CONTENTS
First Post
The Strangest Secret
Can't Keep a Secret
Journaling as a Problem-Solving Tool
Nanomanufacturing
Quarterly Planning Time
How to Make $100K+ Per Year
More on Planning
Modeling
High-Protein Nonsense
Full Text Feeds Enabled
Timeboxing
Optimal Thinking
Humorous Speech Contest
Brains Brains Brains
Finding Fresh Brains
The Courage to Live Consciously
Conditioning Yourself to Succeed
More From The Archive
First Post
October 1st, 2004
I just got the new StevePavlina.com web site up and running today after a marathon HTML/PHP/MySQL session. Whew!
Earlier this week I did a quickie phone interview with Nettie Hartsock, who quoted me in an article titled, Setting Up a Software Development Business. That article includes the very first external link to this new web site and announces my new book-in-progress, The Software Self-Publishing Guide.
Several friends have been pushing me to write such a book for years, but I never really had time to write a complete book until now. I did some initial market research, and from what I can tell, this will likely be the first book of its kind. There are many books on building a software business, but I could find no modern books that really explain the details of how to setup, operate, and grow an independent software business based around selling direct over the internet, starting from scratch with little or no money. My book aims to explain how to go from employed programmer to software entrepreneur, so I think it will appeal to software developers who possess the technical talent to develop their own software but who lack the business and marketing knowledge of how to sell software effectively and build a profitable business around it.
The Strange Secret
October 3rd, 2004
For at least a decade now, I’ve been an avid devourer of personal development info. I literally have it for breakfast, since I often listen to audio programs while eating. One audio program I recently picked up from the local library is Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. I own a number of Earl’s audio programs (Lead the Field is my favorite), so I really enjoyed this one too. It can take a while to get used to Earl’s extremely deep voice, but I like his no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is style. The Strangest Secret is from 1988, but I found that most of the ideas are timeless and still apply today. The “secret” is simply six words: We become what we think about.
This certainly isn’t a new idea. In fact, Earl clearly admits that he learned it from Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich. And it isn’t a unique idea either. There are plenty of other books that have expanded on the concept, such as Marc Allen’s The Millionaire Course or James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh (later retitled As You Think).
Nevertheless, the idea is a profound one.
Few people would argue that our thoughts control our actions and that our actions (largely) control our results. If you think about going shopping and decide to follow through on that thought, your body follows suit, and pretty soon you acquire the results of going shopping. It all begins with a thought. But what people often fail to realize is that we have the power to consciously choose our thoughts. Instead of just letting our brains randomly cycle through the same thoughts over and over, we can start choosing to spend time thinking about different things. And if we do that consistently, we’ll shift our actions in new directions and thereby acquire new results.
Thoughts are like seeds. If you want different results in life, you have to figure out which thoughts are capable of growing those results and which aren’t. Then you have to consciously fill your mind with the correct thoughts and weed out the incorrect thoughts.
For example, if you want to start your own business, I can tell you which thoughts are the right seeds and which are the wrong ones. Among the wrong seeds, you’ll find the following thoughts:
Note that I’m not saying that these thoughts are objectively wrong… just that they’re the wrong seeds for the potential result of starting your own business. In other words, the result of starting your own business isn’t going to grow in the soil of the thoughts above. But these are the right seeds if you don’t want to start your own business; these seeds will grow the tree of being a lifelong employee. So chances are that if you harbor thoughts similar to those above, you find yourself an employee right now. Nothing at all wrong with that if it’s what you want. On the other hand, if you’re an employee right now and would like to start your own business, but your predominant thoughts about the idea are similar to those above, then you have a problem. Those mental seeds simply won’t grow a business. If you retain those thoughts, you’ll never run your own business, just as if you plant tomato seeds, you’ll never grow a watermelon.
So what kinds of thoughts are the right seeds for starting your own business? Here are some of them:
Now even though thoughts like those above might be the right seeds for starting your own business, that doesn’t mean that planting the right seeds is sufficient to grow the whole plant. Just as plants need water and sunshine, it takes a lot of hard work to build a business. But the right thoughts are the first step. I’m just using the starting of a new business as one example. I could have just as easily used quitting smoking, losing weight, getting married, etc.
The main point I’m trying to make is that if you find yourself in a situation where you want new results in your life (i.e. something other than what you’re currently experiencing), then the first step is to examine your dominant thoughts to see if they’re the right seeds to grow the results you want. The odds are probably better than 95% that if you’re not making progress, then you’re probably thinking the wrong thoughts and need to replace them with new ones. For example, you won’t become a nonsmoker by thinking thoughts like, “Quitting smoking is hard.”
A key concept to understand here is that shifting your thoughts is a conscious and deliberate activity. You don’t just say to yourself, “Ok, I’ll think about starting my own business. Sounds good. Next….” You have to be a lot more proactive than that. You have to set aside an hour or so to be totally alone, sit down with pen and paper, figure out the correct thoughts/seeds you need to be thinking, and then consciously ram those new thoughts into your head, over and over again until they become dominant over the old thoughts. And if you’re trying to make a big shift in your results, then this is something you’ll need to do every single day.
You might find the above exercise really difficult at first. When you start thinking new thoughts, the most common initial reaction is that you’ll feel a great deal of doubt about them. So if you start thinking about running your own business, your initial images probably won’t seem too attractive. Then you find yourself thinking about quitting your job, the negative reaction you’ll get from coworkers, the office politics you have to deal with on a daily basis, and you suddenly realize you’re back to thinking the wrong thoughts again. That’s normal. But use your imagination to push past the doubt and keep working on it. See that new reality working out beautifully, even if you have no idea how it could possibly work in the real world. It’s going to be sloppy in the beginning, but it will get easier over time. After about 2-3 weeks of this, you’ll start to actually believe in those new thoughts. And that’s when you’ll feel the urge to start taking action. But in the beginning, you’ll still be too full of doubt to act. That’s fine — it’s important to reach the point of belief first. So just be patient with yourself, and let your imagination guide you. As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Can't Keep a Secret
October 6th, 2004
Today I learned that someone posted a link to this site at the Indie Gamer Forums. So welcome, Indie Gamer visitors.
I only started developing this site on October 1st, so I haven’t even officially launched it yet. It was only this afternoon that I finished making the CSS style sheet for the site, but aside from this blog, there’s still no real content yet. I put up a very quick and dirty version a few days ago because I was doing a phone interview last week and mentioned this soon-to-exist site in the interview. The interviewer assured me that the article wouldn’t be posted for at least a week or so, so I told her it would be OK to include a link to this site in the article, since I knew I’d have the site at least launched by then. But of course Murphy had a say in all this, and the article with the link was online about 48 hours after I hung up the phone… before there was even a site here.
I scrambled to get something online just so the visitors from that article wouldn’t get a 404 error, but the one link from that article eventually led to someone mentioning this site in their blog, which led to more people knowing about it, and then the Indie Gamer mention… all before the site was ready for public viewing. I wasn’t going to officially announce the site until I had some actual content, at least a new article or two. Oh well… too late now. 
I should at least explain what this site is going to be about. Although the home page currently features the new book I’m writing on software self-publishing, my plans for this site have nothing to do with software or computer games. I just put up the book sign-up list here temporarily, but I’ll eventually offload the book stuff to its own site. This site, however, is going to be purely about personal development. It will be something of an expansion of the personal productivity and motivation articles I wrote in the Dexterity Articles Section. After more than five years of writing articles, I’ve found that the personal development ones (as opposed to the software, marketing, or business articles) have been the most popular and have benefited people the most, based on all the feedback I’ve received about them. Some of these articles have been linked up to the point that they generate quite a bit of traffic. A Google search I just did on overcoming procrastination even lists one of my articles in the top 10.
So if you don’t have much interest in reading about personal development, time management, getting organized, setting and achieving goals, and similar topics, then you probably won’t be interested in this site. Personal development has been a major interest of mine for more than a decade. I’ve read literally hundreds of such books and listened to many hundreds of hours of audio programs, not to mention attending a number of seminars. So this site is my newest expression of my deep interest in personal growth.
