Tag: writing

It does not matter

FabrizioLeave a comment

There are always countless reasons to drop a practice.

A bad day. The shouting with your partner the night before. Laziness. Your boss just drops trivial tasks on your desk. Friends never call. That asshole just cut me off. Nobody is ever interested in what I do. It is always raining and the weather is crap. After all, why should it matter?

And so on.

I have dropped more practices than I care to admit myself. Until I realised, few years ago, that practices are not about perfection, good weather, healthy relationships, and praises from strangers.

Practices are about habit.

Practices are about commitment.

Practices are about doing.

And if you do long enough, you still get all of the above (and some more) and it does not matter.

The right time

FabrizioLeave a comment

How often do you feel confident showing your work?

Probably almost never. Showing your work is difficult. It means opening up to the judgement of others, accepting you might have done something others will not pick, transitioning control from you to the rest of the world. And so, you keep your work hidden. You continue adding to it, refining it, editing it, perfecting it. The right time, of course, will never come.

As many other things, showing your work is a muscle. It can get trained. Do it once, do it twice, do it ten times, and eventually it will become natural.

Start today.

P.S.: A great question to ask when you are this kind of stuck (or any kind of stuck) is always: “what is the worst thing that could happen?“. The point being: the absolute worst thing is probably very unlikely to happen, while the worst thing that is likely to happen is often something you can easily live through. As a matter of fact, you probably have already in the past. Keep yourself anchored.

Winning machine

FabrizioLeave a comment

When you have a new idea, it is quite difficult to avoid having all your following thoughts gravitate around it.

If a new slogan comes to you in the middle of the night, all the successive iterations will just be slight variations.

If you think at a solution for a problem you have had for a while, you will expand and stretch the solution until it gets good enough to actually cover at least a small part of the problem.

If the process you have just implemented has proven successful, you will use it until it is too late to understand it is no longer up-to-date.

A possible way around this could be to ask different people to come up with a new idea. Or to foster an environment in which it is normal that different people come up with a variety of new ideas. If you match with a process that clearly defines what gets picked, what gets postponed and what gets rejected, you have a winning machine.

Difficult times

FabrizioLeave a comment

Sometimes it feels like banging your head against a wall. And sometimes it feels like that for most of the things that make up our days.

In these times, the importance of a practice cannot be overestimated. Getting back to doing, sitting down to deliver, adding a “+1” to whatever streak matters to you, can help immensely in keeping sane.

Practices can be developed in good times, and it is in difficult times that they save you.

Elsewhere

FabrizioLeave a comment

Things that will make people stop listening and move their attention elsewhere.

Raising your voice.

Interrupting.

Antagonizing.

Being self-important.

Imposing your own topic.

Using more than three items in a list.

Not making pauses.

Technical jargon.

Not letting the other speak.

Getting distracted.

No form of personalization.

It does not matter if your idea is the best in the world, if you do any of the above you stand no chance to make an impact. Thinking about how many organisations out there have at least five of these dealbreakers in their communication on a regular basis.