Category Archives: Inspiration

Don’t set Goals, Try this instead

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives. Getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

For most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things. It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

The Difference between Goals and Systems

What’s the difference between goals and systems?

If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.

If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.

If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.

If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:

If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results? I think you would.

Let’s talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you are working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”

The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.” Instead commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.

Think about someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term. Instead let go of the need for immediate results.

I was working out at the gym last week and I was cycling. I hit somewhere around mile 45 and I felt a twinge in my knee. It wasn’t painful, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about going further. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will be able to ride further in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You cannot predict the future (shocking isn’t it!)

Every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way. Instead let build feedback loops.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.

Fall In Love with Systems

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I have found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what will make the difference.

6 Mindsets that will radically improve your business

Success is something all career-driven individuals aspire to yet many never get there at least at the levels desired. Why are some business people successful and others not? It has everything to do with habits, beliefs, passion, flexibility and attitude.

Often there’s nothing really different between one entrepreneur and another in terms of ability, as each person can do whatever he or she wants. What it all comes down to having the frame of mind to set practical habits and keep a balance between attachment and commitment and letting things happen. Here are 6 mindsets for success:

Choose courage over fear

To be successful, you have to have courage. To become courageous, do courageous things. Much of being successful is about going beyond what you think you’re capable of — venturing into the unknown. Whether you fail or succeed, you will learn and grow. Growth, in and of itself, means attaining a level of success whether it came from success or failure.

Believe in yourself

Attitude is everything. A negative attitude decreases success and a positive attitude creates success. Without that belief in yourself, you will lack a path to success. Success is something that is created. It’s not something that merely happens.

When you firmly believe in yourself, you can achieve virtually anything. It’s within this belief that you’ll find the power to create the resilience and fortitude needed to keep going when things get tough.

Choose good company

Whom you surround yourself with is among the most important choices you’ll make as you climb up the business ladder. Negativity is contagious and if work groups, especially bosses, are negative, there will be a ceiling to your success.

To reach the goals you want, be willing to change bosses if necessary. Or if you’re the boss, rid your team of toxic people immediately. It only takes one toxic person to destroy the morale of an entire operation. Additionally, when you surround yourself with other successful, goal-oriented individuals, you can learn from them and take on some of their habits to add to your own as you proceed along your road to success.

Have a purpose and a vision

Visualization is powerful because actions follow thoughts. A great technique for nurturing your vision and purpose is to make your goals visual. Some people use vision boards and others set goals identifying specific dates for their achievement. Whatever works best is a matter for the individual to figure out.

I believe that anything that’s written down is more likely to be achieved than visions kept only in the head. When you make your purpose visual, you make it real. When you keep them in your mind, they remain wishes.

Accept the challenge

There are few easy paths up a mountain and often they’re hard to find. Challenges will be an essential piece in any type of success in business.

Challenges are what creates your growth along the journey. Each challenge hindering your path provides you with the chance to create a more defined direction toward attaining your dream vendors, customers, managers, employees and numbers. For this reason, be thankful for each challenge. Each one is a compass directing you toward new business leads, circumstances and opportunities.

Be discerning

Discernment creates success. You must think deeply and wisely about the bigger picture and what it is you need for each step along the way to continue articulating and executing your business goals.

Mindfulness means being aware of all angles and staying sharply in touch with the present so that you do not have to clean up mistakes in the future.

Be astute when it comes to group dynamics: which person is the best at what job, which customers or deals will take you the furthest and what it is that each moment is calling on you to do or change to be the most efficient. That is how selectivity offers you the pursuit of success.

How to respond to nasty emails

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a nasty email, as well as its secretive, vaguely insulting cousins. You know the messages I’m referring to. They don’t need exclamation points or all caps to be full with anger and dripping with sarcasm.

Dressing someone down via email is tempting because it’s easy, you have plenty of time to vision up daggers that strike straight to the heart, and you lack the inhibition that’s present when the recipient is staring you in the face. This type of email is known in cyberspace as “flaming,” and all such messages have a single thing in common, a complete and utter lack of emotional intelligence.

A recent survey (sponsored by communications device manufacturer Plantronics) found that 83% of today’s workforce considers email to be more critical to their success than any other form of communication.

Email has been around in the world long enough that you’d think that we’d all be pros at using it to communicate effectively. But we are all human and if you think about it we haven’t mastered face-to-face communication either.

The bottom line is that we can all use a little help. The five strategies that follow are some methods for keeping your emotions within reason, so that you don’t hit send while your emails, tweets, comments, and virtual chime-ins are still flaming.

1. Follow Honest Abe’s First Rule of Netiquette

Lincoln in his younger years, had a bad habit of applying his legendary wit when writing insulting letters to, and about, his political rivals. But after one predominantly contemptuous letter led a rival to challenge Lincoln to a duel, Lincoln learned a valuable lesson, words impact the receiver in ways that the sender can’t completely comprehend.

