Yesterday we learned five truths about attitudes. We also learned that a good attitude does not guarantee success, but a bad one definitely guarantees failure.
At this point, very likely, you are nodding affirmatively because you know a good attitude vs. a bad one when you see it. But, can you describe what attitude is? John Maxwell, author of Attitude 101, says, “Attitude is an inward feeling expressed by behavior. That is why an attitude can be seen without a word being said. Haven’t we all noticed ‘the pout’ of the sulker, or the ‘jutted jaw’ of the determined? Of all the things we wear, our expression is the most important.”
“For some, attitude presents a difficulty in every opportunity; for others it presents an opportunity in every difficulty.”
Maxwell was intrigued by the fact that attitude can make or break individuals, so he put together seven axioms to help us better understand how attitude impacts a person’s life.
1. Our attitude determines our approach to life. “We are individually responsible for our view of life. […] But almost daily we witness jobs that are held but hated and marriages that are tolerated bur unhappy, all because people are waiting for others, or the world, to change instead of realizing that they are responsible for their own behavior.”
2. Our attitude determines our relationship with people. “All of life is impacted by our relationships with people, yet establishing relationships is difficult. You can’t get along with some people, and you can’t make it without them. That’s why it’s essential to build proper relationships with others in our crowded world.” It is very important to lead with empathy: to have an attitude that places others first, that sees people as important, that walks a mile in their shoes, and that reflects their point of view.
3. Often our attitude is the only difference between success and failure. “There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.”
4. Our attitude at the beginning of a task will affect its outcome more than anything else. “Most projects fail or succeed before they begin… The right attitude in the beginning ensures success at the end. You are acquainted with the saying ‘All’s well that ends well.’ An equal truth is ‘All’s well that begins well.’ […] Many times we have been guilty of viewing our future challenges as the sunset of life rather than the sunrise of a bright new opportunity.”
5. Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings. “In Awake, My Heart, J. Sidlow Baxter wrote, ‘What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty and every difficulty has an opportunity.’ ”
6. Our attitude can give us an uncommonly positive perspective. “An uncommonly positive perspective is able to help us accomplish some uncommon goals.” Maxwell cites the story of David and Goliath. Upon seeing the giant warrior Goliath, his opponents thought He’s so big we’ll never kill him. Whereas David, a young shepherd, looked at him and thought, He’s so big I can’t miss. Individuals who approach life from an entirely positive perspective are not always understood, as they won’t settle for what is “normal or accepted” in terms of limitations. “Certainly they have limitations. Their gifts are not so plentiful that they cannot fail. But they are determined to walk to the very edge of their potential and the potential of their goals before accepting defeat.”
7. Your attitude is not automatically good because you are a religious person. Maxwell mentions that sins “are all matters of attitude, inner spirit, and motives. Sadly, many people of faith carry with them inner-spirit problems.” The problems are further accentuated when they confuse a poor attitude with righteousness, and nothing could be further from the truth.
ACTION
TODAY: Take a moment to evaluate your attitudes against these seven axioms. Within the spectrum of each axiom, where do you fall? Jot down some actions that you can take to turn your attitude into a more positive one.
FUTURE: As with any other skill, a positive attitude can be learned. Be mindful of the truths we talked about in yesterday’s post and in today’s axioms, and keep them in mind. Practice makes (not perfect but) permanent. And the more you practice, the more you will enjoy the ride. Maxwell says, “The future not only looks bright when the attitude is right, but also the present is much more enjoyable. The positive person understands that the journey of success is as enjoyable as the destination.”
Please share this post with someone who has a bright and wonderful attitude, they’ll be grateful! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
“Good attitudes among [team] players do not guarantee a team’s success, but bad attitudes guarantee its failure,” says leadership guru John C. Maxwell in his great little book Attitude 101. That is why the Harvard Business Review published an article entitled Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill a few years back, as this has become quite a prevalent philosophy among leaders who are putting teams together where sufficient knowledge and skills can be acquired on the job for optimal performance.
