The most powerful thing you can do for yourself is to develop a frame to work in.

Your life works best when priorities are decided for you and by you– not today, but in advance. Last week, when I saw Pay Yourself First (1, 2) I was reminded that  you need a decision tree that helps you structure your day, or you won’t feel good about it. If today’s a waste, the feeling it gives you will carry into tomorrow, squandering its potential.

I work best with an empty inbox. Everything that needs to be done is either done right at the moment I read the email (2 minute rule) or it is deferred to GoodTodo, which I consider the perfect task management system (read Bit Literacy to understand why). Once my inbox is empty, Goodtodo tells me what my tasks are.

The most important thing is that I do not decide. The calendar is sacrosanct– if it’s in the calendar, I do it, and if there’s nothing in the calendar, I go to the list. This makes the decision process very simple, which means that even stupid-me can do it.

In other words, belief in my inability to make good decisions actually leads to making better decisions. The smart money is on bad decision making and trusting in the process.

You can make your system whatever you want it to be, but I’d urge you to consider the following (thanks to Robb Wolf’s book for this important question):

Is what you’re doing really working?

If yes, carry on. If not, consider trying something else for 30 days.

(Photo by JPhilipson.)

Have a good conversation with yourself

Failure can be an attractive option.

Failing can be the easier path. It can be comforting. We often feel compelled to maintain the status quo, for ourselves or for others.

With failure we can go back to our old life. We can say “ah well, we tried”.

Maybe someone else will pick up the pieces.

In truth the only good failure is when we learn from the process of giving it our best shot. In fact, that is not true failure but an experiment that did not pan out. Real failure is giving up.

Our low points can be hard. We can feel the pull towards bailing out and going backwards. But resist, push through, and the rewards are there.

Take a look at your reflection, even if you don’t like what you see. Have a good long conversation with yourself. Ask yourself what you really want. Is what you want worth the reality of what it will take you to get it?

Then jump in with both feet and a mind clear of letting doubt cloud your judgement.

You will look so much more awesome from the other side of whatever comes next.

18 Fishing Poles

When I first started my business, I was ready to do anything for just about anyone. Sound familiar?

I was like a greedy, inexperienced fisher. Here’s what I did …

I would meet someone I thought might be great to work with. I’d rearrange my future plans. Invent a completely new offer just for that person or company. I’d put that fishing pole in the water hoping that the unique “fish” would bite and we could move forward.

And when I met the next person who represented something even remotely interesting. I would develop an entirely new offer and do that again.

and again.

and again.

What I never realized was that I was so busy baiting fishing poles with different bait for every different fish i met. That I hadn’t done many of the things that good fishers do:

• Figure out what kind of fish I wanted to catch. What was I good at cooking?
• Ask around to find out where those fish were biting. Who might teach me more?
• Decide what size fish would fit my frying pan. What was I ready to take on?

One day, I woke up to see that I had about 18 fishing poles in the water. I wasn’t fishing. I was playing at being a fisherman. Greedy, inexperience fishers like I was focus too much on just catching a fish, rather than catching a fish that works for them.

The problem with 18 fishing poles in the water is that it’s a lot of unfocused work for little return. We spend all of our time running up and down the bank checking to see if something worked or whether we need to rebait the system. AND when a fish finally does tug at the line, it’s awfully tempting to wonder whether another fishing poles might bring in something slightly bigger or more exciting … it’s easy to get stuck waiting for the fish that might be next.

For this fisher, too many options were the same none at all.

Narrowing down the options first with a few decisions has its advantages. What I needed was specific concrete goal. With a goal, a destination …

• We can figure out a plan for getting there.
• We can talk to people who have achieved that goal in the past.
• We can yes to things that help us get closer to the goal and no to things that pull us away from it.

Now I keep my focus and goal to “teaching fishers how to fish” — some are huge fishers, some are aspiring fishers, some are other people who teach fishers how to fish — that suits exactly who I am. I tell people about that whenever I can and when any one of those fishers show up, I know I can deliver value exactly as I promise. I’m not running up and down the bank of the river anymore.

And the fishers I work with tell their friends.

I’ve been a longtime fan of business-writer, Jim Collins. But, last week, I learned something new about him.

We’re both climbers. No, not social climbers, rock-climbers.

He started out in Boulder when he was 14 and has been climbing ever since. I started in the “Gunks,” outside New Paltz when I was around 17.

I’ve always believed climbing teaches you so much about life. So, I was incredibly excited to hear Collins share  his insights on this during his presentation at last week’s World Business Forum in NYC.

