Self-discipline and caffeine

I talked yesterday about achieving goals and self-discipline.  Self-discipline is a recognised predictor of happiness, health, the ability to perform well in education, work and life in general.  So it’s an area worthy of some thought.  Like many people, I believe I have self-discipline in some areas, and less in others.  One interesting aspect of self-discipline (or self-control) is that there is some evidence that being disciplined in one area leads to improvements in other areas.  So increasing exercise, for example, leads to healthier eating, a higher propensity to stop smoking, etc.  They are known as cornerstone habits, and they lead to other seemingly unconnected good things happening.  

So at the risk of sending long-standing readers to the hills, I’m going to repeat my kicking-caffeine experiment.  For reasons I can’t quite remember, caffeine is back in my life.  I’m drinking reasonable amounts of green tea during the working day, and enjoying it immensely.  But for the sake of science, I’m going to document my experiences of not drinking caffeinated drinks for at least 100 days.  That's no coffee, no tea (black, white or green) and no Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Red Bull or the like (that won't be difficult for me as I don't drink them anyway). 

My experience to date is that habits are difficult to break or alter and that 100 days is the minimum  amount of time that is meaningful for such an attempt.  In true no-time-like-the-present style, I’m kicking off today.

It’s been almost 2 years since I tried this for the first time, and I’ve learnt a lot more about habits and self-control since then.  So in the days ahead I will fill you in on some of the techniques I have learnt that I hope will make this attempt a easier.  In the meantime, while you are all enjoying your coffee, I’m going to have another cup of Rooibos tea.  Yum!

Achieving what’s Important

We all care about different goals.  Some want to run a marathon; others dream of getting a first for their art history degree.  Some care passionately about delivering an important project at work, and going on to yet greater responsibility and job satisfaction.  Others are frustrated with lack of success in completely different areas.  Whilst all our goals are very different, they are tied together with more commonality than differences.

What’s very clear is that achieving what’s important to us matters a lot.  It matters for our happiness, our financial security, and our ability to make choices in how we live our lives

There are just four steps to achieving your highest priorities:

1.      Be specific about what you want to achieve. 

2.      Plan what you will do to be successful.

3.      Make time to do the big, important things, as well as fitting in everything else.

4.      Stay in control of your days.

It’s short, specific and anyone can do it.  But not everyone does, even though there is a mountain of research to demonstrate that it works.  The reason for this anomaly, despite everyone’s protestations about how important their goals are, is equally short and specific.  It’s self-discipline.

It’s not that we don’t know what to do; it’s more that it’s a lot of effort to do it. 

A recent Horizon programme called “The Truth About Exercise” promised a way out of hours in the gym, at least for some people.  One minute of high intensity training, three times a week, can keep you fit.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Almost as good as a silver-bullet list for achieving your goals.  The difficulty is that one minute of truly high intensity training is not pleasant; I know because I’ve tried it.  I’d go as far as to say it’s unpleasant.  It’s certainly not an easy option, but it does get you fitter.

There’s the rub.  If you want to compete at the Olympics you have to get up early and train hard, so hard that you start to dream of opening a sweet shop in Devon.  If you want to achieve your goals you have to work at it - not on an exercise bike until you feel queasy, but at your desk until your brain hurts.  And then some.

The good news is that whilst you may not be a natural athlete, you can achieve important goals where you do have the necessary ability and motivation, providing you are disciplined enough to do what needs to be done.  Discipline isn’t a fashionable word, or a particularly agreeable notion in a world of instant-gratification.  On the plus side, if you want something badly enough, you don’t have to wait to win the lottery.  You can go out there and get it.

Are you are making progress?

“I’m like a little boat adrift in the ocean - I don’t know whether I’m 200 yards from land or 200 miles.”

When we are working under difficult conditions, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics.   The old saying “when you are up to your neck in alligators, don’t forget you came to drain the swap” is never more true when something is hard going.  We set out bright eyed and bushy tailed only to find everything a lot more difficult than we realised.  As time marches on our enthusiasm dwindles, and we start to wonder whether we will ever be successful.

