60: Lessons learnt in week 12

Lessons learnt in week 12 #weekdaykickoff

It’s Friday. Time for the #weekdaykickoff 🌊 summary of week 12. This is what you learned.

Ride life, leaning forward

The perfect example of how to regard life is how Ronan Keating puts it in one of his most popular songs: You have to ride the rollercoaster of life. Riding it is the only way to move forward. It includes moments of fear, joy, uncertainty, danger and risk. You will move fast and slow, just like when the rollercoaster moves up and down again. Enjoy the ride. Life is the longest coolest ride you’ll ever have!

Make it right for the right people

The outcome of any task that is your responsibility requires that someone else is happy with what you came up with. This someone is specific, sometimes a very particular person. It can be your client whose business goals you help achieving. It can be your boss whose business goals you help achieving as well.

You never go out and do something for everyone. In reality, this will serve no-one. If you try to catch every fish in the sea you won’t catch any.

With my seconds day job (cleaning) it’s the same. Even though I’m trying really hard and ambitious to satisfy all needs and wishes of every client who requests a clean apartment or house, I won’t always be successful. Bummer. Yes! But I learned overcoming this feeling of perfect. Instead, I move on, and you should move on, too. Perfection is a nice, intriguing concept but it often only slows down your execution.

Like with your target audience you have target clients. Not everybody likes you. Not everybody likes how you are, how you clean, how you behave, speak and exist. Make it right for the right people. The earlier you are ok with it, the more beneficial for your future success — success in whatever way you define success.

Kill what drains your energy

You complain about your job, your colleagues and how all about work sucks. You’re jelling around (into your inside) and are eventually not achieving anything. You’re just being frustrated, angry, passively aggressive and are looking for excuses instead of taking responsibility for it.

„How could I take responsibility for a position in a company that I’m not owning?“ you may ask. Good question. If you happen to be employed with restricted freedom and independence you hack your workplace until it breaks.

Remember that it’s probably not the work you dislike. You chose to have this position because something told you it’s the right thing. If the position is also not what you like doing, change it or find another one in the same company. But let me continue with my thought. So, you like your work but the conditions in which you work are killing you: noisy environment, colleagues interrupting your work flow, open cubicles spaces where you can listen to any conversation you didn’t want to hear, the absence of a great foundation for deep work.

These factors drain your energy which is why you need to adjust them to your needs: Hack Your Workplace! One strategy to hack: Find allies (other colleagues) with who you subtly share what bothers you to get a sense what others struggle with. Without letting people know interview them and document your findings and learning. Do that for a month or two. When you’re done with your field research, write down the results and make a presentation for your boss. Ask him for 10 minutes, show him what you found, offer practical and financially feasible solutions that he can’t resist to agree upon. Mention that you asked tons of employees. This will make your presentation even more powerful and credible.

It’s easy to fall into the passive mode of being a victim. If you, however, roll up the sleeves and take action you’d be astonished how even being an employee can make you pretty powerful!

Make hungry

Lacking food is one of the most powerful methods to get you going, only trumped by the fear of death. If you don’t eat for a while you get angry, moody, aggressively or unfocused. The problem you have in this state is your attention on the lack.

Too many people focus on the lack of something. Lack of money means saving money. They don’t think of making more money. Lack results in entering survival mode. Instinctively this helped us out in the wild where there was a lot of unknown in nature and a lot of unknown in the heads of our prior humane versions who were hairier and walked like some computer people of today sit.

However, we normally don’t need a survival mindset as we used it in the early days of mankind. Today we have an abundance of things, also an abundance of opportunities and money. In the right mindset, you practically see money lying on the street, and you just need to grab it. Most people don’t see that. They are so accustomed to how things are and have been that making more money in a situation where you lack money appears counterintuitive.

I like comparing the „more money“ mindset to how successful sports people roll. In sports, you don’t enter a competition or challenge to only survive or „make the best“ out of it. You start with the only possible goal: Win! Eventually, even if you didn’t win you know it’s only that your success was postponed. In the end, you will win.

With being hungry can practice your will power and willingness to win because how much you win will ultimately decide whether you will not only survive (find food) but shine like the one who came from nowhere being a nobody and become the A-man everybody (the cool people) look up to.

You make hungry when you are convinced that the lack you’re having (food, friends, money, love) is not restricting you in creating and wanting more. Your lack becomes your boost. That’s why I enjoy writing texts being hungry. I want to finish the texts fast so I can eventually eat my well-deserved bread.

The takeaway for the weekend: Move forward, every day. The rollercoaster is your preferred no. 1 vehicle for that. While you move forward make sure to be in touch with good people who care about you and vice versa. Keep them and hold them sacred — whether it’s business partners, friends, your wife, clients or random acquaintances.

Those who care will be the right people and appreciate what you create by buying it. Set up your place of creation like paradise on Earth, a Garden Eden. Hack your workplace so that you know you can perform best. Keep yourself in a survival mode where you’re permanently lacking things. This lack doesn’t drown you but boosts you instead.

If you stay hungry, you’ll stay on track to enjoy another round in the rollercoaster of life. Become the rollercoaster tycoon, will you?

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This was episode 60 of the #weekdaykickoff 🌊 Every weekday (Mon-Fri). Also find me on Anchor so we can talk — literally talk from person to person!


Also published on Medium.

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