Set Higher Standards by YogiRavi

I am a big fan of not creating problems that I will need to solve later on. I do not love cleaning, but I do enjoy a clean home. The best way I’ve found to keep my house clean is to not make it dirty or messy in the first place! This sounds incredibly intuitive and simple – and it is – but it amazes me how many people still don’t actually do it.

For example, let’s suppose the dishes pile up, the carpets get tracked with dirt, clothes are lying all over the floor, laundry is left half-dry in the dryer, food is spoiling in the fridge, receipts and mail are littered about the counter, etc.

This is quite a mess, but not out of the ordinary for the typical home every. Just think about how frusting it would be to live in this kind of environment. Cleaning once you hit this breaking point would just add another layer of frustration to the mix.

Instead, consider the following changes:

• You don’t put dishes in the sink, but directly in the dishwasher
• You slip off your shoes when you enter your home
• You have a hamper in your bedroom for all your dirty clothes, and another for the clean clothes that are yet to be folded
• You eat what is in your fridge first before dining out, and get in the habit of freezing things you know you won’t eat in a few days
• You have a shoebox for receipts, maybe a few shoeboxes if you have a home business
• You immediately throw all junk mail out before you set the mail down on your counter (and then take steps to stop junk mail for good)

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I’ve had experiences lately where I have not wanted to do things. Practicing yoga, teaching yoga, going to work, eating healthy, calling someone, doing my taxes, cleaning up, etc. Normally I don’t need a lot of motivation to do thing, but the past few weeks have been an exception.

Reflecting on this experience I find that things often appear to be far worse from a distance. That is to say, they seem to take more effort, work, time, etc. It’s like a little kid inside of my throwing a little tantrum saying “I don’t want to do this!!!!”.

In all of these cases, I’ve done the thing anyway, and have been happy I did. The tasks were never as arduous as I thought they would be. In all cases I learned something from the experience and ended up having a better day as a result.

I guess the lesson here is that sometimes when you don’t feel like doing something, and are half-committed and waffling abut, just committing and doing it anyway is the exact right thing to do.

It’s another year, and another time to reflect on the amazing things have been created over the past year, while also considering great new possibilities for the coming 12 months.

It’s also a time of year when gyms and health clubs are packed and hordes of people are crowding the organic produce sections at the local grocer in an attempt to clean up their diet, their bodies and their overall health. Yes, it’s that time of year – resolution time. Even though history shows that the vast majority of resolutions set at the beginning of the year go unfulfilled – people still go through the process of setting them and then charging out to achieve them with reckless abandon.

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Source: Seth Godin’s Blog

I was reading Tynan’s blog and his recent post about Seth Godin’s book, “The Dip.” I just finished reading Seth’s most recent book “Tribes” <very short and very good> so this caught my eye. So much so, that I just headed over to the library to check it out.

Now, less than am hour after reading Tynan’s post, I have finished reading “The Dip”! Yes, it’s a short one.

The book is about being the best in the world at something, and the effort that goes into that pursuit. Being best in the world is itself subjective. It could be best in your town or whatever micro-market niche you are in. Regardless, being the best at something always involves some amount of effort and toil <the dip> before coming out the other side and seeing the benefits.

Most people quit in the dip.

The trick is to know when to push through the dip and when to quit. Lifting weights is a great example. It is the last few reps that produce all the gains. Most people quite before they break a sweat. Those last few reps are painful.

On the flip-side, quitting is also important since languishing in mediocrity is a sure-fire way to waste a lot of resources (time, money, opportunity cost of doing something great).

So in the end…we all need to decide what to stick with AND what to quit. The book is a great and very short. I highly recommend reading it a few times (I plowed through it in less than an hour).

Below are some random notes I took while reading.

• Being the best in the world is important. The best get out-sized rewards.
• Everyone wants the best, nobody wants the second best.
• Being the best in the world means quitting lots of things where it is clear that you won’t be best in the world….and sticking with things that do have promise, even when the going gets tough.
• Best in the world is subjective. It is the best in terms of the range of your customer. Best in the world might really be the best in your town in the price range that your customer can afford. It’s about being the best in your niche.
• The customer determines what the “best” is…not you. And their definitions may change.
• People who are the best in the world get really good at answering the questions that are hard, the things that they don’t know. That’s what they specialize in. If they skipped the hard stuff, their skills would not be valuable.
• Be exceptional in the areas that matter.
• Dips don’t last as long when you whittle at them. Successful people don’t just survive the dip, they lean into them.
• Jack Welch made the decision for GE to only stay in businesses where it was #1 or #2 in its industry. He was a great “quitter.”
• Quitting when you hit the dip is a bad idea.
• Quitting means deciding ahead of time that you are done.
• Write down under what circumstances you are going to quit! Don’t quit in the moment.
• Questions to ask before quitting:

1.    Am I panicking?
2.    Who <or what> and I trying to influence?
3.    What measurable success and progress is being made?

