I’d be willing to bet that at least once a week, you have some kind of subtle panic reaction when you think about what you’re doing with your time. We see this everywhere – people are always saying “I’d love to, but let me check my schedule” unconsciously knowing darn well that they just generally feel like life won’t let them have enough time for anything.  I even find myself occasionally pausing when someone asks me about doing something as simple as meeting for coffee. It’s like I have some time account somewhere that I fear is overdrawn because I haven’t balanced the ledger recently, and I’m worried I’ll get penalties for bouncing my time checks or something. Part of this is simple time management stuff, but part of it may be the QUALITY of your time, rather than the quantity of it. The facts are that first of all, time is an arbitrary measure of something that can’t be stored or saved. Or deferred. It’s going to “keep going”, to the extent that it exists at all. The second thing is, we actually have more leisure time than at almost any point in human history.

So how could giving away some of your time possibly ease your frustrations about how much you have? Well, a recent study by a trio of academics from Wharton, Yale, and Harvard ended up with some interesting results. This piece from the Association for Psychological Science covers it in detail, but the gist of the idea is that when subjects were given either an altruistic task to complete, a mundane task, or leisure time, the subjects that were assigned a task that involved helping someone tested as perceiving themselves to have more time than even the subjects who had enjoyed leisure time.

Feeling short on time? Maybe you should stop reading and go give some of it away!

This provided us with a few valuable lessons:

1.) It’s hard to write something snappy daily.
This was perhaps partly a discipline problem. We’ll get to that in a minute.

2.) Ian is a bit of a windbag.
We won’t get to that in a minute. It should be evident if you peruse his articles here on the site.

3.) It’s important to adapt to new situations quickly.
It can often give quite the wrong impression if you don’t.

4.) Ian and Nick are not avid Twitterers
Is that a bad thing? Probably not. By the way, did you know that sending a single tweet uses a whopping 2MB of code?

So I’m willing to entertain the notion that if we had been more disciplined, writing a “Daily Fix” would have been easy-peasy. But the fact is that we launched this idea right around the time we were completing our recent book, and doing a soft release during the holiday season. At the same time, we’ve been working out the details of a contest involving YouTube submissions, prepping for promotional appearances, launching a publishing company, and starting a new book. Sounds a little like excuses, doesn’t it. Maybe so.

The Secret About Discipline

So I at least re-learned a little secret about discipline. You know what it is? The only secret to discipline is simply DOING a thing, persistently. There is nothing else. Except choosing not to do a thing. Which is what we’re doing in this case.

Writing Something Snappy Daily

I recommend trying this some time if you haven’t. I personally write a minimum of 500 words a day for my work. But “something snappy”? That’s an entirely different animal. I’m going to give this a shot in a different context soon just to challenge myself.

Adapation

We violated one of our own unspoken rules here. It’s common knowledge that in today’s world, it’s crucial to adapt quickly to new situations. I would submit that it was our own intrinsic commitment to follow through and discipline that actually left our “Daily Fix” column in a not-very-daily state. We will now be posting in this section when we feel like it. It’s entirely possible that we lost visitors who were interested in our daily content; we’ll never know. But by simply changing the name of the column, multiple burdens are lifted!

And that’s The Score.

See? I told you Ian is a windbag. He is in fact hoping that this long winded, self-referential diatribe will inspire Nick to write something snappy soon to bump it off the main page.

The other day, I ran across this 1983 New York Times article questioning whether “stress addiction” was a legitimate phenomena. Given the behavior of the typical cellphone toting, iPad poking, Twittering Tumblr-tagging teen, or the number of people you see walking down the street eating lunch as they text and talk to the earpiece in their ear, I think we can safely lay that debate to rest, and assume that some form of stimulation or stress addiction seems to afflict a lot of modern people.

So why does it seem like some people seem comfortable, even eager to add more stress-inducing activities to their life, while others seem to be trying everything imaginable to reduce the stress factors in their life? I think one of the first problems in “dealing with stress” is that there isn’t even a widely accepted definition of what it IS. This University of Maryland page says it’s a form of anxiety, which “is a feeling of fear, unease, and worry”. Merriam Webster says it is “a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation”.

Good Stress & Bad Stress

That dictionary definition above highlights a common misconception about the broad array of things we might call “stress”. From a common sense point of view, and in a view that is becoming more pervasive in health and wellness circles, stress can actually be a GOOD thing. In its simplest form, it’s a heightened reaction to external challenges or stimuli. So as long as the those external stimuli aren’t so persistent and intense as to overwhelm the individual, it’s a healthy survival response that helps us meet and overcome challenges. Historically, war has been one human activity that would reliably overwhelm the human organism, leaving many of its survivors with sometimes permanent stress-induced mental and physical health problems. But what about the crazy, stressful activities that people INTENTIONALLY engage in, like skydiving, bungee jumping, running for political office, or working in the finance industry?

