Tag: Change

Less Intense, More Frequent

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I strained my right hamstring back in April playing squash. It wasn’t too bad at first, and I figured I’d be back to 100% in six to eight weeks’ time.

I spent the subsequent four months trying, unsuccessfully, to fix my hamstring myself.

My approach, as always, was to barrel straight at the problem: intense stretching or strengthening workouts focused directly on the area that hurt.

Four months later, in early August, I had to accept the obvious: my hamstring was no better; if anything, it hurt more.

Chastened, I resigned myself to stopping most of my regular activity and starting physical therapy.

Happily, two months later, I’m finally seeing good progress.  And, as I watch how PT works, it’s easy to see how different its approach is than what I’d been doing.

Everything we do in PT feels more moderate and measured than what I would do. Very little strain, absolutely no pain.

But, miraculously, real gains over time thanks, no doubt, to the consistency of the effort. Week in, week out, whether convenient or not, I’ve been putting in the time, even in the absence of obvious improvement. I’m finally getting somewhere.

It’s easy to make the mistake I made with any new thing we’re trying to learn: we get inspired, decide to “go for it,” and put in a bunch of effort for a few weeks, expecting results. When we don’t see them, or when the novelty quickly wears off, we give up. As in:

  • Vowing to get more organized, finding a new To Do list software, filling the list, and feeling super-accomplished in week 1…and then giving up when the list gets too full to manage
  • Reading a great article about setting aside quiet time in our schedule, crushing it in the first week or two but then schedule a “really important” meeting during that time, and then another, and another…
  • Going to a training about the value of professional feedback, studiously setting up three formal feedback sessions with peers per the facilitator’s instructions, and then snapping back to the old way of doing things
  • Dreaming of becoming a better writer, writing for an hour a day for a week and then being so terrified of the blank page that we close Word, convinced that we tried and we failed.

The too-large dosage, the version of the story where we dive in with massive commitment and enthusiasm, can be part of the problem. This is because big, symbolic shifts start with fanfare but are often hard to sustain. Worse, when our “new thing” requires a lot of effort, we invariably look too soon for results and, when they don’t materialize, we take that to mean something about our ability to learn or do this new thing, and we desist.

The reality of most change is that it is much slower than we expect or hope it will be.

So, in planning to make change, we must ask not only “what is the new habit I would like to nurture” but also “what is the new practice I believe I can sustain, not for a week or two, but for a few months until it becomes ‘the way I do things?’”

Drip, drip, drip.

Changes that become part of who we are happen because we make them part of our lives over a long period of time.

Small, consistent doses make that kind of sustained change possible.

Halfway

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

There are countless tools out there that will help us organize our lives: tips and tricks for managing a to do list; achieving Inbox Zero (aka knowledge worker nirvana); making time for deep work by not scheduling meetings one or two days a week.

There’s also plenty of quality advice about all the professional skills we might want to work on: from how to give and receive more constructive feedback; to what we need to do to become better writers (write shitty first drafts); to how to become great coaches.

But there’s a catch.

The best To Do list approach (and app) won’t work if we also keep, sort of, using our Inbox to track our tasks tasks.

Our Inbox Zero dreams will be dashed if we don’t consistently act on each and every email. Not most of them, all of them.

Our time for deep thinking will evaporate if we make exceptions for “really important” meetings on our supposedly-open day.

We won’t become skilled at giving and receiving effective feedback if we fail to walk towards that discomfort regularly, or if we’re afraid of the awkwardness of structuring our feedback using the Situation-Behavior-Impact framework that might be new to us.

And on and on to our writing, our coaching, and, yes, our, diet, sleep, and exercise.

The doorway from where we are to where we want to be isn’t knowledge or even motivation.

It’s commitment.

And in most cases, halfway is none of the way there.

How to Make a Big Pot

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

I was chatting with my son, who is a potter, about what it takes to make really big pieces on the wheel.

Last year, he’d often come back from class to report that the piece he had thrown had collapsed. Week after week he’ spend two hours at the wheel and have nothing to show for it.

That’s not happening to him this year and I asked him why: is he being less ambitious with his projects or has he just gotten better?

He said the answer was pretty simple: speed.

Last year he would try to get a piece from tall to tall-and-wide really quickly – in two or three minutes. A new teacher this year explained that the process needs to take closer to 30 minutes. The simple fact is, the clay cannot transform and stretch that fast.

We often ask ourselves whether we are able to change as if it’s a binary thing. More often still, we notice our pace of change and feel it’s not fast enough.

Of course, change is possible, we just need to recognize how slowly or quickly we can stretch and transform.

Old habits, old mindsets, old attitudes, old limitations. They’ve made themselves part of our psyche and part of our personal story. We took years, maybe even decades to build them up. Should we expect that they’ll just fade away after a few minutes, weeks, or even months?

