The adage goes: don’t bite off more than you can chew.
I’m not going to argue that. In fact, it’s literally impossible to bite off more than you can chew.
I’ve hacked this adage though.
The other day my mother said I was crazy. (Not surprising. I get it often, actually.) Then she said, “I’ve never heard of anyone intentionally trying to bite off more than they can chew.”
That’s me, Bigmouth. Not really though, I’m fairly humble. But she is right, it is intentional. I’m working a 40+ hour job, going to school with 15 credits at UW Madison, doing some freelance work, working my magic as VP of Public Relations for Toastmasters, also working my magic as VP of Chapter Relations for the PRSSA Conference Committee, finding time to workout at least 3 days a week, giving speeches, going out on the weekends, and still getting around 6-8 hours of sleep each night.
That’s all fun, but not yet crazy (by my standards). What I mentioned above is a packed schedule. What warrants the title of “crazy” is that, although I know that my schedule is packed, I’m still adding more. I’ve applied to be a Transfer Ambassador beginning in a couple of months, I’ve made the committment to write a blog post every day and freewrite for 15 minutes (nonstop) 5 days a week. I’m offering my hand, my arm, my legs, my back, left and right to friends and those who ask for help; I don’t remember the last opportunity that I had passed up.
Hacking the adage: I started by taking a bite that filled my mouth but still allowed me to chew, if only just a tiny bit. The moment after I started to chew, I took another bite, chewed, took another bite, chewed… and so on. I’ve intentionally committed to too much in small intervals. I based my actions on the idea of adaptation.
To keep with the analogy, after each bite, my cheeks are stretching, my jaw muscles are loosening up more, and I’m able to take another little bite. It’s not about biting off more than you can chew, it’s about biting off as much as you can chew, then biting off a bit more again and again.
It’s truly amazing how much we are all capable of doing. It’s truly amazing that we all have 24 hours in a day, but some of us (you? … now you?) can do so much in the same amount of time that others do so little. I’m not hating on those who don’t do much, I straightforwardly believe they just never try to bite off more than they can chew, so they never adapt, never grow, and are never amazed with themselves.
I haven’t crashed yet. I’ll let you know if I do.
Stay Positive & Do As Much As You Can, Then Do A Little More
Keep on going and you will stumble on to something remarkable. Notice how I didn’t say that you will find a treasure chest. Notice how I didn’t say you would stop in front of and look up at your reward. Notice how I didn’t say that you would meet your goal face-to-face. No.
We race so quickly to our goals, that when we fall, we never notice the X on the ground. We get back up and keep racing, leaving whatever reward (which often comes in the form of a lesson – at least at the early stages -) on the ground.
Stay Positive & Look Where You Stumble Before You Get Going Again
Last night I was honored to listen to John Mose, Senior Vice-President of Public Relations at Cramer-Krasselt in Milwaukee, give a presentation to PRSSA Madison Chapter. The next few posts will be highlights of the presentation with my own commentary for an added texture.
1. Writing is important. Really.
You can land a position by presenting writing examples. You can get promoted by writing up proposals. You can get honored by writing the best press releases. You can be respected for writing media pitches. You can have the advantage of knowing what writers want to write about by being one yourself. Writing is everything.
2. Clients care about details.
You can skip the details when you are writing a plan out because you know them. You can skip the details when you pitch to your boss because your boss knows that you know them. You can’t skip the details when you pitch to your client because regardless of any title or background you have, your client won’t care. They want the details.
3. Understand and consume media. Read!
If you’re like me, reading all the articles in a newspaper is hard. The idea of opening a magazine to have my eyes blasted with absurd and uninformative ads repulses me. One word: literature. Other than that, I love reading articles online, but my eyes can only stand looking at the screen for so long. I’ve written about adaptation and this is when you have to get used to consuming all that you can. I’m making progress, you can too/need to.
