Striving is winning

strive: 1.) make great efforts to achieve or obtain something. 2.) struggle or fight vigorously.

It’s hard to talk about being okay with losing when you made a good effort and still lost. Winning is important, but if you let the result be the primary motivator, you will soon lose all motivation.

We must find a way to consider striving for the good result the win in and of itself. If the good thing happens after you have strived, that is just a bonus. The striving after some good thing is the win.

This is advice that goes back to Biblical times. The apostle Paul talks about pressing toward the mark, a high calling. He talks about running in a race where only one will win, but there is good in the man that "striveth for the mastery."

This ancient advice is nearly 2,000 years old! It’s still true to this day. Strive, pursue, make a good effort and be happy with that. To strive is to win. The one who learns to strive toward his goal, and be content with it, is the one who wins every single time. Strive.

The honest man’s crime and the vile hypocrite

When the honest man is caught in some crime, he meekly confesses his part in the matter and (hopefully) turns away from doing the bad thing again.

When the hypocrite is caught in some crime (particularly what they have been so quick to judge in others) they never admit to wrong-doing, but they always clothe their evil and crimes with some honest presence or pretended good reason. So the hypocrite has been regarded throughout history as the vilest person.

Fear, sadness, and anger

Fear prevents us from getting started. So learn to start when you’re afraid.

Sadness stops us in our tracks. So practice containing sadness when it starts to become overwhelming.

Anger sparks in us the propensity to make bad decisions. So work to control anger and never let it simmer for long periods.

Getting better at writing

Lately, I’ve been mailing in my blog posts here. They’ve all been written very last minute and just a shotgun blast of whatever happens to be on my mind that morning.

I try to commit to some improvement in my writing every few months. I’ve talked about building more traditional story structures and making my blog posts shorter. Not only have I not been doing either of those things, but I also have not been investing more than 5-10 minutes each day in my writing.

The writing process is for me to practice getting ideas on paper and sharing my thoughts. Improving my writing itself has become another goal along the way.

Do things the boring way and you’ll be more creative

It might sound strange, but focusing on making the routine things in life boring frees up your cognitive memory to be more relaxed, and therefore, more creative.

Inefficiency is doubly damaging because it wastes your time and forces you to expend more cognitive energy to do simple tasks that need to be done but aren’t all that important to push your business forward.

Developing systems is outlining a specific step of steps that you always take to complete a certain task or part of your day (think a morning routine or a way you process client invoices, etc…)

Efficient people are reliable and consistent and they are sustainably so. They are reliable today and will continue to be reliable tomorrow.

If you want to be efficient, reliable, and more creative about the important things in your business, develop systems to make the boring-but-important things automatic and easy to do without having to think about them.

We still have 1/6th of the year remaining

Just like that, the month of November is upon us. I like to start off the week by taking stock of how the year is going and what I can do to improve. I also write down a couple of general “big” tasks that I’d like to accomplish each month. Here we are with only 1/6th of the year remaining.

If the year hasn’t been a good one, you can accomplish more in these final two months than you did in the first ten months. It’s up to you.

“How can I do that?”

“How can I do that?” and “How can I help” are two of the best questions to keep in your arsenal of communication.

“How can I do that?” is the question to ask when you’ve reached an impasse with a client, co-worker, or family member. It’s the question that both shows your interest in fulfilling their request, but also offloads the pressure on them to consider what they are asking of you.

“How can I help?” is the question to ask when you have the upper hand in any engagement. Maybe you’re the worker who knows the boss is trying to get her schedule cleared out before vacation. You have the time that she needs. Let her tell you how she can help.

“How can I help?” signals that you’re setting aside your preferences for a moment to subjugate them to the wishes of the person you’re offering to help. Not only is it a fantastically kind thing to do, but it can serve you well in life and business, too.

What’s done in love is done well

They say that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. There is real strength in love, particularly when it comes to the things you do. If you love what you do, you will do lots of it.

If you do lots of something, you’ll get really good at doing it.

If you do lots of something that you love, you do it extraordinarily well because you’ve gotten many more opportunities to practice it and because your love of what you’re doing you will focus that skilled hand.

What’s done in love, is indeed done well.

The tenuous grip we have on the world

One of my grandmothers suffers from dementia. It’s sad to watch her lose her mind and her memory. Her mind seems to live in the year when my father and uncle were little kids. She doesn’t know who I am or who her grandkids are.

Watching her has been somewhat of a lesson to me that I should be careful not to take my connection to reality for granted. It can be gone in a moment. Our grip on the world is tenuous, at best.

So I am reminded to take care of my body and mind to the best of my ability every day. Make things that are common in life easy and introduce sharp challenges that come and go. (Stress isn’t bad for you unless it’s long-term stress. Short-term stress strengthens your body or mind.)

An interesting thought

We judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions.

Long-term planning is the worst (but also the best)

A good plan violently executed right now is far better than the perfect plan executed next week. That’s a quote from General George Patton.

You must start now and get the ball rolling. Once you start moving, you’ll be able to make things more perfect and steer the ship. Long-term planning isn’t just a vague idea that might need to happen in the future, it is important.

Too often we get stuff making plans and never starting to execute them. Get the ball rolling first. Clean up your plans and processes second. Work out long-term plans third. Don’t get it backward.

Focus on doing less to do more

When I run into a block of time where I procrastinate (this happens very often to me) I stop trying to do so much.

The trick is to get your mind started like one of those old cars that needed a spinning crank in the front of them.

