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One of the things that comes up again and again in the work I do with leaders and ambitious doers is that so many of us get frustrated when our goals take longer to accomplish than we want them to (and they almost always take longer!). We tell ourselves it's not worth trying anymore, or beat ourselves up for not succeeding fast enough, or recalibrate our ambitions downward so achievement seems easier or more likely to come sooner.
But the thing that we all need to remember - and this is a hard truth to internalize - is that THERE IS NO RUSH. And the world has no stake at all in making our dreams a reality. So take some of the pressure off. Or take in these words: "Never give up on a dream just because of the length of time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." The time will pass anyway. The time will pass anyway... The reason I share this quote is because it is just so obviously true. There are so many things about which we tell ourselves "Oh, it would take forever to do that or build that or achieve that. What's the point in trying?" Well, the point is: the time will pass anyway. So why not fill it with trying, fill it with failing, fill it with taking mini steps towards a big dream or a big goal, fill it with doing things that stretch you or scare you or grow you. Sure, we might not get there - wherever "there" is. But you know what? The time is going to pass whether we sit on our asses and agonize about the things that won't happen or whether we get out there and make things happen in whatever ways we can. And you know what else? Even if we don't get "there", at least we'll have some great stories to share and battle wounds to show off. Life would be so boring if we played it safe all the time, so why not just get out there and see what might be possible? Everyone starts from no where, as a "no one". Even Oprah started out as "just some girl from Mississippi." And how much sadder and worse off would the world be if she had held herself back by thinking "who am I to be someone" (and given where she was starting from, she had a lot more social and personal and economic reasons to think that way than many of us do). I'm not saying we all need to go out and become Oprah. All I'm saying is that the time will pass anyway, so we should go out there and do our own thing. Make stuff happen. Build our businesses. Send that first (or fiftieth) email. Ask for what we want. Put ourselves on stage. Whatever it is. Why not you? Why not each one us? The time will pass anyway.
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"Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays..."
For those of you who haven't seen the movie Office Space, that's a quote early in the film, where the secretary is needling the main character for not being chirpier as he comes into the office. He has just battled stop-and-go traffic, ducked-and-dived to avoid seeing his slimy boss, and skulked into his cubicle only to be aurally abused by the sound of a colleague on the phone. (It's a hysterical film, and I highly recommend it for some silly late-winter fun.) I love that quote because it captures so succinctly the feeling that so many of us have at the beginning of the week (or sometimes throughout the whole week!). We are all so over-committed, and over-to-do'ed, and overwhelmed, that it's easy to be consumed with unceasing dread about all the stuff we have to do... Now some, maybe all, of us have felt like that little kid above... maybe we're feeling like that right now. I know that "ugh" feeling, and it can be palpable. But one of the magic tricks that I picked up years ago that has helped me cope better with that "ugh" feeling is this: reframing all of the things I feel I have to do, into things that I get to do. It's a small mental shift but can have a powerful effect on how we perceive the day and week and tasks ahead. It reminds us that we are lucky, even if only in a small way, to have the opportunity and the ability to do the things we do. I don't have to review my P&Ls, I get to review them because I am in the happy position of being a CEO of two successful business and have a powerful brain that enables me to decipher numbers. I don't have to take my daughters to nursery, I get to take them there because I am the lucky parent of two amazing children and have a healthy, functioning body that enables me to walk fast while pushing a stroller. I don't have to get back in touch with a client, I get to email them because I have worked hard to develop a strong reputation, and people trust and want to work with me. Do you see how the energy changes almost immediately? Very quickly we can go from feeling put upon and burdened to feeling lucky and energized. That's the power of what we "get" to do. Now I know this may not work every time, and there are many, many things that just have to be endured (life's not about being in our "happy place" all the time). BUT, if we can change the way we feel about what's ahead of us, even just a little bit, it makes that thing just a little bit easier. Little shifts, little energy boosts, little mental reframings. They all add up over the course of a day, a week, a lifetime, and can help us to become do-ers instead of complainers, and to feel activated (maybe even a bit excited?) instead of deadened. So the next time we catch ourselves dragging our feet, hitting the snooze, moaning about what we have to do, let's remind ourselves that we get to do it, too. And not everyone is so lucky. "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself..."
Ahhh, the Perfectionist's Creed. I love these words because I can predict with almost 100%-accuracy how many leaders and entrepreneurs and high-achievers and change-makers (like you!) have them playing in a loop in their heads pretty much all day long. (I know I would need to call on some high-order math if I wanted to count the number of times I've said or thought that.) No one can close a sale as effectively as I can. No one can negotiate as well as I can. No one can market as well as I can. No one can pitch as well as I can. And you know what else? No one can make doctor's appointments for our family as well as I can. No one can order groceries as well as I can. No one can tidy up as well as I can. And no one can take out the rubbish as well as I can, either! Isn't it amazing that I can do so many varied tasks better than any other of the 8-billion-plus humans who live on this planet or the few hundred thousand who live in my immediate vicinity or the tens of thousands who specialise in each one of these discreet tasks, or the other adults in my family? Gosh, I really must be amazing! Right? Now hopefully you see what I'm doing here. Hopefully you've had a little chuckle while reading the preceding lines not just because of how ridiculous they are when you see them written down but because maybe you recognize some of that silliness in your own way of thinking. I get it. We love to be in control. We love to get things done. We love having things done our way. And we are really, really, really good at some things, maybe even a lot of things. But perfect at all things? Is that even possible? The more I think about it, the more I hear it from my clients, and the more I try to train myself out of it, the more I see self-proclaimed perfectionism as something quite different: laziness and anxiety in disguise. Let me explain. First of all, I think we can agree that doing anything "perfectly" is basically impossible because "perfect" is subjective. What I think is perfect, others might think sucks, and what they think is perfect, I might find seriously flawed. Perfect is a standard that we define and our definition will inevitably be different to someone else's. Secondly, perfectionism is often used as an excuse for not doing something - "Oh, that website, will never be as perfect as I want it to be, so I may as well not build it"; "My business will never be as big as I want it to be, so I'm not going to start it"; "This marketing campaign will never capture everything I want to convey, so why bother planning it" - OR perfectionism is used as an excuse to keep doing everything yourself because you can't be bothered to TRY to delegate to someone else or TRY to find someone who might be able to do it at least as well as (or maybe even better than... gasp!) as you can or TRY to have a difficult conversation with a colleague or a partner about how they can contribute or improve. Perfectionism maintains the status quo - you either don't do something or you keep doing everything - and the status quo is, well, lazy. And perfectionism keeps you from addressing your (often baseless) anxieties. "It has to be perfect or people will never buy it"; "No one will execute my vision as perfectly as I can"; "If I don't do it, it won't ever get done"; etc, etc, etc. Do you see how these perfectionist anxieties can hold you and your life/career/relationships/health/everything back? Do you think Richard Branson comes up with new business ideas AND does the marketing plan AND does the pricing AND chooses the words for each ad AND makes the coffee? No! Do you think Sara Blakely turned her product into a billion-dollar business by sewing each item of Spanx herself AND building her website AND shipping her products AND ordering the paper clips for the office? Hell no! So why do we? Why do we think we can grow a business or a career or a life while doing everything ourselves? Why do we hold ourselves back by deluding ourselves that we are the exception to every rule of success - and sanity! (delegate, leverage, focus on what you're good at, test and iterate...)? Are we really perfectionists? Or are we being lazy? Are we really perfectionists? Or are we just anxious? Done is better than perfect. Trying is better than worrying. An imperfect reality is better than a perfect theory. Get something out there and improve, iterate, and - dare I say it! - perfect it, later. For most of my adult life, anytime I set myself a target or wanted to grow my business, I threw hours at the problem. I figured if I worked hard enough and long enough that anything I wanted to do would get done.
