Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Will you still care about what you’re working on in three weeks?
What about the grudge you just started holding?
Or the news you’re paying attention to?
What will matter in three weeks?
The three week test is a great evaluation of work worth doing and energy worth giving. It’s also a great way to determine what to let go of or what distractions to let pass you by.
Stay Positive & If You Really Wanted, What Will Matter In 30 Weeks?
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The problems you still have. The items left on your to-do list. The challenges that haven’t been completed yet.
Certainly they’re the most difficult ones.
On our wait for a shortcut or some easy solve to the problem, to-do or challenge, they build up.
But if we see this early on, we can make the choice to let the problem, to-do or challenge go. No hard feelings, no shame, no disappointment. We know it was getting too daunting and we weren’t up for it – no problem, because there are other problems waiting to be solved. Time to move on.
We can also make the choice to put in the effort, the emotional labor, the focus and energy needed to solve, check off and complete. Better to make that decision early on than wait for a shortcut to appear.
Either decision becomes infinitely easier when we 1. accept that shortcuts rarely spontaneously arrive and 2. choose to draw on our willpower to either lean in or back out.
Stay Positive & Choose Early
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A culture of work and business success will lose its momentum if there aren’t a series of reminders of what it stands for. Reminders for people who have heard them before. Reminders for the newbies involved in your mission. Reminders of what you stand for and where you’re going.
A culture of work and business success will lose its momentum if there aren’t any celebrations around what it stands for. Celebrations when milestones related to the mission are reached. Celebrations when someone exudes company values. Celebrations around company-specific holidays.
A culture of work and business success will lose its momentum if it doesn’t lead by example. Actively and ongoingly making actions that align with it’s mission. Actively and ongoingly supporting efforts that resonate with its core values. You get the idea here.
A successful culture of work and business needs all three.
Stay Positive & Carry On With Your Trifecta
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We might not have to wait for videos to buffer so much anymore, but we shouldn’t forget the lesson doing so taught us.
To account for the buffer time.
In setting up the video chat and running into tech issues. In driving to your destination and not being surprised when there’s an accident that slows it up. When out on a date and running into an old friend on the street who you want to catch up with.
When you account for a little extra time in any endeavor, you undoubtedly remove the amount of stress and frustration you’ll feel along the way as you inevitably experience, hurtles, setbacks, distractions, etc.,
It’s incredible the difference in levels of stress one experiences between buffering that is anticipated or accounted for against one that is a surprise and unwanted.
Help yourself out and account for the buffering.
Stay Positive & It’s All Good (After We Realign Our Expectations)
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You can likely riff your top three competitors.
But what about the 25th?
50th?
100th?
It’s quite incredible how one can learn something from a competitor that, at face value, might be so removed from your geography or your line of service or your customer base.
Sure, study up and learn how to have an advantage over your main three.
But don’t stop sourcing improvements there.
The winners will be the ones who keep learning what they can from all who they can – even if it’s learning what not to do.
Stay Positive & Be A Winner
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A poorly built foundation, painted, polished and finished always leads to failure, bad reviews, unnecessary stresses and disappointment.
An expert, well-thought out foundation without any fit and finish rarely catches on, leads to people seeing the value or turning a profit.
A playbook without heart, intuition and personalization might work temporarily.
A eye-catching shiny object might get some short-term sales.
But to truly excel, the foundation has to be built strong and then it needs to have a layer of finish on it.
That means you need to learn how to lead your project with both in mind or delegate the half you’re not interested in investing your time on. No shame in that whatsoever.
Stay Positive & Fit Then Finish
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It’s not an question to be answered with words.
It’s a question to be answered with action.
The next time you use the question “why” to stall doing the work, add a “not” to it.
Why not do this? Why not send that? Why not book it?
No answers required. Just doing.
Stay Positive & The Answer Is In The Action
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