By the time he died, Lincoln had amassed stacks of flaming letters that verbally shredded his rivals and subordinates for their bone-headed mistakes. However, Lincoln never sent them. He vented his frustration on paper, and then stuffed that sheet away in a drawer. The following day, the full intensity of his emotions having subsided, Lincoln wrote and sent a much more pleasant and appeasing letter.

We can all benefit from learning to do the same with email. Your emotions are a valid representation of how you feel no matter how intense but that does not mean that acting on them in the moment serves you well. Go ahead and vent—tap out your anger and frustration on the keyboard. Save the draft and come back to it later when you’ve cooled down. By then you’ll be rational enough to edit the message and pare down the parts that burn, or even better rewrite the kind of message that you want to be remembered by. Just remember leave the “To” part blank.

2. Know the Limits of Virtual Humor

Some people show their disapproval with words typed in ALL CAPS and a barrage of exclamation points. Others, though, express dissatisfaction more subtly with sarcasm and satire. The latter is no less of a breakdown in the core emotional intelligence skill of self-management, and it can be even more dangerous because it’s harder to detect when you’re doing it. The sender can always convince him or herself that the spite was just a little joke.

3. Remember That People Online Are Still People

While captivated by the warm glow of a computer monitor, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that there is a living, breathing human who will end up reading your message. Studies have shown that people who are communicating online experience a “disinhibition effect.” Without the real time feedback between sender and receiver that takes place in normal face-to-face and telecommunication, we simply just don’t worry as much about offending people online.

We don’t have to experience the discomfort of watching someone else grow confused, unhappy, or angry because of something that we said. When these natural consequences are delayed, we tend to spill onto the screen whatever happens to be on our mind.

4. Know How The Internet Feels 😉 🙁 😮

Emoticons have a mixed reputation in the business world. Some people and even organizations believe that smiley faces, winks and other symbols of digital emotion are unprofessional, undignified, and have no place outside of a high school hallway.

When used properly, however, a Dutch research team has shown that emoticons can effectively enhance the desired tone of a message. The team led by Daantje Derks at the Open University of the Netherlands concluded that “to a large extent, emoticons serve the same functions as actual nonverbal behavior.” Seeing that nonverbal behavior accounts for between 70 and 90% of a message when communicating face to face, it might be time to ditch the stigma attached to emoticons in the business setting.

For those leery of dropping a smiley face into your next email, I’m not suggesting that you smile, wink, and frown your way through every email you write. Just don’t be afraid to peck out a quick 🙂 the next time you want to be assured that the recipient is aware of your tongue in cheek.

5. Know When Online Chats Need To Become Offline Discussions

Managing online relationships will always be a somewhat difficult task for people built to communicate in person. However, managing critical email conversations is even more difficult for those programmed to communicate via email. Significant, prolonged, and heated email exchanges are almost always better taken offline and finished in person.

With so much communication taking place via email these days, it can be hard to initiate a face-to-face conversation when you feel that an online interaction is becoming too heated or simply too difficult to continue online. Online technologies have become extremely useful for increasing the speed and efficiency of communication, but they have a long way to go before they become the primary source for creating and maintaining quality human relationships.

8 Motivational tips for entrepreneurs

Being an entrepreneur means that you will often blaze you own trail. No career guides, counselor or maps will guide you from one step to the next. You have to make it up as you go. Here are some tips to keep you entrepreneurs motivated.

1. Keep the big vision in sight.

A big vision will take you far. When things go wrong on the path to your success, and they will, keeping the big vision in mind will enable you to steer your way back to a successful course. It may not always be the course you imagined, but your big vision becomes your north star, which in turn helps you navigate and orient yourself through the darkness. Your vision is your base, compass and cosmic beacon, lighting the way forward.

2. Fuel your vision with perseverance.

What should go hand-in-hand with a big vision is the perseverance you’ll need to keep moving forward. If you’re a Game of Thrones watcher, there was a great line in a recent episode when Stannis Baratheon was being advised about the lack of wisdom in starting a battle in the snow. He responded: “We march to victory or we march to defeat, but we go forward, only forward.”

Sometimes, when things get challenging on your path as an entrepreneur, you have to commit yourself to moving forward, regardless of the anxiety and fear surrounding the next steps. When you fuel your big vision with determination and the spirit of “only forward,” in time you will meet your success.

3. Make a plan, but be flexible.

You need a few sets of plans, even if each is only a few pages. A business plan, with a complementary marketing outline, are important blueprints for success. They help you map out the major landmarks of the road ahead, state your success and break the journey into important milestones you can track your progress against.

