Reframe your problem

And detach yourself from it.

Whether it be something to take care about yourself, your business or almost anything, really.

Any problem you encounter you could reframe it as an engineering problem, as a failure in the system.

So, when you view everything as a system, then you are not the problem, you are not a failure. It is only the system which failed temporarily. So it must be fixed.

It is kind of a lifehack more than a method, but hey, if things are getting fixed who can complain?

Fix and move on.

Give as few orders as possible

Once you give an order about a determinate matter, you will have to give an order about that matter ALWAYS.

It is better to ask for an outcome and let people decide for themselves how they will reach the goal.

And as long as they have some basic ethical and cultural guidelines, they will know what is right and what is not.

Who knows, you might get a nice surprise.

Remember that, most likely, you can’t possibly know each and every path to a solution and, the more you try to control people, the less they will grow.

Playground

How many different games can make up a group of kids in a sandbox? And how about a whole playground?

They will come up with thousands of games with thousands of variations.

That is a laboratory of life. They experiment with inputs, processes, rules and even players.

They experiment and experiment, and they don’t feel bad if a game didn’t come as expected, they just say: let’s play something else.

Imagine if you could see you life, and yourself, as a kid in a playground. How many things you would have given yourself permission to try?

How much fun you would have had?

Take it to your organization. Turn it into a playground. The markets need those amazing products and services result of minds set free.

Welcome to the state of play.

Acceptance

It feels like a warm, gentle wave washing your feet at the beach. Acceptance is the ocean cleansing and caressing your soul.

Having a distorted perception of the reality is like swimming upstream. You create friction between yourself and the world. It is exhausting to create a screen with filters and projections between your eyes and the universe.

Acceptance means the struggle just came to an end.

But hey, acceptance doesn’t mean conformity. Acceptance means fresh eyes and clear vision. It means you can finally set things on course.

That useless struggle have finished, yes, but now you may start a new kind of struggle: a truly meaningful one. A struggle (let’s call it quest) to forge that accepted reality into a better, more fulfilled, transformed reality.

Commitment to dysfunctionality

A few years ago, while I was mapping the processes for a consulting client.

I found some people within the company, including the CEO, described to me the processes inside the company in a completely different manner than what i had observed to be the actual process.

I made my ppt presentation to display the findings and they couldn’t beleive the gap between what they thought was happening to what was actually happening.

Even after I showed them the evidence, they were reluctant to believe the facts, and their distorted reality, even though it didn’t produced the desired outcomes, was a prefered view of their particular world.

How hard it is to see reality as it is.

I tried several ways to bring them around to a more objective perception without any success. Their commitment to dysfunctionality was so deeply rooted that no other version of the reality was allowed.

Sounds stupid, right? But we all do the same in some way or another.

The thing is, all the bias that govern our perception of reality and our perception of ourselves will never seem stupid to us.

And no, do not kid yourself: it is not how quirky or eccentric we are. It is plain and simple dysfunctionality.

Networking for creativity

Certain breakthroughs are the consequence of a particular type of personal network. That network prompted an exceptional individual creativity.

You’ll see, networks deliver three unique advantages: private information, access to diverse skill sets, and power. And the combination of those advantages compound into high impact, shielded, warped movement.

So, do you want to have greater impact? Do you want to see your ideas implemented? Do you want to achieve more? Maybe the state of your network could be the single most important task you should focus next.

Networks determine which ideas become breakthroughs.

https://hbr.org/2005/12/how-to-build-your-network

Go take a look at the article. The authors will even tell you how to diagnose and manage your network.

Resistance is futile

Of all the races depicted in #startrek it is hilarious (and kind of scary) that, most probably, we will become the cyborg hive organism first.

With neural-computer interfaces coming much sooner than anyone expected, the level of connectivity and communication that we will be able to have, will go from individual-individual, all the way to everyone-connected-to-every-one at thoughts and feelings level.

As we speak, we are training for that.

All those trolls, haters and the rest of ominous characters in tweeter are practicing the immediate connection, throwing whatever comes to their minds.

They think they are safe spreading all that hate. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Also the regular person posting and commenting is training. They are putting themselves out there. Even if it is a curated version of themselves, they are having so much more exposure than anyone did 20 years ago.

So, we are preparing ourselves to the über-connection.

Some will love it, some will hate it. But it’s coming. Resistance will be futile.

Just friday

Tomorrow it’s Friday. Just that. A regular, unextraordinary Friday.

Tomorrow it’s a change in the numbers we see on our phone screens. And that is about that.

It won’t be THE day you finally find a purpose. It won’t be the moment when everything that went bad during 2020 will be fixed. It won’t be the day that everything changes.

Unless you do.

PS. For that kind of change, any day will do.

Now go and have a great, happy, extraordinary year, you gorgeous human being!

Give meaning

Setting your selfish gene’s propagation aside, the purpose of life is to give meaning to it.

You give meaning to your life.

Such a beautiful thought.

It literally puts in your own hands the direction of your life. Amazingly, it puts in your hands the outcome too.

And of course, it also gives you the full responsibility on your life.

Total ownership of your own life. As it should be.

Identity and actions

Your identity emerges out of the habits you have. What you do eventually becomes who you are.

So, if you have always dreamed about becoming a chef, you should start cracking eggs and cutting some onions, even if it makes you cry.

Eventually, if you are consistent and start doing things chefs do, all your own narrative will include a whole section of you being a chef. Then you become one.

Same applies for companies.

If you think in order to survive your company should be evolving into something new, the you better start doing that something new or it won’t happen.

You should start developing new products or services, even if it’s not in your industry. Or you should start acting some traits into your culture, so you can become THAT kind of company.

To incumb into a new business, the best way to become that new company, is by acting.