Tag: life

The Quantity of Stuff in Your Life is More Important than Your System

Praxis grad James Walpole blogged today about the problems of too much focus on optimization and “life hacking”.

It got me thinking about those I know who struggle to keep their head above water.  People who are creative and productive, but perpetually behind and stressed and overwhelmed.  If you’re in that position, I’m going to share a belief that might be depressing, but it might also be heartening: there is no system that can fix it.

You can’t implement a new schedule, or tool, or plugin, or diet, or any other new way of organizing and executing on your stuff that will save you.  These systems may be better or worse, but they can’t address the fundamental thing keeping you buried.  It’s the quantity of stuff in your life that’s the problem.

I don’t mean physical possessions, though that can be part of it, I mean stuff that’s not core to your mission but that you do or pay attention to or simply keep around anyway.  It’s open tabs on your browser that you don’t need to read.  It’s emails in your inbox you don’t need to keep.  It’s events and engagements you can do without.

If your day is a pipeline transforming inputs to outcomes, no re-arrangement of the pipes can handle the fact that you’re flooding the system with three times the volume it can handle.  Or, to use another water analogy, if your progress is a body of water, compare the power of a highly concentrated, pressurized stream like a fire hose, vs. a flood plain sloppily sloshing around.

Cut the stuff out.  Focus only on the things that give and create energy.  That’s when your systems and life-hacks will begin to work.  Then they can improve things at the margin.  But until you reduce the overwhelming quantity of stuff in your life, no system can save you.

Email From a Praxis Graduate

I got an email yesterday from Mitchell Broderick, a Praxis graduate from our very first class.

I distinctly remember Mitch’s decision to abandon college and step up to the challenge of Praxis.  He had to move across the country.  He had to build a new network.  He had to enter a professional environment with far more responsibility (and opportunity) than any he’d experienced.  He had the chance to start doing work immediately that he hoped he would someday be ready for after four years of college.  It wasn’t easy.

He rose to the challenge.  He took a chance on Praxis and on himself.  In his email, he recalled the difficulty of the decision, and the challenge of making this personal investment.

   Mitchell Broderick

“The return on that investment and struggle has been incredible.”

 

The reason he emailed me was to let me know that, exactly one year after completing the program, he hit his ambitious sales goal for the year and cleared six figures (working as a VP of business development for the same company he spent his Praxis apprenticeship with).

No degree.  No college debt.  No hoops to jump through.  Mitch became the person he wanted to be and is living a life he assumed he’d have to wait a decade or more to live.  And he’s just getting started.

There is an experimental, exploratory element of the program.  You can take a year to get out into the world, test yourself, engage in personal development projects, be challenged by advisors and coaches, take charge of your own education, build better habits, and see what entrepreneurship is all about.  But Mitch is a great example of the fact that this isn’t just a one-year good time.  Praxis isn’t just about a short-term experience.  It’s about building the career and life you want in the long term.  You get an amazing job with the program that can be the first step in your career.  As Mitch put it,

“Praxis isn’t something that contrarians do to be different for a year. They do it because it works. They get awesome jobs making great money.”

And Mitch is the first to tell you, it’s not about money.  It’s about becoming the kind of person that can create value and achieve your own personal goals, material and otherwise.

I shudder at the thought of an ambitious grinder like Mitch languishing in a cinder block classroom somewhere under fluorescent lights.  He’s worth more than that.  He was ready to engage the real world and create his own path, not sit on someone else’s conveyor belt.

How many Mitch’s are out there, ready to break the mold?  This is why we do what we do.

Discover Praxis if you think you have what it takes.

15 Minutes a Day is Better than Two Hours a Week

I took several Spanish classes in my teens.  I hated them all and didn’t do that well with anything besides the pronunciation.

I also took half a dozen trips to Spanish speaking countries in my teens.  I did incredibly well making basic conversation in Spanish.

I got to thinking about this while listening to an episode of Praxis participant Ryan Ferguson’s The World Wanderers Podcast.  Language is one of those things that is really dumb to try to learn in a classroom.  The incentives are all wrong.  When you really want something – to get to know a person, or to find a bathroom – you’ll engage your cognitive capacity at a high level.  Learning to navigate another country is a great way to grapple with the language and gain some proficiency.  When your only incentive is a test, how will you rewire your brain to say “The apple is green” in another language?  More important than how is why?  Why would you want to say that anyway?

