18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done (20 page)
Read 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done Online
Authors: Peter Bregman
So here we are. I’m writing this sentence on the left side of my computer screen while Daniel is on my lap, watching a movie on the right side.
Sometimes, it really is simply impossible to resist a little multitasking.
We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task. And it’s inefficient, unproductive, and sometimes even dangerous. Resist the temptation.
It’s Not the Skills We Actually Have That Matter
Getting Over Perfectionism
A
ccording to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That’s right, Iceland. Yes, I know it’s cold and dark six months out of the year there. I’m just giving you the data.
The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, author of
The Geography of Bliss
, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn’t stigmatize failure. Icelanders aren’t afraid to fail—or to be imperfect—so they’re more willing to pursue what they enjoy. That’s one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation. “There’s no one on the island telling them they’re not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write,” Weiner writes.
Which makes them incredibly productive. They don’t just sit around thinking they’d like to do something. They do it. According to the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
who wrote the book
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
, “It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.”
So if you
think
you’re good at something, whether or not you are, you’ll do it. The converse is also true: If you think you aren’t good enough at something, you won’t do it.
Now, some of you naysayers will be thinking,
Wait a second, didn’t Iceland go bankrupt?
And you naysayers are right. There are some times—some things—in which failure can’t be tolerated. The financial system of a country is a good example. So is heart surgery. But for the majority of the projects we work on? Failure can be a good sign. It means you got started.
A friend of mine, Raphael, has wanted for some time to start a business teaching guitar. But he hasn’t yet. Why? When you sift through his various explanations and excuses, it comes down to one simple problem.
He’s a perfectionist.
Which means he’ll never think he’s good enough at guitar to teach it. And he’ll never feel that he knows enough about running a business to start one.
Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it’s they who aren’t ready. At the end, it’s their product that’s not. So either they don’t start the screenplay, or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don’t want to show it to anyone.
But the world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity.
And productivity can be achieved only through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It’s the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.
So, how do we escape perfectionism? I have three ideas:
1. Don’t try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.
Don’t write a book, write a page. Don’t create the entire presentation, just create a slide. Don’t expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set clear expectations. Pick a small, manageable goal and follow through. Then pursue the next.
These smaller steps give you the opportunity to succeed more often, which will build your confidence. If each of your goals can be achieved in a day or less, that’s a lot of opportunity to succeed.
2. Do what feels right to you, not to others.
Eleanor is a fantastic mother to our three children. Their sleep is extremely important to her, and in her early days of parenting, she read a tremendous number of parenting books, each one with different advice on how to predictably get children to sleep through the night. Each expert contradicted the next.
The only thing those books succeeded in doing was to convince her that she didn’t know what she
was doing. It was only after throwing all the books away that she was able to find herself as a parent. It’s not that she found the answer. In fact, what helped was that she stopped looking for
the
answer.
What she found was
her
answer, and that allowed her to settle into her parenting. It made her calmer, more consistent, more confident. And that, of course, helped our children sleep better.
By all means, read, listen, and learn from others. But then put all the advice away, and shoot for what I consider to be the new gold standard: good enough.
Be the good-enough parent. The good-enough employee. The good-enough writer. That’ll keep you going. Because ultimately, the key to perfection isn’t getting it right. It’s getting it often. If you do that, eventually, you’ll get it right.
3. Choose your friends, co-workers, and bosses wisely.
Critical feedback is helpful as long as it’s offered with care and support. But the feedback that comes from jealousy or insecurity or arrogance or without any real knowledge of you? Ignore it.
And if you’re a manager, your first duty is to do no harm. A friend of mine, Kendall Wright, once told me that a manager’s job is to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their maximum contribution. That’s as good a definition as I’ve ever heard.
And yet, sometimes,
we
are the obstacle. As
managers, we’re often the ones who stand in judgment of other people and their work. And when we’re too hard on someone or watch too closely or correct too often or focus on the mistakes more than the successes, then we sap that person’s confidence. Without confidence, no one can achieve much.
Catch someone doing seven things right before you point out one thing they’re doing wrong. Keep up that seven-to-one ratio, and you’ll keep your employees moving in the right direction.
These three ideas are a good start. Don’t worry about following them perfectly, though. Just well enough.
The world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity.
Why Won’t This Work for You?
The Value of Getting Things Half Right
T
here’s very little these days that we accomplish by ourselves. Most of the time, we have partners, colleagues, employees, friends, clients, associates—and the list goes on—with whom we work. And more often than not, our ability to get things done is, in part at least, dependent on their willingness and drive to get things done.
So to get them on board, we create lengthy presentations to make a convincing case—and we lose our audience. Or we hold long meetings to gain buy-in—but our bored colleagues end up spending the time on their BlackBerrys. Maybe we try to get good visibility by copying lots of people on our emails, but instead they simply delete them, and us, as irrelevant.