Maybe You’re A Stress Addicted Chaos Junky

Strangely, like almost anything else, it is in fact possible to be addicted to stress or chaos, as mentioned at the top. The same chemical processes that are going on in the brain when you’re screaming and waving your arms on the trading floor may be very similar to those that are occurring when when you’re overindulging in your drug of choice. I’ve been on both sides of this fence, so I can speak with some expertise. Before I entered recovery a few years ago, I maintained the most immaculately orderly home and work environments you will encounter. The most common remarks people would make about my character would usually reference my organization, cleanliness, and grooming. Little did they know that these external things were the only thing anchoring the turmoil in my heart and head; my external world was a desperate attempt to maintain order SOMEWHERE, and physical objects and strict schedules make this fairly easy. Interestingly, after a few years of personal evolution in recovery, I find my home and workplace are often a lot messier, but I’m probably getting ten times as much done as before, and perhaps more importantly, I’m HAPPIER.

Your Personal Best Stress Level

I’m of the opinion that – as is so often the case in contemporary culture – the emphasis on reducing stress in our lives is oversimplified, ill-conceived, and is an easy monetization tool for the health care industry. A couple of problems with most people’s approach to stress are that a.) they lack the self-awareness to usefully define their stress levels, and b.) they lack the self-awareness to usefully define their stress levels. Yes, the two reasons I’m suggesting are the same. On the one hand, many people aren’t aware that the very tools they use to create organization in their lives are in fact the number one source of their chaotic and stressful existence. On the other hand, most people are unable to separate anger over personal dissatisfaction (i.e. frustration with unexpected outcomes, etc.) from a normal “stress” reaction. I personally THRIVE on a significant level of stress. The thing that will take me into an unhealthy zone in this regard is WAITING. Not because I demand that things be done on “my time”, but because I’m most centered when I’m “doing”. So if – like me – you struggle to maintain a high enough stress level in your life to satisfy your addictive nature, below are some tools I recommend for enhancing the overall chaos level in your life. Maybe embracing them all can make you finally snap, and then ease back into your own “good level”.

5 Sure-fire Tools To Enhance the Level of Chaos in your Life

Email

If you really want to escalate the level of disruption, distraction, and disorder in your day, use email. According to this NYT piece, in a 2007 study a group of Microsoft workers took – on average – 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. Email is a great tool for chaos generation all around. Also make sure you always have at least 10 messages in your inbox that require replies, send important messages as you LEAVE the office each day, and check it first thing in the morning. I jest of course. I just named three of the basic things that destroy attitudes and productivity. The point is, email is a useful tool, but if you don’t use it with some conscious thought, it will eat half of your day, and keep you in a perpetual tizzy. Empty your inbox. Could that one message be handled better with a quick phone call? MAKE IT. Is there going to be anything in your inbox at 7am besides problems that someone left you late yesterday? Probably not. Wait a couple of hours and get your workday going before you disrupt it!

Multitasking

Face it. You’re not. Unless you’re amongst the 2 percent of people who CAN, according to research, and there’s a 98 percent chance you aren’t. So really all you’re doing when you multitask is under-performing, and stressing yourself out. But if you really are seeking that level of stimulation, there’s probably no better way to achieve your goal than texting and talking while driving, typing an email while talking on the phone, or doing all of this while you’re having lunch with me. Because then I’LL get stressed out, because ill-manners make me angry, and since you’re on the phone, my polite nature will force me to wait until you’re done to scream at you, which will add to YOUR stress level.

Saving Stuff

According to 2010 figures from the White House Office of Management and Budget, Americans spent 8.8 billion hours completing government forms. That’s just government forms! In America, employees print an average of 45 sheets of paper per day, and 30 percent of all employees’ time is spent trying to find lost documents. No wonder there are over 50,000 primary storage facilities in the US alone. We’re all afraid of throwing that thing out, because Lord knows when you’re going to need it! But seriously. Try a system like the Noguchi Filing System or a variation of the 43 Folders method, and those piles of documents that are crucial to national security – even though you don’t know what’s in them – will disappear.

Meetings

Have lots and lots of meetings. Hell, have a special meeting just to talk about all the meetings you’re having. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unnecessary meetings cost U.S. businesses approximately $37 billion in 2005 alone. I think your team should meet to discuss that problem. I’d share more thoughts on how the the travel and task switching aspects of meetings consume more time than the meetings themselves, but I’m late for a meeting.

Time Travel

You’re going to find this hard to believe, but I have a time travel machine. In fact, this is one of my favorite chaos generation tools. I bet you have one too, and don’t even realize it. It’s right in your head. I’d bet a nickel that one of the greatest productivity inhibiting, stress-generating tools at our disposal is in use nearly constantly by all but the most advanced Zen Masters. I have to confess that even while typing these words, I thought about a couple of meetings this week, and answered the phone twice, transporting myself across time and space to a place full of problems that actually don’t concern me right now, and that I can do nothing about. Want to stay in a constantly stressed state? Think about everything BUT where and when you are right now.