Maxwell continues, “As an individual, your attitude has a profound impact on your life. As a leader, you cannot ignore the attitudes of the people you lead and expect to achieve success—whether you’re leading a business, a family, a sports team, or a group of volunteers. A person’s attitude colors their view of failure and defines their approach to success.”
In short, “Attitude can make or break you.”
To this effect, Maxwell shares five truths about attitudes to illustrate how they affect a team:
1. Attitudes have the power to lift up or tear down a team. Maxwell cites Denis Waitley’s book The Winner’s Edge: “The winner’s edge is not in a gifted birth, in a high IQ, or in talent. The winner’s edge is in attitude, not aptitude.” Nowadays, says Maxwell, talent alone (or talent with experience) is not enough.” If you’re looking for outstanding results the formula is: Great Talent + Good Attitudes = Great Team.
2. An attitude compounds when exposed to others. While talent, experience, and willingness to practice are unique to each individual, attitude is contagious. “People have a tendency to adopt the attitudes of those they spend time with—to pick up on their mindsets, beliefs and approaches to challenges.”
3. Bad attitudes compound faster than better ones. “There’s only one thing more contagious than a good attitude—a bad attitude.” Need we say more?
4. Attitudes are subjective, so identifying a wrong one can be difficult. “People always project on the outside how they feel on the inside. Attitude is really how a person is.” Maxwell shares a few of the most common rotten attitudes so that we can recognize them and nip them in the bud when we see them:
An inability to admit wrongdoing.
Failing to forgive.
Petty jealousy.
The disease of “me” (overpowering belief in their own importance).
A critical spirit.
A desire to hog all the credit.
5. Rotten attitudes left alone, ruin everything. “Bad attitudes must be addressed. You can be sure that they will always cause dissension, resentment, combativeness, and division on a team. And they will never go away on their own… [but] because people with bad attitudes are so difficult to deal with and because attitudes seem so subjective, you may doubt your gut reaction when you encounter [them]. After all, if it’s only your opinion that he has a rotten attitude, then you have no right to address it, right? Not if you care about the team. Rotten attitudes ruin a team.”
Abounding on this last point, dealing with a person that has a negative attitude can be tricky. It’s important to learn first the way in which attitudes affect an individual. And that is the subject of tomorrow’s idea. Stay tuned!
ACTION
TODAY: We all have had the experience of dealing with the proverbial bad apple. How has this person’s attitude affected you and your team? What have you learned from that attitude? Conversely, think of a person whose attitude brightens up a room and changes the mood from black and white into bright, vivid color. How has this person’s attitude affected you and your team? What have you learned from that attitude?
FUTURE: Resolve to have a positive attitude always, especially when things go wrong. Remember President Jefferson’s quote: “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
Please share this post with someone who has a bright and wonderful attitude, they’ll be grateful! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
In their book Switch, brothers Chip and Dan Heath talk about change and what it takes to make it happen for the better of people, teams and processes. One of the tools to shape the path of change is forming habits.
“Habits are behavioral autopilot, and that’s why they’re such a critical tool for leaders. Leaders who can instill habits that reinforce their teams’ goals are essentially making progress for free. They’ve changed behavior in a way that doesn’t draw down the [habit doer’s] reserves of self-control.”
The authors focus on the fact that habits will form inevitably, whether intentionally or not. And they point to all of us creating lots of team habits, albeit unwittingly: “If your staff meetings always start out with genial small talk, then you’ve created a habit. You’ve designed your meeting autopilot to yield a few minutes of warm-up small talk.”
The key, and the main question for the leaders, “is not how to form habits but which habits to encourage.” And thus the authors cite the example of General William “Gus” Pagonis, who led the logistics operation for the Gulf War (Desert Storm) under President George H. W. Bush.
