Cameron Test Bootstrap: April 2015

Eliminating the Fear of Failing

By geralt on Pixabay

Last week, I stumbled across Gary Vaynerchuk and John C. Maxwell both talking about failure within a few hours of one another. And both stressed the importance of failure and learning from it to move yourself, your business, your career all forward.

I mentioned Thomas Edison's famous thousands of failures leading towards discovery yesterday, but in today's world, people tend to live in fear of failing, as if a single failure will destroy their career. Any business seeking sustained success has to modify the culture so that it eliminates that fear of failing and allows for innovation to organically grow. Otherwise, you entrench the culture of "playing it safe" and stifle true development and growth.

Changing the culture is hard. Only through baby steps can your business accomplish this feat. Here's a few that you can try, though, as you work within your own team to learn to fail forward.

Eliminate shame with blame - Questions like "Why would you do that?" or statements of "You should have known better" only serve to berate. They will beat your co-workers into submission to the "playing it safe" strategy.
Refocus on learning - When someone fails, hold them accountable to only one question. "What did you learn from that experience?" Tweet this!
Be accountable - Take responsibility for your own failures, and your part in overall failures. Make a point to emphasize what you learned from the experience and apply those lessons to future projects.
Think prevention - After a failure, focus on how to not repeat actions that led you or the team down that path.
Don't tolerate repetition - While failing, and failing in different ways, can lead you to a stronger success eventually, repeating the same mistakes means that you or the team are not learning from the mistakes of the past. If the same action leads to the same failure, emphasize the need to change. And follow through.

Some failures are epic and large enough that they warrant immediate response. But for anything that you or the team can recover from gracefully, make every attempt you can to take it in stride and learn your way through it. Eventually, you will find success.

I've failed at projects. I've failed at team-building. I've failed at coaching. I've also had great successes at those things, many influenced by lessons I learned along the way. What have your failures taught you? Email me or tweet me and let me know (or leave a comment on the blog).

Who Is The Visionary?

One morning last week before work, I got into a discussion on Twitter with Tom Peters and several others on the meaning of the term "Visionary" as it is applied, particularly to business leaders, but the conversation morphed into discussion of George Washington, Steve Jobs, and various others.

As we progressed, my thoughts tended to align with the idea that visionary is a term that gets applied retroactively to describe those who accomplished great things. As you can see in my tweet above, that can, in my opinion, in part be attributed to the objective of those using the term. Journalists, Biographers, and others who label individuals as visionaries are typically those telling the story of someone's life.

Outside of the story of Thomas Edison, the idea that repetitive failure leads to eventual success does not have the same ring and zing from a plot perspective when telling a cool story as the idea of a visionary, some future-seeing guru with a unique and uncanny ability to perceive trends and not-yet-happened events. I think the storytelling tends to be flawed there, though, for a few reasons:

It hides the work - Terms like "visionary" and "genius" often get used to explain great success in terms that almost indicate it is easy for those people to succeed. I'm not certain that anyone (including visionaries) finds it easy to succeed.
It downplays action - Steve Jobs was a success because his company made great products. Not just because he had a vision for them. Vision by itself does not hold much value. While the vision may inspire other to action, it is only through that action that value is created and results are achieved.
It is rarely a forward-looking term in itself - very rarely are visionaries branded as such before they have achieved the results of that vision. So if they can predict the future, how are they not clearly identifying one another, even?

All in all, though, the net is that actions speak louder than words, visions, or ideas. If you have a vision for a better world, go and do something about it.

What are you going to act on today? Follow me on Twitter and let me know.

Rise of the Expectations

By gaelipani0 on Pixabay

I watched 300: Rise of an Empire the other night. In case you're not aware, it's the sequel to 300, a bloodbath gory fight-fest pitting 300 Spartans against the Persian empire of Xerxes. So, aside from the gratuitous violence which was to be expected, the sequel had a few other notable moments. First, it served, much as the first movie did, as a reminder that I need to do a little more abdominal work. After this post I think I will go do twelve crunches. That should get me started. Second, I thought "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath was an interesting choice for outro music. Finally, I thought the CGI blood spatter truly outdid the first movie in terms of overall gushers in slow-motion, so if that's what you expected, go watch this movie.

