positive Archives | Ian M Rountree

You know what? I’m tired of talking about failure.

I’ve spent most of this month thinking about how to move on, to learn, to grow from setbacks – and that attitude hasn’t been helpful at all. Sure, I’m learning and growing, but I’d be really worried if I weren’t.

What we learn from our experiences is largely tied to how we treat them, both in the moment, and in hindsight.

We have this awful tendency to vilify the things that enact our setbacks, or to make golden the things that appear to have helped us succeed. Is this productive? Probably not, unless we live by way of avoidance – and that’s not productive. No matter how attached we are to praise, or unconcerned with whether people think we’re snobs online or not – retroactive adjustment is usually a bad idea.

Productivity – rather than just activity – is far more interesting, and far less tied to dedicated learn-by-failure kinds of work than one might expect.

I’ve been thinking about theory a lot lately. Applying theory to practice, adjusting our theories to match our work… These are all good things. But one of the things theory allows us to do – if we have a strong grasp of it anyway – is to conduct some analysis on our failures, and the failures of others…

But there we go again!

We need to shift our verbiage – instead of talking about our liabilities, let’s talk about our deliverables. Same thing, far different meaning. Instead of crossing things off your to-do list, highlight them – same action, entirely different mental trigger (and thank Susan Hurrell for that one).

It isn’t just how we react to our opportunities for improvement that impacts how we improve; it’s also how we react to our opportunities to show our strength, and opportunities to analyse whether it’s strength or improvement we’ve got.

Stop mitigating your weaknesses, and start bolstering your strengths.

Last week I got the audiobook form of Seth Godin’s The Dip through iTunes – it was on for four dollars, how could I say no? – and finished it over about three days of on-foot commutes. I’ve since been trying to come up with a good way to communicate some of the lessons in the book.

Regular book reviews give me the gyp. I can’t write them. If you want a better example of a synopsis review, see Brad J Ward’s sum-up – he did a good job. I like the Dip. I like its message, I love Seth Godin’s writing. But I always have trouble with book reviews, because I look so hard to find application more than just assessment. So why not do something entirely different. Why not an assessment, then an example?

The assessment.

Godin is very good at adding value to simple concepts, but it still feels like you only need one page to write this book. Never quit is a stupid piece of advice, because sticking with things that aren’t working for you is a waste of energy, effort and capital. Godin uses the term Strategic Quitting very often in the book, and talks a lot about the things that are legitimate reasons for us to quit, and the irrational, reactionary reasons why most people quit and then, in true Godin fashion, he wraps it all up with a very simple message.

Being prepared to quit for good reasons (and knowing the reasons why you quit) is of infinite value in any endeavour. This is because, until you reach those limits- the ones you set for yourself when you plan, you’re never going to give up and you’ll eventually become (as Godin says so many times) The Best In The World.

The example.

I’ve been reading Mark Dykeman’s Broadcasting Brain for just under a year. It was one of the first blogs I happened upon when I was looking into doing this very thing myself – and I consider myself very lucky to have found it. Mark’s writing is incredible. The angle from which he approaches life is at once pragmatic and inspired; he gathers massive numbers of ideas for blog posts, and recently crowd-sourced a lot of wisdom about doing work better in the coming year. However, this is now. The dip was then. In August, Mark wrote a perspective on his previous two years of blogging, and it was a visible sign that he was leaning into a big personal dip. Or, perhaps even better considering the awesomeness he’s been producing lately, August may have been the end of the Dip, and the Mark Dykeman we’re seeing now is on the other side, on the hard hill upward, reaping all the benefits of his experience crossing the dip.

Here are the questions I asked Mark, and his responses. [Read more…]