Productivity

Day to Day / Glitter / Productivity / Psychology / Stories / Talks & Recordings / Thinking like a Slayer — 5 Comments
12
Mar 13

Curing the Lie of the Big Win (and the Big Fail)

We’re surrounded by the stories — the mytharc, if you will — of The Big Win. (Also the Big Fail.) “Twitter succeeded because…” “I failed because…”

I’m here to tell you: That’s largely a load of crap.

If you want to know why — and if you want to know how I succeed at so many things people said would never work — you want to watch this video. It’s short (12 minutes) and it’s awesome.

It’s nominally about habits, but it’s really about the stories we tell ourselves, and why they make us fail.

(PS — this is a lesson straight outta the new 30×500. Why am I giving it away for free? Because everybody needs it.)


Did you recognize yourself in this video? Did you spot stories that you hear every day?

If so, you have three things to do right now:

  1. Rush out and buy The Power of Habit. And actually read it. And take notes. Seriously. This book is worth every single penny and every single moment you will spend devouring it.
  2. Drop your email in the box below, because I will be sending out the next video (and other awesome free content) and you really don’t want to miss out.
  3. Try the assignment: dechunk 3 of your every day routines. Then leave your instructions for a day or two, and read them. Try to follow them. See all the stuff you left out. Oops! This is the stuff that habits growth is made out of.

Get the next video in this series for free, straight to your inbox:


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Productivity / Psychology — 2 Comments
19
Aug 12

Parenting Yourself: You Suck At It?

Context for the quote below: the “both situations” are a parent who tells a child “You must do your homework,” and a parent who sits down and takes on an equal role as the child.

In both situations parents are using control, in the first case behavioral (sit down, do your math) and in the second psychological (“we’re applying.”) It is psychological control that carries with it a textbook’s worth of damage to a child’s developing identity. If pushing, direction, motivation and reward always come from the outside, the child never has the opportunity to craft an inside.

— Raising Successful Children, NYT

Wordsworth wrote, more or less, that the child fathers the man.

My own experience is more that we have to parent ourselves, since nobody else seems to be doing the job. Certainly we are our own gatekeepers, since we are always the first to rubber-stamp our own excuses.

I think pretty much my entire blacksmithing essay is about the staggeringly awful results of pushing, direction, motivation and reward always coming from the outside, and the internal emptiness & spoiled brat stompy-ness that results.

And when all that drama results in not achieving what we (claim to) want? What then?

A loving parent is warm, willing to set limits and unwilling to breach a child’s psychological boundaries by invoking shame or guilt. Parents must acknowledge their own anxiety.

— Raising Successful Children, NYT

So.

Which type of control — behavior, or psychological — do you apply to yourself?

Do you invoke shame and guilt?

Do you parent yourself badly?

We tend to do to ourselves what others once did to us. Which obviously didn’t work all that great, or we wouldn’t be here discussing it.

Time for a program change, perhaps.

Lifestyle / Productivity — 14 Comments
4
Jun 12

Why I Love Running My Bacon Biz

NewImage

Just a quick list of reasons I’m grateful to own & run my own totally bootstrapped, customer-funded business:

  • We take vacation whenever we want…
  • …and for as long as we want, with an hour or two daily work, max (often less!)
  • We choose who to work with
  • We set our own hours
  • We can work from anywhere
  • We can decide how profitable we want to be
  • We can decide how big we want to grow, and how we’ll get there
  • I can take 3 months of unexpected sick leave…
  • … and our business can be dialed back to maintenance mode and still bring in about $40,000 a month on autopilot
  • We can choose what “corporate” benefits to provide ourselves
  • We have the freedom to shitcan projects which aren’t working, or start new ones, as we see fit
  • We can easily afford to work on passion projects which aren’t the most profitable use of our time
  • We can spin up a workshop or infoproduct to bring in $10-25k of money on short notice, if we want or need to (one of the most amazing things)
  • We get to choose the mixture of growth vs hours worked, growth vs luxuries, etc., which makes us productive and happy, from month to month
  • We can afford to donate a significant percentage of our income to charities we believe in
  • We get to interact with happy customers every day
  • We are empowered to please unhappy customers, or ignore them, as we see fit
  • We have no do-or-die deadlines. We get to choose our own pace, and if things get screwed up because of health surprises or the need to dial back… that’s okay.
  • We can take risks.

And the awesomeness that comes in the negative form:

  • We don’t owe anyone money
  • We don’t share ownership of our company with anyone
  • We don’t have to consult anyone other than each other, no matter how big the decision is
  • No one can tell us what to do on a day to day basis, or any macro level
  • No individual customer is big enough to hold sway over us
  • We never have to compromise our beliefs to earn money — ever
  • We can never be fired
  • We can never be replaced
  • We can never be forced to sell
  • We can never be forced to hire someone we don’t like

Until you’ve experienced it first-hand, you can’t understand just how radical this freedom & security is. I sure didn’t.

