Many of us have learned to maximize our outputs. We pride ourselves on how much we can produce, how many projects we have, and how productive we are. What some of us don’t acknowledge until we are forced to do so is how important inputs are. If we don’t refresh our energy, ideas, and inspiration with outside inputs, eventually we will lose our effectiveness, at the minimum. Or worse, we lose our health (speaking from experience here).
Inputs provide creative ideas, inspiration to take our work further or expand our scope, and emotional satisfaction, and may give us a bigger future to work towards.
3 ways to give ourselves more inputs?
Expose yourself to different experiences. Only listen to rock and roll? Try bluegrass, classical, or African shamanic. Read fiction from other countries. Join a hiking or kayaking club. Think of things you haven’t tried, but might be curious about.
Deliberately look for and read industry publications from one different than yours. See if a method they use in that industry might offer some ideas for yours.
Follow The Artist’s Way author, Julia Cameron’s recommendation, and take yourself on an ‘Artist’s Date’ once a week. The rules are simple. You have to go or be by yourself, and it must take at least one hour. Examples might be as diverse as whale-watching, visiting a museum or bookstore, or listening to a different music genre.
By consciously ensuring you have plenty of inputs into your life, you will likely be more productive than before. You will be more creative, more inspired, and certainly more prolific.
If you don’t have two seconds to rub together, and your brain is freaking out at the length of your ‘to-do’ list, that’s the time to ‘take five’. Taking five focused minutes will reset your brain, regulate your body, and give you new energy.
Here’s what you can do in 5 minutes:
Quickly list your top three priorities for the day. Now, list the top three actions for each priority.
Take a walk around the block or down the hall. If possible, outside is best. Pause and stretch at the beginning and end of your walk.
Plan the rest of your day, week, month, or year – obviously the more detailed plans will be those closest to now.
Go get a glass of water. Drink it slowly. Most of us don’t get enough water, and we are often dehydrated.
Feeling stressed? Muscles tight? Set the timer for 5 minutes. Focus on a nearby object (or close your eyes if you can comfortably do so), and begin taking deep, slow breaths. You will likely feel your body relax and your mind quiet down.
It may seem counterintuitive to take time if you feel like you have no time, but it works. Taking 5 minutes as needed during the day will ease your stress, sharpen your focus, and make you more productive. It is a healthier way to move through your day, which may also help you live longer.
There are many benefits and no drawbacks to this method. It’s free, and anyone can do it. That’s the “Take Five” Payoff.
Creativity inevitably leads to change, and that takes courage. As business owners, creators, and individuals, we will be more effective if we recognize the natural fear, hesitation, and risk we face in order to create.
Rollo May summed this up in his book, The Courage to Create, when he wrote: “Creativity requires courage. The creative process is not a path paved with pure joy, but one filled with suffering, obstacles, anxiety, and frustration. Without the courage to proceed in our creations even when overcome by these unpleasant states, we will remain impotent in our ability to create anything of value.”
May touched on another aspect of creativity in the last part of the above quote. And, that is chaos, which is often the catalyst for creativity. It isn’t only the act of creating a new kind of order by reinventing or re-purposing what is outside of ourselves. There is also inner chaos.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “You must have chaos within yourself if you are to give birth to a dancing star.” Even his terminology was creative.
Not only does creativity require chaos, it requires destruction. Pablo Picasso said, “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” Now, to be clear, this destruction is most often metaphorical rather than actual destruction. If chaos is not thrust on you by outside sources, consider designing your own state of chaos.
How do you do this? By questioning your beliefs, shaking up your worldview, and throwing yourself into a challenging environment. Step out of your comfort zone, do things you wouldn’t normally do. Remember, this destruction can be of old ways of thinking or habits, policies, procedures, or structures.
Be courageous, allow for chaos and destruction and you will form something new and valuable. You will be creative.
It is an illusion that we are in control of our lives. Once we embrace that fact and recognize the constraints of reality, we are immediately more empowered. We can do what is in our power to do. We can manage what we are given.
The first step is to understand our personal paradigm, our way of looking at things. We ask ourselves, “What is my perspective on life? How do we do that? By looking around us and seeing the results in our life. Do we have a lucky life or one that is filled with bad breaks? Are our days generally good or bad? We can see what our paradigm is by looking at the results.
We cannot resist reality. Anyone who has suffered an debilitating injury or disease, PTSD, or grief understands that these things will overcome our puny efforts at control.
All we can do is manage what we are given.
How do we manage reality?
We learn to manage by paying attention to our surroundings, our body clues, and our emotions. We ask questions about where we can make decisions and choices that will impact reality. We accept that we can shift our paradigm at any time by choosing how we respond.
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who was imprisoned by the Nazis and lost his family to the camps, has been credited with the saying,
“Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
In other words our power over reality only exists in our response. How do we prime ourselves for the most effective response to obtain our preferred results?
We learn. We listen to ourselves. We pay attention to how we feel; we pay attention to what is showing up for us in our contemplation, our journaling, our internal urges and ideas. This is not outer-directed, but inner-directed work. We peel back layers to get to the heart of who we are at the center. It takes perseverance, endurance, and patience.