“Every morning, General Pagonis held a meeting that started at 8 a.m. and ended at 8:30 a.m. No great innovation there, but Pagonis made two changes to the routine. First, he allowed anyone to attend (and he required that at least one representative from each functional group be present). That way he could ensure a free and open exchange of information across the organization. Second, he required everyone to stand up during the whole meeting.”
Holding the meeting standing up ensured that everyone involved got to the point fast and in a concise manner, and then yielded the floor to the next person. The authors say, “It would have been just as easy for [Pagonis] to enshrine a two-hour, seated blabfest. What’s exciting here is not the existence of the habit, but rather the insight that the habit should serve the mission. … A stand-up meeting won’t guarantee any of that, but it will help and it’s “free”—it’s not any harder to create than the blabfest would have been.”
When looking at creating a habit that supports the change that you’re trying to make, the authors say that there are only two things to think about:
1. The habit needs to advance the mission, as did Pagonis stand-up meetings.
2. The habit needs to be relatively easy to embrace. If it’s too hard, then it creates its own independent change problem.
On this second point, let’s imagine that you’re trying to exercise more and make a habit of “going to the gym.” The Heath brothers point out that you’re only renaming the core problem. It will be more productive and faster to build a simpler habit, such as laying out your workout clothes the evening before or having a workout buddy pick you up on his way to the gym.
In sum, any behavior you select will become habitual if you stick to it. Just remember that the habit should serve the mission as you select which habit to build for optimum purposes.
ACTION
TODAY: Take one habit that you/your team members have built and analyze its effectiveness. How well is it serving your mission? Should you keep it or should you ditch it in favor of another one that better serves you?
FUTURE: When creating a new habit, you may run into opposition (whether your own—as you keep hitting the snooze button—or your team’s reluctance to change). The best way to figure out whether it serves your mission is to try it out for a period of time, say three or six months, or more, depending on your case. Make sure you can measure the results vs. the old way of doing things, so that you can have a baseline for comparison. If it doesn’t work, you’ll know it. Yet if it does work, you may have a full group of enthusiastic supporters (your team) when you see the results.
Please create the habit of sharing these daily ideas with someone who will enjoy reading them! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
“Your ability to persist in the face of setbacks and disappointments is your measure of your belief in yourself and your ability to succeed,” says business guru Brian Tracy in his book The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success.
“Persistence,” Tracy continues, “is the iron quality of success.” And he points to persistence as the most important asset we can have, because our ability to persist longer than anyone else is what will give us the edge.
“Never give in, never, never give in.” – Winston Churchill
“When you persist in the face of the inevitable setbacks, delays, disappointments, and temporary defeats you will experience in life, and you continue to persist in spite of them, you demonstrate to yourself and to the people around you that you have the qualities of self-discipline and self-mastery that are absolutely indispensable for the achievement of any great success.”
And this last point is precisely what Tracy refers to as the corollary of the Law of Persistence: self-discipline in action. That means no excuses, just focusing on the end in mind.
The combination of unshakeable determination and persistence is what will make you unstoppable. “You will become an irresistible force of nature. Your goals of high achievement will become your realities.”
ACTION
Both actions come directly from the book. I love them because they’re very similar to what I would have written as it relates to the Law of Persistence, so I’m leaving them here verbatim for you.
TODAY: “Make a list of the problems or challenges that you are facing right now. In what areas are you feeling discouraged and unsure? In what areas do you need to persist even more than you are today? Keep reminding yourself that ‘Failure is not an option!’ ”
FUTURE: “Resolve in advance that, no matter what happens, you will never give up. Remember that if you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and you resolve in advance that you will never quit, you must ultimately be a great success. No one can ever stop you but yourself. Go for it!”
Know someone who is thinking about giving up and needs a pep talk? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
In his clever and funny style (read this other post), Steve Ventura, author of LEAD RIGHT, states that when we become leaders, we lose some of the “luxuries” that we had before. Those “luxuries” that he refers to, are “ways of thinking and acting that only non-leaders can exercise and enjoy.”
