May 7, 2010

The First Step to Your Ideal Career

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Newborn chicken

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? No idea. Which came first your career or your lifestyle? Erm… well, your lifestyle had a say in your career choice of course. But your career choice has determined your current lifestyle and will continue to do so.  So, do you enjoy your lifestyle inside and outside of work?

If not, you need to change your career. Its your lifestyle engine.

So how do you know what career is the right career for you? Well its the one that gives you the lifestyle you want, inside and outside of work, short, medium and long term (high quality decisions take the short, medium and long term into consideration).

So you MUST start then with your desired lifestyle in mind first. To overlook this is a huge mistake. Then you work backwards.

There’s a lot to think about that makes up your ‘lifestyle’, and you must think about it if you want to make the right career choice. The Great Career Escape process walks you through the entire thought process step by step, having you apply as you go along. By the end of it you’ll know exactly what career path will lead you directly into this lifestyle, earning and spending your time and money where, when and however you want.

April 21, 2010

Caught Up in Anything? How to Get Out Quickly

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Cornish Fishermen Deliver Directly To Londons Finest Restaurants

I think this is a great question to ask yourself every so often.  I ask myself this question a lot.  This post shows how I escape what I’m caught up in.  It works.

There’s nothing worse than being (or feeling) caught up in something, whether it’s work, relationships, business, your environment, whatever.  If you feel that way, then something’s not right.  And the default first step for most of us is to complain about it, or feel hard done by.

The first reason people stay caught up: they feel the pain and just spend their time and energy complaining about it. Many people never make it past this step.

Ask yourself in what areas you feel hard done by, or what you’ve been complaining about recently, and you might realise what you’re caught up in.  Some things you’ll realise will pass by, so you can just shrug your shoulders at those.  But some are unlikely to just pass by.  These are the things that you’re frustrated about that you really are temporarily caught up in.  Of course the remedy to your frustrations and worries for these is to get yourself out as carefully and as smartly as possible.

At this point, many people start throwing out the excuses and reasons why they can’t get themselves out.  But most of these excuses just sound lame when you really think about them.  Each of these excuses are effectively you casting another vote to continue to spend your short life caught up in something you’re unhappy about, instead of voting to get the hell out.

The second reason people stay caught up: they dish out excuses or reasons why they can’t get out, each one significantly decreasing any hope or chance of escape.  Of those who get past the complaining stage, few get past this stage.

The reality is usually that you can get yourself out if you drop the excuses and just go for it.  The first step then is to contemplate what you’d do if you did just drop those excuses.  If you have trouble doing that, then answer this: how would an actor in a movie play the role of you once you’d dropped those excuses?  Consider acting like that.

Obviously consider the consequences on your life and relationships in the short, medium and long term of both staying in what you’re caught up in, and getting out of it.  Then weigh up what you’re prepared to live with.  Then decide.

The third reason people stay caught up: they fail to decide to do something about it.  They may get as far as dropping all excuses and they may feel they’ve plucked up the courage to act.  But somehow, they just don’t make the decision.

And of course, verbal decisions (or passive decisions in your mind), in my book, can’t really claim the title of ‘a made decision’ until you act on them.  Only then have you really decided.

The fourth reason people stay caught up: they don’t plan some steps to take to get out as carefully and as smartly as possible (with minimal damage), and they don’t act on these steps.  Of those who decide to do something about their situation, few make it through to actually doing something about it.

So there it is.

Once you notice you’re caught up in something, do this:

1. Stop complaining and re-direct your time and energy…
2. Drop the excuses. Either plan a way around them, or just drop them (but consider the consequences, and weigh up whether you’d prefer to stay caught up for the rest of short your life or not)
3. Decide to act
4. Make a plan and act on it
5. Notice what happens
6. Adapt your plan and actions with what you’ve noticed and learned and keep taking actions until you’re no longer caught up

Now, depending on what you’re caught up in, you may not know what outcome you want, how you’ll plan to get it, or what you need to learn to be able to get out.  But they’re just excuses.  (See point 2 above).  Work it out.  Use your resources.  Use your contacts.  Talk to me.  Talk to each other.  Use your brain.  (What really?  Yeah yeah.  Honestly, it works)

If you’re caught up in your career, here’s your plan, map and all you need to learn and do to get out – click here

P.S.  Don’t forget to do what it takes so that you don’t get caught up in the same situation again

April 7, 2010

Positive Thinking Can Land You in Trouble

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Its about time I nailed this. Positive thinking is encouraged everywhere you look these days. But I think it can land some people in trouble.

