Archive for March, 2008

In our last post we talked about starting great and then making it better. The idea is to put aside perfection and instead choose something great to start with. Once you are started on the path, make improvements along the way. Here is a simple diagram to show the direction that leads to success.

If we choose to aim for perfection, chances are that we will stall out at some point. Perfectionism is a trap that can stop the best laid plans.

On the other hand we don’t want to be complacent and settle for the status quo. The old saying, “Good enough never is” is one that rings true over time. If we are not willing to make improvements along the way, our product or service will die a slow death as the world slowly changes around it.

The strategy that will produce the best results is to aim for excellence. Excellence is defined as…

Excellence is a habit that we can learn from. As Aristotle once said…

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Some other quotes sum up the idea of excellence…

“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing”  Harriet Beryl Braiker

“Anyone can be an ACE: Attitude + Commitment = Excellence”
Robert Inman

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”
Booker T Washington

A great book on the subject of Excellence is Good To Great by James Collins. This is an inspiring book that offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that anyone would do well to consider.

To put the idea in a sentence…

Start Great, Continually Improve, Strive For Excellence.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading a pre-release copy of Michael Port’s upcoming new book, Beyond Booked Solid. This book is a treasure trove of ideas for anyone thinking about starting or improving a small business. While the book has been a great read, I stumbled upon a revolutionary concept in one of the chapters yesterday that truly may change the way I look at personal development.

Michael refers to the concept as Satisficing and is based on an economic theory by Nobel Laureate, Herbert Simon. He relates Simon’s idea as…

Any business that tries to make decisions based on how to “maximize” its returns will bankrupt itself in a never ending search for the best option.

Michael takes a step back and relates from his business experience that…

Instead, what successful businesses do is attempt to “satisfice,” by which Simon meant they are happy with the results that are “good enough.”

Michael has a great way of taking a wordy theoretical concept and putting it into simple language that almost anyone can understand. He puts it this way…

Seeking perfection usually results in indecision. Indecision is the antithesis of improvement. If we become hamstrung trying to achieve perfection, then there will, in the end, never be any improvement. If instead we are able to continue moving forward, then we can constantly improve.

This is a precursor to the Japanese business philosophy called Kaizen, which advocates the need for continuous improvement in somebody’s personal and professional life.

This concept really opened my eyes. I have always been a big advocate of designing a perfect day, as a way of motivating myself in goal setting and personal development. If I can see it, I can do it, has always been my motto.

Here is the problem… every time I try to create a “perfect” day in my mind or on paper, I get overwhelmed by competing ideas. After all, if it is the perfect day it has to be the “best” there is. Here is an example…

I usually visualize myself on a beautiful, sunny island in the Caribbean, with a cool drink in my hand. I picture a boat at the dock and that is where the picture starts to get fuzzy. My mind starts trying to figure out all the “perfect” details…. hmmm what island is this? What type of boat is this? Is this an ice tea in my hand or a Coke…?

The questions go on and on then the idea dies. Perfection kills it off.

But lets take a little bit different scenario… let’s step back from perfect to something great. Something that we know well and that we enjoy. Let’s start with “great” and add improvements.

Here is how it would work.

One of my favorite places in the world is the beach in Carmel by the Sea, California. It is very picturesque, with white sands and beautiful hills in the background. While there are places that might be better, this is a “great” place to start.

Since sitting on the beach all day would get old after while. I can improve the experience by adding a boat. But what kind of boat? Here is where I need to give myself some options (no more than three).

I could add a

1. Fishing Boat
2. Pleasure Boat
3. Sightseeing Boat

Since this is such a great place it would be fun to take people out on a sightseeing boat and show them around. The fishing boat would be too much work and the pleasure boat would get old after a while… so we’ll go with the sightseeing boat.

Our next improvement would be our clientele

We can offer

1. A short and cheap tour primarily for families with kids
2. A moderately priced one hour cruise for tourists
3. A two hour dinner cruise for anniversaries and special occasions

The though of sailing with noisy and boisterous kids would surely get on my nerves and the thought of dealing with tourists constant questions would get old quickly. But offering a luxurious cruise to honeymooners and people celebrating anniversaries and other special occasions sounds like fun. Lets go with that.

Now we need to choose a special cuisine for our guests

Since we are on the central coast of California we could offer…

1. Fresh, local seafood
2. A festive Mexican menu
3. A cadre of local central coast specialties from wine country

With our proximity to the famous Napa wine area and the celebratory nature of our sightseeing trip, lets go with some local specialties and offer central coast wine and cheese to finish it off.

Can you see how this process works. You start with something great and then you make it better. Along the way you give yourself options, but you limit the choices to only a few. As you followed along, your choices may have been very different from mine. As you can see, when you have to pick from a short list it is relatively easy to make a decision.

