“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

–Gilda Radner

I submit the following points:

• Most of the particular details of your situation came about by chance.
• Most of your belief about your control of outcomes is simply an illusion of control.
• People have different kinds and different amounts of natural talent
• Despite all of the above, success is not just “dumb luck”.  There is a reason why some people are successful and it has nothing to do with dumb luck.

Steve Jobs was in the news a lot lately because of his tragic death which was the result of a chance event, pancreatic cancer – really bad luck.  But what about his incredible success in life?  Was that just luck too?  In my opinion the answer is both yes and no.

If Jobs had not come of age about when he did, if he had not met and become friends with Steve Wozniak in high school, or if he had not visited a Xerox lab and have seen the idea he used to create the Apple computer interface, we probably would never have heard of him.  We might have anyway but in my opinion likely not.  That is what I mean by the first bullet point that the particular details of your situation are the result of chance.  If you met your lifelong partner at a party that you only went to because bad weather cancelled other plans, then but for that chance event you life would have been very different in its particular details.

Most of what happens are things we don’t control.  They are just a series of contingent occurrences in our life.  After the fact and in hindsight we compose narratives to explain the events and how we were in control of it all. Gurus tell their story of success and use it to convince you they have discovered the true path to success and that you should buy into it – literally.  The control over the outcomes that these stories describe is illusory.  It is in this sense that much in life is driven by chance events.

I think it is incredibly important to accept the uncertainty of life – that you don’t control outcomes and that conditions will constantly change. By believing we are in control of these events we set ourselves up for failure. When things inevitably depart from our plans we are disappointed by failure or see ourselves as victims of circumstance.

Accepting you don’t control the outcomes, which you don’t, allows you to roll with the punches with a much better attitude. Shit happens so just deal with it.  You control what you can control and then accept whatever happens and move on.

Are Some People Lucky?

Richard Wiseman who has made a specialty of studying luck says that lucky people are just much more open to possibility.  Unlucky people are stuck in routines and are afraid to take chances when opportunities present themselves.  I think he has completely nailed the issue.

Lets say something about Steve Jobs’ life had happened differently and he had not “lucked” into those chance events I mentioned above.  Would he have been a success at something else?  I think it is highly likely he would have been because he was the kind of person who looked for opportunities and took advantage of them.  He might not have become a famous multi-billionaire but probably by any standards he would have been successful.  Other people were in similar situations and saw the same things Steve Jobs did but not create Apple computers.

The one thing that will guarantee you remain stuck in “bad luck” is to be afraid of uncertainty and change and to play it safe.  Life changes too rapidly and too unpredictably for that to be a successful strategy in today’s world.  You might not like it and it may scare you but that doesn’t change the fact that is the way the world works.  Successful people are opportunistic chance takers.  Eventually they find something that works and all the complainers are still sitting around whining about how unlucky they are.

I do not believe we are all equal in talent either.  I watched a documentary called Bobby Fisher Against the World yesterday.  Malcolm Gladwell was on their spouting the 10,000 hour mantra and making it seem like luck had nothing to do with Bobby Fisher.  I completely disagree.  Bobby Fisher had an IQ of 180 which puts him a category that only something like one in a million are lucky enough to be born with.  Certainly without his obsession with chess (he spent virtually all his time with it from age 6 on) he would never have achieved what he did.  On the other hand had he not been born with a brilliant and very unusual mind he wouldn’t achieved it either.  There is luck involved here but in one respect Gladwell and I are on the same page; it’s what you do with what you are lucky enough to be born with that is most important for YOU.

There are some genuinely undeservedly lucky people and some genuinely undeservedly unlucky people.  However, in general I think over time most people create their own luck by either taking advantage of whatever circumstances life delivers up or by failing to do so.  That choice is yours to make.

The Keys to Luck

• Accept that life is uncertain and can’t be predicted and planned out
• Accept that what happens is not under your control
• Be resilient so you can bounce back when life smacks you on the head
• Be open to see the opportunities chance delivers to you
• Be flexible so you can take action on those opportunities
• Don’t be afraid of doing something

“So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don’t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

–Lee Iacocca”

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Life is made up of a whole set of package deals.  It’s the nature of a package deal that you have to accept or reject the whole package, you don’t get to cherry pick the parts you want and reject the others.  The good usually comes packaged with some bad.  It’s part of the nature of the world we live in.

This is the problem I see with those gurus or spiritual leaders who claim everything can be great or perfect if you just look at things differently.  There is something to what they say and I agree with much of it but they over do it.  We think we have the right to demand life be great just because we exist or that it will be that way if we just imagine it.

