Our natural tendency
We willingly take on attractive ideas, often without questioning them. They just look good, don’t they? We also reject unattractive ideas too easily, and too often without questioning. They are ugly, we want to get them out of our sight. For attractive ideas, we look for any supporting evidence we can find. Then we stop there. For unattractive ideas, we look for an contradictory evidence and stop there. No balance. Those ideas turn into beliefs, and before we know it, we have a belief system which looks good to us, but may not be representative of reality at all.

The consequence
Reversing this trend is critical for success and sanity. The alternative is a head full of pretty ideas, where pretty does not always mean good. It is often said that the truth is beautiful, but a deception can seem just as pretty, until you see it for what it is. A deceptive idea is just that, by definition it misleads you. If we have been deceived about something, we are, by definition, unaware of the deception. Think about it.

The cure
Spotted any beautiful ideas recently? Everyone gets deceived by wrong ideas at some point. Once deceived, it is hard to reason our way out. Over time reality slips further and further away, buried under layers of wrong ideas. The best way to escape from a deception is not to be deceived in the first place. Easier said than done. Check out new ideas as they come in the door, even before you head out on the first date with them. Don’t judge them by how attractive they at first seem, judge them by how true they are. What is the consequence of that new idea? If it seems attractive, check for contradictory evidence to that idea. If it seems unattractive, is there any supporting evidence that has been missed? Has the idea been examined in a broad enough context – is it over- or under-generalizing. Is it taking something we found to be true and applying it in a new context where it is not longer valid?

In conclusion
Ideas are just ideas. In the end, action is what counts, but action is exactly what creates the consequences for a beautiful idea. Wrong ideas, wrong actions.

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I’ll warn you now, I  this is a long one, but you’ll get something good out of it I am sure!

In the beginning

At the start of my career I was trained as a teacher, a domain where the idea of aims and objectives was beaten into you on a daily basis. You worked out where you were headed and set objectives to make sure that you were getting there, in the time available, for every hour of the day. This was followed up with constant reflection on how you were doing, with the occasional random assessment, just to frighten you into action.

When I moved into the business domain I quickly lost site of all that and was educated into mission, vision and MBOs. These seemed to get updated about once every three months, with a cursory check-up on an annual basis.

My recent exploits in the productivity domain have started to introduce me to the language of focus and action – to do lists, a mission and values. Plus a whole dictionary of terms that seem to have arbitrary definitions, but are still useful.

Thrashing it out

These things have all been conflicting in my head, so I decided it was time to do the right thing: Get a piece of paper and let these ideas battle it out!

Let’s take the idea of progress as distance moved, with little arrows to show bits of progress. I think progress is something we all seek at some level, although we never seem to make as much as we want. There are all sorts of reasons for this. Take the direction that the arrows point as aims, with each arrow ending at a goal. You could think of mission as the total path of the arrows. These are really just metaphors to help think through the issues, without depending on the language.

Dissipation

Sometimes we apply our efforts to many different things in many different directions, all at once. When we do, we don’t get anywhere. When you look at the big picture it is clear why we feel that way. This is lots of activity, but it isn’t getting anywhere. Effort spread across many different things, in many different directions, with different aims, doesn’t create much real progress. This is life with no mission. Lots of effort, not much distance moved, no big achievements.

Conflict and Stress

Sometimes we create focus and concentrate all of our efforts, but there are conflicting aims or no clear mission. That leads to stress, frustration and a lack of progress. There is lots of effort, but no movement. In fact progress in one place seems to come at the expense of progress in another. The diagram here is an extreme, but many coaching books focus on surfacing and resolving conflicting aims or values and you can see why. If you are focussed, but you are not making progress, it is quite likely you have some conflicts to resolve. You need to discover what these conflicts are and resolve them. If you don’t, your stress and frustration will keep building and you won’t be able to move on. Write down all of your aims and goals and weigh them against each other.

Drifting Focus

We might have focus, aims and goals, but they are short term and they keep changing over time. Randomly changing short term aims will tend to lead us round in circles, on the balance of probability at least. Again, this is an extreme case. You probably won’t end up exactly where you started, as the arrows here do, but you may not be satisfied when you look back over your progress. It feels like you have made some, but it feels like you could have made more. You haven’t found your mission. Without a mission, we will struggle to know what direction our aims should take us in. The understanding of the mission may change and evolve over time, but a long term focus helps to plot a straight path.

