Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Meaningful work is hard to do, but it’s made easier when we give it labels other than work.
Prepping is still the act of doing the work.
Giving yourself permission to work on a shitty first draft is still the act of doing the work.
Doing a brainstorm or brain dump about a project is still the act of doing the work.
Stay Positive & Label It What You Need To
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Those not opening your email. Those scrolling past your blog post. Those reporting your ad so they don’t see it any more.
They’re all ignoring you.
You can scheme other ways to get their attention and maybe (a big maybe) win them over.
Ya know.
Or you can focus more on those not ignoring you.
Here’s the truth about target marketing: it’s more efficient to get a loyalist to tell a friend than it is to convert someone who ignores you.
Stay Positive & Where Is YOUR Attention?
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More often than we probably acknowledge or appreciate, the way things happen is actually often aligned with what we were hoping for.
Of course, we often put focus on when something doesn’t go the way we were hoping for.
We try to rationalize it after the fact. Find a place to assign blame, perhaps.
All at the loss of doing one or two better moves.
The first being finding the lesson. Perhaps you didn’t get the job because of a missing attribute. You have control over adding that in and learning from the experience.
The second being finding a way to move on. Perhaps a coin was flipped and you didn’t luck out with the job. That’s out of your control and there’s nothing to learn from that, which means it’s time to spend the energy on hoping for something new than sulking in how things didn’t go how you hoped.
Stay Positive & You Control Your Hope
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The master creative reviewer surfs the high tides and the low tides.
She gets in the weeds as well as boards the helicopter to see the 2000 AGL view.
He evaluates the big picture and the tiny details of it.
She reads the room at the same time she’s engaging in discussion.
It’s a difficult dance, but someone has to do it.
Stay Positive & Maybe That Someone Is You?
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Funny how instruction manuals and part lists and how-tos can have the wrong language in them or be missing a piece or some step isn’t quite aligned with what’s in front of you as you’re trying to complete it.
When this happens, you’re left with two options.
Invest a lot of time to figure it out (and any time there is a time investment, you’re undoubtedly getting frustrated or enraged, too). You might discover there was a missing piece or find the missing step in some thread in the deep web. Key word, though, is might.
The second option is to evaluate if it’s truly needed to still get the result you want. If you think about it, the language is wrong, the piece is missing or the step is misaligned because it’s not critical in the first place – it was the last prioritized element of someone’s role.
Rather than investing time to figure it out, it’s worth investing time to evaluate if you can keep going with the task anyway, first. Perhaps this entails simply leaving that void a void or it’s quick thinking on how to fill the gap with an alternative.
More often, shipping the work, completing the task, moving forward is more important than getting it absolutely perfect (especially when it doesn’t need to be).
Stay Positive & Time Is Of The Essence
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We’ve got so many choices.
And even when it feels like there’s only one right answer, there’s more than one. Versions. Nuances. Parallel paths.
The only real way to know if the choice you’re making is the right one to make is to ensure it ladders up to your mission.
Business or personal, it applies.
If a decision can ladder up to your brand’s positioning of, say, pushing boundaries with sustainability or in the great outdoors (Sierra Nevada) then it’s a decision worth making.
If a choice can ladder up to your personal why, say, to extract meaning from victories and defeats so that I can help others recognize, reflect and continue pushing forward beyond their own (my personal why statement), then it’s a choice worth making.
It’s all about what a decision ladders up to.
Stay Positive & Less Time Arguing Over Pros/Cons, More Time Making Sure It Ladders Up
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Teaching someone a lesson.
Proving someone wrong.
Going through the process of elimination.
Crafting a rebuttle.
It’s all wasted time.
Time that could have been spent:
Learning something new.
Proving yourself right.
Creating magic.
Yes, anding an idea with someone.
Stay Positive & You Choose How You Use Your Time
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