I was originally planning to write this as a regular blog article, but since one of my resolutions is to do more videos this year, here it is in video form: the top 3 mistakes that cause 88% of all new year's resolutions to end in failure:
If you can't see the video here, you can watch it here on Google video. And, if you want to get the ebook and other stuff I mention near the end, you can find it here.
Writing Thinking Things Done is probably the hardest project I have ever undertaken in my entire life. Not because the writing itself is difficult, or because of my ridiculously ambitious goals for the book. But rather, because the project itself has forced me to confront so many of my own challenges around deadlines, time management, and above all, patience.
(And all that was just during the first four chapters!)
Almost four years ago, my father died. But all the same, I learned an important lesson from him today.
I loved my father dearly, and remember him fondly. In my entire childhood, he was the only person I can remember -- family, friend, or otherwise -- who treated me with respect, dignity, and unconditional acceptance. He never treated me like I was too young to understand, and even when we disagreed, he didn't let it come between us.
All the same, it's taken me half my life to unlearn most of what he taught me.
You see, my father was born almost a century ago, as the youngest in a large, wealthy, and privileged family... shortly before that wealth and privilege evaporated in the Great Depression.
Still a child -- not even a teenager yet -- his family lost everything. No longer did servants make hand-cranked ice cream on the back porch for him and his brothers; no longer was there any ice cream, period! Instead, he had to go to work to help support himself and his family.
And during those years, he learned many hard lessons, which he duly passed on to us, his children.
Lessons like, "man appoints and God disappoints," "Don't expect anything, and you won't be disappointed," "You'll just have to learn to live with it," and so on.
And beneath the slogans, a burdened, world-weary attitude. As far as I could tell, in his heart of hearts, my father had given up hope long before I was born.
He told me how, when his fortunes had turned enough to get him into college, another misfortune required him to drop his chosen major in music.
(Truth be told, I'm a bit hazy on the fine points of many of his stories, so I hope I've not done anyone an injustice by errors in my understanding or re-telling. I really only remember the thrust of his losses: how each time, just as things seemed to be going his way, something would come along and make it all go away.)
I see now, too, that he must have seen in me that same streak of ambitious dreaming he'd once had, and that he must have feared the world would break my heart... as it had his. No doubt he shared his stories and sayings with me, hoping to guard against it.
So when the world went against me, as it sometimes must, I thought I saw the truth of his words and attitude, and despaired similarly.
However, while my father possessed patience and a sense of duty, to stick with the hard thing and see it done, I had none of these qualities. And I always saw myself as less of a man because of it.
Until...
I felt like I was living a lie.
These past few months, I was supposed to be working on my new book, Thinking Things Done. But somehow, I didn't seem to actually be getting anything done on the book itself!
Sure, I made videos, tons of notes and outlines, struck marketing deals, traveled to conferences doing promotion, and even figuring out how to swap out my entire business's technology infrastructure.
But the book still wasn't getting written.
And even worse than that, was the feeling that my schedule was slowly slipping away, and soon I'd have to delay my promised launch dates.
And in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, "Oh god, what is it going to say about the book if I don't get it done on time?"...
(Click here to get the "inside dirt" on the whole sordid story of what I've been up to this last month... and the totally unexpected results.)
A couple of nights ago, when we thought a hurricane was headed our way, I went out around the house with a flashlight and a broom, knocking down wasp nests from the hurricane shutter frames.
And my mind went back to hurricane season a few years ago, before we had shutters, and we'd never boarded up before either. And we didn't know if the way we were putting up the boards was right. Didn't know if they'd hold. And especially, didn't know if we'd finish in time, before the killing winds arrived.
The rain was already pouring down, and the storm was due in mere hours. I was sweltering under a makeshift poncho, arms and shoulders aching, fingers sore from the vibration of the hammer drill as it drove into concrete.
At that point, only about half the windows were covered with plywood, so my wife -- the voice of rationality -- suggested that maybe we should leave and go to a shelter.
"No." I shook my head, tears starting to form in my eyes. "You go ahead, if you need to. I'm going to stay here and finish this." I paused a moment to let my throat clear before I continued. "I'm tired of running away from things when they get too difficult. I'm going to keep working, even if the storm comes and I get blown away holding a piece of plywood.
I didn't know it at that moment, but I'd just changed my life forever.
Now, if I were one of the Guilt-trip Gurus of Uncertain Success, I would probably tell you that it's because I made a commitment, blah blah blah, and you should make commitments too. But that's not at all the point of this story.
When I look at the stories of the gurus, the people who purport to tell us how we should live our lives better, I see three patterns:
There is not much we can learn from category 1; if you're not already successful, it doesn't help. And category 2 isn't much better. After all, Even if you go to the same guru as they did...
Now at first, category 3 doesn't seem to help, either. If we want to have the passion or enthusiasm of a Tony Robbins, for example, do we first have to be just as fat, broke, and alone as he was when he got his shift? Should we wash dishes in the bathtub and listen to Neil Diamond?