4. At an agency, you are the product on shelf.
“Companies don’t cut the product that makes money.” – John Mose
5. PR can’t solve everything.
I’m leaving this up for debate. I have yet to meet a PR Professional other than John to say this. PR Specialists – being one myself – live by the adage If there is a will, there is a way.
6. Better to be fast than perfect.
My spin off of this that I have tweeted a few times, and rarely do I ever tweet something twice, is Be first, but be right first.
7. Be ready to sell some aluminum siding.
Similar to the next lesson; you never know what you may have to sell.
8. Know difference between a good-looking horse trough and an ugly one. You have to go out and be, do, or buy some crazy things.
You never know what you may have to do.
9. It’s okay to have non-traditional experience if you can make it interesting.
Took a year off? No problem, make the reason why fascinate me. Spent that last six years working a job that has no respective value? No problem, find and share what value it did hold. Every topic that you believe will work against you on your pursuit of becoming a PR Specialist, find how to make it interesting.
10. Study somethingelse.
It’s time to confess something to you.
Everything you have read so far on this blog has come from experience, self-learning, or books and classes that are not directed at PR. I have to say that any and all future posts will be of the same context.
John advocates that you study something else, something you are passionate about, because the real world is the education center for PR. I couldn’t agree more.
I have been engaged in a series of processes, trials and tribulations in enacting a major lifestyle change, choosing to best emulate my thoughts and emotive responses in a physical manner. I find the faith in human ambition frighteningly low amongst many of my peers and I have a pressing question on my mind, as a friend. What is it that drives your motivation? You are perhaps one of the most influential and inspiring people that I have come to know and even the slightest of conversation on the question would be unfathomably appreciated. As always, I feverently wish you the best and I hope to talk to you soon. Feel free to respond at your leisure, I understand you are a busy man!
With the out most sincerity, Seeker (maybe not so obviously not the real name)
Dearest Seeker,
If you are willing, I can offer even better assistance if I had more background knowledge on what has produced this current state of mind and tribulation.
However, I will still go ahead and explain a few theories of mine. Please note that I have made these realizations after much mind-ache and set backs, but I believe these are the golden nuggets of the little wisdom I have.
1. This is the most complicated one, so I thought I would put it first. You have to choose not to have a choice in whether you can be motivated or not be, whether you will kick out your to-do list or not, whether you can sleep in or not.
When people have a choice, it’s easy to choose the easy route, follow the status-quo, and do little. If you revoke this choice upon yourself (don’t feel that I am suggesting a dictatorship of humankind, only YOU have control of yourself, that is was I am aiming at)… as I was saying; If you revoke this choice upon yourself then “getting **** done” so-to-speak is not an option, it’s a life style.
2. There are two hard parts in the process of being motivated. The first is getting started. Starting an addiction that isn’t based on nicotine is as difficult as stopping an addiction that is. It’s going to suck and your life is going to try and reject your pursuit. I can’t tell you how many times I got headaches, sick, and all symptoms of sleep deprivation from trying to wake up earlier to write or stay up later to write. My understanding is the more times you bounce right back after getting knocked down, the more durable you become. It’s like building calluses around your passion.
The second hardest part I have come to find is what I call “the last 3,000 words”. It is gathering that positive mindset that starting and writing the first 32 thousand words will be easy and if you are going to believe that any part of it is going to be hard, let yourself believe the last 3,000 words will be the hard part (your goal is obviously 35,000 words). The reason being is that naturally we want to have reasons to stop, to not finish, to fold and throw down the towel. Too many people think the first 3,000 words are hard, or that halfway through, it will be too difficult, so they quit early. Fight that feeling. Imagine the last 3,000 being more difficult than everything else added up. The reason being is that when you go that far, when you get to 32 thousand words, the last 3,000 are easy, they always are and you will never quit that far into the game.
3. This one is simple. You have to fall in love with shipping. Shipping a product, shipping a song, shipping an idea, shipping a poem. Whatever it is, find a way to ship something everyday, fully completely finish something every day and give it to someone, share it, spread it. Once you start to ship, you can’t help but fall in love with it, so just keep shipping.