In addition to using this site as an outlet for my writing, I’m also working on my public speaking skills, since I want to eventually expand into professional speaking. But before that happens, I need to overcome two obstacles. First, I need to develop a sufficient quantity of unique material. So I’ll be starting with some free articles and blog entries to get a feel for my strengths in that area and to get feedback to learn if/how people are actually applying the ideas. And secondly, I need to develop my skills as a speaker. To work on that subgoal, four months ago I joined Toastmasters International. My local club is called Starmasters and meets in Northwest Las Vegas. In fact, I have a club meeting tonight, which will focus on impromptu speaking. There are more than 10,000 individual Toastmasters clubs and 200,000 members worldwide. I’ve already improved a great deal thanks to all the outstanding feedback. In August I attended Toastmasters’ 2004 International Conference in Reno, which was a lot of fun, and I met other members from around the world. This Fall I also participated in Toastmasters’ annual humorous speech contest and won first place in my club and then first place again in my area (my area is 5 clubs). So on October 23, I go on to compete in the division contest (my division is 5 areas, or roughly half of Las Vegas), which will be held at the California Hotel in downtown Vegas.
It’s pretty strange running a software business during the day and then in the evening putting on a suit and getting up in front of an audience to make people laugh. Mild-mannered software developer by day… amateur comedian by night. I’m really enjoying the variety though, and I love the challenge of it.
Journaling as a Problem-Solving Tool
October 7th, 2004
One the most powerful personal development tools is simply to keep a personal journal.
I’ve been keeping paper journals since 1996, and two years ago I converted to journaling software, which I find much faster and more convenient. The program I use is called The Journal. It comes with a fully functional 45-day trial and sells for $39.95, but honestly I think that price is too low compared to the value I receive from it. I think $79-99 would be a fairer price. I just bought a second copy of the program for my wife to use, since she’s getting into journaling herself. Although you can certainly keep a journal on your computer with just a word processor, what I like about this dedicated journaling software is that it has a built-in calendar to make it easy to instantly view entries by date, and you can also search past entries for specific keywords.
What do I do with my journal? Although many people use journals or diaries to keep a record of life events, I don’t normally bother with such entries, and I rarely even go back and read past entries. For me it’s primarily a problem solving tool, a way to think through complex decisions until I reach the point of clarity. I average about 5-10 journal entries a month, and I usually begin a new entry by typing a question or a problem I want to solve. Then I proceed to explore the possible solution space of the problem. Sometimes the problems may be very simple, such as “What topic should I select for my next speech (or article)?” But other times I explore much broader subjects, like “Where do I want to be in 2010, and what do I need to start/stop doing now in order to get there?” Sometimes I’ll just brainstorm possible solutions, while other times I’ll write about a problem from different angles to understand it more fully. For example, I might ask myself, “How would Albert Einstein solve this problem? Leonardo da Vinci? Jim Carey? Captain Picard?” Or I might ask, “What’s good about this problem? How might I avoid even needing to solve this problem? What would the optimal solution to this problem have to look like?”
I find these kinds of exercises very valuable. When I try to solve a problem in my thoughts alone by thinking it through, I often meet success with simple problems, but thinking things through often fails to solve more complicated problems. Either I won’t find a satisfactory solution at all, or I won’t understand the problem well enough to feel good about the solutions I do find, or sometimes I’ll find a solution that I feel good about, but after I’ve slept on it and looked at it fresh the next day, it doesn’t seem quite so intelligent anymore. So instead of thinking things through in my head, I tackle those big, hairy problems by writing them through. Thinking can often become circular, and our brains have a tendency to overgeneralize; i.e. we’re always looking to simplify things by classifying them according to patterns. However, sometimes it’s important to consider the raw facts of a problem without trying to prematurely pattern-match it to a previous problem we’ve already solved. For example, if you run your own business and experience a temporary sales drop, which happens to be a problem you experienced and overcame once before, you may still need to consider the possibility that this sales drop has a unique cause and cannot be overcome by re-applying the previous solution.
By exploring problems on paper, I avoid circular thinking, and it’s also easier to identify gaps in the possible solution space that have yet to be considered. Once I’ve written about a problem from a particular angle, I can put that part to rest and move on to exploring the next part, and the written record makes it easy to consider the problem from a sufficient number of different perspectives to leave me feeling confident that I understand it fully enough to make an intelligent decision. So essentially, journaling allows me to overcome some of my brain’s functional limitations, effectively expanding the mental working memory that’s available for solving problems.
Some problems are by their very nature just too big to fully understand in our thoughts alone. We can only focus our conscious minds directly on a small part of any given problem. Our brains are fairly powerful, but our conscious minds are still extremely limited in their ability to hold onto multiple simultaneous thoughts. For example, you can close your eyes and visualize an apple tree, but can you visualize that tree from one hundred different angles all at the same time and thereby select the one with the most apples visible? Even a question as simple as, “What should I have for dinner?” is enough to run us up against our mental limits. To truly make the best possible decision, we would have to consider all possible dinners we might eat, prioritizing their taste, texture, nutritional value, cost, convenience, etc. Now for a relatively simple decision like this, we might consider a mere three or four options and then pick the one that seems best to us in the moment. But what if we’re faced with a much more significant decision with far-reaching consequences, where it’s much more important to feel confident that our choice is at least close to optimal?
Life is full of these kinds of choices. What career should I choose? Where should I live? Should I get a divorce or remain in an unhappy marriage? These are all major life-changing decisions. You can certainly choose to make them haphazardly and without careful consideration, but you’ll be the one who has to live with the consequences. If you fail to put forth the effort to apply the full extent of your intellect to making the best possible choices when the stakes are so high, then what does that say about the value you place on your own life?
While even journaling can’t overcome the major limitations of our conscious minds to systematically consider solution spaces with millions of possibilities, writing things through is at least a step in the right direction. We still have to delegate a major part of our decision-making to our subconscious minds, to our intuition, and to our emotions. But the more of this process we can pull into our conscious minds (by using either paper or a computer screen as an extension of our consciousness), the more clarity and focus we gain in knowing that our decisions are the right ones. And in the long run, after years of exercising the mental discipline to make more conscious decisions, we reap the harvest of far greater results.
Nanomanufacturing
October 9th, 2004
Last night I attended a meeting of the Las Vegas Futurists, which is a discussion group that gathers monthly to discuss… the future. Being a first-time attendee, I wasn’t sure what to expect, hoping it wouldn’t be a bunch of local teens asking when we’ll have our own holodecks.
Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised. The guest speaker was Chris Phoenix, Director of Research for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. Involved in nanotech research since 1988, Chris led us through a fascinating exploration of the possibilities for molecular manufacturing using table-top nanofactories. Imagine 144 quadrillion tiny robotic arms, each constructing physical objects one atom at a time, with a combined output of about one kilogram per hour. And because these would be operating in a vacuum and due to their tiny size and the negligible effect of gravity at that scale, they could move extremely rapidly, each one performing millions of movements per second.
Ultimately Chris predicted that the first working nanofactory could probably be produced within 10-15 years, but as little as 5 years if an organization like the U.S. government were to fast-track such a goal as was done with the Manhattan Project.
After the official meeting, eight of us went out to dinner together, and since I ended up sitting next to Chris, I took advantage of the opportunity to subject him to a nano-brain-picking. Hearing about the possible benefits of this technology is interesting to be sure, but I wanted to know how such a nanofactory could actually be built and how it might physically work. I wasn’t disappointed, as Chris took me through many of the details of how he envisioned a rudimentary nanofactory might work, something about which he’d previously written an 80-page paper. We discussed the power requirements, how the robotic arms would be controlled, fault-tolerance, electrostatics and covalent bonds, heat output and cooling options, and the potential for portability. By the end of the evening, I was becoming convinced that this technology is on the verge of becoming real, not merely the domain of science fiction.
If this technology ultimately succeeds, it means not only that we could produce virtually any physical goods in a completely automated fashion, but also that objects could be engineered with atomic-level precision. Chris said that we could potentially create a computer chip the size of a grain of rice that would be more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputer (which I believe presently does around 36 teraflops), and it would cost less than a penny and could be manufactured in seconds.
