Work. Try. Sweat. Finish. Publish/Ship/Send. Fail? Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

The rug gets pulled out with a tug from fate. From the competition. From an employee, a manager, a brother or sister. And we flip upside down.

Flip.

Flip.

We can choose to quit. On the other hand,

“…You might not end up with perfect, but it’s significantly more valuable than being stuck.

Don’t just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.”

Seth Godin (again, still)

Here’s another quote about being stuck.


“If you feel stuck, move. You’re not a tree.”
 — Germany Kent (American print and broadcast journalist)

If you want to get unstuck and stay unstuck, try something new every day for three weeks. See how it feels. If you want to step it up, level up, play up, check out the altMBA. OR check out any of the many other Akimbo.com workshops.

I like being unstuck. Some days are scarier than others, but unstuck is better. I’m never bored. My unconscious blow-through-the-day-in-a-haze self can rarely file its nails and rock on the front porch of life. That self is always wondering, “What’s she going to do NOW?”

Me too.

Photo credit: Pexels.com

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Decision Making

TOO MANY CHOICES

The ThinkerWhether it’s business, our health, or our insurance policies, the problem is the same. We have too many choices. Result:  We don’t choose. We do nothing at all. We’re exhausted and we’re paralyzed.

Here are three folks who can tell us why we are not happier, and not smarter and not better off with more choices.

  • Barry Schwartz, Ph.D. writes and speaks on The Paradox of Choice. (2004)
  • Malcolm Gladwell author of  Outliers and Tipping Point in his 2004 TED Talk.
  • Sheena Iyengar Ph.D. writes and speaks on The Art of Choosing, (2010). The book discusses “relationship between choice and freedom — one doesn’t always go with the other.”

What to do about it? Simplify. Boil it down to three.

Choose From the Top Three:  Make every decision—as difficult as it is—a choice among three things. Why? Because we don’t have time for more. We can only handle three. It forces us to seriously consider the most important three. It requires conscious choice and a modicum of analysis. There is usually not an advantage in over-analyzing.

Here’s what you get from choosing three: A momentum that will not get mired in the sludge of too many choices. Too many choices paralyze us.

To move forward, to move at all, whittle it down to three.

What if you’re wrong? The beauty is… You will know sooner rather than later.

Make It Easy: Make it easy for yourself and your clients to make decisions. They can handle three. More than that and you risk their not making a choice at all. You risk losing the sale.

And for yourself, you risk not moving forward. Stuck is stuck. Like a statue. Don’t be.

 

What Would I Tell a 22-Year-Old Today?

Fail fast and often.

IMG_0044Everyone your age gets lots of advice. And you’re not even asking for it, are you? Well, here’s the deal: when you ask for advice, you’re pretty much tapping into the stuff you already know, deep down inside at the gut level. You know it. Yes. You know it.

Here are five things I’d like to tell you. It’s a short list—so I hope you’ll read it.

  1. Be kind.
  2. Fail fast and often (like Michael Jordan!).
  3. Read (or listen) voraciously.
  4. Smile widely.
  5. Don’t forget to have fun.

We could go on for paragraphs. Write books (there are lots). And make long speeches. But those are the five that matter today. If you want my advice, see what books, speeches, podcasts, and  TED talks exist to expand on each of these ideas. Or not. Just having these five to think about should do it.

P.S. If you’re not 22, it’s okay. You might also consider the five suggestions above.

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” ~ Michael Jordan

Clutter

ClutClutterter. It was everywhere I looked. I spent a day (a whole day!) fighting it off, but it rolled right back in like a peeping-Tom wave to a nude beach.

This phenomenon is known in family circles as the “clutter factor (CF).” Here’s the formula:

CF = 

(Number of people in the living unit) to a factor of pack-rat lineage 

(The volume of the clutter container)

Screw the math: If you buy too much stuff, never get rid of it, work and/or go to school, and have a lot of busy people under one roof, your Clutter Factor is high. My husband said I obsessed over it, but then, I saw it, he didn’t. (Neither did the boys.)