I’m all for making the best of every situation, looking for something you can get out of each challenge or struggle and learn and grow from them.  I have said as much many times here on this blog.  However, I’m getting a little tired of people in general and gurus in particular acting like everything can be wonderful and perfect all the time.

One of the most important aspects of a good life are its relationships and this is one area where many people seem to not get the package deal concept.  If there ever was a package deal it is people.  Young people especially don’t seem to get this package concept of their romantic partners.  As soon as the move in together or get married, they set about constantly griping about the things, big and little, that they don’t like in the package they selected.  What’s worse is they think they can “change” them.  Sorry, but you bought a package.  Same with your friends.  Make sure you select carefully because a package you will get and not a piece of clay you can mold.

I choose to live in the burbs because I like the space and green surroundings.  I appreciate the peace and quiet most of the time.  But I bought a package deal.  I’m not surrounded by the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a city center and I crave that sometimes.  Instead, I get the burb culture and it definitely can be bland.  It’s a package deal.

Guess what happens when you elect a politician?  You get a package, much of which you aren’t going to like.

When you work for someone else, especially a corporation, you are trading independence and freedom for at least some level of stability and security.  When you work for yourself you are buying a different kind of package.  It doesn’t help to constantly bitch about the parts you don’t like because they come with the package.  Everything is not wonderful and great all the time.

I watched the U.S. Open Tennis Men’s finals earlier this week.  Novak Djokovic definitely experienced the thrill of victory while Rafael Nadal experienced the agony of defeat.  But even Djokovic suffered through the grueling and painful match with a back injury.  He had what many consider the greatest year ever in the history of tennis for a men’s single player.  That greatness came packaged with a great deal of mental and physical stress.  What about all the other players with less spectacular (or any) success?  Most elite performances are preceded by a great deal of not so thrilling practice and drills and yes even the agony of defeat.

Life has its ups and downs.  The downs make the ups that much sweeter.  Life is jam-packed with a bunch of small (and some not so small) packages – packages that bring both the good and the bad.  Accept that and life can be wonderful.

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What if there was one thing you could do to dramatically increase your effectiveness both personally and professionally?  I believe there is.  It’s an extremely simple concept, but not so easy to implement, because it is simply not ingrained in our habitual behavior.  Our modern culture has mostly eliminated it from our mindset.  Implementing it on a consistent basis requires some audacity and commitment that most people simply will not choose to develop.  Regardless, I believe virtually everyone can improve their personal effectiveness if they are willing to develop this one habit to a much greater degree.

I highlighted the word “you” in the first sentence above for a reason.  The whole idea is simply to ask yourself in any situation in which you are dissatisfied, frustrated, less than pleased, or whatever the following question:

What can *I* do to improve/advance this without asking anyone’s permission and without requiring cooperation from anyone else?

This is often referred to as “sphere of control” in contrast to “sphere of influence” which requires you to influence others to get things done.  What I don’t like about the typical formulation is that it assumes an existing “sphere of control” that is fixed and causes many people to accept those existing boundaries.  See the following graphic for an illustration of the concept.

In contrast I would ask that you push those boundaries outward to a much large circle. From my own personal experience and the observation of others who act similarly, I believe our spheres of control can be greatly expanded.  All it takes is the above mentioned audacity as well as some creative thought.  Even if the boundary seems mostly fixed in a particular situation, you can often find ways inside those boundaries to take action for yourself.  There are probably several avenues of action that you simply haven’t considered.

There are times you can’t actively control the situation and in those cases you need to do something else.  There is one thing you can almost always do no matter what. No matter how helpless you may seem in the face of circumstances (e.g. a serious health problem with no relief), you can reframe your response to it.  Even if there is nothing else, there is great power in that alone. However, most of the time there is much more you can actively do to progress your own situation if you only have the courage to take hold of the situation and act for yourself.

People tend to focus the vast majority of their energy on looking at others or circumstances to blame and wallow in their feelings of helplessness to change anything.  The mass media overwhelms us with what somebody else is doing to screw things up for us. It’s an endless stream of messages blaming somebody for something somebody else doesn’t like. That, along with much of the rest of our culture, teaches us is that we are helpless and our situation is someone else’s fault. We are socialized to believe that we are not personally responsible but instead the victim of circumstance.  Instead of focusing upon what we can do, we fuss about what others are doing to us.

