Persistence

On October 29, I changed my life. Will today be the day you changed yours?

At the start of 2011, I made my annual new year's resolution to do something about my weight. In March, I paid attention to it for a few days and my weight went from 185 pounds to 183. By late October, my weight was down to 178, a move in the right direction, but not much of one. That's when I pulled out Tony Robbins Ultimate Success Plan.

This plan has four steps:
1. Decide what you really want.
2. Take massive action.
3. Check to see if you're headed in the right direction.
4. If not, change your approach.

On October 29, I concluded that I was zero for four, so it was time to implement step four and change my approach.

In my journal, I decided what I wanted with a written goal and a plan. The goal was to weigh 155 pounds on or before January 15.

My plan identified the steps that I would take. The plan was simple, but the action, as Tony required, was massive:

Step one was to create and follow a stop doing list. I put my biggest weaknesses on this list.

No ice cream. No Steak N Shake shakes at 1000 calories each.
No trail mix. The bag says 60% less fat in big letters, and 150 calories per serving. I could live with that. I couldn't live with sevenmsrvings per bag.

Step two was to be aware of what I ate. I could choose a Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich at 450 calories or a Wendy's Grilled Chicken at 340. I found an IPhone app to track everything and report it out to Twitter and Facebook. Instead of an accountability partner, I looked for an accountability planet.

Step Three was to increase my exercise. The plan called for ten miles of walking every week. When I decided that didn't count as massive, I scaled it up. In December, I walked 132 miles, making me number ten out of over 3,000 people using the same program.




The programs I was using kept graphs of my progress. I recorded what I ate and what I weighed. I used a scale sensitive to 2/10 of a pound so I could see results every day. Some days were better than others. My January 15 weight check recorded 156 pounds, missing my goal by either a pound or a few days. As I write this today, on January 27, I weighed in this morning at 154.6 pounds.



The ultimate success plan works because it includes tracking your progress, taking massive action, and being persistent if things don't work. Today can be the day you change your life, but you don't need to take my word for it, or even Tony Robbins.

As Buddah said, "in the confrontation between the rock and the stream, the stream always wins -- not through strength, but through persistence."

You can find out more about the Ultimate Success formula in Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.

I tracked food and calories with MyNetDiary on an IPhone.it is also available as a web application at MyNetDiary.com. I used the IPhone app Runkeeper to track my walking. Both MyNetDiary and Runkeeper offer options to post progress to Twitter and Facebook.

7 Billion and Counting

With the world population now at 7 billion, what can we do to have a greener, more sustainable life style? When I heard this question recently*, I  wanted to share my thoughts on it. After all, what could be more sensible than protecting the only planet we have? My thought was the environmental slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle," but on reflection we can and should do more.

Reduce

This thought can be expressed with another slogan "do more with less." Although usually used to justify budget cuts, the thought can guide us here. If we reduce our usage of something, say  a plastic water bottle, we don't need to figure out what to do with it later. Some water distributors have redesigned their bottles to have less plastic in them. As consumers, we can and should reward efforts like this.

We can do our part more directly. By planning our day to be more effective, we can reduce personal consumption without impacting life style.

Reuse

We might not want to refill bottled water, but aluminum thermos bottles offer a highly reuseable way to approach this problem. If you don't want to refill the plastic bottle, can you find another use for the bottle itself?

Recycle

Plastic water bottles are the poster child for recycling. We can and should take the effort to see that they get directed into recycling systems.

Rethink

The point of buying bottled water in the first place is reliable, portable clean water. If we work to make tap water cleaner, we might be willing to reuse or even abandon the bottles. In the meantime, Brita is selling bottles with their filter built in, rethinking the concept of reuse. Reduce, reuse,and recycle can mitigate a problem but only rethinking can really solve one,

Remember

A more sustainable life style improves the quality of life for everyone. Everyone can and should help. If you think you can afford to just toss that bottle away, you don't understand the rest cost.

A poster child puts a face on a problem, allowing us to connect with the problem in a way that would be otherwise unavailable. We can't foresee the consequences of many of our actions, but we should be guided by probable consequences we can see. 

Make a list of things you can and will do right now to to make the world a better, more sustainable place. This should be an action list, not a wish list.    With 7 billion of us and counting, this should create many ideas and a lot of results.

* I heard this question, and some answers, at a Toastmasters Table Topics contest. Contestants are asked  a question and challenged to give a one to two minute answer without preparation. It is a great exercise in extemporaneous speaking. You can learn more about Toastmasters at http://www.toastmasters.org

Thinking About The Box

When we work on problems or projects, others often encourage us to think outside the box. Unfortunately, this is one of the most inside-the-box pieces of advice anyone can give. When offered, the usual meaning is to not limit our thinking. In my view, it is often more useful to think about the box, rather than outside it.