Start small. Take an hour task and commit to working on it for five minutes. Almost always, that five-minute jump-start turns into a long focused block of work on that project.

Depending on how I am feeling, I will use five-minute or twenty-minute long blocks of time to “jump start” my brain. This helps to put aside the distractions or worries or whatever dumb thing my brain has decided is more important at that moment.

When there is a lot to do, focus on doing less, and somewhat paradoxically, you’ll do more.

I’m still on the road to being the best and most focused version of myself, but this one little trick has helped me along the way to be more effective and efficient in the hours that I work than almost anything else.

The importance of the morning routine

I’ve noticed that it’s nearly impossible to maintain perfect self-discipline throughout the day. But I’ve also noticed that the first hour of the day is the foundation of the day.

If I am lazy and thoughtless about my actions at the beginning of the day, I almost always have pretty bad and unproductive days. That first 60-90 minutes is where I need to focus all of my self-discipline efforts.

When I have my morning routine in order, it’s almost automatic that I have a great day. Instead of expending distracting (and exhausting) efforts to get myself “up” for my work, I can clamp down that first hour or so and ride through a smooth, productive, and satisfying day.

P.S. I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff written by professional writers and it makes me realize how much I stink at writing. I’m trying to break down this stuff I’m reading to find best practices I can use to slowly transform my own writing to be more coherent and more professional.

Blame the world, or don’t blame the world

Most of us know somebody who contributes all their failures to some greater conspiracy or an outside force that is the “real” cause of their problems.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we often do the same thing, but hopefully to a lesser degree. It’s very easy and very enticing to blame the systems around us for our shortcomings.

The things around us don’t hold us back, our perception of those things is what holds us back.

When we focus on the events around us and things that we cannot control, we choose to overlook the flawed aspects of our own lives and things that we can control (and improve!)

The stability and performance of our lives and companies come from paying attention to what can be improved upon within them, not stuff that we don’t like in the world around us.

It’s easy to get angry and blame the world. It’s difficult to look at ourselves and work to get better. However, only one of those methods brings improvement.

Some businesses have an unhappy existence

A self-absorbed and uncontrolled life is nearly always an unhappy existence. However, much like the Dunning-Kruger effect, the confidence of the self-absorbed person is inversely proportionate to their ability to understand why they have a miserable existence.

I’m more interested in the uncontrolled aspect of the “uncontrolled life.” I believe that the lack of order in your life or business leads to a lack of peace and stability.

In terms of business, the disorderly business owner spends his days putting out fire after fire. Everything is a reaction to the next crisis. The business owner who has systems and orderliness spends the majority of his time being proactive and avoiding problems before they become full-blown crises.

While orderliness and attention to detail might seem annoying at the moment, they give us peace and stability in the long term.

Dry, boring, and difficult work

Most work is dry, boring, and difficult. It’s difficult until you’ve done it for long enough. It’s boring until you know why you’re doing it. And it’s dry until you care about the process of doing it.

Bigger company, or more freedom and flexibility?

As you get better at the work you do, the demand for your skills will increase. There is a good problem that arises. How do you hire more people to make more money and build your business?

There is an alternative as well. This solution is to double what you charge per hour and only work half the hours.

When you hire more people, you scale your business and add pressure and expectations to your work. Maybe that is what you want. The payoff is great and you an on your way to building a bigger business.

However, there is a peaceful allure to the life of a successful freelancer who operates independently. Maybe that is what you prefer.

If so, the goal should be to leverage your skills and demand to prioritize gaining flexibility and freedom in your personal life rather than a simple quest for building a bigger and bigger company for the sake of having a bigger company and making more money.

By doubling your rates, you have the choice to work as many hours and make twice as much, or to scale back your working hours and live a more free and flexible life.

We should spend more time thinking about what we are trying to get out of our work and find a creative solution.

Building and selling highly valuable skills

We must develop and build valuable skills that society wants, but doesn’t have easy access to.

Building your highly valuable skills is more than just absorbing the zeitgeist of the given moment. Consuming social media and becoming an expert in all things pop culture, sports, and movies have little staying power because what society trains you for, can just as easily train someone else who can quickly replace you.

Deliberately practicing rare and valuable skills is the way to build them. These are not skills that any person can pick up by reading a book, they are skills that require practice and getting better. These hands-on skills that you develop are usually highly creative, technical, personality-driven, or non-automate-able things. This is part of what makes them so valuable when you are able to do them.

Identify skills that are valuable. Develop those rare and valuable skills by practicing them. Learn to build and sell valuable skills and there will always be a place in the market for you, no matter the interest rates, inflation, economic stability, etc…

You can’t skimp on it

Success is not all about hard work, but hard work is absolutely a requirement. But hard work that is pointed in the wrong direction is just a fast track to a destination you don’t want and maybe don’t even know exists.

My problem over the past three years is that I skimp on hard, focused work way too much. When I get this focus and hard work issue sorted out, it’s going to be awesome. I can’t skimp on the hard work part of the equation.

Your passion needs you to be constantly courageous

All of us have good ideas. All of us can make a viral moment. All of us can steal a few moments of attention here and there. Sustained success requires more. Our dreams don’t become reality when we don’t constantly do the work and get our business or brand out there.

Too often, we come up with reasons to not do something, rather than making up reasons why we should do something.

Our passion is always waiting for our courage to step up and make the dream a reality.

No matter what your business or job is, you have to deliver more finished work and get your name out there. Whether you’re washing dishes in a kitchen or creating content for Instagram, get out there and be courageous in delivering your work.