And then I remembered this is not a movie-reviewing blog, so here's the actual corollary that I drew to write a post as a response to watching this movie.

Artemesia, who I might call the primary antagonist in the film, struggles with looking for a solid second in command. It is a subplot that stretches for at least a good third of the film and interplays with the main plot. Two things emerge out of this search for a second that parallel quite well with business and work.

The first is just the need of someone in a leadership position to have someone that they can trust. It is the reason that new CEOs to companies generally come with at least a small slate of executives, whether the existing ones were good or not. Everyone needs someone that they can trust to give them the truth, and someone that they can trust to get things done when they need them to. Leaders need a committed tribe who subscribes to their leadership.

The second thing that stood out, though, was the willingness of people to step up, trying to jump into that second in command spot, and making outrageous promises in order to get there. Look, I get it, it's a movie, but the point is that various individuals were gaining authority based on completely hollow and empty promises of quick victory. What if a Vice President of Sales was given the position based solely on a promise that he or she could quintuple sales of a company in a month? These candidates made similarly ridiculous claims, and I am certain you can guess their results.

Sometimes, when a leader says, "I need victory in a day," the truly strong second in command will advise pragmatically, that immediate victory may not be attainable, but a sustained strategy will get them where they want to be. And a true leader will listen.

The incredible shrinking computer

By JESHOOTS on Pixabay

I have heard all kinds of predictions about technology. Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are not. The other day I heard someone predict that by 2020, our phone may be the only computer that we utilize. According to the Pew Research Center, that is already almost true for seven percent of Americans, for whom the cell phone is the only device they utilize for browsing the Internet.

Being the sort of person with multiple laptops all around the house, multiple smart phones, and an assortment of other internet-connected devices, I cannot fathom having only a cell phone to access the web. What's more telling, most of my devices even sync up with one another, so whatever I was browsing yesterday on my phone I can check out this evening on my laptop (thanks, Chrome, Evernote, and Dropbox).

Still, one thing is true - computers are getting smaller. And if you are designing content for computers, the form factor has to be something you consider in how your content is displayed, and how that content interacts with a smaller device.

I'm not sure the tablet will kill the laptop (Microsoft might want me to buy a Surface to challenge that theory, but I almost think of a Surface as a laptop). I am not sure that a large percentage of adults will abandon their PCs for phones and join the seven percent anytime soon. But I am certain that the phones of today process tremendously more than computers that filled rooms fifty years ago. The tablets today are more powerful than the personal computers of ten years ago. Even the laptops themselves compete on how razor-thin they can go with the design. Let's not forget the wearables (yes, including you, little Apple Watch).

Portability is key. People do not stay in a single place tethered to a wire all day, and our technology will continue to keep pace. So as our technology continues to develop, how will you use it? And how will we define content that is relevant and device-independent?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

By Markgraf-Ave on Pixabay

Several years ago, I had a chat with a coworker who was leaving (I try to have a conversation with everyone I know who is leaving to see if there are things that I can do to prevent others from exiting). I asked her why she was leaving, point blank, and she answered simply, "It's time for me to decide what I want to be when I grow up."

The answer stuck with me. What do I want to be when I grow up? It's a question that kids answer all the time, with knee-jerk responses, usually with a huge salary attached (which may or may not be influenced by parents - doctors, lawyers, etc.) or with a "hero-factor" associated with it (astronaut, firefighter, etc.). But as adults, we often get trapped with what we are doing rather than what we want.

If you ask yourself that question, you can come up with several answers. You may have a career or particular job identified that you would like to have one day. You may want to change industries. You may be happy with where you are, but just want to improve the job you are doing in your current position.

To get there, you may need training, independent study, additional degrees, experience in different organizations, books to read, or new friends that can give you insight.

So ask yourself: What do you want to be when you grow up? And, as important, what are you doing to get there?