Here’s the thing.  It’s not always easy to get to another country and learn a language by necessity.  You can try other hacks, like pick a day of the week where everyone in your house is only allowed to speak Spanish, but this can be pretty tough too.  So if classroom learning is subpar and you can’t immerse yourself, what can you do?

I downloaded the free Duolingo app on my iPhone.  I love it!  Yes, it’s basically glorified flash cards, but it’s very fun, quick, has cute animations, easy progress tracking, and lets you practice pronunciation (my favorite part) using the phone’s mic.  I also love it because it works well with a breakthrough discovery I’ve made about other aspects of my personal growth in the last few years: tiny daily challenges work better than big goals.

I blog every day because there’s no excuse to not push out at least something.  I do one form of exercise every day because there’s no excuse to not do at least a few push ups.

Since my family is embarking on an Ecuadorian adventure early in 2016, I decided I wanted to brush up on my Spanish.  I added an activity to my daily tasks spreadsheet that just says, “Spanish”.  I do 10-15 minutes a day on Duolingo.  Some days I do a lot more, some days I barely hit it.  I’ve done it every day but two in the last 60 days.

For me, this pattern is vastly superior to taking a one hour class twice a week.  By getting Spanish bouncing around in my brain every day I find weird things happening.  I’m beginning to have a few random thoughts in Spanish.  Just a word or phrase, sometimes apropos of nothing, but it means my brain is being primed.  It’s like listening to a song every day.  Pretty soon it just comes out all the time.  My ears are being trained to hear things and my tongue to form new words associated with old concepts.

Of course, upon arrival in Ecuador I will realize how little Duolingo prepared me for fast-paced real world conversation, but I can’t realistically do anything about that.  The daily Spanish is fun, totally doable in my schedule, and it’s making some kind of progress.  The power of the compounding effect comes in to play.  If I improve my Spanish by only a fraction of a percent every day, it begins to get serious before long.

In case you’re wondering, Duolingo tells me I’m currently 10% fluent.  On the one hand, that’s probably a huge exaggeration.  I’d fail any Spanish test.  On the other hand, that’s probably a huge understatement.  I know from experience that once I get into a place where I need it, I’ll get where and what I want more like 2/3 of the time.

What other things might you learn better by doing a little every day instead of setting some big huge goal or taking some formal class?

Sometimes You Have to Create a Chip on Your Own Shoulder

NBA great Stephen Curry has a chip on his shoulder.  It’s clear when you watch him play.  Even as he’s gotten better, it’s grown bigger.  This is what great performers do.  They play with a chip.

Steph is a great example of how the factual truth of a situation by itself does not dictate what kind of orientation we have toward it.  There are two stories about Steph Curry, both true.

In one story he was born with great genes to an NBA star dad and volleyball playing mom.  He grew up with plenty of money and access to basketball training facilities, coaches, mentors, and opportunities galore.  He honed his skills, went to a good school, played well, got drafted for good money, and continued excel with a great team and organization around him.

By this account, which is factually correct, he is one of the most fortunate people on earth.  How could this gifted athlete have a chip on his shoulder?

In another story Steph grew up with more pressure than most people could imagine.  His star athlete parents had done more than most kids could ever hope to in sports.  He lived under their shadow.  He didn’t grow as tall as he should have for basketball, and was too skinny.  Despite practicing the sport almost from birth, not a single major college was interested in him.  He ended up at a tiny liberal arts school.  He played well, but he was not fortunate enough to be on a team with any hope of a national title.  Despite his amazing shooting ability and NCAA tournament performance, Steph was questioned as an NBA talent.  He was seen as too small, and mostly just a shooter without a full range of skills.  He entered the league with virtually no hype compared to most future MVP’s.  He had to scratch and claw through a historically great Western Conference for the first several years of his career before making it to the finals.  When there, even though the team he led won, he did not get finals MVP.