Or is there something else that we can learn from these "inspiring" stories?
Now, common wisdom holds that when you have a near-death experience, or a major loss, this causes people to "value life more" or "see what they're missing." But I know for a fact that this is not the case.
See, I had been through a major loss before, about 20 years ago. And like Buckminster Fuller, who turned his life around on the brink of suicide, I'd even contemplated killing myself back then.
But Fuller and I stopped before the act for different reasons. And the difference between those reasons, is why I didn't turn my life around 20 years ago... and why I did, starting in 2004.
That difference is the reason why some people can "hit bottom" and bounce...
Now, in many self-help books, you'll find the classic "burn the ships" story... live free or die... win or die trying, all that sort of thing. The Hardassian gurus are particularly fond of these kinds of stories, because they want to illustrate the attitude they think you should have.
That's because when someone who's naturally successful reads that story, they see an example of something they know and understand. They nod to themselves, "yes, of course!"
But when somebody who is naturally struggling reads that same story, they are much more likely to think, "I haven't got that kind of commitment!"
So what's the hidden meaning in these stories? What is the true essence of these loss and redemption, do-or-die experiences?
The answer is simple. At least, it is...
See, it all goes back to the pain brain vs. gain brain thing. When our brain believes that failure -- or more precisely, loss -- is likely, it engages a resource-conservation mode that makes us act much more cautiously, to avoid investing effort or taking risks.
This mode acts as a damping override on our ambitions and desires, too, causing us to be less certain of what we want, more fearful, and less likely to commit to anything. Our first response to thoughts of action will be to hesitate, to "wait and see" how things are going, or to keep looking for a "better" opportunity.
Now at first glance, this might seem at odds with the idea that people turn their lives around after a loss. Shouldn't it make things worse?
Ah, but you see, here's the catch: the "pain brain" isn't engaged by actual loss or failure.
Do you see the difference? Once you've actually lost or failed, it's positively a relief by comparison to the suffering you go through in anticipation of the event.
During that summer a few years ago, I coined a new phrase: "indecision is suffering". See, my wife and I quickly learned from the repeated hurricanes that the pain of putting up shutters and maybe having them up too soon or too long, was much less than the pain of continually wondering whether it was time to put them up yet!
The arrival of a hurricane, the damage, the power outages, all that stuff, was usually a relief by comparison, to the suffering that anticipated it. Once you've actually been through it, there's nowhere to go but up... or so the conventional wisdom goes.
But if that were really the case, why doesn't everyone bounce back after "hitting rock bottom"?
Well, it's actually good that they don't, because it means it's not the act of "hitting bottom" that causes the change. And that means we don't have to lose everything, just to become a winner!
The difference, you see, is in anticipation. Buckminster Fuller turned back from suicide because, in effect, it occurred to him that, "well, hey, I'm not using my life anyway, so what if I tried to see how much good I could do for the world?"
Or in other words, he realized that if things couldn't possibly get any worse...
In contrast, when I contemplated suicide 20 years ago, I turned back because I was afraid I'd botch the job and end up even worse off. So clearly, it's not getting to the bottom that counts.
It's what you think when you get there!
And without that particular piece of information, it's all too easy to take my hurricane "commitment" story the wrong way, as a parable about being willing to "do or die", or something like that.
In fact, at first, I learned the wrong lesson from it myself! And so, even though I call it the beginning of my turnaround...
And I'm somewhat hesitant to repeat the tale, because when I alluded to it in the preview edition of the new ebook I just released, some reviewers commented on it very negatively.
One said, "Oh, I thought you were different, but you're just doing the old 'buying this means you're a winner' scam."
Well, yes, I was. Thing is, it's true... and my realizing it was true, and buying the damn coaching already, was what really turned my life around. Not the coaching itself, mind you... not directly anyway.
The coaching helped me in my business, of course, and it still does so to this day. But the thing that turned me around, was the decision to bet on myself.
Now back at the time, I didn't fully understand this. I was angry at Matt Furey for having the gall to state such a stupidly obvious and transparent sales pitch as "buying makes you a winner."
Well, sort of.
See, it's not even really the act of buying or even deciding to buy that does it. If you do it because you're afraid of losing, then it absolutely won't make you a winner! And if you do it because the product or service is inexpensive enough that you don't feel like you're really risking something anyway, it also doesn't work.
What makes it work, when it works, is if you decide you're willing to take the risk anyway, because you want something badly enough.
In the hurricane, I wanted the house (and certain of its contents) to survive the storm, and I was willing to take the risk to get that outcome.
You see, this is the loophole that lets you change without having to hit bottom first. The people who bounce at the bottom, do so because they realize that -- like Buckminster Fuller or the soldiers whose ships were burned -- they have nothing left to lose. And so, they become willing to take risks.
Conversely, when I turned back from suicide, it was because I feared something worse. That is...
But this is where the loophole comes in. See, you don't have to have "nothing left to lose", in order to be willing to risk. You just have to either be okay with losing, or not expect to lose.