Answers To Common Lawn Problems

Picture by Hans on Pixabay

I received an email the other day with this very subject line from a major lawn and garden product manufacturer. From the outset, it had me hooked. Even though I knew that inside that email was a sales pitch to try to get me to buy their lawn products, that's not what they were offering. They were offering answers. Answer to weeds, insects, crabgrass (if only there was a real answer to crabgrass), and I was hopeful to find answers to any of my problems inside. So I clicked on the email to read it.

The reason this pitch worked was that it did not overtly try to sell me anything. Instead, it only tried to give me something for free. Answers that would otherwise have required at least a five minute Google search to obtain. When someone else has compiled those answers, or at least what they think them to be, and delivered them to my inbox for free, well, I should at least pay them the courtesy of reading, right? And what if one of those answers perfectly matched a problem I actually had? I might be inclined to purchase whatever solution they were peddling at that point.

To be successful, I noted this sort of approach has to have some basic tenets. Here are the ones I have figured out so far:

Start with the finish. This email was full of answers, not questions. They didn't even care what quesitons I had to ask. They had answers, and they were willing to give them.
Know what you can give away for free. In my instance, the company is willing to give the information and knowledge away for free because they anticipate that some of that will drive sales of their product. They won't give away the actual product for free. In some of your worlds, where your product is more intellectual capital, it becomes even more important to determine what you can give away for free and what you can't.
Offer something of value without a sale. If every single "answer" to my common lawn problems involved the phrase "purchase our product," then the company would have failed. However, throwing out several freebies that don't even compete with their products doesn't negatively impact any business and provides a baseline to establish trust and rapport. If their free tip on watering my yard works well, or if I get my mower working perfectly with their mechanical tips, I might be more inclined to purchase their weed killer to solve my crabgrass issues. I'd do that because I trust their answers now, due to the free advice they have already given me.

What other companies use this approach? Do you trust them? Would you or have you bought from them?

Measure Everything

Photo by EME via Pixabay

"Expect what you inspect" and "What gets measured gets done" are two phrases I hear quite frequently touting the benefit of metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) in driving business forward. They also drive through the point that metrics only drive behavior when management is utilizing those metrics to monitor actual behavior and manage to that.

These adages also stress the idea that if you are measuring too many variables, you will dilute the overall impact those metrics have to drive change.

But what if you are just starting out? What should you measure?

My opinion: measure everything. Measure everything twice, and in six different filter dimensions. Don't try to run your business or organization on all of those metrics, but measure them. You will never know what data you will need.

Because when you are just trying to start driving business and organizational change via metrics, the most important things you will need are a baseline and some trending. The trending is necessary for you to do proper analysis and determine the root cause of your pain (and whether you are focused on the right metrics at all). The baseline shows you your starting point, so that you can continue to measure the impacts of your actions.

And don't forget that other adage, "Measure twice, cut once." Make sure you're focused on the right target, back yourself up with data, and make a change. See the impacts of those changes before you make changes again.

So what are you measuring?

Anticipating the Alarm

Every morning at the exact same time, my alarm starts honking violently at me, telling me to wake up. Some days, it's a battle, with my old friend the snooze button granting me an extra seven minutes of less-than-satisfactory sleep. But every now and then, I catch it early. See, my alarm makes a very slight, almost imperceptible click before it starts to fire. The sound is just like when you first turn on a speaker or guitar amp, but no sound is coming out yet. Just a click.

Every now and then, I am awake a few minutes (sometimes more) before the alarm goes off, and I can prepare. I put my hand on the clock ready to shut it off at a moment's notice, and I wait. If I can successfully catch the clock right as it clicks, I can prevent it from ever going off and disturbing anyone else. The reaction time has to be quick. Any delay and I will receive at least a partial blast of sound before shutting it off.

At work, we rarely have to deal with split-second reaction times, but quick decisions do come up. The unexpected choice of project A versus project B. The staffing decision (hiring or firing) that gets dropped on you. Deciding between two risk mitigation strategies that both have limited success prospects. The secret is the same as my alarm clock: get up early.

