Everyday Excellence

Bryant January 21st, 2010

So many gurus of time management tell us that the best way to be effective is to rigorously schedule every minute of every day. Not only should we schedule our work activities but we also need to schedule our personal activities. Each week we should revisit that schedule to ensure we’re making progress on those activities.

Don’t forget to schedule those big rocks first!

And for each commitment that we put on the schedule, we need to be sure and keep it. At face value this makes a lot of sense. But it really won’t work if you have too many activities scheduled. Thomas Edison’s plan was much simpler:

I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.

 

It’s called relentless focus or working in sprints. In other words, you don’t worry about scheduling a ton of activities and then watching the clock to ensure you are doing the right activity at the right time. His secret to time management: Just focus on ONE activity. Then there is nothing to schedule because you always know what you should be doing.

For Edison this “one activity” was his work. He was legendary for working 16 hour days and given that he has 1500+ patents, I would say that it was pretty effective for him.

Now, there can be a dark side to this. In Edison’s case he truly neglected his family to the point where one of his daughters said she didn’t even know he was her father because she barely saw him.  So, there is a balance. I like what Scott Berkun, author of Confessions of Public Speaker, has to say:

When someone tells me they have a wish, or a new years resolution, I ask what are you taking off of your plate to make room in your life for this new thing?

You can’t do everything. Period. So pick what’s important and focus on that relentlessly. And maybe, just maybe, stop staring at the clock in your office…

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Bryant January 3rd, 2010

What happens after we die? It’s the question that I think everyone has pondered at one time or another. Yet, it’s a tough one to answer. It’s not like you can easily gather evidence. There isn’t exactly a steady stream of people that we can ask about life after death and it’s not anything you want to try out.

We can look to our churches and holy texts to see what they have to say. Most would say that there is some kind of afterlife, and that there is a spirit that lives on in some form or another, but they are pretty light on the details.

Luckily, as medical technology has advanced, doctors are beginning to bring more and more people back from death’s door. Some of them are actually “clinically” dead (ie – without a steady heartbeat) before being brought back. What would they say from their experience being nearly-dead and would their stories match?

That’s the question that Dr. Raymond Moody set out to study in his now classic book Life After Life. He collected the stories of hundreds of Near Death Experience (NDE) survivors and published them in a book along with his analysis. What he found is that even though the people and the cause of their near-death varied, their actual experiences while “dead” were surprisingly similar. 

Stages

Almost all of the people he studied went through a variation of the following “stages” in their NDE roughly in this order:

• Hearing the News – Many report hearing doctors or accident spectators pronounce them dead and later (after being resuscitated) are able to repeat the exact words back.
• Feeling Peaceful – Even though many of the stories he collected were gruesome car accidents or war wounds, the people who experienced them described their first feeling as that of peace and comfort.
• The Noise – After dying, many report hearing a noise that’s most often described as a ringing or buzzing. Sometimes it takes the form of bells or something more musical.
• The Dark Tunnel – After hearing the noise, many recall being pulled through into a dark tunnel.
• Out of Body – Throughout the experience, they describe being out of their body and seeing it on the operating table or still behind the wheel of the crashed car.
• Meeting Others – Many report seeing other people such as departed family members or old deceased friends.
• Being of Light – They recall meeting a “being of light” that takes many forms (depending on a person’s religious background) and who communicates with them in a non-verbal way usually asking them to say what they had done with their life and if they were ready to die.
• The Review – After seeing the being of light, they report seeing something akin to a slideshow of their lives starting from when they were young to the present.
• Effect on Lives – After coming back to life, many report being forever changed and seeing life as deeper and more precious. They also emphasize trying to be as loving as possible to the people they interact with.

The most startling aspect of these stages is how similar they are across individuals regardless of race, geography, ethnicity or religious belief. According to the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS):

No significant correlation has been found between religious beliefs and the likelihood or depth of the near-death experience. No significant correlation has been found between age, race, sexual orientation, economic status and the likelihood, content or depth of the near-death experience.

So NDEs know no cultural boundaries though some stories are more fantastic than others.

Maria’s Shoe

One classic NDE story that adds validity to the out of body stage is that of “Maria’s Shoe” as described by the IANDS:

Kimberly Clark Sharp (1995) was a social worker in Harborview Hospital in Seattle when Maria was brought in unconscious from cardiac arrest. Sharp visited her the following day in a hospital room, at which point Maria described leaving her body and floating above the hospital. Desperate to prove that she  had in fact left her body and was not crazy, she described seeing a worn dark blue tennis shoe on the ledge outside a window on the far side of the hospital. Not believing her but wanting to help, Sharp checked the ledge by pressing her face against the sealed windows and found a shoe that perfectly matched the details Maria had related

Conclusions

So what can we learn from Dr. Moody’s research? The first is that even though it was published over 25 years ago it has yet to be shot down by newer research. If nothing else, further research from groups like the IANDS has helped support it.

