Even though the spirit of Christmas has turned into a consumer obsession, it is still a good time of the year to think about the spirit of giving a little something of yourself to make the world a better place.  This article is about what you individually can do.  It’s about accomplishing something worthwhile by yourself.

I’m not telling you to try and make a difference in anything or not to try and make a difference.  That is a completely personal choice that each person makes for themselves.  Frankly I’m tired of the constant demand for giving of time or money for this or that cause.  It’s a turn off and in my mind counter-productive.  I find myself less likely to give anything to anybody as a result.  You can’t even go through a check out line now without the clerk asking you to donate to some effort.  What follows is my advice on the most effective use of your personal resources should you choose to do something.

Movements

I am strongly anti-crusade, anti-mass movement, anti-group action, etc. I wrote an article last year on this topic and I encourage you to read it here: The Problem With Causes, Crusades, or Organized Movements.  It rarely succeeds and even when it does the result is not necessarily what one had hoped for.  For instance the Egyptian freedom movement, which did succeed in ousting the corrupt Egyptian government, looks like it is going to end up resulting in a strongly Islamist government.  I’m pretty sure many of the young people and women of that movement aren’t going to be happy with the results. Some will be happy and some will have felt like they contributed to something worse.

More often though you end up with diluted effort, wasted resources, and failure.  The Occupy Wall Street movement comes quickly to mind as an example.  Instead of spending time camping out in a park, singing Kumbaya, and being a general nuisance, what if each and everyone of those people spent the same amount of time and effort (mental and physical) actually helping someone in real need (including themselves) on a one-on-one basis?  Think as well of all the public money (police, sanitation, etc.) that would not have been diverted and the useless media attention.   One of my favorite quotes on this summarizes it well:

“Most people think in terms of indirect alternatives – who must be changed, how people must be educated, what others should be doing. Consequently, they spend most of their lives in futile efforts to achieve what can’t be achieved – the remaking of others.” — Harry Browne

Contributions

Even giving your money to a big organization is an extreme dilution of those resources and much of it may go to administration anyway.  Agencies who collect donations often take 50% of the donation off the top for themselves.  It is not unusual for administrative costs to take much of the rest (see for example the U.S. government Welfare Administration).  If you have a $100 to help someone you may end up giving $75 to help enrich those who claim to help others and only $25 to actually help someone who needs it.  Why not take your $100 and find somebody you know needs help and do something specific to help them that is worth the whole $100?  You and they both will end up better off and the bloodsuckers won’t get any of it.  See the excellent expose Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (it’s only 99 cents on Kindle) for an example of how some charities fleece the public (and school children) and enrich themselves.  Don’t get me wrong, there are actually some excellent organizations, but even with them your effort is diluted and you don’t really know where the money goes.

“When we decide to do what we can, where we are, instead of looking for others to do it, we feel more powerful and accomplish more.  What’s more, beyond our personal world most of the great problems of our day can be solved only by each of us deciding to take action in our sphere of power.”  — John Izzo

Plant a tree, ride a bicycle, help a neighbor, volunteer your time, buy some poor kid a Christmas present, take a kid who needs a role model to a ball game, visit a children’s cancer hospital, counsel, mentor, or do whatever you feel appropriate.  But stop campaigning for change and joining causes.  Stop wasting your time trying to convince others.  You will likely fail and waste their time and yours.   People are tired of others telling them what they should do with their resources.  You’re better off just being a shining example of whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.  People are more likely to follow your example than be convinced by you getting in their face.

The choice is real simple.  You can either spend your time campaigning, protesting, debating, organizing, strategizing, etc. (e.g. political activity) or you can actually spend your resources doing something that matters to real individual persons.  It’s as simple as that.

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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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“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.” – Eric Hoffer

Right off the top let me say I support doing good, I support helping people, and I’m not opposed to trying to change things.  I do think it is a huge mistake to take group action to do these things and the larger the group the bigger the mistake.  This is not a categorical statement as there are exceptions, but as a general rule in my opinion, group action (esp. large groups) is a mistake.