These tongue-in-cheek luxuries are everything that a leader is not. The opposite is true: “The mindsets and behaviors [that these lost luxuries] represent are the essence of leadership. More than anything else, they are what separate leaders from followers… they are what separate poor leaders from great ones.” So, here is the list, verbatim, of those lost, so-called lost luxuries.
As a leader, you no longer have the luxury of…
…thinking mostly about yourself—putting your own needs first. …acting on feelings, rather than facts—jumping to conclusions and reacting in a “knee-jerk” fashion. …whining to others or commiserating with their discontent. …forming opinions and making judgments knowing only “one side of the story.” …continually blaming “them” and “they”—and expecting someone else to fix what’s broken. …not listening to others’ ideas, concerns, and opinions. …taking sides, overtly favoring some people, and excluding others. …wearing your emotions “on your sleeve.”
And as a leader, you no longer have the luxury of…
…closing your eyes or walking away when things happen that just aren’t right.
ACTION
TODAY: Give yourself some time to ponder the list above. While Ventura puts it in a funny way for us to better absorb it, analyze your thoughts and actions, and recognize if you’ve acted like this in the past. Analyze why. Ask why 5 times. Get to the core of the issue and learn from it, so that you can no longer give yourself that luxury in the future.
FUTURE: Keep this list handy and check it often, remember that you can no longer engage in those luxuries, and that is a great thing! Share the list with your circles, we are all leaders in one way or another, and we should all lose these luxuries in exchange for a better, gentler and more empathic way of treating each other.
Know someone who would enjoy reading this post? Please share it via email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
Take a breath… Imagine that you are 95 years old and ready to die. Before taking your last breath, you’re given a great gift: The ability to travel back in time—the ability to talk to the person who is reading this page, the ability to help this person be a better professional and lead a better life.
The 95-year-old you understands what was really important and what wasn’t, what mattered and what didn’t. What advice would this wise “old you” have for the “you” who is reading this page?
Take your time and answer your question on two levels: personal advice and professional advice. Jot down a few words that capture what the old you would be saying to the younger you.
Once you’ve written these words down, the rest is simple: Just do whatever you wrote down. Make it your resolution for the rest of the current year, and the next. You have just defined your “there.”
While “there” will be different for each one of us, and no one but you can define it for you, Goldsmith shares wisdom about the common features that most “theres” have. This is because a friend of Goldsmith interviewed people who were dying and asked them what advice they would have had for their younger selves. Three recurring topics kept coming up:
1. Reflect upon life, find happiness and meaning now. “Not next month or next year. The Great Western Disease lies in the phrase, I will be happy when…” Take time to enjoy the here and now. The promotion, the house, the money, the lucky break, may or may not come, but you can choose to be happy today and find meaning in your life right now. Don’t postpone your happiness, enjoy life as it is now!
2. Friends and family. “You may work for a wonderful company, and you may think that your contribution to that organization is very important. When you are 95 years old and you look at the people around your deathbed, very few of your fellow employees will be there waving good-bye. Your friends and family will be the only people who care. Appreciate them now and share a large part of your life with them.”
3. Follow your dreams. “This doesn’t apply just to big dreams; it’s also true for little dreams. Buy the sportscar you always wanted, go to that exotic locale that’s always held your fascination, learn how to play the piano or speak Italian. […] Few of us will achieve all of our dreams. Some dreams will always elude us. So the key question is not, ‘Did I make all my dreams come true?’ The key question is, ‘Did I try?’ ”
Curiously enough, Goldsmith conducted a research project with more than 200 high-potential leaders from 120 companies worldwide that yielded the same topics. When the leaders were asked, “If you stay in this company, why are you going to stay?” the top three answers were:
1. “I am finding meaning and happiness now. The work is exciting and I love what I am doing.”
2. “I like the people. They are my friends. This feels like a team. It feels like a family. I could make more money working with other people, but I don’t want to leave the people here.”
3. “I can follow my dreams. This organization is giving me a chance to do what I really want to do in life.”