In climbing, shared Collins, there’s failure…and there’s “fall-ure.”

Every climb has a move or a section known as the crux. It’s the hardest, most technical, strategically-challenging part of the climb. The crux makes or breaks a climb and, not too infrequently, a climber, too.

But, regardless of whether you make it through, it’s how you handle the crux that determines whether you go home with your tail between your legs or you head back to the lair with an epic story to be shared.

It’s the difference, said Collins, between failure and fall-ure.

Failure is when you get to the crux, start to feel your legs shaking, your forearms and fingers flaming out, your nerves rattling and focus flagging…then just choose to give up, peel off and hang on the rope.

Fall-ure is when you get to that same place. Heart pumping, sweat pouring from places you didn’t know you could sweat, ground a distant memory and, instead of choosing to let go, you commit fully to the next scary-as-hell move. You go for it with everything you have…and still fall.

Failure is about going most of the way, then bailing on your defining moment.

Fall-ure is about going all of the way, then falling in the utterly committed pursuit of a quest.

And, the difference, the willingness to go all-in and fail at the biggest moments, is very often the difference between epic journeys and a lifetime of excuses.

Because failure and fall-ure isn’t just about rock-climbing, they’re about life.

So, I’m curious…

What do YOU do when you hit the crux moves in business and life?

If there is one message I could scream from the mountaintop about escape velocity, it would be “no organization can be trusted.”

This is a pretty simple statement, and there’s a good reason for it not having any clauses or exceptions– as long as you’re not part of the organization (and I mean really part of it), you aren’t the one that’s really profiting. They are.

People will tell you they have the secret all the time. They’ll tell you that you can buy the secret for only $1997 and then you’ll have an automatically generated, passive-income business. They tell you this the way cults tell you that you have to follow them, or else. But none of these people ever have something you must do.

There is nothing you must do. There is a lot you can choose to do. Choice is essential to your freedom. Unfortunately, most people will tell you otherwise.

They will tell you there is a set path, and that your only choice lies in your college major. They will say that you need to climb the corporate ladder, or that you need to wait your turn. But you don’t– they just convince you of that because they got suckered, and they believe in it now, too.

Don’t ever believe organizations, or those that have bought into them. Always ask yourself why you should follow their path instead of your own. This is how you will become the person you were meant to be, instead of the one your parents, your friends, or the government want from you.

The difference is choice, and you’re choosing every day.

Would You Get on a Plane Going Anywhere?

As my hero Chris Garrett said a few days ago, “it is not failing when we course-correct.” Building on his thought, I’d like to add that course correcting is part of getting there. Fact is that …

An airplane traveling from New York to Chicago is off course 98% of the time.

Still it gets there. Why? The pilot is always course correcting with the destination in mind.

The pilot has a destination. That’s his or her guide.

Would you get on a plane that was going “anywhere” if you wanted to get somewhere in your life?

A Destination Decision Is Mission Critical

Decision means to “kill off other options.” To get where we’re going we’ve got to decide that we’re getting there — no holds barred no matter the number of course corrections and adjustments it takes to arrive.

A decision is critical to the mission because:

• It focuses our vision and sets our goals on the horizon.
• When obstacles and roadblocks interfere or interrupt our progress, we can see the shortest path around, over, or through them.
• When people offer ideas and help, the decision makes it easy to analyze which offers will move us forward and which will take us off course.

That destination decision puts us in the position to choose the course and the people who help us thrive. It give us a simple and elegant frame to say “Does this idea, this design, this audience, this book premise move me close to my destination.”

It doesn’t have to be such hard thing. If you can decide on a vacation destination, you can decide a destination for what you’ll while you’re working. It doesn’t have to be a lifelong vacation destination or a lifelong career thing.

You may just find that first destination decision opens up a world of options.

Knowing where we’re going is irresistibly attractive and who’d want to follow you, if you don’t?

I’m fascinated by the intersection between thinking, creativity and movement.

Back when I studied for the bar (many moons ago), I spent the entire time walking.

Whenever I’m on a call with a client or doing a phone interview, I pace mercilessly.

When I speak, I’m pretty sure I cover every available inch of the stage.

Seats, podiums, constraints of any kind, when in thinking and creating mode, kill me. They don’t just make me feel uncomfortable, they change how I think, how I create, how I solve.

But, there are times when I need to sit and create. For hours at a time. Like right now, as I work on my next book.

And, even when I do sit and write, I’ve always felt that the simple fact that I move a lot outside my creative practice helps me channel my juices.

