How to be more proactive in life and business

Have you ever wondered how important it is to be proactive? As I was reading Upstream by Dan Heath, he discusses the benefits of being proactive and how best to identify and address hidden problems in a complex system.

Photo by Marc Zimmer | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Aim to prevent, not react
  2. Think in systems
  3. Make it personal

Aim to prevent, not react

Ideally, we need to do more than just react to problems. The goal should be to try and prevent problems from happening in the first place. Dan describes this as going “upstream,” from the quote by Bishop Desmond Tutu.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

-Bishop Desmond Tutu

A good way to start with this is to notice what problems seem to be common, either with your customers, community, or just in your life. Once you’ve found the common problem, you need to figure out what’s going wrong to reduce occurrences.

For example, at Expedia, they wanted to reduce the number of customer service calls, so they took the time to look at what the common issues were. They noticed that a huge percentage of the calls were about the customer’s itinerary. So they put systems in place to help people access their itinerary, such as an automated option to resend their itinerary instead of talking to a service agent. Once they made it easier for people to access their itinerary, they noticed a huge drop in service calls.

Often times systems reinforce the issues as they are not a specific person or department’s problem. For instance, the customer service calls at Expedia were being dealt with properly – promptly and satisfactorily – so there seemed to be no need to change the current system. If anything they were showing that customer service was performing exceptionally, as they were addressing so many customer issues smoothly.

Sometimes it takes a shift in perspective to identify widespread problems, as they may seem normal.

Think in systems

In connection with the point above, often to be proactive you need to think in systems not just linear reactive pathways. System thinking is important for both identifying and addressing upstream issues. This section will talk more about how to address issues within a system.

Consider everyone

A key part of working within a system is identifying everyone involved or connected to the problem and engage them in finding a solution.

One way to do find all relevant people is to think of an individual experiencing the problem (ideally someone you actually know) and look at everyone they could interact with.

An example discussed in the book was dealing with domestic violence within a community. It discusses how someone handling a domestic violence case noticed that the woman had a cast on her arm, and the break didn’t match the story given in the medical record. That cast meant that the woman had actually sought medical help and no one noticed the warning signs.

When looking to make upstream changes to prevent domestic violence, they made sure to involve people from all aspects of society to increase the number of people who could notice the signs and be able to help.

For instance, they developed a risk assessment checklist for nurses and health care workers to see if a patient is at risk of violence from someone in their life. They also noticed that people who were being released on the condition of wearing an ankle monitor might not receive the monitor until a few days after release, giving them an opportunity to be in contact with and possibly attack someone. So they made sure that they received the ankle monitor directly upon their release. Also, if there is a household with a history of domestic violence calls, they had police drive by on a regular basis to make sure everything is okay.

The goal was to find as many ways to improve the system so that people didn’t fall through the cracks and to increase opportunities for people to notice the warning signs.

Complexity

Systems are complex, which means it can be difficult to predict how systems will react to changes. It also means that you may not see direct results from your changes.

For instance, if you have a police officer stand at a corner, it may cause people to drive more cautiously and might prevent accidents. But it’s very difficult to track or identify what has been prevented.

Since it’s near impossible to track what has been prevented, its also far less common to encourage preventative behaviour. It’s much harder to show results from having a police officer act as a visual warning to increase safety than another police officer giving out traffic tickets. It’s easier to track, record, and reward individuals based on number of tickets (reactionary) given out than possible preventative behaviour.

As it’s difficult to predict how a system will react to changes, you need to have a way to track feedback. The feedback will help identify if changes are improving the system or if you need to adjust your approach. Looking for feedback requires you to actively be looking for changes and be committed to continually improving the system.

An example of this would be to track the domestic violence rates within a community, or maybe within a school looking at graduation rates. It may take years to see an impact within these clear quantitative (numerical) indicators, so it’s also useful to see if there are also qualitative (descriptive) indicators that you can track.

Make it personal

The more you can connect the problem to a specific person, the easier it will be to start identifying solutions. So if you start thinking about how we can help Ariana, then you’re able to focus on improving that individual’s situation.

By narrowing in on specific people, you’re able to get more context and delve into the nitty-gritty of how interconnected the system is. It also gives you a clear example of how an individual is affected and an easy way to see progress firsthand.

Overall, when you make it personal, it also makes it more concrete and actionable. Then you can take all that you learn from an individual’s situation to start helping other people with the same problem.

One of the examples in the book was when teachers in the Chicago Public School system wanted to improve graduation rates. They noticed a good indication of how many students will graduate was how well those students do in freshman year, so the school and teachers all started focusing on the students in grade 9 (freshman year). They changed the system by putting the best teachers in grade 9 classes, and making sure that teachers were meeting with others that shared the same students rather than the same subjects (i.e., all of Ariana’s teachers would meet, rather than all of the English teachers). This way the teachers could all work together to identify ways to help each individual, like Ariana. It ended up being hugely successful, and after a few years, they had saw the graduation rate increase and stay at that level.

Final thoughts

I like how this reframed the concept of being proactive in a way that was very tangible. There were so many clear examples of how this worked and the immense benefits that come from identifying how to go upstream and remove the issue before it happens.

I don’t think the concept of “be proactive” is novel to any of us. But this went so much deeper and discussed how it can be useful for both individuals and businesses.

It was interesting how much it highlighted the complexity, and the importance of getting everyone involved. I think that’s a point that’s often overlooked when discussing the importance of being proactive.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

The value of diverse personality types

Have you ever wondered about the diversity of personality types? In Susan Cain’s book Quiet, she discusses the power of being an introvert, and how we need to embrace all personality types. She highlights the strengths of introverts, but also emphasizes the importance of being yourself and focusing on your own personal growth and self improvement.

