Day 562
Photograph https://unsplash.com/szolkin
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Discipline is the mother of Success
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What to do when you are short of ideas? 3 techniques that work
https://unsplash.com/intrepid Day 561. I am sitting in front of my tablet and am scratching my head. I had thought about a topic this morning for this post, but it vanished… It should have been a bad topic. I am looking through the window and it rains. Definitely a day to be working, but I have not a single idea for this post. Then of course, the idea comes in because I am using one of the following techniques to get ideas pouring in. And the idea is to share with you how to deal with the blank page syndrome. The problem? You need to write of paper or put a project plan together, or produce whatever that needs to be produced starting from scratch, and you do not know how to start, or where to start. Use any of those simple 3 techniques and you will experience the magical effect of creativity unleashed:
- Start typing (or writing, or any other activity that is required for the task you have to do). Type the first idea that comes. It can be your printer is black, why is this printer black by the way? Or it can be that it is raining and you love the smell of earth and nature after the rain. The trick here is to start a train of thought. Your unconscious mind will create links and ideas will start flowing. Continue writing until you have the right one.
- Flip through previous projects, texts, or ideas. The best way to create something new is to start from something existing. Actually very few new things are really new. They are just an enhancement of something that existed and presented as new.
- Switch to something else… Hey, but I need to do this thing, I cannot switch to something else. Actually, if you are familiar with the concept of « lacher-prise », or « let go », you understand that holding to something too hard is counterproductive. You need to get away from the thing that blocks you to be able to get back into it. Counter intuitive? Sure, but really powerful. So let go, start something else, and in a matter of minutes, ideas will fly in so naturally you’ll wonder why they did not come sooner. The magic of Let go!
The human brain is full of mysteries. Sometimes, with these conscious techniques, we will « fool » our unconscious brain so it provides what we are looking for. Try it, you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain in terms of creativity and productivity. Voilà, I am happy, I went to no idea to a blog post in ten minutes.
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The most important leadership skill…
https://unsplash.com/matthewclarkrogers Day 560. How do you become a respected and successful leader? As Lao Tzu wrote: When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’ Hundreds of books have been written on leadership. Over the ages, leadership has changed and the necessary skills to be considered a good leader have changed too. However, all good leaders have one thing in common: they succeed through others. All good leader need others to deliver the vision. And to be able to lead others, they need one crucial skill and that is: speaking.
We all learn to speak by listening first, then by learning the rules, mostly grammar. However, what is barely taught is the how and the what (the content, not the rules). Words can lift you up, can tear you down, and can even kill. How you deliver those words can be the amplifier. Words and their delivery, a.k.a. speaking, is the most important skill of all because this is one you cannot delegate. You have to learn it, you have to rehearse, and you have to master it. The good news is it can be taught. Clubs like Toastmasters will equip you with the right skill set to speak and to lead.
Speaking is not difficult but it’s powerful. It requires understanding of its power and a lot of training. Once you master the art of speaking, you need to polish it, slowly, skillfully. The best investment you can do for yourself and for others!
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Greece 2015, Germany 1918? #ThisIsACoup
https://unsplash.com/ugmonk Day 559. Greece has said yes to Europe. Europe has reached an agreement with Greece. Although I am no historian, no politician, and no diplomat, while reading the reports of the negotiation marathon I had one feeling: Europe has humiliated Greece, like in its time Allies had humiliated Germany after World War I. Of course the circumstances are different. Of course Greeks need to reimburse their debtors. Of course Greece needs to demonstrate its willingness and possibility of repaying its debt while avoiding to go into the next crisis.
As a kid, I was taught to practice what you preach. Tell me M. Hollande and other European so-called « leaders »: why do you continue lending money, not your money, but taxpayers’ money, to Greece while you know that Greece will never be able to pay back its debt? Not only you ruined France, you will now ruin Greece, adding shame to prejudice. For the first time since WW2, land sovereignty has been compromised. Not by war, by money. Greece will sell its territory to payback its debt, not because it wanted to do it, because it was told to do it.
I am not sure how the Greeks will react to this « agreement ». Time will tell. But in 1918, Germans felt badly and the post-war recession opened the door to fascism and ended up with WW2. IMHO, one thing is blatantly visible in this crisis: people never learn from their mistakes and history is doomed to repeat itself, again and again! What’s up doc? Nothing, the sun will continue shining for a few billion years, whatever happens to those tiny living creatures called human beings, so as Candide was saying « we must cultivate our garden ».
