Success

Success seems to be an elusive unicorn. There have been so many different measurements and tests and surveys and models. Yet authors have not been able to write the definitive book that will lead to the success anyone is looking for.

On many levels it is easier to assume fairies show up and sprinkle success dust over the successful and do not sprinkle success dust over the unsuccessful.

I know I would rather assume the successful writers, speakers, authors, and software companies I want to align myself with are sprinkled with success dust and that is why I have not been able to attain a certain level of success or accolade in my life.

The more difficult assumption is to assume the successful showed up and put in the hard work and now they are successful because they started putting in the hard work and did not stop.

They

Did

Not

Stop

I am sure they wanted to stop. I am sure they had reasons to stop. There were hard moments when they were losing it all. Things were on the verge of not working and everything was about to catch fire if they stopped working.

Still, they kept going. They did not stop. And today they have the mark of success I look at and admire. It was not given to them. It was not an award the received for being the 1 millionth startup that year.

They showed up. They kept working. Especially when it was hard, they kept showing up.

What are you working on? What excuse are you giving yourself about not showing up? How can you start working on your project? When can you show up again? Have you put the appointment on your calendar to keep yourself from scheduling over it?

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The Underbelly

I recently ran into this graphic of what it is like to work on a project. How you spend all this time in the underbelly of the project or system, and so little time actually engaging what is going on.

The hot, new, sexy thing is on top. Meanwhile, the whole rest of the project is the seventy percent of the iceberg you cannot see and it can sink your boat. Everyone wants the top of the iceberg, nobody want to spend the time building the bottom of the iceberg where all the work is.

The part of the iceberg where you are drowning because of the anxiety of the enormity of the project you are working on.

The part where you want to give up.

The part where you are not sure how you are going to afford to pay your bills and keep going.

The part of a project, process, or story where everyone is most engaged and involved is in the underbelly. The start of the project is happy and easy and nobody seems to care. The end of the project is the obvious conclusion of what everyone expected.

The underbelly is where everything gets interesting.

Are you really going to give up now that things are finally interesting? How do you keep your goal and end in sight while you are in the underbelly of the story? What did you do the last time you encountered the underbelly of a project? How are you preparing for the underbelly of the next project?

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FOIL

When I learned algebra, I was taught First Outside Inside Last as the order of operations. Today, when I type a formula into Google or a calculator, it then follows the rules to calculate the correct answer.

Meanwhile, when I hand the same formula to a human, they will usually follow the rules as best they can. Fortunately for us both, I do not need very complicated formulas. Then again sometimes I will put the wrong formula together to try and find the information I need. Other times, I will be looking for the wrong information altogether. I will have the right answer to the wrong question.

Meanwhile, when working with people, they are not nearly as predictable and analogue as the calculator. Every interaction I have with a calculator has a limited number of reactions. Other people are not nearly as simple. Every interaction and micro-interaction has several reactions per person, and in some cases, there are several potential reactions based on the time of day, week, month, season, or year.

The calculator was designed with the same limitations. The designer of the calculator knew that various people would try and interact with it in different ways. They knew that some people would follow the rules and other people would type “01134” into it, turn it upside down, and show their friends that they made the calculator say “hEll0.”

I need to also design my interactions to be good, better, and the best for most people, most of the time. So whether I have someone trying to run a complex formula using the ‘Manning Interface Guidelines’ or someone who is trying to type “hEll0” I still provide the best experience in the interactions and micro-interactions I have.

When I am initiating an interaction, I need to make sure I am designing the interaction to be the best for the person I am interacting with. Present them with a genuine and positive interaction to give them the best opportunity for the best and most positive reaction.

How are you when someone interacts with you? Do you react well when someone tries to type “hEll0?” Do you try to set up other people to have the most opportunity for a positive reaction? Do you go into interactions looking for good ways to improve the best for others before it is good for you?

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Grownups

When I was a little kid, I always looked up to adults. Literally, I haven’t always been six feet tall. Really though, they were the grownups. They were so much taller and smarter than I was. I wanted to be just like them when I was grownup. Tall and smart, that’s what it meant to me to be a grownup, tall and smart.

Here I am all these years later and I’m still waiting for someone to give me a badge. To let me know, I am an adult. I’m 32, a father, and I still wonder when I’ll be a grownup. Reflecting on what’s so different now from that little kid who sat in the room while his parents and their friends sat around talking and chatting about adult things. Most of which in my memory sounds exactly like the adults from Charlie Brown. I think I’m about as tall as I’ll ever be, unfortunately.