How to Think Smart

Smart thinking requires looking at potential consequences, both positive and negative of decisions and actions in the short, medium and long term. You want to check all three of those time scales if you want to think smart, and you must look at upsides and downsides for each if you want to make well thought out decisions.  Failure to neglect any decreases the quality of your thinking.


The Problem With Failing to Acknowledge Reality

The problem with inveterate positive thinkers, is that their default setting is to strive to look only at the positives.  But reality always has a downside.  The downside is there whether you’re prepared to acknowledge it or not.  Whilst I agree that positive thinking can make you feel better in the moment and should increase your chances of acting towards more positive outcomes, you’re also open to the surprise negative consequences you failed to look at and failed to plan contingencies for.  This breaks people.  I’ve seen it happen a lot.

Inveterate positive thinkers can become delusional.  I don’t value the positive thinker standing next to me telling me that “it’ll all work out alright” when I’m faced with an important decision.  They don’t have the authority or credibility to tell me that.  As far as I’m concerned, I might as well have a clown advising me.  Similarly positive thinkers who are into extreme sports just scare the hell out of me.

The positive thinker who thinks it’ll be OK if she jumps off a cliff and will land safely and lightly on her feet also concerns me.  Its just not useful to think positively in certain situations.

Positive thinkers may now think I’m being negative. (Or will they? Maybe they’ll see the good in what I’m saying?)


Useful Thinking

Its why I don’t talk of positive and negative thinking, and instead developed the terms “useful thinking” and “unuseful thinking”. Its useful if it enables you to avoid or minimise negative consequences (think short, medium and long term) and instead steer you towards the outcomes you really want.  Its unuseful if it doesn’t.  Some positive thinking is “unuseful thinking”.  Some negative thinking is actually “useful thinking”.  Think about it.

Some of you may feel that this post has a negative tone to it.  I’d say it has a useful tone to it.  I hope you find it useful.

March 24, 2010

The Best Ideas Come After the Big Decision

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Lack of ideas, and therefore options prevents many of us from heading down new paths and trying new things.  The thing is, once you take your first step towards something new, lack of ideas is no longer a problem.  Once you’ve decided and stepped forward, your mind is no longer split and your focus tightens.  You tend to get showered with ideas of your own, and from other people.  It seems you have to take a bit of a leap of faith to be in that position.

If you’re holding back from heading down a potentially exciting new path because you lack ideas, head down it anyway (whilst hanging on to the day job!)  Then you’ll find the ideas you were looking for and a whole new set of options.

March 22, 2010

Instant Creative Thinking

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A lot of people in my seminars say to me ‘but I’m not a creative thinker’.  What they don’t realise is that they have the ability, they just don’t know how to turn it on.

Here’s one way:

Whatever area you’re trying to get creative solutions for, list the common popular solutions (the way it’s normally done), then next to each, write down the exact opposite.  Doesn’t mean all your ideas will be great, but it does jolt your thinking away from the norm.  Voila, instant creativity!

March 17, 2010

Become Indispensable

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I sent this post out as a newsletter back in 2008. For those who missed it, it’s worth a look:

My advice this month was given to me 10 years ago by a colleague who I deeply respected.  It still holds true and I often think about it.  He explained to me that to increase your value and earn more money, and increase the chances of continuous employment you should purposefully become indispensable to your employer or your customers.