Photo by Alexander Grey | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. It’s a spectrum.
  2. Part nature, part nurture.
  3. Power in diversity.

It’s a spectrum

This whole book is about personality types, specifically introverts and extroverts. It’s important to understand what they are and the fact that they occur along a spectrum.

Most people are some combination of the two, with one typically more dominant than the other. No one really exists at the far extremes, meaning there’s no such thing as someone who’s 100% introverted or extroverted. But there are the special ones in the middle, called ambiverts, who have a big percentage of both.

“There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.”

– Carl Jung

Your level of introversion/extroversion is based on how you react to stimulation, including social stimulation like social situations. Generally, if you feel more rejuvenated or energized by external stimulation, you’re more extroverted. Then vice versa, if you’re more tired or worn out from stimulation, you’re likely more introverted. This isn’t about whether you enjoy it or if you can handle it (for example, social skills), it’s how you feel after going through it.

A good way to think about this is thinking about how you feel after leaving a party full of people that you love. You may have had a wonderful time with friends and/or family, but how do you feel afterwards. Do you leave the party feeling energized or tired?

Part nature, part nurture

One part of this book that was really interesting was how Susan delved into the idea of nature versus nurture for personality development. Basically the conclusion is that it’s part nurture and part nature.

A scientific study that showed the nature part – meaning the part that comes from your genetics – was done by looking at how sensitive children were and then re-evaluating them many years later as an adult. The study showed that sensitive children were very commonly also sensitive adults.

There were other studies that looked at the influence of parents on their children. Such as looking at how children were affected by having both introverted or extroverted parents. The environment (the nurture part) was also shown to affect the amount of introversion/extroversion. Which makes sense, your family environment shows you what’s considered normal and encourages you to act certain ways.

So, like most things, it’s partially genetic and also partially determined by our environment. Which is not too surprising, but very interesting to hear about the studies and how the conclusions were reached.

Cultural differences

You can also kind fo see this difference in the way cultures around the world view outgoing or extroverted personalities. Western cultures tend to encourage a culture of individuality and outgoingness, whereas other cultures can have more of a community focus and may discourage disruptive personalities.

An interesting example of a clash of cultures was when international students came to the USA for university. Professors were always encouraging class participation, even when people were not contributing any value. But for some of the international students they felt it was rude to speak up if they didn’t have something concrete to contribute and were surprised at how patient the professors were. Some even felt that it was disrespectful of the other students to waste people’s time when they could be learning things of value from the professor.

Susan thought it was important to discuss how culture can also impact personality types (nurture). I also really appreciated that the book had a disclaimer that general cultural trends are not absolute, and that there’s lots of individuality within every culture and country.

Power in diversity

Just like every other type of diversity, there’s power in our differences, including our personality types. We can learn and balance each other out. Two aspects that introverts and extroverts deal with differently are with risk and leadership.

Risk

Generally, extroverts tend to be greater risk takers, whereas introverts are more likely to be cautious. It’s not difficult to see how a balance of the two can be beneficial.

One example Susan talked about where an imbalance of leadership lead to significant damage was the 2008 financial crisis. It’s discussed that the crisis may have been partially caused by the culture of risk taking that was encouraged and enabled within the financial sector.

At that time, the people taking risks were creating profits and so more risk taking was encouraged. This led to having a certain kind of people (aka risk taking extroverts) making most of the decisions, and anyone who talked about being more cautious was removed from decision making positions.

It’s suggested that having more of a balance or diversity of personalities could’ve mitigated some of the damage.

Leadership

Leadership is typically thought to be a strength of extroverts, but in reality introverts can often outperform extroverts in leadership positions.

Introverts tend to encourage and enable proactive employees. This means they’re good at listening for good ideas and making sure they get implemented. They also tend to delegate more to those who can do it best, rather than making sure they get recognition.

Introverts tend to listen to others and make time for reflection or deep work. Both of these can be incredible strengths as leaders.

Extroverts can also be good leaders, and not all introverts are great leaders. This is only to highlight that leaders can come in all shapes, sizes, and personality types. Also, to show that things typically seen as being negative (being quiet) can be monumental strengths (listening).

Final thoughts

I found this book really interesting. Personally, as an introvert that sometimes crosses into the ambivert territory, I really enjoyed hearing all the scientific studies that challenge our thinking about personality types.

It was great to get a different perspective than what I grew up with, aka the idea that you need to be outgoing to be successful. I loved hearing about the benefits of introverts and personality diversity, and how we all have out personal strengths and value to contribute. This book was a delightful reminder that you just need to be yourself and that there’s no one way to do anything.

Like most things, the key is to find balance by encouraging everyone to be themselves and understand that you are enough just as you are. You don’t need to mask or pretend to be different than who you are. We, as a society, need different personality types to continue thriving, and encouraging diversity can also create positive side effects of becoming more accepting.

I know the book is not new, and people have become more accepting of introverts in the past 10 years. But there’s still so much that isn’t common knowledge, with lots of scientific proof to back it up. I would highly recommend this book.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

How to kick start your project

Have you ever wondered how to maintain your motivation for a project? I was reading Kick Start Your Success by Romanus Wolter, and he describes ways to both kick start your projects, maintain your motivation, and achieve your goals. He discusses the intent behind your work and how to inspire others to engage with your project. Your project can be any kind of goal you’re working towards, whether business, personal or anything else.

Photo by Etienne Girardet | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Intent: Internal vs external
  2. Inspire others to help you
  3. Question of the day

Intent: Internal vs external

One of the first things Romanus defines is the idea of internal and external intent.