Causes, crusades, mass movements, especially organized ones, very seldom work; they usually end up with most people involved becoming frustrated and depressed. Usually the movement becomes an end in itself that takes on more importance than the original cause for which it was established.  Preservation of the movement now takes priority and the formerly idealistic leaders end up trying to preserve the power and prestige they have gained as a result.

Your individual contribution to the goal of the movement is not generally amplified by joining the movement; instead it is diluted.  Your participation just adds to diversity of opinion and bureaucratic piddling around and thus individual effectiveness is thwarted.  Time is now spent trying to agree on strategy or tactics, planning, communication, etc. and all that before any actual work is done.  Most of the resources of the group are spent on internal bureaucracy and structures instead of real action.

Your individual aims are sacrificed to the lowest common denominator of the group.  Reflection, nuance, deep-diving on complex issues get lost in sloganeering and the mindless repetition of the latest revealed wisdom from the leaders or gurus.   Research has repeatedly shown that people in groups, even mixed opinion groups, harden their positions and move towards becoming more extreme.  You seem to lose the ability to remain open-minded and become a victim of groupthink.

Movements appeal to emotion more than intellect.  Immersion in a movement gives the participant the illusion that he is part of some greater good when in reality it allows them to fool themselves into the belief that they are actually accomplishing something.  What is being accomplished is support of the movement itself.  Some people get off on joining movements and that is fine.  If that is what you want I say go for it.  Just don’t fool yourself into believing you are changing the world.

When you join a group movement you are not longer responsible for success or failure; a great way for people to avoid individual responsibility.

Taking Your Own Direct Action

“Most people think in terms of indirect alternatives – who must be changed, how people must be educated, what others should be doing.  Consequently, they spend most of their lives in futile efforts to achieve what can’t be achieved – the remaking of others.” – Harry Browne

In any situation you need to ask yourself what can you do yourself to improve the situation?  Forget save-the-world causes; the principle applies equally to every day action.  If people around me are noisy I can take the indirect action of asking them to behave the way I want them to behave and quiet down, or I could take the direct action of putting on headphones, going in the other room, or going outside.

If I don’t like what my neighbors are doing I can try to change them or I can move.  I hate moving and it is not easy, but I’ve never convinced my neighbors to do what I say either.

If you have a good idea at work, good luck trying to convince others, especially the corporate bureaucracy.  Some people say it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.  I say it’s better to ask neither – just do it.

If you want to travel somewhere or eat lunch at a certain restaurant or do something else you can try to convince others to agree with your choice or you can announce what you are doing and invite them to join you.

If you think your taxes are too high, you can take the indirect action of spending your time in a futile effort to band together with other people to convince the government to lower them.  Alternatively, you could take the direct action of figuring out ways to avoid them yourself.

There are few cases where joining a cause or where trying to take indirect action through others is a better approach than taking direct action yourself.  It’s a mistake to believe you can accomplish more through others; you just end up frustrated and disappointed.  Your actions are diluted, your goals are reshaped, and your time is wasted.

“Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels fastest who travels alone.” – Rudyard Kipling

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The short answer is yes.  We are socialized from infancy to follow rules.  Most of us spend a couple of decades in school submitting to authority and doing what we are told.  When we go out into the job world nothing changes.  We believe we are being paid to be told what to do.

“Most of us feel screwed, and many of us feel helpless to change it.  We have become slaves to our infrastructure – to business’s controlling tools, procedures, and mandates.  Something’s got give.” –  Bill Jensen and Josh Klein

If you put as much time thinking creatively about how to hack your work as you do dreading and complaining about it, you would be a lot better off.  Bill Jensen and Josh Klein have written a new book called Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results.  I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, but all other 7 reviewers have given it 5 out of 5.  If you are interested in getting more out of your job, I think it is a worthwhile read.

