Get Results: Productivity requires better decision making and problem solving
It’s easy to accuse high profile people of poor decision making, whether they are the government, local council, business leaders, or football managers. Hindsight is a great tool for scrutinising the choices of others, especially when results deviate from intentions.
But hindsight contains the full picture, where the initial decision is made on a best guess basis, relying on past experience as a pointer to future repeatability, and a great deal of hope that luck will work its magic on subsequent variables that could fall for or against a position.
Many critics comment from a position of ignorance, often unaware of the true complexity of a situation, which on the face of it seems obvious, until you dig into the detail sufficiently to actually affect change.
Most people are poor predictors of future outcomes, particularly with regards to their own circumstances. So what makes them experts in things they have less experience dealing with. People are quick to blame others, outside influences and unforeseen events for their own shortcomings when it comes to decision making, but are less willing to extend that courtesy to others.
Next time you feel the need criticise others for making a poor decision, take a pause, and think that maybe, just maybe there is more to it than meets the eye, and realise that maybe subsequent events didn’t fall favourably for the decision maker.
At least they made the decision in the first place, fear of change and uncertainty is often enough to paralyze decision making and subsequent action taking, it’s easier to play safe and do nothing. Give them some credit for trying, by doing so, you give yourself permission to take a chance and make a change through the decisions you make.
If your outcomes are not as predicted, use the power of hindsight to learn lessons about where it went wrong, so that you shorten the odds for unexpected results next time, that’s the best you can really hope for, and so it is for others.
Strongly held BELIEFS and the OPINIONS that come from them, are often considered a good thing, but they are in fact the worst thing for the individual and for society at large, let me explain why..
It is amazing how people are able to convince themselves something is true or false, even in the face of contradictory evidence. They grab onto something, will often defend it with their very lives, and only pay attention to data that confirms their beliefs. Whether it be a religious, political, cultural belief or ideology, they have an unwavering conviction to their cause.
You can fool yourself into believing just about anything, if you set your mind to it, even without definitive proof or evidence to support your belief. Many beliefs and the opinions that come from them, are built on nothing more than assumptions and inferences rather than hard facts, and are ultimately motivated by fear.
History is littered with examples of opinions that have resulted in horrific consequences, such as Hitler’s conviction to rid the world of Jews, Bush and Blair’s conviction to fix Iraq to make the region and the world a safer place, both stem from beliefs built on assumption and inference driven by fear, and little to do with fact.
These are extreme examples, but we are all guilty of holding onto a belief far too tightly, and dismissing or ignoring anything that counters it, for recent examples of issues that have divided opinion think of Brexit here in the UK or Trump in the US.
In the case of Brexit, whether you’re a remainer or leaver, you hold onto a mentally constructed position with unwavering determination. Those that oppose your view, are considered ignorant, racists, cowards, undemocratic, or uneducated, depending on which side of the fence you find yourself on.
Have you ever wondered why you feel such affiliation to your position?
Eckhart Tolle is a revered spiritual teacher, his books talk about escaping the control of THE EGO. The Ego is the unobserved mind, it is identification with thought. It is the illusion that your thoughts are who you are. He recommends bringing awareness to the process of thinking, and by observing thought, you remove yourself from it. The moment you start to observe it, you remove yourself from within it, and from this perspective you can take control back.
His explanation for why people hold mental positions and the emotional responses they inevitable experience when challenged goes like this….
“Two or more people express their opinions and those opinions differ. Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions that are invested with a sense of self. In other words, identity and thought merge. Once this has happened, when I defend my opinions, thoughts, I feel and act as if I were defending my very self. Unconsciously I feel and act as if I were fighting for my very survival, and so my emotions will reflect this unconscious belief, they become turbulent. I am upset, angry, defensive, aggressive, I need to win at all cost, lest I become annihilated, that’s the illusion. The Ego doesn’t know the mind and mental positions have nothing to do with WHO YOU ARE, because the Ego is the unobserved mind itself.”
So, if you do find yourself holding very rigid mental positions, bring awareness to them, observe them, question their underlying purpose. What are they doing for you? If you feel a negative emotion, next time you are challenged, step back from the emotion and observe it, and bring yourself out of the control of your Ego, step out of the emotion. You will feel better for it and mankind will only benefit in the long term. Emotional reactions don’t serve anyone.
Also question the accuracy of such beliefs and opinions, how much is built on assumption and inference driven by fear, compared to hard facts you know to be true, not from the testimony of authority figures and so called experts but from your own experience. After all, authority figures might be telling you only what they want you to believe, for their own gain, rather than in your best interests. Question everything you are being told, and be more flexible with regards to your beliefs. Science takes the approach of trying to disprove rather than prove hypotheses and this is a more effective approach to uncovering THE TRUTH.
by politicians pursuing their own career goals over that of their constituents,
by emotional and physical abuse,
by religious doctrine,
by greed,
by anger,
by selfishness,
when people are rude,
when people don’t acknowledge when you let them go first,
when people push in, or don’t wait their turn,
by people that get offended and try impose their values on others.
