Archives for August 2006

If you fail to achieve a goal; if you fail to master a particular habit; if you simply fail to recall a birthday of someone you know – there is the same question you should ask yourself: are you interested?

Are you interested at all?

Every day we manage to accomplish certain goals and complete various tasks, and we also, quite naturally, fail to get some things done. There are various reasons we attribute our successes and failures to, but I think I know a basic foundation for most of such reasoning.You see, it is my personal belief that all such reasons and excuses can eventually be narrowed down to only one: your interest in the outcome.

The more interested you are in the success, the more easier it is going to accomplish the task. The less interested you are, the harder your struggle with the task is going to be. And what I’ve noticed from my personal experience is that we don’t always stop and realise that the outcome we end up with is the direct result of us being interested or not interested in the task.

Quite often, we’re being rushed by surrounding circumstances so much that we never have a chance to stop and admit that there’s no interest left anymore in something for us to do.

I believe you should always be clear about your interest in a particular outcome, because being genuinely interesting in something is the only way to actually become successful at anything.

If you think about it, any other way of getting things done starts with your interest, and stay very dependant on your level of interest until the task is successfully completed.

Here are just a few of the sure ways to get something done, and how I think they are related to you being interested in a certain outcome:

• Goal setting
  Why do we set goals? Because we want to have a list of outcomes we want to achieve. How do we set goals? By listing the desired outcomes along with the best reasons why we desire such outcomes. No goal is good enough until you’ve decided why it is your goal and why is it that you absolutely have to achieve it. Setting goals and finding the right reasons for desiring them is a process of defining your interests for a certain outcome.You’re interested in a certain goal, and you’re also interested in achieving it within a timeframe and other limitations your situation has. Justifying some outcome as one of your major goals implies learning the exact points of your interest in this outcome.
• Motivation
  What keeps us motivated? There are many sources of motivation available, but among the most obvious ones are your interests. Keep the list of your goals visible, maintain your constant interest in the best outcome possible, and you’ll have plenty of motivation.If something had’t worked out just as good as you expected, review your interests. Why did something go wrong? Was there anything else you could do to prevent this from happening? Why didn’t you? Your interest will have all the explanations: either you were not interested in a particular outcome anymore, or you simply got overwhelmed with an even greater interest in something else.
• Problem solving
  Identifying your exact interests is a crucial part of the problem solving. Until you know for sure what is it that you’re trying to achieve by solving the problem, you cannot effectively proceed with the solution itself. You need to clearly see why and what you want to accomplish by solving the problem, and predict the desired outcomes for doing so. Sometimes it will take you just a few minutes to realise that the problem doesn’t interest you, because it’s neither a challenge nor a desired outcome for you.

Are you interested enough?

Once you learn to stay interest-conscious about any task or plan you have, it will become quite easy for you to manage the priorities and order for things to be done.I know what you’re thinking now. Yes, it would be perfect if we could only do things we really like and we’re genuinely interested in, and simply forget about all the other things which we’re required to do as part of our social or functional roles. But the reality is this: we need to learn how to become interested in things which we’ll have to do anyway, because then it will be much easier to get them done.

When you look at your typical plan of actions for one of your goals for example, you will see right away some (hopefully many) items on the list which interest and excite you, and others which really don’t. But if you know that a certain part of your plan is really important and therefore has to be done, this means you need to look for the interest even if there isn’t anything apparently appealing in the task.

With project plans it’s fairly easy to find your interest in about anything – simply because every single step serves the bigger interest of one of the higher level tasks. But it’s always possible to find other ways of some task to interest you.

Here is a simple yet effective approach you can use when going through a list of tasks, be it a project plan or a simple to-do list for the next half-an-hour:

1. Glance through the list, quickly identifying items of interest. Mark them – they will be the relatively easy ones to accomplish.
2. Look at the rest of the list, and quickly identify the most obvious dependencies of actions which don’t seem to interest you to the ones of your interest from step 1.
3. Look at the list of uninteresting items and decide which tasks are most important (simply because you know they’re important or because you can see a lot of interesting tasks depend on one of the uninteresting tasks)
4. Prioritize – uninteresting tasks with lots of dependencies should be a higher priority
5. Grow your interest – emphasize the advantages of getting the highest priority things done, and pay some attention to details – like “this has to be done because without it I can’t go on with the really interesting stuff”, or “this is the only uninteresting task in the whole first stage of the project – it will be great to do get it done first and then quickly roll up the whole stage of a project”.

Be genuinely interested!It is a rather popular belief: if you’re passionate about something, you’re going to be successful at it. While generally I agree with this statement, I’ve changed it to the following one a long time ago: if you’re interested in something, you’re going to be successful at it.

I’ve made such a change to the magic formula because I believe that passion usually growth from interest. You can’t really be passionate about something unless you get interested in it first.