He explained that often there is money to be made in the jobs that most people don’t want to do or can’t easily do.  He explained that in every organisation there are certain important areas in which few people, if any, are expert.  And that if you make it your mission to become the expert in any of these areas, then you’ve just made yourself instantly valuable.  Especially if you can create value and impact in your work that no one else can.  That’s when they need you.

When you reach that level, people keep coming to you.  Word of mouth soon travels when you can do something truly useful (and relevant) that no one else around can do.  You (and the value you provide) get free advertising.

With that of course comes bargaining power.  You should become more in demand, so long as you choose the right area to become expert in.  And with that, your (employment) price can go up.

But you must not get complacent!  Times are changing so fast these days that it’s healthy to assume that whatever niche area you are expert in will become obsolete in the next 5 years.  So you must keep learning of course, and keep an eye on which areas to dominate as THE expert.

Give this some thought.  It could change your career and your lifestyle forever.  And of course, if you want to become indispensable fast, then you should learn how to learn fast and self manage effectively so that you can put what you learn into practice in the right way at the right times.

Finally, it’s much easier to become indispensable when you’re in your ideal career. Are you?  If you’d like to find your ideal career because you’re not happy in your current one, drop me a note. I might have a surprise for you.

Help Yourself and Your Organisation

Since 2003 I’ve helped businesses and corporates in the UK and Australia grow high value engaged employees who:

  • learn fast and adapt quickly
  • become highly productive
  • think like a business

Here’s what they’ve said.

If you think I might help you or your organisation, then either get in touch, or put them in touch with me.

March 12, 2010

Free Learning by Thinking

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Often you don’t need to learn theory by attending a course or reading – you can extract it yourself from examples and analogies that you’re already aware of.  It’s an incredibly powerful way to learn and make highly memorable connections in your mind.

Use What You Know

Learning is attaching what you don’t know to what you do know.  By starting with something you already know and using it to trigger what you think you don’t know (hang in there, I’ll explain!) you create something that’s always at your fingertips, rather than having to learn completely disconnected new theory.

It’s like the difference between being able to derive formulae back in maths, vs memorising one.  Anyone who knew how to derive formulae knew how powerful this was.

Here’s What I Mean

Well, I’ve just done it in the paragraph above.  If you want to learn productivity, then choose an example of something you already know that’s very productive, and pick out the ingredients that make it so productive.  Write them down. There’s your lesson.

Or use an analogy.  You might ask yourself how doing your work each day is like going on a flight somewhere, with a take off time, and landing time, and so on.  I did this in a recent blog post myself which you might find useful.

Free Lesson on How to Make More Money

If you want to learn how to make more money, extract the lessons from people you know who have made money, or again, choose an analogy.  Maybe somehow you could relate making money to earning respect from people and question how they’re similar.  You might decide that to earn respect you must keep promises and provide value to people.  You might realise that to earn more respect you should provide even more value, and do it to more people, so they all respect you.  You might realise that doing it once isn’t enough, but doing it again and again means they’re bursting with respect for you.  Then you might realise that it’s the same rules for making money.

Einstein said that everything is connected to everything else.  So sometimes, do away with books and external sources, and see what useful lessons your mind can conjur up based on what you already know.  It’s a powerful and cost effective way to learn, and you can do it anywhere you like.

March 5, 2010

Big Decisions: Taking Risks

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Most people seem to throw around the idea that you must be a big ‘risk taker’ to make it in business.  It’s a viral message passed between people who haven’t thought about it enough.  Unfortunately it gets passed on to some poor hopeful who is rather risk-averse.  He definitely doesn’t want to risk making himself happier in life, in case it all backfires and he’s miserable.  So he chooses to stay put in his less-than-fulfilling job for the rest of his life.  Oh, the irony.

Let’s not pass this viral message on any longer until we’ve thought about it:

First up, everything you do, every decision is a risk.  So you’re a risk taker.

Second, you’re in business if you’re earning a living.  Whether you’re ‘making it’ or not in your career is for you to decide.

So the idea doesn’t mean all that much anyway.  It just means that you have to make some hard decisions to ‘make it’ in your career.  Yeah we know that.  The thing about risks, is they’re on a scale.  Low risk is still a risk.