And how do you do that?
Well, I'll tell you.
Next time!
--PJ
Next time: What Makes A Person Naturally Successful?
P.S. In the meantime, if you haven't already seen them, you might want to check out my new video and ebook, or the website for my upcoming "Thinking Things Done" book launch. I'm really excited by how much the process of working on the videos and book has given me an even deeper understanding of the essential elements of success.
So far, of course, I've only shared a very tiny bit of that understanding with you in this article. So stay tuned here and at ThinkingThingsDone.com for more!
I get a lot of emails from people who are struggling to change their lives in one way or another: losing weight, quitting smoking, getting fit, fighting procrastination, changing careers, and generally trying to live their dreams.
And I've been seeing a really common theme lately, that mirrors my personal decades of degradation as a self-help junkie.
You see, I've spent a lot of years guilt-tripping myself over my supposed inadequacies, and agonizing over things that really weren't my fault.
So I'm writing this, in the hopes that it will save someone else -- maybe you? -- an awful lot of grief.
However, be warned: if you are currently a self-help junkie, addicted to one or more of the (figurative) sacred cows I'm about to slaughter, you will probably find some portions of what you're about to read to be personally offensive. So if someone whose teachings you follow, someone you look up to and admire gets ripped a new one in this article... don't say I didn't warn you.
'Cause junkies never like it when you mess with their supplier.
When I made the to-do list, I had no idea how big a mistake I was making.
It was Friday night, the end of a spectacular week in which I made more progress on more projects than I would have dreamed possible for me just a few years ago. I hit all my critical targets for the week, and didn't have any planned for the weekend and coming week.
But then I made a stupid mistake: instead of continuing to do the things that produced that success, I got lazy.
It was late, and I was in a hurry, so I just dashed down a sloppy old to-do list, the way I used to, in no particular order, mixing high-level projects like "prepare this month's topics" with low-level odds and ends like "return library books" and "backup PC".
Now, I just recorded a CD a few weeks ago with a detailed explanation of how to plan things in a way that's actually motivating... and that way was soooooooo not a to-do list! So, it should have come as absolutely no surprise the next day, when I had absolutely no interest in doing a single damned thing off that list!
For some reason, though, this didn't even occur to me at the time. I spent a frustrating Saturday in which only the little things on my list got done... and damn few of those. Meanwhile, I felt the old deadline pressure building, and felt like things were getting out of control.
Sadly, I'd made the oldest mistake in the motivation book: confusing the output of a process (some writing on paper) with the process itself (stuff that has to happen in your brain, in order to make a difference).
I deluded myself into thinking I could make a list that looked like the lists I'd made before, and still get the same great results... even though I hadn't gone through the same thought process I used for the earlier lists.
This is why some people can take a new time management or organizational method and have it work great for the first week or two... until suddenly it seems like just a bunch of work filling out forms, that's not really helping anything.
It's like being a little kid who thinks that turning the steering wheel of a car back and forth is what makes it go. You might look like you're driving the car, but all you're doing is spinning your wheels!
This is also the big difference between thinking you "already know" how to get results in your life... and actually getting them. Truth is, if you're not doing it, it doesn't matter what you think you know.
And nobody is immune. I mean, I just recorded a damn CD about doing this motivation-based planning technique less than two weeks ago, for crying out loud. I've actually been using the technique for a whole month, and getting phenomenal successes with it. And still, I succumbed to "already-know-it" disease!
There is a phenomenal gap between knowing and doing, because the "knowing" and "doing" parts of the brain are barely on speaking terms. But if you don't get both of those parts to work together, you will end up filling out the forms and going through the motions of whatever new "system" you pick to run your life... without ever feeling the calm and confidence of really being in control.
Let's imagine that I made a video of myself working, using the method I now teach. If all you could do was watch what I did on the outside, you would probably focus on the fact that I'm using index cards, writing a title at the top of each one, and breaking down further details on the cards. You'd notice things about how I mark items to be done today or next, and how I track what things are in progress or completed, what things need to be or have been broken out onto other cards, and so on.
You would then conclude that you "already know" how my system works, because you could faithfully go through the motions of copying everything I do on the outside. And you would, quite logically and correctly, conclude that it's nothing special at all.
And so you would never actually try it for yourself, and even if you did, you wouldn't get the same sense of control, motivation, and ease that it gives to me!
Because you'd have missed the real system, which lies entirely within my head. The writing on the cards are merely a convenient record of what already took place in my mind. A matter of mere style, rather than the real substance.
And unfortunately, this is what virtually all self-help material consists of: detailed sets of instructions for copying the visible side-effects of what successful people do differently in their minds!
This is why I've been building a second career around changing all that -- teaching people the real distinctions, the "differences that make a difference" to finding your focus and living your dreams.
