Escape from Cubicle Nation

Learn to tune OUT to tune IN to great progress in 2009

About halfway through writing my book this year, I hit the wall.

 

I looked at the volume of online notes, stacks and stacks of resource books and hundreds of pages of blog posts and I froze.  The task of writing a book felt too enormous to accomplish, and I got completely overwhelmed.

 

So I gathered my wits about me and came up with a stunning, well-researched and strategic productivity plan:

I made a list of the titles of the sixteen chapters, taped it to my computer monitor,  and used a highlighter to cross off each one as I finished.

I know, my tactics are not exactly earth-shattering.

 

But this exceptionally simple tactic totally changed the way I thought about writing the book.  Instead of holding the structure of all of the chapters in my mind at the same time, I gave myself permission to only focus on the chapter right in front of me.  And if that became overwhelming, I only worried about completing one sub-topic.

 

This really reduced a lot of anxiety in the writing process, and allowed me to crank out sixteen chapters  in an agreed-upon time line (more or less - don't ask my editor!).

 

I see a lot of my clients get in a similar state of overwhelm, particularly at the beginning of a new year, when they stack all kinds of goals and tasks and  priorities on top of each other.   

 

The moment of panic increases when you want to start a new business, because there are a lot of steps required to get it off the ground. 

 

So in the spirit of pragmatism from my grandma Alice Stewart, who used to give advice such as:

"Don't bother to dust extensively when guests come over, just put out fresh flowers.  They will think you are a perfect housekeeper."

 

and

"Don't think you have to make everything from scratch - get a high-quality store-bought item (like a pie or a casserole), cook it, set it on fine china, and when people compliment you on your cooking, say "thank you!"

Here are a few tips for allowing yourself to focus on one thing at a time so you really can accomplish your dreams (or at least start them!) this coming year:

 

1. Make The Big List.
   This is your opportunity to empty your head of all the hundreds of things you want to get done next year like:  "lose 10 pounds," "start newsletter," "write book," "clean out the files in my office," "create 10 new information products," "get in 5 news publications," or "start a blog," or "create a beta version of my software product."
   
   
2. Think about your deeper contribution, purpose or mantra for the year.
   My friend Christine Kane wrote a nice article last year about choosing one word to start a new year instead of the dreaded resolutions.  The month of December she included guest posts from readers who talked about their results with their words.
   
   If one word feels too limiting, choose a mantra (described by Guy Kawasaki) like "inspire freedom," or "encourage healthy relationships" or "kick serious creative bootie."
   
   You should feel passionate about your word or purpose or mantra -- lukewarm feelings get nothing done!
   
   
3. Cross off anything from the list that does not directly serve your deeper purpose.
   This can be a tough task for those of you who have been doing things the same way for a long time.  But it is essential!  If you want to serve more people, live bigger, stress less and accomplish more, you must release unproductive tasks and thoughts and, yes, even people from your list.
   
   So if "have lunch every Wednesday with your friend Wendy the Winer" is on your Big List and your mantra for 2009 is "energizing partnerships," guess what?  Lunches with Wendy might have to go.
   
   You may also have a lot of "would be nice someday" things on your list that are not really relevant to either the economic climate this year, your focus or or the timeframe of one year.  Save those things for next year, and see if they still are relevant enough to include for 2010. 
   
   
4. Create a simple 4x4 grid with one square for each quarter.
   Depending on your love of technology, this can be a simple piece of 8 1/2 x11 paper, an Excel spreadsheet, Word table, or, my favorite in the brainstorming phase, a flip chart with post-it notes for individual activities.
   
   Label each square with a quarter.
   
   Square One: January - March
   Square Two:  April - June
   Square Three:  July - September
   Square Four:  October - December
   
   
5. Map your activities into the squares.
   This is where you get to play around with the sequence of certain activities.  You might find a natural order to things, like you have to start your mailing list before you design and launch your new information products.  You might want to design some custom landing pages on your website before doing a major promotion to the press or organizations.  You may want to do lots of exercise before entering an Ironman competition.
   
