July 8, 2010

While you were failing

Not very often, but every now and then, I’m way too hard on myself.

Monday morning was a good example. I had planned on getting some serious work done over the 4th of July weekend, but instead I couldn’t resist scratching a pesky social itch and so ended up spending the majority of the weekend either out on the town or sleeping in.

There I was on Monday morning, feeling like I’d let myself down, neglected things I shouldn’t have.

But then I got to thinking. I realized that yeah, sure, I failed to follow through on my initial plans, but that didn’t have to mean those previous few days were a complete waste. I put aside the negative thoughts and asked myself a question: What did I succeed at this past weekend?

As it turns out, I succeeded at quite a lot: I donated a bunch of clothes, getting my possession count down below 200 for the first time; I forged lots of great connections; I had an abundance of great conversations; I laughed; I made others laugh; I made people think; I read a whole book; I shared my dreams; I danced to live music; I broke through fear barriers to approach and chat with women I found extremely attractive; I stayed true to myself; I supported local businesses (mostly pubs); I shared stories and experiences; and I pieced together the previous blog post.

Man, what was I thinking? I rocked it this past weekend!

Now I’m wondering if you, like me, ever focus too much on your failures, beat yourself up, oblivious to your successes. Let’s stop doing that and start giving ourselves some credit. We don’t always do what we set out to do, but we can still accomplish quite a lot, even as we’re failing.


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July 6, 2010

The daily habits of highly effective people

Leadership guru Robin Sharma advocates taking what he calls a “holy hour” each morning, 60 minutes devoted to self-mastery and personal development. During this 60 minutes, he might read inspirational books, mediate, review his goals, or just simply take time to think.

Given his success, that daily habit obviously works well for Robin. I was curious to learn about the daily habits of a few of my favorite folks online. So I asked them. The question went like this:

Is there something you do every day — something most people don’t do — that helps you be at your best?

I got great responses from nine impressive people. Here they are…

Corbett Barr, Free Pursuits & Think Traffic

Corbett writes about no-nonsense lifestyle design at Free Pursuits, and also knows a thing or two about building a popular website. His response:

Let every day flow. Creative work takes long periods of intense concentration. To achieve that, you can’t make each day too rigid or pre-planned. Schedules are deadly to creativity, so avoid planned meetings on days when you need the creativity to flow.

Everett Bogue, Far Beyond The Stars

Everett is learning how to sail, but that’s not really important right now. The important bit is that he teaches you how to apply minimalism in order to live and work from anywhere. His response to my question:

There are three elements that I need in my day to make everything work.

  1. Movement. I have to either walk, bike or take the train somewhere. This gets the ideas flowing. For instance, today I walked up to the UC Berkeley campus and grabbed a table at a local coffee shop to work.
  2. Time constraints. I only let myself work for 2 hours max per day currently. I find that if I say to myself “I have to get everything done by the end of two hours.” Everything falls into place much quicker, and there’s less incentive to get distracted.
  3. Eliminating distractions. When I write, I turn everything else off. Tweetdeck, my email, any other projects turned off. I use Writeroom or Evernote on my iPhone to single-task the art of writing until I’m done with whatever idea I’m working on for the day.

Karol Gajda, Ridiculously Extraordinary

Karol writes about freedom, health, travel and life at Ridiculously Extraordinary. He doesn’t mind people stealing his shit. His response to my question:

Yes, there is actually something I do that most people don’t.

Eating a plant-based diet provides a clarity that is not possible to
achieve otherwise.

(Quick aside: Karol no lie. I also found that I could focus better and think more clearly after switching to a plant-based diet. Read about my experience here.)

Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity

Chris helps people live life on their own terms as he visits every country in the world and fights the status quo. His response to my question:

I always try to be thinking about the next action. I work on a lot of projects on any given day, so the goal is to continually push the boulder up the hill on each one, even if only a little. Small pushes combined with a continual bias toward action = highly effective.

