The second of this weekend's link posts. Today's excerpt is from Zdravko Cvijetic writing about productivity techniques. Here is our favourite:
5. Block Time
The last sentence is worth reading three times. You must block time to do actual work or else you will get run over by busywork. Get out of meetings early and work on your top 3 goals. MeeTime can help
Read the original article here
It is time for the weekend link posts again. This one is from a great article by Christopher D. Connors on 30 excuses stopping you from living your best life. Number one is close to my heart, here it is:
1. I don't have the time
At MeeTime we help people save time to do the things they love. It is so easy to carve out twenty minutes of a meeting. Do this every day and you have the time to make progress in whatever you choose.
Read the original article here Advice For When Careers Are Not Invented Yet, Or: What Do When Passion Is The Scarce Resource9/3/2018
There are so many ways to make money. Watching Young Welsh and Minted, it said there are over 12,000 millionaires in Wales. That is astonishing. Wales is tiny and most of it is hills where nobody lives. The show follows people, all making money in different ways, but the main thread is that they are all doing things that they love to do. They all reach out to their community a lot, they get a great following and therefore they make money. Whether it is modelling, talking about football, computer games or rally driving.
Now I am a parent, it is important to remember that our idea of what will make our son happy is, at some point, largely irrelevant. At the start of his life, he needs to learn that fire hurts, that falling off a slide makes him cry and that being kind is kind of good. But later, our conceptions of what he should do for a living should not matter and this is something I will try not to push on him. Who knew in the 80s and 0s that you could make more money from people watching you play video games than from being an accountant? The jobs our kids have will likely not even exist yet. Who are we to tell them what they should be interested in? As long as they are passionate about something, I think they will be able to make a living out of it. For the world today, it is people with a passion that are a scarce resource. After generations of being beaten down by school and what we must not do it has resulted in us having workers instead of artists, having worriers instead of doers. Others have made the digital land grab and beaten us to it because we were too timid. Will you chose to be braver for the next opportunity? Why wait, there is still room to give value right now.
If you spend 100% of what you earn, inflation will go up (or the value of money approaches its true worth - nothing) and you will, therefore, need to get paid the same percentage more as inflation to stay even.
If you get a pay-rise in line with inflation (assuming inflation is calculated fairly which it is not) then you will be even. But inflation is not calculated correctly because it excludes things you actually need to live, like rent and house prices, like pensions moving to defined contributions etc. So why should you settle for a percentage increase? Skip ahead to consider the flip-side. Imaging you are already 3 to 4 times higher on the hierarchy at work and you are making good money now. Groceries are only 10% of your salary and you have loads of extra cash to spare from your wage even after all expenses. Why should your wage go up by the same percentage as retail prices? TO keep the maths very simple, if groceries cost you £100 a month, 2% increase is £2, but you are getting 2% increase on your £1000 a month salary which is £20. You are £18 better off for a cost of living increase. The cost of living rise does not work. It benefits the rich. Or does it just benefit those who happen to be living below their means? Both. The rich could be squandering all their extra salary on 'stuff' and why should they be worse off if RPI goes up? Similarly, you can have the effect of the rich right now by living below your means and taking the upside. Or you can just earn more money, work harder, work on yourself, become a lynchpin, suggest new ideas, start a side business, sell stuff in the attic, sell things from garage sales. But do not complain. I saw a homeless person with an iPhone. You can start a business with that same device in your pocket. You have all the knowledge you need inside it even if you do not know where to start - the internet. Just fucking do something to pull yourself out of the hole, but do not moan about economic conditions. You can see what the economy is going to be like if you educate yourself - factor it in. Get ahead of the game.
All caught up. Caught up on inbox zero, on chores, on busy work. Now I can get down to something big and meaningful, you might tell yourself. It is a great feeling being caught up. All the psychological weight of incoming tasks has gone. You feel free, you feel motivated, you feel like you have time to do something big. But, like everything, it is fleeting. What happens when the next email hits, when the next interruption stings by your desk, when it is time to go to the next meeting?
