“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here’s the opening blurb of the press release …

“Getting Results the Agile Way” — A Timeless System for Changing Times — Now Available in Print

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) October 26, 2010

“Author J.D. Meier is announcing that his new book ‘Getting Results the Agile Way’ is now available in print. The book shows readers the way to make the most out of work and life. Meier has come up with a simple system to achieve meaningful results that combines some of the best methods for improving one’s thinking, feeling, and doing.

“The best way I can put it is, it helps you be the author of your life and write your story forward,” says Meier. “Basically, it’s a system that can support you in everything you do. It’s based on principles and patterns so you can tailor it for yourself or for any situation.”

Read the rest on PRWeb at – http://www.prweb.com/releases/Getting-Results/Now-in-Print/prweb4636494.htm

“Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.” – Seth Godin

There’s a hidden message in this post – it’s your free prize inside.  Whether you find the free prize or not, this post will make you think.  About your life.  About work.  About just about everything.  Why?  Because it’s a distillation of lessons from a man named Seth.  Seth Godin is an author, an agent of change, a meaning maker, and an Idea Merchant.

I have to say, this was my most challenging “greatness distilled” post to date.  Seth is a fountain of insight, and I wanted to do more than show the tip of the iceberg.  At the same time, I wanted to take the balcony view, look across his forest of ideas, and make a map of the most meaningful insights.  I won’t claim victory, but I smile inside as I think in the spirit of Seth, I won’t let perfect get in the way of the good.  I’m hoping people will share their lessons from Seth with me, and the map will go beyond my sketch and take a life of its own.  For now, this is my “Seth on a page.”

As you explore Seth’s work, find what you can use for the business of life, or the game of work.  If you walk away with the goal of finding 3 ah-has, you’ll change your frame … and a key to life is that if you change your frame, you change your game.

25 Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
Seth is full of lessons and insights.  Here are 25 lessons to chew on:

1. Have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets. Seth says — “Life is like skiing.  Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.”
2. Be remarkable.  Boring is invisible.  Remarkable products and remarkable people get talked about.  Seth on remarkable — “How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”
3. Success is a skill.  Seth’s philosophy on success is — “it’s possible to enjoy your job, to do the right thing, to be transparent, to give more than you get and to be successful, all at the same time.”  It takes work.   Surround yourself with people who are succeeding.   You become who you hang with.  By surrounding yourself with people who are succeeding, you’ll learn what’s working and what’s not.  You can model their success and open doors that you might otherwise not see.  Seth on successful people – “”Successful people rarely confuse a can-do attitude with a smart plan. But they realize that one without the other is unlikely to get you very far.”
4. Being the best is the best place to be.  It’s better to be the best.   People pick the market leaders and they narrow their choices to the top.  Seth says, “Being the best in the world is seriously underrated.”   According to Seth, best in the world is relative – “It’s best for them, right now based on what they believe and in their world, the one they have access to.”  In the Dip, Seth shares 7 reasons why you might fail to become the best in the world:  1.) You run out of time, 2.) you run out of money, 3.) you get scared, 4.) you’re not serious about it, 5.) you lose interest or enthusiasm and settle for being mediocre, 6.) you focus on the short term instead of the long, 7.) you pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world.
5. Be missed.  Seth on how to be missed — “Connect, create meaning, make a difference, matter, be missed.”
6. Everybody is an expert about something.  You’re an expert at something.  Make meaning.  A SQUIDOO lens is a way to make meaning for others.  Seth on lenses – “A lens gives context. When it succeeds, it delivers meaning.”
7. Success is a hierarchy.   Seth teaches us the hierarchy of success: 1.) Attitude, 2.) Approach 3.) Goals 4.) Strategy 5.) Tactics 6.) Execution
8. Don’t do A as a calculated tactic to get B.  Do A because you believe in it.  Seth on success – “If we define success as the ability to make a living doing what I do, I’d say the following: 1.) No ulterior motive. I rarely do A as a calculated tactic to get B. I do A because I believe in A, or it excites me or it’s the right thing to do. That’s it. No secret agendas, 2.) I don’t think my audience owes me anything. It’s always their turn, 3.) I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there. I’m not in a hurry, at all, to finish the “bigger” project, to get to the finish line, 4.) I do things where I actually think I’m right, as opposed to where I think succeeding will make me successful. When you think you’re right, it’s more fun and your passion shows through, 5.) I’ve tried to pare down my day so that the stuff I actually do is pretty well leveraged. That and I show up. Showing up is underrated.”
9. Be in it for the long haul.  Things rarely come easy.  Make the journey worth it.  Chip away at success.  Seth says — “Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.”
10. Quit the right things and lean into the right Dips.  Winners quit the right things all the time.  Recognize when you’re in a Dip.  Pick the right Dips.  In the Dip, Seth teaches us 3 curves: 1) the Dip, 2) the Cul-De-Sac, and 3) the Cliff.  The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery.  The Dip is where success happens.  Stick it out, only if you’re going to get the benefits of being the best in the world.  The Cul-De-Sac is where you work and work and work, but nothing much changes.  These are dead-end jobs.  The Cliff is a situation where you can’t quit until you fall off.  If you’re in a Cul-De-Sac or Cliff, you need to quit.  You need to quit these so you can refocus on something with promise.
11. Decide if you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur.  In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, Seth teaches us that a freelancer sells their talents.  While they may have a few employees, they’re doing a job without a boss, but not running a business.  There’s no exit strategy or pot of gold, but they make their own hours and be their own boss.  Examples include layout artists, writers, consultants, film editors, landscapers, architects, translators, and musicians.  Seth writes that an entrepreneur is trying to build something bigger than themselves.  They take calculated risk and focus on growth.  An entrepreneur is willing to receive little pay, work long hours, and take on great risk in exchange for the freedom to make something big, something that has real market value.
12. It’s like walking through a maze.   Seth on building a business from scratch — “Learn as you go.  Change as you go.  Building a business from scratch is like walking through a maze with many, many doors.  Once you open one, 100 new doors present themselves.  As you move your way through the maze, you need to stop and check your location.  Look at a map.  If you’re in the wrong place move.  But if you’ve discovered a new place, there’s nothing wrong with exploiting it.”
13. Everyone is not your customer.  Seth teaches us the key to failure – “the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”  Listen to your real customers.  It’s not the media, the investors, or the early adopters.  Seth on everyone is not your customer – “The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers …”  Seth on figuring out what your customers really want — “Most people have no clue what they want, and if you ask them, you’ll get a lame answer. Most people don’t know they want Pretty Woman or Slumdog Millionaire. They don’t know they want Purple Cow or one of your killer articles. So if you want to have an impact, all you can do is lead. You can’t ask.”
14. Feed, grow, and satisfy the tribe.  Build your tribe.  According to Seth, “You can lead a tribe of people, connect them, commit to them and create a movement.”  Seth on building your tribe – “It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe.”
15. Small is the new big.  Focus on relevant, specialized, and unique.  It’s the difference that makes the difference.   According to Seth, small helps you be remarkable – “Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.”
16. Find the new scarce.  Where there’s scarcity, there’s value.
17. It’s the FREE PRIZE INSIDE.  Seth teaches us how to create a remarkable product – “The thing that makes something remarkable isn’t usually directly related to the original purpose of the product or service. It’s the FREE PRIZE INSIDE, the extra stuff, the stylish bonus, the design or the remarkable service or pricing that makes people talk about it and spread the word.”
18. The third century is about ideas.  We went from farms to factories to ideas.  Seth on the third century – “Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks.”
19. Spread your ideas. Be an idea merchant.  Spread your ideas.  Seth on being an idea merchant — “If you can get people to accept and embrace and adore and cherish your ideas, you win. You win financially, you gain power and you change the world in which we live.”   According to Seth, spreading is a formula of 8 variables: Sneezers, Hive, Velocity, Vector, Medium, Smoothness, Persistence and Amplifier.
20. Don’t wait for perfect. Test your ideas.  Learn and respond.  Don’t wait for perfect to land in your lap, and don’t let it get in the way of sharing a good idea.  Seth on testing ideas – “I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there.”  Seth on perfect — “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.”  Seth on doing it well now, is better than perfect later — “The minute you start walking down a path toward a yak shaving party, it’s worth making a compromise. Doing it well now is much better than doing it perfectly later.”
21. Don’t get paid to alter your behavior.  Be authentic.  There are two types of sneezers – the promiscuous sneezers and the powerful sneezers.  Promiscuous sneezers can be motivated by money and rewards to sell ideas to a hive.  Powerful sneezers have authority by setting a trend and can’t be bought.  A powerful sneezer can be worth many more times a promiscuous sneezer. Seth on staying a powerful sneezer — “After I left Yahoo!, I had many opportunities to serve on boards and do endorsements. I  chose not to. Why? Because I didn’t want to squander the powerful sneezing points I’d earned by writing my last book. … In every case, you’re getting paid to alter your behavior. That makes you more promiscuous and less powerful.”
22. The goal of reading is to choose what to change.  Find 3 take aways when you read a business book.   Seth on how to read a business book – “Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work.  Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change.”
23. The world changes whether you like it or not.   The world’s getting bigger and smaller.  Seth on how the world is changing – “The world’s getting bigger because you can look everywhere, but it’s also getting smaller because categories are getting specialized.”
24. The game of marketing has changed.  It’s not price – it’s relevancy, difference, and value.  Marketing is now tribal leadership.  Small is the new big.  Fire customers that aren’t right for your business.  Attention is an asset.  Permission marketing works better than spam – “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t.”  You take word-of-mouth marketing to the next level with IdeaViruses.  Tell the stories people want to believe.  Products that are remarkable get talked about.     Be authentic.  You can’t fool people.  According to Seth — “You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time.  And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.”  Marketing is an investment.  Seth says, “If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense.  Good marketers realize that it is an investment.”
25. Feed, grow, and satisfy your business.   Plan for the money.   If there’s no money, you’re out of the game.  In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, Seth shares 9 rules to take care of your business: 1.) find people who care about cash less than you do, 2.) survival is success, 3.) success leads to more success 4.) redo the mission statement and the business plan every three months, 5.) associate with winners, 6.) beware of shared ownership, 7.) advertise, 8.) get mentored, and 9.) observe those little birds that clean the teeth of very big hippos.

