You have got to give yourself the chance to be surprised.
Not because you are unprepared. Not because you had not thought about something enough. Not because someone is trying to get ahead of you. Not because you have lost the bigger picture.
Just because people are surprising, and you got to give them credit for it as well as allow yourself to feel positively about it, without feeling in any way diminished.
In order to set your mind to giving, you have to rid yourself of the expectation to get something in return.
Of course, mixed motives will play a role. But it’s eternally unsatisfying to keep a ledger of what goes and what comes.
Give freely and you will be ready to welcome any reward.
We can’t keep assessing productivity in terms of quantity.
The amount of emails we reply to.
The number of meetings we have scheduled.
How many conversations we are in.
How late we are leaving from work.
The quantity of leads, presentations, or projects we deliver.
Productivity needs to be a function of a goal we set and of the actions we take towards that goal.
If within a measure of work (an hour, a day, a week) we complete something that takes us closer to the goal, that’s where we find meaning.
The rest is just a poor proxy. Just faked busyness.
There is one important metric that should be considered in any report.
It’s the cost of what you have achieved.
Not only monetary cost – though that is always a fantastic way to start, that would immediately set you apart from the vast majority of people – but also the cost in terms of energy, in terms of time spent, in terms of forgone opportunities.
Adding the cost to your reports can very much give you a clearer picture of how effective your work is.
It’s surprising how many teams are not aware of how much their achievements cost.
It’s so easy to feel attacked when somebody gives you critical feedback or even just points at some mistake you made. It’s even easier when you are tired, when you are going through a rough patch, when you have had bad experiences in your past, or when you are generally not used to get feedback.
If you can just hold your thoughts for a little longer, though, you can see that’s not the feedback that’s hurting. It’s the tiredness, the fear, the stress, the insecureness.
Say it.
“I’m tired”.
“I’m under a lot of stress and I needed an easy win”.
“I’m sorry, I will fix that, it’s just something I don’t feel particularly confident with”.
That little labelling exercise will completely shift the narrative. From defensive you become open. And when you are open, anything can happen.
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