Some of us, myself included, are natural born rule-breakers and having been doing it all our lives.  However, my observation is that the vast majority of people follow the vast majority of rules.  The world has changed and the top-down dictatorial business approach is a hold-over from an era that is long gone.  The tools and procedures provided by your company cannot keep up with the rapid changes going on all around you.  Who hasn’t lamented the fact that the software and technology they use at home is far ahead of what they are provided at work?

The simple fact of the matter is you should be looking out for yourself when it comes to your job.  Individual people in your company might want to be loyal to you, but the reality is they can’t.  The world is a very flat and competitive place and if they can improve the bottom line by getting rid of you they will.  A career of following inefficient and bureaucratic rules will not save you.  You will get ahead by producing results.  Blindly following the rules and being a “good employee” means you will lose out in both results and your personal growth to those who chose to break them.

You shouldn’t cheat your company.  You shouldn’t do anything unethical.  You should produce the results you are paid to do.  Outside of that though, I think you owe it to yourself to be the most productive you can be, to exercise the most control over what you actually do, and spending the least amount of time possible to get it done.  Don’t follow rules simply because they exist and because everyone else is doing it.  Within the limits just described, how you get your job done should be up to you.

You are investing an enormous amount of your time, personal resources, and frankly your health in your job.  You absolutely owe to to yourself to get a return on that investment and any company who thinks otherwise isn’t worth your time.

I’m convinced that most people have far more control over how their work gets done than they believe.  Most people have simply accepted the rules by default.  They don’t realize how easy it is to work-around most of them.  Even if they do realize it, they are paralyzed by fear.  What you should be afraid of is becoming irrelevant or outsourced to a cheaper rule follower.

You can usually work different hours, use different tools, and bypass most procedures if you will only take charge of your own job and empower yourself to work differently.  If you wait for somebody to empower you, you will be waiting a very long time.  There’s an old saying that it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.  I wholeheartedly agree, but going even further I think you mostly don’t have to ask for either.  If you produce results and do great work, you usually don’t have to ask for anything.

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

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In in my previous article I explained Why You Should Be More Decisive.  In this article I will give you my suggestions for just how to do that.  They are:

1. Make Fewer Decisions
2. Identify a Single Owner for All Decisions
3. Feel the Decision
4. Create Decision-Making Guidelines
5. Identify the Essential Factors
6. Treat Most Decisions as Trivial Because They are Trivial
7. Practice Near Instantaneous Decisions on Trivial Issues
8. Use Your Unconscious Mind for Complex Decisions
9. Set a Deadline for Important Decisions

Make Fewer Decisions

This almost feels like cheating, but let others make as many decisions as you possibly can.  Delegate, Delegate, Delegate.  There is something incredibly freeing about letting go of decisions.  Mark Victor Hansen wrote:

I told my assistant, “Get me a cell phone.” She asked, “What type?” I said, “I really don’t care; you figure it out.”

Beautifully done. My wife hears “You decide”, “It’s up to you”, “Do whatever you want”, etc. all the time.

Identify a Single Owner for All Decisions

Avoid joint or group decisions whenever possible.  There is no greater cause for indecisiveness than joint decisions.  Even decisions most people think have to be made jointly don’t.  Couples are notoriously invested in joint decision making about everything.  This is our culture and many people have known no other way.  I know many will disagree, but I promise you that if you somehow divide up decision making you will be better off.  For really important decisions that involve another, one person can set a few basic requirements and let the other person make the decision as long as it satisfies those requirements.

Feel the Decision

Bright people who score well on IQ tests, but who have had brain damage that prevents them from feeling emotion, have a problem.  They can’t make decisions.  They are truly paralyzed by analysis and seem to never stop analyzing long enough to make a decision.  Whether you admit it or not, you have to use your emotions to make decisions.  So the best way to shorten the decision making process is to get to the feeling faster.  Pull the trigger and go with your gut.

Create Decision-Making Guidelines

Creating guidelines for how you will make decisions is a great way to streamline the process.  Have some rules in mind that you consistently follow.  Maybe you are frugal so you can go with the least expensive choice that satisfies your requirements.   Maybe you are a novelty seeker and so everything has to be different than the last time; a new experience.  If you are indecisive you can choose the first option you see, you can flip a coin, you can go with your gut or whatever.  If you are having a hard time deciding something because there is no obvious choice, then there is no obvious choice.  Just pick one and decide to have no regrets.