I don't mean actually wake up early (though there are probably benefits of that). What I mean is that for every quick decision, you have months or years of data that feed into that decision. Leverage it. Prepare. The only way to be ready for the quick decision is to anticipate it, plan for it appropriately, and wait until it comes. Helps you avoid the alarm. What future alarms can you anticipate today?

Icons

By Ted Quackenbush [GFDL 1.2
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)
or GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I was late to hear the news, but I read a story the other day about the return of Eastern Airlines to American skies. I remember Eastern competing with Delta, TWA, and American when I was young. That field has narrowed since, and airlines continue to merge.

What's particularly remarkable about this story, though, is that Eastern Airlines stopped operating in 1991. So, after over twenty years of simply not existing, the company is starting up again and trying to pick up where they left off.

To be fair, it isn't the exact same company. Corporate interests purchased the brand and all collateral to relaunch the company. And they aren't exactly picking up where they left off, but rather they are starting with charter flights and expanding from there. Still reviving a dead brand and company is a pretty monumental feat, and likely we will see this icon of the skies returning and expanding over time.

The story made me think about other dead brands, disappeared either through merger, bankruptcy, or other collapse.

If you had the money and power, what icon would you resurrect?

Passwords and Absurdity

From XKCD

InformationWeek last week offered up several alternatives to our traditional passwords. My first inclination, as it is with any reference to passwords, is to think of my favorite XKCD comic (above), regarding password strength and "correcthorsebatterystaple" - a password I still think would be entertaining to use in some inconsequential website requiring credentials.

Still, the concept is valid, and we may attribute the XKCD strip above with sponsoring adaptations to cryptography and password-cracking applications so that now they do test four- or six-word combinations as well as the typical computer guessing, but from a mathematics perspective, I am not sure that four actual random words would be likely a focus of a target.

Regardless of actual password strength, the real thought-provoking piece here is the subtext comedy. We, as humans, are incredibly great at determining things that are difficult for us to do, and then requiring us to do it. Passwords that expire every month. Passwords that have different requirements on each different site you sign up for (was that a capital G or g? or was it just a 6? Did I need one uppercase, one lowercase, and a number? or was that one lowercase and uppercase with a separate special character thrown in?) and the more you use the same password on different sites the more risk you place on a single hacker breach (by gaining access to your kids' soccer team password, or your Facebook password, a hacker might now have your email address and Google password, Amazon password, or bank password).

Other things that are incredibly complex to do but we still do? Pay taxes. Elect officials. In some cases, work.

So the better question is - What's an overly complex activity that you can streamline and simplify? If you answered work to the first question, I bet you can answer that for the second.

The Power of Planning

I have always heard the difference between a resolution and a goal is a plan to make it happen. There's something to that.

I don't know what causes it, but checking a box on a to do list gives you a tiny little burst of excitement, a little dopamine rush that says, "Hey, you did something good today, keep it up!" In case you don't recognize it, that's your body telling you it appreciates accomplishment.

What I have found, though, is by making organized versions of those lists, and setting specific tasks outlined to achieve those goals, I am more likely to hit that target. I have to write it down, though. Whether you use pen and paper or something like Evernote or even Microsoft Project, having a document, an artifact, that describes your plan makes it real. Until you can articulate it on paper (or the digital equivalent, because I am a low-paper guy), every project is generally a jumbled pile of idea in your head.

Not only do you need to write it down to add structure instead of spaghetti to the plan, you also need to select the right level of task. For each person, it may differ, but you need to take some time to go through your plan and do what I call "decomposing" your tasks. Anything that seems huge or challenging or insurmountable towards your goal needs to be broken down into constituent parts, which, when all totaled and completed, should accomplish the higher goal. If, after decomposing the task, you find yourself with items that may take weeks to complete, decompose further into sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks, until you have an accurate list of targetable chunks.

Nowadays, I try to plan as much as I can around work and other items. The downside to that would be less flexibility, unless you build appropriate slack and gaps into your own work. Plan for change and you won't be surprised when it comes. And it will come.

