if you can’t use your time and apply your energy on your highest priority items, what does that disconnect say?
by bill reeb
having a desire for something is the first step in your process. once you have identified what is important to you, the desire step then includes creating
- a plan,
- plan tactics,
- a realistic timeline and
- reasonable expectations.
more: 3 early warning signals for overachievers | learn more by letting go | don’t let others block your path | how overachievers can get ‘unstuck’
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my approach is to immediately start introducing you to a variety of techniques, each followed by a short exercise that will ask you to assess how you are performing as well as how you might apply the technique to help maintain or start building momentum toward your objective. these techniques are focused on helping you discover what you want to achieve.
techniques to consider as you begin to identify your desires
take the time to understand what it is that you are really looking for
one common trap overachievers fall into is raising the expected performance bar long before an objective is reached. this almost single-minded focus to achieve can easily result in elusive and constantly morphing goals. it is like an addiction to perform as we press ourselves harder to achieve, rewriting goals into new ones as soon as we can see the possibility of attainment, all while mentally whipping ourselves with the thought that some form of devastation is looming right around the corner if we even think of letting up.
this reminds me of one of my clients. i started working with his company about 10 years ago. during our first conversation, he told me that if i could help him make $125,000 a year, he would be exactly where he wanted to be. after working with him for less than 18 months, he was making just that amount. unfortunately, by the time he reached his objective, he had already escalated his goal to a new i-would-be-happy amount, which was $250,000 a year. within another 18 months, he was earning that. but rather than enjoying his incredible success and growth, because he is so driven, he had already fixated on $500,000 annually. just recently, as we discussed the state of his business, his new i-can-live-with number is about a million a year. the problem is … when you keep driving yourself, rarely feeling good about where you are and focusing only on where you want to be, you are like a pressure cooker about to explode. he is the perfect example of an overachiever. as he consistently makes progress toward his objectives, he minimizes the value of whatever he has accomplished, and he beats himself up with negative self-talk daily to push himself to perform at a higher level. in the end, while overachievers are often great examples of success, some of them sacrifice everything around them, including their daily happiness, to simply get more of what they already have and are taking for granted.
as you think about the changes you want to make, suppress your urge to attain more long enough to determine if more of the same is what you really want. regardless of whether my client ever makes an annual salary of a million or not – which i believe he will – unfortunately i don’t believe he will find what he is looking for when he does. why? because when my client tells me what is important to him, he is clear about what is on that list and money is not at the top of it.
so, once you have determined what is important to you, that should be your focus. and if you can’t use your time and apply your energy on the highest priority items on your list, that disconnect says that you probably haven’t taken enough time to understand what it is that you really want.
do you find yourself regularly getting caught up in the chase for “more” of what you are already taking for granted? have you taken the time to really think through what it is that is important to you and are you focusing on that?
don’t let the fear of missteps and mistakes get in your way of determining a destination
my life sometimes feels – and certainly reads – like a series of missteps. but the way i look at life, those missteps are a big part of what makes me who i am today. those missteps are what will help me make better decisions tomorrow. i hope you embrace the idea that your missteps are not something to be ashamed of, but an integral part of your development and evolution.
i am reminded of a consulting class at the university of texas in austin that used one of my books as part of their reading assignments. i came in once a year for several years as a guest lecturer to make some general comments or answer any questions the students might have. i will never forget the time i was sharing some of my experiences in one of the classes. a student raised her hand and asked, very seriously, “why would anyone ever hire you … it sounds like all you do is make mistakes.” i responded to her, “that is exactly why people hire me .. they want to hire experience. and experience is a shorthand word for the phrase ‘humbled through failure.’” she wasn’t satisfied at all with my answer and quipped under her breath as she sat down, “i wouldn’t hire you.”
you need to know that defaulting to standards that require mistake-free perfection for yourself will create more problems for you than your performance will ever fix, and unfortunately, overachievers do this a lot. it most certainly will stifle your personal development ability. your “ability to be correct” percentage can be directly correlated to a timeline. consider the following figure and the regression curve from the past through the present continuing into the future. the more you are simply making judgments about the past or interpreting results from historical events, the more accurate you can be (hence the phrase “hindsight is 20/20”). for example, with certainty, i can tell you as a cpa how to record a journal entry for a specific transaction that has occurred according to generally accepted accounting principles.
however, the more decisions you have to make considering partial data, ambiguous situations or outcomes in the future, the greater likelihood that you will be wrong. as you move through this timeline, you go from “knowing” to “guessing.”
in business, the more junior the job function, which usually correlates with lower pay, the more you are expected to know how to do your job because guessing is minimized – most tasks are taught processes, with little room for creativity or variation. the higher the job function, and usually accompanied by higher pay, the more guessing – hopefully informed or educated guessing – is fundamental to the position. promotions and career advances often come with expectations of becoming more comfortable with ambiguity or the unknown. the more situations like this you encounter, the more likely you will make mistakes along the way.
the same progression is true for physical responses as well (but here i refer to it as “familiarity” versus “new”). the more you can call upon your past experiences to perform your current physical requirement, the more successful your attempt will likely be (for example, walking across a narrow log over a creek today calling upon years of practice as a gymnast in your youth). however, when you are in a position in which you are trying something truly new with little familiarity regarding that activity to draw upon, your odds of marginal performance are high.
this is why setting standards of mistake-free perfection can be so dangerous. this expectation causes us to constantly negatively evaluate our progress, therefore pushing us to retreat to the familiar so that we can operate more consistently mistake-free at high levels. by retreating to our comfort zones rather than allowing ourselves the luxury of failing, we will find it difficult to push the boundaries of our current skills.