I was talking to someone a few weeks ago about his business and he said he felt like a little boat adrift in the ocean.  He had no idea whether he was 200 yards from land, or 200 miles.  It’s not a nice feeling, and it’s all too easy to give up when you feel like that.  He was taking a step back to figure out what to do with this feeling.

What’s needed is to work out what’s important in your business, and to measure it.  In his business it was getting face to face meetings with people who have a need for his service.  As it turns out meetings with prospects is a lag indicator, rather than a lead indicator.  That is to say that the number of meetings with prospects is a result of work already done.  That work might be meeting new people at networking events, or having people request a white paper from your web site, or making a certain number of cold calls each week.  You know what the activities are that you need to do to create the circumstances where meetings with prospects start to get into your diary.  So the lead indicators are number of new people in your contacts database, the number of marketing communications sent out, etc.  The lag indicator is the number of meetings with prospects.  To say it another way, you reap what you sow. 

Coming back to this feeling of being a boat adrift in the ocean, it’s important to measure this activity.  Unless you know on average how many people you need to contact to generate a meeting you will never know where you are in the ocean.  If you don’t know where you are, your motivation takes a hit.  Without motivation you don’t do those upfront activities that are actually the life blood of your business.  So measurement isn’t a nice to have, it’s actually the map that guides our little boats through calm or chopping waters. 

I wrote about lead and lag indicators a while ago, if you want to have another look.

Clarity of Purpose

Anna Wintour: “People respond well to people who are sure of what they want.”

We somehow think that a clear purpose will come to us from above, as the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, or as Buddha achieved enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi  tree.  Some people are lucky enough to know early on their where their talents and interests lie.  Anna Wintour reckoned she was just 15 when her career in fashion was fixed[1].    For the rest of us, being clear about our purpose is hard work. 

There is no escaping the fact that a clear vision is essential to the success of any organisation, and essential to the success of those within the organisation.  

If being clear about your purpose was easy, though, everyone would be highly focused on their specific goals.  Sadly, that’s not the case for one very simple reason: being clear about your purpose means making a choice.  By choosing one path you close off others.  For many people that is very difficult; the grass always looks greener someplace else, particularly when things don’t turn out as you planned.  So our attention wanders to something we think might be more profitable, more interesting, or just plain different from the problems we are facing.  However, that is exactly why clarity of purpose is so powerful; choosing forces you to focus your time, resources, and energy on one thing.  And doing one thing vastly improve your chances of success.  The old saying that the hunter who cases two rabbits catches neither one is as true in business as it is in the woods.  

When we are sure we are doing the right thing, we can sink ourselves fully into the activity.  Free from distractions, we become absorbed in our work.  Disturbances that would normally cause annoyance are ignored as we focus on the job.   Concentration and effectiveness are at their highest when we have absolute clarity about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

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[1] When Anna Wintour was just 21 years old she told her co-workers that she wanted to be Editor of Vogue.  She achieved her ambition in 1988 and 24 years later she is still Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour.

Be Sure of What you Want

Driven, ambitious and competitive; this is hardly the description you would expect of someone born into a wealthy family.  But it might be more understandable when you know the person’s father.  Charles Wintour was editor of the London Evening Standard following a decorated military career.  His daughter Anna obviously inherited his coolness under fire.

Anna Wintour is, of course, the legendary editor-in-chief of American Vogue who was savagely depicted in The Devil Wears Prada.  Ms Wintour is characteristically unruffled by such things.  She has been editor of Vogue since 1988 and has a loyal following from friends and staff.    She is unrepentant about her management style, saying[1] “people respond well to people who are sure of what they want”.  Her skill of course is both knowing what she wants, and being mostly right.   Her track record is impressive and Vogue continues to be an icon for all that is desirable in fashion and lifestyle.  It has made and broken many promising careers.