It’s interesting how we all seek the same (happiness, meaning, relationships, dreams, purpose) no matter what our age or stage in life. So now you know, regardless of where you’re going (“there”), be happy now, enjoy time with friends and family, and try to make your dreams come true.
ACTION
TODAY: Go through the exercise above and determine your “there.” Then call a trusted and supportive friend and a family member to share your results. Set a date and time to meet with them—it’s always more fun to catch up in person!
FUTURE: Just as Goldsmith said, make your “there” your resolution for the rest of the current year, and the next. Set up goals and break them down into doable chunks so that you can see and measure progress.
Please share this post with someone who needs to find his/her “there,” they’ll thank you for it! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
Steven Pressfield, renowned author, has written much about Resistance as part of our work (The War of Art, Turning Pro, Do The Work). Resistance is that chatter inside our head that criticizes all we do, prevents us from starting or continuing a project, and wants to sabotage its completion.
However, in Do The Work, Pressfield says, “The opposite of Resistance is Assistance.”The Assistance, whatever form this takes, stands for the love for your dream, your creation, or whatever it is that you are looking to bring to fruition: “The dream is your project, your vision, your symphony, your startup. The love is the passion and enthusiasm that fill your heart when you envision your project’s completion.”
“In myths and legends, the knight is always aided in his quest to slay the dragon. Providence brings forth a champion whose role is to assist the hero. Theseus had Ariadne when he fought the Minotaur. Jason had Medea when he went after the Golden Fleece. Odysseus had the goddess Athena to guide him home. In Native American myths, our totemic ally is often an animal—a magic raven, say, or a talking coyote. In Norse myths, an old crone sometimes assists the hero; in African legends, it’s often a bird. The Three Wise Men were guided by a star. All of these characters or forces represent Assistance.”
Pressfield details how, when Resistance appears (which, in his words, is all the time), he thinks of Charles Lindbergh:
What symphony or Resistance must have been playing in his head when he was struggling to raise the funding for his attempt to fly across the Atlantic solo? “You’re too young, you’re too inexperienced; you’ve got no credentials, no credibility. Everyone who’s tried this has failed and you will, too. It can’t be done. Your plane will crash, you’re going to drown, you’re a madman who is attempting the impossible and you deserve whatever dire fate befalls you!”
(Here’s a great blog post from Pressfield on how to look at and deal with Resistance and self-loathing in a positive way.)
“What saw Lindy through?” asks Pressfield. “It can only have been the dream,” he answers himself. “Love of the idea.”
It is that love of the idea, the visualization of our goal, along with dogged determination, that gets us through the finish line. Pressfield points out that it is in our best interest to keep our end in mind so that “we can align ourselves with these universal forces of Assistance—this dream, this passion to make the unmanifest manifest—and ride them into battle against the dragon.”
After all, Pressfield goes on, “How cool would it be, in 1927, to land at Le Bourget field outside Paris, having flown from New York, solo and non-stop, before anyone else had ever done it?”
Keep your end in mind. Always. And keep working at it. But as you work on it, don’t get so mired in the details that you lose sight of your desired goal. Focus on Assistance, not on Resistance.
If you have 3 minutes, I highly recommend you watch this video of Pressfield talking with Oprah about Resistance.
Let me know in the comments here your favorite way to beat Resistance!
ACTION
TODAY: Rekindle the flame of some dream that you’ve set aside lately because Resistance beat you. Assistance can come to the rescue. Read this post if you are battling impostor syndrome, another manifestation of Resistance.
FUTURE: Focus on Assistance to get you through to the completion of your projects, goals, and dreams. And when you experience Resistance, read this post to overcome any block (writer’s or any other) that you encounter. Keep at it. Think of Lindbergh: how cool will it be when you land on your goal?
Please help others get Assistance for their Resistance by sharing this post! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
Marshall Goldsmith, author and success coach to top CEOs, talks about the importance of receiving feedback. While feedback usually comes from others, in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Goldsmith shares a simple technique by which we can give goodand reliable feedback to ourselves to create lasting change.
