Make Things Easier

Would you like to make things easier?

Would it be nice if when you thought about the future and started to make plans for it, that things would just work out? That something wouldn't always come up that prevented you from doing what you intended?

And would it help you to be able to make the most of your interruptions or unforeseen events when they did happen?

Maybe you've thought about finding that one thing that you could do.

 

Here's a great question to ask yourself: "What am I doing that's not working?"

This is an excellent question because it looks at your problem from a different perspective; from a new angle.

When things don't go according to plan, most people blame the interruption, or the event, or the people who caused them. Thing is that if the root of the problem is something or someone else, then you can't do anything about it. Not only that, but you're absolved of the responsibility to find a solution because it's out of your hands.

 

Basket of excuses

Over the years, I've encountered many people who give every indication that they want better results, but then when you offer some suggestions, instead of thanking you, they dredge up a basket of excuses for why they can't.

Que será, será. Whatever will be, will be.

That's fatalism. You can't live like that. It will make you cynical and bitter about everything, and it will make you angry that you've been dealt a "bad hand."

 

Over the years, I've encountered many people who give every indication that they want better results, but when offered some suggestions dredge up a basket of excuses for why they can't. And these excuses - these reasons, if you prefer -  are so well-crafted that you get the impression that that's where they've put their time and energy. They haven't put it into taking the action that they could make progress. Instead, they've use it to persuade themselves that there's nothing they can do.

And that's the rub, as Shakespeare would say. Most people would rather justify their results than change what they're doing so that they got better ones, even if it was obliquely.

Why do they do this?

Because to them, it's easier. The path of least resistance will always be crowded. It's also a deadend.

If you're going to improve your results, then you must start by stopping.

 

What are you doing that's not working?

The question is, "What are you doing that's not working?" And you have to be ruthless when you answer that question. You can't let yourself off the hook with excuses, especially the ones that lay the responsibility for failure at the feet of others.

 

A clarification

Now I want to clarify something here. The answer to the question which lies at the extreme opposite end of the responsibility spectrum is, "If it's meant to be, then it's up to me."

That's a lie. And if you really believe that, then you could slip into a prolonged - think weeks and months - depressive state.

Why is it a lie?

It's a lie because it assumes that you're capable of making everything you want to occur actually happen. That, too, is a lie. You can't, so don't blame yourself.

Of course, if you accept more responsibility, then by your actions you're likely to achieve more than if you accept none of it, but there are a lot of other factors in play that are outside of your control. For instance, you don't have and can't get perfect foreknowledge. You can only try things to see if they'll work. And even if they work for others, that's no guarantee that they'll work for you.

John Kay, in his book Obliquity, notes a number of outcomes which surprisingly occur indirectly - that is for reasons other than what you'd expect them to be. For example, the most profitable companies don't make profit their primary goal. 

Here's another one: The happiest people don't pursue happiness. It's a byproduct of doing something else. Or how about this one? The wealthiest people aren't the most materialistic. Do you know who the most materialistic people are? It's the one who can't afford to be.

When you're trying to answer the question, "What am I doing that's not working?", however, it's not because you expect to learn what you should do instead. That comes later. Instead, it's to help you determine what you shouldn't do. In other words, it's a stopping point; not an end point.

You have to know what to stop before you can know where to start.

 

Successful people, as the comedian Steve Martin has pointed out, omit the in-between details. They trivialize all that went on from the time they started their craft until they got their "break." And so to the outsider, it looks as if their path was a straight line from nothing to celebrity.

 

The first thing you have to do is to identify what you're doing that's not working. Answering this quuestion probably won't be easy.

For one thing, you're probably so emotionally vested in the outcome you want that you're unwilling to cast any doubts on the actions that you're taking. For example, you may be trying to build an audience by buying traffic. Even though it doesn't seem to be working, you keep buying it because you feel that if you don't, then all you've spent so far will have been wasted. In business, we call this sunk costs.