And to some extent I was right. There is a positive correlation (albeit one that gets looser under investigation) between hours and output. But it took a phone call with a friend and fellow entrepreneur to illuminate the industrial-era fallacy behind "working harder". More often than not, we don't need to work harder and more, but smarter and less. Now, many of us can probably recall times when we have been grinding out work and burning the candle at both ends and running on fumes and [insert-hard-work-metaphor-here], because we think we have to, or our work culture dictates that we do, or we don't know another way. But the thing is, that hours-for-output mentality doesn't make sense anymore. Sure, in the industrial era there was a direct and necessary relationship between the number of hours input and the number of widgets produced. If you wanted to make more things, you had to put in more hours to make those things. And we got so used to trading hours for output that even when our economy evolved, our way of working stayed the same. We tried to pretend that what served us in the 1800s would continue to serve us now. But it doesn't. Many of us are not in the business of making actual things. Most of us operate in a service-based or knowledge-based environment, but we still cling to old ways of working that are actively counterproductive and a colossal waste of time and effort. And even those of us who do make things do so under vastly different conditions to what existed in the Industrial Age. For example, "face time" in the office tells us we "should" arrive at a certain time and "should" leave at a certain time, regardless of how productive we are in between. Most people (I would venture to guess) end up padding their day with coffee breaks, chit-chat, scrolling through social media, busy work, whatever they need to do to be visible for long enough until the boss goes home. What a wasteful charade. Or those 100-hour weeks that are the expected norm in a lot of companies? They're often counterproductive and dangerous. There are measurable and diminishing returns to working that long for any sustained period. Our minds simply can not and will not function optimally without rest, and our performance will suffer and accidents will happen. And yet we continue to think we need to do more, more, more, more and work longer, longer, longer, longer to achieve. But what if instead, we worked less? What if we chose to prize working smarter over working harder? In the 21st Century, in the service- and knowledge-based industries in which most of us operate, the industrial approach to work simply doesn't make sense. And to create sustainable businesses - that we can live long enough to sustain! - we need to escape our industrial era mindset. I am not saying we should be lazy or slow, but that we are thoughtful about the work we do and that we question why we are doing what we are doing, and that we always ask ourselves if there is an easier, better, simpler way, or if we are just creating work to justify our salaries and assuage the industrialist lurking inside. I don't know about you, but there are days - especially in the lazy days of summer! - when I really struggle. It'll be approaching 4-o'clock and I'll be wondering where the time has gone and what I have to show for close to a day's work (and then panic at the thought that I only have a few hours left to "catch up" before my daughters get back from nursery).
There are times when I feel so swamped and buried in the "stuff" that I am terrified that I'm not actually moving forward in any meaningful way, and wonder if I am doing enough. And it's during these moments of (mini) crises that I go back to my data. See, a while ago (7 years to be exact), I got sick of wondering and wanted to know. I remembered a fantastic New York Times article (I highly recommend reading) that talked about the data-driven life. So I started to track my stats. I set myself daily, weekly, and quarterly targets and then tracked how I was using my time against those targets (in the early days, I used Excel, now I use Toggl and can't recommend it enough). And doing so changed everything. It gave me a concrete and objective picture of where my time was actually being invested. I could look back at a day, a week, a year, and see exact percentages and numbers of minutes being invested in business development, marketing, speaking, admin, etc. And I could use those stats to hold myself accountable against the targets I had set. Simple and powerful. And most important: objective. Because, the thing is, we are often the worst at assessing ourselves. And we often get it wrong when we are guesstimating or appraising off the top of our heads. We suffer from recency bias. And availability bias. And self-preservation bias. We judge our performance based on what has just happened, what we can recall (and we forget a LOT), and we tell ourselves stories to make ourselves feel better ("I have been working soooooo hard and soooooo much!"). But the reality is often different to what we imagine. When I started objectively measuring what I was doing each day, what I learned surprised me. It still does. In some instances, I was way ahead of my game (a few years ago, I was having a really bad week so wanted to see where I was going off track... and you know what? I wasn't off track at all. I had hit 50% of my targets for the YEAR by May!). And in other cases, I was doing far less than I thought (when I was starting my first business, I was making shockingly fewer calls to partners and clients than I thought I was. No wonder things weren't moving as quickly as I wanted back then). The data changes everything: practically, emotionally, and energetically. When we are ahead, wouldn't it be great to know that? We can breathe a little easier, we can stop stressing (a bit) about how much always needs to be done, and we can maybe even celebrate our successes or pat ourselves on the back (crazy, I know!). And when we are behind, isn't the data morale boosting in a counterintuitive way too? If we aren't seeing progress, isn't it better to use the data to tell us whether that's because we're not investing enough time on the important things or if it's because we're spending too much time on "low value" things? Isn't it better to know if the flaw is with the process or with the execution? The data gives you answers. The data helps uncover solutions. And the data makes it easier to know, instead of guess. Business and success and growth don't happen by guesswork. And that's the beauty of the data-driven life: you swap the confusion of wondering with the power of knowing. And knowing is half the battle. Back in 2014, I remember hearing a speaker talk about how, when he was first getting started with his business, he bought a load of empty binders to remind him of how many clients he wanted to have.
Every time he saw those binders, it subtly prompted him to get going (or keep going) with everything he knew he needed to do to start and grow his business. I loved the idea (and the "woo-woo" behind it) so off to Staples I went. Now, I am not naturally prone to superstition or woo-woo (and I definitely wasn't back then), but the thing with the binders made sense to both my left and right brains. It was the perfect combination of practical and philosophical. Because it wasn't as if the speaker was expecting the binders to fill themselves with new client details. And neither was I. But having something concrete and visual to represent my targets prodded, reminded, and nudged me forward each day. And as I've gotten into the habit of setting goals and targets and then diligently making them happen (I'm at a 100% completion rate after years of learning how to properly set goals and execute on them; there is an art and a science to it), I've realized that some of the "magic" behind those empty binders was that they were, well, empty. I had created a void. And nature abhors a void. And what I've realized is that whenever we want to bring anything into our lives - better health, deeper relationships, more knowledge, bigger business, anything - we have to make room for it, mentally and physically. We have to create a void so it can then be filled, ideally with something, or someone, better. Saying no to a dinner invitation creates a void we can fill with learning about something we care about. Spending less time with people who drain us creates a void we can fill by spending more time with people who fuel us. Opening up a new savings account creates a void we can fill by putting some money away each month as we've always been wanting to do. It's not technically "magic" but it can feel magical. Because when we create space in our lives for the things that are important to us, when we declutter the thoughts, relationships, and activities that no longer serve us, amazing things can come in to take their place. We just have to guard the gates and make sure we fill the void with things that are worthy of it, and that are worthy of us. There's a great scene in the movie Office Space, where the secretary is needling the main character for not being chirpier as he drags himself into the office. "Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays," she says, not knowing he has just battled stop-and-go traffic, ducked-and-dived to avoid seeing his slimy boss, and skulked into his cubicle only to be interrupted by the sound of an annoying colleague on the phone. (It's a hysterical film, and I highly recommend it for some silly Sunday fun.)