Because none of that stuff works. In fact, it works against us.
There are times in life when I expect something to be just right. Perfect. Like when I open the box of my new
MacBook Air, for example. Or when I take money out of the ATM.
In most cases, though, I expect imperfect. And when working with others, I think that’s a good thing—but not in the if-I-expect-imperfect-I-won’t-be-disappointed sense.
I’m not suggesting you
settle
for imperfect. I’m advising you to
shoot
for it.
Several years ago, a large financial services company asked me to help them roll out a new performance management process for two thousand people.
“Why me? Why not do it yourselves?” I asked my prospective client. This might seem strange coming from a consultant, but I always think companies are better off doing things themselves if they can.
“We tried!” she responded with exasperation. “We identified the standards we expect from people. We created the technology system in which to write the reviews. We sent out lots of communication. We practically wrote the reviews for them. But they’re not doing it. After two years of training people, we still have only a 50 percent rate of completion. Now we’re looking into whether we can give people a bonus for doing reviews—”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting her. “You’re going to pay managers
extra
to talk to their employees?”
She looked a little embarrassed.
“Give me six months,” I said.
When I reviewed the materials, I was impressed, even intimidated. They had paid meticulous attention to detail. Not only in
what
they gave their employees (the materials
looked beautiful), but also in
how
they tried to get people to use the system.
They followed all the rules of traditional change management. They had sponsors (senior-level people who spoke about the importance of performance management). They had change agents (people whose job it was to make sure that everyone was committed to the change). They had time lines, communication plans, and training programs.
Still, only half the managers were completing their reviews.
I assembled my team: fifty people spread out across three continents. I redesigned the materials, the training, the messages. Then I began the roll-out, right on schedule.
It was a complete and utter failure. People resisted. They complained. My own team dissented.
So I pushed harder. After all, I’d designed this myself. It was
perfect
.
And that’s when it hit me.
Of course
I thought the performance review process was perfect. I’d created it. I would be more than happy to use it. But I wasn’t the person who needed to use it. Here’s what I figured out:
1. My perfect is not their perfect.
2.
They
don’t have a perfect. In fact, there is no
they
. There are two thousand individuals, each of whom wants something a little different.
3. The more perfect I
think
it is, the less willing I’ll be to let anyone change it.
4.
The only way to make it useful to
everyone
is to allow
each person
to change it to suit him- or herself.
5. The only way people will use it is if they
do
change it in some way.
6. The only way I will encourage them to change it and make it their own is if I make it
imperfect
.
So I stopped the roll-out immediately. And I changed everything to make it half right, half finished. It wasn’t pretty, but it was usable.
Even the trainings were half designed. Halfway through each training, after describing the process, I always asked the same question—a question people were more than happy to answer:
Why won’t this work for you?
“There are too many standards on this form. I don’t have that much to say about my employees, and it will take too much time.”
I responded to every answer with the same response:
That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?
“I guess I could just fill out the standards that apply to that employee.”
Great
.
“Three people who don’t report to me are asking me to review them, and I have nothing to say about them.”
That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?
“I can redirect the review to the appropriate manager.”
Great
.
“There’s no standard here that relates directly to the issue my employee is having.”
That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?
“I’ll just write in the standard I think is appropriate.”
Great
.
One by one, we dealt with all the issues people saw as obstacles. One by one, they made their own changes. One by one, they took ownership for the system and became accountable for using it.
Is this only a large-scale change idea? Not at all. It’s useful whenever you need someone else to take ownership for something. Just get it half right.
Hiring someone new? Get the job description half right and then ask her:
Why won’t this work for you?
When she answers, you respond:
That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?
She’ll look at you a little funny because, after all, you’re the boss and you should be telling her what to do. Then you’ll just smile and wait for her to answer and the two of you will redesign the job right there, right then. No better time or place to send the message that she is accountable for her own success.
Delegating work to someone? Give him the task and then ask:
Why won’t this work for you?
When he answers, you respond:
That’s a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?
Here’s the hard part: When someone changes your plan, you might think the new approach will be less effective. Resist the temptation to explain why your way is better. Just
smile and say
Great.
The drive, motivation, and accountability that person will gain from running with her own idea will be well worth it.
This doesn’t just work internally. It’s also a great way to make a sale. Get the pitch half right and then say… you guessed it…
Why won’t this work for you?
Then go ahead and redesign the offer in collaboration with your potential client. You’ll turn a potential client into a collaborative partner who ends up buying his own idea and then working with you to make it successful.
Forget about lengthy presentations and long meetings. During economic downturns, when it is critical to get more done with fewer resources, getting things half right will take you half as long and give you better results.
How did this work in the performance review roll-out? One year later, the numbers came in: Ninety-five percent of managers had done their reviews.
Imperfectly, I expect. Which, of course, is the key.