Of course, I probably don’t even need to point out that there is a potential dark side to this technology as well, so it’s questionable as to whether human beings will be ready for it if/when it does appear. A part of CRN’s work is to encourage policy makers to start thinking about these questions now and to take steps to prepare ourselves socially and structurally, so that we aren’t caught unprepared to handle the consequences.
I didn’t get home until about midnight. Hmmm…. spending a Friday night in Vegas discussing nanotechnology with a group of futurists, while my wife stays home playing City of Heroes with her level 36 defender…. Don’t even say it!
On another subject, I still haven’t even officially announced the existence of this site yet, but due to the power of word of mouth (and the spy network that has me under constant surveillance), it has now spread to more blogs, including Tom Warfield’s A Shareware Life, Micro ISV, and someone emailed me a few hours ago to say it was also mentioned in The SWRUS Yahoo Group. According to my traffic logs, during the past four days there have been 28, 192, 253, and 313 visitors to this site — certainly not huge, but a lot for a site that doesn’t officially exist yet. This effect reminds me of the book The Tipping Point.
At least you’ll never have to worry about me posting cat pictures on this site, since I have no pets (well, at least no organic ones). 
Quarterly Planning Time
October 11th, 2004
Today I finished typing up my detailed plan for this quarter, which is about 10 pages long. I revise my goals and plans roughly every 90 days, and I find that although this can be tedious (usually 10-15 hours of tiresome work), it’s an essential tool for me, not just for running a business but for managing my entire life. Life can get pretty complicated sometimes, and it’s easy to get knocked off track by external pressures if you don’t know precisely where you’re headed. When you’re working for several days on a particular project, and a new opportunity comes along in a totally different area, it can be tough to make a clear decision if you aren’t able to mentally pull your mind out of that project and see the forest for the trees. Having a written plan you can review at any time makes it easy to review your current situation from a bird’s eye view, so you can make more consistent decisions.
In 2001 I wrote articles on goal setting and planning, and aside from some minor refinements, I still follow this basic approach today. But one thing I now include in my planning document is a list of assumptions that I made in putting the plan together. These are often assumptions about what I expect to happen, such as how long I think it will take to complete a particular project. Invariably I’ll get a few weeks into my plan, and I’ll hit a snag. So I go back to my list of assumptions and look for any that may have turned out to be wrong. Then I can adjust those assumptions and update the plan accordingly. But if I find that all the assumptions still seem to be accurate, then I usually feel safe that the heart of the high-level plan is still OK — I may just need to alter the way I’m currently implementing it. Just today I had to turn down two potential licensing deals; on the surface they looked potentially lucrative, but in light of my overall long-term goals, it’s clear they would be off course for me.
When you create a 90-day plan, you’re really looking ahead much further than just 90 days. I typically think ahead at least two years to figure out what I should be doing over the next 90 days. There are many decisions that look good when you consider them on a 3-6 month time frame, but when you look 2+ years ahead, they seem more problematic. It’s a lot like AI chess programs — the computer player will think a particular move is optimal when it looks ahead 5 ply, but when it looks ahead 10 ply, it ends up picking an entirely different move. So it is when making short-term plans. You’ll create the best plans if you look ahead a few years and think about where you’ll end up, and then use that long time perspective to decide what you need to be doing right now. And for certain big decisions, like whether you’d like to have another child, you may want to look ahead much further. The long view sharpens the short view.
When I was single and living alone and hadn’t yet started my own business, this kind of detailed planning would probably have been overkill. But now that my life is much more complicated, it helps me cut through the possible quagmire of confusion and really focus. The more complicated my life gets, the more important I find it to spend time clarifying my goals and plans.
The main thing a written plan does for me is gives me a sense of peace, knowing that I’ve thought everything through consciously, and everything is covered. It can be hard to make choices such as… should I spend time with the wife and kids, or exercise, or practice my next speech, or write an article, or work on my book, or do some marketing tasks, or play poker, or read a book? One thing I’ve learned is that I tend to do a bad job making these kinds of balancing decisions on the spur of the moment — I vastly underrepresent some areas while overworking others, so something important slips through the cracks. I just don’t have the time to think several years ahead when making every single decision. It’s only by creating a high-level plan that I can trust that I’m able to achieve the right balance and get the really important things done while consciously deciding what areas can afford less attention. I can trust the plan because I know I spent the time thinking things through to create it, so it acts as a tool that helps me simplify and speed up daily decisions.
Once you have a solid written plan, the next trick is to learn how to work it effectively. I manage my daily workflow using a system based on the one in David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done book, which I highly recommend. I also encourage you to read the free articles on his web site, although I think they’re more helpful if you’ve read the book first.
How to Make $100K+ Per Year
October 12th, 2004
I just saw a post in the ASP newsgroups about an article titled, What does it REALLY take to be making 6 figures as a service professional? The bulk of the article is a list of 50 tips, many of which will apply to more than just service professionals. Worth a quick read, methinks.
More on Planning
October 16th, 2004
I’ve received some questions (both publicly and privately) about the Oct 11 entry on planning, so I think a follow-up is in order to address them….
Planning is such hard work. And it’s hard to keep plans up to date. So why do it?
The best advice I can give here is to try it both ways and see for yourself. Although it would be best to do this over a reasonably long period of time, such as 90 days, you can do a simple experiment in just a couple days. One day, don’t create a plan for your day, and just see what happens — live and work as you normally would. If you want, you can even use yesterday for this first part. But the night before the second day, set aside about 30 minutes to set clear goals for your next day (three interesting goals is a good number), and plan out the details of those goals to create a to do list. Then write up a schedule for your day — not just your workday, but the entire day from when you wake up until when you’ll go to sleep. Aim for a challenging day but one you think you can still do; push yourself a bit, but keep it achievable. Think about what you would consider the absolute best use of that day. And do this planning work alone, quietly, and with no distractions. Then live that day with according to your written plan to the best of your ability.
Then after living though days one and day two, you decide which you like better. You can take notes about what you experienced at the end of each day, or you can just go by feel; maybe rate each day on a scale of 1 to 10. Think about where you’ll be in a year if you experience 365 day ones vs. 365 day twos. Note that there isn’t a proscribed right or wrong answer here. The choice depends on your personal values.
What you’re likely to experience on day two is that things don’t go quite according to plan. That’s common. But even though it probably didn’t go according to plan perfectly, how well did it go compared to day one? Were the results better or worse? And was it worth the extra 30 or so minutes to create the plan?
Now, if you don’t want to take a whole day to do this, I’ll give you a shorter version. Set aside two 2-hour blocks of time during your day today. It doesn’t matter when they occur, but it would be best if they are times when your energy level is about equal and the level of interruptions you’ll experience is roughly the same. If you can’t get equivalent 2-hour blocks on the same day, then use the same time period on two separate days. For the first 2-hour block, just do what you’d normally do during that time period. That’s your control. In fact, if you want to make it the previous two hours you’ve just experienced, that would probably be fine too. But for the second two-hour block, spend the first 15 minutes making a detailed to do list of everything you want to get done in that block, and then schedule the remaining 1:45 at least to the granularity of 15-minute increments. Then follow your plan. See which time block you like better.
Yes, it’s hard to keep plans up to date, but the plan itself isn’t as important as the habit of planning. It’s the idea of using a vision of the future to sharpen your present-moment decisions that is the real key to planning. The benefit of a written plan is that it allows you to instantly refresh that vision of the future at any time just by reading it.
What’s the connection between planning and visualization?
I see planning as a tool for visualization instead of vice versa. Planning allows you to mentally create a model of your future. And a written plan allows you to keep that model consistent. Every plan is inaccurate to some degree because we don’t really know how the future will turn out. And the future is purely a mental construct — an illusion — because you never exist in the future, only in the present. So planning and visualization don’t create the future. All they can do is affect your present. But by using a consistent, internally congruent vision of the future to make decisions day after day, you start to build momentum, and you’ll ultimately achieve your goals.