By this account, which is factually correct, he is one of the biggest underdog greats in sports history.  How could this constantly overlooked late-bloomer not have a chip on his shoulder?

Steph can choose which set of facts to focus on and which narrative to tell himself.  Off the court, Steph is likely aware of the great life he’s had and thankful for it.  Remembering the best facts about ourselves is a powerful defense against self-pity.  Yet it seems pretty clear that, come game day, he’s thinking about the second story.  He’s not just happy to be there.  He’s got something to prove.

At Praxis we like to tell the participants at the start of the program these two bits of professional advice:

  1. Don’t take anything personally
  2. Take everything personally

The first is a reminder to think in terms of rational choice theory.  Deciding someone is wrong or out to get you is unhelpful for determining how to work around them.

The second is a reminder to stay sharp because no one cares about your success.  In fact, if you’re doing your own thing, they probably doubt you.  Good.  Use that.  Not with malice toward them in real life, but as fuel for the narrative you weave of your own hero’s journey.

See, we can all be like Steph Curry after all!  Now go watch some amazing highlight videos.

Who’s Calling the Shots, Your Future or Your Past?

I heard an interesting talk from Dan Sullivan on why 10x growth (in business, life, whatever you choose) is actually easier than 2x growth…if you get your mindset right.

He described 2x thinking as fundamentally controlled by the past.  You look back at what it took to get where you are and you attempt to do more and better of the same activities, approaches, and processes.

10x thinking is controlled by the future.  Since the future hasn’t yet happened, you first have to imagine the future you want.  Once your idea of that future is firmly in place you work backward from it.  You deconstruct what it takes to get there.  You let this vision of the future determine what you do in the present.  The past may occasionally provide lessons, but it’s mostly a distraction.  What does the future demand?  If you are to grow 10x, what would have to happen to get there?

It’s amazing how much this little insight helps.  So many things we do unthinkingly just because we did them in the past.  We assume they are necessary because they were before.  When you ask only what the future wants, instead of replicating what the past was, your entire mindset shifts and you begin to focus only on the truly key activities and those that are scalable.

Are you a slave to the past or are you letting your vision of the future lead?

It’s That Time of Year When the Emails Start to Swell

I’ve gotten so many emails from bored, unhappy college students in the last few weeks I decided to write a post addressed directly to them and others like them.

You can check it out over at the Praxis blog.  Here’s an excerpt:

You haven’t done much more than read textbooks and sit through lectures.  You haven’t been around many entrepreneurs, innovators, or creators.  You begin to suspect that your grades aren’t a reflection of your value-creating potential in the market.  You begin to wonder why they matter at all.  Same goes for your second major…and your first.  You ask yourself what your plan was coming here in the first place and realize you didn’t really have one.  It just sort of seemed like the next stage on the conveyor belt moving you along to an undefined “normal” life.

Here’s the good news.  You can get off the conveyor belt.

Read the full post here.

If you want to explore whether you might be a good fit for Praxis, shoot us an email.

Coffee Is Killing Your Productivity

“Let’s grab coffee and chat.”

Those five words are far more dangerous than you may realize.  When you begin to create, start a business, write a blog, or generally do interesting stuff a funny thing happens.  Lots of people want to have coffee with you.  Most of the time it’s a bad idea.

Face to face meetings can be valuable.  There’s an energy that you don’t get any other way.  But the cost is very high, and it’s extremely rare to gain that energy with a stranger.  Unless you know from interactions over email, social media, or phone that you and this person have mutual interests and will both be spurred to beneficial action by a coffee meeting, avoid it.

It’s not that coffee isn’t fun.  That’s the problem.  It is fun.  Waxing about how much you love innovation or art is a blast.  But that’s not scarce.  There are more opportunities to talk about cool things than ever before.  What’s scarce is conversation that leads directly to productivity.

There are professional coffee drinkers.  People who spend all day asking others to coffee to talk.  They keep talking, meeting, discussing, exploring, plotting, networking, devising, gaining input, seeking inspiration, building consensus, creating boards and backers and teams for non-existent organizations or efforts.  These people will consume you.