Haruki Murakami in The Paris Review, Summer 2004 shared:

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

That resonates so strongly with me. When you’re writing something really substantial, at least for me, once I’ve done enough research to stop circling, the deeper creative process does take me into a place that takes a serious amount of energy, mental and physical, over a sustained period of time.

And, I’m pretty sure that’s not just about writing. It’s about creating anything worth creating. It takes a toll, requires you to draw upon reservoirs you may not have even known existed.

So, whatever your vision, be it artistic, personal, spiritual, entrepreneurial, explore the impact of a dedicated movement practice as a source of fortification for the quest.

It can be quite an extraordinary catalyst to the process.

Answer me these questions if you will …

• What does trajectory mean to you when it comes to your life?
• If you were to plot out your trajectory, what would it look like?
• How do you feel about that trajectory?

Defining Your Trajectory

What I am talking about if you haven’t guessed already is the path you have taken and where you are headed.

The dictionary definition of “trajectory”, is quite interesting.

tra·jec·to·ry (tr -j k t -r ). n. pl. tra·jec·to·ries.
The path of a projectile or other moving body through space.
A chosen or taken course.

I would say for many people there is no chosen course. Just the course we happen to take.

Some definitions also include time as a factor, which again is interesting when it comes to looking at the course of our life. Time for many of us is our most valued commodity.

The big question I want to ask now that is established is … How intentional has your trajectory been up until this point?

For me I have pretty much waddled aimlessly through life, blundering from one opportunity to the next. At the same time I can look back and I have achieved every one of my original ambitions but two. On or around October 24th I will have achieved another.

Most of the people I would regard as a success, the people I would like to model aspects of, have not necessarily had a grand plan, but have known deep down what drove them and what they wanted. They knew what made them happy, and what to avoid to stay happy. Are you like that?

What does this mean?

In my view this means we do not always need to know exactly where we are heading all the time. It’s not about precision or order. You don’t need an exact grid reference and time of arrival.

We do however need to know a general direction if we want to hit some kind of marker. I’m told even airline pilots spend much of their time off-course, but they do know their intended airport.

Know Where You Have Been to Get Where You Are Going

Some people live in the past while the rest of us set our sites on the future. We are told by gurus to “live in the now”. As with most things in life, I think a mix and moderation is best.

We need to understand what has lead us here, we need to know what fuels us in the now, and we need a sense of direction.

If the choices we make define us, then we need to be careful about how we arrive at those choices. The driving force of my life is my family and the need to support them with safety, freedom, comfort, health and happiness. I also know my core values and how these things relate. There isn’t a prize in the world that will motivate me if it takes away from my family or goes against those core values.

Plot Your Course

Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Is there a version of you that you want to be?

Decide.

It is amazing the difference making a seemingly trivial decision can make.

By deciding you are programming your brain, you are setting a clear intention.

Five years ago I said on a forum that I wanted to leave my job, set up on my own, and sell my services from my blog. Recently someone pointed me to the archive of that old forum and it feels wonderful that I have achieved what I set out to do. I’m sure setting that intention helped.

It’s Never Too Late to Course-Correct

What if you feel you are heading in the wrong direction?

The good news is we are not NASA mission-control. We are not strapping ourselves to billions of dollars worth of fireworks. It is in our power to change where we are headed and it is not failing when we course-correct.

Up until I left school at age 15 I wanted to draw comics or be an illustrator for a living. If I had stuck with that dream I would have been pretty miserable right now I think. Being all grown up and objective I realize that my lack of actual talent might have put a bit of a drag on my career … living out of a box and sustaining myself with charity soup is not my idea of a grand life.

Velocity and Escape

If you are going to make the correct choice of direction then you need to know three things:

1. Where you are going (including what it will look like when you get there).
2. What you are leaving behind (including why).
3. How you are going to get from here to there (roughly).

All important questions that we on this site will help you answer, but you can start thinking now …

How have you got to where you are and was it planned? Do you know exactly where you are going? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments …

I talked with someone recently who was on the verge of a big career change. “I’ve wanted this for years,” he told me. “And I feel like I’m getting closer.”

“That’s great,” I said, but I could tell there was more to the story. “What’s troubling you about it?”

“It just feels so risky,” he said. “I want it so badly, and I think I even know what to do next… but I’m just afraid of the risk.”

***

If you’re making your own escape plans, you’re naturally thinking about change, and you’re probably thinking about risk. Change is simultaneously thrilling and scary. We like the idea of change, the promise of change, the grass-is-greener vision—but the actual implementation of change can be very discomforting. We don’t know what’s on the other side and how we’ll actually get there.