There are so many things you can be offended by, if you choose, far more than I’ve listed above and it is okay to feel offended. Yes really, if you choose to take offence about anything, you can. But understand that taking offence is a choice, it’s an internal process about an external situation, event or occurrence.
It stems from your EXPECTATIONS and/or PREFERENCES that aren’t being met by the situation, event or occurrence.
It also comes from your ATTACHMENTS to ideals, ideologies, ideas, causes, things, people and your thoughts about all these things.
And finally it comes from your PERCEPTIONS of situations, people things, ideas and the world, universe and of existence itself.
The question becomes where do your EXPECTATIONS, ATTACHMENTS and PERCEPTIONS come from? Are they self generated or influenced by the society and culture you have grown up in, or are surrounded by?
Do you have a right to EXPECT anything from anyone or anything? Okay you can be excused for preferring one thing, or outcome, over another, but you don’t have any right of expectation, and you can’t really complain if your preferences aren’t met, can you?
Is it healthy to form ATTACHMENTS to anything or anyone. After all nothing really belongs to you does it? Your partner, your kids, your family, your friends are not really yours are they. They are people you share time and space with, who you love, of course, but when you mentally add a “my”, “mine” to them, you are more than identifying something in a descriptive manner, you are investing a sense of yourself in them. This is attachment. Your mind does this to make itself bigger, better, more. In our consumer focused culture, we are conditioned by society to seek more.
Society’s call to consumption works very well because it plays to our self preservation instinct and our fear of being nothing, because deep down in our psyche, we believe we are a fleeting, temporary particle in time and space and as such vulnerable and insignificant. Society benefits from telling us the more we have (the more we attach to), the more we will BE, because modern society is built on economic growth, it wants us to keep consuming products and services.
With regards to PERCEPTIONS, there is extensive research showing our perceptions to be deeply flawed and influenced by our inner belief systems and values. We see, hear, feel, taste, smell what we think we should see, hear, feel, taste and smell, what we’re primed to, and what we expect to. We run a story over our sense perceptions that works to join the dots, but rather than drawing a direct line, embellishes and exaggerates with story-telling imagination.
For instance, a number of years ago, I went out for a drink with a good male friend of mine. I genuinely forgot to take my phone out with me, this was the days before phones became an extension of our hands. When I got back after 2-3 hours I noticed 15 missed calls from my then, casual girlfriend. Listening to the messages in turn, the content went from a casual, “just giving you a call to see what you’re up to, give me a call back when you get this message”, becoming increasingly agitated with each subsequent message to the last one saying “I know you’re with someone else, why are you treating me this way? CALL ME NOW!!!” Let me just say, I wasn’t cheating on her, I had no intention of doing so, but she was unable to rationally explain the fact that I wasn’t calling her back, which I would normally do straight away, and began to let her imagination run riot, believing I must be cheating on her. I later found out she had been cheated on by an ex boyfriend and as a result had trust issues, but I must admit I was rather freaked out at the time.
Hopefully this makes the point that perceptions are interpreted by internal mental processes, which give all meaning to them. First the event or situation occurs, then the mind tries to find an explanation, which is based on individual beliefs and values, which in turn are built from our own personal past experiences, learned thoughts and behaviour patterns and habits.
I’ve highlighted above some of the reasons we might feel OFFENDED, and if you’ve spent any time on social media, you’ll have noticed the outrage and offence that people seem to feel these days about all sorts of issues, some major some minor. Offence is taken rather than given much of the time. I might offend you by something I say or do, but with no intention from my perspective to do so, but you take offence all the same. You will be offended if what I say or do, doesn’t match an EXPECTATION or PREFERENCE of yours, or if it involves something you have some ATTACHMENT to, or if your PERCEPTION tells you some story about it that isn’t in alignment with your EXPECTATION/PREFERENCE.
It’s okay to be offended, it’s impossible not to be at some point in life if EXPECTATIONS/PREFERENCES, ATTACHMENTS and PERCEPTIONS are at work, but OFFENCE has to be taken to be felt. Remember this, because often AWARENESS is the biggest weapon we have at our disposal to battle internal processing of external events, situations or occurrences and how we feel about them.
Did you know we wear masks, and hide behind the social roles we play; we might be a parent, a brother/sister, a son/daughter, we might be a boss, an employee, a friend. We might be Bill the marketing guy, or Jenny the supplies manager. You might be a son, a dad, a brother, a boss to some, a subordinate to others, and Bill the marketing guy within a single day.
We play roles and wear masks because we’re conditioned by society to, after all, everyone is doing the same.
We might even get some comfort from this fact, we feel less vulnerable hiding behind a persona.
