Zugunruhe: Helping great people get [good] things done: Zoog.un.roo.ee

What is enough?

Themes of conversations seem to come in waves. Yesterday, the theme was “when have I done enough?” Two conversations, two very different people, both struggling with the sense that no matter how hard they work, no matter how much is accomplished or achieved, no matter what—it doesn’t seem to be enough. What does it mean to do enough? And how do you know when you get there?

At first blush, enough would seem to be an obvious quality. However, if you’re a knowledge worker—that is, someone whose productivity and results come from brain work—the standards of what is enough may be far fuzzier than someone who produces widgets for a living. That’s because knowledge work, or thinking for a living, has a way of being a source of work in and of itself. Let’s take a look at an example.

Work can come from assigned duties—that’s something someone tells you to do—or work can be self-assigned. Self-assignment can be the agreements you make based on requests but often, for a typical brain worker (and this includes small business owners), self-assigned work is self-generated work. You get an idea. You like the idea. The idea is something that is doable. So you decide to pursue said idea. You start writing a blog, producing a podcast, doing the research needed to write a book proposal. Lo, more tasks are generated. The work itself becomes a source of more work and the more you do, the more there is to do. And therein is the paradox. When have you done enough?

One possible key to this conundrum may come from your ability to work hard on meaningful projects. What I mean by this is if you are spending a great deal of time on self-generating work that is linked to a larger purpose--a project that has great meaning for you—you may find that fulfillment comes from the process. Once you tap into the joy of the process, then like any activity you deeply enjoy, getting enough isn’t what you’re after. Instead, your thirst for the doing outweighs the desire to achieve some result.

One thing I’ve noticed about people who stick with one area of focus for a long, long time is that they seem to have a profound love for the activity or subject, above and beyond any achievement or goal. Like the botanist who studies her one genus of plant for 30 years because she just wants to know, the artist who’s been painting since he was six, the novelist who keeps writing stories even in the face of repeated rejections. It’s not that these folks don’t want to accomplish or complete, but rather that they don’t rely on that sort of validation.

A long while back, I had the opportunity to talk to novelist Susan Straight. Susan lives and breathes her stories. When she’s not writing, she’s thinking about her characters, worrying about their well-being. Susan writes wherever she goes, on whatever is handy. She’s a well-published, acclaimed author, but from talking to her, that’s not what drives her. It’s the love of the story that keeps her heart on fire. I’m guessing here, but I imagine that there is no such thing as enough for Susan—she will always hunger for more and she wouldn’t want it to be any other way.

In the end, perhaps that’s the real trick: finding something about your work that feeds your soul. Something that you’ll always want more of, like chocolate, and focusing on pursuing it. There will always be more to do, you’ll always want more of it to do, and too much will never be enough.

Back to School (or, What I did on my summer vacation)

It’s a gray Monday in the Pacific Northwest, one that looks suspiciously like fall. I’m back from my summer vacation (as many are, a bit of a working vacation but hey—it was Costa Rica!) and am working to caught up and get back in gear.

Lots of long flights meant lots of time for reading. One book that made a deep impression on me was Coaching the Artist Within. This highly readable, immensely practical book sets out to teach you a dozen essential skills. Skills that not only will help you to be more creative, but will get you up off your duff and into meaningful pursuits, no matter what the arena.

The first skill is becoming your own self-coach. Because I already am a coach, the first exercise of the book was particularly interesting and surprisingly rewarding for me. The idea is that you alternate roles in a dialog fashion. First, you are you, bringing forth the issue you wish to be coached on, just as you would with an actual, live coach. Then, you switch chairs (the author suggests you do this literally), and speak to yourself as your coach.

I dove into the self-coaching exercise with a nagging issue for me: finishing my novel. While I won’t go into details here, the upshot is that I have a solid story with a large gap in it. I’ve been stuck in incompletion for an embarrassingly long time. So I sat down with myself as coach as used my journal to capture the back and forth. After four pages (longhand), I had worked out some areas of wrong thinking and created a plan for how to get back to work. (And so far, I’m please to report, the plan seems to be working.)

The exercise does a great job of suggesting the entry point into the self-coaching dialog. However, from my own perspective as trained coach, there are some pieces missing. If you’d like to work as your own coach, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Structure your conversation with yourself. This means putting the dialog into a specific order, beginning with a simple statement of what you want to work on and what outcome you want from the conversation. Every coaching conversation begins this way: What do you want to work on today? What would you like to walk away with? By being very specific here, at the beginning, you set your agenda.

• Hold your agenda. If you were working with someone else as your coach, she would keep you from wandering off on tangents. As your own coach, it’s your job to keep yourself on topic. Writing your dialog out will assist you in doing that, as you can read back over each statement and see where you’re starting to slip off topic.

• Be honest with your responses. Self-coaching is useless if you let yourself remain in denial about what you’re doing (or not doing) and the obstacles that are holding you back. Find out what you are pretending not to know; go for the heart of the matter.

• Ask yourself open-ended questions that begin with “what” and “how.” This, for me, was one of the most difficult coaching skills to master. But once you get in the groove with what and how questions, you can really make progress very rapidly. You'll notice I don't suggest asking “why?” I am not a fan of asking why because when someone doesn’t know why, they’ll come up with some answer and get stuck with it. Often, there is no good answer for why—so skip it. Instead, listen for a way to ask a question based on what or how. Here’s an example.