So, being the big-shot professional guru that I am now, it only took me a freakin' day to realize my mistake, instead of weeks or months like it used to take me. ;-)
And once I got done slapping myself upside the head for my stupidity, I went ahead and replaced my weekend "to-do" list with a motivation-based plan for having a great week.
And in a matter of minutes, I knew exactly where I stood on every important project, and was able to rapidly identify which things I needed to get done right away... so I could take the evening off and take my wife out for dinner and a movie.
Without spending the entire date thinking I should be working!
So I had a great night out with my wife yesterday, and lo and behold, what do I find in my inbox this morning? Why, this email from Jack, an associate member of my self-improvement group:
"I was a little skeptical at first about whether the last CD would really make a difference, but I gave the technique a try yesterday. I felt like I have too much to do (or not enough time). At the very least, it helped me relax and decide what not to do. Plus, I've still got the notecards from yesterday for the things I didn't finish, and it feels like it's going to be easy to pick up where I left off.
Interesting that it reminds me of the "breadth first" tree searching algorithm. Though really, I'm building a tree of action items, rather than searching. But it seems to work better than the sort of A* search I'd been trying to do usually, because I'm more relaxed.
And, of course, that whole "feeling relaxed" thing is just is side effect of creating the mindset that I'm going to "win" each of these "games", (i.e. the "gain brain"), which is available once I've gotten things broken down to a size where I can visualize/imagine the steps.
It'll be interesting to see how things go as I keep doing this.
Also, having the notecards reminds me of a technique called "parking downhill". The analogy is to parking a car on a downhill slope, so that it's easy to get started next time. The "parking downhill" technique is simply whenever you have to interrupt a task that you are working on, make a physical note of what you would do to get started on it again, while that context is fresh in your head. Like pushing a context frame onto a stack, so you can pop it off later. With the notecard, I usually already have that note as one of the steps in the list. If not, I can just add it to the card.
Good stuff. Looking forward to more,
--Jack
Ah, Jack, you are truly wiser than I. You actually did what I recorded on the CD, even while the big shot guru was getting lazy and ruining half his weekend. Good on you, mate.
Jack's certainly also got it right about "feeling relaxed" being another side effect of the process. And of course, some of this is basically straight out of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" philosophy, except that he leaves out some really important parts of this stuff... parts he probably does automatically, and assumes everybody else does, too!
Unfortunately, it's precisely these small, seemingly trivial differences in thought process that make such a huge difference between the naturally successful David Allens and Tony Robbinses of the world, and "the rest of us".
And the traditional self-help field has utterly failed at teaching the rest of us to change our thinking processes. Instead, we get fed the same old tired retreads of the output of successful people's thought processes.
We get told that successful people "aren't afraid of failure", for example, but not how they get that way. We get told that they "see everything as an opportunity", "take risks", "write down goals", and ten thousand other stupid little things that you could spend a lifetime trying to force yourself to copy... while never even remotely matching their levels of success -- or feeling any better about yourself in the process.
Because all those little things, from writing down goals to having a "positive attitude" aren't really what makes people successful. Those things are just the output of a process -- the record of something that already happened inside them.
And if you try to copy those outputs, you'll just be going through the motions... feeling hollow and empty inside.
The same way I did, for nearly 20 years of self-help junkiedom.
But earlier this year, I finally "cracked the code" -- the critical insight into the difference that makes ALL the difference, between the people who are "naturally successful," and those who are "naturally struggling".
But insight is still not enough. You must actually become a different person -- the kind of person who does things differently.
And part of the path to becoming a different person, is being in an environment that supports that process. Yes, you can learn some things just by reading or listening to them, but in order to become different, you ultimately have to interact with people who are either already different, or seeking to become so.
See, your brain doesn't give a flying fart what you think your life should be like. Your body didn't go to all the trouble of growing you a brain just to get you whatever you want.
No, not at all. It grew you that big brain so you could keep track of tribal politics. There are actually studies that suggest that brain-to-body size ratio in primates is directly related to the number of members in a typical band of that species... and the human brain weighs in at just the right size for a 150-person tribe.
And so the reason you have a "self-image", as pop-psych and self-help have it, is not so you can become "self actualized", but so you can keep track of your public image -- your tribal PR, in other words.
That means your brain -- by default -- cares a whole heck of a lot more what other people think, than it does about what you think.
So, if you want to change your behavior, the fastest, strongest, and utterly easiest way to do it, is to change what tribe you're in!
I fought this for a long time, because I believed that I ought to be able to be strong enough to do it all by myself, without any help and regardless of my environment. But as it turned out, that was just my tribal brain's PR spin.
See, if you've ever wondered why your brain plays tricks on you, making you do things you don't intend to, and making you not do the things you do intend to, here's the answer in a nutshell: your brain is a spin doctor.
It's job? To make you look good, or more precisely, to make you NOT do things that will make you look bad and get voted off the island. If you got kicked out of the tribe, you died... and more importantly, didn't reproduce. And since by definition, all your ancestors were people who managed to stay in their tribe, you inherited their cowardly brains.