What are you planning?

Taxes and Taxes

by stevepb on Pixabay

It's Tax Day here in America, meaning the 1040s are flying (mostly electronically) as Americans scramble to file their taxes or to get an extension request in. Several, likely those who are receiving refunds, have filed months ago, but the procrastinators are all on task today.

This year, we ended up paying a little more than we would like, the first time we have had to pay in several years. We've fixed that for next year, but it reminded me of several basic tax facts to remember, so I thought I would share a few:

Taxes are fully intended to be zero at the end of the year. If your refund is huge, you are loaning the government money interest-free throughout the year. If you end up owing too much, not only will the government charge you interest or penalties, but they may start making you file quarterly so they can make sure they get their money.
Review and refile your W-4 with your employer annually. This is particularly important if you are a double-earning household or if you itemize deductions. In both of these situations, there are additional worksheets to fill out (on the back of the W-4) where the amounts may change based on the current tax law or your prior year returns. If you don't fill this out correctly, you may end up owing quite a bit.
File on time. Either file on time, or file an extension, but be aware than an extension will still potentially incur penalties if you don't pay a high percentage of taxes due. Not filing on time will incur a ton of penalties that is simply not worth an additional day of procrastination. At a minimum, file an extension today.
Keep an idea of how your deductions work. Several deductions and exemtpions phase out above certain income levels (IRAs, student loan interest, etc.). Be aware of your income level as well as your deductions throughout the year and focus on those that do not phase out.
You always make more than they take. However painful and annoying taxes may be, know that they are utilized to take care of government services that you may take advantage of one day (like interstate highways) and that until we reach a level of taxation that exceeds 100%, you're always bringing something home. For the past century or two, the take-home has exceeded the taxes paid pretty consistently.

I am sure you have more tax tips and advice. What are they?

Dress For Success?

by Unsplash via Pixabay

We're all aware of the old adage "Dress for Success." What the original phrase intended was to demand a certain level of business attire in order to make one appear ready to succeed.

I have an alternate theory. It's more about dressing for perception than for success. Putting on a tie doesn't make you magically more talented at anything. Nor can I downplay Internet geniuses who made millions in t-shirts and shorts. But for everyone locked in the corporate world, your attire does say something about you.

Sometimes, it changes your vibe. I have a friend who often would show up to work in t-shirts. It was a rather casual IT environment, so that was not any sort of dress code violation or anything. Still, some might gain a perception that he was the easygoing jokester who never took anything seriously, or that he didn't care about his work, or that he didn't deserve the job he was in (none of these true about this guy). At some point he started wearing more collard shirts that button down the front. Is he the same guy? Sure. Will those that knew him for several years have a different opinion of him? Probably not. But if a new employee arrives tomorrow, would that employee automatically attribute any negative connotations to him just because of attire? Doubtful.

But it isn't all about dressing up.

Several years ago towards the start of my career, I was working on some warehouse software that I had been developing for months, and my boss asked me to go to one of the warehouses where it was being utilized and deployed. My mission was to both support and learn. Before I headed out to the warehouse, though, I was warned to dress extremely casually, including the specifics, "maybe even shorts." See, I was working in a corporate office wearing late-90's IT office attire (khakis and a polo). I might refer to that as late-10s office attire for me too (I don't change much in the fashion department). Anyway, the advice I got was to dump the khakis in exchange for shorts because in the warehouse environment, I would stick out. Some of the workers might make assumptions about me simply because I was wearing clothes that would be inappropriate for loading boxes onto conveyors, and therefore I would be defining myself as different from them before I walked in the door.

In the end, just like everything else, there is a calculated decision to be made. You just have to know what your choices say. So ask yourself, what image am I trying to convey by dressing this way for work? What positive or negative assumptions might people make if I wear these clothes? What would people think if I changed clothes? Often if the change is dressing up, people assume you have an interview lined up.

You don't need a new wardrobe. But you should think about what it may say about you, and what it says about your brand.