Internal intent is your personal purpose for this project. It’s the reason why you want to accomplish this goal or be successful. It also highlights the benefits you are hoping to achieve through this. Basically, what’s in this for you?

Whereas, your external intent is the purpose of this project for other people. It outlines how this will benefit and help others, along with why they should be interested in this project. Identifying this external intent is a great way to understand how to get others involved.

One activity that Romanus takes you through in the book is to craft an instant impact message. This is a short phrase, around 10 words, that succinctly outlines how you can help others and the external benefits of your project.

Understanding both your internal and external intent will help keep you focused, by understanding why you are doing this project and how you can help others. Both intents, when brought together, can make your project sustainable by balancing the benefits for yourself and others.

Inspire others to help you

A big part of this book describes how you can involve others in your project, as nothing happens in a vacuum. Romanus uses this phrase that I really like to “inspire others to help you.” This simply means finding ways to engage others in your project and have them be part of your success.

A good place to start is noticing how you speak about yourself and your project. If you speak passionately and positively about both, people will be interested to know more. It may also help you be successful by seeing the positive side of things and focusing on what you’re achieving.

Another way to involve others is to ask them for input. Ask people for advice (see below for your question of the day), you never know who might be able to help. Don’t hesitate to talk about your project and see what others think.

Romanus even encourages you to engage with the naysayers. Rather than just taking their negativity to heart, ask them how they would solve the issue they see with your project or how they would do it differently. Sometimes they just aren’t used to being listened to and would appreciate the opportunity to give you some advice. Their advice might be useful! Whereas sometimes they’re just negative and have nothing useful to say. If the latter is the case, then there’s no reason to give them any more time.

Question of the day

In combination with the topic above, one way to inspire others to help you is through a question of the day.

The idea of this activity is to craft a question you can ask people throughout the day. The question should focus on the current hurdle or barrier you’re facing, and simply asks for advice on how to overcome it.

It’s a great way to spark conversations about your project and to crowdsource ideas to overcome issues. Getting advice from a wide range of people increases your chance of getting a good solution, as well as making more connections that might benefit your project.

Plus the question focuses on a specific actionable item that you need to address and creates an opportunity for others to help you. It can also provide your close friends and family something to focus on, especially if they want to help and don’t know how.

Another great benefit of this is that you can change the question of the day whenever you have a new hurdle. Once you’ve solved the issue, then update your question to focus on the next issue you need to solve.

Final thoughts

I found the idea of connecting your project to its external and internal purpose was a really interesting way to think about it. It’s important to both provide you and someone else benefit, or else it probably won’t be successful. If you’re not gaining something from it, you won’t be motivated to keep going, and if it isn’t benefiting anyone else, then you won’t be able to make it sustainable, especially if you need to make money.

I’ll be honest, the book did come across as misogynistic and outdated. The examples used in the book were about a man looking for a job and the woman was looking for a boyfriend to complete her life. It just seemed so dated and unnecessary to reinforce those gender stereotypes. I get the idea that they wanted to show how the activities apply to a range of goals, but they could’ve easily switch the genders.

However, there were some interesting ideas and useful activities in this book, but maybe read it with a grain of salt just to find what’s useful for you.

Final tip

Here’s a life tip, if there are books that you think might have interesting parts but don’t want to support the authors financially (or don’t want to buy the book for various reasons), check out your local library! You can also borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your library by using the Libby app connected to your library card. It’s a great way access books and I use it all the time.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

  • You can buy the book here.
  • You can get the Libby app here.

Why you should get diverse career experience

Are you struggling to figure out your career?

As I was reading Range by David Epstein, he outlines how generalists tend to succeed in careers, especially in our current world. He talks about the benefits from gaining diverse experience, and the potential downside to becoming too specialized. He also highlights a handful of people who became successful because they were generalists, along with instances when generalists perform better than specialists.

You’ll get there eventually.
Photo by Thomas Dils | Accessed on Unsplashed.com

Main impacts

  1. The importance of sampling.
  2. Getting stuck in a specialization can create blinders.
  3. Find your fit.

The importance of sampling

A key part of career development is finding yourself, and you tend to find yourself through experience, not just through reflection. Reflection is important, but by itself it’s not enough. This means you need to actively try things and diversify your experience to find out what you like and what you’re good at.

Head start vs sampling

Near the beginning of the book, David talks about the difference of getting a head start versus sampling. He uses two famously successful athletes to discuss their career paths, with Tiger Woods representing the head start category and Roger Federer for the sampling.

Tiger got a head start in golf, as he started really young. Whereas Federer tried a bunch of different things before settling on tennis, which gave him a range of skills and coordination that he could then apply to tennis.

It is important to note that even though Tiger started when he was very young, he was always the one asking his dad to play golf, he was not forced to play golf.

One is not better than the other, just different, but both can achieve greatness. Typically, we hear a lot about stories like Tiger’s, where they start so young and become immensely successful. But we don’t often hear the stories of others like Federer who took a very different path. These are the kind of stories that David is highlighting in this book.

Even Vanessa and Serena Williams had immense range. They were required to try a bunch of different sports for different reasons or skills, and both were encouraged to have diverse educational backgrounds and learn multiple languages. If you want to learn more about the Williams, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie King Richard.

Reframe failure

Part of the value in sampling is knowing when to stop, and knowing when you’ve gained what you need to from an experience.

Grit is important, but more important than having grit is knowing when you need to apply it. You don’t need to commit whole heartedly to something that’s just not right for you. If you can find a balance between trying new things and fully committing to the most important ones, you’ll end up being both successful and satisfied.

It’s also important to comprehend that “failure” at something is not “failure” of yourself as a person. Choosing to move on or give up because it’s not right for you, does not make you a failure.