That said, there are competing theories, such as a neurological one which states that a dying brain starved of oxygen will formulate a tunnel, show beings of light, and life reviews as coping mechanisms. The problem with this theory is that it does not explain how people report NDE’s even when their brain’s are healthy such as during childbirth and some accidents.

For those looking for some evidence of what happens after we die, this book is a great place to start. For those who have recently lost a loved one or fear death themselves, the stories of NDEs provide a measure of comfort.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place    
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish    
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down    
With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings,    
The powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good,     
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,    
All in one mighty sepulchre.

-William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis

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Bryant December 29th, 2009

There is a tendency when reading about the achievements of others to try and follow their path. To say that they made it through life in a specific way, why can’t I just follow their path? But this is a mistake. There are things you can learn from the lives of others, but you can also get stuck down dead-ends trying the follow someone else’s path.

Follow Your Bent

Why is this?

It really boils down to skills and environment. Everyone is bent in a specific way. And for the most part, you can’t change that. Even though I like and admire the achievements of Teddy Roosevelt, I have to realize that my personality is nothing like his. So the path that he took in his life is not a path that I could take. I’m not going to bowl people over with my enthusiasm like he did.

Well why not try and become more enthusiastic? It can’t be that hard…right? Most of the research today suggests that you’re much better building on your strengths rather than trying to improve your weaknesses. At the end of the day, your success comes from your strengths in spite of your weaknesses. No one remembers what Lance Armstrong was poor at, only what he was really, really good at.

There’s a great quote from Lincoln during the civil war where someone asks why he doesn’t get rid Grant because he is a hopeless alcoholic. After recently going through a string of generals who never pressed their advantage against the enemy, Lincoln replied

I cannot spare this man. He fights!

In other words, it didn’t matter that Grant was a drunkard. What mattered was that he had the courage to take the fight to the enemy. In the end, Lincoln was wise to overlook Grant’s faults and focus on his strengths. We all need to do the same with ourselves. We can’t follow someone else because we have our own strengths that may not be the same.

Find Your Roy

Not only are we bent in different ways than others, but our environment is different. We are surrounded by different people.

A while back I was reading the autobiography of Phil Vischer called Me, Myself &  Bob. In his book, he describes the rise and fall of Veggie Tales (the animated series based on 3-D generated vegetables and positive messages). He talks about how he built his empire in his basement when everyone thought he was crazy. But after he became hugely successful, he began to think that he could be the next Walt Disney. He was always amazed by what Disney had accomplished. Now here was his chance to do the same.

His company was highly successful with producing half-hour episodes so the next step was to move into feature films just like Walt did. But there was a problem. How should his studio finance the incredible expense of a feature film? At the time, they were flush with cash and all of the 5-year projections looked great so they chose to self-finance the feature film. The only problem was the film cost way more than anyone expected and 5-year projections were horribly inaccurate. By the end, his studio went bankrupt.

After much reflection, Vischer summarizes what happened:

In hindsight, perhaps the simplest explanation for the failure of Big Idea Productions is this: I never found my Roy. I never found the person who could look rationally at my ideas and then, in love, say no. There were numerous people ready to say no to me, but we didn’t have the sort of relationship Walt and Roy had, so I was always hesitant to trust them. As a result, I didn’t trust their “no’s.” So I barreled ahead, on my own, clutching my ideas like a child clutching a prized stuffed animal in a roomful of strangers whose motives he can’t discern.

Phil could not follow Walt because he did not have Roy. His environment was different. He would have been better off focusing on what he could do with the people he had rather than trying to following the pattern set out by Walt. At the end of the book, Vischer finally comes to grips with the fact that he cannot be Walt and he even makes amends at Walt’s statue in Disneyland.

That’s a lesson we all need to learn because at the end of the day we can only be ourselves. 

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Bryant December 17th, 2009

That big red line sailing upwards pretty much says it all.

At a time when retail sales have been flat or even declining, e-commerce–and Amazon specifically–has been experiencing tremendous growth. In the less than a decade we entered a world where you no longer have to leave your home to do all your holiday shopping. Think about that.

Not only do you not have to leave your home, I would argue that the online shopping experience is actually far better for the following reasons:

• Consumer Reviews: When you are at a retail store looking at five different coffee makers, it’s very difficult to determine which is the best. Can you really trust the marketing on the box? But online it’s different. You see reviews of people who have actually purchased that coffee maker and what there experience was
• Price: I’m not sure how they do it, but Amazon is consistently 20-30% cheaper than the same item in a retail store. And the site makes it extremely convenient to price shop across different sellers of a given product. You can even sort by lowest to highest price. And with Amazon there is often no shipping or tax.
• Availability: When you get to retail store you never know if they will have an item in stock. Or sometimes they say they have it in stock but then can’t find it on the shelf. These problems don’t exist with Amazon. Not only do they tell you if they have an item in stock, but when they get low they tell you how many they have left.
• Speed: I can comfortably purchase an item on Amazon much faster than the amount of time it takes to get out to a retail store, dig through the aisles, and then wait at checkout. Now granted I will not have the item immediately from Amazon, but their 2-day shipping (through Amazon Prime) is usually fast enough for most items. My main concern is that it saves me time.