What Is "The Box"?

The box is often used as a metaphor, but when applied to our thinking it is very real if not physical. When we start to think about anything, our assumptions and beliefs define the boundaries of what we consider. We don't usually think about them as much as within them. By staying within them, we define a box for ourselves.

Real world constraints can also be a wall of this box, but more often our beliefs are more limiting than the constraint. A baby elephant that learns it cannot pull free from a tied rope won't even attempt to pull free when it grows to an adult strong enough to do so. The rope is a constraint to a baby elephant, but the adult it becomes is limited by old beliefs based on facts no longer true
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Why We Want To Think Outside The Box

The vast majority of problems can be solved with tools immediately at hand. The tools are there because they have solved problems in the past. If a problem seems difficult, one approach to a solution is to look for a tool you don't know about.

For example, try to calculate the sum of all integers from 1 to 2000 (1+2+3...+2000=). This can be solved by grade school addition over a period of several minutes if you're careful enough not to make even one error over the many additions required, or it can be solved in a moment in your head with a change in perspective. 1+2000=2001, 2+1999=2001 ... 1000+1001=2001. That means there are 1000 pairs of numbers, each totaling 2001, so 1000*2001=2,001,000. Pair wise addition and multiplication provide tools to greatly simplify the problem.

For some problems, nobody has a tool to offer a solution. In those cases, looking for solutions outside the box can be either useful or necessary. Even in those cases, however, it is often more useful to think about the box rather than outside it.

Newton's Box

If you look casually, Newton's three Laws of Motion seem like a perfect example of thinking outside the box. Instead of limiting his thinking to things he could touch, Newton pushed out from the box to imagine planets in orbit to offer universal laws which hold even today. If anyone was capable of out of the box thinking, it was Newton. While he may have been capable of it, that wasn't what he chose to do.

Newton invented and validated calculus, a whole new branch of mathematics to calculate objects in motion. By doing so, he created a new tool built on the set of tools his peers commonly accepted. This allowed him to see the space outside the existing box by using the box itself as a frame of reference. The result was a bigger box with a better set of tools.

Thinking About The Box

Since the box was made up of assumptions and beliefs, Newton was able to solve a previously unsolvable problem by testing each and seeing if another could take its place. If we cannot solve a problem by thinking within our assumptions and beliefs, the time has come to think about them.

One approach which can work is to present your problem and your thinking to a colleague. Ask the colleague to question anything that isn't either proved or nearly so. You shouldn't have to prove that 2+2=4, but you may want to note it as an assumption. I shared a problem once, meticulously defending each step of my thinking until I stopped in mid sentence, staring at the answer. She didn't see it, but I did.

Another strategy is to explicitly write down every assumption and belief that may touch on the problem you are addressing. Then you walk through them one at a time until something gives. This approach is almost guaranteed to be labor intensive. It is not guaranteed to produce a result.

Eureka Moments

Every once in a while, ideas pop into existence as if from nowhere. These eureka moments typically occur when one thing connects with another, but even then they aren't useful until they can be connected back to known ideas, methods, and tools.

In the early 1600s, Johannes Kepler noticed a similarity between properties of geometric solids and the number and relative distances of planets in the heavens. He was elated that this showed geometry underlying the Solar System. Given this relationship and his inspiration, he looked meticulously at the data and found nothing. His eureka moment died because he could not connect his out of the box idea back to the box.

The idea that continents drift was first suggested in 1596 by Abraham Ortelius, but it wasn't until plate tectonics offered an explanation in the 1960's that the idea was commonly accepted.

Conclusions

Eureka moments -- out of the box thinking with no connection to the box itself -- do happen, but they only become significant when they can be grounded by recognizing their connection to the existing body of knowledge represented by the box itself. Therefore, it is frequently more useful to think about the beliefs and assumptions which act as the boundaries of our thinking to see if the box can be made bigger.

In his book Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress Free Productivity, David Allen develops a five step model for project planning he calls the Natural Planning Model. Step one includes identifying beliefs, assumptions and constraints so you can think within them. I talk about this on a radio broadcast you can listen to on YouTube. Find it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC56niTb9vM&feature=email

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Don't

In his book Good To Great, Jim Collins covers the value of a "stop doing" list. His focus is on enduring organizational success, but the concept applies equally well for individuals. Our goal should be to decide yes or no, then either "just do it" as Nike recommends or "just say no". Real life is rarely that simple. Here are some of my key don't do items.
Don't assume against yourself. When you assume that something can't be done, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I put this at the top of the list because it stops everything else. Henry Ford expressed it this way: Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

Don't make big changes for small reasons. It is sometimes difficult to know whether a decision is big or small, but some decisions are obviously big. When your decision is big, the payoff should reflect it. Using liposuction to lose five pounds would be making a big change for a small reason. Using it to lose 105 pounds would still be a big change, but the reason behind it is big enough to consider.