In a context of getting things done, being passionate really means being interested in the most successful outcome of every task you have. When your interest is so strong that you’re willing to sacrifice your time, money and other valuable resources to achieve your goal, you will know that you’re passionate about something.

Being interested suggests that you’re focused and serious about your goals, you’re alert and ready to face the challenges. Being interested implies having many more qualities of your character activated and aimed at the maximum productivity.

In contrast to it, being passionate suggests something irrational – like being impulsive and creative, but not necessarily efficient. Being passionate implies strong feeling about a certain goal or subject, but does not necessarily suggest maintaining awareness of other factors which could affect your accomplishments.

That’s why I’ve been using the following formula for a while, and it’s been most useful in everything I’ve accomplished so far: if you’re really interested in something, you’re going to be successful.

More and more I realise that this simple rule is absolutely true: what you focus on will improve.Over the past few months I’ve been trying to improve so many things in my life that it would take a while even to write them down. Not everything was a complete success, but I’m more than happy with the results I’ve achieved so far. And now that I gradually become more and more conscious about the need to maintain my focus on the right things, I notice that some experiences of mine were an absolute success, and that it wasn’t just a coincidence.

I’ve realised that only the things I’ve paid most attention to got greatly improved.

Know what your goals are

I’ve said it before, and I’m going to repeat it: know what your goals are! Because if you’re going to focus on something to make it happen and to improve it, you have to be absolutely sure where you’re going with your goals.

Wrongly chosen focus could mean that you’re going to improve things which don’t really matter to you. Improving them will take time and efforts, but will not bring you closer to your goals. And this, done repeatedly to yourself, brings a certain frustration.

Let your focus do the work for you Too often people let great ideas go simply because they fear they’re not going to have enough time, money, skill or some other resource to make the idea work. And while it’s generally a good approach to be conscious about your abilities and resources, you should never worry about things without first taking time to analyze them.

What I’m trying to say is that if you pick an idea, and immediately start worrying about everything that comes to your mind, it’s not going to get you anywhere. This isn’t what we call a productive thinking.

What you need to do instead is to write an idea down, in as much detail as possible. That’s the first step towards a proper analysis and planning. Then, start writing down what it’s going to take you to make the idea work. DON’T worry about HOW you’re going to make it all work. Just write it down as if there’s going to be someone else who will magically do all the work for you. Remember: you’re trying to build a plan which works, not the plan which will simply scare everyone (including yourself) away from a brilliant idea.

After you’ve written everything down, pick a few of the most important areas of the project. They are the ones you want to keep your focus on. And for each of these, come up with at least 2 next steps to bring you closer to your goal. Don’t worry about how big or small these few steps are – but make sure they are real to you, they are some things you can go and do yourself, right now or a little bit later.

After this, let your focus do the work for you. Print the goals out in a large font and put them on your desk or your whiteboard. Make sure you review them daily, and get into a habit of coming up with at just one step which will bring you closer to your goal, every day.

What you should aim for is a progress, not a difference it will or will not make. You want to get into a proper state of mind – into a planning mode, when your creative thinking will give you more and more actions you can do to bring you closer to your goal. You want to learn how to get into this state on a constant basis. And after you master this habit, you will be shocked how easy it is to move towards your goal.

Never underestimate the power of focus!

Don’t be surprised with your resultsSometimes maintaining a focus will make a positive difference somewhere you never expected it!

Here’s an example for you: two months ago I’ve realised that I was making quite a number of spelling errors as I wrote my articles. Most of these errors were made because I was in such a creative state while working on an article, that my mind would simply disregard any spelling questions – and so some words would always be spelled incorrectly, mostly the same words with the same spelling errors.

I had realised that bad spelling wasn’t doing me any favours, and so I’d made a decision to spell-check every article of mine before I post it.

It was that simple: there was a problem which needed my attention, and so I maintained my focus on it to ensure the quality of my articles is as high as I’d like it to be. Simple, yet effective!

But what I didn’t expect is that it would actually improve my spelling!

You see, it turned out that I was misspelling only a certain set of words, and I was so consistent making spelling mistakes, that in a matter of weeks I had learned most of the words I would usually misspell. They were not very long words, they were not very hard to spell properly, it’s just that I had a pattern of misspelling them. But over the course of two months, I’ve fixed the spelling of these words so many times that I’ve automatically started typing the same words correctly right at the time of writing!

So with the last few articles of mine, I had literally no spelling mistakes (I know this because I still maintain the focus and do the spell-check), all this just because I’ve paid attention and maintained my focus.

Isn’t it wonderful? I never expected that my focusing on spelling would improve anything but the quality of my articles, and yet – it helped me greatly improve my writing. Just like me, be prepared to see improvements everywhere and not just in the area you’re focusing on! You’ll be surprised how seemingly unrelated things gradually improve because of a minor tweak in your approach.