by Helena Escalante | Growth, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Tools
TODAY’S IDEA:
“Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what is not working.”
— From Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, by Derek Sivers.
The idea of persistence and dogged determination has been ingrained in us from a very young age. While there is enormous merit in being persistent, we have to make sure that said persistence will take us somewhere: sometimes we are just trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.
We do have to try (or see someone trying) to fit the proverbial round peg at least once into the square hole to realize it won’t work. Substitute this for whatever is not working in your business or life. Once you realize that this is not working for you or anyone involved, improve, switch, redesign, reinvent, modify… experiment and iterate again and again until you get it right. As Leadership Guru John C. Maxwell so wisely says: “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.”
By failing “forward” you know that you will learn something and apply that learning to the next iteration of whatever you are doing. Eventually, like Edison*, you’ll find the formula that works. As Derek aptly says in his book:
“Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what is not working […] Don’t waste years fighting uphill battles against locked doors. Improve or invent until you get a huge response.”
How do you know it’s finally right? Derek says that your clients will tell you: “Wow! Yes! I need this! I’d be happy to pay you to do this!” Or depending on what you’re doing, you may get any other positive expression of love, gratitude and/or desire to acquire.
* The story goes that Thomas Edison, the inventor of the incandescent filament for light bulbs, experimented and failed ten thousand times before finding the one that worked. When asked about it he said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
ACTION:
TODAY: What is a proverbial round peg that you’re dealing with now? Ask WHY 5 times to see what’s the real reason why you’re not moving forward. What is one action that you can take today, (even if it’s just scheduling time in your calendar to deal with this next week) that will move you towards improving what is currently not working?
FUTURE: Grab a journal and take inventory of some—or all—of these areas of your life (the ones that apply to you): physical, intellectual, social, financial, spiritual, marital, parental, emotional, professional, and your hobbies. I’m sure you’re determined to make all of them work, right? (I hope so!) Where are you banging your head against a wall trying to make something work, but it’s just not happening? Write down a few experiments you’d like to try. Write the time/place/date where you will take action, then take action and see if your experiments work to improve the issue. If not, ask WHY 5 times to see what’s the real reason, write it down and try new experiments. Note: the experiments you try can be big, but I suggest breaking them down into small, manageable chunks. It’s easier when the chunks are not earth-shattering, enormously time consuming or eat up a month’s budget: minor tweaks work too.
I’ll share with you a couple of examples of small tweaks that worked for me recently:
- My husband and I, for a while, tried to have a “date night” on Wednesdays… dismal failure. Work and everyday obligations got in the way. The experiment? Switched it to Saturday mornings. The result? It’s just fantastic because we don’t have to worry about work the next day, and we can tackle any pending issues over the rest of the weekend.
- I was going crazy with one of my client’s electronic billing systems. I do some work for this client on and off; so it’s not often enough to remember clearly how to deal with the convoluted system, but often enough to deal with the system to the point of annoyance. Then I read somewhere that it’s worth establishing a system for anything that you do more than TWO times. Eureka! What a concept… eye-opening indeed! The experiment? Create a system. My “system” became a cheat sheet where I detailed the process—step-by-step—that I needed to follow every time. The result? Smooth sailing every time now that I use my client’s system. Voilà! No more frustration.
So now it’s your turn. Try out inventing, experimenting, improving, enhancing… and let me know how it goes!
by Helena Escalante | Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Time
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 50 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: TGIF*: Reframing the weekend
–From What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend, a short guide included in What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: How to Achieve More at Work and at Home by Laura Vanderkam
One of the many wonderful insights about this book is the idea of reframing the way we look at a weekend: from 6 pm on Friday when we leave work and the weekend “officially” starts to Monday at 6 am when the alarm clock goes off, we have 60 (sixty!) hours. Even if we sleep 24 hours, that leaves us with 36 hours to play, do chores, tackle our to-do list or all or this plus anything else we want to do. Thirty-six hours is almost the same amount of time as a week in a full-time job!
Laura’s point in reframing the weekend this way is the importance of planning: what gets scheduled gets done. Planning and scheduling ahead will result in your devoting the time to the activities that will help you achieve your goals, big or small. This is the best way to ensure that those goals will be met and you will be able to check them off your to-do or you bucket list. From cleaning your sock drawer to training to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, you can do it if you only plan for it.
For those of you that may be groaning now about the idea of planning your leisure time, Laura says: “people have a visceral reaction to the word ‘plan’ that makes them think of things they don’t want to do. I’m suggesting planning things that [they] want to do. […] I don’t want to fill every hour […] but there is a wide gap between planning every minute and planning nothing.”
The key is to do it ahead of time. I’m so guilty of waiting until Saturday morning to start planning, and by then, it’s already Saturday afternoon when the weekend “starts.” With a bit of planning ahead (hint, hint, today is Thursday, the weekend starts tomorrow at 6!) we can make the most out of our time and have a super productive, super fun, or super _______ (fill in the blank) weekend. And yes, you can use the word relaxing in there – it’s part of it if you decide to make it so. The important thing is to plan ahead to use our time wisely, according to our needs and wants.