(One of my theories is that they are actually robots placed by an alien race that feels threatened by creative action on the part of humans.  They sent a host of coffee-sipping droids disguised as cool people who love your idea as a way to slow you down.  They are fueled by caffeine and lack of follow through.  Just a theory.)

It’s easy to emulate this behavior.  You get a quick high from talking about big ideas with cool people over hot drinks.  Hammering out the next steps and taking them is no fun.  The coffee grinds taste better than the work grind. (See what I did there?).  It’s easy to seek the next quick inspiring hit via another quick coffee or phone meeting.  Then again.  And again.

Working for a non-profit increases susceptibility.  Absent profit and loss it can be hard to measure success.  As a result, many non-profiters report activities as a proxy for outcomes.  If you’re a program manager and you report that you had an amazing meeting with a really cool person who runs similar program X, your superiors are likely to think, “This gal is really going out there and doing a lot of stuff!”.  (In fact, non-profits are so predictably prone to the meeting-as-work conflation that I can tell without looking when someone works for one.  They send meeting requests not for a 15 or 20-minute phone call, but a full hour with an open-ended, “Can I pick your brain?”)

None of us are above it.  It’s flattering to be asked to coffee by someone who thinks your stuff is great.  But it almost always eats away a huge chunk of your time and energy with very little in the way of a tangible outcome.  You can feel like you’re doing something because your calendar is booked with coffee and conversation and you don’t have time for stuff.  But busyness is not business.

Don’t let flattery or a quick high or the open-ended hope that some synergy just might magically appear let you fall into the perpetual coffee meeting malaise.

And be on the lookout for the people who ask you for coffee the first time they meet you.  They might be evil alien robots trying to stop your progress.

The Rest is Never History

You’ve heard a lot of stories that ended with, “And the rest is history.”  It’s not true.

The phrase conveys a sense of well-known, easy to plot steps from where the story left off to where things currently stand.  It’s the part that comes after the crazy, obstacle-filled origin story.  It’s the easy part.

In reality, “the rest” is harder than the beginning.

What about the heartwarming story of the guy who somehow made it through flat tires and lost keys and pouring rain to accidentally end up on the wrong blind date that turned out to be his soul mate?  After the drama of the first encounter it’s easy to treat the rest as history.  They went on more dates, got engaged, and got married.  But anyone who’s gone from first meeting to marriage knows that process is much harder to work through than first date nerves.

What about the aspiring actress who packs up all her things and heads to Hollywood, works as a waitress, auditions every chance she can to no avail, and then unknowingly impresses a big name agent she served at the restaurant?  Sure, the agent gets her her first part, but I assure you the rest is not history.  Countless people get their first part.  It’s not at all obvious or inevitable to them that it will produce a second, third, or Oscar winning fourth part.

The danger of believing the rest is history is that we’ll pin too much on that one big break or chance encounter.  There certainly are defining moments in our lives, but that’s because of the way in which we remember them and the easy identifiers that accompany.  The real story of success begins much earlier, with the choices that define who we are and what we bring to and can do with that big moment, and continues much later, with the way we use the power of the moment and parlay it into sustained results.

That couple had fights, and jealousy, and misunderstanding, and pain, and money problems, and disproving friends and family, and religious differences, and cultural divides, and different taste in food and Netflix shows to overcome.  Love at first sight is the easy part.  Living together and agreeing to the terms of a long term relationship is hard.  The part called history is what produces the outcome.

That actress had roles she hated, and typecasting, and dry spells, and pressure from family, and haters, and creepers, and unreturned phone calls, and money problems, and bad reviews, and stalled shows, and a new agent, and Twitter arguments, and TMZ to overcome.  Getting the agent and the first role is the easy part.  Handling fame, fighting to define a brand, and getting the next job before the current one is through is hard.  The part called history is the battle for continued growth.

“The rest is history” really means the rest is a longer, slower, less interesting slog through every mundane challenge and self-destructive mindset imaginable.  It means the rest of the story is something that can’t fit in a 2o-minute interview and doesn’t make for inspirational story time.  It means the rest is what transformed the subject from the person present at that fateful moment to the person standing before you.

There’s nothing automatic about history.

