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Leading Through Chaos, part 3: Seizing Opportunity!

Leading Through Chaos, part 3: Seizing Opportunity!

In part 1 we covered the need for predictability. We took Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s advice in part 2 to cover our worst-case scenarios.

Reader Shari Aaron asked: My business faces short-term disruption. Client budget approvals are very slow, due to so much uncertainty. How do you balance the need to keep your business healthy, when you believe it will come back once we have more clear direction on economics/tariffs, etc.?

We’ve already seen that priority #1 is Don’t Die! But don’t go into survival mode, just yet. Because even in survival mode, you need to keep the tools to rebuild.

You need to grab any upside that comes with turbulence. You can’t use prediction, remember. The rules are changing too fast.

I’ve personally never been good at ambiguity. My mind is orderly. It runs on plans. No plan? No problem. I’ll make a plan to create a plan. Then I’ll follow that. To my mind, it’s plans all the way down.

But when faced with things that can’t be planned, I freeze like a deer in headlights. Cold headlights. Subzero headlights. With a freeze ray. I really freeze.

I’ve always wanted to be able to plan for the unplannable. And after decades of searching, I learned there’s a way.

We have role models right in front of us who operate where the rules are unknown. Where opportunity is all around, and the skill shifts from predicting the future to shaping the future.

As it turns out …

Entrepreneurs Live in Uncertainty

It’s entrepreneurs! They do what we need! When they invent new products or open new markets, they don’t know how it will turn out. The successful ones limit their downside while grabbing opportunity. The very barbell we want!

Even better, we know how to think to do this.

Babson College has been the world’s #1 school in entrepreneurship since 1994. I worked with the President during their strategy redesign, and there learned about Entrepreneurial Thought and Action.

It start with Professor Saras Sarasvathy at the Darden School of Business. She found serial entrepreneurs with multiple successes. All had invented new products and markets. Prediction and planning were impossible.

Successful entrepreneurs limit their downside while grabbing opportunity

She gave them challenges and had them describe their approach to overcoming them. Successful entrepreneurs all used the same mindset. A mindset that captures good luck, while protecting against losses.

She called it “Effectuation,” an easy-to-remember, evocative name that instantly conveys deep meaning. Jk.

For me, it was love at first read (the concept, anyway. The research itself makes a great insomnia cure). It gave a framework! Not as good as a plan, but a way forward. A way to take action when faced with my dread nemesis, The Unknowable.

Acting Under Uncertainty: The Basics of Effectuation

We usually make decisions based on plans. Or the way we think the future will unfold. Effectuation complements that approach.

Where we can’t plan, we can effectuate. When plans work again, we reach for our beloved GANTT chart.

“Effectuation” is for whenever there isn’t a firm roadmap: starting a company, dating, writing a theatrical piece, launching a product, building a gigantic Burning Man art installation, learning a skill, or anywhere else you can think of.

Learn the Effectuation principles and apply them as needed:

Pilot in Plane. Don’t think about the future as something you predict; think of the it as something you shape. You’re not a passenger in the plane, you’re the pilot. You can change where it’s going by taking action. As business scholar Peter Drucker often said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”.

Bird in Hand. Textbook business development classes tell us how to make the future happen:

  1. Set an end goal
  2. Build a plan to reach that goal
  3. Raise the money from investors to execute that plan.

But knowing a goal and plan requires prediction. Instead, try doing whatever you can with what you have on hand—from money to hard assets to relationships.

Identify how to invest the fewest resources to get the most learning to direct you towards the right course of action. Invest those. Then use what you learn to decide on another learning cycle or a switch into planning mode.

Crazy quilt. In uncertain times, listen to people who have skin in the game. Everyone has advice, even though they can’t predict any better than you can. Hold their advice lightly … unless they put skin in the game. If they’re committed enough to their ideas to put down money, time, or sacrifice, they’re worth taking seriously.

That doesn’t just mean doing what they say. It’s adding another relationship, another patch, to your quilt of committed stakeholders. The more people have skin in the game, the more you’ll support each other. You’ll all be motivated to roll up your sleeves, get creative, and make the business work together.

