Category / problem-solving

by Nathan Coumbe

Ask someone

Sometimes the easiest way to get an answer, the easiest way to get unstuck, is to just ask a question.

Want to know what comes next for you in your career? Ask your leader what he thinks.

Want to know how to market your latest work? Get around people who do it and ask them how they did it.

Want to know if the person you are dating will marry you? Ask them (hopefully not too soon).

Sometimes it is best to get out of your own head, away from the fear and uncertainty, and just ask someone a question.

by Nathan Coumbe

Make time for your mind

I am always amazed at the quality of thoughts that I have when taking a shower. Some of my most poignant ideas occur not long after I close the curtain. Solutions to problems, blog topics, business ideas – they all seem to happen while I am standing in the shower.

Why?

I am completely undistracted; there is no waterproof cell phone in there with me. My brain checks out of the actions of the moment as my body automatically goes through the routine, and the brain is allowed to work its magic. This was not always true, though, as I used to bring my cell phone into the bathroom and blast music or a podcast or an audiobook. These quirks may seem harmless, yes, but my daily shower is some of the only truly undistracted time I have.

Our access to technology has our brain so constantly distracted that it seems few of us are having the “a-HA” moments that we need to improve ourselves and the lives of others. This is not a rant against technology but simply a call to action for you to work a few moments of distraction-free thinking into your day.

You’ll need a few things:

  1. Peace and quiet
  2. A notebook and a pen or pencil
  3. A timer (only if you truly need to keep track of your time, as I do when I am on a break at work)

Spend just a few minutes letting your mind wander; write down any thoughts you have which might seem significant to you. They may seem trivial, you may worry that other people think they are stupid or poor-quality (they aren’t), but write them down anyway. This is just for you.

I use my daily shower for this as well as my lunch break and the few breaks throughout my workday to just sit and think – no phone, no social media, no email, just my notebook, a pen, and my thoughts.

What do I write down?

  • Questions
  • Answers to questions
  • Business ideas
  • Problems
  • Solutions to problems I have at work and in my personal life
  • Observations of things I see around me (there is one entry in my journal about a very interesting bird…)
  • Drawings
  • Lists
  • Workouts
  • Music practice sessions
  • General randomness

Write whatever you want. Let your stream of consciousness take over for a few minutes. It is a wonderful feeling once you get used to doing it.

Everyone needs to carry a notebook with them at all times, something I learned from this amazing book (click here), and everyone needs to sit with their thoughts for a few minutes throughout the day. You will be amazed at how much better you will feel, how many good ideas you have, and how much more curious and excited about the world you will be. Try it out! Make it a habit for the next month to get 5 minutes a day of thinking time.

You don’t have to take your notebook in the shower – just leave it on the back of the toilet tank like I do.

by Nathan Coumbe

Irony

My reading today got me thinking about education and our attempts to fix it. A bunch of people who grew up in the industrial education system we know today are trying to fix and/or revamp the way we learn using the very education they seek to change.

I have hope, though. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, a lot of failures, and a lot of bravery on the part of us that seek to make it work. If we seek to push through and get it right, however, it will be worth every second.

by Nathan Coumbe

What is school for?

Today, I am simply posing a question to anyone who wishes to leave a thought. Please feel free to comment below or at one of my social media sites.

This particular question hit me very hard after listening yesterday to Seth Godin’s podcast (click here). I recommend you listen to the podcast in its entirety at the link above as you think about this question. It’s only about 20 minutes long.

So tell me – what do you think school is for?

by Nathan Coumbe

Rehearse

I had a dream last night in which a very unfortunate situation occurred, and I reacted very poorly. Then, an interesting thing happened – my brain gave me a “do-over.” Without ever waking up, I dreamed the same incident again, but chose a completely different response. I calmly and diplomatically expressed my disappointment in the situation and discussed how and why things had to change.

Of course this was just a dream, but in my conscious hours I have also been pushing myself to pause for just a moment before reacting to a situation and then choose how to respond. This works wonders for unexpected situations at work and at home. However, when you know that situations are going to occur, such as an angry customer, or a difficult task, or delivering bad news to a boss, you can be even more proactive than choosing a response in the moment.

When was the last time you had a dress rehearsal?

