Good enough is a potent propellent.
When shipping something is more important that getting it perfect, good enough gets you in the game.
Good enough gives you time later to revisit. Good enough gets you iterative.
Good enough doesn’t mean you don’t try.
But you also don’t let perfection paralyse you.
Good enough is generous because it moves everyone closer to the value you’re here to give.
If it’s good enough it might be time to ship it.
If you’re always doing things half pie to save yourself for the ‘important stuff’ you won’t be ready when the important stuff comes along.
How you do anything is how you do everything.
I love this idea of a ‘resourceful state’
It just means a way that you are, physically and mentally where you are able to access your inner resources.
It’s a sunny Saturday morning and you’re powering through your chores. There’s a smile on your dial and everything feels simple and figure-outable.
I’m obsessed with the ability to get into this mode whenever I want.
Turns out it’s as simple as remembering a time you were in that state, and re-creating your internal and external world to match.
How were you standing? What was your face doing? How were your eyes? Your breath? What kinds of things were you saying to yourself in your head? What were you focussing on?
It’s no surprise that these are the same tools actors use to change their biochemistry.
How do you want to be, do what do you need to do?
It’s not what you get it’s who you become.
It’s nearing the end of March which means we’re a good chunk through the year now. That also means it’s a good time to re-look at those goals you set over new years.
Goals can get us trapped in the idea that we have to ‘get’ a ‘thing’.
Get a deadline, a certain amount of money or some status symbol…
What I’m being reminded of this time around is that the ‘thing’ you get in pursuit isn’t even the real prize.
What really matters is who you become.
You don’t really want to win the Oscar- you want to become the type of actor who could win the Oscar.
You don’t want to run the marathon, but become the person that can.
The accolade or the toy isn’t the thing, but who you become is.
Set the goal, sure. But know the real prize.
An uncomfortable question to ask yourself: Where does this lead?
It’s pretty pointy. And it can elicit some pretty uncomfortable truths. We can ask this question in all aspects of our lives and get some useful feedback.
Maybe you find yourself flying by the seat of your pants at work, never really putting in the preemptive work to be really great at what you do. You find you can ‘get by’ pretty well this way, no one notices and your work is ‘good enough’.
Where does this lead?
We can fall into the trap of thinking that ‘one day’ we’ll do better, but really what’s better than deferring to ‘one day’ is focussing on ‘day one’- and that brings us right to today.
Asking “where does this lead” forces us to face what is all to easy to ignore.
The next question of course is, where do I want to go? and what if this was ‘day one’ on the journey there?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
There’s a little secret your calendar is telling you.
It’s called ‘time plus tax’… and it’s not named after ‘taxing’ tasks. It’s the secret extra time we don’t account for.
Maybe it’s just me, but I am REALLY good at under-estimating the time a task will take. Today I had a website update to make and I allocated one hour for the job.
It took two hours
And this isn’t the exception. I look at most tasks and it takes 1.5 – 2x as long as expected.
So I’m adding tax. It makes me feel way less productive at the start of the day (”Oh no, I’ve only got time for a few things”)
But I feel like a boss-eagle-lord at the end of the day.
Add tax to your calendar and see how much more realistically productive you feel.
It seems to me that the way to make ourselves follow through on anything we want to do is to keep it vividly alive in our minds and hearts.
Things are a great idea when they’re a great idea.
They’re less a great idea two hundred and eighty seven days later…
The idea stayed the same but our relationship to it changed.
If we really want to get there, we need to keep it as vivid, as alive, as exciting and captivating as day one.
Thats our only job, really, because when something is that real to us on a daily basis, we will act on it.
People talk about the importance of the journey as opposed to the destination.
As actors we’re encouraged not to play a result but to play action instead. What comes as a result of that is not our business.
It’s a hard one to grapple. But I think there is a lot of peace we can all gain by attaching ourselves to and falling in love with the action and not the result.
Fall in love with providing outstanding educational opportunities for your students.
Fall in love with creating amazing value for your clients.
Fall in love with being the most alive and attentive parent.
The action is the thing we can control. The result is not… so it’s not worth the heartache.
Fall in love with the action. Then you may get some pleasant surprises along the way.
I just watched an episode of Grand Designs UK (my favourite).
It was one of those episodes where the house doesn’t get finished. I think it may even be one of the longest builds on the show.
There was something I noticed in the language of the guy building the house. He said he would ‘tinker’ away at the build over the next ‘little while’.
When I picked up on these language patterns, I understood why the build took so long. Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tinkering or with taking a long time on projects. We can all do whatever we like.
What I’m interested in is effectively meeting our outcomes as determined by ourselves.
All we need to do it make sure our actions match our outcomes.
If you want to enjoy a build that is a long labour of love, then to ‘tinker’ is quite an appropriate verb.
But if you want to get it built in three months and to high spec- you might want to choose another word.
Actors choose action verbs in their work. Different action verbs activate us in different ways.
What do you want and what are the action words you’ll choose to get there?
Goals are great… when you remember them. Something I’ve noticed is I’m great at setting goals and feeling that initial enthusiasm. As I’m sure we all are. But it can be tricky to find effective mechanisms of follow through on the day to day. An inefficient way to get to any destination is to only check in a few times across the journey.
I like the image of a pilot needing to constantly course correct across the span of a flight. Did you know they are off course between 90% and 99% of the time? Pilots have to constantly course correct to get to their destination.
The same goes for our goals and I’m using a super simple daily question to help me do that. In my journal every morning I ask myself:
How can I course correct today?
It allows me to look at yesterday, what I did, didn’t do and how I spent my time. If I lived a day like that again would I get to where I want to go? If not, what could I do slightly differently today?
It’s nice to know we can be off 99% of the time and still get there.
It just requires a little course correction ✈️