I don’t create plans now, and I don’t have a problem achieving my goals most of the time. Planning seems overkill. So why bother with it?
If you don’t have any really big goals, you don’t need a plan. But then, you’re probably selling yourself short in your goal-setting. For example, if you have a job and set a goal to increase your income by 10% this year, and you pretty much expect that to happen if you just continue working as you always have been, then why would you need a detailed written plan for that? You wouldn’t. But that’s a rather impotent goal, isn’t it?
Now what if you set an ambitious goal to increase your income by 100% this year? And you see that it’s virtually impossible for that to happen passively at your present job. Now you’ve got to pull the ol’ brain out of the cobwebs and do some thinking. This is a situation where you have to think about where you want to be a year from now to know what you need to do during the next 30 or 90 days. It’s probably not at all clear what the first step should be. Chances are good that there is a way to achieve this goal, but the path to get there isn’t obvious. This goal will require you to be proactive and consistent in your actions; you can’t just passively coast your way to an ambitious goal like this one.
Now imagine the above scenario…. what if after about 15 hours of work, you could produce a written step-by-step plan showing you exactly what you need to do to increase your income by 100% over the next year? It tells you very clearly what you must begin doing this very week in order to get started. And the plan makes sense to you — it won’t be easy, but it’s pretty clear that if you follow it, you probably will achieve your goal. Would those 15 hours be a worthwhile investment?
On the other hand, what is likely to happen if you try to increase your income by 100%, and you don’t have a plan to get there, but you still try to make the best choices you can? Most likely you’ll be a lot more hesitant and uncertain in your decision making, and that will likely lead you to procrastinate. Should you try to work towards a big promotion within your company? Look for a new job? Quit and start your own business full-time? Begin building a part-time business while keeping your day job? Try doing consulting work on the side? You’ll never feel too confident about any of these choices until and unless you can paint yourself a clear mental picture of where each path will lead you.
Fuzzy thinking leads to hesitancy in acting. Clear thinking makes it easier to act boldly and consistently. And really ambitious goals generally require bold and consistent action.
So if you feel you don’t really need to plan, chances are you’re not setting very challenging goals to begin with, and you probably aren’t stretching yourself much. And if that’s how you want to live, that’s perfectly fine, but then why are you reading this blog? Why not take on something a bit more ambitious? Set a goal to double your income in a year… or write your own book and get it published… or spend a month in a country you’ve never been to… or quit smoking and lose 50 pounds… whatever truly inspires you.
One nice thing is that for many goals, there are already pre-made plans to get you there. For example, if you want to run a marathon, there are pre-planned six-month training programs you can follow, such that if you just follow them blindly each day, you will gradually build up the needed level of endurance, and you’ll be able to at least finish the 26.2 miles on race day. It doesn’t mean that pre-made plans are any easier to follow than the ones you make yourself from scratch, but using other people’s plans can definitely save you some time.
I tried to create written plans once, but my plans never worked out. So I just sort of gave up on that whole concept. Am I just broken?
You’re not broken. Planning is very, very difficult to do well. It’s a skill like any other that takes tremendous patience and practice to learn. If you sit down and create a plan, and it doesn’t work, then don’t use that setback as a reason to blame planning itself. Rather consider that you simply need to continue to build your skill at planning and/or execution. Being able to set an ambitious goal, create a plan to achieve it, and then work the plan all the way to victory is a skill that can take a lifetime to master.
How do you actually create a plan? What tools do you use?
I’ve tried many different planning and “life management” tools over the years, and I have some strong opinions about some of them. I’m sure many people will disagree with me, and that’s fine. This is entirely my personal opinion regarding my own experiences.
MS Outlook – Piece o’ crap. The slogan for this software should be, “By Golgafrinchans, for Golgafrinchans.” I know some people love this software. I’m not one of them. Outlook’s biggest problem is its inflexibility. You’re stuck with using a particular paradigm for planning and scheduling. I am just way too left-handed to stomach this program for more than a week. And if you don’t know what a Golgafrinchan is, then I’m sad to say that you probably are one.
Franklin Planner – Piece o’ crap, both in paper and software versions. Again, the problem is inflexibility. You have to buy into the Franklin model of reality. That’s a great model for some projects but a lousy model for others.
OPA Life Planner – Utter crap. This software based around Tony Robbins’ Outcome-Purpose-Action planning model has more bugs than a Mars rover. This was eventually replaced by a new acronym, RPM (Rapid Planning Method). And in addition to software, there’s also a paper-based version like the Franklin Planner. But still the biggest problem is inflexibility. You have to buy into a particular paradigm.
Palm or other PDAs – Golgafrinchan heaven. Even as this technology has improved a lot since I first bought my Palm IIIxe a few years ago (which now sits in a closet), most of the handheld organizing software is barely worth a mention. Puny screens, inflexibility, and tedious interfaces (pen and paper is often faster) make this a poor overall choice. I prefer thinking outside the box, and this is a very small box.
Pen and Paper – One of my all-time favorites. It’s cheap, reasonably fast, readily available, and incredibly flexible. Try drawing a mind-map on a PDA, or look at your schedule, to do list, and quarterly plan simultaneously on its tiny screen. You can spread out multiple sheets of paper and quickly move from one page to another — massive surface area. Software has tried hard to duplicate the flexibility of paper, but paper is still better and faster for certain things. Of course a major drawback to paper is that it’s tedious to edit and update, and I’m sure you can think of other problems with paper as well.
Regular Text Editor – Not bad. It’s not quite as flexible as paper but still much more flexible than dedicated planning tools. You can use any planning paradigm you want, and you can switch paradigms without having to switch software. You can use different paradigms for different pieces of your plan — top-down, bottom-up — it’s your choice.
Action Outline – This is my overall favorite piece of software I use for high-level planning. I use it every single day. On the surface it doesn’t really look like a planning tool. The program works like a combination of Windows Explorer and MS-Word. On the left side of the screen, you have an expandable directory-like structure. And on the right side of the screen, there’s a regular text editing window. So what this program allows you to do is to create pieces of text (about anything you wish) and organize them into a hierarchical structure. And then you can expand and collapse pieces of that structure however you wish, looking at your overall plans from a high-level or drilling down into the details of any particular section. What I like most about this program is that it takes care of managing a hierarchical structure for you, but it doesn’t force you to use any particular planning paradigm. You could use it merely as a text editor and type up your entire plan in a single file. Or you could develop an entire plan in a collapsible outline form and not even use the text editor part of the program. Or you can use a combination of both. So as I try different methods of planning, I find that this software can always adapt. I’ve used it one way to create a 90-day plan for my life, another way to outline a book, and still another way to write a speech. And most of all, the program is extremely fast, and it’s very quick to switch from one part of a plan to another. I recommend downloading the free trial to see if you like it, and there are other outlining programs you can find on the net, but this one is my personal favorite.
What individual documents do you create to manage your time, and how do you use them?
Calendar – First I have a yearly paper calendar, one page per month. I buy one at Office Depot each year for $5-10. A paper calendar works fine for me because my schedule isn’t filled with pre-scheduled appointments, so very little of my work has to be done one a particular day and time. If I had a lot of time-bound appointments though, I probably would use something more sophisticated. I don’t use this calendar for scheduling my day; it’s only used for recording stuff that must happen on a particular day. For example, this coming week I can see that I have a Toastmasters meeting on Weds, a meeting with my financial planner on Thurs, and a speech contest on Saturday. That’s it for my appointments for the week.
Values List and Mission Statement – I maintain a list of my values as seen at the bottom of the About page of this site, along with my personal mission statement. Whenever I have to make really big long-term decisions, I consult these to make those decisions. They’re both maintained in Action Outline, so I can bring them up with a hotkey at any time.
Goals List – This is a list of all my long-term goals (everything 90-days away or longer). Some of these will take me at least a decade to accomplish. The goals are all sorted into categories (physical, social, career, financial, etc). This list is also maintained in Action Outline. I look at this list at least once a week, and I update it every 1-2 weeks.