Affordable loss. To sleep well at night, never invest more than you can afford to lose. Once again, this addresses the “Don’t die!” barbell.

Every so often, review what you can afford to lose and still sleep at night. How much money? How much reputation? How much time? Then ask, “given what I can afford to lose, what can I do to make as much progress as far as possible?”

Combined with Bird-in-Hand, Affordable loss is how you choose a path forward that keeps you sane while keeping you solvent.

Lemonade. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When things don’t go the way you want, always be asking how to turn the new circumstances into advantage.

This is where you find the other half of your barbell, upside! When you are nimble—because you have limited your downside to your affordable loss—you can experiment when opportunity or brilliant ideas come your way.

Remember, everyone else is also without a roadmap and disoriented. So when you see a $100 bill on the sidewalk, grab it! Everyone else might be missing it because they’re too busy trying to figure out why their plans aren’t working.


Effectuation gives you a way to take short steps (the size of your affordable loss), with committed allies (crazy quilt), to direct your resources (pilot in plane, bird in the hand) towards seizing opportunity (lemonade), all while sleeping well at night (affordable loss).

Two colleagues and I trained in Effectuation. We then founded a company and ran it for a year and a half explicitly using effectuation. At its peak, we had a team of 14 people, an alpha-level product, and a total capitalization of less than $5,000.

What we know so far:

If you’re changing how you plan, how you prioritize, and turning planning into learning cycles, you need to change the way you make decisions.

Next time, we’ll look at how your company can make high-quality decisions to go down possibly new, lemonade-covered paths.

Leading Through Chaos, part 3: Seizing Opportunity!

Leading Through Chaos part 2: Don’t Die! (aka Barbells and Risk of Ruin)

I have long planned to buy a new computer in 2026. My current desktop is nearing its end of life, but it still limps along. I’d rather not invest right now; cash is tight, tariffs are high, and my portfolio is down. But supply chain disruptions might mean that prices jump later this year. 

What do I do? 

Do I stick to my original plan? Do I change my priorities and buy now? Do I sit tight and not spend money until I know what’s coming? 

In part 1 of this series, I suggested that Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “barbell” approach to risk makes sense here. 

As Anti-Fragile made clear, our top priority is protecting against risks that could wipe us out. 

Find What’s Likely to go Wrong (80/20 rule)

We can’t predict business-as-usual, but we can probably predict business as unusual

We humans focus on best-case and worst-case scenarios. Right now, the best case is unclear, but the worst case probably isn’t. We often know where things are unstable.

We just need to know which major disasters could reasonably come our way. An asteroid strike? Probably not worth our attention. But a drop in order volume, or a rise in tariffs probably is.

The full risk assessments and risk management efforts I’ve done with clients have often taken one or more days, to be thorough. But things are changing too fast to reconsider everything each time there’s a shift.

Instead, focus your attention and your risk management efforts first and foremost on the things that are easy to identify: the things that could tank you and tank you fast. 

Burning Man’s Risk Management Pays Off

Burning Man is a city that exists for one week each year. It’s built out of experiential art in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Most years, it’s hot and dry. But in 2023, it rained. As it happens, the playa dust turns a clay tarpit when wet. It became impossible for people to get it or out. Mud would collect on car wheels and mire the wheels in the ground.

The organizers did their risk management. They had considered this possibility and the Burning Man Organization handled ‘mudpocalypse’ just fine.

A picture of a fantastical Burning Man structure in a dry desert, juxtaposed with a picture of a soggy hippy trudging through the mud after a rainstorm.

Plan for many possible downsides. Identify the government policies, external signals, and actions others could take that could lead to disaster for you. 

For Burning Man, it was rain. For your business, it could be clients leaving you for political reasons.

For each scenario, brainstorm:

  1. How to reduce chances of that happening
  2. How to recover if it does happen, and
  3. How you’ll know that scenario is becoming more likely.

Don’t Panic!

I once considered buying a house as an investment. It needed a lot of repairs. About a hundred thousand dollars’ worth. YIKES!

Here was my thinking:

Pros 15 years of slightly better-than-breakeven expenses and rent. Then it becomes a steady income stream. If rents rise with inflation, it could fund part of my retirement.

