Tag: fear

Shorten your backswing

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

It was time today to sit down and write a blog post.

I keep track, by email, of blog post ideas when they happen, and was just about to go into that email account when I saw an interesting tweet….that led me to a clever article about Occupy Wall Street, that….  wait a minute, what was I planning to do?

There’s the real work we need to do, and there’s all the muss and fuss that we do as part of our process of starting our real work.

This can happen a lot in sports.  In racquet sports there was a whole move-my-racquet-forward-before-hitting-a-backhand thing that I used to do.  I have the same problem (never fixed) when throwing a frisbee.  If you ever go to a yoga class, watch how much hair-fixing and water drinking happens at the exact moment the instructor calls out a challenging pose.

It feels minor, but think about all the wasted motion I was doing for the 500 backhands I hit in a one hour squash game – energy spent, speed reduced, extra steps taken for absolutely no reason other than that I’d built up a bad habit.

This isn’t just about not getting distracted by social media and your inbox (though those are particularly dangerous because they pretend to be work).  It’s about shortening the distance between “I’m going to start working” and “I’m working.”

Secret weapon

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to break through all the clutter, to stand out from the mountain of emails in your customers’ inbox, to have your voice be a clarion call above the deluge of Tweets and Facebook updates?

Guess what, there is:  a mode of communication where instead of competing with 150 others’ messages in a day, it’s just you and maybe 1 or 2 other folks; it’s direct and gets people’s attention right at that moment; it’s a way to show that you care more than the other guy.

It’s called a telephone.

Yeah, that’s right.  Pick it up, dial the number, talk to another human being directly.

All those scheduling emails are a way to hide.  All those emails full of questions and a proposal that you find a time to discuss three weeks from Tuesday are an even better way to run away.

Today, pick up the phone three times (let’s start small) when you otherwise wouldn’t.  Call up a customer, impromptu, and talk to them.

That customer is getting 150 emails a day and 3 phone calls, and you’re wondering why you’re having trouble getting her attention?

Call.

Terrified of success

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

It’s worth reflecting why we systematically under-prepare for things: big speeches, job interviews, presentations to the Board of Directors, asking for a raise.

We’ve heard all the talk about not losing spontaneity, about being in the moment.  Phooey.  All the best jazz musicians – professional improvisers – practice like crazy.

If there is foundational work that you (systematically) don’t do when the stakes are high, that is fear speaking.  Fear of spending time today looking the thing that scares you right in the eye.  Fear of putting in the time now, because when we put in that time we’re making an emotional commitment to a successful outcome.  Fear that if we try our hardest and then fail, we have no excuse – whereas if we wing it, we always have an out.

It’s surprising, ironic and a little sad: we under-invest in our own success not because we’re afraid of failing, but because we’re terrified that we might succeed.

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POSTSCRIPT to yesterday’s post: I was half right (or, if you prefer, half wrong), as Dean Karlan posted the results of his experiment on the Freakanomics blog.  The results are that prior donors who’d given less than $100 to Freedom from Hunger gave 0.9 percentage points LESS when presented with more facts/data; those who’d given  $100 or more gave 3.54 percentage points more.  So more facts made some donors give more, and some give less.  Dean shares an interesting observation in the post: “Freedom from Hunger is known amongst its supporters and those in the microfinance world as being more focused on using evidence and research to guide their programs.”  So these donors might be some of the most likely to be interested in evidence, and it still was a coin flip on whether more data resulted in more or fewer donations.

A better list

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Lists are great – a systematized, orderly way to keep yourself on task and keep track of tasks.

Except of course that lists are usually an excuse – an excuse to do everything but the real work we have to do.

Some lists, full of seemingly important stuff, actually just say:

  1. Stall
  2. Stall
  3. Procrastinate
  4. Put stuff off
  5. Stall some more
  6. Look busy
  7. Have a meeting that looks busy
  8. Etc.

(By the way, your inbox is just a fancy list.  And don’t get me started on your Facebook / Twitter feed).

So how about this: keep the list, work the list, but act based on the knowledge that you’ll never get to the end of the list.  Knowing that, why not commit, once a day, to add one thing to the list (just one!!) that’s hard or scary, and commit to getting that thing done today.

Hard and scary is, it turns out, a pretty great proxy for “worthwhile.”

One item, once a day, every day, that terrifies you.

The elephant

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Here’s the deal: he’s in the room, so you options are either to talk about him or to pretend he’s not there.

You can put it off, you can discuss other things, you can hide for a while, but he ain’t going anywhere (heck, he doesn’t even fit through the door).

Imagine how you’ll surprise people when you – you who appear to have most to lose if you bring him up; you, whose plan seems to hinge on him not being there at all – call him out, describe just what he looks like, acknowledge that he could scuttle everything.

Better for you to name him and explain why it makes sense to barrel ahead regardless.  It’s when someone else calls him out that you’ll be pushed onto your back foot and risk losing momentum.

The illusion

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

Three years since I first started blogging, I’m beginning to get a glimpse of the phantoms that real writers battle:

The illusion that, regardless of what happened yesterday, today you’ll have nothing to say.

The twinge of loss when you write something worth writing.

The pain of putting an idea out into the world.