In my case, I grew up learning that "being good" (in the form of doing my schoolwork without assistance) brought rewards... and that having to get help (especially from a teacher) resulted in humiliation and shame.
So, from my brain's perspective, it was more important for me to NOT seek help from people, than to actually get results! As far as it was concerned, needing help was something that might get me "kicked out of the tribe". (Because human societies use shame to teach children what is and isn't acceptable behavior in that society.)
And so, instead of getting coaching or participating in a group, I struggled for a ridiculous amount of time irrationally trying to prove I didn't need any help.
And boy, was I wrong.
Because just minutes of actual interaction with the right people taught me more about myself than I'd previously learned in decades of trying to figure it out on my own.
Now at first, all I noticed was how uncomfortable I felt around successful people. How nervous and defensive I got, and the various twinges and flinches I got when they said certain things about their beliefs or what I should do.
And ultimately, that drove me to seek out ways to find the source of those inner conflicts, and remove them, before I began teaching other people how to do the same.
Of course, the other big thing that held me back was an addiction to knowledge -- and especially, showing other people that I had that knowledge.
I mean, it was literally an addiction. I always had to be the smartest person in the room... which usually made me avoid rooms with smarter people in them, or be somewhat obnoxious when I couldn't otherwise help it. In recent years, I managed to tone it down a bit so I didn't always have to correct other people out loud, but after I was out of the room I'd still have to go tell somebody else about all the ways those other people were wrong.
But you don't grow, when you "already know". An information addiction is not the same thing as a thirst for wisdom. And it's definitely not the same thing as becoming a better person.
And that holds true, whether you define "better" in terms of improved moral qualities, greater practical effectiveness, or just enjoying your life more.
So if you want to become a different kind of person than the one you've been, look for ways you can change your environment.
Because your brain really doesn't care that much about what you think. And without outside support, it's not just your to-do list that's going to fail.
Next time: Hardassians vs. Fairylanders... FIGHT!
--PJE
P.S. I've already helped hundreds of people change their lives through my work in the Circle. And if you're finally ready to do the same... you can be next. Join me for my next workshop, "Small Steps, Giant Leaps", on Saturday, June 28th, by becoming an Associate or Full member of the Circle today. (And then, among other things, you'll get the CD and newsletter that Jack got. Plus the next ones, that will be on creating instant good habits and instant motivation.)
But look, life is not a game, and you don't get do-overs. As much as I wish I could, I can NEVER get back all the years I wasted trying to prove I "didn't need any help" and "knew" more than anybody else. So all I can say to you is, don't be like me.
If you value your life, then stop sitting on the sidelines of it! Become the player in your life, instead of just being a spectator, watching it go by. Do something different. Now.
Boy, do I feel stupid. All this time, I've been reading books about planning and organizing and just completely not getting it.
See, every single book says that to make a good plan, you need to break things down into smaller pieces. But my trouble is, those pieces get really small, really quick, so it seems like less trouble just to start the damn thing already.
Of course, what happens next is that I spend a ridiculous amount of time on preliminaries and fixing tiny details of things that aren't really very important... especially if there aren't any other people involved in the project, or any looming deadlines to keep me on track.
Now, they say that this is an ADD trait, something called "hyperfocus". It can be really handy in cases where you really do need to focus in on something and get it absolutely right, but it's also a perfect way to throw your project... or your life!...
And in the last few days, I've been studying my own hyperfocus tendencies, trying to understand how they work and what could be done to mitigate them. And along the way, I've discovered what seem to be a set of three general principles or processes that have to be in place for a person's life to be "organized", in terms of either space or time.
Well, "discovered" is maybe too strong of a word. Thing is, these proceses are already implicitly expressed in many books, including the "Inside-Out" books by Julie Morgenstern. ("Organizing From The Inside Out", and "Time Management From The Inside Out".) But, in order to use these three processes, you first have to be able to plan well.
And unfortunately, there is one absolutely critical piece that seems to get left out of all these books: namely how to think in a way that naturally leads to making good plans! (Especially if you are blessed with -- and/or suffer from -- hyperfocus tendencies.)
Even "ADD-Friendly Ways To Organize Your Life" misses this piece entirely. I almost threw that book across the room when I kept finding section after section that basically recommended people with ADD get their non-ADD friends and family -- or professional organizers -- to do their thinking for them. (Jeez! So what did we need the freakin' book for, then?)
But, it was really good for one thing: insight into all the ways in which this single "ADD" trait leads to all sorts of quality-of-life issues, through poor planning and prioritization. So it got me thoroughly motivated to figure out precisely how my thinking worked differently from that of the "normals"...
So here's what I figured out, about how to plan things in a "non-ADD" way:
Think in successive approximations by breadth-first traversals of the desired end-state.
Brilliant, isn't it? Well, I guess I need to explain it first, so you'll know what I actually mean. Otherwise, it won't be of any more use to you, than all those organizing and time management books were to me!