When I was a very young adult I stumbled across a wonderful book that is now out of print and very expensive – Harry Browne’s classic How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty.  He gives a lot of specific advice in that book but what I took away from it and still treasure 30 years later is not the specific ideas he advocated.  What stuck with me all these years is the principle that regardless of what chains others attempt to put on you, you can do things your own way if you simply choose to do so.  It takes guts but if you choose to be the boss of you, I think you will find yourself a lot happier and effective person.  It has been well established by research that subjective well-being increases with feelings of greater personal autonomy.

The question is easy; the concept is simple and basic.  However, the implementation it is not easy and the habit is hard to develop.  We have become trapped inside our own and our culture’s assumptions about our power to act on our own behalf.  We are intimidated by spouses, friends, family, colleagues, bosses, and governments.  I’ve empowered myself most of my life and have gotten away with it.  It frustrates other people because they are not used to it.  They are used to people playing by the rules they impose.

Spouses or other family members are especially good at guilting you into doing what they want and if you don’t then you must be an awful person.  Why? Because you refuse to play by the rules.  Whose rules?  Why theirs of course.  People in relationships are always full of ideas about what some other can do to make their life better.  They seem to forget about the things that are in their total control – what they themselves can do to make their own life better.

If you will simply empower yourself to advance your agenda and stop waiting, complaining, or depending upon others, you will go a long, long way towards increasing your effectiveness. I simply cannot emphasize that enough. It’s not enough to just accept it or say that it is obvious or old news, which in a way it is. You have to actually act upon it. Therein lies the difference between those who accept it intellectually and those who actually do something that makes a difference in their own lives.

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This is a question that I think few people consider seriously and yet I think in today’s world it is a very important question.  I will  celebrate (or mourn) my 50th birthday  this year.  I think I’ve lived about one half of my adult life and this question is something I have been thinking about.  I will attempt an answer in this article.

In today’s hyper-specialized world I think the “well-rounded” person person is disappearing.  By default we are becoming specialists.  I graduated college with a computer science degree and went into the IT profession.  I am profoundly ignorant of most of the field.  The amount of knowledge or skill in most fields is so vast and increasing so rapidly that you can likely only be a narrowly focused specialist if you want to achieve anything significant.

To take one example, the medical general practitioner is becoming almost uselessly behind in every area; the field is so vast nobody can begin to hope to be much of a generalist and be of as much use as the internet. You don’t go to a criminal lawyer to do your taxes.  I follow several scientific fields and the well-known scientists are usually very narrowly focused in a sub-specialty of their field.  The same thing is true with athletes and artists.  Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist and audiences don’t pay to hear him play the trumpet.  Bobby Fischer focused on chess so much from a very young age he never learned to be a competent human being and he ended up a raving lunatic.  The Olympic decathlon champion probably couldn’t win a college level (or maybe high-school) competition in any particular event, and despite Michael Jordon’s undeniably rare athletic skills he couldn’t play baseball at the professional level.  As a blogger, one of the most consistent pieces of advice I hear is to find and focus on a narrow niche (which I ignore).  In other words, be a super specialist.

Of course there are exceptions but we are talking about relatively normal people – you and me.  A few centuries ago you could probably learn a lot about a lot of different subjects and be considered to have a reasonably well-rounded intellect.  Many educated people achieved this universal knowledge and some remarkably talented people actually became true polymaths or Renaissance Men (e.g. Leonardo Da Vinci).   I don’t think this is realistic anymore (there may be a few exceptions) and the embarrassing result is that many world-class experts in one area try to throw their weight around on things they are unqualified to speak about (artistic people who think they are political or economic experts come to mind).

In times past many people out of necessity were multi-skilled in a variety of activities and if they couldn’t do it themselves it didn’t get done.  Even in the western world, at the practical skill level, this persisted well into the 20th century in rural areas on farms and ranches.  My father is a do-it-yourself handy man in many different areas.  I can barely hammer a nail.

We love and are captivated by human excellence and in all fields we benefit from the single-minded focus of the experts.  I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them. Specialization is undoubtedly productive and has produced great wealth.  While this hyper-specialization seems necessary for significant achievement and economic progress, the question still remains should you try to be an expert or a more well-rounded generalist?

And The Answer Is?

I don’t know, but I’ll take a shot.  Given the hyper-specialized world we live in the obvious answer seems to be that you should become a narrowly-focused expert.  No matter what you choose to be doing at any particular time, there are going to be any number of other people who are specialized in that area and doing almost nothing else.  If you aren’t focusing most of your time on it, they will be much better at it than you.  Since the world is so connected, people who want their services will be able to find them.  You are never going to be able to out compete the specialist in a specialty.  If you don’t want to spend a lot of time at your chosen field, there will be others who easily surpass you.