The Solutions

I don’t have one. That’s up to you. There are thousands of books and websites out there offering solutions to your stress-related problems, but frankly, I find merely searching and browsing these sources stress-inducing. Why not try a simple approach. Pause. Take an honest look at how you use technology, for starters. And then examine if you’re simply angry that things aren’t the way you want them to be, and get to work on changing them in manageable steps.

So like anyone else, I still get bogged down by my own planning and pondering, but I make a conscious effort every single day – at least once – to ask myself the seemingly silly question “Am I here right now?” I’m surprised by how often that question still makes me realize I’m thinking about ten things that aren’t the thing I’m doing. There are of course times when I don’t ask myself that question. And those times are mostly when I AM finally doing what I’m doing. Because one of the coolest results of doing the next right thing – as opposed to THINKING about doing the next right thing – is that you end up in that happy groove, where you don’t even realize how happy you are, because you’re so happy, So why are you still reading? Go do the next right thing and find that happy place.

Recently Nick and I asked ourselves “How come our meetings are so dang productive?” We often accomplish more in a thirty minute meeting than we do with other people in TWO HOUR meetings. Who has two and three hour meetings, anyway? Three hour meetings always make me think of what happened to Gilligan and the gang when taking this kind of leisure cruise of productivity. And as much as I might enjoy being trapped on a deserted island with Marianne, I have things I’d like to do first. So what’s our big secret? As Nick and I discussed it, we isolated a few simpler points, but as I pondered the idea, something else occurred to me that is a little more “play and creativity” oriented. I’ll share that after the basics about why meetings in general are often not only unproductive, but COUNTERproductive.

Meetings vs Blamestorming

So first let’s make a disctinction here. I think of meetings and actual work as separate things. Meetings are for reviewing, assessing, communicating, deciding, and planning. If you’re on a team of political strategists, your meetings of course may be most of the work you do. But if you’re in any kind of production oriented work, whether it’s running a publication, building cars, or playing in a band, the bulk of the work is done elsewhere. Meetings are for fine-tuning a process, they shouldn’t BE the process. They also shouldn’t be thought of as a grievance forum. Actual grievances should be addressed directly in a separate process, whether it’s an honest one-on-one dialog, a “complaint box”, or forming a union and going on strike. Of course, good management should be aware enough of grievances to avoid that last option, but blamestorming sessions are worse than counterproductive, they can even be destructive.

The Secrets To Efficient & Productive Meetings

So the actual mechanisms behind quick and purposeful meetings are incredibly simple. Which may be the exact reason so many people overlook them. They’re just too darn easy. Below are a few really simple methods for keeping meetings quick and painless. Leaving more time for the kids, golf, laying on the beach, wasting time on the web, or that new knitting pattern you’ve been dying to try.

1.) Know Why You’re Meeting
You’d be surprised how many people don’t use simple lists, or routinely discover what they’re talking about WHILE THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT IT. Before you even arrange a meeting, identify key topics, put them in concise lists, and identify specific tasks or needs under each item.

2.) Share The Memo
Yeah, the old workplace joke about “didn’t you get the memo” is all fine and dandy. Until someone PUTS OUT AN EYE. Which is what I personally do to people who act like you should know what they’re thinking. Before the actual meeting, share the list. Let’s use the archaic term “agenda”. I break up the tedium of this with amusing subject lines in the email like “Here’s The Plan Stan”. And continue at the top of the message with “What’s the agenda, Brenda? The arc, Mark? The deal, Neil? The intent, Kent?”

3.) Time Is An Illusion
“Lunch time doubly so”, as Douglas Adams said. Which is poppycock. Time is a reliable, mechanized measurement. The human mouth can only form words at a rate defined by its physical limitations, and although some human brains seem to utilize their neural networks more or less efficiently than others, the nerve impulsives themselves move at a fairly consistent rate. Know your material, and know how much you can talk about in an hour.

4.) The Time Barrier
Ever notice how people (maybe even YOU) tend to hit a point during classes or meetings where they just start nodding off? We’ve all been there. One minute you seem fully concious, the next you suddently jolt upright with spittle on your chin, with a murmur of voices bubbling in your head. You have just hit the t-~i~-m-~e  b-~a~-r-~r~-i-~e~-r. A combination of decreased blood flow and blood sugar cycles mean that the optimum uninterrupted meeting time is under an hour. Common wisdom says that it’s about 45-50 minutes. No matter what you’re doing at this point in a meeting, take a break. Ten minutes is probably good. Longer, and you risk losing focus.