Most people don’t like giant, robust plans nobody will access, but I am a believer in a more modest go-to plan that can act as your basic instruction manual and hold you accountable to specific numbers. The reason most people don’t support highly detailed plans is that they believe you need the flexibility to alter the course as necessary. Sometimes, large changes in a plan will be unavoidable.

4. Embrace your expertise.

If you are already naturally good at something, or have a skillset, embrace it. Don’t try to be all things for all aspects of your business. Hire out or sign contracts with agencies for the things you can’t do, and focus on your strengths as quickly and often as possible. Don’t be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. For all those computer problems remember Apex IT Solutions is here for you ready to provide you with fast, reliable services at affordable rates. We offer computer repair & support, IT consulting, server support, cabling services, and much more.

5. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

What is already working in other people’s business models, in your industry, in software applications and other business operations that you can emulate instead of re-create? Don’t waste your time trying to set up systems when you can simply purchase and install one, saving precious time and spending little money. Sometimes the best decision is to take on the expense of some good systems so you don’t have to waste time and make mistakes building your own.

6. Don’t burn out.

This isn’t a piece of advice. Your health is literally the most important thing in your life. When your body gives out, you’re done. Your heart doesn’t care how good a business you have; your circulatory system isn’t all that impressed with your money or accomplishments. Try to eat really good food, get good sleep and take as much time as you can to enjoy the small things in life. You will burn out if you sacrifice your physical and mental health on the “altar” of your business. So, take care of yourself.

7. Leverage everything.

Learning life hacks may seem cliché, but they can teach you an important mini-lesson in leverage. When you use leverage to your advantage in every aspect of your life, you go further, faster. Leverage outsourced help to streamline tasks and gain traffic time for important phone calls. Leverage down time waiting anywhere (the doctor’s office, your child’s school, your auto shop, an airport) to get stuff done.

8. Keep your sense of humor.

If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re missing out. I too am guilty of not doing this enough however laughing is a good cure to diffuse stress. So put some joy into life and get some perspective on the fact that this is only life after all you don’t have to take it so seriously.

So, try to laugh more and stress a little less. It strengthens your emotional and mental well-being, keeps other people from getting under your skin and keeps you cool and collected, plus it makes you a lot more fun to be around.

Memorial Day: Remember the meaning

Today is Memorial Day 2015. In cemeteries across the U.S flags flutter, flowers are placed on the graves of the dead, and bugles sound the notes of Taps. The crowds paying tribute, however, have grown sparse.

Memorial Day began as a way to honor Civil War dead, the commemoration was long called Decoration Day from the practice of decorating graves. The observance was held on May 30 no matter the day of the week. Since 1971, Memorial Day has been observed on the last Monday in May as the end of a federally mandated three-day weekend. Now firmly ingrained as the traditional start of the summer season, the solemn reasons behind the day have faded despite the continuing sacrifices of so many.

Seventy years ago, it was very different. Memorial Day 1945 marked an uneasy time of mixed emotions. There was celebration, remembrance, and fear. World War II in Europe was over by three weeks and no more battle casualties would join the rows of crosses planted from North Africa to the beaches of Normandy and across France into Germany but the war in the Pacific still continued. Many Americans who fought in Europe feared they would be going to the other side of the globe to continue the fight against Japan rather than back to the States for a victorious homecoming.

In the far Pacific, forces led by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz battled to wrap up the invasion of Okinawa, a long and bloody struggle that cost the lives of more than 12,000 American soldiers, sailors, and marines, including U.S. Tenth Army commander Simon Bolivar Buckner. In the southwest Pacific, having fulfilled his promise to return to the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur sought to complete his occupation of the islands and plan the final assault against Japan.

In the Pacific that year, Memorial Day observances were particularly solemn. Fresh graves were decorated in cemeteries with names largely unknown a year earlier: Saipan, Peleliu, Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The question that could not yet be answered was how many more graves and cemeteries would be required to end the war. On Saipan, a special service was held for crews of B-29 bombers lost in the air war against Japan’s home islands. Their final resting places were unknown.

In the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt intended to pay a quiet visit to her husband Franklin’s fresh grave at Hyde Park, but found instead an overflowing crowd of well-wishers. Among the tributes to the fallen leader was a wreath sent by the current president, Harry Truman. It was laid on Roosevelt’s grave to honor the man who had led America longer than any other president and died within sight of victory.

Truman also sent a message to a “Salute to the GI’s of the United Nations” rally in Madison Square Garden. The new president emphasized the four essential human freedoms long articulated by Roosevelt: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The American Secretary of State and the Soviet Ambassador to the United States were in attendance. Each praised American-Soviet cooperation in the war and expressed hopes for a long-lasting peace.