Cons Guaranteed need to cover mortgage and taxes even if it’s not rented. It puts me in debt for a six figure amount. I’ve never managed contractors. Cost overruns could bankrupt me.

RUN AWAY!

The Cons scared the pants off me. I declined.

After looking up the property’s last assessed value, letting this deal go definitely ranks as one of the five worst decisions of my life.

What I should have done: tease apart different scenarios and consider them individually.

Avoid Risk of Ruin … But Be Smart!

The problem is that I was treating the Cons as if they were guaranteed. And I was treating the upside as if it was highly uncertain. 

In reality, the opposite was more realistic. The upside was near certain, and the downside was only somewhat likely. 

Furthermore, there were many ways to limit the downside losses:

  • Property Damage. Take out insurance.
  • Shoddy repairs. Pay more for a highly reliable contractor. (“More” yes, but in the grand scheme of things, not that much more.)
  • Slow contractors. Structure the renovation to make payments contingent on completion.
  • Too-large an amount to risk. Bring in an experienced real estate investor as a minority (or even majority) partner on the deal.
  • Costs spiral out of control. (The “nuclear option”) Resell the building at below market, a modest loss, if expenses were too great.

When it comes to my new computer, the major downside scenarios are (1) wait and have my current computer fail or become obsolete completely, forcing me to buy at a much higher price if costs rise substantially (2) buy now and having a better model come out later and (3) buy now when the money could be used for other things.

When I listed the downsides individually, it’s pretty clear that the downside of waiting is an interruption to my business and a possible bigger purchase price. The downside of buying now is entirely opportunity cost.

Since I don’t have any opportunities on the table that would be hurt by the purchase, I placed the order while I was writing this essay.

(Yup. I really use risk analysis, myself!)

But this is only one part of the equation, limiting the existential risk. You still need to increase your chances of finding the upside in the chaos. We’ll tackle that in the next newsletter. 

P.S. What are you afraid might happen? Where are your most likely risks? Let me know and I’ll choose a reader scenario to use as an example going forward.

How to overcome fears and microfears that sabotage you, part 3

How to overcome fears and microfears that sabotage you, part 3

As we saw in part 1, and part 2, we often we get stalled because we have “microfears.” These steer us away from the Important Things we want. It’s our thinking that does it. We imagine what might go wrong, feel a bit of fear, and then suddenly notice we have a pressing urge to watch Netflix.

The good part is that we’ve noticed how things might go wrong. The bad part is that we’ve responded by avoiding, not by taking care of what might go wrong.

  • Where are you stalled?
  • What’s not getting done?
  • Where do you shy away?

It’s easy to find fears; just ask!

Stop right now and think of where you’re stalled. Now just ask yourself:

  • What am I afraid of?

Give as many answers as come to mind. Then give one or two more. You’ll often find the answers spring to mind quickly.

Use your brain, deliberately

Remember: your brain is not logical. List the answers, no matter how realistic they may be.

Imagine you’re afraid to say “No” when your boss asks you to work weekends. You might have a sort-of-reasonable fear like “I’m afraid I’ll get fired if I say No.” You might also have over-the-top fears. “I’m afraid I’ll die alone in a gutter, covered in mud, smelling of bad whisky.”

Both are triggering your fear response, so you need to deal with both of them.

Separate emotion and information

Now bring in your Thinking Brain to address your imagined futures. For each one, mentally make a plan for how you can prevent the fear from happening, and how you can address it if it does happen.

I’m afraid I’ll get fired. I ask my boss ahead of time, “what will happen if I say ‘no’?” I can also keep up-to-date on my networking so if it does happen, I have a fallback plan.

I’m afraid I’ll die alone in a gutter. I’ll look at my bank balance and credit limits to be sure I can get enough money to keep my apartment if I get fired.

Now implement those plans.

Congratulations! You’ve handled a microfear. You heard the messages your brain was concerned about. Rather than falling into fight/flight/freeze, you made a concrete plan. The next move is up to you, not your fear.

