Category: book

If you happen to be in a smart working company chances are that you’re lucky.
Surrounded by great people with a nice mindset.

You might be tempted to simply do your work. But what is your work?
In today’s jobs our work doesn’t really equate a task.
Is a task “your work”?

I’m not sure. What I think is that a task is part of our work.
Completing a task is part of what we should do.
We should also be sure to do it correctly, be sure that we understood the problem and how to fix it, following up to be ensure that the people depending on our work will use it correctly and so on.

The more we help the people after us, the more we try to be sure that what we did was great, the more the workflow will improve, the more the quality of what we do will stand out.

It’s easy to simply finish a task. It’s one click away.
But your work is much more than that, don’t be fooled by technology and go the extra mile to help, improve, document, discuss.

What will you remember 10 years from now?

Will you remember that customer that shouted at you?
Will you remember the long working hours?
Will you remember the anxiety of finishing a task?

or

Will you remember that trip to Hawaii?
Will you remember your wedding day?
Will you remember that time when you did bungee jumping?

As you might have guessed: Some experiences stay with us, some other disappear.
Work is great, work is part of our life.
But work should be efficient, if it’s not then it won’t make a big difference.

Working too many hours might be useful for a short sprint to help a project, an extra hour from time to time might seriously help your coworkers live a better workday tomorrow and in these cases then go for it. Do it.

It shouldn’t be the norm though.
Your quality of work is based on your life, and your life is what you’ll remember 10 years from now.
All the rest is gonna disappear. You’ll even forget many of the discussions you’ll have with your partner, let alone the issue at work.

So learn to protect your time, both in and out of your work.
Make your time count, be more productive at work by having less distractions (messages, etc) and protect the rest of your time.

After some years both as an employee and as a company owner I came to realize that urgency, for some people, is the standard.

I don’t know if it’s because they realize what must be done too late or if it’s because they are extremely anxious.

The fact is: For some people urgency, emergency, is the standard.

There is no difference between long term, short term: Everything is urgent. Everything is needed now.

These people might be easy to spot, but it doesn’t mean they’re always visible in plain sight.
Some people hide the urgency behind a great communication, some people use different words. In the end you might not guess instantly that they are “those type of people”.

It might take a while and some introspection to understand who they are but when you do there is only one answer to them: Delay them.

Not if the work is truly urgent, not if it’s truly critical.
Delay them when it’s not.

Here’s the thing: Urgency is like a sale. If everything is on sale, nothing is on sale.
Same goes for urgency.

Go for the important things. Those will _always_ pay off in the long term.
Not so many things are truly urgent. A lost website might be urgent, payment not working might be urgent.

Wrong text? It depends.
Wrong image? Unless it’s inappropriate then it’s definitely not urgent.

Urgency often lies in the needs and the social status of the other people.
They overpromised and urgency is their way to get their act together.
Or maybe they need to save their face in front of their boss, coworkers, whatever.

Urgency is rarely a matter of damage, mostly a matter of status.
It’s hard to distinguish between the two, but after a while trying you’ll start noticing pattern and know when it’s the right time to delay, to put the important things first.

Because important things will always make a change. Urgent things will always make a fix.

It usually goes like this: You struggle, you fail, you struggle a lot, you want to get better, get rich, improve.

At this point you’re quite frustrated, you don’t know what to do, you feel powerless.
Then the self-help world opens up its doors with words like success, happiness, money, managing and controlling people.

Is it too good to be true?
Before answer this let me share one thing: I did struggle. I did fail. I did search for a solution.
At that time those solutions seemed like the perfect one. I studied marketing, influence, how to make money. They all seemed to show one hidden side of this world that wasn’t shared mainstream.

Many of those self-help books/video revolve around visualization. I did also write an entire 100 pages book on the subject of self improvement, using some of the things that worked of me. Special types of visualization also used in a specific branch of psychology here in Italy.

Oh, those visualization. One common one is “Fake it till you make it”.
It’s based around the fact that if you mimic being happy, you’ll someone force your mind/body to act like that and it will partially work.

Or visualizing success, things like this.
They do work, but they’re also missing the point.

Because what’s missing in this equation is the human nature. The “Fake it till you make it” can work days, weeks, months but it won’t get you further than that. To go beyond you have to embrace it. To be honest and force yourself to change.

Faking it won’t work in the long term. It’s a short term strategy to relieve you from some problems. To reduce pain, because it’s hard to fight when you have less power. So that’s it. But it’s not a cure.
It’s like an aspirin. Can work for a cold, not for a serious problem.

And we _do_ have serious problems.
So back to the question: Is it too good to be true?

Yes.

Some books might help you and I do think that many of them have some nice insights, things to keep in mind and learn.

But what they don’t teach you, what the major part of the self-help, success, moneymaking world, doesn’t always communicate is failure.

You know where were you in the beginning? Struggling. Failing. Trying and failing.

What they don’t teach you is that _it’s perfectly fine to fail_ as long as you try again, as you continue learning and trying, as you become more resilient to failure.

That’s the key. Success doesn’t commonly happen overnight.
Success happens after many failures.

So beware. Beware of all the shortcut to success, being it in communication, marketing or self help.
They do all come with a price, and the price of the shortcut is usually that it doesn’t belong to you.

Think of the many topics as boxes you can count on. They become information you can use to protect and to communicate with others. See them as a toolkit to use with judgement, honesty and good intention and find _your_ way to do the work.

Don’t be a follower.

If you complain to something at starbucks they’ll be told to apply their “LATTE” method. What is it?

• Listening to the customer
• Acknowledging their complaint
• Taking action to resolve the problem
• Thanking the customer for bringing the situation to their attention
• Explaining to the customer why the problem occurred.

You know what? It’s a great example on how to react to any problem and complain.
You listen, you repeat the problem and acknowledge how and why it happened.
You fix the problem.
You thank the user, and explain why it happened.

I’d also add that you take steps to avoid it in the future and share them with the user.

The user in this case can be anyone.
Your boss, your wife, a customer, a supplier.
**Any person in the world deserve such safe, human, reaction**.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that you apply it step by step. It’s one of the most human and kind reaction you can give to a shouting person in the room.