Notice how our “great” day evolved quickly into something enjoyable and doable. The whole process of Start with Great, and Make it Better is a quick way to get started on a project. When we put aside perfection and limit our choices to just a few things we can quickly move forward.

Michael Port’s new book has really opened my eyes to the trap of perfectionism. This book is full of real world examples that really extend well beyond small business and entrepreneurship. This is a book is a treasure trove of proven principles that can truly change your life. Unfortunately the name “Beyond Booked Solid,” doesn’t do this book justice.

His book is due to be released in April. You don’t want to miss this one!

I love my iPod. I’ve had numerous models over the last few years and each one of them has filled a unique niche. My video iPod has seen the most duty as my main conduit for audio books. The large capacity and small size of this unit make it ideal for taking audio along in the car.

I have found that listening to audio books while I’m driving is a great way to learn new things in an otherwise unproductive time. I’m a Kinesthetic learner (hands-on) by nature so the actual motion of driving (steering etc) makes it easier to learn things from these books than just sitting in a chair or lying in a bed listening.

My smaller iPods (mini & nano) have been very useful while exercising and on outside walking trips. Nothing makes a walk more enjoyable than invigorating music or a stimulating audio book. The small size of these units make them ideal for the high motion of physical activity. The Nano is especially useful as it is based on Flash memory which is not prone to skipping when the unit is jostled around.

Over the last year I’ve listened to over 60 audio books while driving or exercising. This has been an amazing experience as I have fulfilled my goal of participating in a successful Personal MBA program. Audio books are more limited in their selection, but there are hundreds to choose from in the business and personal development areas.

One of the new developments that represents a huge opportunity for parents is the new lower cost iPod shuffle. You can now get a 1 gig unit for $49 which will hold multiple audio books and uses flash memory that is perfect for the high activity lifestyle of kids.

Now you can get each child their own iPod and download age appropriate audio books. They can listen while walking to school or on the bus. The really cool thing is that many of the books that school age children are required to read for class are available in audio format.

Now your kids can literally do their book reading homework while in the car or out riding their bikes. This small iPod shuffle is the most bullet-proof of the iPod units and the light weight means they can take it almost anywhere.

Whether it is Huck Finn for the younger kids or Steinbeck for the older crowd, the audio version makes a great addition to the written book. I know when I was a kid that my reading sometimes meant skimming the book on the way to class. With audio books they will have heard the entire story through and will easily be able to go back and give a detailed book review.

The nice thing about the Apple iPod versus other units is the bookmark function. If you pause the audio at any point the iPod automatically puts in a “bookmark” which makes it easy to come back to exactly the right spot. Many other MP3 units do not offer this feature which makes studying the audio book much more difficult.

In short, the new less expensive iPod shuffle can help your kids learn while they play and get better grades too. If they should happen to drop the unit, it will most likely survive unscathed because of the lightweight design. And in the unlikely event they lose it, you’ll only be out $50, instead of hundreds for the other units.

Audio books are widely available through Amazon.com or from direct download from Audible.com or iTunes.

I’ve worked as an IT professional for the past 12 years. I’ve seen lots of changes and lots of updates. I used to like updates. Hey… they usually made things better… usually making things load quicker, giving me faster throughput and making things more reliable.

The problem is that most of my time now is spent with some kind of update. If I leave my laptop off for a few days and boot it up, it will take 10-15 minutes to get the latest Microsoft or Apple updates… download them and then want the usual reboot. This is before I fire up iTunes or other software that needs an update.

And just when I think I’m done, a little tray icon will pop up and remind me that Flash, Java, or Acrobat is feeling a little outdated and needs some attention. A few clicks, a download, an install and a reboot and I’m finally ready to get to work.

Ahh the silence of a spun down hard-drive… but wait… now that things are silent the background notifications are starting to work… It’s the dreaded e-mail that there is a new Wordpress blog software upgrade that should be installed right away. This little chore takes about 15 minutes and now I’m ready to start working.

Ooops… not so fast says the Wordpress dashboard… a slew of updated plug-ins are now available and some of them are really important… another 20 minutes this time and now I’m surely ready to get started writing.

I start to type and upload my first draft to the web and I notice that my site is suddenly down. How could this be… I wonder? So I login to the site status web site and notice that my web host is doing a 12 hour maintenance. Thanks for letting me know I mumble under my breath.

I start to write in my local blog editor and now I’m starting to get mad. I take a vacation for a couple of days and I come back to this update hell… arrgh. But wait… now that I have to wait 12 hours for my blog site to come back up I can download the new Vista Service Pack 1 and load it on my computer.