The microfears that derail you are imaginary. Literally! part 2

The microfears that derail you are imaginary. Literally! part 2

When things get stalled, as we saw in the article that answered the question What is a Microfear?, fear is often why. Not big fears; small ones.

  • We’re afraid of failing at something we want to learn.
  • We’re afraid of starting an ambitious project that might fail.
  • We’re afraid of choosing the wrong job and missing a better opportunity.

Ash realized that their business partner was no longer a good fit for the business. But they were scared to have the difficult conversation, because it might destroy the relationship.

Look carefully. All those fears are about something that isn’t happening in front of you. Every one.

Fear began as a way to save us from danger that was present and immediate. We’d spot a Saber Tooth tiger or killer jellyfish and get afraid. Very afraid. And we’d run, or fight, or freeze. As long as we chose the right one for the occasion, those reactions served us well.

Our brain still has that reaction, however, even to our own imagination. We run a mental movie of our business partner getting upset during a conversation. Then we get afraid that they really are upset. But we’re really just projecting what we think will happen. Then we get scared of our mental movie and decide we won’t have that difficult conversation.

If you aren’t making progress on Something Important, blame fear. The fear comes from your beliefs and thoughts about the future.

Fear = perceived danger + emotion

Yay, Brain!! We can anticipate problems and respond in advance.

This is a good thing!

What sucks is the fight/flight/freeze response. It helps us survive a killer jellyfish, but not much else. And it certainly doesn’t help us have a difficult conversation when we need to.

When you anticipate a problem, however, you have plenty of time to be smart about it. If you can defuse fight/flight/freeze while still knowing the problem, you can use your smarts to deal with it.

Without fight/flight/freeze: Ash imagines the business partner freaking out and … calmly calmly and carefully rehearses the conversation. Ash tries several presentations, choosing the most respectful, gentle approach. (In the real case, the partner knew he wasn’t a fit. He was relieved to discuss it and left amicably.)

Without fight/flight/freeze, you can take deliberate action. You can plan. You can take action to choose your future. You don’t have to let your emotions choose your actions:

You imagine failing at something you want to learn … and you calmly identify tutors, extra reading, and other resources in advance to help.

You’re afraid you might fail at an ambitious project … and you recruit a team with the needed skills. You do good risk management up front, making success much more likely.

You believe you might choose the wrong job … and you make a plan. You keep in touch with your other prospects so you have a backup network.

Make your fears work for you

Your brain is great at projecting What Might Happen. You have plenty of time to plan. But when your fear hijacks your thinking, you end up avoiding the very things you want to do.

  • Where are you stalled?
  • What’s not getting done?
  • Where do you shy away?

In part 3, I’ll share some tips for finding and overcoming your fears.

Stalled? Procrastinating? Abandoned dreams? It could be microfears. Part 1

Stalled? Procrastinating? Abandoned dreams? It could be microfears. Part 1

There’s a lot that doesn’t get done, despite our best laid plans. There’s that novel we’ve dreamed about writing. The weekly billing, which always seems to be late. The networking and prospecting we need to keep our business running.

Early in my career, I learned about human motivation from my mentor, Joe Yeager. He had a simple, but surprisingly profound, model of achievement. To get what you want, you must:

  • Want to do it
  • Know How to get it
  • Have the chance to pursue it

It’s the “Want to, How to, Chance to” model. It applies to organizations that aren’t finishing important initiatives, as well as people. Give it a shot.

What’s something that isn’t getting done in your life or business? Is the problem you don’t want it to get done, you don’t know how to do it, or you don’t have the chance to do it?

If you’re stalled, check your “Want to”

Here’s a secret: if you’re stuck, it’s almost always because of your “want to.” When you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way to learn how, and you’ll find a way to make the chance.

But even if you’re a high-achiever, even if you have complete mastery in your life, your “want to” can sabotage you every time.

Why? Because “want to” is all emotion. Emotion is powerful. Emotion is irrational. Emotion comes from the hindbrain and can override your logic and common sense. And your emotions can contradict your conscious desires and make you flame out.

