Category: Mindset

While in Thailand these last two weeks, I completed training on Nitrox and advanced wreck diving on a WW2 wreck.

In a wreck, you simultaneously have to monitor normal dive constraints along with the added challenges of low visibility in a constrained environment. I was managing my air, depth, no decompression time, my buoyancy, a dive light, and a spool of nylon line. The nylon line is for you to follow blindly out of the ship if someone accidentally “silts up” the dust in the wreck by kicking it with a fin. While you dive, you have to play it out and tie it off at regular intervals with specific techniques to avoid it creating other problems.

It’s like navigating a multi-level labyrinth in the dark, with a time limit, where you risk death if you lose track of what’s happening or don’t complete tasks correctly.

It’s really fun.

A couple of years ago, I took a month off and followed the changing autumn leaves along the length of Japan. I started in Sapporo and slowly made way to Fukuoka by train. It was an epic trip. Afterwards, I had an incredibly productive finish to the year.

When it comes to getting things done, I think we place too much of an emphasis on “time management” and not enough on “energy management.” A big piece of the energy puzzle is simply time off.

Which is what I’m going to be doing for the next couple of weeks. I’m heading to DCBKK in Bangkok and then to an island in the Gulf of Thailand for some diving and, if the weather cooperates, sailing and climbing.

If you’re at DCBKK, give me a holler. Otherwise, enjoy the wonderful autumn and I’ll be back at the desk in November.

Featured image is Religious melancholia and convalescence used under public domain.

“If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.”

I like this adage, not because it’s a hard and fast rule, but because it speaks to the sideways nature of things.

There’s a difference between our intent and our effect.

The founder of Patagonia didn’t have an aim to build an outdoor clothing empire, but rather to improve the tools he used for rock climbing. He realized that solving his own and others problems provided a way to make a living.

Concerning growth, there are different perspectives to see the work you do.

I’ve got a busy day ahead of me. It’s one of many. My summer has been like one of those old photos where college students try to cram as many people into a phone booth as they can.

This might be your life or you may pass through the occasional season of busyness like me.

The problem is that busyness will dull your blade.

Here are three things that I’ve found to work wonders at staying sharp:

1) Take unstructured time. If I have just one day with nothing planned, it will revitalize me for all the professional and private events. Even the Judeo Christian omnipotent God had to take a day off after six days of work creating the universe.

2) Spend time outside. Walks are great. Swimming is fantastic.

3) Connect. Connect with others. Connect with art, nature, or beauty.

Alright, back to cramming students into that phone booth!

Featured image is Wenceslas Hollar – Chaos (State 1), a 17th Century etching of Genesis. Used under public domain.

Last night, I took my little from the Big Brother Big Sister program to a haunted house. He’s in fifth grade and didn’t make it past the entry hallway before starting to hyperventilate. We had to bail on the experience before he had a heart attack. A couple of weeks ago, I got in trouble with Big Brothers because I let him drive my car around an empty parking lot.

I’m really lowering the bar with their program.

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”  – Michael Porter

This is a quote that I often return too.

Something that I’m naturally excellent at is considering alternatives.  I see paths where others don’t.  StrengthsFinder describes this ability to generate options as “Strategic.”

Porter puts a finer point on it by emphasizing selection among options.

Many things I’ve tried this year haven’t paid off. Which isn’t to say it’s all been losses, but I’ve definitely had my share of them.

In my experience, most of what we do as entrepreneurs is fail. Few new endeavors are successful out of the gate.

The emotional experience of weathering that environment is challenging.

Professionally, this year won’t go down as a banner year for me. However, personally, it’s been a great year.

Which inhibits growth more:

• What you don’t know?
• What you think know, but that you’re wrong about?

I heard a story about a bootstrapped software founder several years ago that stuck with me. Like many entrepreneurs, he had worked on several projects that had mediocre results. Then, he had a breakout success with a product.

His comment was, “I didn’t realize before that this is how a business is supposed to work.”

In other words, he believed that you worked hard to make not much progress and that was just how business was.

After his successful product, how will he think about the next product that doesn’t take off?

The benefit of experience is that it reveals what you’re wrong about. Unfortunately, accumulating experience takes time and losses. Fortunately, experience is transferable. It doesn’t have to be your time or your losses.

This is why it’s critical to solicit help, advice, and perspectives from others. And to read about and listen to the experience of people in your situation.

Featured image is an old illustration of the Library of Alexendria. A significant portion of the Mediterranean’s accumulated thoughts and experiences were lost with it after its destruction in the third century. By O. Von Corven – Tolzmann, Don Heinrich; Alfred Hessel and Reuben Peiss. The Memory of Mankind. New Castle. Used under public domain.

Setting goals for growth is challenging. There’s a dilemma:

1) You can’t control everything. And striving after things you can’t control is a recipe for failure.
2) Setting objectives that you can control doesn’t grow you much, if at all.

The classic example of the first kind of goals are revenue goals. For example, “Grow our revenue by 10% by January 1.”

You can leap into action around this kind of goal, work everyone to the bone, and still fail. This is what happens most often because you’re not in control of how the environment will respond to your efforts.

The classic example of the second kind of goal is a process oriented goal. E.g. “Market at x tradeshows in 2022.”

Unlike the first kind, these kinds of goals are achievable. Only achieving them doesn’t always lead to growth. This is because they’re simply an extension or replication of what you can already do.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how ignorance is its own obstacle.

We operate with half formed ideas about our business. Internally, these concern the nature of roles, team members, offers, systems, and etc. Externally, we develop theories about trends, markets, and competitors.

These half formed ideas are emerging beliefs still coalescing from experience.

The challenge is that these emerging beliefs aren’t accurate, but we operate as if they are.

For example, a couple of years ago, we launched a service that I tested by selling some initial customers through PPC. Having established that customers were in search, we built up our SEO for those terms. I projected sales based off traffic. The traffic came, but the sales did not.

I believed, erroneously, that PPC ads would be treated the same way as content that ranked for those terms- but that wasn’t true. I would have been better served to spend that time and money optimizing PPC campaigns.

We don’t know where our beliefs are off, but we still have to operate based on something.

The trick is to identify what beliefs matter. Where are the obstacles to growth?

Once you’re clear on where you’re stuck, what are your assumptions about these obstacles?

Finally and most importantly:

What data would eliminate assuming?

Featured image is one of the maps that Columbus used as a basis to seek out Asia by crossing the ocean. The missing North American continent is super-imposed over the original 1472 map created by Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. Revised illustration by Bartholomew, J. G. – A literary and historical atlas of America. Used under Public Domain