I love that case-of-the-Mondays quote because it captures so succinctly the feeling that so many of us have at the beginning of the week. And even now, eight-plus years into being my own boss, Mondays can sometimes fill me with dread at all the stuff I have to do. But one of the magic tricks that I picked up years ago that has helped me cope better with that "Monday" feeling is this: reframing all of the things I feel I have to do, into things that I get to do. It's a small mental shift, but it can have a powerful effect on how we perceive the day, week, and tasks ahead. Because it reminds us that we are lucky, even if only in a small way, to have the opportunity and the ability to do the things we do. I don't HAVE to review my P&Ls, I GET to review them because I am in the happy position of being a director of two successful businesses and have a powerful brain that enables me to decipher numbers. I don't HAVE to take my daughters to nursery, I GET to walk them there because I am the lucky parent of two amazing children and have a healthy, functioning body that enables me to walk fast while pushing a stroller. I don't HAVE to get back in touch with a corporate client, I GET to email them because I have worked hard to develop the strong reputation I have, and others want to work with me. Do you see how the energy changes almost immediately? Very quickly we can go from feeling put upon and burdened to feeling lucky and energized. That's the power of what we "get" to do. This may not work every time, but it has a pretty good track record, and is a quick and easy way to change the way we feel about what's ahead of us. Little shifts like this, little energy boosts, little mental reframings, they all add up over the course of a day, a week, a lifetime, and before we know it, we've become do-ers instead of complainers, activated instead of deadened. So the next time we catch ourselves dragging our feet, hitting the snooze, moaning about what we have to do, let's remind ourselves that we get to do it, too. And not everyone is so lucky. Over this long COVID period, many of us have gotten used to multi-tasking. We've made endless snacks while hosting conference calls. Taken Zoom with us into our bathrooms (yeah, you know you did!). Worked on product pitches while perfecting our Disney-song pitch. Typed up emails while spending "quality" time with our loved ones.
And while multi-tasking was one of our biggest allies during COVID, I think it's important to remember that it's really an enemy wearing a very friendly smile. Now, I get it. We all wear many hats and sometimes all those hats are screaming to be put on at the same time. But if we are honest with ourselves, can we really say we got 10 things done to the same quality as if we had done each one of those things in turn? And did we really need to do those 10 things all at once anyway? For me, I know the answer is no. Because there is a massive difference between multi-tasking and making efficient use of our time. When I take an honest assessment of the times I have been a multi-tasking fool, I find it's most dangerous when I am trying to do something business-critical but allow myself to get pulled into the low value tasks just to get them out of the way. In my attempt to declutter my to-do list of the mundane, I end diluting or prolonging the important. And that's why multi-tasking is a false economy. We delude ourselves into thinking we are getting a lot done, instead of appreciating we're just doing a lot. And doing isn't the same as accomplishing. In our crazy go-go-go world, we have lost sight of the importance of true focus. In our endless impatience to get to the end, we have confused quantity with quality. On this crazy English day, when even the weather seems to be multi-tasking, all I am suggesting is that we get real about the false economy of multi-tasking and try to unitask instead. And when that multi-tasking siren starts tempting us towards distraction and ruin, let's at least try to steer her to the low value things (brushing while showering, ordering groceries while walking, making social plans while cooking...) and harness our best and our focus for our most important work instead. If you've been with me for a while, you'll know that my husband and I are lucky parents to a toddler and a baby. And while parenting (or life!) is never easy, I've always found the first year with a newborn particularly draining, physically and emotionally.
With our 6-month old, we had been struggling with bad sleep and bleary-eyed days. For almost 3 months, she was waking up 4-6 times a night, and sometimes our toddler would wake up too just to be a part of the action. And all this night waking meant inevitably short-tempered days for all of us and my feeling at my less-than-best. All of the parents around us had been suggesting we sleep train our baby, and after weeks of misery and illogical resistance, we finally gave in and started on a schedule and a let-her-cry-it-out-at-night plan. And ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my what a difference it has made. In less than a week, she started sleeping through the night, and we are ALL far more human and humane for it. And I realized that this pattern is how so much growth and positive change in life happens: we make it hard for ourselves, despite knowing there are better alternatives, and then when we finally start on a path towards where we want to be, things are really difficult before they get easy. For our newborn, the first few nights of her new routine she cried for almost an hour before falling asleep. And my husband and I would stare at the monitor, our hearts (and our ears!) cringing. But then she cried for shorter bursts, and then shorter, and shorter, until she started sleeping straight through the night. But those first few nights were brutal. And I wanted to run in and comfort her. I wanted to do something, anything to make it stop. But I didn't. And thank goodness for it. Because now we have a much better and a sustainable way of living and sleeping. It was - as my brother so wisely offered - short-term pain for long term-gain. But too often, and for too many of us, we never start - or we quit to soon - precisely because it is so hard in the short-term. I hear this so many times from the solopreneurs in my group mastermind who resist making a new hire or getting some admin support because "it is too hard to train someone new" or "by the time I teach someone else, I could have done it myself." And then they struggle with burnout and wonder why staying "Chief Everything Officer" isn't working. I hear this so many times from the corporate leaders I coach, who resist putting themselves out there to shine because it feels "icky" and "self-promotey" even though they know being more authentically visible will help them achieve their career goals. And then they wonder why they never get noticed for the right reasons and why they feel stuck in professional limbo. And I hear this so many times from the business school students I mentor who are trying to change careers or want to start their own businesses, but are too "scared" to do something new because there is "too much to learn." And then they wonder why they aren't happy when they go back to their previous careers and why they feel deflated and rudderless. And what I share with all of them - and what I re-learned with my baby daughter just a few weeks ago - is that EVERYTHING is hard before it gets easy. That's just how it is. Everything starts out awkward and icky and scary and overwhelming. Everything worth having requires us to get comfortable with discomfort. Everything is hard, hard, so damned hard before it gets a little easier, and a little easier, and easier still until what we once thought impossible or not for us becomes something we simply do. It's like my brother said, it's short-term pain for long-term gain. And we all owe it to ourselves, to our dreams, our ambitions, our businesses, our relationships to do the important hard things now before it's too late. Before we get complacent or bored or deflated. And before the windows of opportunity close. Think about what you are denying yourself because it's too hard. Think about what are you delaying because it feels awkward to start. Think about what you are diminishing because you can't be bothered to put in the effort. And then decide to do it anyway. I don't know about you, but so often - sometimes every day - there comes a point in my day when I feel bad about where I'm not and what I am not doing. It might just be that I have an over-developed sense of guilt (I mean I went to Catholic school for 13 years and come from a big Indian family, so the combo turns normal guilt trips into epic guilt pilgrimages) or it might just be that I always feel pulled in too many directions.