5.) Pretend You’re In A Band
This is the more “play and creativity” oriented thing I mentioned at the top. If you’ve ever played music with others (Nick & I had a band years ago) you know that there’s a sort of point/counterpoint that occurs in a lot of ways. I think this is a reflexive underpinning of how our meetings work, and it’s not that hard to break down the elements:

a.) Know the difference between “jamming” and the disciplined playing of a part.
Nick and I keep an ongoing acute awareness of whether or not we’ve digressed. Digression is inevitable, but when we do it, we allow it for a moment, perhaps apologize if it’s lengthy, and then zero back in on the topic.

b.) Limit the solos, or have a cigar.
Counterpoint is the basis of all great songs. When someone has a good riff going, let it rip. If it’s turning into self-indulgent bandstanding, be comfortable checking or being checked on it. “Soloing” isn’t the same as digressing. It’s hogging. I used to keep a wrapped cigar at meetings. When someone went on a big ego kick, I’d hand them the cigar. This became a regular part of our meetings; a humorous way to check someone’s soapboxing.

c.) Parts is Parts
I worked with a successful session musician and songwriter years ago. He would jokingly say “parts is parts”, referencing the fact that the best pop songs were really just good “parts” strung together artfully. This is true with work and planning too. Know how to break things into their components, and how they relate. Some projects spin off into related ideas, and if you don’t know the song well enough, you end up with a plodding, forced medley of ideas instead of focused, deliverable results.

6.) Know Why You’re Meeting
I already said this, right? But this is where WAY too many people screw up. At the end of a poorly executed meeting, everyone just wants to be done with things and move on to their next activity, right? Well first of all, try to get the meeting flow working so that at the end of the allotted time, you have about ten minutes to review what you’ve covered, so you can streamline the notes for the next meeting, and keep momentum. When you actually wrap up this way, meetings feel GREAT. It feels like you nailed the resolving note in an orchestral piece, and can literally go “TA DA!” When you walk out of the meeting, you should feel freer and more at ease than when you walked in.

Is Your Business Like A Business, Or Like A Band?

Bands and non-profits have a few interesting things in common. The first is that they’re often started by someone who is extremely passionate about something. The second is that the term “non-profit” is useful in referring to them. And the third is that the person that started them is often so convinced of the value of what they’re doing that they forget that the world doesn’t really give a damn what they think. Having worked with both, and having also worked on developing more “businessy” businesses, I’ve seen both how businesses fail by acting like bands, and bands fail by failing to act like businesses. I’ll be touching on ideas for treating your band like a business in a separate piece, but something worth asking yourself is the reverse – is your business like a band? The ability to blast ahead simply because you’re passionate about something is the very foundation of successful entrepeneurship. But do you treat your venture as some brilliant creation, convinced that someday its genius will be discovered, making you millions? Maybe it’s time to see how your business “charts”. If it were a pop song, where would it be on the Billboard Top 100? And if you even said “99″, is that really even close to true, or are you stuck back in the dreamy-eyed “visioning” stage that inspired you at the outset? One acid-test would be to look around yourself right now. Are there a bunch of sycophants surrounding you, trying to get on your good side so they can get a backstage pass into your methods? Were you written up in Fortune this week? Are you reading this as you fly in your private jet to a tropical getaway? In an upcoming piece, we’ll talk about about scheduled assessments are a crucial part of even the smallest, simplest freelance business. We’ll probably have a quick meeting about it first though.

When To Say Yes To Saying No

There are lots of situations in which it’s okay to say no, and some in which it’s actually quite beneficial. First we’re going to talk about saying no as positive self-preservation, and then we’ll talk about saying no as a necessity of consumer-driven modern life. If, like me, you’re a person who has a reasonable amount of compassion and even a slightly giving nature, you’ll understand varying degrees of the “self-destructive helper” behavior. What we’re referring to here is of course the “let me drop everything I’m doing and fix your problem for you” phenomena. This is probably the most easily identifiable form of what we’re talking about. It takes a lot of other forms, but we’re going to use one real-world example, and then explore why it’s really a bigger problem than it seems, and talk about some solutions.

The Computer Guy

For me personally, this takes an amusing form that the more computer-savvy amongst you may be familiar with. Or maybe you’re on the other end of things, and are one of the self-proclaimed “Dummies” that all those books are aimed at. In any case, I work a lot at a computer, and have taught myself how to do things I need to do, like using a word processing program, basic image editing, and simpler aspects of web design. I have no programming skills, and limited hardware knowledge, but whom do all my friends call when they have a computer problem? Yup. And why do they do it? It’s partly their misconceptions about what I know, but it’s more because they know I’m patient and helpful. But over time, this free help desk service of mine became time consuming and distracting. I needed a solution.