   Do your best to lay out activities within each quarter.  You don't have to get it perfect, or to worry too much about the order of things in the 2nd to 4th quarters, since plans may change as you finish the first quarter.  But at least you can get started, and prioritize the things you must do early in the year versus later.
   
   
6. Get your massive plan down to a very short list which you can start in January. 
   Here is the real beauty of all this work.  Since you know that you will get to all the items on your list eventually, you can stop worrying about them and just focus on what's ahead. 
   
   Once I did this with my book, my creativity returned, and my writing flowed. 
   
   Pick the most logical, highest impact activity to work on first thing next week, and get working on it.
   
   
7. Celebrate every little accomplishment.
   Martha Beck gave me great advice when I was writing my book -- she told me to never forget to reward myself for getting even the tiniest thing done.  When you promise yourself that if you complete a certain task you will get a pedicure, or go fishing, or get to play 2 hours of uninterrupted Doom on your computer, you must do it!  Otherwise, your finicky inner self will realize that your promises are empty, and will not hustle so hard to complete the next task you ask it to work on.

I am absolutely thrilled with the change coming to our country in the new year, and feel real enthusiasm and excitement for 2009.

 

I wish you, and all those you love, a healthy, joyful and prosperous new year.  We are in this together -- let's get some stuff done!

 

---

Quick notes:

• The photo for this post is a shot I took at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.  Inspired by my Brazilian compadres who have a wonderful new year celebration at the beach, we went out to the ocean to give thanks for 2008 and welcome in 2009.  My Dad gave our older son Jeffery a camera, which he adores, and I caught him taking this shot of our younger son Josh.  It captured everything I want in the new year: love, creativity, strength, abundance and, per the topic of this newsletter, focus.

• I posted my new schedule for free monthly coaching calls for 2009 on my blog - check them out if you want some advice and ideas to help get your business off the ground.

 

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Make way for a killer 2009: Release any lingering agony from 2008

Whatever your business, job situation, balance of your 401(k), personal situation or region of the world, you have to admit that 2008 was a doozy.

It certainly was for us here in the Slim household.  We had more exciting and terrifying rides in my husband's business than either of us had ever experienced.  The perfect storm of growing a heavy equipment construction business just before a historic slowdown in local building, coupled with a global financial meltdown made for an <ahem> interesting year.

Throw in some big life challenges for loved family members, writing a book, raising a baby and chasing after a toddler, we were not short on excitement and, sometimes, drama.

If that was what it was like in our household, I can imagine that you had your own challenges.

• Some of you may have lost your job.
• Others saw hard-fought life savings melt away in the economic firestorm.
• Perhaps you ended a marriage.
• Or faced a big health challenge.
• Or, as our dear neighbors recently did, lost a 5-year old child unexpectedly.

Living through such immense personal transitions may have left you feeling quite vulnerable and raw and even bleeding.

That may not feel like a terribly powerful place from which to launch a new and positive year.

I was wallowing a bit myself in these past months, trying really hard to focus on the tremendous opportunities ahead, but at the same time feeling a bit anxious and gun-shy given the nature of 2008.

All of my training as a coach tells me that any external circumstances (like a down cycle in the economy) do not impact my success or failure:  it is only my thoughts about the situation that drive my reality.

This very true perspective can have some unfortunate side-effects, especially for the overzealous Law-of- Attraction-or-Else fans:  you can start to beat yourself up for not being hyper-perky and positive.

Here is the rub:  unless you release some of the emotion that bottled up during your rough and tumble parts of the year, clear thinking and focused intentions might be a bit difficult.

So here is a way to do a bit of excavation to make way for a positive and productive 2009, without having to feel like a Stepford Wife or member of a hyper-cheery cult.

1. Think back over your year and notice emotions you feel.
2. The easiest way to categorize emotions are: mad, sad, glad or scared.
3. Do any emotions stand out?  For those who faced lots of challenges, mad and scared tend to be high on the list.
4. Do whatever you need to do to acknowledge and release the emotion. 
5. Once you feel the emotion has been properly dealt with, it is time to let go of the story you attached to it, such as:  "This year was so hard." "I can't believe my teenager got into so much trouble." "My health situation is terrible.  I gained so much weight from all the stress!" "The economy is in shambles.  All businesses are failing." "Getting new clients will be hard."
6. Then with gratitude in your heart for tremendous lessons and clean, sincere thoughts for the new year, you can say "I am ready to stand up and lead my life in 2009."