Being sure of what you want sounds simple enough, but reaching the point of clarity and being able to communicate it clearly isn’t always easy.  Without that clarity, however, decision making becomes laboured and people confused.  Your decisions may or may not be popular, as is the case with Ms Wintour, but at least people know where they stand.

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[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-5013905.html?pageNum=3&tag=contentMain;contentBody

What Steve Jobs Taught Me

Let me say at the outset that I didn’t know Steve Jobs, or ever work with him.  In fact I haven’t even read the book that EVERYONE seems to be reading at the moment – his biography by Walter Isaacson.  And I don’t intend to anytime soon.  Which I guess makes me supremely unqualified to write about any lessons he taught anyone. 

But Steve Jobs did, apparently, teach me one thing. 

It doesn’t involve any form of computing, is completely unconnected to tablets or smart phones, and is so ordinary that it doesn’t even begin to give away its power. 

What is it?  It is planning in analog. 

Unusually for me, I didn’t even need to read a book to get the idea; it came in a freely downloadable pdf.  Plan in analog.  So simple, so obvious, but so, so powerful.

I happened to be working on a presentation and tried the idea out.  I replaced my much loved but very broken fountain pen with a sleek, inexpensive silver number and invested in a nice notebook (without a power pack).  And I started to write.  And draw bubbles.  And more bubbles.  Turned the page and did it again.  For hours on end. 

It is notable how the brain is free to think creatively when it doesn’t get caught up worrying about point sizes, or whether boxes are lined up.  I thought about my BIG IDEAS.  I criticized them, turned the page and started again.  I have pages and pages of mind maps, notes, crossings out and ideas that run off the edge of the page.  Pen and paper isn’t nearly as flexible or forgiving of mistakes as my Office software, but it is superb at freeing the mind.

I hope I produced a better presentation with my inspiration from Steve Jobs.  I know I created it more quickly than if I hadn’t done my pen and paper planning.  I guess I won’t know until it closes a sale or makes an entire audience stand up to applaud. 

The process has taught me an important lesson – pre-planning on paper should be given plenty of time.  It produces better structure, better ideas, and hopefully a better end result.  It certainly saves time. 

I shall credit Steve Jobs with the lesson.  It’s not as earth-shattering as the iPhone or iPad, but looking at his presentations I can well believe he devoted considerable time to worrying about big ideas before worrying about how it might look on the screen.

Watch “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” by Camine Gallo here:  http://www.slideshare.net/cvgallo/the-presentation-secrets-of-steve-jobs-2609477.  His book “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience” is also well worth a read.  OK – I’ll admit to having read that one!

Want to do Great Things? Be Under-Employed

My yoga teacher was always telling me to slow down: “What’s the rush? Put your suitcases down and let the train carry you along”.  I was always the one late to the class, worrying about something and fidgeting to leave before the end.  “We are human beings”, he would calmly point out, “not human doings”.

“Just being” was, and still is, very hard for me.  While I could hardly sit still for a moment, he seemed to spend his days taking long walks in the woods, practicing yoga and volunteering at the local hospice.  His serenity and calmness was a world away from my life of busy activity.

But rush doesn’t accomplish much.  Running around trying to get lots done, without time to think or rest, leads to burn out and confusion.  James Watson, who together with Francis Crick discovered DNA, said “It’s necessary to be slightly under-employed if you are to do something significant”.  I’ve always found that a rather shocking and controversial idea when I try to make good use of every moment.  Their breakthrough was one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the last Century, and laid the foundation stones for molecular biology.

Beethoven also understood the need to let his mind relax and come back refreshed.  He worked only from sunrise until two or three o’clock in the afternoon.  His mornings also included a number of breaks outdoors, where he “worked while walking.”  He never worked in the evenings.

Beethoven struggled with his compositions, working and reworking themes over and over again, yet he created some of the most beautiful music ever composed. 

Whilst it is counter-intuitive, it seems that making time to do nothing pays off; even if your ambitions are less lofty than discovering DNA or writing a symphony.