ThriveCurve.com

Creating and re-creating

In my last post I introduced the idea of the flea, the rider and the elephant…

One of the ways that helps me ensure that I get good quality recreation and creation time is by building an environment and habits that support and bring these two together.  The components of this environment will be different for different people.  Some of the things that work for me are:

• having one environment where typically do ‘normal’ work versus another environment where I engage in my craft.
• creating and maintaining habits that I know help me have feelings of ‘well being’.  For example, I don’t need to take a particularly long time over breakfast but I do know that I need it to be uninterrupted.  I have trained my family members to allow me that time almost no matter what and as a result my day gets off to a better start and I am much easier to be around.
• ensuring that I spend time in non-urban environments as well as urban environments.  For example, while I live in a suburb I’m close to the beach and make sure I get 15 minutes at the wild beach near my home every day.

It is not always possible, or desirable, to be involved in high-end activities non stop.  Rather by recognising that there are a range of activities that are needed and that each has a role it helps get a perspective on how I want to spend my time and how I need to restructure things to meet that.

Tags: habits, innovation

Focusing on craft - the flea, the elephant and the rider

No matter our individual circumstances in any given day there will be a range of things that we want to achieve.  These range from completing mundane tasks such as picking up groceries or calling a plumber, to tasks that require more attention, and then to the top end high quality thinking and action.

This high quality thinking and action is usually the greatest source of satisfaction and enables us to further our craft – what we are good at and have a passion for doing.

Most of us battle to find the time and inclination to focus at this top end.  After all, most of the activities located here take more energy and engagement than simply lining up the ducks on a range of ‘to do’ tasks.  In fact, it’s easy to allow our agenda, email inbox or phone calls to determine what we do when. This is a form of self sabotage, as it takes little interruption to scuttle the high end stuff.

Focusing on the ‘important but not urgent’ is a common theme of time management and self-help tomes whether this takes the form of quadrants and targets.

The most elegant analogy I have come across is by Jonathan Haidt in his book “The Happiness Hypothesis”. Here he suggests that humans comprise of an unconscious elephant being ridden by a rider (the conscious mind) that tries to alter the elephant’s behaviour. To make things more complicated, the elephant doesn’t understand language, so communication tends to be via forming helpful habits and feedback loops that have quick response times on what the rider thinks are desireable (making the elephant feel good) and undesireable things to do and ways to behave (elephant feels bad).

In grappling with how to get the quality time and quality head space, it seems that an extension to this analogy is a flea that sits in the rider’s ear - giving advice, suggesting action and at times being quite incovenient. A classic case is in the mornings I go for a run down at our local beach. This is easy when the weather is fine and it’s not winter. However on those cold mornings it’s easy for my rider to make another choice.

Fortunately, the flea says ‘just do this habit because it’s who you are, and I promise you’ll feel good afterward’ - and of course the flea is right!

So how can I make sure that the flea gets heard?

One of the things we did recently was to get a low key holiday home in New Zealand beech forest covered mountains. The habit I now have is that when I’m there I severely compartmentalise any lower order activities and instead have formed habits about high quality re-creation (through the environment) and high quality creation. This really works. It’s as though I’ve got the rider and elephant to a stage where all the flea has to do is get me here (I’m here right now) and then my nature and nature itself take their course and I do my best stuff.

Tags: craft, habits

-The Monk who Sold his Ferrari

A “must read”, despite its cheesey style that really grates… Sharma spells out changes in thinking and behavior that can have an enormous impact on who we are and how we get the most from life. Key ideas include:

• willpower is a muscle that drives change - you need to exercise this muscle on small and regular issues and tasks as a means of building resilience for the bigger and/or less frequent moments when its needed
• habits make us who we are - creating good ones and jettisoning ones that hold us back

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
by Robin S. Sharma (1)

Tags: habits, willpower

Why Thrive Curve?

“Thrive Curve” is a work in progress on ideas and thinking about thriving in the 21st century. About the only thing that seems certain about the future is that it isn’t what it used to be. So, if we can’t predict and plan the future, being good at improvising, shaping our “craft” (what we are good at and have a passion for) and living a balanced life seem like good bets.

This thinking is our own, coupled to that of a large number of outstanding authors and presenters. We are packaging the “memes” in visual ways (part of our “craft”) and leaving the breadcrumb trail for those interested in finding our more about the underlying memes and where they spawned from.

“Thrive Curve” is being in the Beginner’s Mind> Barbarian > Expert phase of the learning cycle outlined below…

Charles Handy’s ” The Empty Raincoat” coins the phrase ’educated incapacity’ and shows how in life it’s a good idea to re-invent yourself periodically before you get stale at the top of the curve - the change being easier when you are still going up, than waiting until you feel resentment and defensiveness that creep upon you slowly.

Howard Bloom’s “The Lucifer Principle” talks about the natural pecking order that falls out of our evolutionary past - that individuals, communities, organisations and countries all strive to be at the top of the pecking order, but that once you are there your behaviour changes from barbarian openmindedness to defensive entitlement.

Tags: barbarian, pecking order

-The Dip

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

by Seth Godin (123)

An excellent quick read that puts the hard yards you need to do to get from A to a much better B in context. That is, the bigger the effort (the dip) the harder it is for everyone - not just you. Now if your dip is playing to your craft then its going to be easier for you. In our business, this has made a lot of sense. Developing new IP, or a service or competency in a technology robs one of time and opportunity. However, by picking the right dips it helps keep us “best in the world” as perceived by our customers. The ”best in the world” is worth a blog  in its own right as it takes into account the fit you have with what someone wants - including price, relationship, geography, skill mix…

Tags: willpower