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Posted on June 14th, 2013Weakness.
Say the word out loud, and taste it. It’s probably not your favourite word, right? As men, we are trained by society from birth to form an image of ourselves as perfect, flawless, without weaknesses. The general idea is that a real man has no weaknesses, a real man doesn’t need anybody else.
In my opinion, this is total bullshit. Thinking like this keeps men right where they are, without any possibility for improvement. In my opinion a real modern man is not afraid of his weaknesses, and has no need to hide them either. This gives him the strength for real, lasting change, and is the foundation for sincere personal development and real growth. A real man deals with his weaknesses and becomes stronger in the process.
It all might sound well and good in theory but what do you need to do in practice? Good question—I propose a simple 4-step process that that gets you going and keeps you going; miss a step and you either don’t overcome your weakness, or you’ll seriously cripple your efforts going forward.
Here are the steps, with some additional thoughtsg:
If you don’t know what your weakness is, there is no way to do anything about it. Finding yours can be done in a number of ways, but you have to be open to doing so.
Keep track of your training results—a good way of finding training-related weaknesses. Are your squat results not keeping up with your running results? Is your bench press weight declining? Do you exercise less? Etc.Ask your friends/wife/girlfriend. For this one you really need to be open and able to trust the people you ask. Don’t ask people you don’t feel comfortable with; that’s a recipe for disaster!Get a scale and keep track of your body measurements. Why not periodically take the Reintegrate 101 tests?Record your spendings and net asset value. Are you getting richer or poorer as times goes on?Basically, what you cannot measure you cannot improve, and if you can measure it but choose not to, you are at the mercy of your beliefs.
Okay, so you found a weakness—now comes a tricky part. You have to accept what you found. It doesn’t matter what you find if you choose to ignore it, which means not accepting that weakness sincerely. Signs to look out for that tell you that you’re not accepting what you find include arguments such as:
“It doesn’t really matter.”“Everybody does it.”“No wonder, it’s because…”If you find those signs it’s time for some serious contemplation. If you don’t accept your weakness, there is no way you will ever make any permanent change to overcome it.
This step might seems strange—isn’t it enough to accept the weakness? For the singular weakness it might be, but we are shooting for something bigger; continuous incremental Improvements. If you don’t love the fact you found a weakness and celebrate it you are much less likely to go look for another one. Don’t skip this step. Learn to be happy about finding weaknesses, Toyota is great at doing this in their factories. When they find a problem they are exited with the prospect of becoming better.
When you have come this far, you most likely know exactly what to do: you know your weakness, so accept it, and love it enough to be excited about what to do. Now it’s time to be merciless—break the back of your weakness, move on and never look back!
By following this simple process, I can guarantee that your success rate with self-growth will go up. Just remember that skipping a step is not an option, as it will seriously water down the next step.
Any questions? What will you do?
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Featured photo credit: Concrete crack via Shutterstock
We live in an incredible time. Thanks to the genius of Steve Jobs, the way we communicate, the way we get things done, and how we look at design have been dramatically changed forever. That is the upside. The downside of course is that through the creativity of app developers across the world, we have a tough time deciding which app will best help us become more productive. We end up spending more time finding the right app and less time getting things done. The result is something I like to call “App Attention Disorder”! In this post, I will talk about how combat this problem by focusing in on the process and not the app.
The problem with getting things done on a smartphone app is that some very smart developer created a program designed the way he or she thinks we want to be more productive. The downside of course, to no fault of their own. is that we end up “hacking” their app. We tinker. We tweak. We complain on their site that there is no:
sub-projectsworkspacesdue datesnotificationsintegration with Google Calendar or Google Taskssync with Dropbox or iCloud or Evernote…and the list goes onFeeling as if we can still force a square peg into a round hole, we continue to tweak. Eventually, we realize we have spent more time playing with the app and less time actually tending to our commitments. So how do we get around this epidemic to our productivity? By focusing on the process and not the tools.