When the kids were home, my husband and kids focused on their work, their studies, their music, and their hobbies. I worked, too, but I railed at the insufferable encroachment of detritus as the work/school week wore on. On Monday, it seeped in the back door; by Tuesday, it washed through the living area; Wednesday found it sloshing into the bathrooms; and on Thursday, it surged into the bedrooms. By Friday, we were neck deep in it, barely able to crane our necks above it to carry on a conversation. Newspapers, laundry, homework, music, bills, projects, books, invitations, purchases, and pets whirled and spun through the churning sea of our busy lives. Weekends sighed in hopes of stemming the tide. Sometimes they succeeded. Sometimes they didn’t.

The Clutter Factor had (and still has) a companion that lurks shamefully in my very own personality. This sin sister is what I call the “Project Factor.” I own this one. I have three to five projects besides work on the front burners at all times – volunteer stuff, hobbies, things to write, things to read, and more. Because all of these contain anxious due dates, their associated files and piles dot the house like seagulls at a picnic. I am a contributor to the clutter! There, I said it.

To overcome the reprehensible clutter side of myself, I invoked my alter ego, “Buffy the Clutter Slayer”— who is still alive and well. Buffy wields trash sacks and Goodwill bags, and tears as if possessed through the house. Her ruling mantra: “If I Cat_Clutterhaven’t seen it move in the last five minutes, it’s clutter and it’s history.”   We lost a cat one year. She was too slow.

One summer, Buffy and I cleaned out the garage in a flurry of self-righteous de-cluttering. My family didn’t speak to either of us for three weeks after that: Buffy threw out their valuable stuff that they hadn’t used since we had moved in. Buffy wanted to move. I said we had to stay. Good lord, we’d have to corral the stuff and box it. I didn’t have the energy!

Here’s the deal: Our clutter defined us, and tried to control us, but with Buffy around, it shouldn’t defeat us. Some days, I actually reveled in our clutter: it told me we were busy and doing. I didn’t trust people whose houses were too clean: they weren’t supporting the American economy, I’d argue.

The very next day as I looked across the burgeoning heaps, I grabbed myself by the collar, pulled myself just an inch or so off the ground and said, “Civilized people don’t live this way.” I strained toward civility as Buffy cleaned out a drawer. I wondered if I would ever live a Spartan, monkish existence, wearing a robe with no underwear, and murmuring all day. I wondered if that would make me happy. Probably not. I wondered if it would be okay to have at least one clean room. One? Okay, I’ll take a closet. No? Then, give me a drawer. I’ll take anything.

It’s a lot of stuff!

Those days are gone. Well almost. The kids are grown and out of the house, but their clutter remains. And while it’s contained in the attic and the garage, mostly boxed with labels, waiting to move on to the next phase it’s still here! I don’t miss the clutter in the house, that’s for sure. But when we’re feeling like we need a fond reminder of what it was like to have noise and craziness filling our space, Buffy and I go up to the attic and look at what remains. It’s a lot of stuff. We sigh. And then we shake our heads, with thoughts of the cat we lost. After we clean up a little, we check to make sure our new dog is still around, we give each other a high five and walk through the house, mostly clear of clutter.

Oh… but don’t look in the guest room closet, please.

 

Saving Money

Saving Money with Freelance WritersSaving money by spending is my idea of a good time. As in, “Look how much money we saved when I bought that [fill-in-the-blank] on sale.”

Although buying something on sale to justify spending isn’t a good practice, it is the correct attitude if you really needed the item. Same thing goes for businesses. Really. Sometimes you spend money to save it. Like when you buy a machine to do work for you so that you don’t have to do the work yourself. Businesses often buy machinery to save time.  They hire a part time employee or an independent contractor so they don’t have to do the work themselves, but they don’t have to pay for benefits and keep a person busy even if there’s no work to do.  The company sees the benefits of spending money to save money.

Really SAVING MONEY is even harder.  That’s when people and companies simply do not spend it. They put it away in a bank, stuff it in the proverbial mattress. Squirrel it away in a jar or a … hmm…piggy bank or equivalent. It’s delayed gratification that is very hard to do, but the reward can be humongous. As Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.” It’s more than that. It’s really good when the company loses a big customer, or if a person can’t work for a while. If that money is available, it can help avoid a bankruptcy. Or survive an emergency. The money is there, and the credit cards are not challenged to see how much they can pick up, like a heavyweight champion with buckled knees and bulging, vein-popping biceps.