Humor as a Tool for Positive Change

When I realized how big a problem this might be a few years ago, I at first relied on humor. With repeat offenders, I’d yuck it up saying “It’s funny how if you know a plumber, you’d never call him and say ‘hey, I have some free time this weekend, why don’t you come over and work on my septic field’, but if you know a computer guy, you have no qualms about saying ‘hey, I’ve got some time this evening, can you come over and help me re-install Windows?’ “. This was actually pretty effective, but then there were the friends that committed something more like ongoing misdemeanors, like calling and saying “hey, I can’t open this email attachment” or “Damn, I’ve been trying to fix this Word document for like 15 minutes, can you take a look at it?” With these people, I also used a little humor. An old tech support joke is to say “Did you try the RTFM Protocol?” That of course is an acronym for “Read The Freakin’ Manual”. I’d then patiently and politely instruct them to see if their program had a little bar at the top that featured the word “Help”. I’d walk them through how to use it. It’s AMAZING how many people don’t use the “Help” files provided with all major software products. And how quickly people tend to give up when confronted with problems. And that’s the real issue here.

How Saying Yes Can Do Damage

So we’ve kept things on a slightly amusing note here, but the little anecdotes above should make evident what the problem really is. While being helpful is a great quality, being lazy isn’t. And a motivated, helpful person is likely to attract a lot of under-motivated, needy people. Not BAD people, just people who haven’t figured out some of the more fun parts of the game of life by meeting simple challenges and growing from the experience. So the fact is, there are several basic problems that can arise by not knowing when to say “no”:

• You’re probably adding unnecessary stress to your own experience
• You’re preventing the person you’re helping from building simple self-reliance
• You’re probably doing this out of some sense of guilt that you might want to resolve.

Like we said, being helpful is a great quality, but a simple indicator of whether or not you’re providing “good” help is whether or not you feel stressed out by doing it. If you ARE feeling stressed out by doing it, the first thing is to learn to recognize this feeling, and then learn that it really is okay to say “no” when you need to. And it’s helpful to have language for doing this, because it’s easy to sound hostile, dismissive, or uncaring when someone asks for help and you deny them. We’re not going to get into that “guilt thing” we mentioned above, it’s beyond the scope of what we’re addressing here. But here are a few commonly suggested ideas for how to say no:

Language For Saying No

Be positive, THEN say no. Stay calm, and say something like “Wow, I know how frustrating that can be. I wish I could help, but [INSERT PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE REASON. THERE ARE MANY]. The real problem is often that we’re simply too harried ourselves, and respond with bristliness and frustration. Which doesn’t feel very good on either end.

Be positive, then DEFER. Sometimes, it’s entirely possible that you would LIKE to help, but the timing is bad. Find out if the problem can be addressed later, and plan a time to do it. Often the person with the problem just needed a break so they could reframe things, and in the interim they figure it out anyway! If not, no hard feelings are generated either way.

Be positive, and then PASS THE BUCK. One of the worst kinds of help is when a SECOND person who doesn’t know what they’re doing gets involved with a problem. Know your abilities, and repress your inner know-it-all. Tell them you have NO IDEA how to tackle the problem, and then ask aloud “Hmmm, I wonder if we know anybody who actually knows how to do this?”

Saying No To Salespeople, Charities, and Strangers

Modern consumer-driven life has really become ugly. The most effective salespeople and telemarketers know that shame, guilt, and persistence are their most powerful tools. Shame, with the implication that somehow you can’t afford something; guilt, used as a tool by pushing the limits of your basic courtesy and decency; and persistence, in the form of mindlessly plodding forward as if you never said no. There’s a simple rule I rely on here, and I am unbending in its application. Be courteous and polite until the other party violates the ground rules of courteous interaction. Then detachedly terminate the interaction. Here’s a typical example, with a little flourish for those of you who feel compelled to be more expressive. Recently a Comcast salesman came to my door. The exchange went something like this:

LOUD, AGGRESSIVE KNOCKING AT DOOR (Already a violation of courtesy)
I answer the door, and the sales guy jumps right in:
“Hi, I’m with Comcast, and we’re offering some great specials including free installation!”
I reply calmly:
“Thanks, but I don’t like television, and am already quite pleased with my internet service”
He continues:
“Really? Comcast has the fastest, most affordable internet service around, what service are you with?”
You see, at this point, he’s already blown it. Rude knocking, ignoring what I said and plodding on. And then being JUST PLAIN NOSY.
I said:
“Wow, you’re really rude. Thanks, I’m not interested, but good luck.”
He started another sales pitch so I said:
“I wish your rudeness weren’t forcing me to close the door in your face.”
He actually started another pitch.
DOOR SLOWLY CLOSES AS COMCAST GUY KEEPS TALKING