I think if you want to achieve at very high levels this is the answer.  If you want to excel in your career, achieve recognition, money, or status I don’t think you have much of a choice.  While there may be exceptions, you probably aren’t one of the genetic freaks who will be one of them.  I’m certainly not.

But I Hate That Answer

My heart’s desire is to have a number of pursuits and areas of interest and do them all well.  I don’t think just dabbling in a bunch of different things gives one much satisfaction.  You need to achieve some level of competence to feel some accomplishment.  I have been fairly specialized most of my life and it seems like I constantly need to be more specialized to keep up and be good.  I absolutely hate it.  I’ve been too focused and many things I want to pursue have been left by the wayside.  I’m determined to change that.

The High Cost of Expertise

To achieve high-level expertise you have to devote enormous amounts of effort.  In others we see the results, but not the painful effort that went into those achievements.  Most skills have a fairly steep initial learning curve and it takes quite a bit of effort to achieve any competence.  However, once you achieve a certain basic competence in something, improvement is very rapid; you are initially getting a lot of results for your effort.  These are the boom times.  As you continue to rise in expertise, the improvements come more slowly; the returns diminish  At the highest levels it may take enormous effort to achieve even tiny incremental improvements.

So once you achieve a certain level of competence the question to ask yourself is it worth the continued effort to gain even higher levels?  It all depends upon what you want.  If you want the recognition, money, achievement, or simply the satisfaction that comes from expertise then go for it.

The Alternative

Here are some things I have zero competence in that I would like to become reasonably competent doing.  Speaking multiple languages, a martial art, a sketch artist, playing chess, being a published writer, and some other things.  I barely know a few words in any other language than my native English.  But I would like to learn another language.  Since I live in the Southern Texas, Spanish is the obvious choice.  It would have a lot of practical advantages.  I could spend a tremendous amount of effort to become remarkably fluent in Spanish or I could spend the same amount of effort to become reasonably fluent in both Spanish and French and maybe even a third language.

Maybe instead of learning three languages, I could become reasonably fluent in Spanish and also learn to be a decent pencil artist and achieve a middle level belt in a martial art.  To me this kind of thinking clearly lays out the consequences of expertise – the opportunities you give up.

My gut instinct and personal experience says that to achieve the best life satisfaction, maybe being an expert isn’t the right choice.  This is something everyone has to decide for themselves, but societal pressure seems to be on becoming an expert; being the best you can be and all that.  I’m pretty sure that’s the way to high achievement in anything.

I’m just not sure that’s the way to high happiness with your life.  To give up on expertise, you will have to give up some other things, but I think for many if not most people it’s worth it.  Don’t get caught in the trap unless you are really sure that’s what you want.  Consider earning a living four or five hours a day and spending the rest of your precious time on other pursuits.  After a career of 30 years, those 12 to 14 hour days may just not have been worth it.

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These days there may be no scarce resource more valuable than your attention and no ability more important than being able to focus that attention.  Success, however you define it, is dependent upon your ability to focus your attention.

This is such an important topic it cannot be covered in depth in a blog article, even a long one like this.  This article will provide you valuable practical tips, but if you want to go deeper into the subject I would recommend the following resources:

Leo Babauta has written a free eBook Focus: A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction.  It is fairly wide ranging and covers Leo’s overall simplicity and single-task focus philosophy.  Like all of Leo’s work it is well done and short.  It’s free and so it is well worth your time (a couple of hours to read).  He has a paid version with additional material that I did not purchase.

A much more content dense and frankly significantly better book is Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload by Lucy Jo Palladino.  While Leo’s book is useful, this book is much more focused on focus and I got a lot of practical tips out of it.  Of course you have to pay for this one.

A very different book is Can I Have Your Attention?: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Concentration by Joseph Cardillo.  This book contains a lot of science and interesting information.  It was a very compelling read that I couldn’t put down, but it is rather light on practical tips.

How to Improve Your Focus and Control Your Attention

1 – Improve Your Working Memory

This is something that is not very widely known, but research has clearly demonstrated that working memory capacity is is critical to both controlling your attention and the ability to ignore distractions.  I put this number one because I think it may be the most important and you ignore it at your own peril.  Working memory capacity was believed to be fixed and genetically determined, but it has been recently shown that it can be improved significantly.  Working memory also declines with age, stress, and lack of exercise.  See my article Working Memory – Why It’s Important and How To Improve It for more information.