Identify the Essential Factors

For decisions you deem more critical and that you want to spend more time analyzing, limit the number of factors to analyze to only the few that truly matter.

For example, when buying a car do I really need to consider the comparative value of all the bells and whistles?  If I am going to buy a car, I’m going to assume they all have wheels that rotate forward and backward on demand and they have a steering wheel, a gas pedal, and a brake pedal that work.  Aside from that all I truly care about is 1) reliability 2) comfort 3) sound system.  I have all kinds of stuff on my loaded car, but as I drive it around I seldom use any of them.  They really don’t matter.  Comfort and reliability are what I care about and that is what I should base my decision on.  The rest is noise that clutters the decision and creates post-decision second guessing.

Treat Most Decisions as Trivial Because They are Trivial

Identify up front the kinds of decisions that are of life-altering importance and then categorize everything else as trivial.  This is where many people are going to have a problem.  Almost everything is trivial to me and the older I get the bigger the trivial bucket gets.  I’m sorry but those decisions you agonize over just don’t make any difference.  The color you paint your house, whether you should let your child do x, where you go on vacation, etc.

When you analyze something to death you are being extremely arrogant.  You are assuming that you can predict the future, that nothing will change to mess it up, and that you actually knew what you were doing in the first place.  Sorry to burst your bubble, but none of that is true. Someday you are going to realize that micromanaging your child’s life drove them away and all that other stuff just didn’t amount to a hill of beans.  You made yourself miserable trying to over decide yourself and your family to a perfect life.

Practice Near Instantaneous Decisions on Trivial Issues

Force yourself to just pull the trigger quickly on every decision you possibly can.  Everyone will draw the line differently, but the more you can push over the trivial line, the more decisive and the happier you will be.  Try to decide these trivial issues in seconds or a minute or two for the less trivial, but still trivial.  Just pick the first thing that comes to mind or use an instant gut feeling.  Practice the habit of not analyzing and whatever you do don’t consult someone else, even your partner.  If you feel you must consult them, then just turn the decision over to them.  Let them own it.

Use Your Unconscious Mind for Complex Decisions

For complex decisions with lots of important factors, feed your unconscious mind the data and than let it ponder the decision for a while.  It’s very important you don’t consciously analyze or you will interfere with the more powerful parallel processor below.  Think about something else and over a day or two you will start feeling the right answer.

Set a Deadline for Important Decisions

Finally, for important decisions when you are going to take more time, set a deadline for making it and stick to it.

I’ll repeat what I said in my previous article: A decisive person understands all this and takes charge making most decisions quickly and with clarity.  A decisive person understands the difference between decisions that really make a difference and those that don’t.  A decisive person has a lot more time for the important things in their lives and a lot more peace of mind.

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

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Technology should be making our lives easier, but life doesn’t seem easier.  I think that is because we unnecessarily complicate it.

I’ve been observing a ridiculous amount of self-inflicted over complication around me lately.  The solutions to this are generally simple.  I’m a big fan of simple.

One of the best overall ways to simplify your life and make it less complicated is to be much more decisive.  I read once that being decisive meant making decisions with speed and clarity.  I like that definition.

Decisiveness Died With Technology

I’m absolutely convinced that people are much less decisive than they used to be.  One of the culprits is our connected world.  It seems some people can’t decided to go to the bathroom anymore without calling or texting someone on their cell phone to discuss it first and make sure it is a good idea.

Teenagers used to have to be responsible (at least to some degree) and make some decisions for themselves.  Now they have to call mommy on their cell phone and get permission or advice for everything.  Employees who used to be responsible for decisions, now have to run it by their boss or their colleagues.  They have to do this 24 hours a day via technology like email or cell phones, even when they or their boss is on vacation.  Couples who used to make independent decisions now email, text, or call each other to discuss trivial decisions.  Don’t say it isn’t so because I can hear it going on around me all the time.  We are all talking to everyone about everything.  Individual decision making and decisiveness have taken a big hit.