I pondered asking him how much it sucks to have such a crappy job, annoying people like me all evening, but I don’t know how effective it is to try to expand people’s awareness. For instance, an acquaintance of mine has a lot of patterned responses to panhandlers. One of them is to say “Would I be walking to work right now if I had money to give to YOU?” Clearly, that’s neither kind nor productive. But on occasion I’ll actually turn the tables on a salesman or telemarketer, and ask them if they love what they do, or if circumstance drove them to it. If they clarify that they ENJOY being obnoxious and aggressive, that’s one thing, but occasionally a quick human chat lets the other person apologize while sharing their frustration. Mostly though, I think this strategy is more about our own ego, so I generally just leave it in the “courteous response and closure” framework. So in the end, saying no is really quite simple. Just make sure you’re clear on why you’re saying no, and then do it politely, without excuses, and without hostility. That hostility usually just comes from our OWN sense of being overwhelmed, so just remember to nip it in the bud. And if you need to delay the answer in order to compose yourself, just say “Maybe, but let me get right back to you”. Gather your wits, get back to them, and say NO.

Some of you may still struggle with this. Here’s a permission slip:

I don’t mean that you have to work before you can go snowboarding – I think we all understand that we have to work before we can play, even if we don’t always like it. What I’m talking about is the idea that whatever you set out to do, there are going to be obstacles and delays on the way to success.

I ran into this the other day when I wanted to install base moldings in my new martial arts school. My architect wanted me to use plywood made from bamboo. It’s expensive, I really like it. But before I could nail the moldings into place, I had to order the plywood, receive it, cut it into strips, sand it, apply a finish, and cut it to length. The whole project took me four days, but actually installing the molding only took the last half of the last day.

Only 10% is the “good stuff”

If it sounds like I’m complaining, that’s because I am …. a little. But what I’m really trying to do is point out something that happens in virtually every significant activity, and that’s this: planning, preparation, and problems are often 90 percent of the projects we do. And if we ignore this truth, we’re doomed to be frustrated and often doomed to fail. On the flip side, if we recognize this at the start of a project, we’re much better prepared to move forward.

Three things you can do

Here are three things you can do to get ready for all the stuff that gets in the way of the things you want to do:

1. Hire a professional

2. Plan

3. Mentally prepare

Hire a professional

If you have the means to hire professionals, they are usually much better prepared to deal with the stuff that has to be done along the way. They have the tools, the knowledge, and the experience to either avoid the obstacles or deal with them along the way.

Of course, you still have to find the right person for the job, and if you aren’t aware of the obstacles that can arise in your project, you will probably underestimate how long it’s going to take him to get it done.

So, even if you do hire a professionals, you still have to plan and mentally prepare.

Plan … but not too much

It won’t surprise you when I say that planning means learning as much as you can about your task in advance, and figuring out the most efficient way to proceed. I’m a big advocate of planning, but if you read my other post on thewellnessaddict.com, you’ll know I’m a bigger advocate of taking action … BIG action. I know way too many people who never get started because they’re always working on their plans. So even though you should plan your projects, I think mental preparation is the single most important thing you can do to help you get through the stuff that gets in the way of the things you want to do.

Half of preparation is 100% mental

If you haven’t heard me say “attitude is everything,” then I haven’t said it often enough or loud enough. Attitude is everything!

Or almost everything. And attitude when starting new tasks can be really, really important. The most successful people I know are those who start projects with these attitudes: (1) they WILL succeed; (2) there WILL be problems, obstacles, and detours; and (3) they WILL persevere despite the problems, obstacles, and detours. Just going into a task with these three attitudes can make a huge difference in the outcome.

And in a funny way, mental preparation for the problems, pitfalls, and predicaments can be a very important part of planning. If you expect a problem and are prepared to deal with it, whatever it might be, you’ll be far better prepared and not nearly so discouraged by it.

So definitely dream about your desires. Dream big, and picture your goals clearly and in great detail. Then, when you know exactly what you want, think about where things can go wrong. That’s the stuff that’s going to get in the way of the things you want to do. Whatever you do, don’t let that stuff discourage you! You’ll get through it if you’ve planned and prepared, and you’ll be smiling at the other end.

Building a Better Fork

The fact is that – aside from possibly having an actual chemical imbalance that may require professional treatment – when we feel like our plate is too full, we’re probably just using the wrong utensils, or our “eyes are bigger than our stomach” as the old saying goes. Part of the problem is often that once you’re bumped up into some level of stress, there’s a good possibility that your mental faculties are slightly impaired, and the effect can snowball a little, so that things that are actually very manageable seem in our mind to be an un-tameable monster. We’ll discuss more sophisticated forks in a future piece, but one simple tool that I turn to myself on occasion, and that I’ve shared with others numerous times with instant results is what I call the Breakdown Scale. If you have a big ball of confusion in your head right now, grab a pen and paper and try the simple method below.

