We are now into the second month of the New Year and I hear a lot of people talking about resolutions and promises they made to themselves. This made me think of Simon Bailey’s article, “3 Goal-Setting Myths,” which looks at the pitfalls or walls that we run into that result in disappointment at this time of year, especially when we are thinking enthusiastically about our goals and of the future.

We need to think of a goal as being multi-faceted, consisting of several small achievable goals leading to our larger goal, with many celebration points along the way.  If we don’t, the tendency is to commit to the same large goal annually. And if we fail to achieve this goal, it reinforces that our ultimate goal in not achievable.

Writing down your goals is of paramount importance, but it doesn’t end there. You need a plan to review them or repeat them daily or weekly, at very least. If you don’t they will be forgotten. Most importantly, the best plans left unexecuted are useless. Don’t be a perfectionist. Practice PBP (production before perfection). The most important think is taking action when human nature tells you to resist. Action does not have to be perfect, but it does have to be taken.  I hope you enjoy the read

I have written about articles that describe motivation. I feel that motivation and creativity as you approach your professional goals are requirements, but generally people view creativity and structured routines as polar opposites. I know I have at times fallen into that trap, believing there is no need to stick to a structure when I’m feeling a very creative flow. The trick is when the flow is gone so is your structure. In all of the reading I have done there is a consistent thread, the most successful people have structure in their day-to-day activities. This is the support mechanism that allows you to continue to succeed when you just don’t feel like it, and we have all felt like that from time to time. Structure is a friend to ongoing creativity and continued success. Some good reads on this topic might be found by reading Joanna Jast. I have read a couple of her books recently and am a fan. Good Luck and Enjoy the Read.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6066742.Joanna_Jast

I came across this article in one of my favorite magazines. It’s true; I still enjoy reading printed magazines, marking the pages, folding the edges and writing notes on the paper page. This article is a quick read but it falls in line with a book I recently read titled “Not Another F****g Motivation Book,” by Joanna Jast. Both state clearly that motivation ebbs and flows in our lives. They also state in their own ways that the basis of true ongoing motivation is based on finding your true underlying drivers, and this takes work and being truly honest with yourself. An example may be, “I want to make more money.” Is this truly your motivation? I find that using the Five Why’s approach can be helpful when trying to get to your core motivation if making more money may provide you a level of freedom that will allow you to spend time with your children in a way that you could only dream of. So your true motivation is really that you want to spend more quality time with your children. These motivations are not always static throughout your life and deserve attention and revisiting from time to time, but will generally stay the same for a five to 10 year period. Well,  enjoy the read and I hope it motivates you enough to possibly pick up the book I mentioned above.

   As an avid business / self-help reader I have come across several of Brian Tracy’s books and articles. Most are quick reads and get directly to the point. The most recent I read was his book, “Eat That Frog,” which is stated to provide 21 ways to stop procrastinating. I see the book as brief highlights of many of the topics that have been covered over and over again, and which I have personally incorporated into my life and personal processes over time. Speaking to many people and a generally much younger and tech-savvy generation, I feel that two chapters may not completely fit my earlier statement. The chapters are titled “Technology is a terrible master,” followed by “Technology is a wonderful servant.”  With so many younger people growing up without ever not knowing knowing a moment without technology, and my generation seeing technology making such profound changes, it is very easy for both age groups to think that building a better business today or “better mouse trap” will be based on better technology.  This is misleading as most successful ventures are based on fundamentals that have nothing to do with technology. Technology definitely has its place as long as you use it to support your core ideas or mission and not become a servant to it. Well enough about me. Here is something different for you to enjoy; a YouTube clip with a brief introduction to the book and concept, to encourage you to buy the book. Enjoy the watch.

Besides being an avid but less-than-average hockey player who only learned to skate in my adult years, I was drawn to this article for several reasons.  There are a lot terms used today that I am not familiar with, like helicopter parents, millennials (not used in the most flattering way), and others.  I am a big proponent of using self-talk very carefully; if you call yourself a failure you will be a failure. If you fail as an engineer, don’t call yourself a failure.  There are no failures only results and the results may not always be what you want or what you expect them to be–but learn from the results. 