Information is Killing Our Decisions

There is so much information available today that people feel like they have to consider it without realizing that it is usually not helping them.  All this information overload creates analysis paralysis.  When you spend too much time analyzing a decision, you are usually less satisfied with whatever decision you end up making.  People who consider more factors when making decisions are more likely to worry later that they didn’t make the right decisions.  So they agonize during the decision making process and then worry even after they’ve made a decision.

The overwhelming number of decisions people agonize over in small or large ways, are not that big of a deal.  We are massively overcomplicating our lives with all this nonsense.

I heard a couple discussing a Disney World trip in B&N the other day.  They had some travel guide to Disney World and they were trying to decide which Disney resort to stay in.  They were looking at a grid with all the options of all the different resorts and discussing the pros and cons.  I stuck around to see how long it would take, but they went on and on about it forever so I finally gave up and left.  I wanted to shoot myself.

Is the resort on the transportation system?  Check.  Do the rooms have beds and bathrooms? Check.  Does it have a swimming pool? Check.  Is it in our budget? Check.  That’s all you need to know.  How much of their life together are they wasting with all the unnecessary decision making discussions?  One of them could have decided the hotel in a couple of minutes.  While they are chasing all over the Disney World parks, they are going to find out all their kids want to do is go back to the hotel and play in the pool.  And in the end the kids mostly want water.  The fact that the pool is shaped like Donald Duck isn’t on their minds.

A Decisive Person

A decisive person understands all this and takes charge making most decisions quickly and with clarity.  A decisive person understands the difference between decisions that really make a difference and those that don’t.  A decisive person has a lot more time for the important things in their lives and a lot more peace of mind.

Tomorrow I’ll make some suggestions for becoming a more decisive person.

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

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I simply have to ask you to go read Jonny’s latest article on thelifething.com.  Jonny is officially an Escape The Rat Race Hero of mine now.  Some of those pictures are gorgeous and his example is very inspiring.  Now that’s living!

The source of many of the ideas in this article are from Kevin and Jackie Freiberg’s excellent book Boom!: 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual.

“How hard are you willing to play?  Your future – the quality of your life at work, your reputation, and the significance you glean from making a difference – depends on your answer.”  — Kevin and Jackie Freiberg

Players bring joy, energy, and passion to the game of life.  Players derive meaning and joy from their contributions.  Players have a voice.  They speak up and influence the cultures in which they live and work.  Players take a stand, join the dialogue, and shape the debate.

You can choose to be a player in the game of life.  A player takes life by the horns and makes things happen.  A player is proactive rather than reactive.  Or you can choose to be a spectator and let life just happen to you.  I choose to be a player.

What a Player Does

• Brings the right attitude regardless of the circumstance they face.
• Creates a pocket of success within their area of influence.
• Assumes responsibility for their own development.
• Learns daily.
• Seeks out and volunteers to help with entrepreneurial projects.
• Takes the lead.
• Chooses to think and act like owners of problems.
• Changes from the inside out.
• Does not gossip.
• Goes for it.
• Presses for solutions in the face of complaints.
• Supports their ideas with well-thought-out cases.
• Does not play small.
• Admits mistakes and apologizes.
• Seeks out challenges.
• Mediates conflict.
• Speaks positively of others.
• Seeks forgiveness rather than permission.
• Does not let others determine how they feel and act.
• Has a sense of optimism for being able to make a difference.
• Seeks rewards based upon their ability to get results.
• Focuses on things they can control.
• Plays to win and leans toward risk.
• What they do matters.
• Confronts constructively.
• Loves what they do.
• Is generally grateful for many things.
• Remains true to their values and themselves.

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

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Sometimes just a few words say about all that needs to be said:

• Your life is your own damn fault.
• Take responsibility for it.
• Learn what you need to do to fix it.
• Take action on what you’ve learned.
• Enjoy the results.