Top 10 Seth Godin Quotes
Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by Seth:

1. “Expectations are the engines of our perceptions.”
2. “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.”
3. “Go ahead, do something impossible. “
4. “You can’t shrink your way to greatness! “
5. “Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what?”
6. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
7. “Why waste a sentence saying nothing? “
8. “If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?”
9. “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”
10. “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.”

Quotes Organized by Category
I’ve included some of my favorite Seth Godin quotes below.  For simple scanning, I’ve organized them using the following categories: General, Business, Change, Greatness, Ideas, Leadership/ Management, Marketing, Mediocrity / Status Quo, Strategy.

Catalog of Seth’s Resources (Sites, Books, Videos)
Seth has a wide range of resources, from blog posts to books.  For simple scanning, I organized Seth’s collection of resources into the following buckets: sites, books, eBooks, videos, and popular posts.

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from the Dip
• Lessons Learned from the Bootstrapper’s Bible
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki

Photo by jurvetson.

“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” — Author Unknown

I was listening to a Tony Robbins talk a while back and he hit on a very important distinction … faith vs. belief.  His point was that while belief is based on evidence, faith is not.  Faith you believe without evidence.   Right or wrong, it’s what you truly believe in your inner core.

Positive Action Over Blind Faith
His point was don’t suddenly adopt blind faith — use smart faith.  If your garden has weeds, see the weeds.  Don’t turn a blind eye or tell yourself, “I have no weeds, I have no weeds, …”  This isn’t about positive thinking.  It’s about positive action and having faith — faith in something better, bigger, or beyond what’s right in front of you.

The problem with beliefs is that it’s a chicken and egg.  If you don’t believe it, until it’s true and you have the evidence, it will never happen.  It’s how you get stuck in a rut.

You Already Have Faiths — Are they Serving You?
The problem with faith, is that you already have it.  It may or may not be serving you.  You have these fundamental beliefs about yourself, the world, … etc. that already live within you.  They can go against evidence or they filter how you see any and all information.  If your fundamental belief or your faith is that people are good, you see them that way.  If your fundamental belief, is that you will always find a way to succeed, that shapes your thinking, feeling, and doing.  If you fundamentally believe that you’re a failure no matter what, or you’re ugly, or whatever … this faith in yourself and faith in people and faith in the world ... limits or enables your ability to rock your world.

If You Don’t Believe It, You Won’t See It
Personally, I know way too many people that don’t know how great they are, and they don’t believe it because of their faith in themselves.  The sad part is, the evidence says they’re doing great, but their fundamental beliefs says they are no good.