Whether you are a follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, Pomodoro technique, Personal Kanban, Franklin Covey, or some combination of all of these plus your own system you’ve invented, stick to it. Research them all to figure out what will work best for you and then choose one organizational system and become a master of its principles. Make the process a habit. Once you’ve picked a workflow, the question becomes of course, but which app do I use? In my consulting work, I always tell folks to focus on the process and the tool will come to them. What if we didn’t have an iPhone or Android? What if you just had paper? How would you organize your tasks, projects, and goals?
Take a giant step backwards and ask yourself these big questions:
What few things must absolutely go right in order for you to have a productivity workflow that works for you? What challenges have you had in the past?What has gone right for you?Being able to honestly answer those questions will allow you to better understand which app (or paper) may work best. That is the key: just knowing what works for you and what will keep you motivated and productive in conjunction with a structured time management system will help you best understand what tool(s) you need to help you get things done.
Once you get that right, you will undoubtedly have a “mind like water” and will be well on your way to getting things done!
Author. Presenter. Consultant. Productivity Guru. I authored the eBook, "Evernote®: The unofficial guide to capturing everything and getting things done", which is sold in the Evernote Trunk and the Official Springpad eBook. My success can only follow yours!
For those of you who already have the good habit of corralling and processing paper daily, keep up the good work! Being conscious of the daily flow of paper and deliberately controlling its flow is the only way to win the war on paper.
A casual approach to paper is a guarantee that you’ll create your own personal paper nightmare. Paper is relentless in its flow into your space. You need to be relentless in your handling of it. Do it daily! It really only takes minutes! Minutes of agony or boredom are better than the hours and hours of excavation that will be required if you procrastinate and let paper accumulate.
Here’s what I mean by PROCESS PAPER DAILY:
Make sure paper follows a specific route, a paper path.
Paper should not float from room to room. When paper comes into the house, make sure it lands in one spot to be sorted into categories instead of allowing it to land in any one of a number of different locations. If you decide the kitchen counter is that spot, make sure everyone in your family knows that mail always lands on the kitchen counter.After being sorted, make sure the different categories of paper are immediately moved to their next logical location. Bills, for example, would go to the bill paying area. Once the bills are paid, the paper associated with them would then be filed or pitched. So, the paper path for a bill would be: from the mailbox to the kitchen counter; from the kitchen counter to the desk of the home office where the bill is paid; from the desk to the filing cabinet. It’s important to create paper paths for every category of paper you regularly handle.To simplify this process, consider having all paper move from its sorting location to a home office where the different categories can be processed and stored if necessary. That way the path would be: from the mailbox to the kitchen counter for sorting; from the kitchen counter to the home office desktop for review and action; from the the desktop to the filing cabinet or the recycle bin.Making papers follow specific paths puts you in charge of paper instead of feeling at the mercy of paper. Your work is to determine the paths and to discipline yourself to make paper follow those paths every time. Just one lapse in maintaining your new paper system can cause paper to spiral out of control. Remember, digging out takes much more time and energy than maintaining paper paths! It will take over if you let it stray from a defined route.Sort incoming papers into categories. I recommend these categories: trash; refer out to someone else; action; filing; reading; holding for later reference or action; and possibilities of things to do, buy, etc. It’s best to separate the action category into bills and other actions. That way you are less likely to lose sight of your bills.
Distribute papers by category to their appropriate locations. For example, trash goes to the recycling bin or trash can. Action papers are moved to the desk or countertop where action will take place. Filing is either filed or stored in a filing tray until you make time to file. Reading is taken to the location where you do your reading, perhaps a basket on your desk or next to the sofa.
You’ll notice I don’t recommend that you complete all the tasks associated with those papers on a daily basis. That would take more time than you have every day. I am just recommending that you control the flow of paper coming in, sort it and distribute it to the place where it will be acted upon or stored. If you do that much paper processing every day, you will find your stress goes down and your productivity goes up. You’ll be in charge of paper instead of feeling at the mercy of it!
My passion is helping people discover the profound impact that environment has on performance. I want people to know they can change their lives by changing the spaces in which they live and work. Check out my blog, http://www.rockscissorspaperinstitute.com/blog, or my book, Rock Scissors Paper: Understanding How Environment Affects Your Performance on a Daily Basis at www.RockScissorsPaperInstitute.com/book.