Failure is good. It can help get you where you need to be and provide you with experiences that may be useful later.

Try new things and don’t be afraid to move onto something new.

Getting stuck in a specialization can create blinders

This book was a combination of highlighting how diverse experiences are useful and complimenting it with examples of how becoming too specialized can also be a hindrance.

For instance, a lot of the best ideas and solutions come from outside a speciality. Usually this is because the individual can bring a different perspective and apply useful lessons from other areas. They aren’t limited by the natural constraints taught by that profession/speciality, or mentality of “that’s just how we do it.”

There’s a program where NASA crowd sources solutions in exchange for a reward. Often times the solutions come from people outside the industry, as they can apply new ideas or different perspectives to the problem. Sometimes the ideas are so simple, there’s an example of one that was only a few pages long, and all it needs was a different perspective to understand the solution.

Interdisciplinary careers

Some of the most applicable careers or degrees are interdisciplinary, but can be the hardest to justify or implement effectively. Interdisciplinary experiences allow you to gain a range of critical thinking skills. Then having the opportunity to apply different types of critical thinking across subjects/industries can be hugely instrumental and lead to breakthroughs.

Tied to this concept is the idea that some of the most influential inventions or studies are interdisciplinary, as they end up being useful across many specialities. They may also provide opportunities for knowledge to cross-over as it opens the door to multiple areas.

Interestingly, most executives in business have a diverse backgrounds. The varied experience may give them a better understanding of how different parts of the company work, having worked in similar situations, or help them to develop creative solutions to things.

Lateral thinking

A lot of this ties into the idea of lateral thinking, which is the idea of taking one concept or bit of knowledge and applying it elsewhere. It can also be things like taking a solution that works in one industry and seeing how it can be applied in other industries.

One example is how a battle strategy can help medical students solve a problem. When students heard both the medical problem and the battle story together, they were much more likely to solve the medical problem using a way that mirrors the battle strategy.

There’s also a lot of medical inventions inspired by aspects of nature or other parts of the world. It’s a matter of simply applying one concept in a very different situation.

Find your fit

As mentioned above, you find your self through experiences, not just reflection. It can take time to find your fit and what you want to do. That’s okay. Everyone has their own timeline.

It’s important to not get frustrated with yourself. Don’t feel like you’re behind, or like you’re supposed to be at a specific point by this age. You don’t need to start young to be successful.

I’ve heard this before, but I really like the reminder that you only need to compare yourself to yourself. You only need to be concerned with who you were before and who you want to be. In general, you need to find the best ways to continue growing and become the most un-encumbered self. Your experience doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s.

Remember, it’s fine for you to take time determining what works best for you. The experiences you have along the journey can only serve to help you in the long run, and you never know how something might end up being useful elsewhere. No experience is a waste, and all are ultimately helpful.

One example I thought was really interesting was about van Gogh. He tried so many things before turning to art, from being a teacher to a pastor. In each experience he was fully dedicated to whichever career path he was currently pursuing, even though he kept failing. Then much later he finally turned to art, and even then it took him time to find the best fit. First, he tried drawing and he knew he was close to a good fit, but was constantly told he was not good enough. Eventually he tried painting and he knew it was a perfect fit, so much so that he developed his own way of painting. Incredibly, most of his art are from the last two years of his life.

Final thoughts

I felt like this book was really hopeful. Less people are sticking with one career path these days. It seems like people are taking longer routes to the career they want, or change careers one or more times. This book just showed how much these choices can be beneficial.

It’s a great reminder that you don’t need to hide your diverse experience, or be ashamed of it. It’s actually a benefit and may even make you more desirable. You just need to understand the benefits and know how to talk about it.

Personally, my career has kind of been all over the place. Kind of like a meandering stream slowly working towards a career in an environmental field, and now I’m taking all that experience and hoping to make it useful elsewhere.

Needless to say, I found hope that this can all work out for the best and that my experiences are all valuable, no matter where I end up or stop along the way.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

Ever wondered how to think differently?

Have you ever wondered how people identify trends? Nah, me neither. But I read Non Obvious by Rohit Bhargava who identifies trends and looks to understand how the world works. It was about more than just how to spot a trend, and talked about how to understand the world and think differently.

Photo by Nick Fewings | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Stay curious and wander intentionally.
  2. The poetry (and power) of language.
  3. Do deep work offline.

Stay curious and wander intentionally

A big part of this book was talking about how to find inspiration from every where. It’s important to stay curious and wander intentionally, meaning to try new things and expose yourself to new ideas.

There are so many ways to wander intentionally, all you have to do is do things differently. You can change your routine and just look around you. Get outside your bubble (or industry) and try to understand the world. As soon as you start making adjustments, you can be exposed to new perspectives and see things differently.

When you’re looking for inspiration, make sure to look across diverse sources, such as various industries for trends that may affect you or ideas that you can apply elsewhere.

The poetry (and power) of language

In this book, Rohit stressed the power of using the right language to describe trends, but it seems applicable to so many other areas of life.

He stressed the importance of using the right words to both capture the idea and catch people’s attention. When selecting words to describe a trend (or anything else) it needs to both explain what it is without being too vague or unclear, while also being catchy and noteworthy.

Rohit notices that poets are really good at this. They understand the importance of using exactly the right word, and that often less is more. Understandably so, since poetry leaves little room for extra words.

Recently, I’ve been hearing people talk about how elegant the prose is when an author starts as a poet and moves into novels or stories. There’s something to be said when you’re used to picking each word with care, and when each one has to add value.

I feel like this can be useful in any role that requires you to use words (aka everything). If you’re intentional about the words you use, then your message can be clearer and more effective.