Our biggest barrier to change isn’t ability, it is attitude: the willingness to stick with things long enough to have  our efforts bear fruit.

Don’t let your results after a few days, weeks or even months dictate what you can accomplish. Your change, your stretch, your transformation – they’re all happening.

The trick is to understand, and to embrace, the pace of what is possible

 

Nothing’s Changed

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So often, we’re easily convinced that we have an objective view of ourselves.

That thing we’re working on, the new skill we are cultivating, the organizational improvement that we’re spearheading? We believe that we can see where we are today relative to where we’ve been.

And yet our children grow up before our eyes, and, were it not for photos, bigger shoes and the occasional new bike, we’d never see it.

The truth is, real change happens daily, incrementally, often imperceptibly. It also is rarely linear, meaning even a plateau can be the precursor to a leap forward.

Yet when a change requires our sustained effort—as most important change does—our “nothing’s changed” assessment can be an excuse to slow down or even stop.

Find objective measures and use them to mark your progress.

And, when in doubt, keep at it. You’ve already come further than you think.

10 out of 30

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

Two weeks ago, to address some recurring pain in my knee, I made a 30-day yoga commitment: a minimum of 30 minutes of yoga a day for 30 days. I even have a big ol’ Austin Kleon 30 Day Challenge calendar hanging in my kitchen, with giant red-crayon X’s for each day I’ve completed.

10 days in, I noticed a few things.

The beginning is not the hard part. In fact, beginning big commitments is fun. There’s a bit of fanfare as you tell folks. A sense of self-validation that you’re doing something big and courageous. You spend time imagining the amazing results that will come at the end of 30 days.

This glow remains for a few days. Those first days are a living, breathing validation of all that excitement. They’re still fun.

Then, about a third of the way in, the excitement dies down.

You’re by yourself, alone with your commitment.

There’s no fanfare, no fans.

It’s just you, stuck in the middle. You’re tired and struggling for time and motivation. Maybe you’re noticing that you’ve not made as much progress as you originally imagined.

What a tempting moment to quit.

“Who will notice, really? Maybe I’ll just skip a day.”

I know that my motivation to start on Day 10 was zero. Same for days 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Here’s a dirty little secret about hard work, especially the kind that leads to real and lasting change: the middle bits (and lots of the bits) aren’t all that glamorous.

They’re hard not just because of the actual challenge of doing the hard thing we’ve decided to do. They’re also hard because the act of following through is itself sometimes a grind.

All of us, 3-4 months into this pandemic, find ourselves past the beginning stage of this new world and new life. We’re far from the shore we left, and we’ve got no clear end in sight. No doubt we have felt, or are about to feel, a dip.

Whether or not you’ve specifically made a 30-day commitment, you’re no doubt spending your days doing new things, trying on new approaches, working on new ways (slowly…but also surely) of becoming the person you’re meant to become: a healthier you, a stronger you, a more accepting you, a more confident you, a more grounded you, or maybe a you that’s more at piece with the fact that kid(s) + job(s) = a different calculus on what “productive” really means.

In case you find yourself stuck, I thought it might help to hear this reminder: just because the middle bits are hard doesn’t mean it’s time to give up.

In fact, the middle bits being hard are the best indication that you’re doing something worthwhile, something that will yield important results.

Keep showing up for yourself.

The results will come in time.

 

Want New Habits? Set Up More Reminders.

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Change is only possible through the cultivation of new habits. Most of the time these habits grow or fade thanks to tiny, daily reminders.

We are, after all, trying to replace old habits with new ones, and we’re entitled to some help.

Reminders can be people or places, words, smells or feelings. They are formed through promises we make to others and intentions we set for ourselves.

Reminders nudge us to do the things we said we want to do—they push us forward when we feel like ignoring our best-laid plans, and, on the days we forget those plans entirely, reminders put them in front of us, in plain sight, where they’re impossible to ignore.

The reminder distracts us from the delusion that the choice of whether to do this new thing, today, is a big decision. It’s not. We already said this was important to us, and that decision won’t improve if we revisit it. Our job, today, is to start. Once we start, we tend to continue.

So whether it’s making a plan to meet someone for an early morning walk, chopping up the raw vegetables we want to eat instead of chips, a colleague giving us a supportive nod right before we walk on stage, or just whispering our intention to ourselves before a difficult conversation, one of our jobs is to set up reminders everywhere.

They help us turn our plans into habits, our habits into practices, and our practices into the new person we aim to become.

Commitments are a series of choices that we make again and again.

Reminders help make each of those choices a little more straightforward.

One Person

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

I remind myself that if this post can create a change for just one person, then it’s a good post and a good day.

One person, not hundreds or thousands or millions.

An individual who experiences a small shift and does something different because of it. Someone, somewhere, who takes words and ideas and turns them into positive action.

