Reconsider the system

If you miss your targets once, it’s good to try with more time, more resources, more of whatever you think was missing, without touching the system.

If you miss your targets consistently, then more is just going to be an excuse to delay something inevitable. You have to reconsider the system.

Hang up

Don’t get hang up on the tool, on the setting, on the company, on the system. Those are all important things to define at some point, but if you realise that’s what is keeping you from doing, don’t get hang up on them.

In the early stages, the most important thing is doing.

When emotions are involved

When a person comes to you with a problem, pointing at the fact that they are the reason behind the problem is not going to set them at ease or help them get past it.

When a customer comes to you with a problem, telling them that their behaviour is why the problem exist is not going to set them at ease or help them get past it.

Reality and facts are really of little help when emotions are involved.

The superior companion

If you fall in love with an outcome, you will never notice that the world around you is moving, that the context is ever changing, and that the outcome, in the end, does not provide that sense of reward you had anticipated.

If instead you fall in love with the journey, you are in the present, here and now. You see the changes, you notice the details, you are awake and ready, you have a place to fall back to when the unexpected becomes reality.

The journey is just a superior companion.

Surprising

There are so many variables in any open position, in any grant available, in any reward you might be pursuing, that it is actually more surprising when you succeed than when you fail.

And by the way, neither success nor failure is a reliable measure of your worth.

The sooner you get used to it, the more you can focus on building your own measure.