Do deep work offline

Another piece of advice is to do your deep work offline. Find a way to capture the information you need and work on it without distractions.

Rohit’s example of this for identifying trends is to capture all kinds of stories that you think might be relevant to trends in a physical way, either in some kind of folder or printed version. Then, set aside some time to deliberately pour over the stories and analyze them, to find what is similar and start to develop trends.

Really, what’s important is to both set time aside for this and to do this work offline – away from devices or distractions. However that process looks like for you, the idea is to do deep work in a way that removes all distractions.

It’s important to take time to process the ideas you’re working through. That may mean different things for people, depending on how you think things through. Sometimes you need to take a break and come back later with a fresh perspective. You never know when inspiration might hit.

I think this is a really valuable reminder. Not everything needs to be done without distractions, but your deep, thoughtful work can really benefit from focused work. And like most things, this needs to be intentional.

Final thoughts

Even though I’m personally not interested in being able to identify trends, I found there was useful information on how to understand the world. Obviously, there were sections that I found less interesting or applicable to me. But I think what this book emphasizes is to be open to information from all places and actively seek new sources of inspiration. And I think that’s one of the most valuable lessons to learn.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

How entrepreneurs can address poverty, carbon emissions, and unemployment

Have you ever considered the interaction of poverty, unemployment and carbon emissions? As I was reading the book A World of Three Zeros by Muhammad Yunus, he describes how the interaction of these can be addressed by social businesses. In his perspective, social businesses (an expansion on what’s currently considered business) can get us to a world of three zeros; zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero carbon emissions.

Photo by Timon Studler | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Key ideas

  1. Everyone can be an entrepreneur.
  2. Expand the concept of a “business.”
  3. Change the systems and assumptions.

Everyone can be an entrepreneur

One of the biggest messages in this book is that everyone can be an entrepreneur. There is no specific type of person that is born to be an entrepreneur, it’s not limited to certain people. It’s really just another way to be creative and finding innovative solutions. Anyone can develop that skill, if given the opportunity.

Everyone has the potential to become an entrepreneur. We just need to provide the opportunity, resources, and expand the concept of what a business can do. Sometimes people are limited by a lack of opportunities or resources (especially capital investments). But sometimes people are just limited by the idea that a business has to revolve around making a profit (see next section).

When everyone can become an entrepreneur, you allow people to change from being a job seeker into a job creator, which helps everybody. Letting people change their mentality of having to find a job, into how to create a job for themselves and others opens the door for so many new ideas and opportunities.

Expand the concept of a “business”

Going hand in hand with above, is to change the concept of a “business” to do more than create profit.

A business is just a creative way to address a problem. It doesn’t need to create profit, it needs to sustain itself and have potential for growth, but what you measure as success expand past just profits. Instead of profit being the main measure of success, profit can simply be a means to grow the business, by putting the money back into the business to create more opportunities

Business can be a tool to develop creativity and self-discovery. The entrepreneurial spirit is primarily innovation and creativity, and can be applied to any issue. There is tremendous opportunity to channel these skills for the greater good and creatively solve

An alternative to the profit driven business is a social business. A social business is a business that aims to address a social problem. The success of the business can change from ROI (return on investment) that primarily looks at profits to maximizing SROI (social return on investment). Once you expand what a business can do, you can easily adjust the key performance indicators (KPIs) to focus on areas that are important to the success it hopes to achieve. The key skills of building a business can easily be adjusted to other definitions of success.

Once you expand this concept of “business”, you open the door to creative solutions to so many social issues. It also gives people the opportunity to do what they’re passionate about, while improving the world around them. Community based solutions are typically the most sustainable and effective as they are more likely to understand the context and what will actually work within the community.

People are the key to solving world problems, and right now there’s so much untapped potential.

Change the systems and assumptions

In order to expand business concepts and open the door to more creative solutions, there are systems and assumption that need to change. To start, we need to change business to be more than just about profits, providing alternative definitions of success.

Another key assumption that we need to change is that all people are inherently selfish. Generally, people want to help but are restricted by the system, which limits what can be done. However, if we start functioning on the assumption that all people are inherently selfless, we can chance the systems and open society up to help others.

Another way to support changing the system is to provide training and support to those starting their own business (social or any other kind). Training provides guidance for other people on their journey, and you often need more than just a good idea, you need to know how to put it into action. Providing resources (money, connections, etc.) can greatly improve people’s access to starting a business. Businesses require money to start and build momentum, and money can create opportunities where people feel like they have none. Micro-loans became very popular because they showed that sometimes people just need a little support, and that people can do a lot with a little.

Overall, we need to change the system through an integrated manner. Change mindsets and provide opportunities, then you’ll see people flourish.

Final thoughts

I felt like this book was very hopeful. It chose to look at the good in humanity and highlight how we can actually address large social issues. We have the potential, people are inherently good, so let’s setup systems that encourage positive change.

This book felt aimed at people in business, and not necessarily at people who just want to change the world. It had business language and talked about untapped opportunities, while providing hope and challenging what it means to be a business.

It was a unique book. It’s not a typical entrepreneurial book nor a typical let’s save the world kind of book.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

Skills to be a successful entrepreneur

Have you ever wondered what skills entrepreneurs have in common? As I was reading The Creator’s Code by Amy Wilkinson, she discusses the skills she found to be shared by the 200 successful entrepreneurs she interviewed.

Also, just a content warning, this book is a bit outdated and highlights some people who are now considered either controversial or no longer successful, such as Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes. If reading it, take it with a grain of salt.

Photo by Ariel | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Stay agile and test your ideas.
  2. Find inspiration everywhere.
  3. Develop the essential skills.