Emotion drives excuses

When we somehow aren’t taking action, we have reasons. Indeed, the smarter we are, the more plausible the excuses. But dig deeper. Beneath the excuses is emotion:

  • The programming class that would let me change careers doesn’t fit my schedule. (Truth: I was scared I couldn’t hack it.)
  • It’s OK if my business partner doesn’t fit into the business any more. He can be a good will ambassador. (Truth: I’m avoiding a hard conversation.)
  • Once the kids leave home, then I’ll lose weight. (Truth: I’ve always been big. If I lose weight, who am I? I don’t know how to be thin.)

Fear kills “want to”

Notice a pattern? The emotion behind our excuses is almost always fear. Not big, traumatic fear. Tiny, lurking fear. I call these “microfears.”

  • … the fear of failure
  • … the fear of hurting a friend
  • … the fear of being someone new

Fear triggers our fight/flight/freeze response. So it hijacks our ability to do the things we know we need to do.

Little fears make us avoid

The things we stall, we stall from fear. Why will the mail pile never get sorted?

… because we’re afraid of confronting those bank statements that need to be reconciled
… because we’re afraid the itemized credit card bill will force us to confront the real cost of our six-week volcano-chasing holiday
… because we’re afraid that notice from the tax authorities means we’re about to be audited (if you never see the notice, it didn’t happen, right? Sadly, no. The tax authorities show up in person at 7 am. True story.)

Fears are findable!

Over my years as a coach, I’ve discovered that:

  1. you can identify the fears that are driving (or not driving) you
  2. there are techniques that are consistently effective at breaking through fear and getting you moving

In part 2, I’ll explore the structure of fear & how it works.

Millennials don’t save? Of course not. Neither would you.

Millennials don’t save? Of course not. Neither would you.

Why are millennials broke? Systems. Not choices.

I recently read an online discussion in which Baby Boomers and Gen Xers resoundingly chastised millennials who don’t save enough for retirement. It seems that instead, millennials are struggling with student debt. The crowd was quick to dismiss the problem as irresponsible millennials spending too much for college degrees that pay too little (e.g. Art History).

Really? Millennials (raised by Boomers and Gen Xers, by the way) are an entire generation of people who simply made bad college choices at historically unprecedented levels? Get real. Remember who chooses to attend college and decide on a major: An 18-year-old with no real world experience, who probably knows nothing about modeling lifetime financial implications of their decisions. Expecting them to be able to choose well is naive. Indeed, many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers made really bad choices. But when they were college age, the system was different. A bad choice, financially, wouldn’t—and didn’t—cripple you for life.

The fundamental economics of education and saving have changed.

That was Then

When Gen Xers were growing up, a college education cost a total of about a year and a half’s salary. MIT four-year tuition was $40,000 before books and expenses. A graduating student could get a job that paid a salary in the $30,000 range.

Furthermore, students could get jobs that paid enough to make a serious dent in student expenses. On-campus student jobs paid about $10, and a 1/4-time job would bring in $5,000 a year. That’s enough to pay half of the tuition bill. Today, student jobs still pay about $10. Needless to say, it won’t be covering half of the tuition bill.

To make up the difference, student loans fill the gap. Student loan interest rates were comparable to rates offered in savings accounts, so once a graduate started saving money, their asset base could compound at about the same rate as their student loans, so their net worth could be at least somewhat stable.

Starting salaries generally paid a living wage (enough for rent, food, utilities, a bit of entertainment, and savings), without the need for multiple jobs. And a college degree was a genuine ticket to a better-than-average job.

This is Now

Today, a college education costs closer to 4 years’ starting salary. MIT tuition is about $184,000.

Debt loads can’t be easily reduced by student jobs. No jobs available to students can make much of a dent in the $46,000/year tuition. Student jobs still pay in the $10-$12/hour range.

A starting salary of, say, $50,000 (higher than many are likely to get) isn’t actually enough to live in many cities while paying down student debt. While saying “move somewhere cheap” sounds attractive, the kind of jobs that make use of a college education are often located in big cities that aren’t that cheap.

Student loan interest rates are much higher than you can get in savings accounts, they aren’t dischargeable via bankruptcy. And the college degree that cost all this money is simply needed to get a job at all. Except from a certain class of top-tier schools, it isn’t a ticket to a comparatively higher salary.