Wow.

What are Your Fundamental Beliefs?
Tony asked a cutting question in his talk:  “What are your fundamental beliefs?” …  What are the 5, 10, 12 or whatever things that you truly belief about yourself?  What are your faiths?  If you fundamentally believe the world conspires with you, that’s a completely different belief than the world conspires against you.  Imagine your will … your strength … your optimism … if you fundamentally belief … in a faith sort of way … that you will always succeed, no matter what the situation.  That cuts deep.

Faith vs. Hot-Air
Now I can recognize when somebody truly has faith and believes in what they are doing or that they are on their path.  I used to wonder why some people say things a little louder and with more conviction, as if trying to convince themselves.  Well, they are.  They have a belief … but they don’t have faith.  They don’t believe it in their core.  They’re testing it, saying it out loud … hoping somebody will believe them, but most importantly, hoping they will believe it them self.

If you’re hoping the evidence comes back and convinces you, you don’t have faith.

Grow Your Faith Muscles
The beauty in all this insight is that true to form, Tony Robbins, gives a very simple way to build and grow your faith muscles:

• Step 1. See things the way they are — don’t ignore reality
• Step 2. See things as they could be — see them a better way
• Step 3. Take action to make it happen

I really like the fact that he was explicitly said to see things as they are and how you want them to be.   It echoed a point that I’ve written about before in The Way Things Are, The Way Things Should Be, and the Way You Want Things to Be.

For me, the exercise of finding my faiths really reminded me of a few fundamental beliefs that have always served me well … that the world conspires with me (Disney taught me that) and that I’ll succeed in any situation.

Got faith? …

Photo by icultist.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

When you have to think your way through things, you wear yourself out.  This is why routines and going into automatic pilot serve you.  You don’t have to think your way through the basics and you can focus your thinking on higher level things up the stack.  Imagine if every day you had to think your way through brushing your teeth, making breakfast, getting dressed … etc.  You effectively rob Peter to pay Paul, when you spend your thinking on things.  That’s why focus and what you direct your attention to and what you choose to turn into thoughtful decisions or mindful actions is so important.  In other words, you have a “thinking budget” to spend throughout the day, that ideally you spend on what matters most, based on what you want to accomplish.

Air Force pilots understand the danger of their pilot’s burning up their attention.  If pilots get overwhelmed, they shut down, compartmentalize, or channelize.  They reduce task saturation and overwhelm through checklists and simple visual cues and reminders.

This is also why change is so tough.  Anytime you’re breaking a routine or changing a habit, you have to monitor and correct your behavior, and think your way through things.  This is the pain of  moving from conscious incompetence to unconscious competence.  Eventually, you’re body will know just what to do, but in the early stages it’s a lot of course correction and mindful, deliberate action.  It’s like when you drive for miles and don’t realize how far you’ve gone.

In the book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard , Dan Heath and Chip Heath write about how change is hard because self-control wears you out.

Self-Control is an Exhaustible Resource
Managing yourself takes effort and you actually drain yourself in the process.  Dan and Chip write:

“… psychologists have discovered that self-control is an exhaustible resource.  It’s like doing bench presses at the gym.  The first one is easy, when your muscles are fresh.  But with each additional repetition, your muscles get more and more exhausted, until you can’t lift the bar again.”

Self-Control as Self-Supervision
Self-control isn’t just resisting something you want.  It also applies to monitoring and correcting your actions, thoughts, and behavior.  Dan and Chip write:

“We don’t mean the narrow sense of the word, as in the willpower needed to fight vice (smokes, cookies, alcohol).  We’re talking about a broader-kind of self-supervision.  Think of the way your mind works when you’re giving negative feedback to an employee, or assembling a new bookshelf, or learning a new dance.  You are careful and deliberate with your words or movements.  It feels like there’s a supervisor on duty.  That’s self-control too.“

Self-Control is Draining, Automatic Pilot is Easy
Mindless activity is easy.  We know just what to do.  It’s when we break the auto-pilot that things get tough.  Dan and Chip write:

“Contrast that with all the situations in which your behavior doesn’t feel “supervised” — for instance, the sensation while you’re driving that you can’t remember the last few miles of the road, or the easy, unthinking way you take a shower or make your morning coffee.  Much of our daily behavior, in fact, is more automatic than supervised, and that’s a good thing because the supervised behavior is the hard stuff.  It’s draining.”