– Larry Winget

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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Quantum Leap: an abrupt change, sudden increase, or dramatic advance

Sometimes trying harder isn’t the answer.  The power of compounding and accumulating small effort is undeniable and can produce astounding results over time.  That sometimes means a lot of effort.  Sometimes you can ascend a long way up the stairs one step at a time.  Eventually you are going to reach a point you cannot get past.  You may even discover that you are ascending the wrong staircase.  Sometimes you will find you are in a two story building and after going up one flight of stairs you can go no further.

Quantum leaps are possible in many areas of our lives, but we won’t experience them as long as we stay stuck in our familiar comfort zones.  A quantum leap does not occur when you are tweaking or pushing harder.  They occur when you back off and open your mind to completely new possibilities.  Quantum leaps are risky and scary.  You must leave your familiar zone and try something so dramatically different that you create new boundaries.

My Leap

When I started this blog I made a quantum leap.  I’d never written anything other than emails and business correspondence.  All of a sudden I was exposing myself through my writing to the whole world; I wish .  It might be a flop.  I might embarrass myself.  I would be open to to criticism and ridicule.  It was scary.

Becoming Competent

Over the last 6 months or so I have become what Seth Godin calls competent.  I’m in a comfort zone.  My subscribers and traffic have been steadily growing.  I’m pleased with the results.  I’ve become consistent and predictable.  I’ve become competent at being a blogger.

But I’ve also become a little restless.  Am I in a dip?  Do I need to just push through it to the other side in order to find that great success?  Or am I just going round and round in a Cul-De-Sac, destined to be just another mediocre blogger whose blog is eventually abandoned because it rand out of gas and died.  I’m I the fly at the windowpane? Do I need to make another quantum leap?  How do I know?

I don’t want to give up on a good thing just before the breakthrough, but I don’t want to fall into a rut and spend the rest of my days grinding the tracks deeper and deeper either.

I just read what I wrote and realized it sounds so depressing.  It’s NOT!  I’m not at all depressed or unhappy.  I’m not agonizing or sweating over it at all.  I’ve just been asking myself those questions lately.  They’ve been rolling around in my head.  I’ve reached a point where I need to make a decision.  I know I can’t make the wrong choice, so I’m just going to continue to ponder it for a bit and then choose.

What About You?

I didn’t intend for this article to be about me, not at all.  It went in a different direction than I had planned.  Those are the questions I’m asking myself and I’ve decided to leave them there and share them with you in the hope that you ask them of yourself.

Life is short.  It may be time for you to make a quantum leap.  Or it may be time for you to continue building up your account with compound interest.  Only you can answer that question.  Remember, no regrets.

Making a Quantum Leap

• Stop trying harder and look for something simple.  A simple and elegant solution is a perfect way to make a quantum leap.
• You aren’t building on previous steps.  You are making a fundamental change.  You are making a breakthrough leap.  Back off the struggle and let something fresh come into view.
• Forget “common sense”.  You can’t do what makes sense or what is usual.  If you do what is common and usual you will get common and usual results.
• The how of the quantum leap isn’t obvious or you would have done it already.  Let go of your limiting beliefs.  You need new boundaries, ones you can’t even imagine right now.
• Break out of your routines.  Find something new, something completely different.  Your routines will keep you where you are at.  What’s working now is what keeps you on your current plane.  If you want to make a quantum leap you have to do something different, something improbable.
• Quantum leaps are risky.  There is a significant risk that it won’t work out, but who cares?  You just make another leap until you find one that does work.
• You are going to be uncomfortable.  If you are comfortable, you didn’t take a quantum leap.  No matter what happens you will learn a great deal.  You may discover something wonderful and new about yourself.
• Let the answer come to you.  Get out of your own way and it will happen.
• You can’t figure it all out ahead of time.  You have to take a leap and make adjustments as you go.  It’s going to be ambiguous and chaotic.  It’s going to be wild, fun, and scary all at the same time.  I’m a big believer in just doing and then figuring it out as you go.
• Leap.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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