Focussed Drifting

If we find our mission, but we don’t have goals on the way, or clear aims, we won’t know if we are on track. It is possible to have aims, but no goals. An aim, or a value, is not something that you specifically achieve. For example, you might aim to be a great parent, you value parenting. To some that might sound like a goal, but for most people this is something that you can never finish. There will always be room for improvement, you can’t tick it off as a job done. It is an aim, and a hard aim to check yourself against at that. Spending an hour of focussed time with my child is a goal. The aim is to be a great parent, but the goal (or objective if you like) is something that I can check I achieved along the way.

Nearly There

Some focus, some goals, some progress, but no clear picture. It looks like something good is happening here, but there are some things that just don’t fit. There are a few distractions around the edges. I think this is how I feel right at the moment. I am seeing some of the benefits of having a small number of aims and goals and focusing on them, but not yet the full power of a singular mission. Must try smarter!

Focussed Aim Overloaded

If we try to express our aim or our mission across too many different things, we can actually end up not making much difference. Everything moves in the right direction, but if we are trying to move everything, everything ends up moving not much. I love to do lots of different things at once, but am starting to see the reality of how inefficient that is. In trying to do more and more, you achieve less and less. There is a lack of efficiency which the diagram doesn’t cover, but somehow it seems to speak to it.

Focussed Mission with a single aim and goals on the way.

I struggled with this diagram, because I had loads of arrows left over that didn’t fit on the page, so I parked them at the bottom. There is a fraction of the number of arrows used in the line that head off of the diagram, less than half. Suddenly a light went on in my head. If we have aligned aims, one focus, one mission, with goals on the way as checkpoints, we can get somewhere. Really fast. This is true for companies as well as individuals. We greatly reduce the amount of work, by staying on track. Wow! Now, I’m not sure that life lets us make things as simple as this diagram, most of us have many different roles that we have to serve: Worker, partner, parent or whatever other responsibilities we have acquired. What is clear is that within each role there is a massive efficiency that comes from having a clear aim, a singular mission, with focussed execution and goals along the way. I must have read 30 books that have told me as much, but it took a picture to bring it home. Finding synergies across the different roles helps this even further.

The metaphor here isn’t perfect, but exploring it has helped me resolve to be even more focussed. I know that where I have been, I have seen real progress and rapid results. That spurs me on and increases my motivation. I’m sure that there will be set backs on the way, but that isn’t a reason to change direction.

One last point before I jump. Even if you have gone around in a circle, you haven’t really ended up where you started. I’ll bet that you are a different person. It isn’t just about progress; it is also about who you become on the way. Anytime you stop yourself to say “I’m really not getting anywhere.” you have actually made progress, you’ve become more self-aware, and that is the first step to taking hold of life. You are transformed. You might make that step more than once, but enjoy the journey and the decisions you make – that is real progress!

More like this post: What does success look like?

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The incident brought home that excellent, if often used, coaching question: “If you had six healthy months left to live, what would you do?”. I know that very few people end up in that situation, but it is a useful question to frame how you spend time. If there isn’t a tomorrow, the importance of putting First Things First, as Covey would have it, jumps right out at you.

When you are working out what needs doing, put the big important things at the top of the list, then do them first! It stands to reason that if you do them first, you are significantly less likely to run out of time in which to do them. More on that after the jump…

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What will you do today?

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Pauses are powerful things. Time to reflect. To think. Time to realise. To resolve. Much is being made of ‘going slow’ these days, with sites like slow leadership expounding the reasons for going slow (great site!).

My wife plays netball, and as we were talking about this, she told me about the ‘three second rule’ in that game. When you receive the ball, you have to pass it within three seconds. That sounds like a rush, a hurry. However, as players are coached, they are taught to use ALL of that three seconds before passing. New players almost always end up passing the ball too quickly, they don’t get the most of the pause. They still act, you have to move the ball on, but take the three seconds first. Stop and think, before passing.

Could we use the three second rule in life? A forced gap between action and reaction. An enforced time to think, before we act. A pause between the demand and the doing. For some little tasks, it is easy to end up spending more time thinking about it than doing it. That isn’t efficient. However, it is all to easy to get caught up doing the wrong things. A pause for thought to say “is this the right thing to do right now?” can be a valuable check. We do have to do – after those three seconds, the player has to act, – to move quickly. But getting things done quickly doesn’t come from doing them in a rush. One of the fun things about ThinkingRock is that it enforces that pause and creates some structured reflection, if it is used correctly. Very useful.

Whatever you are doing, happy pausing!

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2006 was a pivotal year, 2007 will be a defining one. I plan to fill my year with good things and to close out the bad, as much as that is under my control, which is more than I imagine. To replace the distractions and the diffusion of effort with focus and achievement. What will your year be full of? I hope that it is packed with good change, brought about by your efforts! Write lots, read lots, and do just the right amount of things!

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