Simple Knowledge
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If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
Thomas Watson, entrepreneur.
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Sit back and listen
When you’re working with people, remember that they are the most important people in their world. Listen to them. Pay attention to them. Care about them.
This one little effort will win you countless friends. It will help you succeed in negotiations and confrontations. It will allow you to build powerful relationships that can grow into beautiful partnerships.
I once watched my father enter a meeting where each person was seething with hatred. An hour later, they all emerged as friends, with business priorities in order. What did my father do? He sat there and listened to each person as if they were the most important person in the meeting. One after another, they all felt content that their opinions were heard. And that was enough.
Try it today with 4 people. Keep count. See how well you can listen today (7min). Bonus points if you smile :)
Let me know how it goes by reaching out to me on Twitter. I promise I’ll listen to you.
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Time is all we have
I sat down, thinking to myself, “What am I going to work on tonight?”
That single thought led me down a stream of relentless self-analysis of what I was doing with my life.
I have at least 20 exciting projects I am working on. Of those, half are really exciting.
But then I take a look back at the projects I’ve left unfinished. Wave after wave of depression kicks in as I realize that so many projects have failed. Plenty never reached a satisfactory completion.
I’m reminded of Dustin Curtis’ entry on his creative gap. I set the bar so high for myself, that I can never accomplish my work to the quality I want it. It’s incredibly frustrating.
It’s interesting that the source of my internal battle lies buried in something as innocuous as “taste”. For most people, taste is just the basis of opinion. It describes the point at which something flips from being “not good enough” to “ok, decent”. But for creative people, it’s something different. Taste is everything. It is what drives us. It is the definition of success, the ceiling of what is possible, and the source of everlasting internal frustration. Being creative is a battle fought over the slow conversion of a mere idea into something tangible that you think is great. The question is: When do you stop the conversion process?
Is it possible to find motivation to move forward? How do you move past this wall?
I know how.
It’s by remembering that time is all we have.
The paradox of time is that when we feel like we have a lot of it, we realize how little remains. When life seems too short, it is possible to sit back and realize how much time we have.
My friend Micah touched on the subject of mindfulness in his most recent blog post. Small meditations can lead to substantial benefits:
[…] I cycle through ideas more quickly, make decisions more emphatically, and more importantly, am willing to stand in the firehose of social media and let the majority of it pass me by.
With mindfulness comes an absolute focus. Try it. You’ll be surprised at how much a 5-minute (that’s 300 seconds) break can do for you.
Seriously, go take 5. When you get back, reach out to me on Twitter and share with me how you feel!
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Repetition cures disbelief
Repeating a statement doesn’t make it true, but it can certainly make it believable. If repeated often enough, a false message can be perceived as true.
Advertisers are often effective at changing beliefs and attitudes about products and brands. This is why you see the same advertisement (or at least the same prominent message) repeated over and over. It works.
Think of Coke. Now think about drinking an ice cold Coke.
Refreshingly delicious, happiness, joy, and awesome cuddly polar bears!!
See?
Apply this to your startup. Deliver a very focused message and deliver it often.
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Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
Steve Jobs, entrepreneur and inventor.
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They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol, visual communicator.