The risk we imagine is often greater than the real risk we encounter when making a change. In a situation like this, it’s helpful to think about what the true risk is, and how we can learn to embrace it instead of running from it.

Here are a few ways you can do this –

REDEFINE risk. Entrepreneurship used to be viewed as risky, and the safe approach was to stay in a traditional job. Entrepreneurs took risks and were rewarded accordingly—sometimes rewarded quite well, but other times falling flat. Times have changed. These days, the traditional gig may be the safe choice… or it may very well not be. When you create your own security, you create the safe choice.

REDUCE risk. Can you start a business for less than $100? A domain name ($10) and a cheap hosting account ($10 a month or less) are all you really need in the beginning. Set up a one-page site offering a service, complete with a PayPal button where prospects can turn into customers as they pay you. You can tweak, optimize, or otherwise improve the site later; the point is to get started and have something out there instead of planning forever and doing nothing.

RECONSIDER risk. Where do you want to be in five years? If it’s a different place than you are now, you’ll need to make some changes. Start with the quick idea of getting something out there. Then move to strategic thinking, creating a different way to get paid. Then add another. If one project takes off more than others, maybe go all-out with it. Or if not, do a range of smaller things and see what happens.

Change doesn’t need to be especially risky… especially when you consider how risky it is to remain in the same place. What’s waiting for you on the other side?

###

Image: Rogers

So, I was out in Estes Park, Colorado last week…

My daughter and I were playing around on the rocks beside a creek when she saw a few crayons and pieces of paper littered around the edge of the water. She reached into the water to pick them up, ran up to the trash can and dropped them in, even though they weren’t her litter, without anyone asking. Then, I joined in, while she went back and looked for more to clean up.

I was so proud of her.

But, here’s the fascinating thing, the streets we walk down in NYC every day are caked with litter. Probably more in a 6-foot stretch than in the miles of that mountain stream. And, this is our home town…but neither of us would think of stopping to pick up someone else’s trash to clean the place up. Not our job, plus it’s nasty and we didn’t create it, why should we have to clean it up.

So, what gives?

Why is it our almost moral imperative to act when we see a small bit of someone else’s human detritus mucking up a pristine mountain stream, but we’re blind to heaps of the same in our own backyard?

The question really bugged me.

It’s not that we don’t care. We do. Theoretically even more, since we have to live with that squalor every day.

I think it comes down to two things – overwhelm and futility.

There’s something about the enormity of the task that leads you to believe it’s futile to even begin.

Standing on the banks of a pristine stream, the effort needed to return it to it’s clean state seemed so small it was almost indefensible not to undertake it. The momentary effort and passing ickyness of picking up someone else’s stuff was outweighed a thousand times over by the instant glory we’d helped restore.

Contrast that with the city. The effort needed to clean even a small swath of street and keep it clean seems so much more gargantuan. And, the impact of your effort seems so nominal in the context of trying to keep an entire block, neighborhood or city clean.

You just end up shutting down and saying “why bother?”

I don’t like that I feel this way. But I do.

And, I began to wonder, is there something you can do to bring the same engaged, action-oriented mindset we brought to the mountain stream to a task that seems monumental to the point of being futile? Is there a way to approach it differently, to reframe it in a way that inspired you to begin to take action it. Maybe even rally others to the cause?

One thing that immediately came to mind is the notion of chunking.

It’s something I learned from my daughter when she was first learning to read. Not that many of us remember, but learning to read is a pretty monumental task. So, her teacher told her, instead of trying to read entire books, paragraphs or sentences, chunk it down.

Start with a letter, then a syllable, then a word, then two, then a sentence. And, before you know it, you’re reading.

And, I think that’s pretty good strategy for a lot of challenges we face in daily life that would be deeply meaningful to conquer, but seem so enormous and futile, we can’t even muster the will to begin.

Chunk it down.

Keep the ultimate goal in back of your mind, but keep your attention and actions focused on the smallest, most-doable thing.

Commit to that and only that. Maybe it won’t make a difference. But, it sets your wheels in motion. It sets your spirit and will in motion. And, once you turn that little action into habit, you can add another, then another, then another. Maybe that’ll inspire a friend to the cause. Then, they’ll start taking tiny steps daily. And, as others see you and your friend, maybe they’ll join in.

And, over time, that monster challenge, the one that seemed insanely daunting, impossible, unbeatable…gets beaten.

Think about it.

What can you chunk down and begin to act on today?

Okay, gotta run.

Off to throw someone else’s soda-bottle in the trash…