It’s easy to fail to take advantage of this radical freedom, due to anxiety or fear. I know because not only have I seen my friends fail this way, I failed this way too.

For a while, we didn’t take good advantage of the freedoms it provides (except for our yearly month-long vacation). But we learned.

We set vacation goals. (Our goal: work semi-regular 4-day weeks, 8 hours or less a day, take fully 3 mos of vacation a year.)

We just decided to take low six figures out of the business to buy a house, after a couple years of minimizing our personal draws in the interest of growth.

We’ve learned & are learning to outsource this and that.

We started to grow by adding employees, but we realized it wasn’t right for us, and we stopped, & took it back to being just us + freelancers. We are hiring contractors & forging partnerships to grow the way in a way that makes us happy.

If tomorrow, we decided we don’t want to, for example, bust our butts to get Charm out the door (finally), we don’t have to. We can shut it down. There are no consequences. We put only our own money into it. We are free to do as we please.

And simply having that power, that freedom, means that we won’t feel like we have to kill it.

It’s amazing how many of our desperate desires are in reaction to things we feel required to do. What a difference it makes when you realize you don’t have to.

Sure, it took a lot of hard work… for a year or two. But because we made smart choices, and used our effort wisely, here we are. As long as we don’t completely sit on our butts, we’re set.

I can’t express how amazing that feels.

But as long as I can write, I’ll keep trying to spread the message.

Productivity — 6 Comments
9
May 12

Sexy, simple calendars for your biz planning needs

Thomas and I are trying to get our shit together. Which is to say, we’re dreadfully disorganized, suck at habits, and routine, and not only is it making us irritating but it’s starting to affect our business.

Bummer.

Traditionally people like us (and, okay, us) try to patch this problem with software. But you can’t solve a social problem with software, and the same goes for personal problems.

Ever tried software deodorant? Yeahhhh, like that.

Paper, it’s the coming thing in planningville.

Entré these awesome planners by Charlie Gilkey. These (and Charlie’s coaching) have been a great help.

But they don’t include a calendar. And I desperately wanted a calendar. A clean, sexy, minimalist calendar without all the chart junk.

A calendar I could use to play Don’t Break the Chain and other fun things.

So I made one.

And now I’m sharing it with you.

Download my sexy clean calendar

May – December 2012, PDF, with blanks for writing new months.

Pages template – Monthly, work week only.

Pages template – Monthly, 7 days.

Fonts used: Archer (good free alternate would be Copse) and Governor.

Productivity Trick for Creating New Months

I figured out how to create new months in a really efficient way. Check it out:

Let’s get better together

I’m going to keep working on this stuff… in public. Just as I bared my soul about why I can’t remember to brush my teeth but I can run a business.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m no Planning Polly. I’m a creative, chaotic spaz, who’s always told herself that she works better under pressure (and does her best work at the last minute).

Which should make for fun reading. (Or embarrassing reading. Whichever.)

My theory goes, though… if it works for me, maybe it’ll work for you, too. Especially if you’d also self-describe as creative & chaotic, if you feel like you rely on deadline bombs to get anything done, if you think you need to live & work in a pressure cooker to achieve anything.

Want to join me? Follow me on Twitter or get my blog posts by email so you won’t miss a thing.

Hard Work / Productivity / Slaying Unicorns — 16 Comments
19
Jul 10

Happy Burnout

It’s Happy! It’s Burnout! It’s… Happy Burnout! (cc sizumaru)

I love the controlled chaos of entrepreneurship. I love writing, marketing, scheming, reaching out to people. I’m a pop-outta-bed kinda girl, always looking forward to the big adventure.

Except lately.

Lately, there are days when I just can’t muster up the energy to choose what to tackle. Lately, when I sit down to write, it feels like a funeral dirge, not a jig. Lately, there are days when I can’t stomach the idea of adventure at all.

The confounding thing is, everything’s going so well. I could barely ask for more. I’m electrified, joyful, and glad… and very clearly burnt out.

Yes, folks, that’s right — I’ve got a bad case of Happy Burnout. Burnout caused by, as it were, an excess of awesome.

Happy Burnout Happens

As a stoic workaholic, believe me, I know burnout. Burnout knocks me on my ass, makes me wanna scream “screw you!” to the world, drop all obligations and go into hiding.

But not Happy Burnout. Happy Burnout looks different, and feels different.