Projects List – This is a list of all the projects I have, maintained in Action Outline. To create this list I chop my big goals into individual projects that can be measured and achieved. For example, if one goal is to make a certain amount of money, then a project would define what I have to do to earn it. These projects are sorted in order of priority, and I often add notes below each project title to brainstorm a few ideas for each one. So if I get an idea out of the blue for an inactive project, I can type up those ideas quickly and get back to work on my current project.
90-Day Plan – This is my plan of what I need to do over the next 90 days, as discussed in the previous blog entry on planning, also maintain in Action Outline. I review it every single day and update it weekly. And once each quarter I totally rewrite it.
30-Day Goals and Plans – This doc contains my short-term goals and plans for what I intend to do over the next 30 days, maintained in Action Outline. I review and update it at least once a week. The purpose of this document is to take the first 30 days of my 90-day plan and break it down to a finer level of granularity. There’s a lot of back-and-forth reworking between this doc and the 90-day plan.
30-Day Schedule – Now I take my 30-day goals and plans and break them down week by week and day by day. While I maintain a 30-day schedule, I only plan 1-2 weeks in advance. So here I’m taking my 30-day goals and breaking them down even finer into individual action steps. Then I decide which days I’ll complete those actions. I don’t use a calendar for this. I just use a linear list of days in Action Outline, so it’s really fast and easy to edit (click and drag tasks around), and I can see what I have scheduled for many days ahead. I also pull the appointments from my paper calendar and insert them into the days in my 30-day schedule. I find this method of scheduling to be the most efficient I’ve tried so far. This is also done in Action Outline, so I can pull up my schedule with a keypress at any time and add/remove items whenever I want. The paper calendar is mainly for long-term scheduling beyond 30-days; otherwise, I don’t need the paper calendar for short-term scheduling. This schedule just involves assigning tasks to days; it doesn’t get any more granular than that. I update this doc every day.
Daily To Do List and Schedule – At the end of each day, I look at the previous doc to see what I have to do on the coming day. Then in my work journal (a paper spiral notebook), I make a to do list that includes all the goal-oriented tasks I need to do the next day, and I also add any spontaneous tasks that may have come up in the past 24 hours, like returning phone calls. This list includes both personal and business tasks as well as any appointments. After I create the to do list for the next day, I create an hour by hour schedule for the day. I like to work in 2-hour chunks, so I basically chop my days up into several of these chunks with breaks or meals between each chunk, and then I assign tasks from my to do list to each chunk. Now I can see what tomorrow will look like and how it will turn out. It usually takes me 10-15 minutes to create my to do list and schedule for the next day. And at the same time, I’ll often edit my 30-day schedule. It’s rare that a particular day goes exactly according to plan — this happens only about 20% of the time. Usually I get more or less done than I had planned. But that’s OK; I still get more done with a plan than without one.
Inbox – This is a plastic tray on top of my desk. Any piece of paper coming into my office must first go into the inbox, including mail, business cards, notes from conferences, etc. Then once every few days, I process all the info in my inbox into my system, turning it into goals, projects, actions, or just filing it for reference. As I write this, my inbox contains to-do items from my last Toastmasters meeting, notes from a 3-hour microbiology/health lecture I attended on Thursday, and a business article I want to scan for ideas.
Outbox – This is a plastic tray below my inbox tray. It’s for anything that needs to leave my office, like mail to drop off. It’s empty most of the time.
Filing Cabinet – A 4-drawer filing cabinet sits within arms reach, so I use this for storing anything I might want to keep for reference. Items that enter my office through my inbox will usually either end up here, in the trash, or in my outbox.
Hopefully the above will give you a good picture of how I manage my time. I like this particular system and find it works very smoothly for me, and I’m always continuing to evolve it. Since most of the info is stored in Action Outline, I can bring up these docs with a hotkey, and there’s no time lost for the program to load because it’s always running in the system tray with all the text ready for viewing at all times, much faster than using a word processor. And I can switch between these different docs with a single mouse click. I probably bring up Action Outline about a dozen times per day on average.
Modeling
October 17th, 2004
One of the most effective concepts in personal development is modeling. Modeling simply means that you find someone who’s already getting the results you want in some area, learn what they did to get those results, and then basically just do the same thing. It’s a lot like following a recipe to re-create a meal.
As an example, years ago I met a man who had gone from earning $40K/year to earning $400K/year over a period of two years. I asked him how he did it, and he told me. One of his main ideas was to find out what has made you money in the past, and do more of it; then find out what has lost you money in the past, and do less of it. But as brain-dead simple as this idea sounds, I found that it worked really well when I looked for ways to apply it, and I doubled my income in about six months. For example, I discovered that releasing products made me money, but developing products didn’t generate income at all. So I found a way to release new products faster. Simple idea, but very effective.
But something I’ve found helpful is that the reverse concept works pretty well too: If you find someone who isn’t getting the results you want in a particular area, don’t take their advice. This is an overgeneralization of course, but I find that more often than not, it’s pretty accurate.
Why would anyone buy a diet book with a picture of an overweight doctor on the cover? Isn’t that sort of like signing up for a martial arts class taught by a white belt? I read that the autopsy done on Dr. Atkins (of the popular Atkins diet) revealed that he was obese and that his arteries were clogged with plaque. And Dr. Phil, well, he doesn’t look too fit to me either, but he tries hard to add credibility to his diet by showcasing extremely overweight people who are given tons of leverage to lose weight (virtually anyone can lose weight with the leverage of national TV behind them). Other fitness books like Bill Philips’ Body for Life and Dr. Scott Connelly’s Body Rx are at least written by people who appear to be in good physical condition. One comment in particular that I loved reading in Connelly’s book was a challenge for all the other diet doctors to appear next to him in a bathing suit. Hmmm, why not?
Of course, you can’t determine health just by physical looks — Brian Maxwell, the founder of Power Bar and a former world-class marathoner, died of a heart attack earlier this year at age 51. So maybe you don’t want to follow in his footsteps either.
While it seems logical that just about anyone could potentially provide valuable advice on any subject, the problem is advice that often sounds good just doesn’t prove effective in the real world. This is why modeling can save you a lot of time. The person who is currently getting the results you want has probably already tried and discarded many strategies that don’t work. And they’ve obviously found at least one strategy that does work, at least for them, so their ideas have already passed the reality test.
On the other hand, be careful not to get trapped into the situation of continually seeking advice from people who aren’t getting the results you want. For example, I often see single people who are looking to marry ask other single people for advice on how to attract a future spouse. And these people get lots of well-meaning advice that simply won’t work. If you’re single and want to get married, then the best people to ask about how to do it are happily married people. Duh! And most likely you’ll find their advice very different than that of perpetual singles.
This is a really simple concept, but it’s amazing how few people take the time to apply it. Is there some area in your life right now where you want to start getting better results? Can you find one person who has already gotten those results and spend a few minutes asking that person how s/he did it? Or maybe find a book written by an author who had achieved those results? Then just by taking the same actions (almost blindly and brainlessly), you stand a good chance of getting those results for yourself.
Modeling — it’s not just for models.
High-Protein Nonsense
October 18th, 2004
As a follow up to some feedback I received on the last entry (I figured it would flush some Atkinites out of the woodwork)….
I agree that high-protein diets like Atkins’ can induce weight loss, and I personally know people who swear by the diet, but many are reporting that the manner in which the diet works is unhealthy in the long run. The American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Mayo Clinic, and other similar groups have all condemned the Atkins diet as unsound and unhealthy. Yet the Atkins marketing machine continues…. Perhaps that will have to be the subject for a future blog entry. In the meantime take a look at www.atkinsexposed.org.
Cutting off a limb is one way to lose weight too, and at the rate these fad diet books are being printed, I predict we’ll see The Amputation Diet on shelves within a few years… featuring testimonials like, “I cut off my leg and lost 30 pounds in only one day!”
I think the reason these fad diets proliferate so much is that (especially in America), product marketers have corrupted people’s concept of health so much that people are confused to the point where they’ll believe just about anything that gives them hope of losing weight.