The more I reflect on what a grownup is, the more I have realized, grownups are a process not a destination. I’ll never be grownup. I will continue to grow up and develop and learn and improve and become more adult. I am definitely much taller today than I was then, but that does not seem to make me an adult. It only seems to cause others to assume I am an adult. We will see how the smart part plays out, but I like to think I am smarter today than I was then.

A grownup is a participant in the process of growing up.

I have to choose to be a participant in this process, and that is all it means to be a grownup. To keep participating in the process and never stop. To believe I have arrived at the destination of being a grownup will mean, I cannot grow any more and my potential will then have peaked.

How are you participating in the process of growing up? How are you intentionally participating in the process of growing up? What would it look like fo you to stop participating? (The best way to avoid failure is to know what it looks like.) What would it look like for you to start participating? Who can help hold you to your word to participate in the process of growing up?

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Details

Do you ever get overwhelmed by a project? All the parts there are to it. The way you are going to have to do all the steps that are hard and annoying. They have so many steps and attributes to track.

This does not seem to matter. You have to do the project anyways. Your boss assigned it to you. The government expects you to do your taxes. Your car needs to be repaired. You need to see the doctor for the chronic issue you are still having.

You do not get to skip a step in this process. You have to get it all. You cannot afford to miss anything. At the end of the day, if you miss something it only causes bigger issues.

Using a cheaper option for the supplier in the project costs you quality. Not seeing the doctor costs you sick days. Not getting your car fully repaired will lead to more car issues in the long run. Not doing your taxes will lead to the government fining you and cost you more money than the taxes you need to pay.

When you slow down and hit every step, checkbox, and detail possible, you pay for the whole thing up front and you do not have to keep paying for it over and over again. Best of all, you pay less in the long run too.

How great would it be for everything to cost less in life because you did it right the first time?

Take your time, do it right the first time.

No matter how much I want to so it right the first time. I get impatient and skip ahead. I let myself get overwhelmed and anxious by the size of the project and the ambiguity of the unknown. When I stop, breath, and take my time. I never regret it.

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Systems & Processes

You are not the first person ever. Odds are someone before you has done what you have been trying to do. They worked it out. Experimented. Tried over and over again. Developed a best method or practice. And now they have probably even written about it. They have shared their idea with the internet for everyone to read for free or cheap.

Why then are you trying to figure out how to do it on your own? Adapt their method to your use case. Odds are they figured out the fastest and cheapest way to do it. Plus, if you use their method, you have just freed up so much of your own time to get things done that really matter.

And if you are doing this and you are the only one who does it and it has to be done the way you do it. Then why not write it down, systemize it, and help someone else do what you are doing. There is a pretty good chance there are other people in the world trying to do what you are doing. These other people can probably use your advise and perspective on how to do what you are already doing so well.

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The System

Having recently had the opportunity to celebrate the American Daylight Saving time and knowing the majority of the rest of the world had now had the opportunity to also catch up and join us in our time change of productivity. ( A great explanation if you did not know different parts of the world celebrate DST at different times.)

This only rekindles my eternal loathing for the semiannual holiday. My seething subsides a little more with each passing year as I have fewer and fewer clocks to change. I think at this point, there are only four clocks I have to update manually. However, how many lost hours of productivity have been lost to the time change negatively affecting people because they forgot and showed up to work late? Or how about how many hours have been spent wasting time communicating this archaic tradition to help people not forget? Or what about the opportunity we all have to change our clocks? I doubt there has been any time lost to changing clocks every year.

Truly, what upsets me most is best summed up by Admiral Grace Hopper, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” (An amazing woman to say the least. We a great deal to her in regards to modern computing languages and software development if you do not already know of her, you should get to know her.)

There are very few methods, systems, or processes that last forever. I have a pretty good system for brewing my french press at work. However, it is not perfect and will not last forever. Maybe my taste will change or my preferences will change on the flavor, style, or strength of my coffee. Similarly, Daylight Saving Time was once very necessary for generations built on sunlight, productivity, and manufacturing. As we now deviate from these ancient systems, it is time for us to update our clocks for the last time.

Similarly, as I grow and mature, it is time for me to take a look at the systems and processes in my own life and develop them. Mature them. Bring them up to speed with where I am at in life.

What processes are you using without question? What systems are outdated that you use regularly? What long overdue process do you need to institute?

Intentionally,

–JT

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Teaching

Teaching is one of the noble careers I appreciate. Natural teachers are some of my favorite people to be around. They are so adept at bringing learning into their whole life and sharing new knowledge with me and everyone around them.

However, I so forget how much it takes to be a teacher. I was trying to document my processes and systems for how I do what I do and I realized how much it really takes to teach. The visuals so people can see things the way I see them. The endless words strewn across pages and pages to describe my actions.