Keeping the goal for the business or for a family always visible is very important. If we are conscious, we’ll hesitate before buying something we don’t need. Taking the money out of everyone’s clutches by having it withdrawn from the checking account automatically is wise for both businesses and individuals. The less liquid it is, the better. Simple savings accounts can even be tempting. Parking the money in a fund of some sort…with penalties if withdrawn, is safer. There should be a very good reason for transferring it back to spend it…an emergency. A REAL EMERGENCY.

People make budgets so they are conscious about what they spend. Businesses make budgets. Disciplined people and profitable businesses stick to them. Spend, yes. But spend wisely. Benjamin Franklin said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” He was a wise guy.

Saving money can be achieved, by the way, by hiring a professional freelance writer. We freelancers save businesses money every day by providing excellent written copy, but not adding benefit loads or overtime costs to the payroll.

Contact us today.

Image by Katie Phillips.

A Real Loser

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No one likes to lose. Winners, especially,  do not like to lose. However, not winning is not the same thing as losing.

Not winning is not the same as losing.

  1. You are only a real loser if you do not learn from your loss.
  2. You are only a real loser if you do not revel in the fact that you still have more room to grow in your chosen endeavor. 
  3. You are only a real loser if you do not want to learn from the winners.
  4. You are only a real loser if you do not question what your goals are and how hard you want to work to achieve them.
  5. You are only a real loser if you beat yourself up.
  6. You are only a real loser if you live in the loss rather than living in the present.
  7. You are only a real loser if you don’t realize that every winner has lost at one time. That’s how they get better.
  8. You are only a real loser if you don’t realize that there will always be someone better than you at some point in your life.
  9. You are only a real loser if you do not understand that you are not the loss. You are perfect. Sometimes, God has something he wants you to learn. 
  10. You are only a real loser if you do not brush yourself off and try again.

              Try again.

                 

Practice Makes Perfect

Winners AND losers practice 10,000 hours.

What does “Practice Makes Perfect” mean? Most people think it means that if you do something over and over and over, your skill (whatever it is) will be perfect. It will not, of course, but one can hope to achieve as close to perfection as possible. Piano players à la Practice Makes PerfectVladimir Horowitz, basketball players like Michael Jordan, authors, painters, gymnasts, race car drivers, surgeons, repairmen, typists, dancers—everyone that wants to excel at something—has to practice. 

Winners Practice 10,000 Hours

To come in first in a competition, to be paid for their work, and to generally reach the pinnacle of their craft or sport or profession, winners practice and continue to practice even after they’re “good.” Why do they call it a medical practice, a dental practice or a legal practice? Because those licensed professionals have to keep practicing to continue to be skilled to their high levels of satisfaction. In his 2011 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery.

There’s a catch, though.

Losers Practice 10,000 Hours Too!

Continue reading “Practice Makes Perfect”

Taking a Break

“Give me a break.” In the vernacular, ‘give me a break’ means “Oh, come on.” On the other hand, taking a break has no second meaning. Does that mean it’s more serious? Taking a break is so important that it is mandated by law to protect employees from being forced to work without eating or taking restroom stops.

Taking a Break from WritingTaking breaks makes us more productive. Coffee/tea breaks make life livable. Meditation breaks fill the screen of your mind with a pleasant je ne sais quoi. However it is positioned, taking a break helps balance body, mind and spirit.

One way of taking a break is to have someone do your work for you. Wow, wouldn’t that be cool? This strategy is usually a win-win. Why? The person doing your work often does it better because they don’t consider it work. They like it! And they’re often paid for it, which is good for the economy.

When we’re super busy, we like to convince ourselves that breaks are unnecessary. Been there, done that. However in my saner moments, I figure that if we weren’t supposed to take breaks, we wouldn’t have been designed to eat or to sleep.

“I think I can, I think I can,” says the little train filled with good intentions as it chugs up the steep hill. Of course we all think we can. We’re good. We’re professionals. We’re adults. Mostly, though, we’re invincible. But we’re not. Scientists know. The bad guys are certain: Starve people and keep them from sleeping, and they’ll crack.