And regarding modeling… modeling isn’t a substitute for intelligence and good judgment — it’s simply a shortcut, a way of narrowing the search space of possible solutions. For example, while I could eventually figure out how to self-publish my own book from scratch on my own, why not learn from someone else who’s already done it, such as Dan Poynter, author of several books on the subject? By modeling his approach to writing nonfiction books, I’m a lot further along with my book than I’d be if I just tried to invent my own process from scratch. Sure I can still refine and adapt his system, but modeling gave me a head start.
Full Text Feeds Enabled
October 18th, 2004
Full Text RSS feeds are now enabled. Thanks for the suggestion, JD.
Timeboxing
October 19th, 2004
Timeboxing is a simple time management technique I use often. I first learned about it in software development terms. Let’s say you have a fixed deadline for a new product you need to release, such as an annual upgrade to software for calculating income taxes. You must have a new version ready by a certain date. So you’ll probably use timeboxing for your development cycle, meaning that you do the best job you can within the time available. What new features you can implement are totally determined by the time frame. Slipping the schedule is simply not an option, so if you get behind, you must cut features.
In terms of managing your own tasks, timeboxing can be a helpful technique. I primarily use it in two different ways.
First, let’s say you want to get something done, but there’s a risk it could end up taking far more time than it’s worth because it’s the kind of task where you might exhibit perfectionist tendencies. So you give yourself a specific amount of time, which you won’t go over, and you simply do the best job you can within that time.
As an example I use timeboxing when doing my Christmas shopping each year. I usually allocate a total of 2 hours to the task, which for me involves buying gifts for 8 people (my wife handles the rest). I decide in advance what kind of gift I should get each person on my list, and then I order as much as I can online and then head off to the local mall, where I zoom from one store to the next picking up gifts as I go. I also usually take advantage of my flexible schedule, doing the shopping on a weekday morning when the stores aren’t busy and I don’t have to wait in line. So I’m in and out with everyone’s gifts in under two hours.
(I know some people love holiday shopping, and taking multiple trips to browse is fine if it’s something you enjoy. But if you’re shopping-challenged like me, and you’re no more likely to get gifts that are any better if you invest an extra 10 hours in the task, then it may be best to simply resign yourself to doing the best job you can within the time you have available.)
The second way I use timeboxing is when I have a task or project that I wish to complete, but I don’t really know where to begin, or it seems like it’s going to be a long time before I can finish a meaningful chunk. Or maybe it’s something I find really tedious and would have a tendency to procrastinate on. Then I use timeboxing to simply commit to working on the task for a given period of time to make a dent in it. I normally use a period in the range of 30-120 minutes. I release any concern about reaching a particular milestone within that time — I simply commit to putting in the time, regardless of how far I get. An example where I use this approach would be when I’m writing a new article. Finishing a complete article will usually take me 3-8 hours. Sometimes I can complete an article in a single stretch, but most of the time I’ll stretch it over multiple sessions. So I use timeboxing to just put a dent in the article and get started, committing myself to writing for 1-2 hours without worrying about how far I get. Then I just repeat the process until the work is complete.
A side effect of this last method is that I’ll often end up working much longer than I originally intended. If I commit to working on a tedious task for just 30 minutes, it’s easy to get started because I’ve given myself permission to stop after only 30 minutes. But once I’ve overcome that inertia and am now focused on the task, 90 minutes may pass before I even feel the desire to stop.
Timeboxing’s ability to circumvent perfectionism and avoid procrastination makes it a useful time management technique. I even used it for this blog entry, and now that my wife has returned home with dinner and a movie rental, it’s time to say goodbye….
Optimal Thinking
October 21st, 2004
Optimal Thinking by Rosalene Glickman is a book I read about a year ago. I don’t recommend that anyone here read it because it’s one of those books that reads like an article padded out to the length of the book. You need only read the first chapter to absorb 80% of the book’s value. And I’ll give you that 80% right now, so you don’t even need to do that.
Here’s the concept of optimal thinking in a nutshell. Suboptimal thinking is when you ask questions like, “What’s a good/great way to do X?” or “How can I solve Y?” Optimal thinking is when you ask, “What’s the best way to do X?” or “How can I solve Y in the best way possible?” It may seem like a subtle and unimportant difference, but when you start applying this rule to your life, I think you’ll see some interesting results as I have.
For example, when planning your next day, you might ask yourself (perhaps subconsciously and nonverbally), “What’s a good way to schedule my time tomorrow?” And by answering that question, you’ll plan a decent schedule for yourself. But it’s most likely a suboptimal schedule. Try instead asking yourself, “What’s the best way to schedule my time tomorrow?” Now you’re seeking the optimal solution — the best instead of just good or even great.
Sometimes you don’t immediately know the best solution to a problem. So what you can do in that situation is to ask, “What will the best solution look like?” And then you start listing attributes and constraints that your optimal solution will need to exhibit. This helps you narrow your list of alternatives. If you know a particular attribute of the optimal solution, then you can reject all possible solutions that lack that attribute.
Going back to the example of the best possible scheduling of your day, you might list some of these attributes: awaken early, exercise, work at least 8 solid hours, eat healthy meals, spend time with family, do something fun and rewarding in the evening, stretch myself in some way, get email inbox completely emptied, read for an hour, etc. Then you can work backwards from these subgoals to piece together your optimal schedule.
Keep in mind that the best solution always takes into account the resources you have available. If a possible solution is impractical, then it certainly isn’t optimal. So if the best way to schedule your day would require a supercomputer and six hours of planning time, then that solution is far from being the best. You might wish to include your key constraints in your original question, such as, “What’s the best way to schedule my time tomorrow in 20 minutes or less?”
In my experience the most beneficial aspect of optimal thinking is that it helps you raise your standards. Instead of settling for suboptimal solutions and mediocre results, you commit to doing your best, yet in a way that’s practical and which considers the reality of your situation. Often when you ask yourself, “What’s the best …,” you’ll find your mind zooming towards a very different kind of solution than you would if you asked suboptimal questions.
Here are some sample optimal thinking questions to get your mind moving in that direction:
Ask and you shall receive. Ask for the best.
Humorous Speech Contest
October 24th, 2004
Last night I competed in my Toastmasters’ division humorous speech contest at the California Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. It was very competitive, and I took home second place. The first place winner was Linda Bown, who gave a great speech titled, “Oh, Clutter. My Clutter.” Her particular club, Jackpot Speakers, specializes in coaching its members to win contests.
Although first place was my goal (and a pretty ambitious one at that), I wasn’t disappointed at all to take home second place, especially given how terrific and talented the other speakers were. I know I did the absolute best I could. With the time I had available to devote to this contest and the feedback I received, I don’t think I could have possibly done any better than I did. One of my club members told me after the speech that he couldn’t suggest anything I could have improved. I’m happy to have done so well, given that I’ve only been a Toastmaster for 4.5 months now, while the average of the other speakers was about 5 years; I’m pretty sure I was the youngest speaker too. It’s pretty exciting for me to imagine where I’ll be in 5 years at this pace. These are some talents I’d never have had the opportunity to develop if I hadn’t stretched myself to join Toastmasters. I have to thank all the members of my club, Starmasters, for their tremendous help and encouragement. I’m already looking forward to the Spring speech contest.
A big congratulations to Rachel Tuller, a very talented member of my club who won first place in the evaluation contest. The evaluation contest is held in conjunction with the humorous speech contest each Fall. Evaluators compete on the basis of who gives the best verbal evaluation of a given target speech. I’ll be rooting for Rachel to win the district contest in two weeks.
Growth has long been my #1 personal value, and competing in this contest through the club, area, and division levels has been an amazing growth experience for me. Last night I was invited by Jackpot Speakers’ club President to attend their next meeting as a guest (which is actually this afternoon), so I think I’ll take him up on that and pay them a visit. One thing I love about Toastmasters is the maturity and sense of honor of the members. Even though the contest itself was very competitive, the competitors are all encouraging and supporting each other.