Then, at the end of the day, the people I am trying to teach still have completely different mental filters and life experiences between the two of us getting in the way of our filters and conversations. We have no way to cross these hurtles without standing in the same room together and talking it all through.

I had forgotten how much it really takes to teach people what I was doing. I had also forgotten how much it had taken for me to get to be doing what I do. How many layers of the onion had grown on top of one another to develop into the job I was doing.
It was very humbling to not be able to document the layers of the onion. I did not need to document how or why things had gotten to be they way they are. I only needed to document how to do the what needs to be done. And though, it was important to have a process through which these processes could improve, it was not necessary in least to document the evolution of how things came to be how they are.

I realized the necessity of having things be the way they are is good, but I had too often been trying to protect things and keep them the way they were because of the process to get them to be the way they were and I was not fighting for everything to get better because it needed to be better.

I was trying to protect the inner layers of the onion meanwhile the outermost layer of the onion was rotting away and couldn’t grow or improve.

What are you needlessly fighting to protect? If you were to document how you do what you do, how much time would you have to spend defending the process to get to where you are? Is the process to get to where you are as important as the destination? Where is your pride getting in the way?

Humbly,

–JT

Role Switching

I am not one to dump carte blanche categorization of people as a way to understand the world; but, I did recently have a realization of types of people who are involved in a product. I see these three lenses of understanding myself and others as an opportunity to better understand how I can best work with other people. These roles are dynamic depending on the situation and in some regards, I think we all play one of these roles more often than the other two and any one of these roles can be a full time profession.

The first person I see is the Creator. They are the designer of the product. The person who makes it, has the idea, develops the idea. Maybe even brings the idea to market. The Creator’s goal is to get the product in the hands of someone to use it and love it and the Creator uses it and loves it and they want people to never stop using their product and they will do anything to make it better for the Customer.

The second person I see is the User of the product. The person who interacts with the product’s creation process or back end every day. They are not the Customer. They keep the product working. The systems the product relies on are used by the User every day. The User is the fuel to the system and the maintainer of the processes. The product continues because of the User and the systems they perpetuate. Maybe they are on the manufacturing team of an assembly line or the coding team of an an application. Usually, they have more contact with either the Designer and less contact with the Customer or more contact with the Customer and less contact with the Creator. The User’s goal is to have a fine tuned product and an equally fine tuned process to keep the product going.

Finally, there is the Customer. This is the person who is the perfect target market. They see the product, put their hard earned resources on the line in exchange for taking the product home. They are meant to be with the product and the product is meant for them. They usually have almost no contact with the Designer and they only have contact with the User at best. Truly, the Customer is the target for the product.

The breakdown comes in when the members of this arc forget their place. The Creator, for instance, generally should not be the one to fill in the role of the User. The Creator is meant to have an idea and share an idea with someone who can do it better than they can. They are meant to be the origin point and let the User do their job. The flaw of the Creator is their ideas about how the Customer will use the product. The Creator generally thinks the customer will use the product one way and, generally speaking, the Customer will actually use the in a vastly different manner all together.

The User cannot forget their role either. They cannot start to fill in for the Creator and filter the feedback from the Customer. They need to make sure to always keep the Customer’s best interest first. They too easily get lost in what works best for the User and not what works best for the Customer. When the User starts to get too carried away with designing for themselves, they start to do what is best for them and their needs and the Customer’s are lost in the fray. Ultimately, the Customer will leave the product because the User is so busy maximizing the product’s processes to meet their own needs and not the needs of the Customer.

Finally, The Customer should be the simplest; but too often, the Customer forgets their role and starts to try and act like the Creator and forgets they only have a piece of the picture. When the Customer forgets their role they start trying to tell the User what to do not knowing how their decisions actually alter the process and derail the overall picture the User is orchestrating on their behalf as the Creator is designing and innovating in their product.

Ultimately, we must have all three roles in order to bring a product to our customers. And the products will vary. Maybe you work for a university and your customers are the students, you are the User, and the Designer is the university’s leadership. Or perhaps you love going to a certain restaurant or buying from a certain tech vendor, thus making you the Customer. Your server is then your User, and the cook or owner/menu selector is the creator.

For me, I have begun to realize my role in all of this. I have started remembering my place, not to over extend into other people’s areas but instead encourage them to succeed at what they do well that I might be able to succeed at what I do well.

Which role do you identify most with? Which role do you overextend into the most often? What can you do to help the people you overextend into instead of suffocating them with your overextension?

Extended,

–JT