— I hope this helped and I look forward to discussing any matter further with you. I am never too busy for a friend.
Alas, reading over your request I fear that I may have neglected to answer your question specifically. You ask, “What is it that drives your motivation?”
To answer that question, it is my desired combination of selflessness and selfishness. I want as phenomenal of a life as possible, but I refuse to be the only one. The more happy I can make others, the more motivated I make others, the more I love others, the more happy, motivated and loved I can be.
With hope that I inspired,
– Garth E. Beyer
Stay Positive & Fearless: to ask, to try, to ship…
Humans in their entirety are under constant adaptation. It’s in our nature. We adapt in every form – mentally, physically, ideally, and in our hearts to the environment we are subject to.
The gold medalist outliers in athletics, in business, and in life, they got there through adaptation.
Most marathon runners have burned themselves out in at least 10 races or practice races before they successfully completed their first marathon.
The published writer, went through having 5 migraines and 20 different occasions of muscle spasms in her eyes and hands because she kept upping the dose of writing she did on the computer each day.
Almost all millionaire entrepreneurs, have had at least 30 overnighters and more than a third of their nights severely sleep deprived.
Reach
It’s impossible to bend and reach your toes if you have never stretched before. It’s impossible to write 60 hours a week while carrying a full-time job if you haven’t even wrote for 20 hours a week. It’s impossible to stay up two nights in a row working on a business plan if you have never had less than 7 hours a sleep in a night. As much as you want to fight it, life has its limits and becoming a gold medalist, becoming indispensable, becoming an artist, and becoming successful is not an overnight occurrence. It’s not something that can be reached the first try, the second try, or even after 50 tries.
The successful become the successful because they bounced back from injuries, headaches and sleepless nights the quickest. They stretched. They crashed. They adapted to it. They (now, like you) understood that their body is in a constant state of adaptation whether you want it to be or not. It tries to adjust to the moment – every moment.
Plateau
If you are not constantly improving with your muse, you are plateauing. If you are plateauing, you are getting worse, because everyone else, they are getting better, thus raising what the average is and putting you below the line. (Not where you want to be)
However, plateauing is key. Again, you can’t reach your toes the first try, even if you stay reaching for them for 5 hours straight. When you plateau, you allow adaptation to catch up and make the improvement you made the average so you can once again go after improvement. A person can reach their toes with 5 hours of effort, but only if they stretch, relax, adapt, and stretch again.
There are two variables of plateauing
1. How many times you plateau determines how excellent you will be. The more times you give yourself time to relax and adapt, the quicker you can accelerate becoming an expert at what you are doing. Who knew the amount of success is based on the number of times you actually don’t work for it?
2. How long you plateau for is the essential factor resulting in either progress or decline. If a weightlifter curls 50lb dumbbells, and then plateaus for two weeks, he is certainly not going to be lifting 50lb’s again right away. His plateau made his abilities decrease. Then again, he won’t get anywhere if he curls every single day, twice a day, leaving no time for adaptation (or improvement).
Success is really what you call “Mastered Creativity”. What you will find below are some constructed writing challenges and exercises to push your creativity. They are formed in a way to apply practice to parts of writing (and thinking) you have rarely practiced before. The goal is to get your creative mind to push limits, stretch its imagination and to give it a game to play.
To have an open and expanded mind that is capable of using objects, sounds, movements, etc., and turn them into something solid and applicable is exactly what the most successful creators do. So why not start with the basics – Creative Writing. You might just realize that there are some life lessons to be learned from the writing exercises.
1. Newspaper Headline: I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of reading all the negativity in the newspaper. Old Zig Ziglar always said that the reason foreigners can come to America and become millionaires within a year is that they can’t read all the negativity in the newspaper. For this challenge, write your own headline article for the newspaper and share what you think is important enough for all to know. Lesson: Make sure the positive is what remains on the front page. Focus on the good, the happy, the love and remember to share it with everyone. Put all of the negativity in the obituary section.