In business, we never look to not succeed in our ventures, but many times that’s what happens. The most successful people in sports, in most cases, don’t succeed as often as they would like to. The best batters in baseball hit in the mid .300 batting average, which means they are unsuccessful over 60% of the time. But they are still considered elite. In hockey, the best players of all time are successful scoring goals on 20% of their shots, which means they fail 80% of the time and yet they are the best.

I don’t advocate that we in business or on our professional career paths should strive not to succeed, but we do need to remember that there are valuable lessons to be learned by falling, so avoiding it may not be the best choice.

Getting back to playing hockey as an adult, if I tried to avoid falling I would have missed one of the most enjoyable activities in my life, which I have been “playing” for over 30 years. I hope you enjoy the read.

Read the article.

In this article there are two points that stand out to me. One, that consistency without disruption becomes routine. This can be taken in different ways. In business it could be for non-core activities, such as billing, or other tasks we strive for that are routine. Where we need to watch out is when routine settles into the core competencies of our business. When this happens, we run the risk of losing the edge or uniqueness of our offering. Many employees feel we shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken, but from time to time it’s a good idea to shake it up.

The second point, or activity that I find useful as a regular practice,e is a 90 day self-review. Whwereas a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters with negative growth, I would say that two2 consecutive 90-day review periods without change or movement should be alarming.  Enjoy the read…. https://www.success.com/mastering-the-art-of-consistency/

   As a business person or business professional, we rarely train as they do in the military or like professional athletes, but we are expected to perform at high levels daily. I have used some of the suggestions Chad Storlie makes in this post and wanted to share it with you. I hope you enjoy the read.  

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2018/04/5-ways-you-can-start-your-day-off-right-like-u-s.html

In our technologically advanced world, learning from mistakes is becoming rare. Most of the young workforce has grown up with a computer in their hand. Debating an issue with friends or arguing with family members about how to do a task or who they recall won a game are things of the past. Now, the answers are all on their phones, or they can look at videos of someone who has already done it. As great as all this sounds, I believe it comes at a great expense.

   People no longer make decisions because they are afraid they will make the wrong one. Back in the 1980’s, when I was learning my craft, if I didn’t know what decision to make and needed to ask my boss, I might be able to “beep”  him on his pager and maybe, if I was lucky, get a return call in an hour or so. If we were on deadline or a customer was standing in front of me and I couldn’t wait, then I had to make a decision, even if it turned out to be the wrong decision. Due to the circumstances, I just couldn’t wait. Needless to say, I learned some very valuable lessons making the wrong decisions. With today’s cell phones younger workers don’t have to make a decision. All it takes is a phone call, text or e-mail to their boss and that decision is made for them.  This may sound good to owners or supervisors, but if you want to develop talent or grow your people, I would ask you to resist the temptation of making all the decisions yourselves. Everybody needs to dive into the deep-end for the first time.

    I hope you enjoy this read.

Fear comes in many flavors and situations. In business, the fear of failure is very obvious in most situations. But the fear of success is usually buried in our psyche. We all have had to push through the obvious fears, like asking someone on a date or possibly the fear of making a mistake when pricing a type of job we’ve never done before. The discomfort that is obvious in these situations is very easy to label.

  The fear of success is, in most cases, masked as many other things. I think Harvey Mackay in this post makes the point that when he states that many fears stem from “the desire for approval from other people.” Success, and especially continued success, is often resented rather than supported and celebrated by sometimes even friends and family. The fear of success may be rooted in thoughts of being pushed out of a circle of friends or being thought of differently by the people you care about, which is much harder to label as fear. Having recently celebrated Independence Day, think of the fear our country’s founding fathers must have feltas they put everything including their lives and their family’s lives on the line in order to create a world they had never seen before. The naysayers are very strong today, so I can only imagine how strong they were at that time. Enjoy the read.