What Do You Produce?

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

No matter what your line of business or what you do, you are involved in producing something. It might be an actual product, it might be a service. But the nature of commerce is that the only way you are making money is that someone is paying you for something. What is that something in your world?

On a more specific level, your work product is also something you produce. If you are an accountant, perhaps it is good accounting. If you are an attorney, it is fair representation for your clients. If you are in IT, it might be good code to support the operational users. The key to doing a great job is to treat your personal work product as seriously as the company treats its products or services.

Develop your product. Price your product appropriately. Make sure through research that there is demand for your product. Produce at a high quality.

So what do you produce?

The Danger of Price Wars

By Milad Mosapoor (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I read an article in CIO lately that warned of price wars in the IT outsourcing industry. While the article went through the winners and the losers in this scenario, it made me think about price wars in general - airlines have done it, telecom providers have done it, among others, and it seems like nobody wins. At least nobody battling on price.

If the factors you can use to differentiate your product from the competition are limited to quality, price, or innovation, price seems like the most dangerous to hang your hat on. Initiating this type of competition is particularly risky, as it runs a high risk of commoditizing whatever product or service you produce to something that is simply a supply and demand game.

If your sales messaging is limited to describing your product in terms of price, it minimizes your ability to talk about any other differences that set your product apart, and you have attracted a certain type of customer who is only interested in price and only sees price as a factor. The bar is set, and any competitor who comes in with a lower price point may take the business away from you.

It also speaks to product development, in that prices should be set to cover the total cost of managing the customer, whether covering warranty replacements for products, downtime between engagements for consultants, or customer repair or troubleshooting for ongoing services. The more you are forced or allow yourself to compete solely on price, the more the ability to support the customer or support more customers at scale is diminished by every cent you slash off of your margin. By that token, price wars implicitly limit the growth opportunities of every company that fights in them with earnest.

What is your differentiation strategy?

Moving the Target

By Leviathan.Leviathan1983 at de.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons

When I was younger, I wanted to be a rock star. I played in bands throughout college, and I got to really enjoy being on stage playing songs for people, particularly when we would get a few dedicated fans that would know every word to every lyric and sing along. My dream of being a rock star, however, never quite materialized. If you did not know, there are a few barriers to making it in the music business. Still, I managed to learn a little about building a fan base and maintaining relationships with individuals who appreciate your product.

Anyway, I moved on to get a job and work in the corporate world, meanwhile starting (and eventually shutting) several small businesses on the side, with the idea that I was going to be a dot-com millionaire. Again, the dream fizzled, but I gained a lot of good experience about online marketing and analytics. The window closed on the crazy internet venture capitalists paying millions for ideas and proven business models began to win out.

At some point I stumbled across NaNoWriMo and started writing novels every fall. Over time I got better, but never quite got motivated to become the next Michael Connelly or Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. Again, the dream of multi-millionaire fiction author did not quite materialize the way I wanted, but I again learned a ton about book structure, the writing industry, and more. I also learned that I really enjoy writing, perhaps leading to another goal or dream for me.

Now, I am planning out ideas on writing non-fiction, part of which includes pushing out my opinions here. New goals, new plans, and new activities.

Sometimes your target may move. In fact, you might find you are aiming at a wholly different target or different game than before. But, as I have learned, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, motion is key. I am not in favor of abandoning goals or dreams, but there is value in resetting your own expectations and altering your focus based on experience gained. The important thing is to keep moving. Second, it's OK to fail. Just fail forward, as they say. From every experience I have had that didn't quite work out the way I hoped, I still learned something that I could carry forward to the next goal. Currently? I've got a goal that takes lessons learned from all of the above examples and more to create a comprehensive target. And for now, I am aiming at it.