2. Oddvertisement: You have seen great advertisements that may have even gotten you to buy something, but you have also seen terrible ads that feel like a continuous prod in the ribs. Advertisements are only fun when you see an advertisement for something odd. That’s why I call it an Oddvertisement. Open up your pantry or closet and dig for something in the far back that never gets used. Now it’s time to sell it. Write an oddvertisement that is creative and encouraging enough for someone to consider buying it. Lesson: Anyone can make a sale, but only the creative make a living off of it. There is always a different way to look at things, you just have to have the right mindset.
3. MadLib Promotion: While MadLibs are extremely fun. The joy can be even more fruitful when you are the one who created the MadLib for someone else to complete. Lesson: Challenge others by giving them the authority to choose what word goes in a certain spot.
4. Word Of The Day Stories: Dictionary.com has a Word of The Day every day. For a beginner writer, try freewriting and using the words from the last seven days. For a more expert writer, create a story using all of last months words. To take it a step further, you can even start your story by using the time and setting of the actual month that you are using the new words from. Lesson: Time really does go by quickly, yet it’s still possible to learn something new everyday and apply it to your life.
5. Improv Writing: Improv, Improv Character Building, Improv-ing Writing SkillsLesson: People-observation skills and the ability to make a correct judgement can be critical in some situations. In others, it’s necessary to keep an open mind about a person since truly, you don’t know where they come from, what they are thinking or where they want to go in life.
6. Who’s Quote Is It Anyway?: Have a list of famous quotes you absolutely love? Create a story that implements them word by word, as the theme, or by using your own derivative of the meaning. Give the quote an all new definition and background. Who knows, if you switch it up enough, you just might be quoted for it. Lesson:Emulating The Successful Through Quotes.
7. Poetry Walk Or Meditation. While walking and becoming aware of all that is around you, carry a journal and write down notes and ideas to create a poem from. Lesson: Living in the moment and remaining aware.
8. Connect-The-Sentences: Either pull random sentences from different books or use sentences you have recently heard someone say. Make three columns and in the first and third, write down the sentences that you gathered. The middle column is for you to write your own sentence that can connect the first and third sentences. The more challenging you want it, the more columns you can add, making every other column blank. Lesson: To achieve anything in life from where you are, you have to create a bridge. There is never skipping steps. You can’t just skip the middle column of this writing game or skip the work you need to do to get to where you want to be in life. It’s also great to realize that you can make the bridge as interesting and be as creative as possible.
9. Word Jump. While freewriting, start every sentence with the word that you blindly land your finger on in a book or newspaper. Lesson: You never know what’s going to pop up in your life to knock you off track. Are you creative enough to adapt and overcome?
10.Guest Post: Instead of getting a guest to write a blog post for you, you write it. Open up the post like you normally would on a subject of your choice (preferably controversial, but it doesn’t need to be). Then introduce your guest that will be writing a post on the subject (Create an alias for yourself). Now begin writing from a different perspective, as the guest blogger. Lesson: Getting different perspectives.
11.Word Play: Write a poem with word play… wait, weight, waste, waist, hole, whole. Lesson: Simply just fun!
12.I Write Dead People: Open up a newspaper to the Obituary section and write a story about how a person died. Lesson: Makes you happy to be alive doesn’t it? Life’s too short to not be creative.
13. Telephone Book Tale: Open to a random page of your yellow book, placing your finger on a part of the page and using what is written in that ad, put it in your story. Did your finger lie on a Muffler shop? Has there been a recent murder there? Was all that was left at the scene a piece of paper and the phone number which has been disconnected? Big yellow phone books don’t do any good unless you can write a story from them. Lesson: Nothing is ever as it seems.
14. Where Do You WANT To See Yourself In 5 Years?: Simple as that. Write every detail, every dream come true, every aspect of the life you want. Get crazy with it! So many people will ask you this throughout your life. Create an answer that will blow them away.
Stay Positive & Then Follow Through To Make That 5th Year Come True