Any questions? (cc mike9alive, curt deatherage)

Burn yourself out on things you love, on intrinsic motivation rather than external obligation, and the core symptoms will be similar — listlessness, disinterestedness, lack of creativity. But the psychological icing is a different flavor altogether.

With Happy Burnout, there’s no rotten, spiraling self-talk. You don’t hear that venal little whisper to damn it all to hell. For me, at least, that voice only appears when I’m doing work I shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

Happy Burnout hard to spot, for that reason, and these:

  • Happy Burnout lacks vicious and destructive thoughts
  • Happy Burnout can arrive one hour, and leave the next
  • Happy Burnout leaves you very functional, most of the time
  • Happy Burnout sneaks in, rather than announcing itself with a crash
  • Happy Burnout leaves you puzzled why you don’t want to do the things you love

Happy Burnout is different.

Happy Burnout is a sneaky little bastard

Regular old familiar burnout is like a game of One More Thing KABOOM!.

Suddenly, a client asks for one more thing… one more thing goes wrong… one more thing piled on… and it all comes tumbling down. Kaboooom!

Happy Burnout is One More Thing — hold the Kaboom.

You can imagine how this change in pattern disrupts your coping strategies. Or, at least, disrupts mine, because typically, I skirt burnout, waiting for that big kaboom, feeling it build up. So I’ve been chugging along happily, taking on big, lofty goals — and when things went well, with no blow-up pre-shocks, I took on more.

No kaboom. Never a kaboom.

I was waiting for an advanced notice, but it never came. Even my stress level didn’t seem noteworthy. I was enjoying it.

Entré the sneaky little bastard.

Happy Burn-Out looks (and feels!) like great success, like everything’s going just right… up until the point where it isn’t. But then it can get better again. Until it isn’t (again).

I’m in it now, and I can tell you that it sucks. I’m overjoyed one hour, and totally whatever the next.

That’s nothing like Angry Burnout, where I was furious at all the external obligations, and the people associated with them. It’s nothing like Rebellious Burnout, where I want to tell the whole world, “Fuck you — I want off!”

And it wasn’t even Constant Burnout, where I was totally incapable of getting into anything, ever.

Happy Burnout can come in waves, alternating even minute by minute.

I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.

A Recipe for Happy Burnout

Here’s a foolproof way to create Happy Burnout, a recipe I can guarantee since it’s worked so well for me:

  • work late into the night
  • work on weekends
  • crash every few weeks and veg — instead of taking true breaks
  • withdraw from friends because you are busy and/or apathetic
  • travel a lot
  • take on a lot of different types of projects at once, e.g. building a new product and also remaking your apartment
  • take the “I’m sick!” messages from your body literally — you have an infection, not a stress problem

And, finally, the last, most critical step:

  • really love what you’re doing

Because it’s this last one that changes Rebellious Burnout, Angry Burnout, Constant Burnout into Happy Burnout.

Happy Burnout can only come about when you really enjoy your work. When your work fires you up — and burns you to a crisp.

I’m not special, and neither are you

I thought burnout was a thing of the past for me, because external obligations that made me sick were a thing of the past for me. (Well, except tax prep.)

Heck, we’d even just hired an intern — and a crackin’ good one at that. We had help. I was different. I wasn’t making the mistake that other entrepreneurs make. And I was only doing what I loved.

Yep… my work has been passionate, autonomous, intrinsically motivated, emotionally rewarding, and aligned with my Core Values.

And therefore, I thought I was immune to burnout. I thought I was different.

Bet you’ve never heard that one before.

What to do about it

Well, I’m not totally out of the woods yet, but I can tell you what’s helped me so far:

Not working all the damn time… Or working all the time, and spending all of the rest of the time with friends, or on other projects, or consuming media.

… Even if you love it.

I started taking weekends off, almost by accident, and wow, what a difference. I can feel the Happy Burnout symptoms fading away, and I’m excited to write again, and scheme again, instead of throwing up my hands.

Tearing yourself away from work you love is hard. Trust me, I know. I’m great at avoiding work I don’t love, and very, very bad at avoiding work I do love.

But you know that phrase, “Find the work you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Clearly that’s not the case: Work is work. It uses up our ability to think critically and manage ourselves… even if we enjoy it.

I’ve certainly learned that even if it feels like I’m “never working a day in my life,” I still need to take the weekend off.

Are you in Happy Burnout?

Or have you been? Please chime in. I want to hear about it. If we share our experiences, we’re all that much richer and better prepared for it.

I’d love to hear…

  • what got you into Happy Burnout
  • what it felt like, how you realized it for what it was
  • what you did to counteract it
  • how that worked
  • what you’re doing differently now