Change is Hard Because People Wear Themselves Out
People aren’t lazy or resistant to change.  They simply get worn out.  Dan and Chip write:

“And when people exhaust their self-control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure.  In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change.  So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s flat wrong.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Change is hard because people wear themselves out.“

The Experiment: Resisting Cookies Wore the Students Out
Dan and Chip share the story of an experiment that highlights how resisting temptation wears you out mentally.  I’ll summarize here.  In the experiment, students were told not to eat for 3 hours before-hand.  The room was filled with the smell of fresh-baked cookies. Half the students were told to eat 2 or 3 cookies and some candies, but no radishes.  Resist the radishes.  The other half of students were told to eat at least 2 or 3 radishes, but no cookies.  Resist the cookies.

As you can guess, the radish-eaters had a tough time resisting the cookies and this wore them out mentally.  This showed up when the students were tested right after, by working on unsolvable puzzles (but the students didn’t know the problems were unsolvable.)  To bottom line it, the “untempted” students (the cookie-eaters) spent 19 minutes on the task, and 34 attempts on the impossible problem. The cookie-eaters were fresh and untaxed.  On the other hand, the radish-easters gave up after only 8 minutes and made 19 attempts.  They had worn out their persistence fighting their temptation.

Imagine that … worn out, simply by resisting some fresh baked cookies.

Now that I know this, I spend less cycles on things that I think are trivial.  I just let them go.  I don’t want to waste my “thought budget” on the lesser decisions that get in the way of the more important things.  I also structure myself for success using checklists and visual cues where I can, so I don’t have to spend energy thinking about things that I can effectively turn into routines.

Photo by bubibi.

Every now and then I come across a metaphor that really sticks and helps me think differently about something I see every day. 

The metaphor helps me look at these situations with a new lens, and, as a result, think, feel, and act more effectively.

I’ve heard of several ways to think about our thinking.  I’ve heard of the left-brain and right-brain.  I’ve heard of the emotional side and the rational side. 

This time, the metaphor is the Elephant and the Rider.  I especially like this metaphor because it paints a powerful picture of a little rider, either at the mercy of the elephant or directing the elephant to make great things happen.  The big take away here is that change can come easily when Elephants and Riders move together.

In the book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard , Dan Heath and Chip Heath write about the Elephant and the Rider.

The Two Systems: The Emotional and the Rational Side

Our brain has two systems at work – an emotional side and a rational side.  Dan and Chip write:

“The conventional wisdom in psychology, in fact, is that the brain has two independent systems at work at all times.  First, there’s what we call the emotional side.  It’s the part of you that is instinctive, that feels pain and pleasure.  Second, there’s the rational side, also known as the reflective or conscious system.  It’s the part of you that deliberates and analyzes and looks into the future.”

The Planner and the Doer

Modern behavior economists think of the two systems as the Planner and the Doer.  Dan and Chip write:

“Plato said that in our heads we have a rational charioteer who has to rein in an unruly horse that "barely yields to horsewhip and goad combined."  Freud wrote about the selfish id and the conscientious superego (and also about the ego, which mediates between them).  More recently behavior economists dubbed the two systems, the Planner and the Doer.”

The Elephant and the Rider Metaphor

Jonathan Haidt introduces the Elephant and the Rider metaphor.  Dan and Chip write:

“But to us, the duo’s tension is captured best by an analogy used by University of Virginia psychologist, Jonathan Haidt in his wonderful book The Happiness Hypothesis.  Haidt says that our emotional side is the Elephant and our rational side is the rider.  Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader.  But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant.  Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose.  He’s completely overmatched.”

When Our Elephant Overpowers Our Rider

Sometimes our emotional Elephant wins over our analytical Rider.  Dan and Chip write:

“Most of us are all too familiar with situations in which our Elephant overpowers our Rider.  You’ve experienced this if you’ve ever slept in, overeaten, dialed up your ex at midnight, procrastinated, tried to quit smoking and failed, skipped the gym, gotten angry and said something you regretted, abandoned your Spanish or piano lessons, refused to speak up in a meeting because you were scared, and so on.”