Find inspiration everywhere

One of the really interesting parts of this book was the discussion of how these entrepreneurs come up with ideas. Amy groups the common thought processes into three types:

  • “Sunbirds: From one domain to another”
    • Sunbirds tend to look at other industries to solve a problem in their own industry, by taking something that already exists and using it somewhere new. An example of this was getting inspiration from a helicopter blade for a heart stent.
  • “Architects: building new models from the ground up”
    • Architects identify a gap or need and building something new that fits. Generally, they look for what is missing or for common pain points, then they find solutions by questioning assumptions and challenging how things are normally done. An example of this is how spanx was developed, Sara Blakely realized there was no reasonable option of what to wear under white slacks and she created something to fulfil the need.
  • “Integrators: Combining concepts”
    • Integrators tend to combine existing parts to create something new, such as putting unexpected things together like unusual spice combinations. They tend to mix and match until they find breakthroughs. An example of this is Chipotle, as the founder wanted both fast food and the best, fresh ingredients.

But overall, the key ingredient for each of these is curiosity.

Stay agile and test your ideas.

So not that you have your idea, you need to start putting it out in the world.

A key part of the initial stages is to remain agile. You need to find ways to test your ideas, ways to get started and see if that’s the best direction to go.

Being able to test parts of your strategy allow you to fail on a smaller scale, and fail wisely, before fully committing to a large investment or an overarching strategy. It also ensure that you’re not restraining yourself by going all in on aspects that you can’t change later on if fail. It’s also a great way to quickly get feedback on your ideas, allowing you to continuously improve without getting stuck.

While staying agile, it’s important to keep your overarching goal in mind, guided by the general direction you want to go. This mix of maintaining an overarching direction while testing lots of things in the shorter term, provides brand consistency and resilience.

Develop the essential skills.

The backbone of this book is that Amy interviewed and analyzed over 200 successful entrepreneurs to find similarities between them. Based on all of her research, she created a framework that outlined what she saw as six essential skills of all the entrepreneurs.

The six essentials skills she found are:

  1. “Find the gap:” To keep their eyes open for opportunities, be curious about the world and look for new ideas.
  2. “Drive for daylight:” To stay focused on the future. Similar to a race car driver, keep your eyes on the horizon as generally you will go wherever you look.
  3. “Fly the OODA loop:” The OODA (observe, orient, decide and act) loop was developed by a pilot. It means to keep updating your assumptions, stay agile, and always be evaluating your situation/environment.
  4. “Fail wisely:” To practice and master small failures so that you can avoid catastrophic mistakes. Basically make small bets to test your ideas and develop resilience.
  5. “Network minds:” To bring together diverse individuals and collaborate with unlikely allies. As well as find interesting and engaging ways to connect with others (ex: gamify work, competitions, etc.)
  6. “Gift small goods:” To be generous to others, often by sharing information and offering kindness. This strengthens the relationships in your network and helps build a positive reputation.

Final Thoughts

I thought this book was okay. There were definitely some interesting concepts. I think it’s refreshing that this book on entrepreneurs was based on research rather than just someone’s subjective perception of their own success.

But there were definitely some dated examples (like Elizabeth Holmes) that you have to read with an updated perspective. I also can’t help thinking about how personal environments are likely to have a huge influence on an individual’s success but that it wasn’t considered in this framework.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the book. But I really did enjoy the discussion on how new ideas are created and inspiration is all around us.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

How a moment can change your life

Have you ever wondered how some people are able to maintain discipline for longterm change but others lose motivation quickly?

As I was reading the Holy Sh!t Moment by James Fell, he discusses how a eureka or “holy sh!t” moments can prompt long-term and sustainable change. He also discusses how we can prepare ourselves for these types of moments and why they work so well.

A eureka moment can change your identity and create long lasting change.
Photo by Justin Leibow | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Eureka moments are emotional and provide a shift in priorities, passion, or identity.
  2. Identity shifts are essential.
  3. There are always cascading effects in other areas.

Eureka moments are emotional

Eureka or holy sh!t moments, are usually quite emotional, and the emotional aspect helps create a shift in priorities, passion, or identity. For example, finding out that you’re pregnant or will become a parent can cause huge shifts in priorities as a result of this new identity (parent). There are lots of examples of pregnant women quitting drugs/alcohol/smoking once they find out they’re pregnant, and they’re able to successfully quit as this new identity becomes their new focus/priority and they’re constantly reminded of it.

You can help prep for a eureka moment by laying the ground work and being open to it, but generally the moment has to happen naturally.

Here are some ways you can start prepping for a eureka moment:

  • Be open to new ideas or experiences.
  • Think about what you want to change and why.
  • Start questioning your motivations.
  • When you’re stuck, go distract yourself and do something totally different until you know what you need to do next.
    • Ideas for ways to distract yourself are to go for a walk, exercise, cook, or do something creative. Basically you want to walk away from it until you’re ready to continue working on it. Creating that space gives you time to come back with a fresh perspective or new ideas.

As this is an emotional event, it can come from a place of discomfort. If you’re currently unhappy with your situation, this can be a good time to start prepping for a eureka moment.

Identify shifts are essential

Ideally, you want to focus on the type of person that you want to become. Focusing on being the kind of person who is healthy and thankful for what their body can do is much more powerful than focusing on how much weight you want to lose. Focus on being the person who perfects a specific sport, not on getting to a specific size or weight.

Most importantly, shame doesn’t work and often times shame can actually make things worse. So don’t keep making yourself feel bad, rather focus on the kind of person you want to be. As you develop your new identity, you’ll gradually change your exterior (or skills) too.

