Musings & Meanderings

This is a new phenomenon caused by information overload in the digitized world of hyper-connectivity, right? Wrong. I first heard this sentiment many decades ago, expressed by people who are now in their 80s and 90s. I doubt it was new then.

The Too Busy To Think syndrome is exacerbated by prosperity, and also influenced through the second half of the 20th century by the increasingly rapid pace of technological innovation. It isn’t caused by these factors, though.

If you’re too busy to think, then it’s time to stop, as in ‘time out’. Regroup. Re-evaluate. If you are basically content to work hard and leave the thinking to others, as some people are, then carry on. This post is for those who aren’t, for those who just know that they’re running too fast without getting where they want to go.

Sometimes we can’t, and sometimes we don’t even want to get off any one of the treadmills we’re on. For many years, I juggled raising my two children with running businesses/deals and managing a home. It was a real challenge, but I wouldn’t have given up any one of them as long as I had the choice. Instead I learned to prioritize, organize, and practice self discipline more effectively. I was vaguely aware that there were all sorts of books being published that would teach me such things, but I didn’t have time to go looking for them, let alone reading them, so I just dealt with it up on my own.

Dealing with it meant first creating a sort of complicated flow chart in my head, with multiple input sources to me (in the center) and multiple output channels, and with a balanced integration of results at the end. This visualization of the strategy for achieving my goals and desired results sometimes acted the way a floor plan of a house or office does, in that it helped both determine how much stuff would fit where, and also how to navigate back and forth.

My ‘flow chart’ helped me balance my energies between family, business, and personal duties, desires, and goals. If creating a workable flowchart seems impossible because there are too many of those, then back up a step and divide them into broad categories, listing what you want/need to achieve in each one in order of priority. Then organize them via input and output.

The process of prioritizing can also be a great reality check in terms of what you are actually able to accomplish. As an example, although I divided child ferrying duties with a nanny-housekeeper and family, attending events that my kids participated in, knowing all their teachers and school principals, and knowing their friends, were top priority for me, but home cooked meals fell to a minimum of 75%, and some of those were pre-frozen in family portions.

Secondly, the tool that increased my productivity more than any other was a weekly series of lists, in writing. These looked like anyone else’s ‘to do’ list at a glance, but they were not typical at all.

Eventually, with practice, I only had to do one integrated list per week, but to get there and make the lists effective, I originally started with several different types of lists: one of major project and commitment (including personal) goals, a second of important tasks (things that would consume hours and could not be effectively accomplished if constantly interrupted), a third of necessary relationship and team maintenance duties including meetings, a fourth which was an overview checklist for things that it was my responsibility or requirement to make sure that others got done, and a fifth of minor tasks such as telephone calls.

If you haven’t made lists like this before, you might find it easier to make separate ones for business and personal, or even for different areas of each, but the most important thing to increase effectiveness is to first group and then integrate them in order to see how best to allocate your energies.

My eventual single weekly list was divided into a half dozen categories on the page. The most important division of all was between things that could be done quickly and in any order, and things that required uninterrupted concentration for extended periods.

When, for some personal or family reason, I started the week without making the list, my productivity fell dramatically, as did my clarity and focus.

Making a lot of lists might work better for some, as long as you can ’see’ them all at once. It isn’t the lists themselves that are important; it’s the sorting out what you need to do, and realistically can do, to get from here to there by a certain time and determining how to get it all done.

I’ve met quite a few people over time, including business associates and partners, employees, friends, and family, who unhappily make ‘to do’ lists because they’ve accepted the reality that everyone forgets things. Really simple lists, say for the similar tasks of one workday or for grocery shopping, are useful, but few people use more complex lists that group tasks by a variety of factors.

Here are three of the reasons that ‘to do’ lists are often minimally effective.

1. Making them in the simple order that things occur to you, without organizing the tasks according to goals, complexity, etc. If that kind of organization is unfamiliar or difficult at first, then try using as many different pieces of paper with headings as you need, and lay them out side by side. You can divide things in whichever way suits you: by category, by type of task, by priority, etc.

2. Shooting the ducks first, to use a friend’s favorite phrase. This means approaching any list with the goal of shortening it as quickly as possible, so you do the easiest and fastest things first, without consideration for priorities or deadlines. A lot of times this approach results in never getting to some of the more important things, often being too tired to tackle the biggest most challenging tasks by the time you get to them, and unnecessary procrastination.

