Everyday Excellence

Bryant April 16th, 2010

I recently finished the book Rework by the 37Signals founders. The book was a quick read and is definitely written for the blogging generation with illustrations and quick, scannable pages. In fact, it’s more like a collection of one page essays than a book, but even so, there is a lot of knowledge in those short paragraphs.

For those that don’t know, 37Signals run a web development firm here in the Chicago area and have created some phenomenal web products – most notably Basecamp.

Their mantra has always been keep things as simple as possible, and even though they work on technical web products, I think their lessons could apply to many other industries. Here are the ones that stood out to me the most:

• Inspiration is Perishable: So true. If I’m excited about getting a project done, I try to carve out as much time as possible right then to work on it because I know that time will be very productive. Inspiration should be used immediately.
• Planning is Guessing: They decry the long-term business planning as nothing more than guesswork and the harm is that they prevent you from being nimble. In Me, Myself and Bob, Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, describes how all their long-term projections showed double-digit increases so they would easily have the cash to self-finance a movie. Unfortunately, those double-digit increases didn’t happen and VeggieTales went bankrupt. Don’t lock yourself into long-term plans that have no bearing on reality.
• Make a Dent in the Universe: Do something that matters. People are happier when they feel like they’re making a difference. You don’t have to cure cancer, but you’d hope that people would miss you when you’re gone. You don’t have forever.
• Start Making Something: Their section on this topic focuses on what I discussed in one of my first blog posts on the myth of the great idea. Ideas are cheap. It’s execution that matters.
• Meetings are Toxic: The true cost of a meeting is often overlooked. If there are 8 people in the meeting then you are actually using 8 hours of company time, not just one. For that hour, there are 8 people who can’t be working and moving the project forward. So if a meeting’s going to happen, it had better be important.

The one point from their book that I disagree with is their denial of the workaholic.

Not that I think you should work all the time, but I’m a big believer in the fact that the hardest workers are the ones that win. If you look back through history at successful people, you will see that they were obsessed with their one thing – whatever it was. And they didn’t just do it from 8-5. The fact of the matter is, the more you do something, the better you get at it.

That said, overall it’s a great book and highly recommended!

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Bryant March 29th, 2010

In life, there is an uneasy balance between ambition and happiness. If you are too ambitious you may never be happy. When you reach one rung on the ladder, then you’re desperately scrambling for the next. On the other hand, if you’re just happy with the status quo, you may never do something truly extraordinary.

Recently someone told me “I’m happy with a good library and a thrift shop”. Now, here’s a person that’s going to be happier than most—her expectations are pretty easy to meet. BUT she may never reach her full potential. And would a company want to hire someone like this, or would it be better to hire someone who says they won’t be happy until they’ve earned a million dollars?

The sad truth is that most highly successful people err on the side of ambition. They’re never satisfied with the status quo and so they’re usually not happy people…

Steve Jobs is known to relentlessly push his people to build the next killer device. He’s often been called an egomaniac and we know he’s a screamer.  But Jobs isn’t alone here. The same is true for Gates, Disney and Edison. Does being great mean being unhappy with how things are? After all, no one less than the Governor of California (“the Governator”) said the secret to success is to “Stay Hungry”.

Doesn’t personal growth require some ambition? And isn’t there something about personal growth that leads to happiness. It seems that the answer must be in the following:

• Finding a Balance: There is a balance between enjoying what you have and pushing yourself to achieve the next level. It can be difficult to strike, but it’s there. And the best growth is supposed to come by pushing yourself just barely out of your comfort zone.
• Enjoying the Journey: Because you never know when you’ll reach the next rung of the ladder, you have to enjoy the process. As long as you’re moving forward, you have something to be happy about. It’s not just the destination.

Where ambition ends happiness begins.
- Hungarian Proverb 

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Bryant March 7th, 2010

Take a minute to watch the above video. I think it captures something profound and inspiring.

For some reason in our culture failure is seen as this taboo that must be avoided at all costs, yet some of the the best in the world have failed many times over. There’s a classic Thomas Edison quote about inventing the light bulb:

I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps

-Edison

So it’s not really about failing, it’s more about when you give up. Maybe success is just around the corner?

The Dip

One of Seth Godin’s books is dedicated to this concept. He calls it The Dip, and it’s all about pushing through failure. As we all know, new projects are fun in the beginning, but the rewards lie for those that can push through the long hard slog at the end. Godin explains:

It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.

-The Dip, Seth Godin

Suck Less Everyday

I think the key is to suck less everyday. Start out knowing that you will suck and strive for 1% daily improvement. Pretty soon you’ll be amazingly good.

I remember when I first started running seriously — I really sucked. After running a couple of miles, I was winded. But I told myself that I would stick to a plan and run an increasing number of miles every week. Somehow, by the end of four months of solid training, I ran a marathon with a pretty good time.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure

One of my all-time favorite speeches is by JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series). She gave it at a Harvard Commencement and her subject was the “Fringe Benefits of Failure”. She talked about how she royally failed in the early part of her life:

So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

She was a huge failure, but she goes on to describe what she learned from that failure. It stripped away the inessential and let her focus on the only that ever mattered to her – writing. She says, that if she had been an astounding success at something else, she may never have sat down to write the novels we all know and love today.

In fact, I hear this all the time. Whenever I’m talking to people about taking time out to build a great software product they always talk about the fact that they’re making good money doing this or that and they don’t want to risk taking time out. They settle for the good rather than the great. By failing dramatically, Rowling didn’t have that option.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius

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Bryant February 19th, 2010

“If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable.”