Make Use of the Commute

Photography by: Osvaldo Gago
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike
2.5 Generic License

I used to have a forty-five minute to one hour commute to and from work, every day for five years. That also coincided on my timeline with working alongside several East coast coworkers who scheduled meetings starting at 8:00 AM Central on a fairly regular basis (if that doesn't seem early to you, recognize that in Texas, lots of businesses start around 9:00. Not sure why, but that's not uncommon.). As it turned out, 8:00 AM was also the time when I would generally get in my car and start heading towards the office. So, speaker phone in the car as my cell phone rested on the center console converted my vehicle into a rolling office of sorts, with ongoing conference call taking up much of my commute.

Since then, I've moved, and my commute is about half of what it once was, and now I take more surface streets than I do long stretches of highway. Couple that with school zones where I am not allowed to use my cell phone and the rolling conference-call-mobile is severely limited. That said, I still consider my commute time to be working time and incoming work calls still trump everything else I am doing (unless I am in said school zone).

But when I am not fielding phone calls, the commute time has a potential to be a completely wasted thirty minutes of the day. What I try not to do is listen to the radio. I used to listen to nothing but the radio when I drove and over time, you will not have much personal growth listening to Taylor Swift's Blank Space or Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass. I save that time for when I am chauffeuring the kids around.

For the past several years, I have primarily utilized this downtime in a few activities. The predominant activity is listening to podcasts. Whether financial advice from folks like Dave Ramsey, or writing advice from Mur Lafferty (albeit focused towards fiction), or entertaining myself with Scott Sigler novels, or learning about all kinds of facts from Josh and Chuck at Stuff You Should Know, podcasts fill close to 80% of my morning commute. The remainder falls into a couple of categories - checking email (only at red lights nowadays given how dangerous that can be otherwise), reading Twitter or Facebook (which is not mentally stimulating but gets me out of the daily rut that a commute can put you in), or doing some daily planning. If nothing else, the commute is an excellent time (even if you are listening to something else along the way) to decide what you are going to do next. If you are taking the one-thing-a-day challenge, you likely need to find some time to organize your thoughts and prioritize activities. A commute is perfect for those opportunities.

Don't waste it.

Getting MORE Stuff Done

So, two weeks ago, I challenged you to get one thing done every day. Did you do it? If not, start there and get one thing done a day for 2 weeks. You should be able to list for yourself fourteen (or more) things that you accomplished. I did a few more than fourteen, but the key is making sure to finish something every day.

Now once you have made it through two weeks of getting something done every day, it's time to up the ante. I know this is going to sound very difficult and completely impossible, but...

do two things every day.

That's right, in order to boost your productivity, I am radically challenging you to double your quota, a full 100% increase in your workload. For a full month. But the honest truth is, I am only asking you to do two things in a day. Two things that move the needle in your world, whether at work or at home. Two things that once you finish, you won't have hanging over your head for tomorrow.

I know this pace can't continue. We are only capable of so much, and it is unfair to think I can double expectations of you (here's a hint: while this is the only time I'll double those expectations in a single day, the expectations may still double before the year ends). I still think that two things from your to-do lists per day are within your capabilities.

Things to keep in mind over the next month:

You have to do two things every day. You can't pay it forward or backwards. The important goal we are trying to reach is consistency.
You can start with more than two items on your list every day. But you need to have at least two.
If you want to get really aggressive, plan the two things the day before.
If you are having trouble deciding which two items to do, select either the one that appears the hardest or the one that provides you the most benefit.
You did one thing a day for fourteen days. Two things a day for thirty days is really nothing.
You should already have a habit of doing something every day, so this is really just a little boost.

In a month, we'll see how you are doing. Or you can let me know how it is going in the comments.

The Power of Momentum

By bukk (Own work)
[GFanalyDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC-BY-SA-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)],
via Wikimedia Commons

When you are learning to ride a bike as a kid, lots of things come into play at once. Even if you have training wheels on to let you ignore the balance part at first, there is still the combination of pedaling while steering and paying attention to what is going on around you. Let's not forget starting and stopping as well. That complexity can be overwhelming at first, and you might choose to stop pedaling just to get your bearings.

The problem is, and you can figure it out pretty quickly, if you stop pedaling, the bike will stop moving. That is a great way to go absolutely nowhere. What's worse, when you try to get started again, you have to use a substantial bit more energy to get the bike rolling again.