The function of emotions:

Rather than unpleasant things to avoid, emotions have very specific purposes.  Martha Beck wrote a great chapter on this in Finding Your Own North Star, where she describes the function of emotions:

Fear:  Protects from danger
Grief:  Heals, strengthens
Anger:  Corrects injustice
Joy:  Nurtures, expands

Ways to attend to lingering emotions:

Fear:  Take a quiet moment and let yourself speak or write down exactly what you were afraid of.  Describe in great detail what it felt like to be threatened, overwhelmed or scared.

"When my business dried up, I felt terror rise in my throat.  I was afraid to look at my dwindling bank accounts, and avoided the phone because I was afraid to talk to creditors. This made me anxious, and I felt like I had no power and was at the mercy of huge, scary forces."

"When my husband left me, I felt like my life was over.  I felt undesirable, unloved and unwanted.  I felt like I would never meet anyone again who would love me like he did.  It scared the hell out of me."

Anger:  Let out all of your emotion in whatever way feels the best.  When I was a wee 10-year old in the 1970's in Marin County California, we beat pillows.  It worked then, and it may work now!  Go to a desolate place and scream your lungs out, write in a "hate and rage" journal (Martha Beck's term) then burn the pages, or hit a martial art heavy bag until you have no force left in your body. Examples of anger thoughts:

"When I lost my job after 20 years of loyal service, I wanted to hurl rocks at all the smug managers who remained.  How dare you not acknowledge my contributions?"

"&^%^%&^(**  and furthermore &^*^%&%&(*)(_))!!!!"

Grief: Make a very safe space where you can absolutely fall apart.  Cry buckets, sob, heave and break in half.  Curl up on the floor.  Do whatever you need to release anguish in your heart.  Watch sad movies, look at photos of a dear departed, or whatever else will really put you in touch with that which you are sad about. Just make sure to put time limits on your grieving sessions, lest they swallow you up.

Running away from these feelings will do nothing but build up a wall between your true, open, positive self and the life you want. 

When I was able to release some of this pent-up emotion from the year, I was surprised to feel a gigantic swell of gratitude for the lessons 2008 taught me.  As a result of all the experiences this year, my eyes are wide open, I understand the life of an entrepreneur much more deeply, I appreciate my clients even more, and I am wholly and specifically committed to my work.  The mantra that really resonates this year is:

Promote liberation.

Liberation from self-destructive thoughts, careers, relationships and businesses.

Time to lead

Seth Godin's book Tribes really influenced me this year.  I was struck by its core premise:  our tribes are out there, waiting for us to lead.  If I wallow, hesitate, pull back or play small, I will not serve the people I am meant to serve.

It is so basic, yet quite profound.

Who is your tribe?  Who is waiting for you to get rid of the emotional residue of 2008 so you can burst on the scene with a genuine smile in 2009?

I can't wait to see where you lead me in the new year.

What's ahead

Thanks for your tremendous support this year as I wrote my book.  Your stories, examples, challenges and requests were a critical part of shaping the story and choosing just what to, and not to, include.  I am really happy with the result, and aim to do everything I can to get it into the hands of every frustrated, dreaming, it-has-to-be-better-than-this cubicle employee who needs it in 2009.  It officially hits the stands in May 2009, but tune in here for early ordering information.

Building on the book, I will develop specific tools and programs for those of you who really want to make things happen in your life and business in 2009.  I am really giddy about this: for the first time, I see a very clear blueprint (the book) from which to build a significant and useful body of work.  I will be getting out from behind my computer screen more in the new year, with dates and cities to come, but definitely to Austin in March (for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, and a panel on Blog to Book with me, Hugh McLeod, Guy Kawasaki and Kate Lee), New York, Washington D.C, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

I wish each of you a calm end to your year, good quality time with those you love and some time to reflect on what you desire for 2009.