-Seth Godin

Seth Godin has a fascinating new book out called Linchpin. If you like Godin’s other books then you’ll like this one. It’s written in his classic style of storytelling and enthusiasm. Some would argue that his books are just extended blog posts – that there’s not enough meat to actually make a book. And while I agree that his books can get repetitive the message is so good that it’s worth hearing repeatedly.

One of Godin’s past books was called Purple Cow and it talked about how to create a remarkable business that people talk about.  Linchpin is about becoming a remarkable person that people talk about. After reading through the book, I would summarize it with these five quotes and lessons:

1) Be Different

You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to become indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.

You can’t become a linchpin by doing what everyone else is doing. You have to be remarkable and to do that, you have to be different. No one will talk about you and say you have to hire this person if you are the same as everyone else. Being different almost always means going beyond the training manual because anyone can follow the manual. What matters is the person that takes initiative to take the customer experience or product to the next level.

2) Give Gifts

When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

In his book, Godin gives the example of an expert sales coach that gives away all of his secrets in a free online book. Is that stupid because now everyone knows his secrets? Or is that wise because now everyone knows that this guy has knowledge to spare and if I ever need a sales coach he’d be the first one to call. Now that I’ve seen his work, I know he’s good.

3) The Web Makes it Easier to Shine

The Web has made kicking ass easier to achieve, and mediocrity harder to sustain. Mediocrity now howls in protest.

On the web, remarkable content spreads quicker than ever before. I once wrote a blog post entitled how long you can wait that talks about how delayed gratification is the key to success. On a whim I submitted it to stumbleupon and the next day I had thousands of views. The post struck a chord and traveled faster than I could have imagined.

In the world we live in, if you do something wonderful (with the help of twitter, digg, stumbleupon and facebook), news can travel like lightning.

4) There is No Map

There is no map. No map to be a leader, no map to be an artist. I’ve read hundreds of books about art (in all its forms) and how to do it, and not one has a clue about the map, because there isn’t one.

In the book, Godin talked about his favorite negative review which said (and I’m paraphrasing): “Godin has all these great ideas but he doesn’t tell you how to do any of them”! To which Godin replied, there is no map — if I could tell you how to do it then it would be a commodity and wouldn’t be remarkable anymore.

Some people just want to be told what to do, and in fact some businesses encourage that. Godin spends a lot of time talking about the old-school factory mentality of getting people that are just cogs and replaceable parts. You give them a manual and they do the work and everyone’s happy (or are they?). Maybe the business makes money, but are they really remarkable or are they just racing to the bottom? And what about the employee, they are just interchangeable cogs.

According to Godin, a better model is one where people bring their talents and creativity to help a business race to the top rather than just following a map.

5) Work is Your Platform for Art

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in the other.

This was my biggest takeaway from the book. The idea being that “Art” is something that changes someone by making a human connection. And to be remarkable, you must bring your art to work. The greatest business people are the greatest artists. They change people and the world with their art.

Jonathon Ive, who designed the iPod and the iPhone, is an artist and he’s impacted millions with his art even if they aren’t hanging it on their walls. Not only has he impacted millions of consumers, but he’s made millions for his company.

Perhaps Ive is a little too blue sky for the average person to relate to, so Godin goes on to talk about the barista in a local coffee shop that is always smiling and welcoming. This barista goes out of his way to make sure customers are comfortable and happy. He’s the reason that people go the cafe and therefore is highly valuable to the business (ie – a linchpin). His art is his connections that he makes with people, and according to Godin everyone has some kind of art that they can bring to work.

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Bryant January 31st, 2010

Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff

I’ve long been a big proponent of picking one thing to focus on and doing it every day, but recently I met someone who really exemplifies this technique.

A Photo a Day

Trey Ratcliff runs Stuck in Customs which is the #1 travel photography blog on the web. I’m sure there are a ton of photography blogs, so how does someone get to be #1? Because he provides a gorgeous photograph every day — including weekends and holidays. Here’s what he has to say about this:

My promise to you: one photo every day. This is very hard… to produce 365 photos that I think are worthy every year. I will probably break this promise about 10 times during the year, so it’s really not much of a promise.

He jokes that he won’t get to it every day, but from a quick look at his blog, he’s been posting a daily photo since roughly 2005 and he hasn’t skipped many days. And I’m not talking about quick photos of your kids or the dogs. I’m talking about true pieces of art worthy of framing in your house. For example, see the photo at the top of this post and imagine creating something like that every single day. It’s no wonder that his site is popular.

Everyday is Easier than Every Other

Gretchen Rubin of the The Happiness Project thinks that it’s actually easier to do something everyday than every few days:

A few days ago, I observed that it’s often easier for me to do something every day than to do it some days. I post to my blog six days a week. I take notes every day. I write in my one-sentence journal every day. Many people have told me that they find it easier to exercise when they exercise every day.

If I try to do something four days a week, I spend a lot of time arguing with myself about whether today is the day, or tomorrow, or the next day; did the week start on Sunday or Monday; etc

I have to agree with her. There’s something powerful about doing your one thing every day. You just can’t help get better at it and there’s no internal debate about whether today is the day you should be doing it.

The Best Street Sweeper

But what if your one thing isn’t that glamorous or you can’t get paid to do it? What if you love to run or draw? Can you still do it everyday and will it matter? I think you can create great art in whatever you do as long as it is a daily ritual and you do it with love. Martin Luther King jr. said it best (as usual):

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

As for myself, I’m trying to do a little bit of writing or programming every day in an attempt to improve my craft. How about you?

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