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October 16 - October 21, 2018
when they’re practicing is to operate outside of their comfort zone and study themselves failing.
If you’re not being rigorous with your practice and focusing on the hard parts, you will improve very slowly.
Experts crave and thrive on immediate and constant feedback.
It’s hard to be your own coach, but not impossible. The key thing is to set up structures that provide you with objective feedback—
Your health, your productivity, and the growth of your career are all shaped by the things you do each day—most by habit, not by choice. Even the choices you do make consciously are heavily influenced by automatic patterns. Researchers have found that our conscious mind is better understood as an explainer of our actions, not the cause
I would want to work hard on a project that was necessary for my business, but I’d fail to execute. Like most people, I blamed laziness or a lack of motivation for these failings.
The key to changing a habit is to realize the ineffectiveness of willpower. It’s not that willpower is unnecessary, but more that it’s a much less powerful tool than most of us assume.
implement each new habit successively, focusing on just one new habit a month.
Instead, imagine that you spent thirty-five minutes each day immediately after work on that skill. Now the behavior is very consistent. It takes place on the same days, in the same conditions, in exactly the same fashion.
Wikipedia lists 223 notable diarists; the primary occupation of fully half is a creative one. These include not only writers, for whom keeping a diary might seem a natural thing to do, but also painters, sculptors, scientists, architects, designers, musicians, and more.
What a calendar cannot do, and a journal can, is help you reflect on the big picture of your life and your creative work—where it is, what it means, and what direction you want it to take. Diaries can be particularly helpful tools for accurately capturing positive events.
keeping a daily diary, you will reduce the chance that some later event will transform your memory of the day’s experiences. So when you feel you have accomplished something, write it down soon, before a client or critic
the single most important motivator is making progress in meaningful work.
To hatch ideas big and small, and to make them happen, you need a mind clear of worry over “small stuff,” a sense of progress and direction, and a broad perspective on your life as it unfolds.
Your diary can only function as a sounding board if you speak to it regularly—and then listen to it.
habit is the key; it gets easier and more self-motivating as you go. We recommend that you start small.
Pick a time when you are likely to have ten minutes to yourself. Ideally, this will be the same time and place each day, to help build the habit. And create a memory trigger, so you won’t forget.
it can be particularly useful to reflect and write on any of the following: Progress, even a small step forward, in work you care about Anyone or anything that helped or hindered your progress Goals and plans, especially a plan for making progress tomorrow Issues or “to-dos” that may be causing you stress as they swirl through your mind Anything that brought you joy or pleasure, even if it lasted only a moment
you’ll multiply the power of your diary if you review it regularly—if you listen to what your life has been telling you. Periodically, maybe once a month, set aside time to get comfortable and read back through your entries.
Be alert to emerging patterns, and jot them down as you see them.
particularly steady progress or feel particularly engaged? Specifically, try to identify the greatest sources of meaning in your work—the types of projects in which you felt you were really making a difference. Those are clues about what motivates you most strongly and where you should concentrate your energies
Was there an idea that looks promising—perhaps an idea that you had completely forgotten? This could signal that what you’ve learned since having that idea, or what’s changed in the world...
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Look for recurring problems and hindrances, and plan to attack them. Focus on one short-term action—something you can do the next day—and one longer-term action—something you can do in the next month.
STOP TRYING TO “BE GOOD” Give yourself permission to screw up. Once you stop trying to be good (and look smart), you can focus on tackling the exciting challenges that will help you get better.
SPRINT TO SPEED UP MASTERY Set aside time for regular “sprints” where you work intensively on a key project or skill without distraction.
In truth, no individual (or idea) can flourish in a vacuum. Relationships, camaraderie, and collaboration are the lifeblood of our personal well-being and our professional success. Put simply, opportunities flow through people.
question of central importance: How can we best realize the value that others can add to the development of our projects and ourselves?
choosing fellow travelers: Will they tell you the truth? There are many reasons why people may fail this test—the quality of your relationship, their position
Get very concrete about the help you are seeking and learn to “audition” people until you find what you need.
two surprises: first, people in general will be willing to help and, second, that help will be far more useful than you might have imagined. In any case, the first step is to ask.
Build a structure for collaboration.
Highlight and discuss strengths. Often the most helpful thing that can be expressed, as specifically as possible, is what is strong and working well within a project.
There’s never been a relationship that didn’t start off strongly and that didn’t then run off the rails at some stage. This is actually not the problem. This is just life. Success for you lies in managing these dips when they occur.
It’s about laying foundations for resilient relationships from the very start.
What do you want? (Here’s what I want.) This is a question that almost always stops people in their tracks. It’s deceptively difficult to answer and incredibly powerful
What else do you want? (“I want this to position me for my next promotion.”) What else would make this relationship one to truly value? (“I want this to lay the foundations of future work together.”)
Where might you need help? (Here’s where I’ll need help.)
You might want to specify where you’ll trip yourself up (bold), how you might fall short in the relationship (bolder), or even how you might get in the way of success (boldest).
When you had a really good working relationship in the past, what happened? (Here’s what happened for me.) Tell a story of a time when you were in a working relationship similar to this one, and it was good, really good. What did they do? What did you do? What else happened? What were the key moments when the path divided and you took one road and not the other? What else contributed to its success?
ask, “How do you feel about the amount of control you have over what we’re trying to do here?”
When things go wrong, what does that look like on your end? How do you behave? (Here’s how I behave.) Tell another story,
It might be when it all went hellishly wrong or it might be when it disintegrated into mediocrity. What did you do and what did they do? Where were the missed opportunities? Where were the moments when things got broken?
Articulate, if you can, the unilateral actions you take when things start going wrong. Do you retreat into silence? Rage on? Try to take control...
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What are the little things that can wind you up? Is it not getting replies to your e-mails? When others are late to meetings? Not having a regular check-in? Being given advice before you’ve got to the heart of the question? Spelling mistakes and random apostrophes?
When things go wrong—as they inevitably will—how shall we manage that? The power in this is twofold. First, you’re acknowledging reality: Things will go wrong.
By putting that on the table, you’re able now to discuss what the plan will be when it does go wrong.
by asking these questions you now have permission to acknowledge the situation between you both when things get off track
the underlying network science says that it’s all about weak links. Those people who are the friend of a friend of a friend. That’s a much more likely place for something important to happen to you than your inner circle of close friends and colleagues.
if you don’t ask, 100 percent of the time you won’t get. You’ve just got to get over yourself. We live in a connection economy. If you can’t connect with people for them to understand what you have to offer, you’re working in a vacuum and you’re going to lose out.
Look at the people whom you admire most in your field. And literally map it out. Here are the four people that are doing great work at the organizations I respect. And just reach out.