When I'm working, I worry that I'm not spending enough time nurturing my personal relationships and when I'm spending time with people I love, I worry that I should be doing something for my businesses and when I'm working diligently on my businesses, I worry that I'm not investing enough time on my health and fitness. It's a no-win situation that can drive anyone crazy. And I remember clearly the day a few years ago when I was going down a spiral of "I should be here, no I should be there, no wait, I NEED to be way over there..." and a really wise friend - who also happens to be a very successful, seemingly non-stressed business owner (who travels all the time for her business) AND is a mom of three - gave me the best advice I have gotten for my business and my life in general: Make a decision and then own it. Now this little bit of advice might look obvious - and often the best advice is - but the profundity (now there's a big word for a Sunday) lies precisely in its simplicity. And I can usually tell how profound advice is by how difficult it is for me to implement. In this case, it's that much harder because there are two parts: 1) making the decision, and 2) owning it. I find that as I've practiced and gotten better at 1, I've really needed to up my game when it comes to 2. And damnnnnnnnnnnn, is it hard. Not because I abdicate responsibility for my decisions, but because with every decision I make, there is a tradeoff, and in my heart of hearts I am a maximalist who hates that I can't be everywhere, do all the things, and be everything to everyone all the time. Tradeoffs suck, but the grown-up in me knows that tradeoffs are inescapable. And it's only with time and practice and catching myself that I've gotten better at accepting that truth and being truly present wherever I am instead of agonizing about where I'm not. Because the thing is, once we make a decision, that should mean we have already considered the relevant facts beforehand. That should mean we have done our best to make the best decision with the circumstances we are given. And that should then mean that it is easier to own the decision - tradeoffs and all - and move on. So now, whenever I am doing something to grow my businesses or spending evenings giving talks or taking afternoons to write my book, I TRY to be fully present and focus on delivering the best talk, having the best meeting, writing the best chapter, and leave everything else where it is. And then when I am with my family (my two daughters in particular), I TRY to focus fully on them, on what we are doing in the moment, and leave my phone and all of the things on my never-ending to-accomplish list physically and mentally out of the way. It's not easy, but I try as best I can. And I firmly believe (know!) that we are not compartmented people, despite what we tell ourselves, and that we take everything with us wherever we go. But the key is not to let the guilt come there with us too, because it will consume us AND the fun and success we could otherwise be experiencing if we hadn't invited guilt to the party. I get it. Like I said, I struggle with this on a near-daily basis. And there are no hacks that I've uncovered other than practice. So, the next time you start wishing you were somewhere else or feel guilty about where you are not, remind yourself that you decided to be wherever you are and then practice owning that decision. It will make being a grown-up, a boss, a business-owner, a leader, a parent, a partner, and a person that much easier AND will be a reminder that choice is a gift we shouldn't always spoil by wishing we had made a different one. I got an email the other day from a company I love where they were celebrating the gradual and here-before-we-know-it end of lockdown. For a split second, I shared in their joy and thought to myself "YESSSSS! Finally!"... and then a split second later, I thought "Oh nooooo."
Now, I know the past year has been crazy and difficult and stressful in so many big and small ways, but there are definitely some things I will miss about our current pace of life and living when things go back to "normal." For example, I am a very social person, but also a home-body. And lockdown has given me so much precious time at home. Yes, sometimes I wanted to punch through the walls through sheer boredom or frustration, but a lot of the times, I thought how happy I was to not be rushing around like a headless chicken to endless social events, work meetings, and all manner of things that filled up my days in The Before Times. In many ways, my pre-COVID life was full of busy-ness instead of business. And I really do not miss the busy-ness. Or the pressure to go out. Or the demands for in-person meetings. Or all the stuff that filled my diary, but sometimes sapped my spirits. I'm going to miss this slower pace of life. The way we have all focused our expectations on nothing but essentials. The chances we have all been given to be inward instead of always outward. And maybe, just maybe, there are things about lockdown life that you'll miss too? Because I know myself. I miss seeing people. And I am terrified that as soon as we can, I'll be running here, there, and everywhere to make up for "lost" time, instead of remembering and treasuring how much time I gained by not running here, there, and everywhere for the past year. But I'm not going to despair, and neither should you. Because forewarned is forearmed, and all that. We know what is coming over the next few months, we know how things will be opening up, and we know - most important of all - about ourselves. So let's take time now, while we still can and while we still have breathing room, to plan for how we are going to protect all we gained during lockdown, how we are going to reign ourselves in, and how we are going to create and enforce the boundaries we need. And let's remember to do whatever we can to be thoughtful about how we are living and leading before we rush back to what life was like before lockdown gave us the gifts it did. When I had our second child back in October, I was reminded again of the beautiful, but chaotic, chaos that comes with those early weeks and months. Life is broken up into unpredictable blocks of time between naps and nappies, appointments and ointments, and sleep deprived delirium that results in half-completed work on your laptop and half-finished meals on your worktop.
As someone who likes tidiness and order and control, I find the early days the hardest because all of a sudden, I can’t be productive or “perfect” at anything. It is like a massive right hook to my pride followed by an uppercut to my sanity. It feels terrible. Now, of course unpredictability and over-full days are not the exclusive domain of parents. At some point, all high-performers and mega-achievers and go-getters (like you!) find themselves oversubscribed and overwhelmed. And when that happens, some of the best advice we can live by is this: to set ourselves only ONE goal for each day. Because you see, when we are stressed and overwhelmed and have more tasks than time, it can become soul-destroying to think about how little we are getting done and how much we are not accomplishing. But if we take some of the pressure off (even just temporarily), and if we focus on getting just ONE super-high-value thing done each day, that can be enough to keep us going. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In those early post-partem days, my “one thing” would sometimes be as small as making one phone call. Or writing one important email. Or going to one gym class. Just one small thing that reminded me that I wasn’t a failure and that micro-steps forward still count. And that approach to my days made ALL the difference in the world. It gave me my sense of accomplishment back. It helped me let go of any simmering resentment I felt. It allowed me to enjoy my time with my newborn and stop stressing (mostly) about everything else. One is a small, but mighty number. And enough “1s” can sustain our momentum just long enough to make sure that we never totally lose it when big changes come our way. We can’t always get the kind of time we want. But, focusing on just ONE thing allows us to get by, push on, and make sure that major life events or major pressures on our time don’t obliterate everything that came before, or everything that comes after. That is the power of one. "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself..."
Ever heard those words before? I'm guessing that you've often found some version of that "perfectionist's creed" playing in a loop in your head as you've started and grown your business (and run your day-to-day life!). I get it. We love to be in control. We love to get things done. We love having things done our way. And we are really, really, really good at some things, maybe even a lot of things. But perfect at all things? Is that even possible? The more I think about it, the more I hear it from my clients, and the more I try to train myself out of it, the more I see self-proclaimed perfectionism as something quite different: laziness and anxiety in disguise. Let me explain. First of all, I think we can agree that doing anything "perfectly" is basically impossible because "perfect" is subjective. What I think is perfect, others might think sucks, and what they think is perfect, I might find seriously flawed. Perfect is a standard that we define and our definition will inevitably be different to someone else's. Secondly, perfectionism is often used as an excuse for not doing something - "Oh, that website, will never be as perfect as I want it to be, so I may as well not build it"; "My business will never be as big as I want it to be, so I'm not going to start it"; "This marketing campaign will never capture everything I want to convey, so why bother planning it" - OR perfectionism is used as an excuse to keep doing everything ourselves because we can't be bothered to TRY to delegate to someone else or TRY to find someone who might, just might, be able to do it at least as well as (or maybe even better... gasp!), as we can or TRY to have a difficult conversation with a colleague or a partner about how they can contribute or improve. Perfectionism maintains the status quo - we either don't do something or we keep doing everything - and the status quo is, well, lazy. And perfectionism keeps us from addressing our often baseless anxieties. "It has to be perfect or people will never buy it"; "No one will execute my vision as perfectly as I can"; "If I don't do it, it won't ever get done"; etc, etc, etc. Do you think Richard Branson comes up with new business arms AND does the marketing plan AND does the pricing AND chooses the words for each ad AND makes the coffee? No! Do you think Sara Blakely turned her product idea into a billion-dollar business by sewing each item of Spanx herself AND building her website AND shipping her products AND ordering the paper clips for the office? Hell no! So why do we? Why do we think we can grow a business AND do it all because no one else can? Why do we hold ourselves back by deluding ourselves that we are the exception to every rule of success (delegate, leverage, focus on what you're good at, test and iterate...)? Are we really perfectionists? Or are we being lazy? Are we really perfectionists? Or are we just anxious? Done is better than perfect. Trying is better than worrying. An imperfect business is better than one that stays in your head. Get something out there and improve, iterate, and - dare I say it! - perfect it later. Be honest about what your "perfectionism" is costing you and your business, and then try, at least try, to hide behind the Perfectionist's Creed a little less often. Every evening as we put our daughter to sleep, in between getting her ready for bed and taking her to her room, my husband goes down to our office for a few minutes. For the longest time, this annoyed me to no end. "What's the point in leaving for five minutes?" I would say to myself. "It's just unnecessary back and forth."