2 – Control Your Environment

If you fail to control your environment, you will harm your ability to focus.  Even if you think you are focusing well, you will be using some working memory resources to filter out distractions.  Those resources are better utilized in the activity on which you have focused your attention.

Do not worry too much about what other people will think including your family.  Some people are offended if you put on headphones or go into another room.  As if your job at work or life is to be on instant response alert to their needs.  Get over it.  If you are truly needing to focus then you should give it your all and give your coworkers or family the full attention they deserve some other time.

• If you are exposed to auditory distractions like co-workers, TV, or family racket go somewhere quiet or try sound isolating earphones.  Play your music or stimulation sounds as described below.  If you don’t want to play sounds then just go for inexpensive foam earplugs.
• If you are exposed to visual distractions go somewhere else or block your view.  Visual distractions, especially electronic ones like TV are designed to grab your attention.  You can’t help being distracted even peripherally no matter what you think.  You simply must block it from view.  All kinds of visual distraction – the hubbub of people and activity around you for example – can be very tempting and disruptive. In your work area is open, put up plants, pictures, or other items to block your line of sight.
• Shut down any computer or electronic equipment that may potentially distract you.  Don’t use willpower to resist temptation because willpower is a limited resource.  The more you use it the less you have.  The more difficult you make it to be distracted, by shutting down email, IM, cell phones and computers, the better.  If you are working on your computer, only open the applications needed to perform the task and shut down everything else.
• For some people it also helps to eliminate clutter or other objects that might distract them – that includes photographs that may tempt them to take a trip down memory lane.

3 – Limiting Daily Disruption and Demands on Your Time

Daily disruptions and ad-hoc requests are a huge problem for most people.  We are constantly being pinged; by IM, email, text, cell phone, banners, pop-ups, etc.  Rings, pings, and bells from your friends, family, and colleagues aren’t the only problem.  Marketers via internet, television, and print ads are using sophisticated techniques informed by brain science to figure out how to grab your attention.  Your brain is wired in ways that make it almost impossible to resist these techniques.  You are increasingly bombarded with demands on your attention, and failure to control it means failure to be who you really want to be.  You do not have to respond to all of this.  Doing so simply makes a a slave to the demands of others.

“We flit from one task to another, one response to another, living a life driven by the needs of others, instead of what we need, what we feel is important.

You don’t need to respond.” –Leo Babauta

If you have trained others that your are always available to respond to requests, you need to retrain them to expect something else.  Make it clear to people when you will be available for ad hoc requests and when you aren’t.

• You can schedule blocks of uninterrupted time.
• You can put up signs in your work area that you are not available.
• You can close the door.
• You can shut down IM and email and either turn off or not answer your phone.
• You can find a privacy room, a conference room, a library, or a coffee shop to get away from others.
• You can be assertive with your valuable time and resources

4 – Be Aware of Your Stimulation Level

In her book Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload, Lucy Jo Palladino describes the inverted U theory of performance and being in the “focus zone”.

The zone is the area between too little and too much stimulation where optimal performance can occur.  Too little stimulation leads to boredom and you are unable to maintain focus.  Too much stimulation leads to anxiousness and hyper activeness that decrease performance.

You need to monitor your stimulation level and increase it when it is too low and decrease it when it is too high.  Palladino suggest you rate your stimulation level on on a scale of 1 to 10.  To help you you with that, think of 0 (most relaxed) being equivalent to laying in a hammock stretched between palm trees on a beach; 5 (relaxed but alert) would be how you feel when you are working at your desk getting things done; 10 (most tense) would be waiting for news about a loved one after an accident.

5 – Adjust Your Stimulation Level

Depending upon the activity in which you are engaged, the level of stimulation required probably ranges between 3 and 7.  Focusing on a good novel might only be a 3 while a relaxed zone athletic performance might need to be a 7.  If you are having trouble focusing, decide whether you need to increase or decrease your your stimulation level.

To lower your stimulation level

• The very best way I have found is belly breathing.  You can do this anywhere and anytime.  You can do it more subtly than shown in this video if you are in public.
  If you don’t see the video in email click here.
• Play music or sounds that relax you.  It can be anything that works for you.  I like ocean and rain sounds.
• Take a low stimulation break.  Set outside, drink a cup of tea, take a short walk, or do some stretching.

