GarthBox

If you’re frustrated with a task, it’s not likely you’ll turn out strong work.

If you feel challenged, you work smarter and the result speaks to that.

But, the feeling of frustration rarely helps us create something remarkable.

I’ve found that the best counter to frustration is conversation. It’s likely you have misinterpreted part of the task. The deliverable you are working on, might have meant to be tweaked a bit. You may be missing the obvious that you’ll only realize when you put words to your method.

The task might not become easier to do through conversation, but it will be a lot less frustrating.

 

Stay Positive & Share The Frustration(s)

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In any message strategy, you have the opportunity to define an anchor.

Many businesses establish a pricing anchor.

Here’s this bottle of beer for $30, so it makes the $15 bottle of beer look much more appealing.

And consider that a sale price is meaningless without also showing the “original” price.

Other businesses have a story as an anchor.

One business in particular works to sell unique products, but that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. So they use an anchor. “We even sell a giant peacock throne. It’s a chair you can sit on that’s shaped and colored like a peacock. It’s remarkable and it’ll be the statement-piece in your room when your family comes to visit.” Now you have an anchor for what “unique” means.

The real problem for businesses arrives when there’s no use of an anchor.

Truthfully, we’re all wired to seek out an anchor through our process of decision-making. We can’t determine the value of something until we have another similar thing to compare it to. So we’ll search until we find one, and most of the time it’s a competitor who has a lower price, a better story, a greater guarantee.

 

Stay Positive & Better To Create Your Own Anchors Than Let Another Biz Define Them

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In the day-to-day, routine may have you sending work to others who will then ship it.

The expectation is that they’ll review it before sending it into the world. They’ll catch your spelling error or missing page or they’ll spot and fix the formatting.

While there are some remarkables in the world who make time to review, most don’t.

The onus is on you to respect their trust and to deliver the greatest work you can create.

It means you invest the time in reading it over again. It means you place yourself in the shoes of the future recipient and critically evaluate the work on their behalf. It means you would be proud of your work if it got shipped as is…because much of the time, it does.

 

Stay Positive & Ready To Ship?

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The cop-out assumption about professional development is that you need time.

Better, though, to use the constraint of time to work smarter, differently, expertly on a specific problem.

The issue usually isn’t time; it’s the number of problems your working to solve because you wanted to fill all of your time.

Focus. Minimize. Focus again.

 

Stay Positive & Let The Small (Focused) Things Add Up

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Certainly there are times when good enough is just that–good enough.

But other times, specifically when you have time, it could always be better.

The amateur ships anyway. The artist spends the extra tad of time to make it better.

 

Stay Positive & Which Are You Again?

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You can put yourself out there more often. After all, obscurity is your worst enemy.

You can invest time in learning more often. After all, doing the reading is what it takes to be seen as an expert.

You can connect to more people more often. After all, it’s the connections that make both the good and bad times better.

You can travel more often. After all, there’s so much to learn from other cultures to reuse in your own.

First step, of course, is to do it. The second, is to do it more often.

 

Stay Positive & Did You Really Think It Would Be A One And Done?

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You’re pissed off. Frustrated. You’re upset with how things turned out.

It’s likely you’re reacting to a situation.

Responding is a far smarter choice.

Take a moment to consider what someone more experienced than you would do in your position.

Stop to think through what you have control over and a next step to make the situation better.

Count to ten or go out for fresh air if you need to, but whatever it is you do, be sure you’re responding, not reacting.

 

Stay Positive & There’s Always Someone Watching By The Way

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