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3 rules to survive and win the email battle
https://unsplash.com/mumolabs Day 558. Do you receive too many emails? If not, then you can go back to what you were doing previously. If yes, just continue reading, because I will give you my own personal 3 rules to win the email battle that take literally 5 seconds to implement and allow you to free time to do meaningful work. Before getting into those rules, I need to clarify one simple point: email is just one of the many ways to communicate and is the asynchronous way. Asynchronous means that when you press the Send button, your email can take some time to be delivered and the recipient may not be online or not in front of his or her email client, so he or she will receive it later and may answer later too. So we come to our first rule:
- If you expect an urgent answer, do not use email, use instant message, phone the person, or walk to his or her desk. In other word: speak!
- Put each email you receive and read in one of those three buckets: trash, archive, action. All those emails that you are copied on or that you receive because you are part of a distribution list will go to trash. But hey you tell yourself, it may be important! Sure it may. And I assure you that if it’s really important you will hear about it through other ways of communication soon! And if you feel it’s important, read and archive! As for those email that you can answer in less than 30 seconds, answer them immediately and move! For those that require some work, keep them, flag them, change them into a task and put them in your calendar. In that case apply some judgement. Some email do not require urgent action, plan them for the next day or the next week.
- End your day with an empty mailbox. Yes, you read it well, empty your mailbox. If you applied rule two, at the end of each day, each email will have been either trashed, archived or actioned upon, your mailbox will be empty!
I always smile when people tell me they receive too many emails. You receive too many emails because you let others send you too many emails. It’s not about others, I am sorry to say it’s all about you! You are the master of your mailbox, do not let your mailbox rule!
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It’s hard to start, gorgeous to finish
https://unsplash.com/sortino Day 557. Some days, you do not feel going to exercise. You may be tired, do not have time, or are just lazy (sometimes it’s good to be lazy, but that’s another story). Therefore, starting is a matter of sheer will. You need to rationalize and tell yourself it’s good for you. Not only for your body of course, but also for your mind. This is what happened to me on Friday morning. I had all good reasons to not exercise: went to bed late the day before, had a plane to catch, and told myself I could skip a day. And I just did the opposite: went to the gym for 30 minutes.
It was hard to start. I did not want to go and my body was reluctant to produce any effort at the beginning. Then the biological of the body kicks in. Our body is a wonderful machine that requires exercise. Tons of medical studies has proven this point, backed up by hundred thousands of years of evolution. So our body generates hormones to help our mind feeling good. Dopamine among others neurotransmitters will make you feel good: it’s also called the reward hormone. You know that feeling when you tick a done thing on your to-do list? It’s dopamine. So when dopamine starts to flow in your body, you feel you did the right thing. And this is what happens. A few minutes after starting sweating, you are feeling good.
But the beauty of these 30 minutes does not stop at the end of those 30 minutes. The effect continues all day. You feel better, you are better, and others feel it too. So even when it’s hard to start, remember it’s gorgeous to finish, so go exercise, even if it’s 20 or 30 minutes. Just do it!
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How to raise, and achieve, your own expectations by following those 4 rules of thumb
https://unsplash.com/jonathanbean Day 556. Running a successful life is a matter of expectations. Like Forrest Gump used to say: « Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. » If this sounds cliché, you can actually bend this truism by setting what you wanna get, and work towards it. This is what setting expectations is all about. However, like Tony Robbins likes to say « we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a year and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade ».
The whole question remains: how to correctly set expectations that we can hold ourselves accountable to? Over the years, I came with 4 rules that work in most cases and that help me setting them, raising them, and achieving them.
- If you feel the expectations are too low or just right, raise them by a fraction that will make you uncomfortable. If you feel the expectations are too high, they’re probably so for your current comfort zone, with the current resources you have. This is actually a great news and a great reason for growth. Have a positive look at them! In all cases, ensure you are uncomfortable with the expectations if you want to grow and challenge you!
- Enlist others to share these expectations and gather their ideas on how to achieve them. Push the borders of the thought process, move outside of the comfort zone in unchartered territories, and accept all ideas including the crazy ones.