And then I did the math. Those five minutes that I was so dismissive of add up. I mean really add up: five minutes every day for 365 days equates to 1825 minutes or 30.42 hours or 1.27 days. A whole extra day and then some. When I did the math, I was stunned. I mean what more could I do with an extra 1.27 days each year? How many more books could I read in 30.42 hours? How many more trips to the gym could I fit in? How many more blog posts could I write? How many more walks could I go on?... We often dismiss - and squander - small increments of time because we think they are insignificant. We ignore the power of compounding. There are so many things about which we say "Oh, it'll just take five minutes" and then we plunge in. But even if it does just take five minutes, are those five minutes being used in the best way possible? I often get clients and students resist my suggestions to delegate small things because they say it only takes them five minutes to do and it's just easier to do it themselves (sound familiar?). But using the math above, you can see how lots of little "five minutes here" and "five minutes there" can eat away DAYS of your year. So what are you spending "only five minutes" on that you could or should delegate to someone else? What could you START to spend five minutes on each day to move you closer to one of your goals? Five minutes is never just five minutes (even when it is five minutes), because that "five minutes" mentality keeps so many of us stuck doing things that we should NOT be doing, or keeps us from starting things we should. We all underestimate the power of five minutes. I still find myself doing so. But we need to pay attention to all the minutes, and - to paraphrase a famous saying - Watch the minutes so that the years can take care of themselves. I was mercilessly decluttering the other day and was literally sighing with delight at all the clear surfaces and space all around me. I always feel calmer and more peaceful whenever I'm in bare but beautiful places, and the simple pleasure of creating that at home got me thinking about other simple pleasures - smells, sounds, lighting - that I associate with some of my happiest "happy places".
And it got me thinking that we've all had glimpses (hopefully more) of what it feels like to be in our happy place mentally, physically, and/or emotionally, but for some reason we don't usually stop to think about how and why those places are happy for us. I mean, when was the last time you tried to deconstruct your happy place experience? And more important, when was the last time you tried to re-create your happy place experience in even a small way? We are all affected by our physical environments. Without realizing it, the stresses around us, the energy around us, the people, and sounds, and smells around us all combine into one big experiential ball that affects our mood, our performance, our productivity, and our happiness. I've always known this about myself. I can feel myself tighten up when I walk into a soulless conference room, I can feel myself come alive when I'm in beautiful surroundings, I know I am more creative when I am somewhere with high ceilings and natural light, and I know which social circles make me feel invincible and which leave me flattened. I know these things because I pay attention to how I feel and how I perform. And that's why I think it's so important to curate our environments. This can be as simple as listening to relaxing music while you work at your desk, having a nice-smelling reed diffuser in your office, or using soft lighting instead of fluorescent bulbs. I do all of these things because I find spas really relaxing so why not make my working environment as spa-like as possible? It can also be as practical as turning off email alerts from your phone so you're not always feeling harried and "pinged", not watching the news if all it does is make you angry, or avoiding social events (yes, even online!) where you'll be around people who irritate or deflate you. Our social and mental environments can be curated too. The little changes can make a huge difference in how you feel AND how you perform. You know whether you are at your best in high-energy environments or more chilled ones. You know whether you nail presentations when wearing a power suit or wearing something a little less traditional but still professional. You know whether you exercise more effectively surrounded by the high-octane energy of a gym or running on a nature trail. Our minds are incredibly powerful and we pick up hundreds of subtle and subconscious cues from our surroundings. So by curating our environments, we give ourselves more chances to feel and do more of our best more of the time. It doesn't have to be a total overhaul, but we can all start with a small, simple change. And then another. And another. And over time and repetition, pretty soon we will have transformed our environments in ways that can transform our lives and our businesses as well. Sometimes it's the small things that can have the biggest impact. "I'll come back in five minutes, shall I?"That is the line my husband uses every evening as we put our toddler to sleep. He gets her ready for bed, I give her milk and read her a story, and in the few minutes it takes her to finish her bottle, my husband always leaves the room before coming back to take her to her bed. For the longest time, this annoyed me to no end. "What's the point in leaving for five minutes?" I would say to myself. "It's just unnecessary back and forth." And then I did the math...  And dammnnnnn, do those five minutes that I was so dismissive of add up. I mean really add up: five minutes every day for 365 days equates to 1825 minutes or 30.42 hours or 1.27 days. Yes, just five minutes a day is the same as a whole extra day (and then some!) every year. Woah. When I did the math, I was stunned. I mean what more could I do with an extra 1.27 days each year? How many more books could I read in 30.42 hours? How many more trips to the gym could I fit in? How many more blog posts could I write? How many more walks could I go on?... We often dismiss - and squander - small increments of time because we think they are insignificant. We ignore the power of compounding. There are so many things about which we say "Oh, it'll just take five minutes" and then we plunge in. But even if it does just take five minutes, are those five minutes being used in the best way possible? I often get clients and students resist my suggestions to delegate small things because they say it only takes them five minutes to do and it's just easier to do it themselves (sound familiar?). But using the math above, you can see how lots of little "five minutes here" and "five minutes there" can eat away DAYS of your year. So what are you spending "only five minutes" on that you could or should delegate to someone else? What could you START to spend five minutes on each day to move you closer to one of your goals? Five minutes is never just five minutes (even when it is five minutes), because that "five minutes" mentality keeps so many of us stuck doing things that we should NOT be doing, or keeps us from starting things we should. We underestimate the power of five minutes. Heck, I teach this stuff and I still find myself falling into that. It's something we have to work on consistently. We need to pay attention to all the minutes. To paraphrase a famous saying: Take care of the minutes and the years will take care of themselves. Do the math. And value your minutes. As women, how often we get applauded (or loaded with more work!) for being "natural" multi-taskers. We take on more and more, even if we don't really want to, and forget how to say no because we let ourselves be persuaded that we can do everything.
And while I agree that we can do everything, I don't think we should try to do it all at the same time. We've all had one of those days (or lives) when we are doing ten things at once without the benefit of additional arms or hands (or caffeine!). But instead of being proud of how much we "accomplish" at once, I wonder if we might be better served redefining what accomplishment means. Because getting things done is of course essential to any success. But there is a difference between multi-tasking and making the best use of our time. When I take an honest assessment of the times I have been a multi-tasking fool, I find this habit is most dangerous when I am trying to do something business-critical and still let myself get pulled into other tasks to get them out of the way. In my attempt to declutter my to-do list, I end up diluting or prolonging the important. And that's why multi-tasking is a false economy. We delude ourselves into thinking we are getting a lot done, instead of realizing we're just doing a lot. And doing isn't the same as accomplishing. So the next time that multi-tasking siren starts singing us towards distraction, let's try to steer her to the low value things (walking while chewing gum, ordering groceries while on hold with the broadband company, making social plans while cooking...) and harness our best and our focus for our most important work instead. Lets's try letting go of multi-tasking and do more uni-tasking instead. I don't know about you, but there are days when I really struggle. It'll be approaching 4-o'clock and I'll be wondering where the time has gone and what I have to show for close to a day's work (and then panic at the thought that I only have a few hours left to "catch up" before my daughter gets back from nursery).