Musicians, dancers, actors, anyone who performs, regularly rehearse the material they will present to an audience. Why don’t we all? Each one of us is a performer during the day; whether we are dealing with a difficult person or a difficult task, we have to perform and show empathy and competence to get the job done.

Rehearse these situations when you have a little down time. You know you are going to have angry customers come to you when there is a long wait for service or something of theirs doesn’t work properly, so visualize how you will respond. Make it as real as possible – what sounds do you hear, how does your office smell, what emotions are you feeling in the moment, what are you doing with your hands, with you face? The same goes when you are delivering a presentation to your peers, or having a conversation with your leader about a raise or a new job. Rehearse them in your mind, rehearse them out loud with someone you trust. These are the same visualization techniques professional athletes and artistic performers use to prepare for “game day.”

You are no less of a performer than any athlete or artist, so practice your craft before you deliver it to the public.

by Nathan Coumbe

Do it.

Some people call it “The Grind.” Seth Godin calls it “The Dip.” There comes a time in just about every worthwhile endeavor when things get tough, or boring, or lose their original excitement. The words don’t come and the muse doesn’t speak. You get “writer’s block,” or your sound quality sucks, no matter how hard you practice your instrument. There is a secret to overcoming this:

Do it anyway.

If you are a writer, write something, no matter how short or how bad you think it is. Train the writing muscles.

If you are a musician, play something, even if only for five minutes. No matter how bad it sounds or how little progress you feel you are making, practice anyway. Train the music muscles.

If you are an artist, make something. It might be incredibly similar to something you’ve already done. You might hate it. Draw it or paint it anyway. Train the artistic muscles.

In this way you are also training your brain to get used to regularly producing in your field of endeavor. It’s mental exercise.

Sometimes you just have to do it.

by Nathan Coumbe

Fail and fail often

When Thomas Edison was very young, a teacher told his mother that he was “too stupid to learn anything.” By age 10, he had set up his own laboratory in his family’s home. He became a full-time inventor and set up his laboratory at Menlo Park at age 20. He wasn’t stupid; he was simply born into an industrial, standardized system which sought to stifle his creativity, to make him compliant to the system. The teacher was bad at teaching; the system didn’t know how to properly educate a child.

Our educational system frowns upon children who don’t sit still, who ask too many questions, who can’t regurgitate facts on standardized tests. We are taught to be children who sit still, shut up, and absorb the facts and figures being thrown at us, seldom ever learning how to do anything. Thomas Edison, one of the most influential inventors who ever lived, was one of these children. Each of us is one of these children.

“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”

– Mark Twain

Edison was not only creative, he was also a failure. And that is something for which we should all strive.

Edison tried over 10,000 different ways of creating a light bulb before finally making the one for which he is famous. A reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 10,000 times?”. Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 10,000 steps.”

Our educational system frowns upon failure, the greatest teacher of all. The lessons we learn from failure stick with us forever and tend to be much more valuable and useful in helping us make better decisions in the future. We are taught that failure, getting the wrong answer, or writing something poorly, is to be avoided at all costs. Yet the only way to get the right answer is to learn what the wrong one is; the only way to learn to write well is to start writing, most of which will be bad in the beginning.

So what?

Our children, our teens, and yes, us as adults as well, have to get used to the idea of trying new things, of failing. The failures of which I am speaking are not fatal – these are failures in creating something new, or trying out a new skill, or seeking a new way of doing things, of giving something to the world when it might not be accepted.

It might not work. So go fail over and over again until you succeed at something. Try new things, make something, start something, give something to the rest of the world. You might fail. And that failure will teach you a lesson. It will be one of the 10,000 steps in the right direction.

Fail and fail often.

by Nathan Coumbe

Make time for happy

I’ve been dealing with a most ridiculous, and at times comically awful, situation for the last month or so. Yesterday, things came to a head. I won’t go into the details here, but I do wish to share with you my reaction to the situation.

By the time all was said and done, I was absolutely furious. Rage was seeping from my pores; my body was on the verge of convulsion because of how badly I was shaking. I got in my car (slamming the door, of course) and sat and seethed for a few moments more. Then I began to think about how I was thinking and feeling.

Human beings are unique in this respect: we can think about how we think. Because of this, we also get to choose how we react in a given situation. (Read Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, and you can get more into this.) I had a choice – I could be mad, or I could let it go.