Sounds too good to be true? Wait until you see how easy—yet how profound—this technique is. It’s all about completing a sentence. Here’s how it works:
Pick one thing that you want to get better at. It could be anything that matters to you—from getting in shape to giving more recognition to lowering your golf handicap. Then list the positive benefits that will accrue to you and the world if you achieve your goal. For example, “I want to get in better shape. If I get in shape, one benefit to me is that…” And then you complete the sentence.
It’s a simple exercise. “If I get in shape, I will… live longer.” That’s one benefit. Then keep doing it. “If I get in shape, I’ll feel better about myself.” That’s two. “If I get in shape, I’ll be a better role model for my family and friends.” And so on until you exhaust the benefits.
At this moment, you are probably wondering what makes this so special. Goldsmith points out that the interesting part of this exercise is that, “as you get deeper into it, the answers become less corporately correct and more personal.”
You start off by saying, “If I become better organized, the company will make more money… my team will become more productive… other people will enjoy their jobs more… and so on.” By the end, however, you’re saying, “If I become more organized, I’ll be a better parent… a better spouse… a better person.”
And so it is that by digging or peeling layers (quite similar to the 5 Whys), we get to the core issue, that is, what is really important to us. Only then, can we find the real reason—the one that motivates and inspires us—to change for the better.
Goldsmith recalls a story of a general in the U. S. Marine Corps who wanted to “become less judgmental.” At first, his resistance was obvious as he completed the first instance cynically by saying, “ If I become less judgmental, I won’t have so much trouble dealing with the clowns at headquarters.” The second answer was quite sarcastic too. By the third one, he had diminished the intensity of the sarcasm. Goldsmith says that by the sixth sentence he was tearing up: “If I become less judgmental, maybe my children will talk to me again.”
When you go deep is when you know that this exercise is working. In the words of Goldsmith: “As the benefits you list become less expected and more personal and meaningful to you, that’s when you know that you’ve given yourself some valuable feedback—that you’ve hit on an interpersonal skill that you really want and need to improve. That’s when you confirm that you’ve picked the right thing to fix.”
ACTION
TODAY: Set up some time aside in your calendar to do this sentence-completion exercise. It will give you important feedback as to what you need to change.
FUTURE: Keep this exercise handy so that you can do it when you need to give yourself good feedback. That way you will be able to change a habit or a behavior that is no longer serving you.
Please share this post to let someone in your circles know how they can give themselves good feedback for lasting change! Email, Facebook, Twitter.
Not too long ago we learned about the term kodawari. This is the Japanese word that refers to the combination of meticulous attention to detail in what we do plus the pride and joy that we feel towards what we do.
Kodawari is an integral part of ikigai (pronunciation), “a Japanese word for describing the pleasures and meanings of life. The word literally consists of iki (to live) and gai (reason).” Thus, it is loosely translated as your reason to live or the reason why you wake up every day.
Author and neuroscientist Ken Mogi, in his book Awakening Your Ikigai, says that ikigai “is used in various contexts, and can apply to small everyday things as well as to big goals and achievements. […] Most importantly, ikigai is possible without your necessarily being successful in your professional life… It is true that having ikigai can result in success, but success is not a requisite condition for having ikigai. It is open to every one of us.”
To this effect, Mogi introduces the five pillars of ikigai that he believes encompass this concept and help us make the best of every moment.
Pillar 1: Starting small → Focusing on the details. Pillar 2: Releasing yourself → Accepting who you are. Pillar 3: Harmony and sustainability → Relying on others. Pillar 4: The joy of little things → Appreciating sensory pleasure. Pillar 5: Being in the here and now → Finding your flow.
Mogi points out that the pillars reinforce each other and enable ikigai to flourish, yet they are not “mutually exclusive or exhaustive, nor do they have a particular order or hierarchy.”