So let’s not wait any longer to get going! What are you going to do with your 60 hours this weekend? Let me know. Happy planning and happy weekend! 🙂
ACTION:
TODAY: Take 10-15 minutes to plan your weekend from 6 pm on Friday to 6 am on Monday (or whatever schedule works for you around this new way of seeing the weekend). Schedule it in your calendar: you can be as rigid or as flexible with your time, as long as you plan your main activities.
FUTURE: Schedule a recurring time on your calendar for Wednesdays or Thursdays every week to plan for the weekend ahead. Try this out and tweak it to fit your schedule and lifestyle until you find what suits you best. Then set up a calendar reminder in 3 months to email me and let me know how this is going for you!
*For our international gurupies who may not be familiar with the acronym TGIF, it means Thank God It’s Friday!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Habits, Planning, Productivity, Tools
TODAY’S IDEA:
“A good-day’s work”
— From Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Whether you work remotely or not, Remote offers some gold nuggets for all. One of those nuggets is how to measure progress and what’s a good-day’s work based on reasonable expectations.
In today’s working culture, it’s unfortunate that overwork and lack of sleep reign supreme. These two terrors are widespread; at best they are temporary and can be avoided, but at worse, they are carried as badges of honor horror (!). Working constantly can be a menace, because it can lead to serious burnout before you even know it. And this is true especially if you love your work. Why? Because we’re constantly connected and just a device away… thus it is easy to check email one more time, and to respond to that message at 10 pm to get it out of the way. And if you have 1 hour on Saturday morning, it’s easy to use that time to work on a project instead; or if it’s rainy outside, might as well make the most out of it and start working on the presentation for next week…
I’m not denying the importance of sprints once in a while, but over the long run it’s not sustainable and it’s not healthy. As the book says, there are no “hero awards” for overworking, as the work should be seen as a marathon instead. “It’s crucial for everyone to pace themselves.” This quote opened my eyes:
“One way to set up a healthy boundary is to […] think of a good-day’s work. Look at your progress toward the end of the day and ask yourself: ‘have I done a good-day’s work?’ Answering that question is liberating. Often, if the answer is an easy yes, you can stop working, feeling satisfied that something important got accomplished—if not entirely done. And should the answer be no, you can treat it as an off day and explore the 5 WHYs (asking why to a problem five times in a row to find the root cause). It feels good to be productive. If yesterday was a good day’s work, chances are you’ll stay on a roll, and if you can stay on a roll, everything else will probably take care of itself, including not working from the time you get up in the morning until you go to sleep.”
This is such a simple and basic but oh-so-powerful idea, because you are the judge of your progress and you can learn from this process to keep making it better. I am guilty of loving my work and trying to squeeze as much of it as I can in a day. But I have found that I work so much better and I’m so much more productive when I’m well rested and when I also do other personal things that are important for my physical health and emotional wellbeing. We all really need to take our mind off work for a while to rest and renew, and to come back better and stronger.
ACTION
Whether you’ve been naughty or nice in terms of a “good-day’s work,” keep a log (nothing complicated, any calendar will do). You’ll be able to see progress with all the yes answers, and with the 5 WHYs method you will be able to get to the core of why it wasn’t a good day’s work and solve it right away. If that or other problems keep emerging and you see patterns preventing your progress, analyze them so that you can solve them too. Get to the root: What can you learn? What can you change so that you can have more good days?
I wish you nothing but good days, and would love to hear from you: how do you measure a good-day’s work?
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Mindset, Planning
TODAY’S IDEA:
“There is no limit to self improvement. Ask yourself daily, ‘how can I do better?’ and sound answers will appear.”
— From The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D. (Read an excerpt here.)
The old saying “there is always room for improvement” is so true. Especially with ourselves, we’re always trying to fix something, improve something, make something better (…to continue along the lines of the conversation from yesterday’s post on BHAGs.)
The main thing, according to some experts, is not to be overwhelmed by the amount of things we want to improve on ourselves. For that, it is recommended to start with one thing, say a good habit that you want to create or a bad habit that you want to get rid of, and work on it until it’s ingrained or no longer existing. Then move on to the next thing in your progression toward your goal, and so on. That way you will be taking baby steps and making steady progress toward fulfilling your big, hairy, audacious goals.
The key, I believe, is patience and perseverance. If you’re anything like me, you want everything done or accomplished by yesterday, which means today everything is in place and perfectly put together. It’s taken me much heartache to learn that you cannot rush processes at a personal level, and I’m learning (sloooooowly…) to see the beauty in the journey, not the destination.
So keep the end in mind always (your BHAG) to know where you are going, but make sure you give yourself the time and effort that your goal needs to succeed. Ask yourself daily “how can I do better?” and you will discover that your mind will show you the many ways in which you can do so. And enjoy YOUR journey!
ACTION
Put to the test the many ways in which your mind tells you to do something differently/better and find out which ones work best for you. There is no shame in testing and trying out new things or habits. Adopt what works, discard what doesn’t, and always keep doing this: you will see daily improvements and if you keep a log or journal, you’ll be able to assess your progress.