We head to San Francisco tomorrow for the holiday. It will be the first time in two years that I am back in my City by the Bay, sampling delicious food, smelling the salty air and hanging out with my family. I can't wait to get back to my roots.

From me, Darryl, Jeffery, Joshua and Angela, Happy New Year!

$2,500 scholarship opportunity for enterprising 20-something - spread the word

I hate to sound old and gushy, but what the heck.

I am so PROUD of my young mentor Ramit Sethi, co-founder of PB Wiki and blogger at www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com.  Note I said menTOR, not menTEE.  Ramit has taught me a lot of things in the couple of years I have known him, but his latest post about a $2,500 scholarship for an enterprising 20-something is really motivating.  Here is how he describes the impetus behind the scholarship:

"Earlier this week, I was reading an online discussion about what people would do if they were rich. People talked about traveling, starting a charity, and teaching…all GREAT causes. But why don’t we do it today? We don’t have to quit our jobs to travel — we can do it 4 Hour Workweek style. We can teach little kids by doing one-off seminars or tutoring or help inner-city women manage their finances or find local volunteering opportunities in our neighborhood.

You don’t have to quit your job and become a monk to give back. You don’t have to stop going out every weekend. We can be successful by going 85% of the way there.

My point is, we don’t need to wait for tomorrow.

If you want to give back, you can do it in a thousand ways.

It doesn’t have to be a scholarship. Never before in history have we been able to help so many people with so little. We have tools like Kiva and DonorsChoose and Youtube that allow us to scale our social entrepreneurship to millions of people. And with so many talented people reading this blog, I’m SURE I can find someone who’s the right fit to give back."

Scholarship details

"The I Will Teach You To Be Rich Scholarship for Social Innovation is a $2,500 one-time award for someone with an entrepreneurial background who has a specific plan for a socially innovative project. I’ll fund your idea for $2,500 and provide mentorship and introductions.

The key is that it must scale. Instead of helping one child (which is great by itself), I’m looking for someone who can take that interaction and apply it to 100, 1,000, or 10,000 people. For example, if you were really ambitious, you could fly to another country and donate your time. But if you wanted to make it scale, you could use your video skills videos like this or this. Or your teaching skills. Or your programming skills. How many more people would that affect? How could you measure it?"

The details and application are here.

In my opinion, mentoring from Ramit is worth twelve times the amount of the financial award.  He is truly a gifted teacher, manager, innovator and leader. Not to mention a very positive human being.

If you fit the target demographic and have a great idea, apply!  And if you know a young person anywhere in your life that might be eligible, please pass on the word.

As for the rest of us, let's take Ramit's example as a healthy kick in the pants to not wait for the mythical moment to make our goals come true. 

Time to get serious about strengthening your systems

When I was about ten years old, our roof got in some serious disrepair.  We lived in a house built in 1906, and the creaky beams and bones of wood were showing their age.  The wooden shingles had been damaged by years of rain and wind, and water started to leak through the ceiling.

 

My hard-working single Mom did her very best to cover all of our needs, but a $3,000 roof was not going to happen.  So we made due, placing pans under the various dripping spots of the ceiling.

 

I was lying in bed one night, listening to the rain pound outside.  Then, without warning, a big chunk of plasterboard fell on my chest. It didn't cause any major damage, it just scared the heck out of me.  Our system of staying dry had reached a breaking point.

 

The same may be true in your business, your health or your home.

 

I have been reading an interesting book by Sam Carpenter which is called Work the System:  The Simple Mechanics of Working Less and Making More.  He is a telecommunications business owner in Bend, Oregon, who spent the first fifteen years of his business operating in crisis mode.

 

His "plaster on the chest" moment came when he was one week away from closing his doors.  His health was terrible from working 100-hour weeks, his finances were depleted, his staff was unhappy and customers were angry.  He couldn't hold on any longer, and faced certain failure.

 

Then he had an out-of-body experience (surely fueled by lack of sleep!) when he rose up from his situation, looked down on it, and for the first time realized that his entire life and business was built on sloppy systems.  Nothing was documented or planned.  Stuff just "happened," which was why crisis after crisis continued. 