As a result, we don’t connect genuinely with others. We interact Ego to Ego, rather than soul to soul. My mask is communicating with your mask, and we’re not getting close to the real people below the surface.
Relationships are fearful, fraught, fragile, self serving and dysfunctional, because when we act from within our roles, from behind our masks, we know intuitively we are not being true to ourselves, we are pretending and we know this deep down, even if we don’t want to admit it.
So, be authentic, drop the mask, come from behind your social roles, and let your inner light shine through. If you fear rejection or the feeling of vulnerability, realise this is only the Ego (the part of you that mistakes your thoughts to be who you are) struggling to hold on to power. When you genuinely let yourself go, you can’t be hurt, particular if you fear you will fall, because outside the Ego there is no floor to hit, metaphorically speaking.
Many of us have fallen victim to PROCRASTINATION. It’s a real productivity killer, but have you ever dissected why you procrastinate?
I recently came across an interesting equation that provides some useful insight into the components that make up procrastination, and hopefully by looking at each of these components we can begin to analyse how each of us are falling victim to procrastination.
Motivation = (expectancy x value)/(impulsiveness x delay)
Lets look at each of these components…
Expectancy
If you feel confident of successfully completing a task, your expectancy will be higher and that will increase your motivation to get the work done.
If the task looks really difficult, expectancy will be low and you’ll be more likely to procrastinate.
Value
Value includes the rewards you get for completing the task, as well as how pleasant or unpleasant the experience of actually doing it is.
Impulsiveness
This is about how susceptible you are to falling foul of distractions and impulses to do other things, and this is directly correlated with procrastination.
The less able you are to resist the sudden desire to check Facebook, the more you’re going to put off working on that should do task.
If you can resist such an impulse, you’ll actually be strengthening your brain’s ability to focus. This is definitely a case of practice makes perfect.
Delay
This is the amount of time between now and when you’ll get any reward for completing the task.
The more you delay doing a task, the less likely you are to do it, because people naturally place far more value on short-term rewards over long-term rewards, even if the long term rewards are objectively greater.
So having identified the components that cause procrastination, the question is how to overcome them…
Increase EXPECTANCY
Break tasks into smaller sub-tasks. This reduces the psychological burden and possible anxiety, which can be experienced when taking on a particularly difficult task. The thought of taking on a particularly hard task can often be enough to prevent you from starting.
Don’t be scared to ask for help. If you can enlist the help of someone who genuinely knows what they are talking about, they can help you over the inevitable difficult bumps in the road.
Improve task VALUE
Improve the actual rewards for completing the task, such as visualising a more fulfilled life or enjoying the fruits of your labour.
Improve the experience of doing the work itself, such as doing the work in a nicer location/environment.
Add additional rewards for completing sub-tasks, such as can be found with gamification, or letting yourself watch a movie, or spend time on social media, when you complete something.
Prevent IMPULSIVENESS
Prevent distractions and temptations by removing yourself from them. If you’re needing to exercise, go to the gym where you’ll be immersed in a fitness focused environment. If you need to get an article written, work on a computer that has no internet access, so you aren’t distracted by social media.
Willpower get used up during the day, like a tank of fuel, so do hard things first when your willpower is fully charged.
Overcome DELAY paralysis
To make use of our natural tendency to put more value on short-term rewards over long-term rewards, break long term goals into shorter term ones, and give yourself a treat when completing them. This way you are making use of your natural tendencies, rather than trying to fight them.
The Pomodoro technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980’s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. This timer acts as an external motivator, and makes a bigger task more digestible.
So there you have it, work your way through the components of procrastination and figure out how best to hack each, and at the end of it, do what you want to get done.
If you’re guilty of saying the following statements, you need to sign up to my email list
I’m not getting quality leads anymore from [X]
[X] is not delivering[ Y], and that’s why my business is failing
People just aren’t buying anymore
People don’t want to pay for [Y] anymore
Everyone wants something for nothing these days
Too much competition, charging ridiculous prices, I can’t compete, they
won’t be around long, but long enough to hurt my business
There’s downwards pressure on prices
It’s a dying industry, technology is disrupting my business model
It’s much harder to make money in this industry now
All of these statements are excuses; they are examples of you complaining and blaming other people, organisations, circumstances, situations, and/or events for your predicament. They are COPING STRATEGIES designed to deflect responsibility from yourself onto others. This may seem like a good strategy, after all, if someone else is at fault for the position you find yourself in, then you don’t have to deal with the feeling of guilt for messing things up.
But in fact by blaming others, by complaining about how life has conspired against you, you are not just passing on blame, you are also passing power, the very power you need to get yourself out of the mess you find yourself in.
Until you TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for your situation, you will not be able to access your RESOURCEFULNESS. You need to have the right mindset to be able to make a sustained effort to make things right, and resourcefulness is required to find the innovative approach you’re going to need to succeed.