To increase your stimulation level

• Play upbeat music or videos.  Try listening to or playing the Theme from Rocky video or Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer on the piano.  Upbeat classical music like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is also excellent.  Play loud rock and roll music (with headphones if you are around others) or whatever gets you pumped.
• Take a power break.  It can be anything you want.  Watch funny YouTube videos, play an intense video game, run around the block or dance a little jig.  Getting up and moving around is a great way to both increase your stimulation when you are bored and decrease your stimulation when you are stressed.
• Multitask.  That’s right I said multitask.  The one time I would recommend multitasking is when you are doing something that is not stimulating.  I often do my boring tasks while watching sports on TV.  You can actually increase your focus on the boring task and perhaps keep from falling asleep or screaming in frustration by doing something else at the same time.

6 – Just Say No To Commitments

Many, if not most people enslave themselves in their commitments.  I think commitments of time and money are enormous mistakes.  If you commitment money to cars, homes, or a lifestyle, you are committing your time and focus to earning money to pay for them.  That is time and focus you will not have for what you really want.

When you commitment your time, you are making the same mistake, although time commitments may be easier to escape.  You can volunteer, help others, or do whatever else you do via commitments in a dynamic and ad-hoc way; you do not have to commit to them.  Commitments almost never fail to come back to haunt you because they show up at the worst possible time – time when you want or need to focus on something else.

I’ve written about this topic in Edit Your Life and Freedom from Commitment. You will never truly have the time or attention to focus on what you really want unless you break free of the chains of commitment.

7 – Control Your Emotions

On this blog I preach the importance of peaceful well-being.  By nature I’m a moody person and I’ve had to work hard to develop my own peace and well-being.  I still have a long way to go, but  I can attest to the importance of a calm centeredness and mindful awareness and their impact on your ability to focus your attention.  I spent many years too stressed and moody to focus effectively.  Too much adrenaline prevents you from controlling your focus.  Too much cortisol (stress hormone) and you lose the ability to focus on much of anything as well as inflicting long term damage on important parts of your brain.

Do yourself a favor and get this book which is about life not just work: Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful – No Matter What If you check out the reviews you will see I’m not the only person who raved about it.

See these article for more information:

Put Down Those Rocks
Eliminating Your Investment in the Outcome
Top 25 Small Things You Let Ruin Your Mood
The Best Ways To Not Sweat The Small Stuff – Part I and  Part II

8 – Limit Your Stream of Information

“With so many distractions, it’s impossible to truly focus on the important.
We try to drink the stream, but it’s too voluminous and never-ending to take
in this way.” – Leo Babauta

Accept the fact that you cannot possibly absorb it all or even the teeny tiniest fraction.

“A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.”  — Theodore Roszak

I used to have a severe problem with limiting my stream because I was suffering from the fear of missing out.  The trouble is that when you try to drink from the fire hose of  available information, you actually do miss out.  You are so distracted and overwhelmed you don’t have time to absorb and integrate anything valuable.  When I finally stood up to the fear and just let it go I was able to reduce the stream to something interesting and manageable.

You do not have to read / listen to/ watch every available tweet, Face Book update, IM, email, news update, blog article (except mine of course), podcast, TV show, or video.  I would recommend starting from scratch.  Get rid of all your sources of information and add back only those you truly need or want.  I’ve probably eliminated 95% of my stream over the last couple of years.

Well there it is.  What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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The way we work and live is not conducive to maximal effectiveness.  In our rush-around modern lives we try to live by one long pulse during the day and then rest at night.  We are working too long and too continuously.  We are burning up our mental and emotional reserves without giving them a chance to renew.

The sleep cycle is critical to our health and most people need more than they get – 7 to 9 hours.  During the day we need to adopt a more pulsing rhythm; one that can be likened to waves.  The crest of the wave represents your burst of focus and activity and the trough your renewal time.   Instead of pulsing like waves we are paddling continuously on a flat ocean.  As a result we are less effective.  In the push for more-better-faster, we are actually doing less-worse-slower.

We are much more effective if we work in bursts of intense and focused energy and then take time to rest and renew.  Given the chance many people naturally take a nap in the afternoon.  Research indicates that after an afternoon nap you can continue to produce at a high level the rest of the day.  Without a nap, output falls dramatically.  The culture in many organizations will prevent napping, but it is a highly recommended way to renew.

Here are some tips you might want to consider.  Even though you are not working as many total hours you will likely produce a lot more.

Work in 40 to 90 minute pulses

You need to work long enough to really get absorbed and into the flow, but not too long.

Renew in 10 to 60 minute breaks

The length of the break depends on the length and intensity of the pulse.  There are no rules here.  Find a rhythm that works for you.  The key is to ride your waves and then take time to renew.

