Tag: Tim Ferriss

Something I’ve been thinking about recently…

I recently listened to a podcast with Tim Ferriss, featuring Jim Collins. Jim is the very successful researcher and author of Good to Great, Built to Last, Great by Choice, and many others. Tim is a very successful writer in his own right, with best sellers including The 4-hour Workweek, Tools of Titans, and Tribe of Mentors, but he is probably better known for his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, these days.

In this interview, they brought up an interesting thought exercise regarding trust and relationships. The question posed by Jim was if you naturally trust others vs. if you feel they need to earn your trust. Does how you behave from the outset of meeting someone help to shape whether they become more trustworthy (at least when it comes to their behaviors/actions towards yourself)?

In other words, are your subtle actions (showing you trust/distrust them) serving to empower them? Will they work harder for you (if they are collaborating with you or an employee for you) because you implicitly trust them? Will they be kinder to you or have a better relationship with you because of the trust you have shown them from the beginning? Or, if you are distrusting and guarded at first, will it indirectly cause them to be more guarded? Will your lack of trust actually become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and make that person act more untrustworthy?

It’s an unanswerable question, but a good one to think of…my actions affect myself, of course. But how are they affecting others (which, in turn, indirectly affect me yet again)?

If it is easy, everyone would do it

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein has been attributed with saying, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” I don’t know the context in which he was speaking, but that’s almost irrelevant, as the statement applies to nearly every situation.

Whenever you encounter difficulties/challenges/obstacles/hardships, whenever you are frustrated by something, there is an opportunity for you to improve yourself or to improve the situation. It’s like when you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up. Sure, most people aren’t at rock bottom, so the situation could possibly get worse as well, but if you are cognizant of your surroundings, your mindset, and the actions you are taking (or not taking), you can usually find a way to make things better.

Another way to think of it (especially when it comes to frustration at work) is that if it was easy to correct, everyone would do it and the solution would be devalued. Your worth to an employer would decrease, because if they could pay a teenage kid with no education in that specific field to do it at a cheaper cost, they would. Or if the data could be plugged into an algorithm and a robot could use artificial intelligence to solve the problem, you would be out of a job. So, the next time you get irritated by your work not going as smoothly as you want, follow these simple steps…

First, try to figure out what went wrong then stop doing that. Where did things go south? Was it something within your control? Then do something different. Was it something someone else did? See if you can walk alongside them and work through the issue with them so it doesn’t happen again.

Second, develop systems/standard operating procedures so next time a situation like that occurs, there is a manual for you (or someone on your team) to refer to without wasting too much brain power. Tweak this as you get more information and follow the results.

Third, be thankful that your work can be challenging. Humans need to overcome challenges to feel satisfied. If it wasn’t challenging and you were bored out of your mind every day, you would eventually hate your job. And remember, if your job doesn’t require skill, you are expendable to the next cheapest laborer.

To summarize, use challenges as a learning experience of how to NOT do something, or if it causes enough pain/frustration to you and others, then work to capitalize on that by creating a better answer. Solve the problem to not only help yourself, but to help others too. The more people you help, the more you will be compensated. (This is what Matthew McConaughey recently discussed on The Tim Ferriss Show and The Joe Rogan Experience, referring to it as the egotistical utilitarian…Why shouldn’t you aim to do something that gets you what you want, but also helps others? That’s a win-win scenario.)

Are you delegating tasks?

At some point in time, you will have to delegate tasks and responsibilities in order to become more effective. You only have so much time during the day, and if you are in charge of doing everything, the limiting factor of how much gets done is you. You are the bottleneck.

I first noticed this when reading Tim Ferris’s “The 4-Hour Workweek.” He talks of the D-E-A-L strategy, which is summed up by deligating tasks/responsibilities that someone else can do (even if they can only do it 80% as well as you can), eliminating tasks/activities that either don’t matter or are unproductive uses of your/someone else’s time, and automating repetitive low-skill tasks that you do frequently and should not be eliminated (don’t waste your brain power or time thinking about these). Once you do those three things, it liberates you to work on the projects that give you the most joy, are in your wheelhouse, and that only you can do. You’ll have more time, energy, and, if you optimized the first three steps, money to allocate to anything else of your choosing.

The quicker you can begin delegating tasks/responsibilities, the quicker you can grow. Don’t expect it to be perfect though. Other people are imperfect (just like you) and have their own way of doing things. If you don’t provide the proper training and instructions (as well as explaining the reason why you want things done), expect worse results. Even if you do provide adequate standard operating procedures, there will still be bumps along the way. But you have to take the good with the bad. And, ultimately, as long as you delegated power to the right person, you will be able to move forward faster than if you took on everything yourself.