When we’re tempted to feel bad for ourselves because we haven’t had the big break, or think only in terms of achieving it, it’s good to remember that the break is the beginning, not the end, of the really hard part.  The challenges that follow the break are tougher and lonelier, in part because everyone else believes the rest is history.

Dig into any success story and look for the real process called “the rest”.  That’s where greatness is found.

Laziness is not About Lack of Labor

Laziness leads to boredom, and boredom is the greatest crime against oneself.

Laziness is not about physical labor.  You can be bored to tears doing manual labor all day long and you can be engaged and fulfilled while lounging in a hammock.

It’s hard work to live an unboring life, but it’s the work of the mind and heart.  It takes relentless self-discovery.  You can’t stay interested on a diet of quick hits of easy excitement.  You need to unearth the self at the core of your being and live in accordance with what you find.  You have to relentlessly purge the things that deaden your soul, bore you, and make you unhappy.

It’s far easier to just go along.  It’s easier to do things that appear to be work but require little mental focus, discovery, or honesty.

But it’s not worth the cheap sense of leisure.  Living an interesting life requires the deliberate act of being interested in everything within and around you and exploring it.

Boredom is death.  Laziness is terminal illness.

Experience Beats Bullet-Points (and Three Opportunities to Gain It)

“I’ll go get an advanced degree because it might open up the possibility of working in X industry that I might end up enjoying.”

I understood the sentiment, but I had to laugh.  I asked my friend why he couldn’t save himself two years and untold thousands and instead go ask a business in X industry if he could come in and work at intern wages for a period of months while he studied his butt off on the side to gain the necessary knowledge?  This approach has so many advantages it’s not even funny.  In less than a year he would know for sure whether he even wanted to work there.  He’d accumulate no debt.  He’d only learn the things relevant to success in that business.  He’d already have an in if he was good and ended up liking it.

Ask any entrepreneur or business owner or customer or client.  They’ll agree, “Show me, don’t tell me!”  But we’re all obsessed with things that tell people about our abilities and attributes.  We’re stuck on getting a list of reasons someone should give us a job.  It’s the same mindset that was beaten into us in an education system based on getting permission for everything, even using the bathroom.

“You can’t do that unless you have the proper qualifications!”

I call it the bullet-point mindest.

It’s the idea that the most valuable thing you can attain for your life and career is a bullet-point list of external accolades, certifications, and validations from others.  It’s the resume, the degree, the honor roll, and on and on.  It’s also mostly bullshit.

External validation is only valuable when something more tangible is lacking.  The person with little in the way of confidence, evidence of value creation, network, or experience will gain the most from formal accolades.  The person who’s done a lot, seen a lot, built many relationships, and created a lot of value will have something that far exceeds the value of a static list of traits on a resume.

Rubber meets the road and a huge set of opportunities

It will come as no surprise that this is exactly why we created Praxis.  We want to help top young people get started right now instead of waiting until they’ve accumulated a list of officially verified accomplishments.

It’s amazing how hungry startups and growing businesses are for the kind of talent willing to take action and build their dreams instead of making lists and planning for them under institutional authorization.

Here are three of the opportunities we have right now to work for a year with entrepreneurs in the real world and discover what makes you come alive, gain confidence, experience, skills, knowledge, and a network.  No gold stars or grades can touch the value of this kind of lived experience.

Opportunity 1: Work with an entrepreneur building a company that empowers entrepreneurs across the country.

Ceterus is awesome.  They’re growing.  They need someone with drive, communication skills, sales interest, and an ability to navigate a wide variety of diverse tasks and activities every day.  It’s in lovely Charleston, SC.

Opportunity 2: Develop an international brand with a chef entrepreneur.

Smart people know to make it you have to see yourself as your own brand.  This chef was not content to produce culinary creations in the confines of a restaurant.  She’s built a business that inspired and educates others on the fine art of quality cooking.  She needs someone to help build and manage her brand online and in person.  It’s in awesome Austin, TX and includes international travel to Latin America.

Opportunity 3: Learn marketing from a growing consumer tech company.