There are times when I feel so swamped and buried in the "stuff" that I am terrified that I'm not actually moving my business forward in any meaningful way, and wonder if I am doing enough. And it's during these moments of (mini) crises that I go back to my data. See, a while ago (5 years to be exact), I got sick of wondering and wanted to know. I remembered a fantastic New York Times article (I highly, highly recommend reading it) that talked about the data-driven life. So I started to track my stats. I set myself daily, weekly, and quarterly targets and then tracked how I was using my time against those targets (in the early days, I used Excel, now I use Toggl and can't recommend it enough). And doing so changed everything. It gave me a concrete and objective picture of where my time was actually being invested. I could look back at a day, a week, a year, and see exact percentages and numbers of minutes being invested in business development, marketing, speaking, admin, etc. And I could use those stats to hold myself accountable against the targets I had set. Simple and powerful. And most importantly: objective. Because, the thing is, we are often the worst at assessing ourselves. And we often get it wrong when we are guesstimating or appraising off the top of our heads. We suffer from recency bias. And availability bias. And self-preservation bias. We judge our performance based on what has just happened, what we can recall (and we forget a LOT), and we tell ourselves stories to make ourselves feel better ("I have been working soooooo hard and soooooo much!"). But the reality is often different to what we imagine. When I started objectively measuring what I was doing each day, what I learned surprised me. It still does. In some instances, I was way ahead of my game (earlier this year I was having a really bad week so wanted to see where I was going off track... and you know what? I wasn't off track at all. I had hit 50% of my targets for the YEAR by May!) And in other cases, I was doing far less than I thought (when I was starting my first business, I was making shockingly fewer calls to partners and clients than I thought I was. No wonder things weren't moving as quickly as I wanted). The data changes everything: practically, emotionally, and energetically. When we are ahead, wouldn't it be great to know that? We can breathe a little easier, we can stop stressing (a bit) about how much always needs to be done, and we can maybe even celebrate our successes or pat ourselves on the back (crazy, I know!). And when we are behind, isn't the data morale boosting in a counterintuitive way too? If we aren't seeing progress, isn't it better to use the data to tell us whether that's because we're not investing enough time on the important things or if it's because we're spending too much time on "low value" things? Isn't it better to know if the flaw is with the process or with the execution? The data gives you answers. The data helps uncover solutions. And the data makes it easier to know, instead of guess. Business and success and growth don't happen by guesswork. And that's the beauty of the data-driven life: you swap the confusion of wondering with the power of knowing. And knowing is half the battle.* (*Any of you GI Joe fans will have caught the reference... who knew an 80s cartoon could be so profound?) “I am so proud of you!!!!!!!!!!”
That was me just a few hours ago shrieking down the phone to my husband Guy. I was literally bouncing down the street with joy because he called to say he had signed an option agreement on a development site he has been working on for five months, and I was whooping and hollering for the both of us. I am generally an effusive person, so after many an exclamation (and sideways glance from people on the street), I asked him how he felt about securing a deal that will make either a smallish six-figure profit or a very large six-figure profit (depending on what we do with it). And his verbatim response was: “No different than before.” But even if he wasn’t ring-around-the-rosie-ing with pound signs sparkling before his eyes, I was celebrating and proud. Just not for the reason you might think… No, dear readers, I wasn’t dancing like Jim Carey because Guy secured this amazing deal. If you have been with me over these past few months, you will know that I like to throw wrenches in the obvious, I watch what I am proud of, and I am impressed by nerdy things. If you really want to know why I was proud of him, it’s this: his singular focus on creating and then committing to a plan without obsessing over the “when is it gonna happen” of the outcome. He is like Churchill, Muhammad Ali, and a Zen master at work: laser sharp and hungry while remaining detached from the result. It’s an incredible thing to witness. And it’s an incredible thing to dissect. Here’s what I noticed: When others might watch TV, Guy watches live feeds of planning committee meetings. When others might scroll through social media sites, Guy studies the local development plan for each council he is exploring land in. When others might spend time researching the “hottest” restaurants in town, Guy invests time researching the “hottest” flood risk assessors around. And you know what else? When others might have complained about how hard it is to “catch a break” and how the odds are stacked against them (he got to within signing-distance on two other sites and then the sellers started courting bids from other developers; these were sites the owners hadn’t even considered selling before he approached them), Guy let me curse and scream on his behalf and then found more sites to replace them. And you know what else on top of that? When others might let everything else fall apart while they build their dream, Guy makes stuff happen while truly co-parenting our daughter and taking care of himself (the man plays squash and football four times a week... can you imagine how uplifting -- and annoying! -- it is to live with such a can-do mother-effer?!). Now, some of you might be ready to barf while reading my praise for someone I am married to. And some of you might even be thinking that A) I am making this up, or that B) Guy sounds terribly boring. But the reality is A) Nope, 100% truth bombs only, and B) That is the point: success sprouts from the boring, success grows from the tedious. And that’s why it eludes so many of us. Because how many of us would do the SAME thing day in, day out for OVER A YEAR without seeing any results and keep going anyway? How many of us would continue to put in that effort even after securing a deal? How many of us would be so committed, focused, and disciplined, that “success” becomes an afterthought instead of a daily obsession? How many of us would commit to the tedium instead of wishing for success to fall into our laps? I am as guilty as the next person. I struggle on a near-daily – sometimes hourly – basis between knowing that I just need to take consistent action on the right things, and throwing my hands up in despair because the results aren’t happening now. But we all know that’s not how it works. It’s a numbers game, you have to pay your dues, you can’t get something for nothing, be detached from the results… there are so many popular phrases that capture this sentiment. But knowing and doing are laughably disparate (just ask any nutritionist with a Big Mac in their hands). And not everyone is willing to be bored. But we can at least try. Try to commit to a process even when it's not fun. Try to forget about the end goal even when the goal seems painfully far away. Try to do what needs to be done even when we don't want to. And maybe, just maybe, if we learn to love boredom even though he isn't sexy or exciting, success will eventually take notice and invite us back to his place instead. I am writing to you just a few short hours before getting on a plane to visit my wonderful family in New York. The past five days have been intense. Since Monday, I have spoken at two different events, written a three-page article for a business magazine, had a handful of sessions with my coaching clients, and hosted an Entreprenora event in a room full of amazingly powerful women, all while managing the day to day operations of my two businesses (meetings with investors, P&L reviews, phone calls to partners, difficult feedback to team members...) and my family life. It has been exhausting.