Our Choices are as Bad as Millennials’

Everything I’ve read about Baby Boomers and Gen Xers is that we suck at saving money. We may have been living nice lifestyles, but we’re anything but role models when it comes to good lifetime financial decisions. But unlike millennials, we lived in a time where circumstances gave us decent lifestyles despite our bad choices. And our bad choices will, again, fall on the millennials. Our retirement years will make their middle-age a living hell, as they struggle to deal with an aging population that saved nothing and expects to be supported.

Millennials probably aren’t better at long-term financial planning than the rest of us, but they likely aren’t any worse. They were born into a set of circumstances, however, where the road to success that worked for us—a college education—had changed. That road, itself, costs more, benefits less, and creates circumstances that would be just as devastating for any Gen Xer or Baby Boomer.

Focus on what you want, are good at, and is needed. Can you help?

Last week, I wrote about starting the year with a strategic plan that looks both outward and inward. And this year, behind the scenes, my strategy has had some big changes.

How have you chosen your direction for this phase of your career? The best place to put your professional energies can be found at the intersection of:

  • What you’re good at
  • What you enjoy
  • What people need
For years, executive coaching brought these together for me. But there’s been a shift. There’s a fourth element in the mix:

  • What can scale

If you’ve got it, grow it!

Sometimes what you’ve got is enough. For years, one-on-one coaching was completely rewarding. But as my audience has grown, I believe that there’s a chance to be a bigger force for good in the world. So why not go for it?

In 2017, you’ll find my emphasis shifting from one-on-one coaching to online and offline courses, workshops, and experiences. The curriculum I helped develop for Harvard Business School touched tens of thousands of people. My goal by 2018 is to be developing and delivering online and offline courses, workshops, and experiences that help tens of thousands of people harness the tools of business in service of creating their extraordinary lives.

I need your help

Are you a helpful person? The missing puzzle piece is knowing what people need. That means you! So we can collaborate on meeting your needs. Would you mind giving me some quick advice, by answering three quick questions to help shape the courses being developed?

It will take about a minute or so. Answering the questions will be fun and exciting! And maybe, just maybe, answering will give you the body of a 20-year-old supermodel, make you win the lottery, and turn every piece of cardboard in your entire recycling bin into solid gold!!

(Truly, I said “maybe,” but do you really want to chance missing out?)

Click here to give some quick advice on what I should do in 2017.

Thanks very much!!

Have a great 2017!

Punt resolutions; use strategy, instead!

It’s January, and we all know what that means: time to set New Years resolutions that we’re going to break! The main things resolutions are good for is causing the gym to get way too crowded for the first six weeks of the year. You have a tool at your finger tips that will do far more for you than simply setting resolutions.

Skip your resolutions and set strategy, instead.

A strategy is a 50,000-foot view of your life or business. A good strategic plan gives you a roadmap for where to put your time and effort this year. It tells you what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to.

As you know from my article on how vision and mission relate to strategy, your strategy for a year answers the question, “How can we further the company vision, given the realities of the markets, customers, and resources under our control right now?” Strategy is how vision plays out in today’s real world context.

But when you’re setting your strategy, make sure to approach it from both the outside and the inside.

Look Outside to Set Strategy

Your strategy depends on what’s going on outside your company walls. You need to develop a plan that makes you more desirable to customers than any of your competitors. That means knowing:

  • How do your customers think of you? What product category do they put you in? (Don’t assume you know. A yacht isn’t necessarily a vehicle. Rather, it may be a status symbol.)
  • Who else is in that product category? If you’re a yacht, are you competing against Toyota and JetBlue (transportation) or are you competing against Jetstream and Sotheby’s (status symbols)?
  • What advantage do you have over your competitors?
  • How can you best communicate that advantage to the market?
  • Who has the power in your ecosystem, and how can you increase your power?

One of my favorite books on external strategy is Co-opetition by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff. If you’ve ever heard of Michael Porter’s “Five Forces,” Co-opetition goes one step further and deepens the model. Just the way Brandenburger and Nalebuff define competitive and complementary relationships is worth the cost of the book.