See, the problems I've had with planning are all about three things: the sequence of my thoughts, the content of those thoughts, and their level of detail. When I start brainstorming a goal like "clean the house", I end up with a list that mixes very high-level and low-level items in the same list, like "take out the trash" and "clean the living room". (Different levels of detail.)
Sometimes, I'll break down a few of the bigger pieces, but mostly what happens is that I pick only one, and dive into that one in great detail, until I get overwhelmed and don't want to do any of it. Or, I don't go into any further detail, and end up just doing the smaller, well-defined items...
But, on the rare occasions that I've done well with planning a major project, it's been when I've used processes that encourage the planning to occur in what programmers would call a "breadth-first" ordering.
In other words, instead of listing small pieces and big pieces together, it works much better if I first put all of the big pieces in one list, then make a pass back through the list to make more detailed sub-lists for each piece. Then, when all of those sub-lists are made, only then do I make any sub-sub-lists.
And the key insight that I got about this today, is that it allows you considerably greater flexibility in the planning process, as well as preventing hyperfocus from occurring at the wrong times, because it ensures that the links in your mind run in the right directions.
See, if I drill down too quickly, I lose sight of the big picture. I get caught up in solving the details of this one little thing, that might not be all that important overall. That's because the sequence of my thoughts is going from a big chunk to successively smaller chunks of the same thing, instead of cutting back and forth over the big picture, seeing each part in relation to the whole.
Because, if I start immediately digging into "clean the living room", it's very easy to end up thinking about stuff like vacuuming or cleaning the carpet or re-organizing the bookshelves. But if my goal is just to have the house neat enough to have the copier repairman over to do some maintenance, then some of those actions might be...
And that brings up the last issue: content. By thinking this way, it's all too easy to end up making a list of tasks, instead of a list of goals. Cleaning the living room is not really a goal; it's merely a logical subdivision of a task... and a highly abstract one, at that! (I mean, what does it really mean to "clean the living room", anyway? No wonder I'd get bogged down in it!)
And so, this way of thinking is really not planning. (Although I used to think it was!)
What we really need is not division at all, and certainly not of tasks! We want to see pieces of the desired end state, not the tasks required to get to that state. And, we need those pieces to be seen as a part of the overall goal. So, if my goal is to have the place clean enough for the copier repair guy to come over, then I need to progressively increase the level of detail I see in my envisioned result, while focusing on individual parts.
This would then result in me listing items that describe chunks of my vision. Like:
Then, when that list is finished, I can then break each subgoal into sub-subgoals like, "I've broken down all the Amazon shipping boxes and put the cardboard out for recycling." And once these goals get small enough, they can be treated as if they were tasks instead... nice, well-defined, easy-to-do tasks. And, if I want to...
So, once again, the three keys of planning are to:
Successive approximation means you see things vaguely at first, then get more detailed. Breadth-first means you see the whole thing at a given level of detail before you go to a finer level of detail, thus keeping all the parts connected to the "big picture". And finally, end-state means that the picture you're making is of what you want, not what you have to do to get it.
Because if you leave out even one of these three things, you will get frustrated with both the planning and the execution of your goals. For example, I've been planning to write another book for well over a year now, but I've been repeatedly focusing on the wrong things.
So, when I've tried to plan, it's always been ridiculous step-wise lists like "Step 1: write the outline... Step 2: write the book!"
Of course, I've never gotten past step 1, because I have the same problem with the outlining. My first book got finished only because I assembled it from already-written essays: if I'd tried to write it the way I've been trying to write my books since then...
See, when I've been trying to outline my book ideas, I've generally ended up drilling straight down into chapter 1 and then writing a chapter that really doesn't go anywhere, leaving me with no idea what to do for a chapter 2. That's because I've been trying to envision chapters as complete units, without first envisioning the whole book as a complete unit.
But now, I can easily see that what I need to do is to define successive approximations for the end state of my book. Not by asking what chapters it will have, but rather, what will someone know after reading it? How will they feel?
And most importantly, what will they do, and how will their lives be different as a result? Because that is what will determine what has to go into the book, and in what order.
So once I've answered these questions at a more general level, I can progressively break down the answers into smaller and smaller pieces. But, this will not be the outline of the book! See, that's the problem I've been having up until now: trying to leap directly from this high-level definition down into a chapter-level outline.
What I need to do instead, is to break down the objectives into finer and finer pieces, then reassemble those pieces to build the outline back up again, from the bottom. That way, I'll be able to sort out the best presentation order for the material as I arrange it, without getting into any blind spots of, "Oops, I probably should have covered this other bit first", or...
What's crazy about all this, by the way, is that I've been digging through writing books for like the last two or three weeks, looking for stuff about how to outline a book, and nobody said a damn thing about this -- or at least not anything that let me see how the way I've been doing it was wrong!
Anyway, now that I've seen how my old approach was broken and how this approach can actually work, I can already see how I can apply it. Not just to planning my books, but also to planning my time... organizing my workspace and bookshelves... heck, it even gives me some fresh ideas for improving my health!