Allocating Energy
We each have a finite amount of energy. How will we spend that energy? Will we fight to preserve the illusion that we are in control and wail when life proves otherwise — as it will? Or will we accept that while we are not ‘in control’, we still have the power to make choices and decisions?
It helps to ask ourselves what our priorities are? How do we want to use our energy? This is a very personal decision.
Dealing with FEAR
Our circumstances may seem insurmountable and our initial instinct is to be afraid. This is normal. Some will blithely say that FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real. I take issue with that. I think those who say that often come from a place of privilege without realizing it. I prefer my own explanation which grew out of some desperately real experiences. I reframed it for myself as FEAR = Face the Evidence And Respond. I found it much more empowering. It was only later that I realized how nicely it matched Frankl’s observation.
Conclusion
Controlling life is an illusion.Choosing to deal with life ‘as it is’ frees up our energy for creative work. We manage our lives by ‘playing the cards we’re dealt’. We manage by being thoughtful about our response to outside stimuli. By embracing what we do have power over – our choice of response – we are able to more fully engage with the life we have and the people we love.
The other day, I misread the phrase, “falling short” as “failing short“. At first, I laughed, and then I began to think about what it might mean to ‘fail short‘.
To fall short is to fail to meet the expected standards, whether yours or another’s. To fail is to 1)be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal or 2)neglect to do something. I’m going to use the second definition for this illustration.
When we fall short, we have tried and failed to meet the target. We can assume we have given it our best effort.
What is Failing Short?
Failing short is when we neglect to do the things that we know would help us move forward. Or, we do the same thing we’ve done before and hope to have a different result. Failing short carries the weight of not doing what we said we would, of not living up to our intentions.
We fail short when we:
Procrastinate and put off the actions that would move us toward our goal.
Neglect to do what we know we should, such as sign a contract promptly, make an important phone call or answer a critical email.
Ignore critical measures such as income and revenue by playing out of sight, out of mind.
Repeat the same actions the same way we have before, even though we failed.
Falling short may be completely due to circumstances beyond our control. Failing short is completely within our power. The good news is that since we have control over our actions, we can choose to never ‘fail short’ again.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” – Robert Heinlein
As a teenager, I stumbled across the above quote by Robert Heinlein. Born into a family that taught me I would never be “enough’, I pledged to myself that I would become my own version of the quote. After all, as the oldest of 9 children, I could already change a diaper, cook a tasty meal (for 11), balance accounts, solve equations, pitch manure (we grew up on a farm), analyze a new problem, give and take orders, and fight efficiently. Consequently, I have lived my life with a hungry mind acquiring skills wherever I could. Today, I am proud to declare myself a generalist.
From Regret to Celebration
It wasn’t always this way. Though my diverse skills have served me well as a serial entrepreneur, until recently, I continued to feel as if I should have specialized. However, being a generalist definitely has its perks. It is easier for a generalist to integrate information, practices, and ideas across fields. David Epstein, author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, writes, “Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly.”
Being a Generalist in Business:
allows you to have a basic knowledge of the different parts of your business – including bookkeeping, sales, marketing, administrative work, hiring and firing, managing people and more depending on the kind of business you have. You will likely have the basic skills you need.
means that you can ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas from one industry or field to yours. Generalists are easily bored after mastering the present learning curve. They seek new areas to explore. The end result is a wide array of experience and knowledge of different fields.
allows you to have the knowledge to know if the ‘expert’ you hired is doing what you hired him or her to do. It can prevent you from becoming ripped off by a specialist contractor.
means you are more likely to be a better problem solver. As a generalist, with cross domain experience, you may be an analogical thinker which makes you see more creative solutions. An analogical thinker is one who draws analogies by recognizing the similarity in multiple domains or scenarios that may have little in common on the surface. Quoting Epstein again, “It is a powerful tool for solving wicked problems.”
Conclusion
Generalists have several advantages over specialists. A generalist business owner will have a wider perspective and a more holistic view of the business. Having basic skills, knowledge, and experience makes starting a business easier. Cross-pollination of ideas and analogical thinking is likely to lead to more impactful problem solving. And, if you need to, you can always hire a specialist!
Welcome to my new space and what is intended to be my flagship site.
I’ve finally made the jump to independent digital publishing. I did this with the help of several folks who kept encouraging me to stop hiding and go ahead and create something.
This website and blog are the culmination of years of dreaming and ‘getting ready to get ready’. However, none of that time was wasted. As Mary Oliver once said in an interview, “Things take the time they take. How many roads did Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?”
I have no pretensions of being a saint, but I’ll acknowledge that there was some necessary personal learning and growing before I was ready to put all of myself out into the world. As with many of you, my life was divided into parts. I’m bringing them together in this space as I learn, explore, and share “the Spirit of Business and the Business of life”. My goal is to share my hard-won wisdom as well as lessons I’m learning as I learn them. I promise you to wholeheartedly bring my passion, experience, ideas, and thoughts to you. I hope you find education, inspiration, and motivation here.