Asides

discipline, learning

Going Deep

Aside

What is a “Deep Dive”?  You’ve probably heard the term before, but what exactly does it mean?

It means doing something that very few people can.  It means spending (depending on the complexity of the subject) hours, weeks, months, or even years exploring something very specific.

And we’re not talking about reading.  Reading is useful but it can easily become a crutch.  In order to truly learn you have to execute.

The Deep Dive is difficult.  Most people start digging into a subject, hit some rocks right away, and quit.  Do this for a handful of subjects and you’ll be like most people: a source of “mile wide, inch deep” knowledge.

The opposite, “inch wide, mile deep” knowledge, is well worth the work.  It’s rare and extremely valuable.  In many cases you can contribute something entirely new to a field, which is incredibly rewarding.  And the process changes you, endowing you with patience, discipline, analytical skills, and confidence that most people lack.

It’s tough to dig deeper.  And in many cases, it seems like an inch deep truly is the bottom.

But it isn’t.  If you sit in front of a seemingly impenetrable wall long enough, fissures will eventually begin to appear.  After hours, days, or weeks of probing, you will find a way through where others could not.

So the next time you tackle a subject or a problem, work on it until you think you can go no further.  Then continue to hammer away at it, breaking down its resistance until it gives up its secrets.

Don’t stop until it does.

personal development

Grabbing Your Audience With Two Hands

Aside

Public speaking is hard.  Yes, it can be terrifying, but it’s also very difficult.

One of the critical (and well-known) keys to being a good public speaker is:  know your material.

Know it cold, inside and out, backwards and forwards so that you can recite it while drunk and hung upside down from a crawler crane.  You should be so familiar with your material that you own it.

“Well, duh,” you think to yourself. “Obviously if I’m going to tell an audience something I need to know it.”

Right.  But it’s not only important to not screw up your story, or presentation, or whatever it is you’re doing.  Knowing your material essential to entertaining your audience.

Why?

Telling us something you don’t know well isn’t interesting because we’re watching you remember words.  It’s about as gripping as you reading a phone book, but without the phone book right in front of you.

I’d rather watch one wrestler.

When you know your material well, however, you have an opportunity to do something magical.  If you know it so well that you don’t have to remember it, we can actually watch you have an experience.

That’s what’s interesting.  No matter what the material is, if you experience it vividly, we’ll be enthralled.

You reliving a personal story is interesting.  You digging into the yoga position you’re teaching is interesting.  You being deeply touched by a historical event is interesting.

You musing over names in the phone book is interesting.  No kidding, it really is.  Watching a human being go through an experience is fascinating.

Know your material so well that instead of remembering it, you can live it.

And we’ll be eating out of your hand.

discipline, personal development

The Art of Mountain-Moving

Aside

What kind of commitment is required to move a mountain?

Let’s take Joe.  He’s committed to moving the sucker, so he wakes up, checks his email, rolls up his sleeves, moves a few rocks, hops online to check the news, moves a few more rocks, has lunch and reads a couple of articles on solar power and politics while he eats, moves a few more rocks, heads to his 5:30 cooking class, etc…..

Then there’s Joanne.  She wakes up and attacks the mountain.  She moves rocks until she has to stop for lunch.  While she’s eating she runs through the move in her head, playing out all the possible problems she might encounter and sketching out solutions.  After her meal she gets right back to moving the rocks and doesn’t stop until well after dark.  At dinner she opens her laptop and reads up on the latest rock-moving technology, takes some notes for the next day, then collapses into bed.

Who are you going to put your money on?

Joanne’s focus is going to get her to the finish line first.  Her social life is going to suck and she’s not going to be very well-versed on anything other than mountain-moving, but she will reach her goal long before Joe does, if he even gets there at all.

To do something big and audacious you must focus on that thing and nothing else.  Every day, every thought must be about your task.  No hobbies, no outside entertainment, nothing.  Distractions will slow you down.

If you’re shaking your head and thinking, “That’s a crappy way to live life,” you’re right.  No one can be happy living that way their entire life.

But it’s certainly something you can do for a couple of weeks.  Or months.  Or a year.

How long can you work on your goal as if nothing else exists?  How long can you shut out distractions and keep plunging ahead like your hair is on fire?

Then take a break, take some time to appreciate your accomplishment or evaluate your failure for future success, and begin again.

Time is short.  What will you use it for?

discipline, personal development

There Are Worse Things Than Pain

Aside

Sometimes pain isn’t the worst thing you can endure.

It can be worse – much worse – to sit around wondering if you could have done something special if you’d only pushed through the pain.

Pain is discomfort.  Regret, on the other hand, is an ever-present agony that takes a long, long time to go away.