Of course, I don't know all the details yet (since that will come with successive approximations!), but I do know I'll have a lot more to say about all this in the next Owners' Circle newsletter, and probably on the CD as well.
I was actually inspired to investigate all this by an article I read recently about how small steps can make huge differences in performance. And it got me to wondering, what small steps could I change in my everyday life, that would have a similarly huge impact?
And I looked at a lot of different things, but they all ended up converging on this one point: lack of adequate planning and prioritization. So, I think this "one small step" is going to be one giant leap for me, not to mention for anyone else who has a similar problem!
Of course, you'll actually have to practice this and put it to use, which is why I'll be putting more detail and examples in the newsletter and CD.
Also, I should probably mention that the three keys I gave above for planning are not the same as the three processes I mentioned back at the beginning! The three processes are actually about how you get organized and manifest the results in your life, not how you create the plan or vision of what you want those results to be. There's a big difference between the two... and you need both to be successful!
So, in addition to expanding some more on this planning process, the newsletter and CD will have even more to say about the "getting results" part. Sign up as a Friend or higher level Circle member here (if you're not a member already), and I'll send them to you as soon as they're ready. (Probably late next week, or early the following week.)
Best wishes, and happy planning!
So, after my success with last night's post, I decided that today I would take the time to try and set down the essential principles of my work on a single page. To do that, I had to leave out any attempt at justifying the principles, providing supporting evidence or examples, or anything like that.
It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, though. I had expected to cover the page with a lot of brief references to complex ideas, but I ended up instead with just eight fairly basic principles:
Success does not require you to become someone else -- just you, with less baggage.
Indecision is the source and essence of all "effort" and "suffering" -- and indecision's sole source is the fear of loss.
Fear of loss is an emotional attachment to something you believe you have, and it should not be confused with the merely rational desire to trade as little as possible to get what you want!
The worst fears of loss are ego-based: fear of disrupting the image we project to others. These fears are the worst because, unlike a legitimate crisis, they can never end.
Fears -- no matter how trivial -- tend to engage the brain's "crisis management" mode, causing us to conserve energy, avoid risk, be less intelligent and creative, and to shrink from pain instead of reaching towards pleasure.
Opposing fear through willpower is useless, since this does not eliminate the fear itself, and therefore keeps the brain in crisis-management mode. To live a happy life, therefore, does not require courage: it rather requires the absence of spurious fear.
Likewise, any change which is produced by forced attention to one's actions, is not really a change at all! It is nothing more than a split between one's previous attachments, and one's current intentions. (A new inner conflict, in other words!) Therefore, if your actions do not serve you, change the cause of those actions, rather than the actions themselves.
Our essential nature is fearless, pleasure seeking, and creative. But these qualities are blunted and suppressed by our learned programming. Thus, we cannot attain these qualities by adding more mental programming! Instead, we must edit or delete the existing programs whose output is fear. Otherwise, we are simply increasing our sources of inner conflict... and therefore, our suffering.
Not particularly poetic or eloquent, but not a bad synopsis. These ideas essentially explain why trying to copy successful people doesn't help people who are stuck, why popular conceptions of change and self-improvement are so unhelpful, and so on.
On the flip side, these ideas say nothing at all about how to edit or delete the existing programs, but that's to be expected. That stuff is technology, rather than science or philosophy. And by its nature, technology is a complex beast. The brain includes many different routes through which to arrive at fear: conditioned responses, social codes, personal judgments, perceived social rank, subconscious prediction... just to name the first ones that come to mind, that I currently have methods for finding, editing, and deleting.
(And that's not even counting the fact that the brain loves to hide its fears under layers of rationalization. Sometimes I have to drag a client kicking and screaming through a series of, "and what's bad about that?" questions until they get to an ego-fear like, "Well then I'd be a failure.")
But anyway, this is a start. If we're really going to change human nature, one human at a time, we sure could do a lot worse than to begin with these ideas.
In the last few weeks I've been working off and on, trying to jump-start a book project. I've brainstormed titles, written outlines, and written literally almost a dozen "chapter ones".
And the more I work on the damn thing, the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what to say, or who I'm saying it to.
Oh, sure, I know exactly what needs to be communicated. I know what skills are needed to solve a huge host of problems that I've had, and that other people have. I know what beliefs are necessary, and which ones get in the way.
What I'm not convinced of -- as yet -- is that I can actually say any of this stuff in a way that will get people to really believe it, and take action.
At one level of detail, I could write it all very simply, just stating what I know and how it works. But presented at that level, rather a lot of it would sound like any other self-help book: vague, over-optimistic, and lacking in tangible reasoning behind its recommendations.
At another level, I could write a scathing critique and expose' of the self-help industry and why most of what is recommended simply does not work for most people, most of the time.
But that likely wouldn't appeal to anyone besides skeptics... who probably wouldn't like me pointing out the things that do work!