ADS Security is at that perfect stage.  Large enough to offer high-quality business experience and small enough to have an actively engaged CEO that you’ll get a chance to meet and shadow.  They need sharp young people with marketing interest and writing and social media savvy.  If you want to know how marketing departments function and add value to one right now, this is for you.  It’s in stylish Nashville, TN.

Not just anyone…

These companies came to Praxis for a reason.  They don’t just want clock-in, clock-out run of the mill credential chasers.  They want eager, entrepreneurial young mold-breakers.

If that’s you, apply now.  If it’s someone you know, tell them about it.  They’ll thank you.

Apply to Praxis now for these opportunities.

When Chasing Your Dream Ends Up Sucking

Join the other supporters of the KickStarter campaign to launch and publish the book!

One of the most interesting chapters in “Why Haven’t You Read This Book?” is by Courtney Derr about her adventure with her husband traveling the globe, primarily by motorcycle.

Courtney and H.J. had an itch they’d wanted to scratch for many years, but both were stuck in the 9-5 grind with jobs too good to give up.  The timing was never right.  Instead of waiting and hoping and delaying, or demanding a perfect list of justifications to go chase their traveling dream, they said, “Why not just do it now?”

So they did.

They saved up their money, quit their jobs, and set out to explore parts unknown.  Courtney’s a great writer and there’s no way to do justice to the narrative she shares in the chapter.  The ups, downs, twists, and turns are entertaining and inspiring.  But the thing that most sticks out about the chapter is this:  They didn’t enjoy probably the majority of their trip.

They ended it sooner than planned and had plenty of bad weather, motorcycle and emotional breakdowns, and all the other downsides experienced by anyone on a long road trip multiplied many times.  Rudeness, safety concerns, language barriers, food sickness, and many more travails.

This chapter was a really important one to include in the book because this is not a book about rose colored glasses and berainbowed cat poster motivation.  It’s about taking charge of your life.  One of the things that happens when you choose to “do you” instead of succumb to status quo pressure is that you reap the rewards.  One of the other things that happens is that you own the downsides too.

Despite the less than glamorous aspects of the story, Courtney and her husband do not regret their decision.  Part of self-exploration is realizing that you’re different than you assumed.  Your tastes, preferences, pain and risk tolerance may not be fully found out.  The thing is, you can’t really know yourself by reflection alone.  You’ve got to act on your desires, dreams, and hunches.

Had they not journeyed out into the wild they would have enjoyed life less back home.  They would always have a fallback to play the blame game and claim their struggles or unhappiness were because they were never able to travel like they wanted.  They would always wonder if they were missing something big.

Now they have a bunch of memories, some great, and some tough (though the tough ones begin to turn great over time too), and the clear knowledge of what the traveling experience is like and to what extent it can and cannot give them the life they desire.

You can’t trade that.

Check out the chapter, “Why Haven’t You Traveled the World” by supporting the campaign and claiming your copy of the book.

You won’t know until you try!

You can also learn more at their great website, www.wanderrlust.com

How to Discover What You Really Want to Do?…Don’t!

Here’s an answer I gave to a question on Quora about finding out what you want to do in life.

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I find this question to be too stressful and unrealistic for most people to answer.  What you really want to do with your life is a lot of things, many of which probably haven’t been invented yet.  How can you pick one and plot a path to it?

Instead, do the opposite.  Think of things you know you hate doing or things that bore you or make you feel dead inside.  Don’t do those.  Try new things and add to that list whenever you find something not for you.  Make it your goal every day, week, month, and year to reduce the number of things you do that you don’t like doing.

Don’t think about careers, majors, titles, industries, and jobs.  Think about activities.  Stuff you do every day.  What do you not want to do?  How can you create a life where you never have to?

What you want is to not be bored in life.  So find out what things you can quit, and find a way to quit doing them.  Everything else is fair game.

That’s always worked well for me anyway.  Certainly better than trying to find out what I want to do.

‘Will a Good School Accept Me?’

I answered a question on Quora (well, I guess I didn’t really answer the question, but spoke to the ideas behind it) about getting into a top university without straight A’s.  You can read the question here.

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First and foremost, don’t stress.  This won’t make or break your life.