A few clicks and a 20 minute download and I’m ready to go. I fire up the update and now it says that my computer will be unavailable for at least an hour and will reboot multiple times… well hey… I’m not doing anything else…

The computer grinds away and the screen goes blank multiple times… I grab some refreshment and watch a little TV. After an hour of a mindless reality show I come back to a computer that is just finishing up… now I can start writing, I say to myself.

One last reboot and the computer is ready… ready for a defrag since a huge amount of files had been installed and moved around. I click off the defragmentation notification and I set it to defrag overnight and go to bed… knowing that everything will be better Saturday morning.

I wake up Saturday morning, ready to go. I click the mouse of my computer and the screen comes up and notifies me that the defrag is done… I’m on my way now. I fire up my web site and get ready to post… but the dreaded “site unavailable” message appears.

What!!! My site is still down??? I login to the site status web site and notice that the screen is bright red with urgent notifications. It seems my current web host had multiple problems overnight and the 12 hour window may have to be extended… This is actually funny as I had just moved my blog over to this web host because my other host had had continual problems since moving my site to a new server in December. Double arrrghhh!

So here I am writing this post, waiting for things to come back up. I did read a great message this morning on Copyblogger about Three Sure-Fire Steps to beat the Boring Content Blues. This post is a result… Hopefully it’s not boring. I’m now starting on another new post for later in the week.

Hey… someday we’ll all be updated or die trying

Ooops… hang on… Now Microsoft is alerting me that there are updates to the service pack… will it never end???

One of my favorite books is “On Writing Well“, by William Zinsser. The big takeaway that I get from his book is that… Writing Is Hard. I couldn’t agree more. The longer that I am involved with this online writing thing called blogging the more I realize what Zinsser says is true.

Putting words on paper is easy, but refining them and massaging them into something coherent and meaningful is a real task. I’ve been blogging for almost three years and it still takes a lot of time and effort to get the words out.

But just because something is hard doesn’t mean that it is not a worthwhile activity. To the contrary, the harder something is, the more potential reward there is at the end.

In the spirit of Blogging Well, here are three timely resources that I found over the weekend that you should bookmark.

1. The Top 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs is a list compiled by Amy Quinn of CollegeDegree.com . This is a well organized and exhaustive list of productivity resources that are just a click away. She has organized them into eight helpful categories.

1. Most Popular
2. Life Organizers
3. Productivity in the Workplace
4. Expert Advice
5. Personal Growth
6. Prioritizing/GTD
7. Personal Finance Hacks
8. Miscellaneous

I am humbled to say that this blog made the list under Life Organizers. The category listings make it easy to find helpful and specific information in just seconds. You don’t have to be a college student to find this list useful.

2. On Reading Well. Joyful, Jubilant, Learning has a great series going this month with reviews of great books. It is called a Love Affair With Books and has some amazing entries.

Current entries include…

• The Dream Manager reviewed by Andrew Rondeau 
• Thanks reviewed by Sara Orem
• Thick Face, Black Heart reviewed by Dwayne Melancon

Be sure to check out this site and add some of these books to your must read list!

3. Make It Great. My good friend Phil Gerbyshak is celebrating a birthday this week. Phil has been Blogging for Three Years and has helped hundreds of bloggers around the web to Make it Great on a daily basis. Phil is an author and was instrumental in putting together the amazing bloggers conference, SOBCON07.

His three year stats are pretty amazing…

If you want to take your blog to the next level, read some of Phil’s popular articles on networking and personal marketing. Have a Great Birthday Phil!

Back in May of 2006 we published a little desktop utility called The Five minute Flowchart. This business card based printable sheet went on to become one of our most popular utilities and thousands of people have downloaded it.

I have been amazed at the uses people have found for it. From a handy planning utility for meetings to an employee workflow tool, these cards have found their way onto many desktops.

In the spirit of innovation I would like to introduce the 2008 Deluxe Version of the Five Minute Flowchart with five new pages of symbols, arrows, and callouts. With this new tool you can complete a very complex flowchart right on your desktop. It is easy to copy and paste the symbols you use often onto one sheet, or print out the whole set for an upcoming meeting.

This new set prints out in Microsoft Word and is compatible with Word 97 and up. You can easily add text while you are in Word or use a Sharpie to add text right on the desktop. You can also add color and texture for added emphasis.

Instructions:

• Download the Deluxe Five Minute Flowchart template
• Open in Microsoft Word
• Add text to the shapes or print blank
• Cut & paste shapes as needed
• Print out on Avery Business Card stock (10 card)
• Break cards apart
• Lay them out on your desk or table
• Create a great flowchart
• Modify as necessary

Options:

• Add color and texture to your shapes for added emphasis
• Add other shapes and lines from the auto shape menu in Word
• Print cards double sided for added versatility
• Take a picture of your final flowchart to transfer to Smartdraw or Visio

These cards are easy to carry around in your Walleteer for quick access at your next meeting. Have fun and go with the flow!