Don't bet against the house if your goal is to win the bet. If the occasional lottery ticket is your idea of fun, go ahead. If it is your retirement plan, think again. Lottery tickets, roulette wheels, and other similar games assure the operator a profit. The more you play, the more you lose.

Don't over promise and under deliver. In Star Trek, Scotty consistently under promised and over delivered. In Star Trek Next Generation, Geordi LaForge delivered exactly what he promised, no more or less. Presumably, those who over promised and under delivered never got into, much less out of Star Fleet Academy. We can have an honest debate on whether under promising and over delivering erodes the trust of our colleagues. Over promising and under delivering is a formula for failure.

Don't spend what you don't have -- or what you do. There are cases where strategic borrowing makes sense, but they are rare enough that the act of borrowing should cause you to recheck your math. A store may sell you a TV for two years interest free, but make sure they don"t bundle in a loan insurance, an extended warranty, or some other gimmick to make money on something other than interest. Better yet, wait until you have money. Even then, shop intelligently. Warren Buffet owes a lot of his success to not buying things he could afford but didn't need.

Success is achieved by what you do, but your chance of doing the right things can be improved by identifying

What Got You Here Won't Get You There

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As an executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith is known for helping successful people become even more successful, and this book provides an overview of his methods for those of us who are unwilling or unable to hire him directly.
The thesis of the book is that for successful people, social flaws which create problems for colleagues are the limiting factor of success. THe book draws on his decades of 360 degree feedback reports -- his tool of choice -- on his clients. From these feedback reports, Goldsmith and his client identify one characteristic to fix, recognizing that an improvement there will positively affect other areas as well. They further enlist those colleagues in an improvement process that can take 12 to 18 months.

The analysis leads to the identification of one of the twenty character traits Goldsmith has identified as something he can help with. The process begins with an apology acknowledging the problem and the hope of cooperatiuon from the person apologized to. From there, the stage for self improvement is set.

The heart of the book is twenty specific complaings. Goldsmith acknowledges that any one person will have very few of these traits. Each trait is listed and described in the text. He offers a simple regimen for improvement.

The book is valuable as a catalog of inerpersonal character flaws we can all work on and the starting point for improvement.

View all my reviews

Whisper from the Past

It sounds like a plot from a movie: a message with critical information arrives mysteriously at the critical moment, changing your plans, your actions, and your destiny. No, this isn'tyour future self breaking laws of physics to share a stock tip. It isn't Obi Wan Kenobi advising you to use the force. It's more like Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, leaving herself a voice mail about a critical item she'd forgotten.

The obvious place to put date sensitive reminders is the calendar. It can be great for appointments, date sensitive reminders, or even things you might want to do. Paper calendars come with limited storage capacity and electronic ones may have a lot of competition for your attention. Here are a few other ways people have built to preserve and deliver those whispers from the past.

The Tickler File

Create a set of 43 folders -- twelve with Month names and 31 with numbers 1 to 31 for days of the month. For items less than a month ahead, put a note in the folder with the corresponding date. For items up to a year in the future, drop the item in the month you want to see it and put it in the corresponding day at the start of the month. You get free delivery of actual paper as far as one year ahead. Just remember to check the folders daily.

Scheduled Email Delivery
You can send an email into the future, either with or without attachments. The Internet offers a number of reasonable choices, including the following:

• Nudgemail.com is a good reminder to yourself with no account needed. The message gets returned to you at the date and time specified.
• Timecave.com and lettermelater.com require accounts but offer more flexibility, including delayed email to others complete with attachments. Because they have accounts, you can review your scheduled notes and adjust them.

If these services go out of business, or the account you are mailing to gets closed, or there is an Internet problem when the mail is scheduled, delays or failed delivery are possible. You probably don't want to do this with anything really sensitive. Even if the message can be stored securely, risk probably outweighs reward.

Use Tasks Instead of Calendar

Outlook allows you to created tasks with specific dates instead of (or in addition to) the calendar. Other task managers have similar features. You have far better control over your data than storing an email in the Cloud.
 Keep a separate checklist of tasks you do every day or nearly so. Mine includes daily medication, feeding the pets, daily exercise, and other things I should do daily. This avoids recurring tasks filling up my calendar or action lists.

Summary

• Use a tickler file to send physical paper, tickets, bill reminders, etc. to yourself up to a full year ahead.
• Use time delayed email to send yourself or others in the future.
• Put time markers on action items to clear thye clutter from your electronic calendar.
• Beware of masked women in skin tight vinyl and their evil, rich bosses.
• If you hear a whisper telling you to use the force, think April Fools joke before grabbing your light sabre.