Benny Lewis, Fluent in 3 Months

Benny speaks a billion languages — give or take — and reveals how you can speak them, too. He’s also Irish, so you know he’s a legend. His response to the habit question:

Waste no time and read/study/listen at every traffic light, supermarket queue and elevator. Time-box tasks into 30 minute chunks and switch immediately when time runs out so you don’t spend too long at one thing. Enjoy solitude if it helps you focus, but get out of the house, socialise and exercise to make sure your mind is truly balanced.

Jonathan Mead, Illuminated Mind

Jonathan is the good kind of crazy. He wants you to follow your dreams, and delivers self development tools to help you be extraordinary. His response to my question:

Probably the highest leverage habit that I’ve installed in my day is mindfulness of how I feel, and allowing my feelings to guide me. I have a list of the way I feel when I’m doing my best work, and I use those to guide the actions that I take, instead of doing it the other way around. I’ve come to realize that I have access to the way I want to feel right now, without having to do anything to create it. When I cultivate the emotional state I want to be in — and feel good — the actions seem to take care of themselves.

Andi Norris, Instigationology

Some say Andi pees victory and belches respect. Away from metaphors, she thought-provokes, motivates and instigates at her lifestyle design blog. Her response to the habit question:

I don’t do one thing everyday. I have a several ways of getting myself “in the zone” if I don’t wake up in it, such as stream of consciousness writing, running, etc that I rotate through depending on how I feel. But mostly, I do what I want and then what I need and trust that nothing will ever be enough for my hunger but everything will be enough to keep moving forward.

Tammy Strobel, RowdyKittens

Tammy wears cool hats while helping people live simple, authentic and uncluttered lives via her writing on RowdyKittens. Her response to my question:

Rising early is the best thing I’ve done for myself. I’m able to go running, practice yoga, write or read. Incorporating these activities into my morning routine has helped me get centered and focused for the day ahead.

Colin Wright, Exile Lifestyle

Colin writes regularly about lifestyle design, minimalism and world travel. He’ll also be in New Orleans next week, disrupting the rabblement with instigating Andi. His response to my question:

Every day I take 20 minutes to do literally nothing – no music, no games, no reading, no work, no computer – I just sit quietly and let my mind wander as it will. I call it my 20 Minutes of Awesome, and it allows me to clear my mind, reboot my mental CPU and refocus my attention on things that really matter. Often afterward I’ll realize I was focusing my attention on the wrong things and immediately am able to tackle the things that I SHOULD be concentrating on, instead.

…

A massive thanks to all of the above. Lots of good advice in there.


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July 2, 2010

Inner parent, inner child

I came across an interesting concept a few years ago — I’ve long since forgotten where — that I’d like to share with you today. The concept is quite simple: Imagine that there are two sides to your personality: the parent and the child.

Your inner child

Imagine that the child side of your personality is responsible for all those primal urges and knee-jerk decisions. The child is that side of you that thinks it’s perfectly okay to eat McDonalds everyday, to sit on the couch every evening watching mindless TV shows, and to blurt out stupid things at inopportune times.

The child follows every whim, for better or worse, never thinking ahead or considering the consequences of each action. Sometimes that childish spontaneity turns out to be a good thing, since quite often the best way to learn more about what interests you is to march right up and interact with it directly. The child also has that sense of wonder about the world, and likes to question why everything works the way it does.

Your inner parent

And then there’s the parent side of your personality. That’s the little voice of reason and experience inside of you, less likely to act on impulse. The parent advises against blowing your whole paycheck on a Playstation, reminds you to buckle up, and sends you to your room to think about what you did. On the downside, the parent half of you has been conditioned by society not to go against the grain, not to think freely, not to cause a scene.

Which one should you listen to?

You shouldn’t just listen to one side all the time. Sometimes your parent side will serve you better. Sometimes your child side will. Listen to both when it comes time to make a decision. Identify which side wants what and why, consider the likely outcome of each path, then pick a side and act.

(Granted, it’s not really child-like if you always pause to look before you leap, but that’s okay. Spontaneity will return later, as you internalize what makes a good decision and what doesn’t.)