3. Abandoning unfinished lists and starting over. The more often you do this the worse you feel about yourself and about lists, too.

So if your to do lists aren’t doing it for you, if you feel like you’re racing on a treadmill, suffering from Too Busy To Think, yet not getting anywhere near your goals, then stop. Regroup. Re-evaluate. Start from the beginning, and make the most important list first, the one that identifies your needs, obligations, desires, and goals. Prioritize everything. List your resources. Plan each path, and if there aren’t enough resources to reach all the destinations, then start cutting from your lowest priorities in each area until you find a balance that you really believe is possible.

We’re used to the idea of budgeting our money, but many of us do not budget our time effectively.

Oh, and don’t forget to put time to think, to laugh, and to love, into that budget.

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In this post, I’ve described the approach that worked for me when Too Busy To Think threatened to take over my life. The description is pretty general. If there’s something in here that you think might work for you, but you aren’t clear on how to start, feel free to email me with a specific question.

How have you conquered being Too Busy To Think?

Random thought is my term for letting my mind wander free while in a state of intense consciousness. It has similarities to meditation, in that controlled thought processes are turned off. It works with or without sensory input, and the result, for me, is usually that my mind will settle on, for example, a previously unconsidered link between seemingly unrelated things. It can work as a creative state for problem solving, but it isn’t that productive creative process that is described as ‘flow’. Rather it is allowing a very high degree of mental alertness to be presented with a tabula rasa. Occasionally the mind gets hijacked by an issue that’s been simmering away in my unconscious, but typically if an obscure memory pops up, it turns out to be a missing puzzle piece of a current picture.

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An example that was enjoyable (to me):
A brief random thought session had me pondering on cohesion between fact and meaning, and that led, later in the day and among other things, to reading this: The Art and Science of Dynamic Network Visualization.

Is entering the race the most important thing? I suppose it is, to the extent that if you don’t then there really isn’t anything else that matters. Dreaming, planning and intending can be exciting, entertaining, and even impressive to others (for a while), but they don’t come close to getting out there and doing it.

For most people who have thrown their hat into a ring of any sort, whether they’ve taken a major plunge or merely taken on a big job, the focus is usually on winning vs losing, success vs failure. We ‘keep score’. It is a natural instinct to evaluate and judge our own and others’ performance, and the simplest way to do so is to measure against the performance of others.

It has been my own observation, though, that what most people have the hardest time with is going the distance. Through the years I’ve been disappointed most by co-workers and employees who can’t follow through or keep up the pace to the end of a project or task. The people I’ve enjoyed working with the most, conversely, are those who are both thorough and finish line oriented. Always meeting deadlines is important too, and is a form of ‘finishing’ in itself.

Finishing what you start is the most important aspect of anything. Sometimes, when we’re doing something for the first time, we get stuck. We encounter a totally unfamiliar set of circumstances that we don’t feel equipped for. Needing to seek help, or educate ourselves on something overnight, is not a reason to quit. It is the cost of learning something new. Even if we’re never going to be doing the exact same thing again, meeting the challenges and finishing what we started is the creation of an inestimable value within ourselves, not only for what we learned and accomplished, but for who we are and how we see ourselves.

The reasons people quit or peter out are many. Not least among them, if you look beyond the ostensible reasons and excuses, is the fear of failure. Analyzing all the ways that this manifests, and each individual’s personal history underlying disproportionate fear, isn’t what this post is about. That type of analysis is highly personal and private. It’s either carried out alone via self-education and introspection, or through formal or informal therapy. The archeology of typical fears is usually not necessary for functioning anyway. For example, there are many performers, speakers, etc. who have stage fright, or butterflies, or even throw up every single time they’re going on. If it doesn’t spiral out of control, we can simply learn to live with it until we want or need to address it.

There are 2 basic components to finishing what you started. They are motivation and discipline.

Motivation seems obvious and well addressed in our society. Although this factor may seem well (and sometimes too much) addressed, I don’t find it to be that well understood in general.