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for yours and other people’s actions and the consequences of those actions on you and your business. You might think it’s harsh to have to take responsibility for what other people do, but at the end of the day, it’s you and your business that will have to pick up the pieces if things head south. So make sure you vet those that you invite into your life/business, either as friends, partners, investors, employees, suppliers or customers. Don’t rely blindly on others’, do your due diligence and have the necessary checks, controls and plan B contingencies in place to make sure you are living up to your responsibilities, for youself,
Open up your mind to the possibilities, enabling you to access your RESOURCEFULNESS to find that innovative approach which is going to turn your fortunes around and allow you to achieve success.
Of late, I’ve been doing a bit of reading up on the history of philosophy, and came across some information regarding Utilitarianism, and it got me thinking….
For the purpose of this post, I’m not going to go into detail about Utilitarianism other than say it is a philosophical moral theory that focuses on the RESULTS, or CONSEQUENCES, of our actions, and treats INTENTIONS as irrelevant.
For sure consequences are what we have to live with, they are the results of action or inaction that effect us and others, after the events that lead to them, but should intentions be considered to greater extent than they often are?
If someone else’s actions result in you becoming worse off in some way, either economically or emotionally, should you focus on what that person intended to happen or on their execution and consequently, the consequences you are left with.
For instance, if a friend is trying to do you a good turn, by say, reuniting you with a relative you’ve lost contact with, and as surprise, arranges a surprise meeting, but when you’re confronted with that person, you are angry having been put in an uncomfortable situation. Should you react to the consequences of their intervention, or focus on their good intention.
If a friend convinces you to invest money into a business venture, but they fail to make a success of it, and it ends up costing you your investment, do you fixate on their inept execution or their intention of doing their best to make a success of the venture.
I guess, how the friend deals with their failings, in either of the situations detailed above, has some baring on your response. If in the latter example, the friend tries to hide the fact that the business is failing, is dishonest about their business acumen, doesn’t show remorse when it all goes pear shaped, or isn’t prepared to try to make the situation right, will affect how you feel about it, and them, in the end.
It’s true that many people will take a balanced, considered view, appreciating all the aspects that contributed to the failing, but there will equally be those that fixate on the consequences, and find it difficult to look beyond these.
Empathy and compassion is required in order to be able take the other persons view, and to be able to seriously consider their intent, at least as much as their inadequate or inappropriate execution. This can be especially difficult in the wake consequences that negatively impact you.
Empathy and compassion, come naturally to some people, but require some development in others. It’s important to remember that we have all been guilty of doing things that didn’t turn out as planned, and which impacted other people.
Generally, when things go wrong, the intention is seldom for it to be so, however we should always be mindful of our actions and their impact on others, and generally they will impact someone else at some point. Think your actions through thoroughly before taking them, and be more empathetic to others when their actions don’t turn out as intended.
I came across this crash course in Philosophy a while ago and thought it might be interesting for you to check out. The whole course is accessable below. The videos are embedded as a playlist so will follow on from one another automatically, so sit back and enjoy.
Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski nails this explanation about the difference between Ego love (fish love) and True love…
“Why are you eating that fish?”
“Because I love fish!”
“Oh you love the fish, that’s why you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it.”
“Don’t tell me you love fish, you love yourself.”
“And because the fish tastes good to you.”
“That’s why you took it out of the water and killed and boiled it.”
“So much of what is love is fish love.”
True love isn’t about what you get from another, it’s about what you give of yourself to another, everything else is FISH LOVE.
When a young couple fall in love,
They see in each other someone who can satisfy their emotional and physical needs,
Each is looking out for their own needs,
The other becomes a vehicle for their own gratification,
External love is not what you’re going to get but what you’re going to give,
People make the mistake of thinking you give to those that you love, the real answer is you love those to which you give,
If I give something to you, I’ve invested part of myself in you, and because self love is a given, there’s now part of me I love, in you,
True love is a love of giving not a love of receiving.
If you want to learn more about spirituality and the Ego, check out our guide here.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell who lived between 18 May 1872 and 2 February 1970, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, he was a prominent anti-war activist and a Nobel laureate.
In the video below, filmed doing an interview with John Freeman for the BBC’s Face to Face programme in 1959, Russell is asked by Freeman what advice would he give to future generations, based on his own life lessons.
Russell splits his answer into 2 parts, first intellectual advice and secondly moral advice.
The INTELLECTUAL advice
When studying anything, ask yourself what are the facts and what is the truth the facts bare out. Don’t get diverted by what you wish to believe or by what would have beneficial social effects if it were to be believed, only look at the facts
The MORAL advice
Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In an ever more interconnected world, we have to learn to tolerate each other and the learn to live with the fact that some people will say things we don’t like. This is the only way forwards, if we are to live together and not die together.