Change is Easy When Elephants and Riders Move Together

The key to effective change is getting the Elephant and the Rider moving together.  Dan and Chip write:

“Changes often fail because the Rider simply can’t keep the Elephant on the road long enough to reach the destination.  The Elephant’s hunger for instant gratification is the opposite of the Rider’s strength, which is the ability to think long-term, to plan, to think beyond the moment (all those things that your pet can’t do.) … To make progress toward a goal, whether it’s noble or crass, requires the energy and drive of the Elephant.  And this strength is the mirror image of the Rider’s great weakness: spinning his wheels.  The Rider tends to overanalyze and over think things. … A reluctant Elephant and a wheel-spinning Rider can both ensure nothing changes.  But when Elephants and Riders move together, change can come easily.”

Now, whenever I find my Elephant off track or my Rider spinning wheels, I ask myself, “How can I get the Elephant and the Rider moving together?”

Photo by Swami Stream.

You know those moments when you feel fully alive? … those moments when you are fully in the moment and you want the moment to last forever?  This quote puts the search for these moments front and center:

“There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of a person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.”

– Christopher Alexander, A Timeless Way of Building, 1979

Photo by Sara.Nel.

This is an excerpt from my latest book, Getting Results the Agile Way.  It’s from the A Word from the Author section.  One of my readers tells me that this was the most impactful prose for them.  I think because it answers the question, “Why did I write this guide?”  This is yet another reminder to me how important it is to lead with your why. Here it is …

“Results were the name of the game, and I didn’t have the playbook. When I first joined Microsoft more than 10 years ago, I was overwhelmed. It was a sink or swim environment. Every day I had to play catch up from the day before. I got more email than I could possibly read, more action items than I could possibly do, and challenges that were beyond my skills. Inside the team, we affectionately called this scenario, “trial by fire.” There were no boundaries to my days, each day bled into night, where I was consistently “burning the midnight oil.” It reminded me of the saying, “whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

However, I hadn’t moved across the country, leaving everything and everyone I knew behind, to fail right off the bat. One of the first things I did to survive was study the best of the best. I found people in the company that got results and I learned from them. I learned everything I could about productivity from anybody who was willing to share their system with me.

…As I mentored people and teams around Microsoft to help them get results, I honed my system. It was one thing for me to get results, but it has been quite another to package it up for other people. Because I was continuously building new project teams, I needed a system for getting new people on each team up to speed quickly. As the saying goes, “necessity is the Mother of invention.” These challenges forced me to simplify my system, and lean it down to the most effective parts. The result is a tested system that’s scaled up to large teams, down to individuals, and is a system I can bet on time and again. The most important thing is simple, so if I fall off the horse, it’s easy to get back on.

This guide is my attempt to give you the playbook that I wish somebody had given me so many years ago for getting results.”

—Excerpt from “A Word from the Author”, J.D. Meier, Getting Results the Agile Way

Photo by lululemon athletica.

When I was a kid, I had a bike that I thought I could ride pretty well.  After all, it was my bike and I rode it every day.  I knew its quirks, I knew its strengths, I knew its weaknesses.  Or so I thought.  One day, a friend asked to try my bike.

He hopped on my bike and then paused as if sizing it up.  Then, with confidence and grace, he rolled slowly forward and balanced on the front wheel.  He then  started to hop on the front wheel several times, before spinning 180 degrees.  He then went backwards on my bike and lifted up the front wheel.  He then proceeded to hop up and down on the back wheel.  He then spun my bike in the air 360 degrees, as if he was one with my bike.

He peddled away fast, then turned around with amazing speed … and he hit a jump.  As he glided through the air on my bike, higher than I ever saw my bike go, he glanced at me, with a knowing look.  He rode my bike up to me with blinding speed, slammed on the brakes, and slid the back tire in a wide circle to a fiery, screaming halt.  When the dust cloud cleared, he had my bike up on it’s back tire.  He gave the handle-bars a quick spin, the sun glistened off my spokes, then he snatched handle-bars to a perfect halt, much the way a drummer might catch their twirling drumstick.

As I scooped my jaw up off the ground, and took the handlebars of my bike, I was silent.  I looked at my bike through new eyes that day.  I had never known what was possible.