We’ve spent recent decades throwing away the sticks and piling on the carrots, telling our kids that winning isn’t everything. We focus on rewards, entitlement and perks. We insist that no one should ever ‘feel bad about themselves’. There is good stuff in all this, and no doubt plenty of responsible parents work on providing, and sometimes even teaching about, having a moral compass. What’s missing is recognition of negative motivation, and the extent to which it rules our lives. Most of us go to school and work because we have to, not because there is nothing else we would rather do. With some attention and guidance, many find something they like best within what they have to do, but how many tasks are driven solely by positive motivation? If we don’t work, we won’t be able to meet even our basic needs. If we don’t do the laundry we won’t have anything clean to wear. By focusing on the concept that by working harder, learning the system and putting out some extra effort, we’ll get to satisfy more desires, we by-pass the place where negative motivation ends and positive motivation begins, and sometimes lose valuable insight on where we want to go and why.

A child can learn the intense satisfaction of doing a difficult job thoroughly and well. Children who have done this and also been lucky enough to receive positive reinforcement, applied consistently, might (cross your fingers and align the stars) discover through the age of reason that elusive why …and with it the personal satisfaction of really feeling good about yourself. Those children are a minority. Maybe their guardian angels aren’t paying attention on a regular basis, or else adults unwittingly supply a self gratifying caveat that makes the satisfaction of achievement always conditional on pleasing others. There are plenty of high achieving 50 year olds that regularly think (or wish) that their father would have been proud of them.

Once we start examining motivation, we realize that sometimes it is simple and other times complex, but that sorting the positive from the negative isn’t hard at all. Everyone does things to gain approval or avoid disapproval from family, friends and peers. What we do, as well as what we wish to do, privately, is even easier. Everything can be viewed in terms of its initiation (desire for gratification), its enactment, and its consequences. The questions of why am I doing this, what do I get or avoid by doing it, and whether what I want and what I’m getting match, can reveal their answers the moment you really ask.

Positive motivation is not always an easy thing to discover or uncover. Finding something that you enjoy and have talent for can sometimes mean risking disapproval of family and peers. It often entails risk. Most difficult of all, it means creating your own version of the definitions of success. That’s more often achieved with a supportive spouse or life partner than within any other relationship, but frequently it is only possible if you’re willing to set out all alone.

For many people, being alone is scarier than failure. That does not necessarily indicate weakness. We are social animals, and our needs and functions are so complex as to mandate interdependency for almost any occupation beyond plain survival. Peer groups can offer a lot more than approval; they can serve to extend our knowledge, resources, and abilities.

I’ve encountered a lot of people who look for their path outside of themselves and, not surprisingly, never find it. The things that attract us don’t necessarily have any relationship to what we’re good at. I can passionately adore arts or music or sports, yet have no particular talents applicable to their specific production if my aptitudes tend to, say, the scientific.

Finding your own talents is a matter of experience and observation. Whatever you’ve done best at, enjoyed doing most, forgotten about time while doing, gets sorted to the top of the experience list, and then analyzed by skills utilized and context. Nothing is too mundane or irrelevant for this. If your biggest lifetime success so far was at partying, you can identify skills from it, such as hospitality or entertainment or interpersonal relationships. We like to believe that people who know what their ‘thing’ is are lucky, but this is rarely true. Mostly they’ve persevered until they discovered and learned ‘it’, which brought them only to a starting point.

A word about distractions here for those who are introspective. Personal accomplishment fulfills higher levels of need. A lack of understanding about our own needs, urges and desires, however, can really mess up both the journey and the destination. We all have needs and wants on both conscious and unconscious levels, and a failure to recognize this can occasionally cause us to sabotage our own efforts.

Positive motivation is everywhere in our lives. We’re born with it. Children are curious about everything. We learn, unfortunately, to close that part of ourselves off to some extent. One of the reasons that science and technology are becoming increasingly dominant in our world is that pure curiosity is fully and always encouraged in these areas, but anyone who isn’t clinically depressed or in the grip of major issues (such as anger) can find and re-connect with their personal curiosity and positive motivation easily. Matching it with occupation, tasks and goals, though, can be very difficult without discipline.

Discipline is imposed on us by our societal structures and institutions. We learn what it is just by having to show up on time every day, or by needing to meet a deadline. Whether it is studying for and passing a test, or getting our work done so that we can get paid and cover the rent or mortgage, there’s a basic level of discipline we all have to meet just to get by. Developing personal discipline beyond those parameters requires serious motivation, and all that really means is that you want something enough to go after it without a parent or boss or trainer.

