The system may be wrong, but it often has more power than your individual will.
It doesn’t matter how good the change is you want to make. If the system is set up to prevent it, you’ll fail.
Therefore, you often have to work within the system to get the results you want, even if you don’t like it.
What would your work day look like if you compressed everything into just two hours? Well, I tried it.
I gave myself two hours to complete a project that I was sure was going to take all day to finish. You know what happened?
I finished it in two hours.
Most of the projects (work or otherwise) take much longer than they should. And I think the reason is because we spend so much time working around them instead of on them.
We check our emails. Look at text messages. Do a little work. Check the news to make sure we didn’t miss anything important (we didn’t). Maybe do a little more work.
If only we could more reliably put our heads down and sprint through the project at hand. We’d create so much extra margin in our personal lives.
If you could give yourself only two hours to get your most important, what would that look like? Could you keep your job that way?
(h/t to Tim Ferriss for the nudge in this direction)
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Dr. Covey taught me perhaps the most important and fundamental life lesson of all. It’s the idea of paradigms and the See-Do-Get formula.
Paradigms are our ways of seeing the world. As Dr. Covey describes it, they are maps of the territory we are navigating. As we know, maps are a representation of the world but not the world itself. These “maps” affect every aspect of our daily lives.
Our paradigms put us into a cycle known as “See-Do-Get”. How we see something (our paradigm) affects our behavior (what we do). Our behavior affects the results we get. These results then reinforce our viewpoint. They become a never-ending cycle that can only be short-circuited by changing how we “see”. We must examine the map.
I once knew a teacher whose students approached him about putting on a short play for the school. They saw this as a way to put the English literature they were studying into a fun and creative context. But this teacher saw his students as an uncreative bunch of hooligans with no talent. He did not believe them capable of staging anything worthwhile.
Grudgingly, he let the students “try” to put something together. Because of his mindset, he failed to encourage them, coach them, or help them in any way. His only offering was scathing criticism because he saw no possible positive outcome. The students became increasingly frustrated and unhappy with their efforts. They began to believe their teacher correct in his views and quit the project after a few weeks. Their “failure” further reinforced the teacher’s own paradigm.
I felt devastated when I found out about the situation from the students. Why did it happen that way? Because he saw them as uncreative, incapable, and without talent, he treated them as such. He failed to help or encourage his students and did nothing but criticize and condemn. This behavior led to the results he expected all along.
How we see a problem (or person, political party, or random happenstance) is a problem itself. It affects our behavior and the results we get, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Design thinking teaches us to reframe problems in ways that allow us to take positive action on them. Only by changing how we see something can we get to the root of the issue. If you want to make positive change in any area of your life, first examine how you see the problem.
What would have happened had this teacher been aware of the way he saw his students? What if he had taken a step back and seen them as young, curious, and full of potential? Maybe he would have treated them as budding thespians and offered encouragement. This change in behavior might have led to a fun, engaging, and successful student project. And who knows? It might have had lasting effects on all the students, even the ones who came to watch.
Instead, his negative mindset destroyed all hope of having any success at all.
I’ll leave the final word on this subject to Dr. Covey himself:
“If you want to make minor improvements, change your behavior. But if you want to make quantum improvements, change your paradigm.”
—Dr. Stephen R. Covey
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Everyone you interact with on a daily basis is a volunteer in your life.
Don’t believe it? Try an experiment:
If you have children, a spouse, or any sort of significant other, order them around, withhold affection, neglect the small kindnesses and courtesies that make relationships so strong and fun.
If you do it long enough and often enough, they will quit.
(Please don’t actually try that experiment.)
The same is true in any organization: simply because someone is employed by another does not mean that person is not a volunteer. You would never neglect the needs and wants of a customer or disrespect her. Why not? Because a customer is a volunteer – she is choosing to do business with you, and that choice can be revoked at any time.
There seems to be some disconnect when money is involved – because the person is paid, she does not deserve the same level of care and dignity given to a customer. This could not be further from the truth.
The employee might be reliant on that money; she might need it for her survival, but she is still a volunteer.
Your friends and family members are volunteers; they are customers. They are choosing to do “business” with you, and at any time, that choice can be revoked. Your employees are volunteers; they just happen to be paid.
Treat everyone with whom you interact as a volunteer customer, and you will seldom be disappointed.
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If you try something new, you might fail.
Why is that such a debilitating statement? Unless you are attempting to leap between two buildings or run past a speeding car on the interstate, our failures are rarely fatal.
Yet we are paralyzed by the thought of failing at a new side hustle, of being rejected when asking for a date, or of failing at the new hobby we have never before tried.
If being proactive means choosing how one respond’s to a situation, then we can fail proactively. You can look at failure as a reason to never again attempt something, or you can look at it as simply one way the new thing won’t work.
Thomas Edison tried 10,000 ways to make a lightbulb before he found the way that worked. He saw each failure, not as a discouragement to trying again, but as a stepping stone to success.
Choose to see failure as a learning experience and you will only ever improve the next time.
Resiliency is a skill that can be developed through practice. The first step is choosing to practice.
What makes you uncomfortable? The answer to that question will help determine where to start.
I hate asking people to make special accommodations for me: I always feel I am inconveniencing the other person (I rarely am), or that I am being a very annoying customer (if they think so, that’s their choice). So when my wife and I started to drastically reduce our waste production, I was uncomfortable with some of the suggestions she made.
My favorite example took place at our local Mexican restaurant: they have delicious salsa that we would buy in large tubs to take home and use during the week. These tubs were made of styrofoam and had plastic lids. My wife suggested that I take one of our many empty glass jars and ask for salsa to be placed inside. I was so reluctant, so uncomfortably scared to simply ask. It felt dangerous, even though the worst thing that could happen was to receive no as an answer. No danger at all, but my mind made it feel dangerous.
After numerous arguments (I was scared, remember?), I grudgingly went to the restaurant and made the request. The host looked at me curiously, but he acquiesced and placed the salsa in our jar. He even went a step further and informed me that there were no preservatives in the salsa; it would only keep for a week or so. A wave of relief washed over me.
The next week, when I went back for more salsa, there was a sign on the front counter.
“$2.99 jars of salsa to go. Bring the jar back for a $0.99 refill.”
The host, who was also the manager, bought a stock of small glass jars and decided to sell them. He was actively encouraging people to reuse the jars while also proactively choosing to reduce the waste his restaurant produced.
By choosing (i.e. being forced by my incredible wife) to do something that made me uncomfortable, my wife and I achieved one of our small waste reduction goals. But the most inspiring thing was the change it created in someone else.
Seek out discomfort in all areas of your life. It makes you stronger mentally. Discomfort in the gym makes you stronger physically.
Other people avoid discomfort, which means you will be doing things others won’t. The intersection of discomfort and action creates change the world desperately needs.
Change makes things better. Seeking out discomfort makes things better.
What makes you uncomfortable?
Go do that.
Resilience is the ability to rebound from challenges, setbacks, and crises. When something happens, a resilient person is seemingly less affected by the event than a non-resilient person (not true).
Is someone born resilient? Doubtful.
Resiliency is a skill; it can be practiced and improved. It can be practiced by consciously choosing how to respond to a challenge, setback, or crisis. The effects of the event may indeed be negative: they might be seriously damaging to mind, body, or spirit. But that most fundamental human right, that of proactivity and the ability to choose, cannot be taken away by a negative event.
Resiliency, therefore, is practicing proactive responses in the face of negative events. It can mitigate the long-term effects of a difficult situation.
Is it easy? Of course not.
Is it necessary? More than ever. It will make you stronger.
Choose how you respond; become more resilient.
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