Right now I have a feeling of tremendous excitement about my future in speaking because I did my best and ran right up against my limits. Many people interpret this kind of event as a failure, but I see it as just the opposite. Remember that October 17th entry about modeling? Now I’ve identified one more person I can model in speaking, Linda Bown. And I’ll be seeing her in a few hours and have a chance to learn from her and her club mates. I’m something of a Borg in that respect — I love to take advantage of opportunities to assimilate the knowledge that’s in other people’s heads. And until we have personal mind-transfer devices, there’s no better way to do it than face-to-face and belly-to-belly conversations.
So if you ever find yourself running up against your limits in some area of your life, see if you can find someone who’s already pushed past that limitation in their own life. Then invite them out to lunch. Aside from the ideas you’ll learn, just from hanging out with such a person, you’ll gain a new perspective — an infectious feeling of energy and potential — that will motivate you to action. It’s like getting your batteries recharged. Of course, the opposite is also true; if you primarily associate with people who don’t push you to be your best, you’ll just get more of the same and will be deprived of experiencing a far greater level of fulfillment.
Victory is life.
Brains Brains Brains
October 25th, 2004
Yesterday I really enjoyed attending the Jackpot Speakers club meeting. This Toastmasters club runs itself very differently than my club, focusing heavily on critique and discussion and less on following the formalized structure of a typical Toastmasters meeting. Linda Bowns and Jeff Lowe, respectively the first and third place winners in the contest mentioned in the previous post, both attended, so all three of us top finishers were there. We discussed each others’ speeches as well as the contest itself. We spent about an hour picking apart Linda’s speech to help her improve it, since she’ll be representing our entire division (about 25 clubs total) in the district contest on November 6th. Linda’s speech was already incredibly good, but we all contributed many ideas for ways she could make it even stronger. I hung out for an extra 30 minutes after the 2-hour meeting and performed some surgical brain-picking, getting loads of outstanding advice and ideas. It’s wonderful to be able to hang out with people who have more than 10x my level of experience in this area. Learning from such people is a major short-cut to success in any endeavor.
I used this same approach when aiming to make a full-time living from shareware games back in 1999. At the time I was making only about $300/month from shareware sales, but I wanted to be making a minimum of 10x that amount to at least sustain myself. So I popped into the Association of Shareware Professionals’ members-only newsgroups (I’ve been a member since 1996 but never really took advantage of it until 1999), and I identified people who seemed to be making at least $50-100K per year from selling shareware. Then I proceeded to pick their brains as much as possible, mostly by engaging in email dialogs. But if nobody knows who you are, then you’re not going to get too much good advice from successful people. So I ran for the ASP board of directors. I lost by a mere 4 votes, but I still succeeded because just by running, I let people know who I was. And a month later, I ended up being appointed Vice-President anyway, so that gave me more influence. Additionally, I started writing lots of free articles for the ASP newsletter, so I built a reputation as a contributor, not a leech. You can’t just pick people’s brains if you don’t give them a piece of yours in return. But the net result was that I could very easily solicit advice from people whose shareware sales were 10x higher than mine.
This approach worked really well — it took me only about six months and one product to multiple my shareware income by a factor of 10. And then I just kept going from there, soon hitting six figures a year, always identifying people who were already making my target level of income.
A big mistake people make when trying to increase their success in some area is that they’ll ask advice from people who aren’t getting the right results. For example, let’s say you’re making $60K per year right now, and you want to be earning twice that amount. Most people will seek advice from all their friends who are making $50-90K per year. And they’ll get lots of advice. But it will be essentially worthless. It’s far better to talk for 15 minutes to a person who’s making $150K per year than it is to spend a full day seeking advice from people who aren’t at that level yet. This might sound like an exaggeration, but I honestly don’t believe it is. I’d rather get answers to just one or two questions from someone who’s far more successful than me in some area than to chat all day with people who are roughly at my own level.
One strange paradox is that advice from people who are at your level often sounds very good and sensible. But it’s often bad advice in that it may be a far more difficult path to success, and often it just won’t work at all. On the other hand, advice from people who are far ahead of you will often initially sound bad or reckless, but if you actually apply it with a bit of faith, it often works wonderfully.
Here’s a simple example:
When I released Dweep in mid-1999, I wanted to build its sales up fast. So I asked advice from a number of people on how to do this. People who were making $1000 or less per month from shareware (like I was at the time) almost invariably gave me ideas about ways I could improve the game itself. So they focused on the product and on doing more programming work. But one person I asked who was earning around $10K per month told me to stop programming and spend 80% of my work time just marketing the product for the next several months. He said to market it every single day — get other sites to link to mine, try to get higher search engine positioning, send out lots of review copies, etc. I took his advice because he was already getting the results I wanted, and I knew he was being sincere. So for the next six months I did little else but learn marketing and do marketing for the game. And it worked. It didn’t feel right at first to spend so little time programming, but I couldn’t complain about the monthly increases in cash and customers. If I had followed the advice of my peers, I understand now that I would have only gotten minimal results, even though their advice sounded good to me at the time. Focusing on the product would have been the wrong strategy — I would have invested a lot of time and energy and gotten very little out of it. Focusing on marketing was harder for me, and it wasn’t initially the kind of answer I wanted to hear because I wasn’t yet too skilled in that area, but it was the thing for me to focus on in order to achieve the level of sales I wanted.
When many people start a new business, they’re likely to miss the importance of marketing. It’s not at all obvious just how important marketing is, especially if you’re in love with developing new products or services. The product is important, but without enough time and energy spent on marketing, hardly anyone will know about your product. Jay Abraham says that marketing is the single greatest way to gain leverage when you want to increase your sales. I think he’s probably right. Unless your product or service has serious flaws, you can often get much greater leverage from a full day, week, or month invested in marketing than you can in tweaking and improving the product/service itself. The fact that this is fairly unintuitive may help to explain why so many new businesses fail or plateau.
But going a little deeper, I think there are other reasons people fail to seek advice from those that are doing much better than they are in some area. For one, there may be a degree of intimidation. The only thing I can suggest there is to go ahead and feel intimidated and ask anyway. But a deeper issue may be that people don’t want to hear the kind of advice that will make them face their own weaknesses. For example, if you aren’t good at marketing or don’t like marketing, then hearing someone say that this is the key to greater success may not be what you want to hear. So it’s easier to listen to people who tell you to tweak your product or service, especially if that’s already your strength. But if you take that easier approach, you’ll always be denied greater results. After a few years of that, you’ll feel like you’re stuck on a treadmill, doing all this work that just doesn’t get you anywhere. You’ll have gotten a lot done, but it just won’t produce very strong bottom-line results. And the reason this happens is often that you’re unconsciously modeling people who are stagnating too.
Seeking and applying advice from those who are already getting the results you want sounds like common sense. Yet actually doing this consistently is anything but common. So feel free to be uncommon in this case.
Finding Fresh Brains
October 26th, 2004
A follow up to the last post…
Where do you find people to model?
I think the best place to do this is through professional trade associations. Volunteering in such organizations is often a good way to develop inroads to meet some of the most successful members.
Industry conferences are also excellent. I find smaller conferences (around 2000 people or less) to be the best. If the conference is overly huge, it’s often too hard to find the right people, and they’re usually swamped anyway. But at the smaller conferences, it’s easy — you’ll often find industry celebrities just hanging around, happy to talk to anyone that has the guts to do so.
How do you identify people you want to model?
Find people who are already getting the results you want. Often you can get a good picture of someone’s results just by reputation. Is there any doubt that Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims, is a talented game designer? Or that John Carmack is a skilled programmer?
Now you might have to settle for lesser mortals in your quest for people to model, and yes there’s some risk of misinterpreting someone’s true results, so reduce the risk by modeling multiple people. Of course, some results are visibly obvious, such as a bodybuilder’s body, a writer’s writing, or a speaker’s speeches.
When all else fails, look for a smile. I like to learn from people who seem genuinely happy.
If you can’t get a clear picture of a person’s true results though, don’t model them in the areas that you can’t perceive clearly. Modeling isn’t a substitute for good judgment — it’s merely an aid.
How do you meet people in person that don’t already know you?