I don’t know what those institutions require for admission but I have another idea: don’t spend your time trying to get approval and acceptance from academic institutions but instead go create value for yourself and the world.

Our world is awash in official accolades and credentials and padded resumes.  You’ll realize when you get into the world outside the education bubble none of that matters much for value creation and personal fulfillment.

Identify what you want in life, identify the obstacles to getting it, and create challenges and habits to help you overcome those obstacles.  All of this can be done without the official sanction of formal institutions.

If what you want is to be a professor or to work within academia, then of course that’s the way to go.  Or if you simply wish to enjoy college as a very costly consumption good, go for it.  But the notion that you must jump through the right hoops to earn the approval of X or Y university is backwards.  You want skills and experiences and knowledge and a network.  You’re the customer.  See if you can think of the best, most effective, quickest, least expensive, and most enjoyable way to get them.  The question isn’t whether those universities will take you, the question is whether you’ll deem them worthy of your time and money.

Whatever path you take, good luck!

How to Ensure Your Professional Mistakes Are Always Forgiven

You’re going to tell me I shouldn’t advocate making mistakes in the first place.  Don’t be silly.  I’m not advocating mistakes.

The reality of life is that you’ll make mistakes and deliver sub-excellent results sometimes.  In fact, the more you push yourself and venture into new territory (good), the more common imperfection will be (not good).  Beyond the obvious, “Just try harder to be perfect”, there’s something you can do that will give you the leeway you need to get away with imperfection and recover quickly.

Here’s the thing.  You’re not gonna like it.  Especially those of you who are perfectionists and understand the tremendous value of high-quality work.

But remember, this is not a way to reduce mistakes and come closer to flawless.  This is just a way to earn the respect, trust, and grace that will keep your mistakes from killing your professional relationships.  This is a way to earn a second or third chance.

Ready?

Never be late for anything ever and respond to all emails within 24 hours.

Some of you are mad, some of you are laughing, and some of you are nodding your head and patting yourself on the back as you gaze at your inbox tab that says (0).

Let me defend my claim.

Imagine you’re new at a job.  Think of the hardest, scariest, riskiest part of your role.  The part you are most likely to screw up a little bit.  The part that makes you worry you could lose trust and maybe your job if you don’t learn to master pretty quickly.

There’s a whole lot that goes into what your coworkers or customers feel about you and how much grace they’ll have for you as you learn through trial and error.  It’s not just a matter of whether you do that thing well.  It’s not about what you do right now as much as what they believe you are capable of doing in time and what kind of person they think you are.

To earn maximum room for error and correction you’ve got to have a pretty decent deposit of ‘social capital‘ in your account.  You’ll need to draw down without going into the red.

The easiest way to do this – a way that not a single person is incapable of – is to completely crush it on the simplest parts of your job.  Consider that again for a minute.

Earn the freedom to make mistakes in the hardest parts of your job by being perfect in the easiest parts.

What are the easiest parts?  Always being on time and responding to all emails within 24 hours.  It requires no special knowledge, skill, or experience.

If you’ve been somewhere for a month and everyone has come to rely on your punctuality and lightening fast response time, they’ll feel a glow just thinking of you (Somewhere there’s a crooner inside me, struggling to escape).  They’ll never have to dedicate mental space worrying about you, and they’ll have a default belief in your ability to handle things.

When you respond to 10 emails perfectly on time every time and meet your deadlines, people will want you to win.  When one of those 10 responses has a mistake, they’ll cut you a break and give you a chance to improve for next time.

Contrast this to the perfectionist who is sometimes late (‘I was putting on the finishing touches!’), even if just a few minutes, and makes people wait around to get a meeting started or causes mental stress because no one is positive when they’ll reply to an important email.  When they come back with a mistake the already thin ice gets thinner.  Tension mounts, the pressure to be perfect increases.  If you’re at all unreliable with the small, easy things, you’d better be damn-near perfect quality with the big, hard things.

Don’t put yourself under that much pressure.  Give yourself some wiggle room so you can learn by making and fixing errors.

Never be late.  Always respond within 24 hours.  You’ll be glad you did next time you make a mistake and someone says, “No problem, let’s improve for next time.”