Renewal breaks must be real

Switching from an intensely creative effort to processing a batch of email may seem like a break, but it is pseudo-renewal.  It may be better than nothing, but you need real renewal.  Some suggestions:

• Take a 20 to 30 minute power nap
• Go for a walk, preferably in nature – don’t think about work
• Talk a casual stroll around the office
• Focused breathing
• Meditation
• Work Out
• Yoga
• Eat lunch away from your desk, preferably with friends
• Get up and go chat with a colleague or friend
• Read something light and cheerful
• Close your eyes and listen to some music

Some day organizations will wake up and pay for output and not time.  In the meantime, if you work for someone who doesn’t get it then you might have to get creative:

• Take your laptop or paper materials and go hide in a conference room – look like you are going to meet with someone.
• Put on some headphones with music and pretend you are looking through some papers – you don’t actually have to be doing anything other than resting.
• Walk around the office like you are going to the printer room or break room, etc.  Take your time.
• If you are on a leash and collar go sit in the bathroom.  It may sound silly, but desperate circumstances call for desperate measures.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Everyone has a message.  Everyone wants to be more persuasive.  Whether you are an employee working for someone else, an owner of your own business, a student, a blogger, etc. you need to be heard.  In that sense we are all marketers.  The world is drowning in information and when you speak you need to make sure your message gets results.

The following are 10 ways to be more persuasive.  They are all proven effective in controlled experiments and many are taken from Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.

1. Social Proof – When the course of action is not clear, people look to others for guidance (even though they will deny that fact).  Put more simply, people tend to do what other people similar to them do.  This behavior is programmed into our genes and is well established.  Social proof is more influential when we are observing others we perceive to be similar to us.  So if you are trying to sell someone on something, be it an idea or a product, a powerful method is to show how others like them have already bought into it.
2. Mirroring – People respect, like, and are most easily influenced by people who they perceive to be similar to themselves (see Social Proof above).  So one way to influence someone is to mirror them.  Mirror their speech and their actions.  If you verbalize back to someone something they have said and in the same words, you instantly become more influential.  The same thing applies to posture and actions.  If you want to influence Mike, then you need to act like Mike.  If he is leaning back in his chair, then you would be wise to do the same.
3. Offer Few Choices – People are paralyzed by choice and if given too many options, will simply fail to choose anything.  So if you are offering up alternative products, services, or ideas, be sure to limit the choices to only a few.  Two choices is often better than three.
4. Reciprocation – Do someone a favor and they are more likely to return it.  There is an interesting twist to this.  People who do you a favor once are more likely do do you another favor in the future.  Once someone has done you a favor, in their mind you become more important to them; you must be worthy of their time.  So get someone to do you a small favor, and they are more likely to listen to you or do you an even bigger favor in the future.  The best way to get them to do you a favor in the first place is to do one for them.
5. Baby Steps – We want to act consistent with our previous actions.  Further once we buy into something or someone, we tend to become much more committed to it or them.  This is the foot-in-the-door technique.  No matter how small a step you can get someone to take as far as agreeing with your idea, product, or service, those small steps will lead to larger steps in the future.  This even works on yourself.  Start small.  Get your target to say yes to anything first, and then they will be much more likely say yes to what your really after.
6. Labeling – Marketers use this one on you all the time: “You seem like a smart person and smart people buy X”.  Tell someone they are smart, sophisticated, thrifty, a risk-taker, etc. and ask them to take an action consistent with that label.  There is a powerful inner drive to stay consistent with what we have demonstrated in the past.  If someone labels us, we believe we have demonstrated that trait (especially if it is positive).
7. Ask the Right Question – Recently I was given a pitch for a timeshare.  All throughout the pitch, the agent was asking me and my wife questions about what would we do or what we would like to do.  This was leading to the final push on the actual sale.  Before asking someone to do something, get them to say they would do it or something consistent with it.  Get them to verbally express an inclination or desire to do something.  Then when asked to do something consistent with what they have previously expressed, they are much more likely to agree.
8. Smile – Smiles are powerful influencers.  People like people who smile.  But your smile needs to be authentic.  Humans have a remarkable ability to detect false smiles (it’s all in the eyes).  So find something in the other person that you can authentically appreciate and then smile about it.  In general, just practice looking on the bright side of things and being happy.  You will naturally smile more and thus be more influential.
9. Keep it Simple – I once read that studies showed the most persuasive writing was written at an 8th grade level of comprehension.  This is true even among people who were capable of comprehending much more complex language.  There is a convergence of data showing that simple is better.  Simple and easy to remember names and ideas are the best.  Resist the urge to show off your knowledge and sophistication and instead  K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).
10. Scarcity and Exclusivity – Making whatever you are offering, including ideas, unique and thus scarce is a very effective technique.  People love and value what is scarce.  Think about a high-end Mercedes sedan.  Part of what makes it so desirable is the fact that it is rare; the overwhelming majority of people cannot afford it.  At first glance scarcity might seem to be counter to the social proof phenomenon described above, but in reality they go together.  When you buy the high-end Mercedes, you are joining and exclusive club of rich and sophisticated people who also value such quality and sophistication in an automobile.  They are people like you.  Mac owners are a small minority of computer owners, but they also believe they are a group of exclusive and sophisticated computer users.  They know better.  So offer something unique, but package it in a way that when people buy into it, they also are attracted by the social proof of others.