If you are making a decision about when to quit in the moment, you are probably making the wrong decision. – Ultramarathoner Dick Collins as quoted in Seth Godin’s book “The Dip.”

Tynan has another great post about life simplification…this time it’s about fashion. Can you imagine only owning a single pair of pants? A little grungy sounding I agree, but can you also imagine how easy it would be to get dressed every morning!

No wasted time or energy deciding what colors to wear or having to avoid wearing the same thing too often.

Just last week I managed to fill up another trash bag with old clothes, and plan to do the same this weekend. I recently bought a few new things, and want to make sure I am not hording old stuff that I rarely wear. I want my closet to only be filled with things that fit me well and that I enjoy wearing.

Everything else must go to someone else who needs the clothing more than I do.

In March I disconnected the data service to my Smart Phone. This means no e-mail, Facebook or web browsing on my phone. Text messages are OK, that’s it. My phone may have less IQ right now, but boy was it a good move.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this single move has had the biggest impact on my ability to get things done, focus and more effectively manage my time in the past few years.

You see, when I have 24/7 ubiquitous access to email <work and personal> I take advantage of that to allow what I call “slop” to encroach in during times when I should be focused. Instead of focusing and getting work done during the day so I can relax and spend time with friends at night, I dink around during the day and then try to stay connected and take care of business when I shouldn’t.

It also makes it so much easier to just react to other people’s bad behaviors. I work in an environment where people e-mail at all hours of the day and night. In only a few limited cases are these after hours emailed really urgent (like maybe once a month if that). When I had e-mail access on my phone, I would play into the drama and react to mail at the wrong times.

…and don’t get me started about Facebook….updating my status over phone had zero impact on solving world hunger.

Perhaps the biggest thing….is that work would just be on my mind more. Checking e-mail quickly before walking into a movie theater would keep me from really enjoying a movie. Any thought leaves a residue behind and it takes a while for that residue to fully dissolve. It keeps me from really being in the moment.

So now, 10 months after embarking on what was a 30-day challenge to go “smart phone free” …..I am still sticking with it and have no plans on turning back. Right now, I just don’t have the will power to use and not abuse the full capabilities of a Smart Phone and my guess is that neither do most other people.

I am a mouse on a wheel. It might be a shiny, diamond-studded wheel that spins all nice and smooth, but it is still a wheel. I’m a stimulus/response machine. I don’t see this as an inherently bad thing. It is what it is. It’s this behavior that has helped me succeed in many things. It helps to multi-task at work. It helps me to juggle multiple to-do’s at home. It helps me just put the blinders on and get things done even when those things might not be fun or overly exciting (like training hard or doing the laundry).

Part of this change has to do with my new role as a manager. I am no longer defining my success at work in terms of what I do, but in terms of what my team can do. I am having to deal with many more varied projects and problems than I have ever had to do in the past. Like it or not, since I spend so much time at or thinking about work; this work-based stimulus response behavior pervades the rest of my life. It is not good or bad, it is what it is.

However, I’m starting to see a dramatic contrast. I just returned from a whirlwind 8 day trip to China, Korea and Taiwan (for work). Talk about stimulus-response overload! Now, in the throes of holiday season, most of my team and peers are on vacation. E-mail has flowed to a trickle. I haven’t had a phone call in days. My stimuli are all gone! Oh no, what to do! It’s actually taken me a bit of time (a day or so) to make the switch from dancing monkey (stimulus response addict) to normal human being.

As a “normal human being”, I feel much more calm; but also less excited about stuff. I am able to think long term, but am actually not nearly as motivated to get a bunch of near-term (easy) stuff done. I am more looking forward to going to work in the morning (less pressure) but a little more bored when I get there.

So yes, there is a change. It’s not good or bad. It is what it is.