I chose mad.

I sat in my car, and I consciously decided, then and there, that I was going to be mad. This situation was so awful, so asinine, that I couldn’t just let it go! I had to be mad.

With a catch.

I gave myself a time limit (a trick I learned from reading the works of Zig Ziglar). It was 4:30pm – I needed to drive home and spend the evening with my wife. Now why would I make my wonderful wife miserable because I was having such a hard time? I decided I would be mad – for a period.

“Nathan,” I said aloud, “6pm. That’s how long you have to be mad. At six o’clock, you are going to let it go, and you are going to be spend a nice evening with your wife. Until 6pm you can be mad as hell.”

5:15pm

By about 5:15pm, I decided it was too exhausting to be mad. I told my wife what I had done, what I had decided, and she laughed. Her whole face lit up; it was as though a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders, not just mine. She thought that my whole monologue was hilarious, wonderful, and one of the best things that I could have done. We splurged and got pizza, ice cream, tater tots, and ended up having a nice evening together.

Be mad – with a catch.

Go ahead – react appropriately to the situations in your life. Sometimes they stink. Sometimes they really stink. Just don’t live in the garbage. Give yourself a time limit.

by Nathan Coumbe

Live by the ABCs

I have a mantra that I repeat to myself through out the day, especially when I start to get bored or frustrated with something.

“Always. Be. Curious.”

These are my ABCs. Corny, I know. I don’t care.

My brain never stops; thoughts fly through my mind at light speed in a never-ending stream. There was a time when I tried to drown them out by mindlessly watching television or playing video games. I didn’t know what to do with all the thoughts; at times, they overwhelmed me, annoyed me, or just plain scared me.

Then I learned how to use it to my advantage – I started listening to Seth Godin who taught me to sit with the anxiety created by these racing thoughts and condition my mind to get used to it all rather than try and eradicate it by vegging out in front of a screen. I also read a book called How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb which taught me to keep a notebook and write down my thoughts and observations throughout the day.

It changed my life.

I have written down some absolutely stupid, ridiculous, useless thoughts in my notebooks, and yet I have also written down profound words of wisdom, insightful revelations about myself and what I want, solutions to problems that have plagued me, and some of the most interesting observations of the world around me which used to just pass me by.

So today, think about embracing your inner child, the one who used to ask questions about everything, the child that had to touch and smell and taste and listen to everything that crossed his or her path as a way to make sense of the world. Sit with your thoughts, without a phone or a tablet or screen in front of you. Let your mind wander. Write some things down.

Always be curious.

by Nathan Coumbe

Start something.

A number of weeks ago, my wife and I went out to play some pick-up soccer with folks in our community; it didn’t quite go as planned. After a flurry of text messages, it turned out that a flat soccer ball and someone’s annoying brother had wrecked our hopes of playing soccer that evening (yes, there is more than one obvious solution to this problem, but that’s not the point of this story).

We refused to let those issues stop us, and we had an idea (and luckily, a frisbee). We decided to teach the folks who were originally going to play soccer with us how to play Ultimate Frisbee. One hot, sweaty, muddy, grass-covered hour later, our group collapsed on the ground, exhausted and exhilarated. Not only did they all have a blast, they all wanted to know when the next game was happening. Since then, we’ve been playing 2-3 times a week, we have created a subscription calendar that anyone can get to see when the next game is, and our interest and attendance in the group has been steadily growing.

So why I am telling you this story? It’s really quite simple:

Start something.

Do something. Write something. Play something. Call someone and see if they are interested. Send them a text message. Put up a flyer.

Start something.

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”

– Walt Disney

We all have ideas that could start something – it may not be a new career or financially lucrative, but it could start a community league, or a charity, or a movement (and it could also be a new career AND financially lucrative).

Just so you know – it might not work.

WHO CARES?

If you never try to do it, then it definitely won’t work.

Do you play guitar? See if you can go teach someone else the basics. Do you draw or paint or sculpt? See if there is someone you know that might want to try a new hobby. Are you an awesome chess player? Find a friend that always wanted to learn or start a group that meets each week to play a tournament.

Start something. It might not work; it might be a bad idea. Do it anyway. And then do it again tomorrow. It might not work.

But what if it does?