Which one do you listen to?

Mostly parent or mostly child? Would you be better off listening less to one and more to the other? Can you strike a better balance than you currently do?


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June 29, 2010

Shades of Gray

I recently read some good advice from James Oliver in his book Affluenza. The book examines the curious phenomenon of people nowadays having more wealth and opportunity than ever, yet suffering from ever-increasing levels of emotional distress; the more Americanized a culture becomes, the more likely its inhabitants are to suffer from depression. Oliver recommends many vaccines for this disease, one of which resonated with me in particular:

Avoid black-and-white simplification, embrace complexity and tolerate contradictions. Complexity and contradictions create confusion for Westerners because they want a right answer. Almost always, there is no definitive one. If you can live with the foggy nature of reality, it is less worrying because oversimplifications for the sake of clarity will be constantly upset by contrary evidence.

Oliver came to this conclusion after doing research in China, a country that doesn’t seem to have high stress levels despite its booming economy. He found that in many cases, Chinese people have the same socially-influenced, materialistic goals as Americans, but they are more prone to adopt them as their own. In Oliver’s words, such “self-deception is essential if you are to cope with this lack of ’self-concordance’ (having a good balance between your life and your values).”

Oliver points to Confucianism to help explain this. One of the tenets of Confucianism is the principle of contradiction and paradox, the belief that good and bad can coexist in the same object at the same time. Think yin and yang.

Acceptance of this belief apparently leads to inner peace. I can see the benefits. Clarity is nice and everything, but there are many issues which simply do not have a perfect solution. Take guns for example. Americans who oppose the right to bear arms will tell you that if no one had guns, the country would be a safer place. On the flip side, others will argue that criminals will always have guns, and so we have to level the playing field by arming ourselves. Both sides make many valid points beyond those, and both will cite history and statistics to strengthen their cases.

The abortion debate draws similar controversy. Pro-lifers argue that abortion is murder. Others will point to a 15-year old girl who was raped and fell pregnant. What is she to do? There are also studies showing that legalized abortion was a huge reason for the crime drop in 1990’s America. But then, the very woman who fought for her right to have an abortion in the 70’s and so started the ball rolling on legalizing the procedure, is now herself a pro-lifer.

Obviously when it comes to issues like these, there are no perfect solutions, only shades of gray. I believe that learning to accept this “foggy nature of reality” is a key part of personal development.


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June 24, 2010

Rethinking the fail question

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

It’s one of my favorite questions to ask. Well, actually, it’s only half of my favorite question. The entire thing goes like this:

What would you do if…

  • you had all the money in the world,
  • and you knew you couldn’t fail?

I like this question because it gets people to consider what they’re passionate about. How would they spend their time if they were free to spend it any way they wanted? What would they create? What would they share? And what if they weren’t afraid of failure?

See, I’m coming to believe that everyone can make a living doing what they are passionate about. It may take hard work and sacrifice, but I believe it can be done, no matter what floats your boat.

But something I read a few days ago gave me pause. It was this article in The Guardian about the Gulf oil spill, in which I learned that BP boss Tony Hayward has something similar to my favorite question written on a plaque on his desk: “If you knew you could not fail, what would you try?” The insinuation there is that Hayward and BP have never concerned themselves too much with the possibility of failure, and look what that has led to.

And the article may indeed be right: that kind of attitude by BP probably contributed to their poor safety checks and inadequate fail-safes. But if so, it’s because Hayward and his cronies took the fail question way too far. Believing you can’t fail and plunging ahead with reckless abandon is fine if it’s only you that stands to suffer when things go pear-shaped. But when your screw-up can affect others in a catastrophic way — like the largest environmental disaster in US history is doing — then you obviously need to ask yourself some additional questions before diving in.

So that favorite question of mine has had to evolve. It now goes like this:

What would you do if…

  • you had all the money in the world,
  • you knew you couldn’t fail,
  • and you were a good and responsible citizen of planet Earth?

Well?


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