GarthBox

Progress is made steadily when there is space and time and you work them in your favor.

Time for ideas. Time for agency. Time for observation and reflection.

Space for all the same.

The trick is to make sure you have both and flex them in a variety of ways. A bit of pressured time here, and a whole lot of flexible time there. Then you apply some space constraints here and then an open field there.

If you manage them both, you’ll see your project excel at a greater pace.

Stay Positive & Oooo Push It

You can be doing great work but if there’s no visibility to it, you’re bound to get frustrated with your lack of progress.

In work. In relationships. In life.

A few tips aside from creating a live feed and asking people to watch you …

• Use an upcoming group setting to say how you’d like to celebrate some progress marks or recent achievements on the team and you’ll go first.
• Source a lesson learned from an action you’ve done and when you share the lesson with others, make sure you include how you learned it.
• Ask someone to help you with an incredibly small element of that project you’re owning.

The trick here isn’t that you need to give complete visibility, but those that make it a regular, unforced priority to have others see the work they are doing ultimately move forward (again, in work, in relationships, in life) faster.

p.s. notice a key thread of what makes it easier to get credit for all the efforts you put in? Hard to call you out for bragging if what you’re sharing is actually helping someone else.

Stay Positive & Need A Hand With Anything?

Well, I’ll go ahead and type it here first: the fun part is on you.

Not your boss. Not the work itself. Not anyone else’s responsibility.

The fun is yours to create.

When something feels like a grind; when you’re putting out one fire or problem after another; when the work feels like work there is still the opportunity to have some fun. Any thought to the contrary is just masochistic.

Please do take your work seriously. But yourself? Quite the opposite.

Stay Positive & Don’t Wait, Create

Broad options breeds paralysis. A variety gives them an out. Offering the option to respond is different than offering an option to respond to.

Feel free to book time on my calendar to chat might work… a bit.

But.

Would you invest 30 minutes next Monday at 10 a.m. works better.

Not in that it gets a better positive response than the former option, but it does get a response faster than the former option.

And speed is everything isn’t it? It’s all a numbers game.

Either you reach out to 30 people with the opportunity to connect with you and spend the next few weeks constantly following up or you reach out to 30 people with a specific request, date and time, to connect with you and rather than spending the next few weeks constantly following up, a quarter of the 30 respond saying no thanks, freeing that otherwise wasted bandwidth up on reaching out to the next group.

And just for shits and giggles, let’s assume one of those you triggered a response from shares why the answer is no.

Now on top of the time you’ve pivoted to being proactive with other targets, you also got a tidbit of actionable information to share with the team.

Niceties and passiveness is often a form of hiding. It delays getting an answer which means you’ll then have to take a new action.

If you’re following up more than 3 times, chances are either that person is dead (to date I’ve never gotten an OoO auto response stating a person must admit they have passed and they’d get back to me never) or your way of asking isn’t working.

Which is likelier?

If you clearly communicate the value of the reason for connecting, then it’s worth approaching the ask to connect with just as much confidence and specificity.

Stay Positive & You Know What Einstein Says About Insanity

“Hey, how’s it going?”

The question gets almost the same response every time.

“Good. How about you?”

It’s quite invigorating how much a relationship can develop when you stretch a prompt to more uncommon territory.

“Hey, what was your high so far today?”

The question gets a far more telling response. One that makes them more human. And heck, it gets them to ride the high once more, if only briefly, and they’ve got you by their side for it.

On the flip side, responding a way that’s outside the status quo has a similar impact.

When you’re asked “Hey, how’s it going?” perhaps a response of “Living the dream because that’s the best thing to do with it” may make the connection a bit stronger to start or unravel a far more impactful conversation than if you responded with the connection-halting phrase “Fine.”

Stay Positive & Go For The Unexpected

It’s a brilliant prompt to answer before a meeting. Brilliant prompt to answer entering a new year. Brilliant prompt to answer before asking someone out on a date.

Even more brilliant to share. To hold yourself and others accountable.

But the secret sauce of answering the question: knowing when a meeting is over or when a goal is met.

Far too much time is wasted beating around the bush, trying to figure out if a meeting is over or worse, decisions are made that lead to chasing shiny objects rather than work that meets the intended objective.

Oh, and what I hoped to get out of writing this post? A reminder to make the most of my time.

Stay Positive & How About You?

You work really really hard at working really really smart.

The smarter you work, the more time you have/save.

The more time you have/save, the more you can work hard.

Stay Positive & That’s How