i am bringing this concept up now because i want to make it clear that desire is not about accuracy or being correct. it is simply about setting your sights on a destination. mistakes will be made along the way; navigation errors will occur that will unintentionally take you off course. this is predictable and expected. the perspective of “taking every step correctly” will not only impede your forward momentum, but it will likely guarantee that you’ll never get there.
for example, i clearly remember when i was writing my first book, my wife (also my business partner and a marketing professor at a small catholic college) would often repeat the same phrase to me that academicians would commonly say: “don’t get it right; get it written.” this phrase was coined because when you bog yourself down with the pre-criteria of writing everything perfectly, you will never get anything written. i will augment this saying with “it is far easier to edit something you have already written than to create it in the first place.” after you have something written, you can change it, delete parts or all of it, augment it and continue to work on it until you like it. make your mistakes, edit them (fix them) and keep moving your manuscript forward. missteps and mistakes are not a sign of failure, but an indication of action, which should be celebrated rather than avoided. it’s about progress toward your objective, not about mistake-free perfection in accomplishing it.
what are you trying to “get right” versus “get written”? how are you allowing your fear of missteps and mistakes to influence what you are willing to consider as directional choices for your life?
do the research, but learn to trust your gut
as you assess what changes you might want to make in your life, though it is critical that you do your research (contemplation being a major part of that function), at some point “more information” won’t add much (diminishing returns) and it will be time to rely on what your gut instincts are telling you. when i refer to gut instincts, i am talking about that feeling you get telling you that something is “right” or “off” when there is little to no data supporting that conclusion. i am a big believer in trusting your gut. that is one reason i commonly preface my recommendations to my clients with the phrase, “here are some ideas to consider, but you need to go with what you believe is right for you.”
so many times with clients, when we get to the point of needing to make an important decision, it becomes time to pull out the pro/con exercise (outlining reasons to do and not to do something). this process generates an outpouring of responses. while this exercise usually starts out noting rational points of view, it doesn’t take long for it to shift to emotional perspectives. and somewhere around this point, you see a shift – people start making up reasons or changing the priority of certain ideas to portray a logical imbalance to the pro/con scale so that it starts leaning toward what they are feeling. when i see this, i comment, “if your gut is telling you something – go with it. if it is not working out like you expect, then that is not a problem as we will just make changes along the way.”
as you start developing your gut instincts and are learning to rely on them, here is another important lesson to consider. colin powell, in one of his leadership speeches years ago, made this point (this was his lesson number 15). he said something like:
i use the formula p = 40 to 70. once you have considered between 40 percent to 70 percent of the information available, go with your gut (consider that the letter “p” represents the probability of success and the numbers following “p” represent the percentage of information acquired as compared to the total available).
as you can see, powell suggests the information required to make a decision is somewhere between 40 percent and 70 percent. the first point is clear: do some research. but most of the people i work with would be very uncomfortable thinking they were ready to make a decision with 40 percent of the information about a subject. and some would feel like 70 percent of the information was way too low of a bar as well.
however, the message simply is, “don’t over-research the choices you want to make.” do a reasonable amount of due diligence and then make a decision. if you are wrong, you will quickly learn from the experience and make whatever course corrections are necessary. if you are right, again you will learn, with the added benefit of reaping the rewards for your accuracy. however, if you continuously research trying to find the definitive answer in an attempt to make the one right decision, you will certainly postpone the rewards you are looking for and you could also miss out on the benefits altogether by making your decision too late. know that all of the research in the world still won’t guarantee a “right” decision or that something will work.
as you first start down the road of putting more reliance on what your gut is telling you, recognize that for some, you might have to build it first. if you feel you have already developed good gut instincts, then start leveraging this powerful tool as much as possible. if you haven’t, don’t worry, just start connecting with that internal feeling that i am calling your “gut instincts” and know that every decision you make from now on – right or wrong – can help you build reliable intuition for successful decision making in the future.
what can i do to build more reliable gut instincts? am i making decisions too quickly, or too slowly based on the research i am doing and what my gut is telling me?
don’t limit your direction because of self-destructive choices
a common self-destructive tendency i run across is what i refer to as “poor impulse control.” through my experience as a coach, i find that people will often succumb to short-term gratification even when it puts at risk what is important to them.
for instance, when someone’s finances are tight, as soon as that person is starting to feel a little relief from living paycheck to paycheck, he or she might buy new clothes, furniture or even a new car, which then loads additional financial stress on the situation. or let’s say someone is feeling a little lonely for a couple of days and getting a puppy is deemed to be the fix without serious consideration of the 10- to 14-year time and energy commitment that is being made. in other words, it is not unusual for us to invoke long-term self-destructive behaviors that derail us from our destination for some momentary escape from our lives.
the stimulation of “new” can feel like a shot of adrenalin, which i have certainly fallen prey to many times. your new anything can temporarily create a wonderful distraction or fill an empty void. but before you know it, the void or negative emotions that motivated the impulse in the first place will resurface. there have been numerous research studies over the years supporting this conclusion, which is that “new” generally brings a jolt of energy and/or an increase in performance and soon thereafter “new” becomes old and everything reverts back to its previous state.
to be clear, i am not talking about your level of impulse control over whether you buy an extra bag of cheetos, but rather about ensuring you are managing decisions that have long-term ramifications, especially those that have a high error cost. for example, if you are miserable in your job, impulsively buying a new car to make yourself feel better about the daily commute would be tethering you even more to the paycheck you earn in the job you hate. in this case, the decision to take on significant additional debt or needlessly consume scarce cash reserves would have a high error cost as it could dramatically shrink your available options. as you start working through the task of determining what is important to you – which could take a while before you are ready to make some final decisions – don’t dig yourself a deeper hole or severely restrict your flexibility by casually making a few instant gratification self-destructive choices.
what impulse choices are you making that are sabotaging what you really want? what can you stop doing now that will help you more expediently get where you want to go?