 

At that moment, he got clear on what he had to do:  take each underlying system in his business one at a time and clean it up.  With flawless systems, clearly defined roles and excellent communication, the business would survive, improve and eventually thrive.

 

So that is what he did, with the help from his staff.  The process took a long time, but by rigorously examining and documenting every step of every key process in their business, they were able to make leaps and bounds in efficiency.  Providing better service, they raised their rates.  Retention improved, and training new employees was much easier.

 

On the personal side, Sam did the same thing.  He made health and sleep a priority.  He respected the system of his body, and only ate healthy foods.  He started to exercise.

 

His former 100-hour workweeks are now 2 hours.  His company is successful and his life is flourishing.

 

How can you translate this systems thinking into your own life?

 

If you are in business for yourself,  you can see that every part of your operation is based on processes and systems.  They may be a home-grown jury-rigged, inefficient systems, but they are systems nonetheless.  To start:

1. Define the strategic objective of your business.  Carpenter gives very specific examples of this in the book.  You can also use a much higher-level description like Guy Kawasaki's example of "mantras" in his book The Art of the Start.  His personal mantra is "empower entrepreneurs."  I am not totally decided on mine yet, but a key objective is definitely "promote liberation."
   
   
2. Define the general operating principles of your businesss. Operating principles guide your decisions, and allow you to choose which systems and processes are truly necessary to run your business.  Some examples from Carpenter's business are:
   
   -We focus on just a few manageable services.  Although we watch for new opportunities, in the end we provide "just a few services implemented in superb fashion, rather than a complex array of average-quality offerings.
   
   -The money we save or waste is not Monopoly money.  We are careful not to devalue the worth of a dollar just because it has to do with the business.
   
   -We study to increase our skills.  A steady diet of reading and contemplation is vital to personal development.  It is a matter of self-discipline.
   
   
3. List the key processes and systems that underlie your business.  For my coaching practice, there are processes like client acquisition, blogging, bill paying, teleclass delivery and forum moderation.
   
   
4. Work on cleaning up and documenting one process at a time.  You may want to choose the most high-impact system to document first.  Write down all the steps involved in clear, simple, step-by-step language. 
   
   
5. Automate as much as you can of the mechanical processes.  Outsource things you don't need to do yourself.  Tools like autoresponder email systems can work great for this.  (Aweber.com is what I use for this newsletter and signups for all my classes)
   

If you haven't started a business, it would be great to keep this framework in mind as you design your business model.

 

What jumped out at me so clearly as I read Carpenter's book is that by rigorously cleaning up the systems that underpin my business, automating as much as I can and outsourcing any tasks that I don't need to do personally, I will have much more time to focus on providing more services, contributing more free content (blog posts!) and serving more people.

 

And if you are not a business owner, not to worry -- you can apply this systems thinking to your everyday life.

 

Some process improvement areas that spring to mind:

• Email management (set up filters and rules for taming the email beast!)
• Grocery shopping (I hand write my list every week, trying to remember the basics -- how about if I created a pre-printed list that I could hang on the refrigerator?)
• Laundry (I used to have four different laundry baskets in everyone's rooms, then I switched to a central basket in the laundry room and it is much easier.  Talk about a task I would love to outsource!)
• Remembering birthdays (this is one area I have been terrible at in the last few years since I relied on my memory instead of calendaring everyone's birthdays.  Maybe next year I will remember to call my best friend on her birthday (January 14) for the first time in three years)
• Rotating food in the refrigerator.  (We have gotten in the habit of cleaning out the refrigerator every Tuesday night, since the trash goes out on Wednesdays.  It really helps cut down on "mystery scientific experiments" growing in the back of the shelf.)

You can see your systems don't have to be glamorous.  They just have to work well, and allow you to spend your time doing what you really want to do.

Other good resource books:

 

Beyond Booked Solid, Michael Port

The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss

Getting Things Done, David Allen

Upgrade Your Life, Gina Trapani

Connect:  A Guide to a New Way of Working, Anne Zelenka

 

Good blogs:

 

Zenhabits.net

Matthew Cornell

 

December and January are going to be my systems scrubbing months, what about you?