That was long ago, but it’s always a reminder to me.  I always wonder whether somebody else would drive me better than I can.  I’ve got the “owner’s manual”, but maybe not the best “driver’s guide.”  As a practice, I periodically ask people I trust …

“What would you do if you were me?…”

I listen with an open mind, as they tell me what they might do if they had my skills, my experience, my capabilities, and my situation.  Sometimes it re-affirms I’m making the most of what I’ve got.  other times, it opens my eyes to possibilities I never imagined.

Photo by Adam Baker.

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.” — Malcolm S. Forbes

On our team at Microsoft, things move fast and we can’t afford to get stuck.  Being blocked on something is one thing, but feeling stuck is another.

When you feel stuck, it’s easy for your thought patterns to create a spiral down.  This is ineffective and it can be paralyzing.  The good news is, you can break the thought patterns, by asking yourself a different set of questions.

Here are some of the questions we regularly use:

1. Ask “who would be doing what differently?”
2. Ask “who is holding you back?”
3. Ask “how?” not “why?”

1. Who would be doing what differently?
This is my favorite question.  This forces absolute clarity.  I use it whenever I feel stuck or when somebody brings me their challenges.  If you can figure out the action or behavior that you want to see, then you start to put your finger on who really needs to do what.  This makes it actionable and specific.  More importantly, this clarity helps you see your role in the situation and where you can focus your time and energy for results.

2. Ask “who is holding you back?”
One of my mentors is great at asking this question.  I’ve seen him in action.  What happens when he asks this question is somebody first gets a blank look … you know, that “deer in headlights” look.  Next, they start figuring out who to point their finger at.  What they start to realize quickly is that nobody is really holding them back.  They are holding themself back.  Often through either limiting assumptions or limiting thoughts.  They haven’t tested their results.  Often, they assume how people will react to their actions without testing their own actions.

Related to this, one of my managers always re-enforced, it’s faster to change yourself than other people, and I’m a beleiver that you have a lot of flexibility in that you can change your thinking, feeling, or doing, or you can change the situation by adapting yourself, adjusting the situation, or changing to a new situation.

3. Ask “how?” not “why?”
“Why me?” … “Why does this always happen to me?” … “Why are you late?” … all of these are “stuck” questions.  They go nowhere fast.  You either find a way to justify why it’s always you, or you end up in a debate whether and why somebody is always late.  Instead, switch to solution-focused questions, and ask “how?”  For example, “how can you show up on time?”  … “How can you avoid this in the future?”  Your brain likes to solve problems, but only if you frame the right question.  If you ask “why”, it’s a self-perpetuating spiral down.  To break the spiral, shift to “how.”

I’m not a fan of fancy.  I’m a fan of effective.  These techniques aren’t fancy, but they are incredibly effective.  You can use them anytime when you find yourself feeling stuck, or you’re in a situation that you want to be different.  The most important person in your life for changing your life is you.

Photo by Tiago Ribeiro.

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.” – Fulton Oursler

If you carry regrets around with you, this post just might lighten your load.  It’s easy to regret.  It’s easy to second guess yourself, especially with 20/20 hind-sight.  It’s easy to ponder the “what if’’s” and “what could have been’s.”  It’s not so easy to let your regrets go.

I was having lunch with a friend when the topic of regret came up.  After my friend talked through his one regret in life, I mentioned that I had just read the perfect words on how to let go of regrets.  In essence, you could have taken your other path and been hit by a bus.  My take is, you never know how things will go.  Instead, you make the most of where you are now, and you carry the good forward — the rest is experience.  My friend instantly got it — it was an ah-ha moment for him, and he suggested I blog it to share more broadly.

The book that re-shaped my outlook on regret is, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less , by Barry Schwartz.

Hit By a Bus
Schwartz writes that life is unpredictable and it doesn’t help to waste time on regret:

I have a friend, frustrated over his achievements in life, who has wasted countless hours over the past thirty years regretting that he passed up the chance to go to a certain Ivy League college. ‘Everything would have been so different,’ he often mutters, ‘if only I had gone.’  The simple fact is that might have gone way to the school of his dreams and been hit by a bus.

Let Go of Regret
Schwartz writes that letting go of regret is better than second-guessing a decision:

Changing the one decision — going to the more prestigious college — would not have altered his basic character or erased the other problems that he faced, so there really is nothing to say that his life or career would have turned out any better.  But one thing I do know is that his experience of them would be infinitely happier if he could let go of regret.

I don’t know about you, but the “hit by a bus” really put things in perspective for me.

Photo by kandjstudio.