The same challenge exists in work and business. Often when we get started on something new, there is all kinds of chaos that surrounds the project. The chaos can easily distract us from the forward progress and motion on the project. Sometimes, it might distract us so much that we stop moving altogether, to analyze the situation and determine the right course of action before moving forward.

What this can lead to has often been termed analysis paralysis, where we let the chaos and indecision prevent us from making any forward progress. What's worse, this analysis feels like work. It feels like progress, but it is really like trying to steer that bike without pedaling. After stopping, it can be even more difficult to get started again on the project, as you come up with more and more reasons to keep analyzing or planning around it, justifying inaction.

Instead of not acting, it is important to act. And act in a way that propels the project or activity forward. Pedal. Even if the course is not entirely set, you can start making progress on what you know while you figure out the rest of the plan. Just like riding the bike, the more progress you make, the easier it will be. There will be hills along the way, requiring you to pedal harder to get up to the summit, but there will also be spots to coast. Regardless, to get anywhere, it all starts with pedaling. Once you are rolling, you have to keep pedaling and pedaling to capitalize on the momentum and gain even more speed. If you do ever slow down, make it an intentional use of the brake rather than just forgetting to pedal.

Something Different

Here's something different for this Friday, an opinion that is not my own. Ever since seeing this video, Drive by Dan Pink (full disclosure, that's an affiliate link, so I get paid if you buy it) has been on my to-read list (I fully intend to mark that one off this year). Take yourself 10 minutes and 47 seconds today and watch this video, which is a really cool way of taking some summary soundbites from a 2010 book talk he gave about motivation and some studies that show just what gets us going. For more information on Dan Pink himself, visit http://www.danpink.com/ .

Brand ID

By Photo: Andreas Praefcke [GFDL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC BY 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

In the old days, cattle ranchers used their brand to lay claim to their cows, putting a mark that would differentiate their cattle from those of other ranchers. Today, brands differentiate much more than livestock. Brands differentiate companies and their missions. Corporations pay millions to marketing and development firms to create just the right brand image, making sure their logo, public presence, customer service, and overall corporate perception matches with their mission statement, goals, and objectives.

In today's internet world, we get inundated with discussion about personal brands. Your personal brand may not be as complex as a platform of websites and social media accounts and speaking engagements, but it is still made up of the public perception of you.

In 2006, ExecuNet published survey results that indicated that 77% of employers Googled applicants to identify any red flags that might indicate the person could be a problematic employee. Now, nine years later, that trend may be changing, particularly as younger generations enter the workforce with an ever growing web of social media sites and personal data collected online. Still, have you Googled yourself lately? What would a potential employer find? Is it better or worse than the next applicant?

But even if you don't have an extensive (positive or negative) online presence, you should still be aware of your personal brand. When you meet someone, write an email, have a phone conversation, or submit a resume, be mindful of what brand you portray and how you will be perceived.

Playing the fool

By Thomas Davidson (fl. 1863-1903)
(Rosebery's) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Hey - it's April Fool's Day, which likely means that the internet will be full of more pranks than a joke shop today.

This isn't one (though maybe next year I will be more creative on that front).

Instead, I'm just writing a note on playing dumb at the office. I don't mean literally pretending to have no intelligence, as I am not sure to what end that would get someone. And I don't mean literally asking what you might caveat with, "This might be a dumb question." Honestly, that is likely seeking an explanation without injecting your own opinion into the answer - something I think is quite admirable.

Rather, just the idea that if you acknowledge that you are not always the smartest person in the room, you might learn something. If you act unintelligent all the time, people might mistake it for the truth. And I'm not actually asking you to act as if you don't know or can't fathom what's going on. But rather just to understand that others may have as much or more to a meeting than you might, or acknowledging that your opinion or position may sway the group, stifling some good ideas from ever seeing the light of day. So pick a meeting full of smart people and instead of trying to drive it to your own objective and ends, ask questions to solicit their opinions and ideas before you make your mind up on the outcome.

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