That shift doesn’t appear in the stats, the likes or the shares.

Those numbers measure something else, and maybe that something matters a bit, but it is poorly correlated with the thing I’d really like to measure: the number of people who are more hopeful today, more committed, more empowered to make a change they seek to make. The number of people who take one more step towards their mission to create positive change.

The measure of success is you and what you do.

Ain’t no stat for that, so why do I keep on checking the numbers?

And why do you?

Defaults

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

We schedule 60-minute meetings because Microsoft built it that way.

It’s just one of defaults that make up the fabric of our days.

The time we go to bed and wake up.

When show up at work, and when we go home.

What we say when someone asks “how are you?”

How we decide if we’ll stop for conversation.

Who we look in the eye.

What we do in the elevator.

And in the car, the train, the subway.

How, when and what we eat.

The first thing we do when we open our laptops, or when we have a free moment, or after concentrating hard for 15 minutes.

The number of minutes (seconds) we allow ourselves for unstructured time just to think.

Feeling rushed.

Acting rushed.

What counts as “real work.”

How honest we are with our boss, and with ourselves.

These are all defaults we’ve developed. Some are intentional, many are unconscious.

Most of them served us well once and don’t any more.

Want to change your day, your health, your outlook, your productivity?

Start by changing a default.

(Including in Microsoft Office)

Right Thought, Right Action

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

You’d think they go together nearly all the time.

But when we’re trying to change, especially when someone has asked us to change, they rarely do.

Thankfully, right action is always available to us.

We just start, we do this new thing, once, a second time, over and over again.

We might not understand why. But we can choose to start by acting, and in so doing we show our faith in and respect for the person who suggested the change.

If it helps, you can see this right action as an exploration: once we genuinely engage in right action, we will see its results. Often, at this moment, our blinders come off. The limitations of our arguments defending our prior, not-as-right action, get exposed.

Right thoughts will follow, because the actions and their results speak for themselves.

The other path, the one where we only act after we’re convinced it’s right, is a mirage.

Because our mind has this terrible tendency to believe itself.

Ritual Reflections

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

At a reception at the Lean Startup conference, where I was speaking last week, I struck up a conversation with a couple as waited on a food line. The three of us had started the day together in the hotel’s small, dark, grey gym, with ESPN blaring.

“How was your workout?” the woman asked, kindly.

“Oh, it was terrible,” I replied. “Truly, every minute was awful. But I finished.”

It was true. I’d had a tiring week, had rushed to catch my 6-hour flight to Las Vegas, wore earplugs all night because the hotel room was so loud, hadn’t eaten breakfast, and was feeling sluggish. I didn’t feel at all like running on the treadmill, but hoped that after I started it would get easier or better.

It never did. This is normal.

I exercise a lot, and at least half of the time I don’t really feel like doing it before I go. I mostly ignore that feeling and the accompanying thoughts, because they tell me almost nothing about what will happen once I get going, let alone how great I’ll feel afterwards.

I notice the same pattern with my kids. This weekend I had to wrench my 7-year old daughter from a lazy Sunday afternoon TV show to get her to practice her ukulele. As kids do, she vocalized all the feelings she had at that moment. “I don’t want to!” “I’m too tired!” “Can we do it a little later?”

But this morning, before school, without protest or prodding, she was in her room strumming away, belting out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

It’s made me realize that most of what we do as parents is to try to instill good rituals.

Rituals of saying please and thank you. Rituals of putting dishes away after a meal. Rituals of how we go to bed. Rituals of doing homework early in the day. Rituals of always saying hello when we enter the house and goodbye when we leave. Rituals about using our phones and when we put them down. Rituals of reading before bed. And on and on.

These rituals only stick if they are for all of us.

My days are no different, filled with ritualistic behaviors: on the train into work, how I act when I get into the office, how and what I eat, what I do on a long-haul flight or how I get to sleep in a hotel room in a different time zone.

These rituals can be comforting, helpful and reassuring. They can be positive, well-thought out, and intentional. They can lead, day by day, to big positive changes.

Or, they can work against us: reinforcing the limitations we’re feeling in our lives, distracting us from what’s going on right now, buttressing our limitations…different flavors of short-term relief we trade, moment by moment, for a future we say we want.

Rituals are powerful because they help us push through the protests we’re feeling in our minds and bodies – whether we say them out loud like my 7-year-old, or we voice them silently. Rituals are a pre-determined set of priorities that free us from the decision of whether we should do this or that.

How we use our rituals is up to us. But when we watch someone who is doing something that seems impossible – running on a freezing cold and rainy morning; showing up perfectly pressed for work no matter what’s going on around them; always listening carefully; writing a blog every day — we should remember that what we’re witnessing isn’t a display of willpower, talent or skill.

It’s the result of ritual.