In Chicago, an estimated 750,000 citizens turned out to cheer General Mark W. Clark, a veteran of the long, frustrating Italian campaign. Clark had made a surprise flight from Paris to Chicago to lead a parade down State Street to observances at Grant Park. Clark expected to receive orders momentarily to report to the Pacific.

On the West Coast, ports and shipyards continued to fill supply lines with men and materiel in anticipation of bitter and costly invasions to come. Yet, there was also the anticipation of hordes of returning servicemen. Newspapers warned veterans to be wary of scams that purported to offer college benefits.

In the tiny hamlet of Airmount west of New York City, Jesse Tompkins was one of the few Civil War veterans still living. Two weeks shy of 98, he spent the day at his home reading newspapers and listening to the radio. Quoted as saying he had seen enough parades, Tompkins would not live to see Japan’s surrender. Mercifully for all, it came later that summer.

On that Memorial Day seventy years ago—a day one newspaper called “a day of dedication”—there was indeed hope that battlefields would become relics of the past. Such has not been the case. No one foresaw then the places American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, as well as coast guard personnel, firefighters, and law enforcement officers, would be required to make a stand. To the World War II names would be added Chosin Reservoir in Korea, Khe Sanh and Pleiku in Vietnam, Kirkuk in Iraq, the Korangal Valley of Afghanistan, the World Trade Center, and a thousand others at home and around the world.

On this Memorial Day, I honor the sacrifices of prior generations. I honor the sacrifices of the men and women who have served or continue to serve our country. I pledge never to forget the true meaning of Memorial Day. I would not have the privilege of celebrating this day and honoring so many memories without the sacrifices of those who gave everything.

10 Points about the Art of Spreading Good

1. Good deeds are contagious. We naturally imitate the people around us, we embrace their ideas about appropriate behavior, and we feel what they feel. Our acts of charity are no different. In 2010 generosity experiment was done and it showed that every extra dollar of giving in a game designed to measure altruism caused people who saw that giving to donate an extra twenty cents.

2. The networks acts like a matching grant. That same experiment showed that contagious generosity spreads up to three steps through the network (from person to person to person), and when added up, all the extra donations that resulted at every step the study, found that an extra dollar in giving yielded three extra dollars by everyone else in the network.

3. Messages get amplified when they spread naturally. People are bombarded by information and requests every day, especially in our new mobile and tech-centered society, so the effect of any one request to do a good deed may get lost. But do not underestimate the effect of a broadcasting strategy. Research on the social media appeals suggests that the indirect effect of a message on a person’s friends is about three times larger than the direct effect on the person who received the message in the first place. The more you can get people to deliver the message naturally, the greater this multiplier effect will be.

4. Close friends matter more. When researchers studied behaviors like obesity, smoking, and drinking, they found that spouses, siblings, and friends had an effect on each other’s behavior, but next door neighbors did not. So any attempt to change people’s behavior should probably focus on motivating these “strong ties” rather than broadcasting to a wide range of weak connections.

5. Our real world friends are online too. Although most relationships online are not strong (the average person on Facebook has 150 “friends”), we do tend to be connected to our closest friends online too. So, it is possible for us to use online social networks to reach our real world friends to spread social good. If someone is suggesting friends to a person who could help spread the world, it is important to try to figure out which of his or her relationships are also likely face-to-face. We do this using photo tags and frequency of communication online, both of which work relatively well.

6. Make your good behavior visible. Studies of donations to an NPR pledge drive showed that people donate more when the caller was told about someone else’s donation.

7. Don’t overdo it! That same study found that when callers heard about an extremely large donation, they opted not to donate at all themselves because they did not want to look cheap. There is a sweet spot too low, and it will drag down the average donation, too high and people will not donate at all. In that study they found that the message to optimize donations was one that revealed a donation size at the 90th percentile, in other words, a donation that was bigger than about 90 percent of all donations, but smaller than the other ten percent.

8. Interest, influence, and influence ability are important. A natural suggestion of network science is that people with more friends and friends of friends are important because they are more “central” (a smaller number of steps from everyone else in the network). But, as we argue here, to maximize influence, there must be 1) interest in spreading social good, 2) influential, and can persuade others, and 3) influence-able by their friends. Without these characteristics, even the most connected person won’t be helpful.

9. Central players can also help predict the future. A 2011 flu study showed that people with more friends tend to be affected by things spreading through the network before other people. On average, they got the flu two weeks earlier than others. This means that central players can also be used as leaders to indicate trends or to monitor the progress of a social good campaign.

10. Realize your network power. Everything we do ripples through our network. If you feel better because you did a good deed, this will have a positive effect on your friends, your friends’ friends, and even your friends’ friends’ friends. Your own positive change can affect hundreds of people. And who wouldn’t want to make his or her corner of the vast human social network a better place?