Trend Alert: Taking breaks must be important: Google returned 729,000,000 results on the keyword string “taking a break.” This post will make at least 729,000,001! If those were seconds, the time to open up (without even reading) each of the separate results would require 12,150,000 minutes. Gee.  That’s 202,500 hours or 8,437 days. That comes out to 23 years. Taking a break is a very significant concept, evidently. We all need breaks, and more than one every twenty-three years.

Taking a break is essential. Standing up, taking a walk, stretching, reading a book for five or ten minutes. Meditating. Seeing a movie. Going out for a meal. Vacationing.

Breaks refresh, renew, revive, reinvigorate, restore, recharge, revitalize. We all know this. We just need to make time for it, schedule it on our calendars, find a break partner, and make taking a break a habit.

Or we’ll break.

Defining Your Project

There are projects and there are PROJECTS.

Let’s start with the basic definition of the word project: The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says, “A project is a planned piece of work that has a specific purpose (such as to find information or to make something new), and that usually requires a lot of time.”

Defining Your Project
Image by Katie Phillips

Business projects are a subset of the project umbrella. The business dictionary defines a (business) project as follows: … “a planned set of interrelated tasks to be executed over a fixed period and within certain cost and other limitations.”

 

Trends in Projects Today

We can describe most projects today as follows: Complex. Overlapping. Time sensitive. Expensive. Multi-disciplinary. Difficult. Challenging. Misinterpreted. Misrepresented. Missing pieces. Simple projects are hard to find in business and in life. Properly managed, projects get things done.

In fact, managing projects can be learned: the Project Management Institute has designed coursework toward a PMP (Project Management Professional) designation to indicate your ability to manage a project in today’s demanding business arena. It’s a difficult certificate to achieve, but a worthy objective.

Projects come in all shapes and sizes, and with varying degrees of complications and costs. I don’t care how big the project is… Knowing the audience and purpose are absolutely the most important aspect of your project. In the early phases of a software development project, for example, the team engages in an activity called “gathering requirements.” At this time, the client (be it internal or external) defines what they want the software to do once it is built. What are the outcomes they want? What should the client be able to do that they couldn’t do before? Who are they doing it for and what are their needs? The more questions you ask and answer, the closer you will come to defining your project.

There’s one more question that must be asked whether gathering requirements or simply setting goals for any project of any size. That question is: “Why?”

5-Why Analysis

Frequently used to discover ways to solve a problem, the 5-Why analysis also clarifies the project you’re creating. Why are we doing this project? Why ARE we doing this project? Why are WE doing this? Why are we doing THIS project? Stop and answer each one. And then ask one last question: Why are you here?

Once your project has been defined, you can start working. Once you know why you’re here, you can start living.

TEENY WEENYCheck out my book here:

Productive Procrastination

2013-10-15 23.56.12I like to think some procrastination is productive.  Actually, Stephen King recommends putting your manuscript away for 6 months so when you pull the dusty, overworked thing back out into the light of day, you’re looking at it with the fresh eyes. One can also call this “put-it-away-in-a-drawer” a massive homage to procrastination, but I believe Stephen King. Don’t you?

On the other hand, I see that often we do little things to procrastinate that really move ancillary projects forward. Grocery shopping in the middle of a writing project does help to gather food in the house that will sustain life. Going out to a movie almost counts. Popcorn definitely makes you think more clearly and the movie feeds your creative muse!

Seriously, taking a walk to think about one’s horribly knotty problem of the day, whether it’s solving a character’s graceful exit or having some other character perform an unplanned exit for them is often productive. Working on bills to break from an assignment is often necessary to gain distance and perspective. Plus it gets the bills paid, which is productive.

Then there’s the procrastination that accompanies your plain unfamiliarity with the task at hand. Ignorance brings us all to face to face with our favorite distractions. The learning mountain seems insurmountable. Your ability to reach ‘base camp’ appears to be impossible. The refrigerator is your best friend. TV, a temptress. Sleep, a seducer.

Ah… but there’s a cure. The only cure. Ease into it though. Promise that you have 10 minutes more to “procrastinate.” Then jump in. Start. Begin. Commence. Flail and fume and fuss all the way. But when it’s time, it’s time. Go. Do.

Voilà!

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