November 5, 2015

Most of us don’t wake up in the morning thinking, today is the day I changed the world.

We are, however, constantly working to change our lives, improve our habits, and address the ever present idea to “be more successful.” Why is it then that all we seem to do is work, work, and work some more?

Here’s a secret -that’s really not so secret- less is more!

Why We Fail

Let’s get a few things out of the way right away. First, success is an awful word. Almost as if paralyzed by the chance of failing to meet our goals, we constantly fail to define what success looks like. All we seem to know is that it is as elusive, and mysterious as the eccentric billionaires themselves.

So what do I mean, when I say success here? Meeting your goals. Whether that is to cook a healthier meal tonight, have a more productive day at work tomorrow, or go on vacation to Europe next spring, it matters not to me.

What matters here is that you have a goal. Most of us have several… today… right this minute, that are competing for our attention. After all, we’re popular people. (If you don’t have even one single goal, it’s probably time to grow-up, and get one.) The problem, or maybe our saving grace, is that they are not ALL important.

We want to exercise. We want to eat right. We want to relax, and enjoy our lives. We want work to go better. We want our careers to be great. And we want to be there for our families. Plus the Voice is on tonight, and Adam’s team needs our support!

However, lets be honest. Not everything we want to do is all that important.

What might not be so obvious, is that not everything we are doing to accomplish some of our very important goals is all that important either.  In fact the Pareto Principle ventures to say that 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. (Read my whole article about applying this principle to your life, if you want.) Meaning 80% of what we do to accomplish a goal is grade A, high quality, platinum level, wheel spinning.

Hey I’m not pointing fingers. We all do it. Very well, usually. And it all started from a lie we told ourselves growing up. I can’t think of anyone who has put it better than Larry Smith (if you haven’t seen his speech “Why you will fail to have a great career,” it’s a must watch.) “So, if you work hard and have a good career,” he says, “if you work really, really, really hard, you’ll have a great career!”

So we work. Then, when we can’t meet the goals we barely bothered to define, we double down. I never said we were lazy. We do what we expect out of ourselves- we work harder. We email in the bathroom. We research during evening TV. We cram every minute of the day with activity, and we multi-task like pros. And still. And still we don’t seem to find success. (At least not like those “successful people” over there. You know the ones.)

“You know what?” Larry say’s “Here’s a little secret: You want to work? You want to work really, really, really hard? You know what? You’ll succeed. The world will give you the opportunity to work really, really, really, really hard. But, are you so sure that that’s going to give you a great career, when all the evidence is to the contrary?”

Swap out “great career” for any type of success you want. It’s all the same. More work does not equal success. The right work does.

Instead of Breaking a Leg, Just Take a Break

So instead of more work, we need to do less work correctly. However, first we need to do no work.

Yep. Zero work.

Just as emptying yourself of so much busyness allows you to reestablish attitudes, and perceptions about other people, work, and stress, so does it change how you view what is important. You need time to unwind. Time to get all of that clutter out of your head. Furthermore, you need to see that the world does in fact continue to turn without your professional wheel spinning.

How Do You Know What is Important?

You want to know how to tell what the most important things that need done to improve are? Take yourself out of a project. See what doesn’t get done without you. That is what you focus on, either through training, or taking care of it yourself.

This is the head-fake mind trick of taking a vacation. Whether it is concerning work, your finances, your family, your health, this is how you relax your mind, while doing valuable research. Multi-tasking isn’t really about doing 2 things at once. Multi-tasking is about setting something up to run in the background without you, while you do something else.

Came back, and nothing got done? Demand that it does, and try again. Teach where necessary, and set expectations. Everything got done? Good. Time to move on to higher order tasks.

Results Matter

Which brings us to point 2) Do the specific activities that produce results. Highly successful people will tell you, it is not about how much you are doing, but what you are doing. Being effective means doing the right things, not doing the wrong things really well. What are the right things? The efforts that produce results.

One of the reasons we don’t do this is that it is uber challenging. It feels more difficult than all the extra wheel-spinning work we put in. And that, my friends, is why it is so important. Because results are what matter. It’s what matters to your boss. It’s what matters to your family. It’s what should matter to you.

If you have to do large volumes of ineffective work to feel good about yourself -like you worked “hard enough”- look very closely at your goals.

When we better define our goals, we can actually succeed in reaching them. Then sit back, and feel good about that. Often by consciously setting goals we realize smaller accomplishments are really enough. That’s not to say you shouldn’t go after the “great.” I’m just saying that when we don’t set any finish line, we never get there. We always feel like we owe more work.

The other reason we are not more focused on finding the tasks that get results, is that it is very analytical. You have to look closely at a thing, and decide, did that produce an effect? The biggest problem with this: you find out that you fail a lot.

A lot of what we do just doesn’t produce the effect we thought it would. We thought hard, pick the best plan, and it still didn’t work. We took a chance, and we got it wrong. If you find yourself feeling this way- good! That means you took action. Now it’s just time to sift through those actions to refine them. The quote gets attributed to many people, but the truth remains, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

Taking a break from our lives -whether that is vacation, some quiet time, a walk, meditation- allows us to come back with new eyes. We are somehow less invested, more objective, and more detached. It helps us to think clearly, about the changes we should make. We can see more easily what the most important actions to take are.

But Mommy, Do I Have To!?

Ready for #3? Here is the doozy: Uncomfortable often means important. You know that thing that’s been on your to-do list every day of every week since 2008? Yeah that one. That one is important. Who’da thought?

Most of us don’t like confrontation, and yet many important activities have at least some risk of it. For the most part it is a sure fire sign that a task is worth doing. Sometimes it is so important that you fear the failure that bad. Sometimes it has such a big potential payoff that you can’t stand the though of screwing it up. Either way, not acting doesn’t get you anywhere. This is hero time. Step up, because you already know you need to.

There are other reasons we kick a to-do from list to list. We don’t know how. We really hate, or otherwise suck at it. However, again if it doesn’t leave the list that should be a clear sign that it is indeed important. Time to put the big kid britches on, and Nike- Just do it.

Because you’ll thank yourself later. It will have a meaningful result, and best of all it will be off the list and over with.

I don’t want to discount the stress though. Which is again why we need to have breaks built into life to recover from these sorts of stresses. We need time to recoup. Some of this stuff makes us feel pretty fried. Giving our minds some time to unclench is important too.

Never Mess with the IRS

Some things are just obviously important. Things that are regulatory in your workplace come to mind. We have to pay our bills. Don’t let the children starve. Some things pretty much speak for themselves. Even still, most of these are more like moral obligations than success drivers.

Likewise, there are always going to be particular tasks that aren’t really important for you goals, but they are important. You still may have routine responsibilities at work. You still have to do the laundry. You still have to cut the rake the leaves.

What you don’t have to do is search out more of these activities just to feel busy.

Hooked on Phonics

All of this takes work [Gasp!] I said “less” not “easy.” [Double Gasp!!] We’ve gotten so used to endless activity that when we sit idle we feel restless. We want to be doing. It is difficult to allow ourselves periods of inactivity. However, remember much of what we were doing was not actually getting us closer to our goals anyway.

You are going to have to practice. Practice being still. Practice daydreaming. Trust me it’s fun. You used to really like it. Take 10 minutes to learn how to be more relaxed. Everything your mind is not used to is difficult at first. This is not different. It is going to take practice.

Don’t give up.

It may seem like wasted time, but were you changing the world on facebook?

You can change your world. But first you need to dream a better dream!

-Michael Speck