I am generally a high-energy, can-do person, but by yesterday morning I was feeling rough. My head was pounding and I literally felt like someone had taken a straw and sucked the lifeforce out of me. I felt listless and tired and did something I never do: I took paracetamol and lay down for an hour in the middle of the day. But there was still so much to do: emails to send, suitcases to pack -- I am a chronic last-minute packer -- and articles to write. And amazingly, most of it got done (thanks to the paracetamol and the energy-boosting powers of salted caramel ice cream!). But oh, how I did not want to get up this morning at my usual 5:30am and write my article. I wanted to stay in bed, harnessing all of my energy for the long flight that I will be doing solo with our high-octane toddler. But you know what? I did get up. At a slightly later 6:25am, but I got up, and here I am. What did it for me was to remember one of my guiding principles: you can make excuses or you can make things happen. Now ladies, this is not something I am perfectly consistent with. I get it. There are some days when there is too much to do and you can't do it all or you shouldn't do it all. And I am never an advocate of over-working or running ourselves into the ground (work smarter, not harder!). But let's face it, there are times when we could do something, instead of nothing, when we could follow through on the commitment we made to ourselves instead of letting ourselves down because it's "just" ourselves we would be letting down. I made a commitment to myself and to all of you (even though you may not have known it) that I would be here every Saturday sharing and writing and hopefully helping you in some big or small way. It would have been so easy for me to not show up, to justify not writing this article by telling myself that I still have to pack snacks and take a shower, and pick up my daughter's stroller, (and, and, and...), and that you probably wouldn't notice anyway. But I didn't. I showed up to write and I showed up for myself. And I'm glad I did. Because these small disciplines, these small acts of showing up consistently, these small decisions to do instead of not-do, make up our lives. And at each intersection, we can either take the easy way out or take the committed way forward. And I have promised myself that I will, at least more of the time than not, take the committed way forward. That I will make stuff happen, even when I don't want to. We all know how difficult life can get. But difficult is just another excuse to stay the same. (And as my husband said to my daughter the other day, "there is no can't, only won't.") So my tough-love message to you today is to dissect your excuses, interrogate your resistance, and commit to yourself that from now on, at least a little more than you otherwise might, you'll stop making excuses, and start making things happen. We're all in this together. For so many of us, no matter the industry, the best part of what we do is often the act of getting started. It's exciting, it's new, and it's as-yet-unsullied by reality and obstacles. We know generally where we want to end up, and that generality keeps us excited and hopeful.
But the devil is always skulking, lurking in the details, waiting to pounce on the excited and hopeful, and that's why it is so important to finish everything in some detail before we even start thinking about starting. Because the options available to us are often endless, and the decision-making requirements only get more exhausting. Finishing before we start makes the best use of our time, energy, and funds because it eliminates much of the guesswork and stress involved in a project before things get guess-ed up and stressed-up. It means our costs are (mostly) predictable, our finish is (mostly) predictable, and our satisfaction with the end result is (mostly) predictable. Marketing campaigns? Decide which message goes to which target group, agree the copy, the format, the delivery medium, the style and fonts used, and which graphics to include before you start sending. New product launches? Finalize every detail about the product itself, how and when it will be delivered to the customer, the packaging, the delivery vehicle, the price, promotional discounts, A/B testing plan, success metrics, and sales targets before you start production. Hiring decisions? Write the job description, think carefully about the scope of the role, decide the pay/salary structure, the profile of the ideal candidate, and create the onboarding process before you start looking. (Chefs do this too... my cousin recently revolutionized my approach to cooking by introducing me to a concept called mise en place which loosely means everything in its place, and which I have taken to mean that you chop all the vegetables, measure out all the ingredients, and get out all the utensils you'll need before you start cooking... Gousto and Hello Fresh have built successful companies by helping normal people finish before they start in almost exactly this way.) Finishing before you start is a powerful tool that so often gets neglected in the excitement to jump right in and get moving. But taking a bit of time to frontload the preparation can reap big dividends in time saved, stress reduced, costs managed, and results achieved. So, what will you now commit to doing differently in your business? What will you take time to set up before you set off? What will you get done before you get going? What will you finish before you start? I'd love to hear your success stories. Almost a decade ago, I was having lunch with a dear friend and we were half-laughing, half-crying about our inner nerds. I was bemoaning my need for external validation and “gold stars,” and it was then that my friend said what has stayed with me all these years: “I get it dude, it’s your Lisa Simpson complex. I’m the same.”
Now for the unfamiliar, Lisa Simpson is a cartoon character who is endearingly obsessed with perfection and good grades, with being the archetypal “good girl.” And my friend’s comment has stayed with me all these years because elements of my “Lisa Simpson complex” still infect so many big and small aspects of my life, and it’s something I have to work hard to keep in check. (But her comment also reassured me that there are other “Lisas” out there… maybe you’re one too!) Now, part of me is proud to be meticulous and painstaking about things that are important to me (good grammar, detailed P&Ls, folding my clothes just-so… you have to have standards, so they may as well be good ones!), but part of me also recognizes that there’s a reason “pain” is 36% of the word “painstaking,” because too much Lisa Simpson is no good. It is painful. And it can be destructive. And it can give too much power to people or things outside our control. And it is only with a lot of practice and the perspective that comes with time (I won't say "age" just yet) that I have finally started letting go just a little bit of my once-near-obsession with getting gold stars and being "perfect" in all aspects of my life. I know I will never NOT care what other people think of me, but I have started to be selective about whose opinion I DO care about (Are they qualified to have an opinion? Have they been in the ring themselves? Or are they just haters raining down popcorn and peanuts from the cheap seats?). I know I will always want some actual or symbolic gold stars, but I have started getting better at giving them to myself (as a writer, just thinking about self-publishing my upcoming book is a hard pride-pill to swallow, but why not “choose myself” as one of my favorite business authors would say, instead of waiting for someone else to?). I know there will be times when I look at my business or look in the mirror and only see the things that need “fixing,” but I have started getting better at focusing on what is amazing and beautiful, too. As women, I think sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to be everything to everyone and to do it all perfectly, often by a standard of perfection or performance that someone else has given to us. And I get it. I still struggle with it. Wanting to be “the best” is hardwired into my DNA. One of my favorite stories about my mom goes something like this: When she was around 8 or 9, she came home from school bawling her eyes out, shaking with sadness. Her grandfather – my great-grandfather – rushed out of the house terrified by her distress, and asked her what was wrong. Through sobs and snot, she told him it was because – wait for it…. – she had gotten a 98 out of 100 on her exam! And even as I type this I am smile-crying because god, do I understand her despair. I wish I could transport through time and give the 8-year-old version of my mom a massive hug for feeling those two points so deeply… Ladies, this stuff is hard. Running a business is hard. Achieving big things is hard. Being a woman is hard. Having high standards is hard. But it is also sometimes – maybe more of the times than we realize – made harder by our own doing, by that self-imposed soundtrack nattering in our ears making us forget that a perfect score isn’t the goal, and that what we are doing or have already done is pretty damned great if we would just allow ourselves to see the damned greatness. So, all I’d like to suggest on this slightly-sappy Saturday (the recent gloomy weather in England is really getting to me), is that from time to time, we let go of those two points and turn the perfection soundtrack off. That we give ourselves credit for how many points we DID get, how many new customers we DID get, how many milestones we HAVE achieved, and to focus less on how far there is still to go. For me and so many Entreprenoras in our community, the trick, the work, is finding the elusive sweet spot between striving and accepting: striving for more and better while accepting where, and who, we currently are. It’s not about becoming complacent, it’s about recognizing that sometimes, even when we do our best, all we’ll get is a painful 98% and a tearful walk home, but our grandfathers will still be there to hug us, and we’ll still go on to have amazing lives full of inner AND outer achievements, and maybe one day, sixty years into the future, we’ll have daughters (literal or figurative) who write lovingly about us and admire us for all the times we chose not to give up, not to stop, not to throw everything away even when we were less than perfect. And it’s about recognizing – as my great-grandfather said to my mother all those years ago – that sometimes those two points aren’t ours to have, anyway. Sometimes 98 is our perfect score. And that really is perfect enough. Just this past Wednesday, three short days ago, I had a moment of panic. I was doing something mundane (making a snack, in this case) and just as I was about to sit down to eat my random assortment of pistachios, almond biscotti, and bhakri (an Indian flatbread that is addictively delicious) I literally almost choked.