Strategy Looks Inside

Looking outside is only half of the equation. You also need to look inside when you formulate your strategy. If strategy is vision made real now, part of “now” is the resources you have under your control. You need to take stock of your resources and decide which resources will form the foundation of your strategy.

When you make ultra-yachts, two of your assets are your customer list (oodles and oodles of rich people), and your yacht design capabilities. If you base your strategy off your customer list, you will expand into other products and services that your current customers might want. Like platinum dinner place settings. If, however, you base your strategy off your design capabilities, you might instead expand into other kinds of yachts, or other sea-faring vessels.

My favorite book on internal strategy is Top Management Strategy by Tregoe et al. The book is 30 years old, but is pretty much just as relevant today as when it was written.

Treat yourself to a 3-martini lunch

If you don’t have a formal strategy session planned, then at least take a long lunch. And over lunch, review the vision/mission for your venture. Why are you in the game in the first place? Then ask yourself how that gets expressed in the world of 2017. Review your external factors—competitors, customers, suppliers, and so on. Review your internal resources, and decide which you plan to base your strategy on.

Then go for it. Give shape to your plans for the next year. Make sure to build in time to review and course correct, and get your year off to a good start. A New Years resolution might only last a couple of weeks, but a good strategy will support you for a year.

Social media and the deliberate life: is divorce in the cards?

Social media and the deliberate life: is divorce in the cards?

There are two ways to live your life: you can drive it, or be driven. Today, I’m not talking about driving your life in a grand, spiritual sense, but in a micro-sense.

You can never replace time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can never get it back. You have a limited supply (though with no fuel gauge, you don’t know how much you have left. And in every waking second, you get to choose your actions in that moment.

Friday was a passion day! Someone was wrong on the internet, and it was my Higher Purpose to make sure they knew it. Six hundred words into commenting on their status update, it hit me: I waste an unbelievable amount of time on Facebook. I log in 3-5 times a day, sometimes for as much as 20 minutes at time. Let’s be very optimistic and assume that it’s only 5 times a day, 6 minutes each time. That’s 30 minutes a day, or using the 3/30 rule, three weeks a year. On Facebook. And that’s being very optimistic.

Technology is making us reactive, rather than deliberative

Now make no mistake: Facebook is engineered quite deliberately to be addictive. If someone were to engineer a physical substance to be that addictive, we would outlaw the substance and throw them in jail. As it is, Facebook being a Silicon Valley success story, we celebrate it instead. But Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, iPhones, notifications—these have trained us to react rather than deliberate. And then, rather than living our own lives, we just become random Dopamine-driven reaction machines.

Where is life getting sacrificed

Many years ago, I wrote a lot! My article ideas file has about 300 ideas waiting to be turned into articles. It hasn’t been touched since Facebook came along. My free writing time has vanished into status updates, cat picture comments, and pointless political arguments that aren’t going to convince anyone of anything.

The toxic 2016 election discussions finally got to me this evening. My friend Tim has changed my Facebook password for me, and I’m going without until after the election is over. But I’m not abandoning writing. The time that would have gone into the Book of Face is now going to go into writing articles longer than 140 characters.

I’m very curious to experience the result. It may well be that my ideas begin to become articles. Perhaps I’ll try rock climbing. Or pursuing inventing. Or take a class. Or binge-watch Black Mirror. Whatever the decision, it will be deliberate, not reactive.

It’s your turn

  1. Choose what to stop. Where are you spending your time out of habit or addiction, yet getting little joy from it? Does your time on social media give you enough joy to warrant the time? Are there hobbies that you’ve outgrown? Friends who have diverged? TV shows that just fill time?

    Eliminate one. Just for a few weeks.

  2. Start something better. Replace it with something that brings you joy, that moves your life forward. Maybe something old that would bring you joy to revisit. Or something new you’ve wanted to do but never gotten around to.

You do your experiment. I’ll do mine. And in a couple of weeks, let’s compare notes. We only have a limited amount of time on this planet, and it’s up to us to use it in ways that make our life somewhere we want to be.

Good luck!