If you liked this and are interested in more I suggest you check out the very useful book: Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Limiting the time you spend on various tasks to a specific number of minutes will help with you with focus, procrastination, and problems with perfectionism.  Studies have shown that people generally perform better under a strict deadline.  I use a countdown timer like Cool Timer or VersaTimer on my computer.

Give yourself a specific amount of time to finish a task and then don’t cheat.  Live with your time limit.  When the time is up, stop.  Allow what you’ve accomplished in the time limit to be good enough.  Give yourself 30 minutes to clean a room and then let the result stand.  Give yourself two hours to write the report and then let that be good enough.  Forcing yourself to live with what was accomplished in your time limit will help you implement the 80/20 rule and overcome your perfectionist tendencies.  If for some reason you simply have to spend more time, do it later under another time limit.

I find this is a fantastic way to focus on an activity and prevent myself from being distracted.  It works wonders for tasks I am not excited about performing.  It keeps me from wanting to check email, get a drink, go to the bathroom, or find other ways to procrastinate.

Don’t just use time limits for obvious tasks like the given examples of cleaning a room or writing a report.  Use them for other things like commitments you might have or volunteer efforts.  Put a limit on the hours per week you are going to commit to coaching the little league team.  Make sure you are clear on the limit for the time you will dedicate.  Commitments without clear limits can become bottomless time pits that suck your life away.

It should go without saying if you cheat on your time limits, you will know they mean nothing and in the end simply wont work.  I have begun self-enforcing limits on many of the things I do and I find that it works wonderfully.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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“Proper assessment of reality can be as crucial to life as oxygen.  To try and make it through this world without a reasonable understanding of reality is like stumbling around in a dark room laden with land mines.” – Robert Ringer

If you are waiting for circumstances to change for the better, you are engaging in wishful thinking.  Circumstances are undoubtedly going to change in some way, but you can’t really predict how they are going to change.  If you think you can, you are simply fooling yourself.  They might get worse.

Examples of Wishful Thinking

The following are common examples of people basing their actions on wishful thinking.  Some of these things might actually happen, but often they do not.  The point is you do not know.  The future is not now.  Learning to deal with what is will actually give you far more control over your future than waiting for “things to turn around”.

• Your partner is going to change from who they are to who you want them to be.
• The economy is about to turn around.  Even though in other times and other places it has been in the toilet for 10 or 15 years, that’s not going to happen this time.
• Your home will appreciate in value.
• The stock market will go up.
• Your dream job is right around the corner.
• Your kids are going to do what you wish they would do.
• Doctors generally improve your health.
• Government can make the world a better place.
• Other people can and should make their decisions in a way that you think is fair.
• Stuff makes you happy.
• The alleged coming economic upturn is going to save your business or your job.

You can find freedom in an unfree world or you can continue to try and change everyone else.  You can waste years nagging your partner to be different than they are and make both of you miserable, or you can accept what is and move on.  You can prosper in a bad economy or you can wait for a good economy (and still not prosper).  You can find happiness without stuff or you can try to buy your way to nirvana.  You can bitch about what other people do or you can control what you do.

Positive Thinking vs. Wishful Thinking

I’m not saying you shouldn’t think positively because you should.  But there is a difference between positive thinking and wishful thinking.  Real positive thinking implies action; it’s proactive.  Wishful thinking is reactive.  Positive thinking is figuring out a way to prosper in bad times – and believing you can.  Wishful thinking is waiting for the good times to arrive and save you from your circumstances.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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You can do as much as you think you can,
But you’ll never accomplish more.
If you’re afraid of yourself, young man
There’s little for you in store.
For failure comes from the inside first,
It’s there if you only knew it.
And you can win, though you face the worst,
If you feel you’re going to do it.
–Edgar Guest