In a way, what I really want most is to write something that I could have read and benefited from, back when I was young and in pain and thought it was only me who was broken.
But it almost seems as if the body of knowledge I have now acquired is inextricably bound to the journey of learning through which I acquired it. That the only way to learn it besides repeating that journey, is to accept it on faith.
And taking things on faith, I find myself thinking, is not something I would have done, back then, when I needed these understandings most.
But then a deeper reflection tells me...
Because the real reason, I think, that I hesitate to write, is that I also want the book to reflect well on me.
So it should do well in the market. Be easy to get PR for. Easy to condense to media soundbites when I'm interviewed.
And of course it should be unique and distinctive, while also being nothing less than the purest distillation of my knowledge and skills. No simplification of the facts just to make it more "accessible". And it must be immediately obvious from the book's positioning why it is absolutely nothing like any other self-help book ever written, so that even the most cynical of people won't hesitate to snatch up a copy in a bookstore feeding frenzy.
(Hm. Inner conflicts, much?)
This, of course, is the exact same pattern that we all fall into. We want to eat our cake, but still have it. Indecision is suffering, and that is all that suffering is.
Suffering is a clash between mental control systems, the hot and cold flashes we would feel in a room with two thermostats set to different temperatures! It's impossible to satisfy both settings at the same time, and so we suffer.
But this suffering doesn't come about because we desire things. It comes about because...
See, people think that "non-attachment" means you don't want anything, or that you don't pursue what you want. But they're wrong. Attachment is not about whether you get what you want, it's about not losing what you think you have.
In my case, I fear that writing a simplified form of my learnings will somehow corrupt or cheapen them. That not sufficiently communicating their uniqueness, or using too much emotion and not enough logic will make me "just like everyone else". That I will, in some sense, "lose my soul".
And yet, when it really comes right down to it, I have already very nearly stated the heart and soul of my philosophy here in this post. Indecision is suffering, and the fear of losing is the one thing that stands between feeling like a loser, and being naturally successful. (As opposed to the pump-yourself-up, willpower-based variety of success that's never worked for me.)
Now sometimes, the way we stop being afraid of losing is by "hitting bottom" and feeling we have nothing else to lose. And sometimes, we realize that what we're afraid of losing is...
But other times, the path is not so desperate or dramatic. Sometimes, we just systematically work to eradicate our fears. Not by willpower or affirmation, but by understanding the nature of the mind.
And above all else, by knowing what to look for. If you don't know that fears of loss and failure are perhaps the only difference between succeeding and failing (due to the differences in brain mode), then you won't spend the time needed to find them... or eliminate them.
And if you don't know why it makes a difference, you won't be motivated to try. You will think it's just the same old same old, that you've heard before... and didn't do anything about.
In other words, it'll just be another "neat idea" to you.
Now I suppose I feel that in my live workshops and one-on-one sessions I have at least some small chance of figuratively grabbing my listener by the throat and making them see. And after this last weekend's workshop, I got notes from a few of the participants saying that the exercise I put them through sparked a breakthrough for them, and telling me about the cool results they've achieved since then.
But still...
Because I want everyone to have a breakthrough. I want to be the Oprah of breakthroughs: "You get a breakthrough! And you get a breakthrough! And you, and you, and you..."
Now on an intellectual level, I realize this is purest ego on my part. I'm sure that nobody, not even Jesus and the Buddha got 100% breakthroughs from every talk they gave!
And most people think ego is about self-aggrandizement, but in my case at least, it usually masquerades as an excess of altruism. Among writers and speakers creating their first product, it usually manifests as a desire to make sure the product is of sufficiently "high quality" -- which is usually code for "the packaging reflects well on me", rather than "actually helps people".
(The same thing also applies to most of us computer programmers, by the way. We don't like to release a program that hasn't been polished enough to stand up to the scrutiny of our peers... even if people are already willing to pay good money for it. But I digress.)
And in truth, I must admit I do not have a perfect philosophy or method. It must be applied in order to work, and it must be applied to each new area of life I come into contact with. And although I will certainly be able to use my methods to banish the fears I just exposed by writing this, it will not foreclose the possibility that as I tackle bigger goals...
My consolation, however, is that each time I get stuck, I can simply turn back to the basics of my method: examine what I want, find the conflicts, identify the fears of losing... and eliminate them.
And as for the people who don't get a breakthrough from just one reading or talk, I suppose they will just have to wait for the next one. Because I know that when I take away the belief that I have "failed" by not being the perfect guru, I will feel... and not just think... the message of the starfish story.
You know, that story about an adult who sees a boy throwing starfish back in the water after a storm, trying to save them from drying out and dying on the shore? The adult says, "there are thousands of starfish washed up here, but only one of you -- so what makes you think you can make a difference?"
And the boy smiles as he throws one back in the water. "It sure makes a difference to that one."
And who knows, maybe the tears welling up in my eyes right now, threatening to pour down my cheeks at any moment, could be some indication that I'm already beginning...
To feel that way, too.
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