Out of nowhere, a cascade of doubts and anxiety and nervous what-ifs started to attack me. Holy shit, I thought to myself, I'm never going to get invited to Necker Island. Never! Why was I so consumed with Necker Island, you ask? Well, earlier this week, I had gotten not one, but two emails from two different women who have created amazing businesses that have global reach and soul-deep impact, telling me all about their time at Necker. These are two women who have done great things, and one is someone who is a distant stranger in Australia, but who I quote with alarming frequency (so we're basically friends as far as I'm concerned). And as I'm trying to remember how to chew and swallow, I am panicking because I literally can't imagine how they did it. And that well-worn soundtrack that comes up automatically whenever I am not vigilant started to play a loop: "Who do you think you are? Why would you be able to do something big? Why would Oprah ever want to talk to you?" (That's another fear I have: that I'll never be interviewed by Oprah!) And as these thoughts are literally bringing me close to tears (they're doing so a little bit now too), I remembered a quote that always brings me back from the brink: "Never give up on a dream just because of the length of time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." The time will pass anyway... Sigh... (and phew!) The time will pass anyway... The reason I love this quote is because it is just so obviously true. There are so many things that I think "Oh, it would take FOREVER to do that (or build that or achieve that). What's the point?" and then I think, "Well, the time is going to pass anyway, so screw it, I may as well just try. Here we go..." Ladies, the time WILL pass anyway. So why not fill it with trying, fill it with failing (because that shows you are trying), fill it with taking mini, terrifying steps towards a big dream or a big goal. Sure, you might not get there. Sure, I might never get to Necker Island or be interviewed by Oprah. But you know what? The time is going to pass whether I sit on my ass and agonize about the things that won't happen or whether I get out there and make things happen in whatever way I can. And you know what else? Even if we don't get "there" (wherever "there" is for each of us), at least we will have great stories to share and battle wounds to show off. Life would be so boring if we played it safe all the time, so why not just get out there and see what MIGHT be possible? (I'm telling this to myself as much as I am to you.) Everyone starts off as a no one. Even Oprah started out as "just some girl from Mississippi." And how much sadder and worse off would the world be if she had held herself back by thinking "who am I to be someone" (and given where she was starting from, she had a lot more social and personal and economic reasons to think that way than many of us do). I'm not saying we all need to go out there and be Oprah. All I'm saying is that the time will pass anyway, so we should go out there and do our own thing. Make stuff happen. Build our businesses. Send that first (or fiftieth) email. Ask for what we want. Put ourselves on stage. Whatever it is. Why not you? Why not me? Why not us? The time will pass anyway. And there's plenty of room on Necker Island for all of us. "We just hired two virtual assistants!"
Gosh, that was a good day. This was a few years ago and our business had just gone from a team of three to a team of five. After a few referrals and a few interviews, contracts were signed, job descriptions were loosely agreed, and we were ready to rocket. It was particularly exciting for me at the time because I was feeling over-stretched and was excited to dump all of the tedious admin tasks on my plate onto someone else's plate (or TWO someone else's plates in this case). It was a proud moment. Ahhh, and how quickly that pride turned to disappointment. Before the month was out, one of the virtual assistants changed her mind and decided she didn't want to be a VA after all. Before the year was out, we realized having the other VA just wasn't moving our business forward. And you know what? It was only when we went back to being a team of two (my partner/husband and I) that our business really flourished to its full potential. Not only had we cut costs, we realized some of the work that had been done manually was better done using a software. And some of what was being done on our behalf was simply a waste of time. Our business got better, more profitable, and easier to manage by going back to just us. It wasn't sexy having zero employees, but it was better. And we weren't the only ones. So many of the entrepreneurs I know were better off once they let go of some of their initially-proud "achievements." Some poured tens of thousands of pounds into building custom software, only to realize the software was too expensive to maintain and off-the-shelf products served them better. Some spent hours finding new team members, only to find those hires were toxic and holding the business back. And some diverted time, money, and energy to new product launches that fell flat because their customers were happy with what they already offered. The fancy software, new employees, or additional products they were once proud of became weights around their necks that needed to be closed down or fired so their businesses could perform better. And that's why I am now so careful to recognize, and encourage my coachees to recognize, that it's not the thing or the "more" or the catchy sound-bites that we should boast about, it's the results and the impact. It's not how little we sleep; it's how much we accomplish while awake. It's not the number of hours we work; it's the number of high-value things that get done in those hours. It's not working harder that is something to be proud of; it's working smarter. Sure, sometimes we should be proud when we hire someone (or build a software or launch a new product). And sure, sometimes we should be proud of how hard we work and how much we gave up to achieve our goals (you can't have something for nothing, after all). BUT, all I'm saying is that we should also watch what we are proud of to make sure that we are proud of the things that have a real, measurable, and positive impact on us and our businesses and not just the things that sound impressive or make us look like business bad-asses. It's not the inputs that matter, but the outputs. It's not the "stuff" but the results. So watch what you are proud of, and make sure it is really, truly something to be proud of. "If someone even smiles at me the wrong way, I'm going to lose it!"
I was having a very bad day a few weeks ago. It started as just another promising Tuesday, and then quickly spiraled down, down, down, oh so down, to some deep, dark depths. I can't remember what it was that triggered things, but suddenly, the world felt like it was on top of me. My mind was whirring with all the things I needed to do: make a few calls, submit tax information, follow up on a project that was taking far too long to finish, and oh, by the way, go to the gym (I had been neglecting my health too much lately), write a letter to my daughter's previous doctor, write my next article, film a few videos for my You Tube channel, buy tickets to visit my family in New York, update my website, and... and... and... and... AND!!!!!!! I was starting to plummet. I walked in the door from my morning appointment, spat a hello to my husband, and went straight upstairs. I sat on my bed thinking very angry thoughts. And then I took a shower. I cooked myself a meal. I didn't go anywhere near my phone or my computer. And then I sat. I indulged in some final the-world-is-so-stupid-and-annoying ruminations, and then -- slowly, but finally - I tried to think about what I could do to make the world less stupid and annoying. I emailed my PA and asked her to do some travel research for me. I emailed my PA again with a list of all the updates we needed to make to the website and asked for her help. I slowly, slowly started taking back control and slowly, slowly started clawing back up from the hole I had been slipping down. I was so proud of myself that night. I was proud because years ago, I would have let myself stay in that kind of a funk for days on end, but not anymore. And I only learned how to short-circuit those down-in-the-dumps cycles by learning to honor who I am. I pay attention to my needs. I pay attention to how I know I need to operate. I accept that I need to stew and fume sometimes - I love being self-righteous and resentful for even just a little bit! - but I also accept that I need to cut myself off and get back to doing whatever I can to push myself and my business forward, even just a little bit. A little bit is sometimes all we can do. It's sometimes all we have. And being your own boss means sometimes you have to boss yourself to pull your shit together and do a little bit. Being your own boss also means it's easier to Honor Who You Are, and design a life and business that plays to your strengths instead of preys on your less-than-strengths. It means you can learn from your meltdowns and do better next time. Honoring Who You Are is a big part of becoming an Entreprenora, and an essential part of living your best life. It might sound woo-woo, but you are the only you you've got, so commit to yourself, honor yourself, and help yourself be the best version of yourself you can be. If you don't do it, who else will? PS - My article about Honoring Who You Are has been one of my most popular, and one that got a lot of conversations going in our community. Please have a read and let me know what you think! |
Business Mentor
Virgin Startup |
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Entrepreneur in Residence
London Business School |
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