If you change your identity, your habits will also change. If you view yourself as someone who is healthy and takes care of themselves, then you’ll find that you gradually start making healthier choices and habits. Identify who you want to be and start asking how each decision aligns with that identity.

Another important tip is to not let yourself daydream about what life will be like when you reach your goal. Studies have shown that if you daydream about the end result, you almost feel like you’ve accomplished the goal and you often lose motivation to work towards it. Daydreaming about end results don’t get you where you need to be, rather it’s better to dream about the process and how much you’ll enjoy the journey.

Cascading effects

Positive habits in one area often spill into other areas of your life. This can be for two common reasons:

  1. A result of the focus: If you’re focused on getting really good at a sport, you often end up eating better and consuming less alcohol, drugs, and junk food with the specific aim to help you achieve your goal. Maybe you noticed certain foods make it more difficult to train or recover after training, so you end up eating it less to improve your training. Even if you’re not specifically looking to change your eating habits, your key goal is both influenced by and influences other aspects of your life.
  2. A result of how you feel: Often times becoming successful in one area can make you feel happier and more confident. That feeling can help you be successful in other areas. This confidence can spill over into areas like your career or relationships, helping you to feel and do better in those areas too.

As you focus on improving yourself in one way or building expertise in one area, you often affect other areas of your life. It makes sense, each aspect of your life is both connected to every other aspect of your life and to everything else around you.

I believe this can also happen in the reverse too. If you’re in a funk mentally or hating some aspect of your life, that negativity can spill into other areas. It can make you less motivated to take care of yourself or less motivated to achieve your goals.

I believe everything is connected, so it make sense how there can be so many cascading effects.

Final thoughts

I found this book really interesting. It was quite different than the typical self improvement book that just focuses on doing the work. It really highlighted how a huge mental and emotional shift can spark and sustain change. Sure you still need to do the work and be consistent in pursuing your goals, but this was an interesting complement to the typical improvement tips.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

How to make the most of an hour

Do you feel like you never have enough time?

As I was reading The Power of an Hour by David Lakhani, he talks about how it’s not always a lack of time that’s the problem, but rather a lack of dedicated/focused time. The book discusses how setting aside one hour a week can enable monumental change.

This was similar to The 4% Fix (see blog post here), but written more for someone in business. It discussed both how one hour can create significant change, and then goes on to discuss in great detail things you can do within that hour.

Don’t miss out on the time you have, use the time you have more effectively.
Image by Murray Campbell | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. You need more focused time, not just more time.
  2. Plan your time! Outline exactly what you need to do within that hour.
  3. Outline what success looks like to you.

You need more focused time, not just more time.

A key message I got from this book was that despite everyone saying we’re too busy or have no time, we don’t need more time. What we really need is more focused time, meaning we need to be intentional with our time. Focused time is where you set aside a certain amount of time (suggestion from David is 1 hour), and you remove all distractions to focus on a specific activity/goal.

One hour can be powerful, or it can be filled with distractions causing you to not accomplish anything. You also have to deliberately remove ALL distractions. Put your phone away, turn off all notifications, close your email program, tell no one to contact you, etc. Just a friendly reminder that nothing is too urgent that it can’t wait 45 min.

David suggests that the first time you do this, it should be a full 60 min focused on outlining what you want to change/fix/improve in your life or business. Then going forward he suggests breaking the hour into 45 + 15 minutes, with the first 45 minutes completely focused on the activity and then use the remaining 15 min to do any admin type work or complete an initial first step/action towards your goal. For instance, if you’re working to improve your health, the first 45 min might be focused on coming up with a weekly workout plan and then the last 15 min could be scheduling a workout class or contacting a personal trainer. That way you can remove all distractions (including phones/internet) until the last 15 min, improving your focus in the first 45 min.

This focused hour can spark change and gives you the time to outline a clear strategy to achieve your goals.

Plan your time!

To make the most of this hour, it’s incredibly important to plan your time! This is quite similar advice to what was outlined in The 4% Fix (see blog post here). Be very intentional about how you spend this time and clearly outline what you want to accomplish in that hour, so that when you sit down to work you can jump right in.

Here are some really useful questions he outlined to help you plan your time:

  • What do I want to accomplish in this hour? (Be specific!)
  • What specifically am I going to do? (Plan the details!)
  • Who else needs to be involved in this hour and what other resources do I need? (Come prepared!)
  • How will success be defined? (Define the end goal!)

He suggests doing some of these actions during the hour:

  • Write down all the steps for what you need to do to achieve your goal (What?/How?)
  • Add deadlines for each step (When?)
  • Outline who needs to be involved at each stage (Who?)
  • Allocated time in your schedule (and others) to accomplish all of this (How?/When?)
  • What action can you do right now? – Use your remaining 15 min for this. (Take action!)

Personally, I would add one more action to the list above, that would be to outline your why for the goal. Why are you doing this and why do you want to accomplish this? Having a clearly defined why can help maintain a sense of motivation throughout the journey.

Outline what success looks like to you.

I think this was one of the more powerful ideas in this book. He states that the key to any goal or target setting is to clearly outline what success will look like. That means, at what point do you feel like you’ve accomplished your goal?

The power of outlining success is that when you actually accomplish it, you get a huge feeling of accomplishment. Often times we work on vague goals (get better at this language/skill), and it becomes something you can always work on but never really accomplish. These vague goals remove any sense of accomplishment or success, so it feels like you’re never really getting anywhere. BUT if you outline key goals or accomplishments, you can see progress being made and it makes you feel more productive.

I know I’m often guilty of these vague goals, such as writing down “improve my Thai skills” every year, which feels repetitive and doesn’t give me a clear goal to work towards. You can always get better, so when have you really achieved “success”?