This may sound obvious, but just go right up and introduce yourself. This is a learnable skill, so if you feel shy about it, it takes a bit of practice. You might benefit from reading a few networking books like Harvey Mackay’s Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty. Two months ago, I attended a lecture by Susan Roane, who refers to herself as The Mingling Maven. She had everyone in the room make up a 7-second personal introduction and then go around the room meeting people. You might learn a few tips by reading the Q & A page on her web site.
So it helps to build up some basic people skills, but mostly it just takes guts. A few years ago my wife and I attended a local outdoor vegetarian festival. While we were waiting for the speakers to get started, we saw Alicia Silverstone sitting on the grass in the shade. She’s a fellow vegan, so we weren’t surprised to see her there. I encouraged my wife, who runs VegFamily Magazine, to introduce herself and see if she could setup an interview. She did so and chatted with Alicia for a while, and Alicia agreed to a future phone interview. A little later we saw Ed Begley, Jr. standing by a tree. We chatted with him for a bit, and my wife convinced him to agree to an interview too. Alicia ultimately flaked on the interview, but Ed came through (I took the photos).
How do you build rapport with people you’ve just met?
There are many learnable rapport building skills. One of the best is matching and mirroring. This takes a bit of practice, but it’s extremely effective. Do a Google search on “matching and mirroring” or “NLP rapport building,” and you’re sure to find tutorials on how to do it. You’ll also find it explained in virtually any book on NLP.
Another simple way to build rapport that takes no practice at all is to ask the question, “So how did you first get started in X?” — How did you first get started as an actor? How did you first get started in public speaking? How did you first get started in business? 95% of the time you’ll get a very positive reaction just by asking this question, and the other person will invariably have an interesting story to relate. I use this one all the time when meeting new people. And I get to hear some great stories. I know how dozens of people started up their software/shareware businesses, for example.
It’s important to use rapport building skills sincerely and respectively. They can be very powerful, and if you’re insincere and manipulative in how you apply them, they’re likely to backfire. Meet people and learn from them because you enjoy it, not because you’re forcing yourself to do it out of a desperate lust for the raw data in their heads.
What questions should I ask of the people I want to model?
That’s up to you. What do you want to know?
One of the best questions to ask though is this: “What would you do if you were me?” Obviously you first have to familiarize the other person with your current situation and your goals. But the question will almost invariably provoke a genuinely helpful and practical answer.
How important are people as resources as opposed to books, web sites, technology, and other non-human resources?
People are your greatest resource. In his book Unlimited Power, Tony Robbins lists this very statement as one of seven key beliefs that highly successful people tend to have in common. At the time I first read it, I disagreed with that statement because I felt technology or personal skills were slightly more important resources. It took several years, but I ultimately came to agree with Tony on this one. Imagine what you could do with all the world’s technological resources or with all the world’s information at your disposal. Now imagine what you could accomplish with all the world’s people on your side.
Anything else?
Sure. In addition to learning from people, it’s also helpful just to make contacts who know something you may eventually need. As a simple example, even though I’ve traveled to many cities within the USA, I’ve never traveled outside the USA, not even to Canada or Mexico. I know — that’s pretty sad, isn’t it? But I at least know many people who have (including my parents and all my siblings — my brother even lives in Japan), and I have friends who live all around the world. So if I ever get around to traveling abroad (which is one of my goals, but a bit tough with a one-year old), I can not only get copious advice from people who’ve done it, but I can also have a great time visiting friends and contacts wherever I go. Some of my Dweep customers have even offered to show me around if I ever visit their countries.
On the plus side, since I live in Las Vegas, the whole world comes to me. I can go visit the tourist areas and meet people from around the world (and then take their money at the poker tables). And I can visit cheesy versions of New York City, Venice, Paris, even the Star Trek: DS9 Promenade.
The Courage to Live Consciously
October 27th, 2004
I just posted my first new article for this site today, titled The Courage to Live Consciously.
Feedback is always appreciated.
Conditioning Yourself to Succeed
October 30th, 2004
Sometimes you may encounter situations where you know what you should be doing, but you’re having a tough time getting yourself to do it. Or perhaps you’re able to get started on a task, but you just can’t seem to maintain the momentum to see it through to the end. If such a problem continues for too long, you’re bound to start to seeing a detrimental effect on your overall confidence level. You may begin thinking you have a motivation problem, as if maybe you just don’t want to succeed badly enough.
One solution to this problem is conditioning, which comes in two primary forms: thought conditioning and behavioral conditioning. Thought conditioning focuses on controlling what you think. This is a cognitive model of success, relying on the assumption that if you think the right thoughts, you’ll take the right actions, and thereby get the results you want. Examples of thought conditioning include speaking or reading positive affirmations, visualizing a positive outcome, transformational vocabulary (choosing positive words to describe your situation as opposed to negative words, as in, “I’m having a fantastic day”), and certain forms of meditation. And in many situations, thought conditioning is very effective, particularly when problematic thoughts are the root of the problem, such as a negative attitude causing you to rub people the wrong way.
Behavioral conditioning comes from a behavioral model of success. This model assumes that if you take the correct actions, you’ll achieve the results you want, regardless of what your thoughts are. Behavioral conditioning focuses on forming new habits of action with little concern for what you think. Many behaviorists believe that if you take the right actions, the right thoughts will follow anyway. Examples of behavioral conditioning include setting your alarm clock to wake you up each morning, giving yourself a tangible reward for working an extra couple hours, or punishing your child for misbehaving.
I have used both forms of conditioning with great success. Ten years ago, I used mostly thought conditioning. Today, however, I find that behavioral conditioning is more effective for me and a lot faster. One of the problems with thought conditioning is that if you fail to take the right actions quickly, then your behavior can de-condition the very thoughts you’re trying to adopt. For example, if you’re trying to quit smoking, and you focus on thinking that you’re a nonsmoker and do some daily affirmations to that effect, but you keep lighting up in the meantime, then you’re sending mixed messages, and you’ll most likely slip back. Your continued behavior is an affirmation too. But if you can manage to physically stop lighting up, even while you’re thinking you’re still a smoker, that behavior will tend to induce thoughts of being a nonsmoker. Behavioral conditioning works best when merely changing your behavior (regardless of how you think) is enough to guarantee a result. For example, if you stop making impulse purchases, you will save money, regardless of what you think about it.
I agree with the behaviorists that motivation follows action. When you get yourself to take action, even when you aren’t initially motivated to do so, you will find that your motivation automatically increases. Having a productive day can be very motivating.
The basic idea behind behavioral conditioning is control and substitution. Figure out what actions you need to take to get the results you want (i.e. how you need to behave). Then condition yourself to take those actions. You’re always behaving some way — so make sure your behavior will give you the results you want. If you find you aren’t behaving in a manner that’s congruent with your goals, then take control of the situation and substitute the correct behavior for the incorrect one. For many goals it’s enough for you to simply put in the time — just investing enough time gets you 80% of the way there.
For example, this morning I could have slept in until 8am (Ok, that’s early for some people), had a leisurely breakfast, and watched The World Poker Tour. And that would have yielded a result of … pretty much nothing. I’d be no closer to my goals. It wouldn’t even be that exciting or fun either… just lazy.
But today I got up at 5am, went straight to my computer, spent four hours writing a new speech from scratch while the rest of the family slept, had a quick breakfast while discussing plans for the day with my wife, spent another two hours doing work for Dexterity Software, and then started this blog entry. So on a Saturday morning, I completed six solid hours of productive work that moves me closer to my goals. And it wasn’t difficult. I simply substituted this kind of morning for the lazy morning. Consequently, I feel energized instead of tired.
The problem is that most people unknowingly condition behaviors that will guarantee mediocre results. Look back on your behavior over this past month. Have your results been congruent with your actions? If you spend the next month behaving differently, will it change your results? Where do you see incongruencies between the results you want and your current habits of behavior? What changes would you like to make?
In the next entry, I’ll explain exactly how to use behavioral conditioning to break bad habits and form new habits. And it doesn’t involve willpower.
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