The Breakdown Scale

First, without prioritizing or trying to order things, list the things that are eating at you. Second, we’re going to use a scale where zero is no stress at all, and ten is a figurative nervous breakdown. Go through the list, and try to honestly assess how stress-inducing each item is. There’s nothing scientific here, but you may notice a couple of things right away. The first is that once you externalize these items, before you even score them, you may notice that the hurricane in your head was really only three or four things, and simply writing them down alleviated half of the stress and confusion. Another thing that you may notice – especially if you really DO have a lot going on – is that if ten is a nervous breakdown, the total of all the individual items could easily be over twenty, depending on the highly subjective nature of the scoring we’re doing here. So first, let’s talk about the scoring, and then we’ll touch on what to do with the numbers. As we said, this is highly subjective, so for one person, something like moving to a new home can be a 9 or 10 by itself, while for another person, moving is simply time and work, with little stress attached at all, and may be only a 2 or 3. The same applies to lots of things in life. We all find different things stressful.

What To Do With These Numbers

Well, if you only had two or three items on your list, and the scores were similar, just arbitrarily pick one item to tackle, do as much as you can about it, and whatever you CAN’T do anything about, make an achievable task list for the item, and LET IT GO for now. Then do the same with the other item or items. If your list was a little more elaborate, we’ll apply the same principle. Here’s an example I’ve recreated from memory from years ago when I learned to use this method. I was changing jobs, was in an unhealthy relationship, and was in the process of moving to a new city as well! My head was a frantic but undefinable mass of mental flotsam and jetsam. I was PARALYZED. Here’s roughly how I scored the list: Moving 8 Relationship 12 (yes, this is cheating for dramatic effect) New Job 5

Using A Fork & Knife In Unison

That’s a pretty darn short list to make someone crazy in the head, right? Simply looking at the list and the numbers immediately gave me a framework to operate within though, and an opportunity for a little humor. Of COURSE I was freaking out; my “Breakdown Scale” was at 25! I was in double-breakdown mode! The reality was that looking at the short list and the simple numbers gave me a start. Yes, from a subjective point of view the relationship score was off the scale, and yes, even if I were less dramatic in the scoring, I’d still be over ten. But what it helped me realize was that I needed to carve this big rump-roast of trouble into bite-size pieces. “Moving” was like a big piece of meat in itself. I needed to slice it into little bites like “call utility companies”, “buy more boxes”, and “take items to Goodwill”, all of which are quite easy to swallow, and can be paced over several meals. The “Relationship” score was off the scale because relationships can be like open buffets, pot lucks, or all-out food fights. It depends on what the parties are bringing to the table. I realized that with that item, I needed to sit down and discuss the menu with my dining partner before I even knew what the score really was. So how do we tackle such a wide variety of things with justs lists and numbers? With logic and and common sense. And more food metaphors to keep it amusing for ourselves.

Creating Bite Size Pieces, and Making a Diet Plan

The way to approach this list has two simple rules:

• Small achievable items first
• Break big items into little items

Nibble at the appetizer or small salad before you tackle the entrees. Make sure to clear the table and take your time between courses. If some item on your plate is unwieldy and keeps sliding around, maybe you shouldn’t be eating so fast! Put it into a to-go box and snack on it later. If you know how big your plate really is, and how big a meal you’re tackling, pretty soon you’ll be in the Clean Plate Club with no signs of indigestion at all.

Are you more motivated by charity than by greed?

I just finished reading a really interesting book. It’s called Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior The authors are Ori and Rom Brafman, and I highly recommend it. These guys make some surprising points about the way our irrational sides undercut our rational decision making. One part of the book that really stayed with me was about how altruism and avarice compete for our attention. Almost all of us are sometimes giving and sometimes greedy, and it’s really tough to be both at the same time.

They tell a great story about Switzerland, I think it was. The government wanted to store nuclear waste near a certain town, and they wanted to find out the best way to present it to the townspeople. So they commissioned a study that asked half the people a question designed to appeal to their altruistic side, and half the people a question designed to appeal to their avaricious side.

Radiation – It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

The first question was something like this: Your country needs a place to store nuclear waste, and we want you to help. Would you be willing to support your country by agreeing to let us store the waste near your town?

The second questions was something like this: Your country needs a place to store nuclear waste, and we want you to help. Would you be willing to agree to let us store the waste near your town in return for a payment of $2,500?

You might think a lot more people would want to get paid for the “privilege” of having nuclear waste stored nearby. But the truth is, the percentage of people who agreed when they were asked to volunteer in order to help their country was a lot higher than the percentage of people who agreed when they were offered money.

People are Basically Good …. Unless They’re Greedy

And the authors said that this kind of thing happens a lot. They talked about some studies that showed that when people make altruistic decisions, one part of their brains activate, and when they make decisions based on personal gain, a different part of their brains activate. They also explained that it’s almost impossible for both the altruism center and the avarice center to activate at the same time. And what’s really surprising is that altruism may be a better motivator than greed!

Would You Buy a Used Car to Save the Planet?

