By ourselves, I mean failure.
I mean that feeling in our gut that makes us face some truth.
The truth that our:
Assumptions might now be sharp enough.
Ideas aren’t strong enough.
Can’t-miss thing missed horribly.
So we avoid putting that stick in the ground.
However, when we hide – we miss the opportunity to find ourselves.
Worried that what we do isn’t good enough when we miss growth.
That is the end.
When we avoid failure, we prevent ourselves.
Then we lose.
Nothing stops motion and potential like false perfection.
What is false perfection? It’s perfection for perfection sake.
I hate that.
One of the most important ideas we can take with us is that we can’t all be great at everything. Sometimes, it’s ok to be mediocre.
Most of the things we do in life are just “ok” at, and that is ok.
Once I become an average driver, I don’t need to curse myself for not being Mario Andretti; it’s enough.
FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is hard to escape. Turning down opportunities goes against most of the conventional wisdom we hear. So, instead of saying “no” we start playing the “What if” game.
What if:
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Choosing one goal means saying “no” when all those thoughts are swirling in your mind. It’s saying “Most is Good Enough” for everything around you and just focusing.
This is hard when “this might not work, in” and you could lose.
The benefit of it, however, is the chance to learn. It understands the differences that only expose themselves when you decide to focus. Ultimately, this leads to you making things that matter, even if it isn’t something that matter at that moment.
Too many goals mean you drown not because of the weight of the goals but the lack of direction on where to go while you swim.
So pick one and go. Maybe your S/O is already there, anyway.
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The altMBA is powerful.
When I started writing this, that is the first thing I thought of, so I figured why not start with it? The program was a rousing success for me. I learned a ton of tactics that change the path of the projects I engage in. I learned how to ask better questions and how to give feedback.
There was one change that may have set my life in a different direction, and that is the idea of “direction” (no pun intended).
Before doing this program, I was a ball of energy with nowhere to go. I often sat, shaking, generating, but with no way to understanding of direction I missed making a real impact. I dismissed it.I made it a point to avoid direction at all cost because it felt wasteful. Even in my first post in the program, I dismissed goals.
Now, because of the work of altMBA, I have changed.
When I did the work, and saw how powerful asking the question “Who is this for?” was, and how much clarity that question had when it’s asked earnestly and with an open mind, it was shocking. This led me down a path of understanding someone’s world view. I’m now more particular about the transformation I want to make. Most importantly, I’m shipping more impactful work in a much shorter time.
Direction is a force multiplier, and with this new strategy regarding my work, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
It takes a lot of balls to write things down.
It means you can fail. It means that it’s in stone. It means you can’t change the stakes.
Even if you lie to someone else, what you wrote is still on that piece of paper, on that word processor, on that blog, and it is there forever. Even if you burn it, delete it, crash it – there is a change in your mind the moment you write it, you turn it into something, you make it into a reality.
Moving the goal posts on anything is so seductive. It doesn’t take any work, and your mind has enough processor power to change the story while you do something else. It is easy, one errant thought, one loose memory, and all of a sudden the entire memory is different, and you are the winner (maybe the loser if you subconsciously want that).
If you don’t put it somewhere, where you stand when you shoot the shot can change. It is a lot easier to let that happen, but the best improvement that I, or anyone else can make, is to hold ourselves to that spot, live with the consequences, and decide our next move.
If not, the processing power that could be deciding the pain points is constantly changing the story, and you will just find yourself at step one, perpetually.
I’ve been wafering with my goals.
I think I balance between a fear of failure and success. I am scared to try new things, and when I do get going, I am scared that the work in front of me will drown me.
I need to beat both – and I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about both.
Goals help – I have accomplished a lot of the goals I had set at the beginning of the year. However, when I sit down and try to add to them I end up procrastinating into a spiral of other things.
I have been forcing myself to put some time in and make it a part of my schedule. It is hard because it requires more stillness – and I am still working on making meditation a habit, but hopefully I can build on those successes I had with goals this year and make it a real habit.
“A whisper in a quiet room is all you need. There’s so little noise, so few distractions, that the energy of the whisper is enough to make a dent.
On the other hand, it’s basically impossible to have a conversation (at any volume) in a nightclub.
Signal to noise ratio is a measurement of the relationship between the stuff you want to hear and the stuff you don’t. And here’s the thing: Twitter and email and Facebook all have a bad ratio, and it’s getting worse.
The clickthrough rates on tweets is getting closer and closer to zero. Not because there aren’t links worth clicking on, but because there’s so much junk you don’t have the attention or time to sort it all out.
Spam (and worse, spamlike messages from organizations and people that ought to treasure your attention and permission) are turning a medium (email) that used to be incredibly rich into one that’s becoming very noisy as well.
And you really can’t do much to fix these media and still use them the way you’re used to using them.
The alternative, which is well worth it, is to find new channels you can trust. An RSS feed with only bloggers who respect your time. Relentless editing of who you follow and who you listen to and what gets on the top of the pile.
Until you remove the noise, you’re going to miss a lot of signal.”
From the desk of Adam Thomas 