Our society offers advanced levels of structured discipline to high achievers in many areas. Academia, science, the military, and big business all have special paths laid out for motivated individuals who require or prefer a de facto parent or big brother, and some of these paths also lead to the opportunity to join the leading ranks. There are many areas in which going it alone is not an option, yet any endeavor chosen will also be enhanced by higher levels of personal discipline.

We have a tendency today to view those who exhibit a high level of personal discipline as driven or monomaniacal. We admire and idolize high achievers, especially in business and sports, yet most of us are not and do not believe that we can ever be, like them. In doing this we exhibit the lack of understanding of positive motivation and personal success. We’ve jumped out of the everyman’s basic world of mostly negative motivation straight into the common definition of winning.

Those superstar achievers in the spotlight, just like the less popularly known achievers in more specialized and/or less glamorous circles, do typically exemplify an application of discipline in addition to their other attributes. This hardly means that a high level of discipline belongs only to the realm they inhabit, or that their positions themselves are the only worthy spoils.

Discipline is the single most important link between motivation and achievement, and it is also plays a major role in whether and to what extent each of us find a personal positive motivation to begin with. Learning to finish what we start, and to do as fine a job as we are capable of in every circumstance, increases our knowledge and understanding of future opportunities, choices and possibilities dramatically. In applying it, we often surprise ourselves with our own performance and invariably increase our self confidence, which naturally broadens the scope of what is possible.

Discipline is often the key factor in any personal, professional or business success, because there are truly few challenging undertakings that do not require attention to and competence in areas outside of those in which our primary talents and motivation lie.

Applying discipline to every undertaking not only improves our performance greatly, it also sharpens the focus so that we are continually making better choices. Start with the simple conviction that if it is worth doing at all it is worth finishing. Insist to yourself that you will always finish everything you start, that you will put everything you have into doing the best job possible, and you will find yourself refining your processes of learning, experience gathering, and making future choices.

Once you apply yourself and develop the determination and discipline to finish any undertaking you choose fully and well, you will eventually find the exercise of personal discipline brimming with things such as drive, desire, and passion. It is like crossing a line from a place where the task looms before you in domination to a place where you survey and dominate the tasks. This passage leads to forms of personal power and freedom.

This is not a recommendation to become a workaholic or approach every aspect of life in a deliberate and planned manner. It doesn’t mean that playing or dabbling or just having fun should be subjected to serious discipline. Personal discipline is an essential step toward gaining a higher level of personal success and satisfaction. If you’re trying something that turns out, half-way through, to be less enjoyable or harder than you expected, finish it anyway. Make sure you walk away at the end knowing that you did your absolute best and learned a lot. Once you, and everyone around you, absorbs the knowledge that you finish anything you take on, do it on time and do it well, the scope of future possibilities that opens is liable to amaze you.

As we continue to develop the electronically connected world of the future, it seems to me of benefit to also develop new ways of conceptualizing what cannot be seen and easily described. The technological revolution continues to deliver means and ‘places’ which are, to our previous understanding, ephemeral. This makes common planning and envisioning the most interesting, from my perspective, challenge and opportunity.

Our work and our relationships with one another are the context in which we describe things.

Most of us do not consider or analyze relationships as entire entities beyond the results and consequences of conducting them. When we do analyze them, it is generally in terms of a 2 way exchange, including shared or complementary benefits vs real and potential conflicts, both current and projected into the future.

The timeless stories of cultural and personal significance are also mostly expressed in a 2 dimensional way. The perfect success, partnership, friendship, or love. The classic conflicts: good vs evil, right vs wrong, man vs nature, personal redemption.

We adopt and repeat the truism that there are 2 sides to every story.

Based on several intense decades of business, as well as personal, experiences, I hold the view that seeing 3 sides, rather than 2, is a perspective that invariably offers solutions, ideas, and opportunities that many of us often overlook.

Developing the full panorama of this perspective leads naturally to a multi-dimensional view, and complex overlaps, but for the purpose of describing the idea in simple terms, I’m staying with 3, and calling almost every human relationship a triangle. In this post, I’m discussing only working, business-related, and commercial relationships, which tend to be less varied than personal ones, partly because of the societal expectation we have of one another to conform to common practice.