Remember to be inspired by others but not to compare yourself to them. The only person you can compare yourself to is YOU. Are you better today than yesterday? Than a month ago? Than a year ago? Than 5 or 10 years ago? If the answer is yes, keep going and keep growing. If the answer is no, besides asking the 5 WHYs, give more thought to “how can I do better” and give it your all. You always get out of it as much as you put into it.
I’m thinking of starting a Facebook group for accountability on our goals and to create a community of like-minded, professional and growth-oriented people. Is this something that you’d be interested in? Please let me know! (Thanks a lot if you have already responded.)
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Leadership, Planning, Tools
TODAY’S IDEA:
Have Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals to keep you going and stimulate your progress.
— From Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins (read or listen to a sample).
Today is the last Friday in January, which means it is National Big Wig Day ™. This is a celebration of “the potential inside of all of us” and the opportunity to lead by example, as any bigwig would do! We are the bigwigs in our lives and today is a reminder that “regardless of title, we can make a difference and improve the lives of others.”
Bigwigs usually have “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals” or what Jim Collins has coined as BHAGs (pronounced “bee-hags”) in his excellent book. Yet this does not have to be a concept exclusive to the most important and powerful persons/companies in the world. We can learn from them and use BHAGs too, because they are “a particularly powerful mechanism to stimulate progress… There is a difference between merely having a goal and becoming committed to a huge, daunting challenge—like a big mountain to climb.”
A BHAG must be “clear and compelling. […] It has a clear finish line, so [you know] when [you] have achieved the goal. […] A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People ‘get it’ right away; it takes little or no explanation. […]
The essential point of a BHAG is better captured in such questions as: “Does it stimulate forward progress? Does it create momentum? Does it get [you] going? Does it get [your] juices flowing? Do [you] find it stimulating, exciting, adventurous? Are [you] willing to throw [your] creative talents and human energy into it?”
Whether you are going strong with your new year’s resolutions (woo-hoo!) or they have fizzled out (oops!), it’s time to set a BHAG so that, as February rolls around, you don’t lose your momentum. Remember to stretch yourself and shoot for the stars with your BHAG (whatever your stars are) so that you can either arrive at your stars or land very closely in that direction. Keep in mind this great quote by Michelangelo: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
ACTION
Based on your new year’s resolutions rituals, goals, or intentions, pick one or two BHAGs (I suggest one personal and one professional) to get you through the rest of the year. Figure out how you will break each one down into manageable pieces month by month. Take some time during the weekend to do this and let’s get started next week on February 1st, deal?
I have my BHAG ready, will you join me with yours? I’m thinking of starting a Facebook group for accountability on our goals and to create a community of like-minded, professional and growth-oriented people. Is this something that you’d be interested in? Please let me know!
I’m cheering for your success!!
P.S. Just for fun, here’s the story behind the term bigwig. (I can’t get over the thought of scaffolding!)
by Helena Escalante | Leadership, Planning, Resources, Tools
TODAY’S IDEA:
To get to the root cause of a problem, ask WHY five times.
I’ve read this idea in many books, and it’s brilliant! I believe it first started in the manufacturing plants of Toyota in Japan, and it soon spread widely, because it can be applied to virtually any situation, any industry, and even to personal issues where we need to get to the bottom of something.
The idea is as follows: to get to the root cause of a problem you need to ask why (an average) of five times to uncover the issue. For example, let me share a case with which I was familiar:
Problem: It seemed that an outreach campaign for a gym was not working: people were not going into the gym to use the equipment that was being promoted.
Why #1: Why are people not coming into the gym to use the equipment that is being promoted?
Answer: Because people don’t understand how to use it on their own.
Why #2: Why don’t people understand how to use the equipment on their own?
Answer: Because it’s a very particular kind of equipment that requires guidance at first to learn how to use it.
Why #3: Why don’t we offer the guidance that people need at first to use the equipment?
Answer: As a matter fact the gym offers appointments for people to come in and have their questions about the equipment answered.
Why #4: Why aren’t more people requesting to make an appointment to come in?
Answer: People do make requests to set up an appointment, but they are being turned down because trainers don’t have the time.
Why #5: Why don’t trainers have the time?
Answer: Because management never checked with them or their schedules before creating the campaign and simply expected trainers to handle the additional flow.
As you can see, it’s like peeling layers of an onion to get to the core issue. Now we see that the campaign is indeed working because people are requesting appointments to come in, but the gym—at its current staff levels—is not being able to handle the new-client inflow. It’s now up to the gym’s management to figure out the best way to solve this based on the information uncovered. Good thing we asked five times, we wouldn’t have known all this had we stopped at the first why!
This is a very simple but truly great method to get to the bottom of things. If you need more than five, keep asking why until you get to the core of the problem, that’s the only way in which you’ll find out what it is. Then you can move on to solve it, which is the best part!
ACTION:
Share this method today with your colleagues, clients and loved ones. Try testing it out on simple things and you’ll see how rewarding it is to solve some of those mysteries. Think about a problem that you faced in the past and mentally apply this method to see how you would have arrived to the bottom of it. Next time you need to solve an issue where the root cause is not clear, remember to use the five whys; and when you do, please let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear how it worked out for you!