And the thing about the majority of successful entrepreneurs and businesses is that they didn’t all take huge risks, despite things appearing that way.  That’s why they succeeded.  They took risks, yes, but they tipped the odds in their favour by researching, measuring, thinking and planning ahead.  It might look like a big risk to the casual observer.

Of course the real big risk takers, many of them failed.  Those who didn’t research ahead, think it all through, measure and act on the data.  You don’t hear so much about them as they tend to keep everything quiet.

Your job is to discover and decide where the risk vs opportunity is relatively low in your career decisions.  Then to do whatever you can to tip the odds even more in your favour.

If you let me drop you by helicopter in the centre of the bush in Australia, you’d be taking a huge risk.  But how could you reduce that risk?  You’d check I could pilot a helicopter first.  Then you’d learn all you can about bush survival.  You’d practice various life saving techniques perhaps and play out various scenarios in your mind to increase your survival.  You’d study a map of the area and take it with you, with enough supplies.

When well prepared, the risk is lower.  The opportunity and potential benefits may seriously outweigh the risks.

So learn, study up front, do your market research and plan contingencies and fallbacks for those big decisions you could make.  And if you don’t have a big decision ahead of you and you value the short time you have on this planet, go ahead and find one now, quickly.

March 1, 2010

Choose Your Rewards and Frustrations

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When you say ‘yes’ to a task or activity, remember you’re simultaneously saying ‘no’ to a whole lot of others.

When you say ‘yes’, make sure you acknowledge what you’re saying ‘no’ to.

Are you saying ‘no’ to something more important?

Are you saying ‘no’ to something that will have a bigger impact on your career or life in the short, medium or long term?

And is now really the very best time to be doing the one you’re saying ‘yes’ to?

Before deciding the long path you’ll head down, think it through.

P.S.  What did you say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to today?  What can you do to put things back on the right track?

February 19, 2010

How to Fly High in Your Work

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This post is about flying solo in business, but the same ideas apply to you in your career too.

If you’re flying solo in your work or thinking about flying solo do you know clearly what sort of flight you’re going on?  Have you thought about:

  • where you’re flying to?
  • why you’re flying there?
  • what you’re going to do when you’re there?
  • how you’ll make your flight enjoyable?
  • what turbulence is ahead?
  • your flight safety and what to do in an emergency?
  • your fuel efficiency?
  • what sort of plane you’re in?

I offer this as a word of warning.  I meet plenty of people who work for themselves.  Some fly solo to get away from a bad or frustrating situation.  Some fly solo because they feel they have no choice.  Some fly solo because they just fancy it.  Some fly solo because they come into money via other means.  Of the business owners I’ve met like this, many haven’t known clearly where they’re going.  Some haven’t even seemed that bothered about the purpose of their flight.  Many have had a very bumpy flight.  Some have nose dived.

The business owners I meet who are flying high (or even looping the loop or victory rolling) tended to start differently.  They chose a different sort of flight.  They chose an important flight for them personally to make.  They plotted a course to fly to a specific large group of people quickly and help them.  They knew the common enemy of those people, and they flew to save them because they were strongly compelled to and knew they were the person to do so.  They knew they were skilled, strong, proud and passionate to save those people from their enemy.  And they knew the personal rewards it would bring them.  They also made a point of planning their flight thoroughly, looking for turbulence ahead (and knowing that there will be turbulence), doing safety checks and checking their radar and dials regularly.  They’re the business owners I’ve met who are making a difference and winning their battles against the common enemy.  They’re the heroes.

Flying solo is one thing, but choose your type of flight carefully.   You’re not in a stunt team – don’t fly to impress.  Don’t glide either.  Don’t fly to escape, or because you can afford your own airplane.  And don’t plod along on autopilot either.  If you’re going to fly solo, fly to make a real difference to people that you care about because you’re the best person to do so.  Choose a mission and fly as the hero to your chosen niche market, nothing else.

What mission and flight are you really on?  Do you need to land and plot a new course?

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