Amazon has truly changed the way we shop. This year I’m doing all my holiday shopping online and loving it!

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Bryant December 1st, 2009

I recently finished Andre Agassi’s autobiography entitled Open. I’ve read many biographies and many books about tennis. This one ranks with the best of them. And it’s because of what the title implies. In his book, Agassi is remarkably open. He talks about his struggles, his failures, and most pointedly how he hates tennis.

That’s right. Agassi, one of the greatest tennis players ever, hated the game passionately. In some ways it almost makes sense. He was forced to play tennis from a very young age by his overbearing father (a former champion Iranian boxer). He never had a choice in the matter and he explains that if he did, he would not have chosen tennis. He preferred team sports where all the pressure was not on one person.

His dad, more focused on tennis than Andre, picked a house where he could build a tennis court in back and force the young boy to hit 2500 balls per day. As his dad said, anyone who hits 2500 balls per day will hit a million per year and anyone who hits a million balls per year can’t help but be number 1. It makes sense from a cruel mathematical perspective. The more you play the better you will get.  But what if you’re that kid forced to do what you hate for 2 hours a day? It’s no wonder that he started to loathe tennis.

All that said, it did give him a wild ride of a career which is expertly chronicled in his new book. After reading it in its entirety, the following lessons stand out to me:

• Surround Yourself with the Best: A common thread throughout the book are the people around Agassi and how they helped him to achieve greatness. Until he started working with Brad Gilbert he had not won any slams. Gilbert analyzed his game and helped teach him that he didn’t need to hit every shot perfectly. Even more important than Gilbert was Agassi’s relationship with Gil Reyes. Reyes was his personal trainer and is largely credited with extending Agassi’s career until the ripe age of 36. Reyes acted as a much-needed father figure to Agassi whose real father never knew how to show affection. These people along with a cast of others supported Agassi through the whirlwind of life as a tennis pro and helped him to really grow into himself.
• Everyone Thinks About Quitting: I was shocked to hear how many times Agassi thought about quitting throughout his long career. The first was when he had just turned pro and had not accomplished much. He had a tough loss, but if he would’ve quit at that time we wouldn’t be talking about him today. It makes me wonder how many quit when they are right on the cusp of accomplishing something great.
• Practice as Much as Possible: Agassi’s dad had him practicing as soon as he could walk. Sometimes he would have him skip school so that he could practice tennis. After doing this for many years, his dad sent him to the Bollettieri Academy where he spent a large part of every day practicing tennis. I’m reminded of books like Outliers and Talent is Overrated which state that the key to success is how much you can practice. Both mention the need for 10,000 hours of practice to become an true expert. Agassi certainly hit that mark at a young age.
• Success Does not Equal Happiness: There was a point in Agassi’s career where he was the #1 tennis player in the world and married to Brooke Shields. Sounds like a pretty good life, but Agassi was miserable. Being #1 was never a goal for him, but a goal his father had set for him. And being married to Brooke Shields was something he more and less stumbled into only to discover that they had very different interests and groups of friends. The lesson is that you can’t be happy following other people’s dreams and happiness does not equal outward success.
• Ignore the Critics: Throughout his life critics were perpetually putting Agassi into boxes. First it was that he was all show and no substance. As one of his commercials stated – Image is Everything! He hated that phrase and felt that it didn’t really describe him, but the shoe fit so that’s what the critics wrote. It didn’t help that he had not won a grand slam. Finally, after winning many grand slams and silencing the Image is Everything moniker they started to suggest that he should retire. While the critics wrote that he should be quitting, he was out winning tournaments.
• Commit to Something Greater: Agassi didn’t seem to find himself until he found something greater to commit to than himself and tennis. He states in the book that he always felt tennis was kind of meaningless. What’s the point of being the best at hitting a fuzzy little ball around? But when he helped a friend send his kid to college that just felt right and created a spark in Agassi. He realized that his tennis skills, money and famous name could be used to benefit a greater cause – specifically underprivileged kids living in Las Vegas. In order to help give them the best education possible, he set up the Agassi Academy College Prep Academy. Only once he realized this goal did he seem to be truly happy.

Tennis was always sort of a - a learning. It was a vehicle for me to discover a lot about myself. And the things that I sort of discovered at times I not only didn’t want to see it for myself but I certainly didn’t want millions of people to see it.

-Andre Agassi

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