This is something I’m going to be much more intentional about when setting goals. I know this is why people always talk about using S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound) goals, but I’m not always good at setting those kind of goals and they can feel too constraining or cumbersome to create. But thinking about what success means, is a much easier way to frame it. It also gives me key milestones to celebrate, making it a bit more manageable and rewarding.

Final thoughts

There were a handful of good concepts and ideas from this book that helped complement the ideas discussed in The 4% Fix. I feel like it helped me appreciate the value of getting different perspectives on the same thing. The two books were both discussing a very similar concept, but were very different in their approach.

I feel like if you’re not in business, then there’s quite a bit of this book that won’t apply to you. But if you either have your own business or are involved in the business/management world, there might be some really useful ideas in this book. To be fair, it’s also setup in a what where you can easily just read the sections that are relevant to your life.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

  • The book can be bought here.
  • You can find out more about the book here at Goodreads.

How one hour can change your life

What would you do if you had one hour each day to yourself?

As I was reading The 4% Fix by Karma Brown, she talked about how she changed her life by setting aside one hour in her morning to work on her goals and projects. She calls this the 4% fix, as one hour is 4% of your day. By setting aside one hour in the morning, she’s been able to reach and surpass her goal of publishing multiple books.

This is not a book summary or a review. This is simply a discussion of ideas that made the greatest impression on me when reading this book.

Photo by Who’s Denilo ? | Accessed on Unsplash.com

Main impacts

  1. Be intentional with your time.
  2. Mornings are important!
  3. Start small and be kind to yourself.

Be intentional with your time.

One of the most important messages in this book was to be very deliberate about how you spend this hour. Having an extra hour to work on anything is precious, and use it accordingly.

Pick a project or goal

Generally she suggests that you use this extra hour for a project or something special. Pick what you want this hour to work towards. If you have a dream goal or project, spend it on that.

You should have an overarching goal or project that you’re working on. Maybe it’s working on a skill, or exercising, or even just having quiet time to reflect.

Plan the details

Once you have a general guidance on what this hour is for, plan each morning and plan exactly what you want to do. That way you can wake up and get straight to it. This hour is precious, and you want to make the most of it. The best way is to show up prepared with a plan of what you want to accomplish.

If your overarching goal is to write a book, plan which days you are writing, editing, and planning. If your goal is to run a triathlon, plan which days you’re going to run, swim and bike; and then make sure your equipment is set out the night before. Make it easy to get started in the morning.

Part of spending this time intentionally is also to make sure you don’t get distracted by other things. Don’t spend your time with little tasks or with busy work. Don’t open your emails or be tempted to respond to people. Don’t open social media. Avoid all distractions, so that you can completely focus on your intended goal.

Mornings are important!

So I know a lot of people don’t consider themselves morning people (including myself!), but apparently mornings are one of the best times for this kind of deep work. There is a lot of science behind why mornings tend to be the best time to work on creative projects, so let me give you some examples. I don’t have links to the studies that back these up, you’ll have to read her book to get more details.

Reasons to take time in the morning

One key part of mornings is that you haven’t had to make many decisions yet, so your decision making ability hasn’t been exhausted. You’re also less fatigued and you have more self control. Your mind is not exhausted from all the little things that wear you down during the day. This makes it a good time to focus on work that requires both willpower and brain power; you tend to have the most in the morning. Honestly, this is the strongest argument I’ve heard for doing deep work in the morning, it makes sense that the hundreds of decisions we make each day wear us down by the end of the day.

Generally, people are more creative and active in the morning. Even if it’s not a creative endeavour you’re working on, using more creative thinking can benefit you in all areas. You can use creativity to find innovative solutions, or just to work on a creative project. Either way, mornings are apparently best. Personally, I think this is more dependent on the person, but I think it’s worth trying out all times of the day to see what works best for you (including in the morning).

Finally, it’s usually quiet in the morning and there are less distractions (even if you don’t have kids). You’re likely to have fewer distractions including from messages or people trying to contact you, people are less active on social media, and there are less expectations for you to be available. To be fair, I could see this also being the case late in the evenings.

Now, mornings might not be a best fit for everyone, but they tend to be a really good time deep work. Give mornings a chance! But ultimately, find what works best for you.

Start small and be kind to yourself.

In the book, she also gives practical guidance on how to incorporate this hour into your day, and what’s needed to make it sustainable.

She personally wakes up at 5am everyday, and suggests that you wake up an hour earlier than normal to fit this time into your day. However, waking up an hour earlier usually means that you also have to adjust your bedtime. It’s best to adjust your wake up and bed time together gradually. Start with getting up 5-10 min earlier (and going to bed 5-10 min earlier) and gradually move it up to where you want it to be. If you jump to one hour earlier, you may experience some jet lag-type symptoms, as your body is not ready for that drastic change. But a gradual transition is easier and more sustainable, as it gives your body time to get used to it.

Also, be kind to yourself! It’s okay to start small, and you’re not going to be perfect. Sometimes you won’t be able to wake up early, and that’s okay. It’s better to be kind to yourself and be persistent than judging yourself harshly and giving up. Most importantly, find what works for you. Everyone is unique and there is no one size fits all solution.

Final thoughts

I thought this book was quite practical and useful. It walks you through why it’s useful, how to make the most of it, and how to build the habit. I think there’s some pretty good advice in here. I don’t know if I’m going to start waking up at 5am everyday, but I do think I’m going to try using my mornings more deliberately.

What do you think about this practice?

What would you do if you had one hour to yourself each day?

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

References

  • You can find the book here.
  • You can see all books by Karma Brown on Goodreads here.
  • You can follow Karma Brown on Twitter here.