There are other considerations, too. For instance, it's possible that you're getting the wrong traffic, or that your message isn't precise enough for your market to recognize it, or your topic isn't what people need help with. Any of those things might be what you need to stop doing. And of course, if that's the case, then you need to stop spending money until those things have been refined. You need to stop doing what's not working until you figure that out.

Or perhaps there are certain extra-curricular activities that you'd like to do, but never seem to have time for. It's true that everyone has 24 hours in a day, but it's a lie that everyone has the same amount of discretionary time. You shouldn't let anyone make you feel badly because you have to work so many hours to pay your bills. On the other hand, the root problem could be in your spending habits, or in what you do during your spare time.

You can always justify what you're doing or not doing. You can always find a reason for staying the same. But it may mean that you need to stop wasting the time you have so that you can spend it on other things.

 

Another question

When you've identified what you need to stop doing, you're still not ready to think about what you should do.

That may surprise you. The thing is that if you skip this important step, then it will be much harder to complete the ones that follow.

After you know what's not working and have devised and implemented a plan to stop doing it, then you have to figure out what you want your new reality to look like. That's the second question.

You could do this by making a two-column chart. On the left side, you list the characteristics of your current reality, and then on the right what you'd like them to be. It's all well and good to know what you don't want, but if you don't know or can't express what you do want, then you won't be able to think effectively about how to get there.

For example, suppose you want to write a book, but you're too busy freelancing for other people, not to mention a lot of other things. Any work that demands a lot of concentration uses up your available brain power. And let's face it, you don't have an unlimited supply. That means that you have to use it wisely.

Some authors have snatched extra time in their schedules by getting up before everyone else, and then writing for an hour or two. Then when the family gets up, everyone else's day begins. I read of one author who did this while raising four children.

Big chunks of time are nice, but even if you had them, you probably would find it hard to concentrate at that level for more than a couple of hours at a time. Even your daily allowance would be limited to as little as four hours.

You probably don't have the luxury of a nanny, either, or a live-in cook, or a cleaner. You might have to do everything yourself. And that means that you have to figure out where you can snatch some extra time.

In this example, it could be that you need to stop writing for others, or at least to do so for the writing that distracts you from what you want to do so that you can focus on your own work. I did this.

And so, in this example, one of the things that needs to be present in your new reality is to write regularly for yourself and your audience which, as it happens, is what authors do.

Maybe you'd like to gain a higher proficiency in sports or music, or something else. That, too, requires time. And just like the previous example, you have to start with what isn't working. Then articulate the new reality that you want.

 

Third question

The third question is, "What are your larger goals that, when you reach them, will demonstrate that you're experiencing the new reality that you want for yourself?"

The late Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi, in his book Flow, says that if you don't learn to set goals, then you won't enjoy the activities necessary to achieve them. In other words, you must love all that you do within the process. The implication is that if you don't enjoy the activities, as well as the feedback you get from doing them, then the goals that you're trying to achieve may not be the right ones for you. That is, it could be that you're trying to be someone that you're not. 

 

How do you make things easier?

It may seem as though we've drifted a long way from the original goal of this article, which was to find a way to make things easier, though I'm sure that when you think about it now, you realize that things become easier when you do what you know you should do and avoid the things that get in the way of the results you want.

When you know what to stop doing, what you want your new reality to look like, and what your larger goals are - and there probably won't be more than three - then you can start to think about smaller goals, things such as how much time you'll spend on them, on what days, and what activities will get you closer to them. But you can see that you have to go through quite a mental journey to get to that point. You can't just leap into that final step.

 

Think about this.

What are you doing that's not working - in your business, in your finances, in your relationships, or in your diet?

What are you doing that, no matter how hard you try, you can't get the results you want?

 

The hack is to start your evaluation by removing the activities that you don't enjoy, because if you don't enjoy the process, then you're probably working toward the wrong thing.