Ikigai is closely related to our sense of happiness. And while Mogi says that there is no absolute formula for happiness, he mentions that accepting yourself is “a low-budget, maintenance-free formula for being happy. […] Accepting yourself is one of the easiest, simplest and most rewarding things you could do for yourself.”
However, Mogi recognizes that no man is an island and draws an analogy: “A man is like a forest, individual yet connected and dependent on others for growth.” And besides learning and getting support from others, one of the fastest ways to grow is by deriving lessons from failure. “After all, in the long process of life, you sometimes stumble and fall. Even at those times, you can have ikigai, even when you are on a losing streak.”
“Ikigai, in a nutshell, is literally from the cradle to the grave, no matter what happens in your life.”
Ikigai is about being mindful and present, enjoying the little things that make up the moment we are living in, and finding our flow as we get lost in the appreciation of the details. And when something goes wrong, “so long as you have ikigai, you can muddle through difficult periods of your life. You can always go back to your safe haven, from where you can start your life’s adventures all over again.”
ACTION
TODAY: Take a look at the five pillars of ikigai. How many do you apply to your life? How many would you benefit from applying? Create the intention of being mindful and aware of all 5 pillars and applying them at least once today.
FUTURE: Celebrate who you area and your ikigai! Also, make it a habit of practicing mindfulness and being aware of the five pillars of ikigai, so that you can apply them in as many instances of your life as possible.
Please share the concept of ikigai with someone today, you can do so via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
Cal Newport is a renowned focus guru and the author of the wonderful book Deep Work. He coined the term Deep Work and defines it as: “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
Newport says that creating a ritual is important to be able to work for long, uninterrupted—focused and very productive—stretches of time. He uses the examples of Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Robert Caro and naturalist Charles Darwin, both of whom “didn’t deploy rituals to be weird; they did so because success in their work depended on their ability to go deep, again and again—there’s no way to win a Pulitzer Prize or conceive a grand theory without pushing your brain to its limit.”
Newport continues by pointing out that, “there’s no one correct deep work ritual—the right fit depends on both the person and the type of project pursued.” And he offers the following three points to consider as you build the ritual that best works for you:
1. Where you’ll work and for how long. “Your ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts.” This particular location can be as common as your office with the door shut or—even better and more effective—a specific place where you only go when you want to achieve depth, for example, a quiet library, or a conference room if you are running away from noisy colleagues on an open floor office. “Regardless of where you work, be sure to also give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog.”
2. How you’ll work once you start to work. “Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured.” For instance, you can set up a goal of the number of words produced per interval of time, and/or you can turn off distractions completely such as disconnecting from the Internet or putting your phone on do not disturb mode. This is important because, “without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves.”
3. How you’ll support your work. “Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example, the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear.” Make sure you have all you need at your disposal, much as the chefs do with their mise-en-place way of working and overall philosophy. (If you have 7 minutes, read or listen to this NPR story about what we can learn from the way chefs organize.)
“To maximize your success, you need to support your efforts to go deep. At the same time, this support needs to be systematized so that you don’t waste mental energy figuring out what you need in the moment.” – Cal Newport
These three points to consider as you build your ritual are mere starting points. Newport says that crafting that ritual that will best serve you will take experimentation, so be willing to tweak and iterate until you find what works best for you. It’ll be worth it!
ACTION
TODAY: Carve out a slice of your day to do some deep work and, in the beginning, do some thinking and preparing, according to what you know you will need to succeed in your session. Make a list so that you can replicate it next time you need to go deep.
FUTURE: Tweak, tweak, and tweak again until you figure out a ritual that feels right for you. Keep on doing your ritual every time you intend to do deep work. In the words of Newport: “To work deeply is a big deal and should not be an activity undertaken lightly. Surrounding such efforts with a [ritual] accepts this reality—providing your mind with the structure and commitment it needs to slip into the state of focus where you can begin to create things that matter.”
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TODAY’S IDEA: 7 Axioms to understand the impact of attitude