The fear that something has left you that you can’t get back

It is like giving away anything real and true – love or friendship or money or some other long-treasured thing.  Our mind tricks us into feeling that these things we give away are ours, that they are finite, that the safest thing to do is to cling to them fiercely.

Over and over we practice creating and letting go.  We practice being open.  We dare to strive to be our best selves, reaching so far that we are exposed and vulnerable.  And yes, sometimes we fail. Our leap comes up short.  We crash into the chasm and end up sore, bruised and limping.

But mostly we discover that what we give away is a reflection of the abundance within us, is proof of our grace and all that we have to give.

So we sit back down again, ready to wrestle the illusion of scarcity to the ground, never giving up or giving in.

That moment

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

You know that moment when you ask for something really big?  Big enough that it makes you nervous and makes the person you’re asking nervous?

Your empathy will scream out for you to rescue the person – and you – from the discomfort you just created.

Don’t do it.

Sit there.

Let the seconds tick by.

Now the best way for that discomfort to go away is to have the person you’ve just made a big ask of say “Yes.”

Which conversation – addendum

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I’ve heard from a few readers that yesterday’s post – Which Conversation – was a little opaque.  So here’s take 2:

There are two models of how you build yourself up professionally, how you grow your visibility and responsibility.

The first model says that you do what’s asked of you, (over) deliver, and then ask for/be given more responsibility. That’s the school version of life – do your homework, get good grades, advance to the next class.

What I was getting at is that you’re holding yourself back if you always ask for permission.

Why not be indispensable instead? Go ahead and DO all those things that seem like the next step, the thing you’d like to do next year or someday.  If you do that well, if you’re already delivering like crazy AND handling a bunch of other important stretch opportunities, then you’re no longer going to your boss asking for permission, you’re going to her with a full list of things that you’re already doing and just asking her to formalize your role in whatever way will confer the official authority you’re looking for (but may not even need).

Of course this requires you to figure out a way to nail your current responsibilities and to make time and space for all the new stuff.  It forces you to think hard, confront your fears, do things without formal authority or blessing from above.  It forces you to do real work.

If you’re up for it, then you’ll find yourself having a very different conversation with your boss a year from now:

1. School version: “I did well. Is it OK if I do these new things next year?”

2. Indispensable version: “Here’s everything I’m doing, all the ways I’m going above and beyond.  Anything I should stop doing?  If not, at some point we should formally acknowledge that I’m doing a lot more than the job I was doing before.”

Hope that’s more clear.

Why am I not more…

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

A long time ago, I decided to take some time off from school to go live in Spain.  I dutifully bought a copy of “Spanish in 15 Minutes a Day” and had worked my way through the first chapter when I found myself on a bus in Boston, returning from a school where I volunteered once a week.

Two guys sitting a few rows behind me having a conversation in Spanish.  I strained to understand, and quickly became frustrated that I could barely catch two words of what they were saying.

This of course made no sense at all.  I hadn’t (yet) actually done the work of learning to speak Spanish, I’d just decided that I was going to learn the language, yet there I was beating myself up for not understanding these guys.

It’s tempting when we find ourselves in new situations – new countries, new jobs, among a new peer set or just at a cocktail party or a conference where we don’t feel comfortable – to beat ourselves up for not being more…something (connected, outgoing, fluent, knowledgeable of local customs).  It’s tempting to forget that we are who we are – nothing more, nothing less.

The point of the new situation is that it’s new, that we don’t yet have what it takes to be the best at this new thing – and that’s why we’re there.  The only positive response to that feeling of discomfort, of inadequacy, is to decide to put in the time it takes to get better.

Sin eso, nunca aprendemos a hacerlo mejor.

The best birthday card ever?

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago a good friend of mine started a greeting card business with all sorts of quirky cards for very specific events – buying a new Xbox; embarrassing faux-pas at the office holiday party; most sleepless nights in a row with a new baby….  When he took the cards to buyers, they all told him that the cards were great, but what they needed to see were more birthday cards, anniversary cards, and Valentine ’s Day cards.

The question he asked and we all need to ask today is: do I want to be in the business of trying to create the best birthday card ever?  Do I want to toil away and hope beyond hope that I’ll rise to the top – using the same tools and tactics as everyone else, but doing it just a little bit better?

You know:

Sure everyone does email campaigns, but ours is going to stand out a bit more because we’re going to tweak the headlines and up our open rates…

Sure everyone creates annual reports, but ours will be snappier, crisper, more memorable…

Sure everyone writes a quarterly email that no one reads, but this is what everyone expects, so we have to do it too…

Really?  You actually don’t need to do those things that everyone else does, and you certainly, certainly don’t need to do them in the WAY everyone does them (please!).

You don’t need to spend your organizational energy on things that “people expect.” Who are these “people” anyway?  What exactly do they expect?  Why?

Maybe these expectations are out there, and maybe they’re right, but I’d pressure test that a lot before spending organizational energy on creating another me-too thing that’s fighting for its life to be just-a-bit-above-average.

The chance that you write the world’s best, most memorable birthday card are pretty slim.  But creating the funniest “office party holiday gift card” ever – and getting that card in front of the people who buy and sell holiday gifts…well that sounds a lot more possible and a lot more fun.