If this is true, it could have a profound effect on marketing strategies. Maybe if you’re a marketing expert you already know this, but based on what the Brafmans said, it’s going to be critical to make sure your marketing and sales materials appeal only to one side of your customers’ minds – either the giving side or the greedy side.  And if I’m right about this, your advertising dollar might be a lot better spent appealing to the giving side. I’m planning to do a lot more research on this idea, and I’ll try to write a column about it when I find out what data is available.

But here’s a point that’s a lot more important if you’re into personal development. You may be a lot “better” person that you think you are. Do you know if you’re motivated more by a good cause than by a good paycheck? Would an appeal to your inner St. Vincent de Paul be more likely to succeed than an offer to your inner Gordon Gecko?

When you Absolutely, Positively Have to Get Something Done

Here’s one way you might be able to find out – take some time to imagine a high-stakes situation similar to the nuclear waste example I pointed out earlier. Would you, really, truly, be more likely to agree to accept a risky or difficult situation if you thought you were helping out your country, your church, your family, or your company? When you put yourself in the shoes of the Swiss townspeople in the story who were offered money, did you do a mental calculation like I did … “Jeez, they want me to put myself, my family, and my neighbors at risk for a lousy $2,500. They’re gonna have to do a lot better than that!”

If you can figure out what approach works better for you, you’ve got a very powerful leverage tool for following through on personal development challenges. If there’s something you want to do or you’ve been meaning to do but just can’t get yourself started, why not take some time to figure out what would motivate you better to get started – personal gain or some benefit to your community. Take some time to write out a list of the reasons to do it and put the altruistic reasons in one column and the avaricious reasons in another column. When you can clearly see which column motivates you better, re-read that column several times. For each entry, visualize how it’s going to feel to attain the reward when you succeed. Make the visualization part of your daily routine, and I bet in a few weeks your desire is going to be very strong! I bet almost nothing will stand in the way of you taking the steps you need to reach your goal.

Remember – don’t just do something, DO SOMETHING! Get started today, pair up your goals with rewards that really get you passionate about achieving. And please let me know how it turns out for you. I think it’s going to be fantastic!

I got reminded of an important business concept this morning at a meeting with one of my young business mentors. His name is James Snider and he has great insight into all things business. If you want someone to review your business from beginning to end who can focus on the financials better than almost anyone I’ve met, get hold of James at On The Top Management.

Anyway, James and I were reviewing the website for one of my businesses, and we started talking about obstacles for potential new clients. He pointed out that you need to have a very clear idea of what action you want your web visitors to take, and that anything that slows them down or prevents them from taking that action should be gotten rid of. I couldn’t agree more, and if you want a really fun read on this topic, pick up Seth Godin’s book The Big Red Fez, which I’ve mentioned before. It’s all about making sure the monkey (your web visitor) knows exactly how to find the banana (the button or other action tool you want your visitor to push). But for now, let’s focus on getting rid of obstacles.

Let’s use the website for a martial arts school as an example. As a dojo (martial arts school) owner, I know I always want to show my visitors how cool our school is – our cool facility, our extraordinary instructors, our history, and the amazing techniques some of our people can do. But James suggested that most people who want to start martial arts probably have a lot more basic concerns.Some of the issues he suggested were:

How do I get to the dojo?

Is it hard to find?

I’m nervous about going in by myself.

What class should I go to watch?

Will it be scary?

If he’s right about these concerns, then all the pictures and video of cool techniques might actually work against us. Brand new people who visit the site would be frightened by dramatic throws instead of reassured by how easy and safe the dojo looks. And our research shows that he is right for most potential new students.

In the larger world of business, you can see this process get played out again and again. Auto makers who show their cars in racing scenes and who emphasize horsepower are targeting a certain segment of the car-buying market, but they are also missing out when it comes to appealing to car buyers with more pedestrian concerns. On the other hand, Saturn went a long way toward capturing the buyers who just wanted a reasonably priced vehicle without having to go through the haggling process. There’s also a lot to be said for car makers who offer an online ordering process – potential purchasers can assemble the car of their dreams, trying out different feature packages and paintjobs, and they don’t have to actually place an order until they’re quite sure of what they want.

Just about every business could benefit from this “get out of the way” analysis. James manages a very successful import repair facility in Ann Arbor, and they do a better job of making non-car people comfortable than just about any auto shop I’ve ever visited. At the same time, customers have to drive into what is unquestionably a repair shop, with all the attendant noises, smells, and rough looking guys with greasy hands. I know all the guys there, and they are very nice people, but a timid client might still be intimidated by the atmosphere. It’s just possible that if James could figure out how to make the place look and feel like a department store, he might win the business of the least car-savvy clients.

Anyway, a great thing to do for any business is to have an objective person look at your website and your client intake process and tell you about anything that seems confusing or frightening, or anything that takes customers away from the clear purpose of enrolling them in your sales process. You can then make a much more educated decision about where to focus your attention. I guarantee it!