Register the pain for what it is and drive out regret.

learning

Not As Bad As It Sounds

Aside

We’ve all been trained to expect scarcity.  It’s built into our lives.  Water will become scarce.  Food is scarce.  Oil is scarce.

“Be afraid.  Everything is running out.”

But what if that’s not true?  What if technology is creating a world in which our most precious resources are going to become, for all reasonable purposes, unlimited?

Water purifying technology is becoming more and more affordable and easily deployable.  Food – be it meats, grains, vegetables, etc – can now be produced in so many new and sustainable ways that it’s dizzying.  Energy is getting cheaper every day, and solar technology in particular is improving at an ever faster rate.

This doesn’t mean that we can now throw a party and forget about conservation.  But you can tune out the chorus of “Everything is running out!” repeated over and over by those who profit from your fear.

Things are getting better.  We can solve this.

personal development

Follow the Rabbit

Aside

When toddlers want to do something they don’t worry about what someone else thinks, or whether the outcome is worthwhile, or whether it even makes sense.

Something tickles their curiosity and they do it.  Something looks fun and they do it.

Follow the rabbit where it goes.  See what happens.

digital nomads, entrepreneurship

When Your Business Breaks

Aside

If you’re doing all the right things with your business, then it’s going to grow.  And if it grows, things will break.  To make things even more fun, sometimes everything breaks at once.

Eventually it’s necessary to stop what you’re doing, scrap an old system or systems, and rebuild or redesign them for the new reality.  Doing so is a lot of work, and it can be difficult for entrepreneurs to sacrifice what they think is forward motion in order to rebuild.

Some signs that it’s time for a rebuild/redesign are:

  • You find yourself fixing the same damned issues over and over again
  • People that formerly were on top of things are now struggling
  • Tasks that used to be completed on time are now regularly late
  • Communication now feels sloppy
  • Managers are doing more technical work than managing, and you’re doing more managing than vision work

…to name a few.

Notice that the customer isn’t mentioned anywhere above.  If the customer’s experience is affected that means your systems need to be redesigned yesterday.

Pay attention to your business and suck it up when something needs to be rebuilt or replaced.  Otherwise your customers will replace you.

personal development

The Agony of Defeat

Aside

Let’s talk about disappointment.  Not the kind you experience when you’re late to the movie theater and find you’re going to be stuck in the very front row feeling like an open PEZ dispenser.

The other kind.

The kind of disappointment that is so crushing that it forces you to reevaluate everything you think you know about your life.  The kind of disappointment that makes you want to quit.

Einstein was disappointed after realizing his first few proofs of E=MC2 were garbage.

Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of Spanx, was once an aspiring law student until she failed the LSAT.

Michael Jordan was so devastated when he didn’t make the cut for his high school varsity team that he shut himself in his room and cried.

Edison must have experienced terrible disappointment multiple times while he was failing his way through 1,000+ filament materials for his new electric light.

In 2011, Venus Williams was knocked out of competition and down to 105th in the world after a bout with Sjogren’s Syndrome.

The list is endless.  All of the people above could have ended their stories by quitting after their first bruising bout with disappointment.

But they didn’t.  They used the bitter taste of it to drive them through one failure after another until they succeeded.

Disappointed?  Good.  Now get back up and get moving.  Your story isn’t over yet.

discipline, personal development

The Right Kind of Pressure

Aside

In the vacuum of our solitary lives, when faced with an extremely difficult or scary task we usually quit partway through or don’t even bother starting.

Diets are abandoned.  Gym memberships go unused.  Projects languish.

The dropout rate for online classes is around 96%.  That’s not a typo.  Only 4% of people who start an online course from their cozy, quiet living room go on to complete the course.

However, that changes when everyone’s watching you.  It’s much harder to quit.  Social pressure can be powerful fuel for surmounting the difficult and scary.

So use it to your advantage.  Commit publicly to a new task or goal and be sure that friends and family who will keep you accountable know about it.

Give a friend $100 and tell her she can keep it if you don’t drop 5% of your body fat in eight weeks.

Announce a new project on your favorite social network and give your friends permission to get on your case if you don’t post weekly updates.

If you’re unable to finish difficult things, perhaps the pressure you put on yourself isn’t enough.  The pressure your networks can put on you may be just the thing.

personal development

Blackout

Aside

I used to sleep in a room with a skylight.  The natural light was wonderful and it was always nice to have a view of the sky, but being unable to keep the room dark for sleeping was a bit of a drag.

The quality of my sleep was just a bit better in hotel rooms, which tended to have blackout shades.  Sleeping in an utterly dark room until you wake up on your own is a little bit of heaven.

Blackout shades – or the metaphor, anyway – are also incredibly useful against those people in your life who drag you down.

If you’re around someone that is constantly criticizing or complaining and you can’t simply walk away, pull the shades on them.  Shut them out and shut them down.