'I'll just do this one thing now, so I can be caught up again.' 'It's only small and I like the feeling of being caught up, so I'll just do this small thing and THEN get onto the big stuff.' But guess what? This type of thinking is what got you here; this type of thinking is standing in the way of growth; this type of thinking leads to a life of mediocrity. Just like Covey's big rocks and sand analogy, you must make time for the big things first. An entire life can be wasted if you focus on busy work. Will you really care that you got to inbox zero every day in a job that you hated? This is the trap that many people who complain of 'having no time' fall into. Not realising that just starting the day with something big and proactive is all the change that is needed. The busywork can still get done in a reduced amount of time; or it will not get done; or sometimes it just sorts itself out. All are manageable if you have already made progress on the big stuff. Gary Vaynerchuk posted a great reminder the other day: 99% of stuff does not matter. Stop worrying about dumb shit. Focus on the important and put this first. Execute
In making any product, there is a balance of making it better or spending time and money promoting it as it is. Without knowing what will be the best return on investment, it is hard to decide on either.
The same is true in your career. You can either spend your time broadly in two areas: schmoozing or getting your head down doing actual work. It is difficult to know where to draw the balancing line especially if your natural tendency is to plan out improvements, get stuck in and execute rather than shout out, self-promote and take credit. But you must spend the time to cultivate this. Assuming you are not already, many a person has made a career and risen the ranks just by attending the right meetings and being close to the right people despite being mediocre best. If you do not believe in yourself, who will? If you do not champion yourself, who will? If you do not shout about yourself, who will? Well, some people will, and most will not. Elon Musk has said in the past that he does not spend a penny on advertising Tesla, instead preferring to invest in making the product better. This is a good model to strive for, but he does put on press conferences, do talks, interviews and publicity stunts, so he is still getting his message out there. He is still investing his time into marketing even if his money does not follow. How can you get noticed today? What can you do to push yourself out of your comfort zone today? Who can you model yourself on that is really good at this? What would they do?
If you fall off your horse, get right back on again. If you fail in your habits, do not let this spiral out of control, just get back into them as soon as possible. Avoid the thinking that goes like, 'well I have had a cake today, so I may as well eat crap for the rest of the day.' This leeches into 'well I was bad on Monday and Tuesday, so I may as well write this week off,' to 'well I was bad last week so I may as well just wait until next month to start again.'
Why are you trusting your future self to be better, to have fewer cravings, to have more motivation than your current self? Because you have felt motivated in the past, you think it will return? Possibly, but why take the risk? Why leave it up to fate? If you just did the thing you know you should do, the action itself will produce motivation, not the other way around. There is no future, only what you are doing in the present. Right now. The future is just a series of presents that stretch out in your mind. You do not delay breathing in such a manner. 'I can't be bothered to breathe right now, I think I'll wait until tomorrow.' Bring your thoughts to your breath. Gather yourself in the present moment and then take action now. Get yourself back on track. Eat healthily, be silly with a loved one, open that stocks and shares account. What would it look like if it was easy? Do that.
Will it make the boat go faster? Benjamin P. Hardy wrote a great article yesterday on how to keep focussing on the right things with a lesson from the British rowing team of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Read the whole article for context but my favourite excerpts are below:
They developed a one-question response to EVERY SINGLE DECISION they made. This one question allowed them to measure every situation, decision, and obstacle - and to not get derailed where most people do.
Find out what you want in life and for everything that gets in the way, ask yourself, will this help me hit my goal? If not, you know what to do...or not do.
Read the full article
James Clear just published a great blog post on Tendai Buddist monks and how this can relate you your own projects. It is well reading the whole article for context but my favourite excerpts are below:
If something is important to you, complete it. If not, kill it. We all have things that we say are important to us. You might say that you want to lose weight or be a better parent or create work that matters or build a successful business or write a book - but do you make time for these goals above all else? Do your organize your day around accomplishing them? It doesn't matter how long your goal will take, just get started.
Where do you want to get to? It could be getting promoted, passing an exam to get a qualification, it could be gaining a certain amount of money.
Why do you want that? This will help keep you going when the times get tough. Even if you stumble, it will act as your guiding light to get you back on track. But the most important questions are needed to distil a habit: What would a person who has already achieved the things you want BE like? How would they act? How would they think about things? What would be their outlook on life? How can you be like those things right now? What do you think they would do each day? What would you need to do each day to be like them even if they do not need to do them each day? What would it look like if it was easy? Start with the smallest daily thing that you will be able to do no matter what. No matter if you are ill, if you are injured, if a crisis happens and you have no time. Something that is so small that it seems insignificant. Something that you are likely to do more than necessary because it seems too small. Consistency over intensity is where habits build into greatness. Day by day by day. This is where the real change happens, inside yourself first before others will ever see it. This is where your focus should be. Do the exercise. Find your habits and then get your head down and commit to them. Look up occasionally to see if you are still going in the right direction. Check in to see if your 'why' is strong enough. And then get your head back down and work. |
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