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!