New Years.
A time of overeating, watching football or old movies, and resolving to do better, maybe a week or two in the future…..
Are we at that point yet? Is anyone “doing better” yet?
Resolving and actually “doing” better are two totally different things, aren’t they? New Year’s resolutions are usually bound to fail….especially if you try any of these silly tactics:
5 Dumbest New Year’s Resolutions Phrases
1) Losing weight “on your own”: Yeah, I know. You’re going to lose weight or build savings without any help from your friends. This resolution is like putting a bunch of French fries in front of you and saying you won’t eat them. Of course you’ll eat them….willpower is baloney. Don’t count on any goal that you’ll do “without help.”
Who needs to reinvent the wheel?
Better solution: find someone who’s done it before and ask them for help.
2) Joining a gym so you’ll work out. Back when I belonged to a gym (before I began working out with friends), my least favorite time of year was the first two weeks of January. The gym was packed with people I’d never seen before….and wouldn’t see again the rest of the year.
Don’t convince yourself that by joining ANYTHING you’ll actually make the commitment to change. Instead, build systems to change. For workouts, force yourself out of bed at a certain time. Join chat groups on working out. Read magazines. Track your progress.
Create goals that begin with “How can I learn about this now and then spend money when I prove I’ll stick with it?…..”
Better solution: create surround sound environment so you succeed in your goals….and spend money later, once you know you’re serious.
3) Deciding to save more every month by “writing a check.” Nobody….and I mean nobody…..writes a check toward their goals. If we want to get all 2010 about it, nobody even presses buttons to transfer money from one account to another. Do you know how the ballers do it? They save automatically. If you have to think for only a minute about your goals, you’re toast.
Better solution: Set up a system of saving that doesn’t require you to think.
4) “I’ll try and…..”
Best. Solution. Ever.: Repeat after Yoda. There is no try. Only do.
5) I’ll cut back on smoking. Making a change halfway is a sign that you really aren’t commited to the goal. Want to achieve something? You can’t be half pregnant. Go for it. Don’t cut back on smoking: stop completely. Don’t save “a little more” toward your goals: find out what they cost and create a plan. Don’t try and budget this year: set up an account at Mint or Yodlee and track every penny automatically.
Better solution: Create automatic systems that will change your behavior completely.
Photo: Jeff_Golden
While I’ll agree that the concept of business as battle is often overplayed, the idea of “move and fire” is a valuable weapon for a businessperson. Often, I’d want to either respond to a client request or work on improving relationships. By quickening the tempo of my communications with clients, surprising them with data when they didn’t expect it, and advising them on areas where they didn’t realize I was an expert, I was actually able to decrease my overall workload because I wasn’t getting silly requests on client terms. The “battlefield” of my career began to be dictated on my terms.
In business, you need to have a short memory or you’re dead. I saw many workers in all of my jobs (from high school through financial planning) who couldn’t get over the time they’d been passed over for a raise, the undeserved reprimand from a boss, or the tongue lashing from a client. Get over it.
While the whole One Minute Manager series was a little short on great ideas, the concept of “the monkey” helps great people accomplish more without becoming bogged down in irrelevant tasks.
While the One Minute Manager didn’t wow me, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt completely bowled me over. I can explain the concept here in a couple of sentences, but I won’t be able to convey the magnitude of how much this change in perspective increased my ability to achieve. In essence: many people measure results in areas other than the one that matters: throughput. If I can increase the speed of something that doesn’t reach the customer, why do I care? The only job that matters: finding the bottleneck and working on increasing the output through that area of the process.
Sorry about two “war” books in the same piece, but this one was easily my favorite piece of advice. When I’m at odds with someone I’ve learned that instead of bringing on the fight, are there ways that I can still “win” without fighting at all.