Me: “I’m not working on my novel. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to fix it.”

As self-coach: “Fix it? What about your novel is broken?”

Ultimately, the job of a coach is to use inquiry to allow the client to see themselves from a more objective viewpoint. By using the same skills that a coach would use, you can take yourself from stuck to starting and from angst to art.

For me, the breakthrough moment came when I wrote that I had to fall in love with the book all over again to work on it. As soon as I wrote that sentence, I recognized it as pure BS. The next coaching question was golden, “What do you have to do to work on it?” And the answer, of course, was blindingly simple: show up every day. Duh. But that’s what a good coach does—she gets you to take off the blinders and see what’s right in front of you, then provides accountability so you follow through.

Ready to give it a try? All you need is a few sheets of paper (longhand will slow you down so you can really see and hear your responses and think your questions out more carefully) and about 30 minutes of uninterrupted time. Here’s the first coaching question to get you started: What do you want to work on today?

Balancing goals and plans

There’s a quote I really like that says, “Plans are useless but planning is essential.” Goals can be a lot like that, too. It’s vitally important to have goals, and plans to reach those goals. But goals and plans are like compasses—they point the direction to travel in but they don’t tell you what will happen along the way.

If you don’t reach the goals you set for yourself, it can be disheartening and sometimes, quite frustrating. And when you hit that frustration, it may be tempting to revise goals to be more realistic and attainable. But it’s also important to have goals that take us beyond what we think we can do. There’s an important balance to strike between goals that are easy and goals that stretch. It’s a real art to maintain the right equilibrium.

Many times, people find that having accountability agreements—that is, someone to report back to—helps them to reach for the harder goals more consistently. However, I’ve noticed that sometimes having a tight accountability agreements can actually work against people. There is a balance to strike there, too. Knowing that someone expects to hear how things are going can push you to get things done. The flip side is that when your progress looks different from how you expected it, it can feel like you have nothing to report, increasing the sense of frustration. To make accountability work for you, you might want to mull over reporting any and all movement forward rather than focus strictly on goals or on what you planned to do.

In the end, plans don’t get things done. That’s because the map ain’t the territory. But with the appropriate balance between goals, plans, and accountability, you can make great progress. The joy of the process is that you can’t predict exactly how things will turn out, but by moving in the right direction, you increase the likelihood that things will turn out well.

Coaxing creativity into the light

No matter what you're interested in getting done, creativity is a must. From solving sticky problems to living a full life, knowing how to come up with innovative and novel approaches requires that divinely creative spark. Sometimes it's easy to think that creativity is something you're born with (or not), a gift that only a few can claim. But you're in luck--because two amazing women are about to reveal that creativity is accessible to everyone, not just a fortunate few. Julia Fabris McBride and Trish Salerno have learned creativity from the inside out.

Julia (left), now a life and leadership coach, earned her stripes as an actor then took her background in theater into the world of non-profits. Trish (right), also theatrically-inclined, is the former Executive Director of Arts Kentucky. Both women have facilitated leadership programs at the famed James P. Shannon Leadership Institute.

Last week, I talked to these wonderful women about how they’ve collaborated to bring the creativity they enjoy to the rest of us. (You can listen to our conversation here.) Coaxing Creative Back into the Light, billed as “A workshop for entrepreneurs, executives, activists and artists,” is designed to provide the all important pause—the space, time, and energy required for the inspirational spark to burst into creative flame. Julia and Trish both know it’s essential to provide creativity with an invitation. “[Creativity] won’t just come knocking on your door and say “Here I am!” Julia says. “You’ve got to come out on the front stoop and invite it in.”

Both women know how busy we all are. That’s why they’re setting aside a Saturday in September (September 20th, to be exact) to give eager participants in Louisville, Kentucky, the opportunity to really stretch their creative legs. Starting with breakfast (and chocolate, Trish was quick to add), twenty or so folks will have Trish and Julia all to themselves to learn the skills and techniques of calling on creativity. (If you want to join them, click here for more information.)

The main thing to remember is that you can choose to become more creative. You have all the talent and resources you need. All that’s required is to put out the welcome mat and invite inspiration in to tell you what’s next. And if you need some assistance, two lovely muses named Julia and Trish are ready to help.

Incentives de-motivate

You may remember a recent post I wrote about the four stages of motivation. The idea is that motivation to do something ranges from forced to, through should, choice, and finally, doing things because of your own intrinsic desire to do them. It turns out there’s an interesting connection between where rewards come from and the degree of motivation people feel.

When people do things for fun, like solving puzzles, the reward is internal. In fact, the doing itself is the reward. But just try paying the person for doing the exact same thing, and lo—the play starts to feel like work and motivation evaporates. Or more to the point, motivation backslides from want-to into have-to or should.

The link seems to be in the externalization bit. As reward becomes more external, the motivation goes with it. When reward is intrinsic, so is motivation and the desire to engage increases.

If you’ve been struggling with motivation, this may come as good news. By finding ways to internalize rewards for things you do (that is, letting the doing itself be rewarding), you may be able to shift your motivation from external to internal and from have-to to want-to.