We transact with one another all the time, and view each transaction as a sharing, trade, or exchange between ourselves and another person. Each of us, though, is conducting 2 relationships, one with the other person, and the second with the medium or value component being shared or exchanged, bought or sold.

The first example, and easiest context, is a sale of goods.

Whatever I create, that which you will buy from me, is something that I have invested in. My investment is likely to be irrelevant to you, since your interest is in determining and agreeing with me on a value that is in line with your plans and desires for the usefulness and enjoyment of the product. Each of us has a different relationship to and view of the objects of our exchange. One of those differences is contextual, in that our approaches and destinations differ. If these approaches and destinations dovetail perfectly, then our transaction is likely to be highly satisfactory to both of us. When the paths of our intentions and goals diverge, however, we are more likely to have a transaction or relationship going sour.

Practical and successful experience in conflict resolution addresses the third side to the story. In a situation of conflict, you have 2 people (or companies, or groups, but invariably led by 2 individuals) with irreconcilable viewpoints. Trying to change either or both of those people is likely to be a frustrating and fruitless exercise. Instead we focus on the domain to which the contention(s) attach, and here we find an arrangement of objects and circumstances and context.

An early partner of mine sometimes conducted conflict resolution processes using common household objects. Wealthy, powerful, stubborn and enraged individuals would have to sit and watch as a sufficient number of objects were collected: a pencil holder, ashtrays, a table lighter, a can of Coke, a coffee mug, and so on. Each object would then be identified as a component relevant to the disputed circumstances, and then they would be arranged to signify context, with each player’s related assets being massed together, and fixed location objects identified by their surroundings. Objects specifically representing things under dispute would be identified and centrally placed. Then the resolution would unfold. An object under joint and disputed ownership would be moved away (sold) to a third party, for example, who would contribute 2 new objects in exchange, other objects would be moved strategically, representing the use of related assets to balance the outcome of the exercise in such a way as to end with each party seeing an improved picture of their own assets and position. Time and again I watched this process, often reminded of boys with playing pieces, transform a situation from one where both parties in the conflict went from being convinced that one of them had to be the loser, to each feeling like the winner because they perceived their own outcome was a substantial improvement on the status quo or the past. One of the components to the resolution might have been selling a 100 million dollar development property, which had previously seemed impossible due to a badly written partnership agreement, but when that property became a can of Coke and other things moved around in relationship to the change, the focus shifted to achieving the mutually beneficial new arrangement of objects that had been easily understood over the coffee table, and the solution would be smoothly implemented.

Resolving complex, messy conflicts is hard, but watching it being simplified through identifying and rearranging the objects, context, and circumstances, served as the genesis for my perspective on transactions and relationships. If seeing 3 sides could lead to sorting out very complicated conflicts that would otherwise have led to years of litigation, among other things, then seeing the 3 sides from the beginning could, and does, form the basis for stronger healthier relationships, as well as reducing the potential for future conflicts.

The better we understand each other’s perspective, the better transactions and relationships we can build. Understanding how our perspectives differ is as important as understanding where they converge, and a substantial portion of this is accessible from the 3rd side.

An architect who designs a building for you, the client, brings personal history, knowledge and skill to the process. He does his best to apply as much as he can glean or discern of the building you’re hoping for and of the ways you imagine it being inhabited and used, but his relationship to the process and the product remains completely different from your relationship to it. A professional such as a lawyer, accountant, or media consultant, providing a non-tangible service and work product, has, similarly, to balance his relationship to his product with his client’s relationship to it. The same holds true for those designing consumer goods and services, whether practical, decorative or entertaining.

Good partnerships are formed on the same basis, with a preponderance of common goals being the best basis on which to build.

Looking at the internet and the web, where relatively little has yet been developed that is community and consumer centered rather than enterprise or academia targeted, I believe that it is this third view, where interests intersect both in synergy and conflict, that is as yet no more than a barely explored new world.

It’s worth what you pay for it, right? Yes and no. Conventional wisdom says yes, and there’s a wealth of idiom that has developed from this ‘wisdom’. Everyone has an opinion and will happily give you their ‘2 cents …for what it’s worth’. The ‘peanut gallery’ is, one gathers, packed with hecklers and malcontents who can’t even see what’s going on center stage, let alone in the back room.