- Prioritize, cut, and choose. You will never ever be able to execute all the ideas. This is the only step where reason and focus kick in. If you are spread too thin, you’ll do too many things, and will remain too shallow. Remember the old Pareto law: 20% of your resources will help you to achieve 80% of the goals. Focus on where you’re going to spend 80% of your efforts.
- Share the plan, the resources, and start the execution, with one very important set of activities: milestones! You need to stop regularly and measure where you are on your path. This will allow you to check you’re running at the right pace, need to enlist more resources, or raise the expectations again.
I will leave you with this famous quote from Michelangelo: « The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. »
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The art of public speaking in 3 easy hacks
https://pixabay.com/en/users/bohed-86046/ Day 555. Public speaking is said to said to be feared more than death. It’s so feared that it has its own word: glossophobia. If public speaking scares you, the best advice I can give is to join an organization as Toastmasters international or take courses to overcome this anxiety and help you deliver confidently speeches. However, over the years, with training and experience (nothing replaces experience in that matter), I came with three easy and simple hacks to overcome fear of public speaking. They do not require a PhD to understand or to apply. It’s jolly effective though! Here they are:
- Write and rehearse. At the exception of impromptu speeches, all prepared speeches need to be written in extenso. From the first to the last word. Not that you will be reading your speech, but writing is the first killer of anxiety. The second killer is to rehearse, rehearse, and when you are over, rehearse again. For a national contest, I repeat a minimum fifty times (yes fifty, five zero) my speech. I will know it by heart, but will rarely deliver the same words. It just anchors the flow and the ideas. Even the best actors rehearse, so should you!
- Breathe. Breathing is essential to speaking. Because while speaking you exhale, you need to inhale. Focus on your breathing. I actually do a dozens of deep breathing before stepping on stage. Not only it will calm you down, it will add extra oxygen in your blood that can get you a little bit dizzy, this will contribute to getting relaxed.
- Speak slowly. Let me tell you that everybody speaks too fast! If you think you are going too slow, record and listen. There is a big chance you will find you still speak too fast. You need to slow down from the beginning to allow you to breathe, to articulate, and to pause. If you speak slowly, you can accelerate to emphasize some dramatic pieces. There is a difference between pace and tone. You can have a joyful tone while going slowly. Do not fall in the trap of becoming monotonous, but allow yourself to slow down.
Of course, this addresses only the delivery of any public speech and not its content. The content will require another post, but you will find in this article from inc.com, 20 great advices, as well as 20 TED and TEDx videos to see different styles and effectiveness. I want to live you with one simple thought: stage fright is normal. Everybody has it! The day it disappears is the day you are becoming complacent and do not grow anymore. Do not be scared by stage fright, welcome it! It’s the signal that what you’re about to do matters to you! Just go and plunge!
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5 meditation myths debunked
https://unsplash.com/robinbenad Day 554. Meditation is making a comeback these days. Nothing surprising in a world described and lived as stressful. Of course, for some, meditation seems to be something for people who have time, for people who are not strong-willed, and for people who are quiet and laidback. Nothing is farther from the truth. Not only everybody can benefit from a 10-minute meditation, but medical studies have proven the positive effects of meditation.
Now, it’s true that meditation can be seen as challenging by many: My mind wanders and won’t keep quiet, I do not feel comfortable my leg crossed sitting on the floor, I feel stupid meditating, are common feedback from people who tried and stopped. However, as Light Watkins explains in this video, effects are visible, may be not by you but by your peers. In his TEDx talk, he debunks simply five common myths about meditation:
Myth 1: I’m a bad meditator if I cannot quiet my mind.
Myth 2: There’s no correct way to meditate.
Myth 3: I don’t have time to meditate.
Myth 4: Meditation will solve all my problems.
Myth 5: Success in meditation is based on stillness on my mind.
Go and watch this TEDx talk, inserted above for convenience, and start meditating daily for 10 minutes. Ask for help to a meditation practitioner if you do not succeed in your first meditations. As Light says, meditation will give your time back on top of other many benefits, one of which is increased productivity, one of my obsession. No negative effects, only positive, still hesitating?
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It’s not the height that matters, it’s to be there, now, executing!
Photograph by https://unsplash.com/danielacuevas