There are various reasons for the common denigration of free advice. The most powerful is based on personal agendas. If you’ve ever hired lawyers, consultants, or other paid advisers, you’re probably well aware that the concept of getting what you pay for applies directly in this area, and perhaps you’ve also discovered that although the cheapest usually aren’t the best, sometimes the most expensive aren’t either.

Some conflict is likely to exist between any two people, but almost all of it is peripheral, and easy to identify and deal with. Serious conflict is usually very obvious and quite simple to identify swiftly and accurately.

More relevant to all of us, though, is our own lack of confidence in our observations and opinions outside of our own very specific area of expertise. The perverse thing about this is that a great deal of this lack of confidence stems less from our inability to observe and analyze than from our disinclination to really listen to the observations and analysis of others.

If you’re in any business where you’re dealing with people regularly then everyone you come in contact with can teach you something, even if they don’t realize it themselves. In other words, everyone around you is offering you good free advice all the time if you choose to hear it, if only through the way they respond to you, your presentation, your product.

What about the truly valuable advice? Who among us doesn’t recall a time when we were told something and ignored it, only to realize for ourselves (the hard way) that we should have paid attention? Why do we so often dismiss or turn down free advice or input?

I think it is, primarily, because we don’t understand how to contextualize it, and secondarily because we’re wary of trusting.

Let’s say that I’m a serial and successful restauranteur. Everyone’s been to restaurants, and few aren’t eager to throw a statement of personal preference my way. Much as I love my customers to be, I’m likely not going to let Tom pick his favorite music, or Dick his preferred crystal, or Harry the way he likes his bread presented.

But. I really do know my customers. I not only hear what they say, but also watch what they respond to enthusiastically and what they ignore.

But again. The reason I’m really successful is that I also know what they want that they don’t even know themselves. I know this by listening to what they say and don’t say as much as by watching them. My biggest successes, in a way, are built as much on free advice as they are on my own creativity and knowledge of the business side of things.

What if, however, I’m in a less customer interactive business? Now I’m only getting the very rare offer of direct input, and need to spend time using clumsy marketing tools to solicit input and observe behavior. I’ll probably hire lots of consultants.

The thing that the restauranteur example does, though, is make it easier to imagine how any businessperson can learn to contextualize and benefit from all input. Doing it in other businesses is far less common because we tend to only process input from our own pov and mindset. We have to develop and crystalize our own knowledge, ideas, and methods in order to accomplish anything. What we don’t have to do is close ourselves off from the wisdom of others, even when it comes from the ‘wrong’ perspective. Often a person giving you a piece of advice is seeing something that you aren’t. It may not be central to what you’re doing, but if you learn to look at what you’re doing from all sides, chances are you’ll do it a lot better.

Smart, successful business people who’ve decided they like you will commonly offer a single piece of advice. Most of us typically respond to this by dismissing it on the basis that they only have, say 20% or the picture of what we’re doing and therefore don’t fully ‘get’ it. This is often a mistake. If you’ve received that offer or single piece of advice from someone you’d consider a peer in at least some ways, stop and think about it. Even if it really isn’t on the nose or directly applicable, it can inform you in other ways. For example, even if it’s really out in left field then maybe you’ve painted a picture of left field unintentionally.

We pay big bucks to professionals to give us single purpose advice on narrow ranges of issues. The top pros make a point of trying to understand our big picture or at least pretend to. Not all expensive advice is bad, but not all is great either.

Free advice, on the other hand, is something we tend to value most when we’ve found it alone, by researching or reading or observing. In reality, the best free advice arrives through personal interaction, once we learn to hear what people say to us in the context of their knowledge and point of view. Doing so requires confidence in ourselves and a willingness to trust and share.

If you’re shy, or inexperienced at sharing and networking, then choose a community leader in your sphere who you like and admire and watch how they do it. You may not have the same temperament, nor become a community leader yourself, but you’re sure to see ways of communicating and connecting that you’d have never thought to try on your own.

There are times when free advice is the most valuable. One of the very things that makes us suspect it, the fact that it cost nothing to give, can also be what makes it a true gift.