Partnerships and teamwork can lead to success. Flikr: ThinkPanama.com

Just recently I’ve realised that I really flourish in a team environment.  I don’t mind doing things by myself, but when engaged in a team or working with someone I find it really works to boost motivation and desire to knock over goals and milestones.

In addition, fnding a partner for something you’d like to do is one of the best ways to get things going.  I’ll call this GTG, similar to the well-known GTD (Get Things Done).

Getting things going is a big part of the difficulty that we have when trying to do something new.

Be it a new project, a new business, a new blog, or a personal goal like trying to get fit – it’s tough to start when we’re unsure of what might happen.  It’s not easy to keep going when you’re not really getting the results you hoped for initially, especially if you’re out of pocket on the way.

One solution is to do things with a partner or a team.  A great example is having a jogging partner, someone who relies on you and someone you equally rely on to go jogging on weekends.  It’s a lot easier to face the pavement when you’ve got someone to go with, or when you know if you don’t go you’re letting someone down.

So why do we try to go things alone when we really need help?

I think it’s a combination of:

• Greed:  We want it all to ourselves;
• Lack of trust:  Chances are you’ve been let down previously.  It’s not easy to trust someone if you’ve been burnt;
• Pride:  It’s a real ego booster to do something all by yourself.

Any one of those alone is a pretty powerful reason for wanting to do things by yourself.  But more often than not, these are the reasons we will fail.  Factor in touch of stubbornness and denial and there’s a recipe for a project without hope.

Teaming Up

I’ve always found that when I start something new, I can get a lot done while I’m really excited and ambitiously planning world domination.  But often that drive can be misplaced or scattered because I’m not concentrating on the part that’s most important – I’m busy trying to set up the structure required rather than working on the deliverable.

When I’m doing something with someone else, it’s a lot easier to spend that energy doing the most important bits where you can make an impact – not just running around like a kid in a candy store trying everything at once without making headway.

Use your expertise on your parts, let your partner use their expertise on the other aspects which you aren’t so sure about.  Great partnerships have partners and teams with different skill sets, but there’s advantages in having both people in a partnership or a few people in a team with a similar expertise so that together you can create something really impressive.

What’s even more important is that a partner or a team can really help move beyond the first downswing. You can’t have overnight success – and in fact it’s probable that you won’t have much luck early on.  This relative lack of success isn’t easy to persist against.  A fair percentage of us give up when we realise it’s not as successful and not nearly as fun as we first thought.  We know we need to put in a consistent effort but suddenly it gets hard.

A partner helps us push through for so many reasons:

Competitiveness: A desire to challenge each other to produce your best whilst being joined forces against the competition you face together.

Friendship: Nothing like being able to go out for a beer together – that’s when the best ideas happen, right?

Commitment: A joint effort can be more effective when you’re able to share ups and downs and motivate each other to keep going.

Perspective: Sometimes you need a different point of view.  Maybe you need a woman to join you if you plan to include ladies in your target segment.  Perhaps a young person can give you some insights into areas you hadn’t thought of.  Use it to your advantage.

I expect to be just the first of a number of GTG posts – helping you get things going!  When I was talking about this topic with a friend of mine, he jokingly suggested that this site would have been better as thenewmenofaction.com.  In a way he’s  right*, it’s far more interesting sharing stories rather than just listening to me all the time.  Let me know through a comment or an email if you’d like to share anything.

*He’s wrong because he should’ve said thenewpeopleofaction.com =]

Never Give Up - What's Your Excuse? Source: JRFeP (Flikr)

How often do you make an excuse, rather than taking action?

I’m hoping you might see this as a little wake up call.

I think you can do it.  You can push past the comfort zone and find your power within.

Are you settling for something that’s less than you really want just because you’re making excuses?  You can achieve.  You can get fit,  eat better, start a business, take action.  Start living.

Have you caught yourself saying these before?  

“I’m too busy”

“I can’t”

When excuses become a way to justify your lack of action, you’ve really stopped seeing the big picture and don’t have your priorities in place.  No matter how hard, what do you need to do that’s really worth doing?  What are you neglecting even though it matters the most?

I’m going to present some methods to help you stop making excuses.  There’s two main reasons: how you convince yourself not to do something; and a lack of organisation & priorities that stumps progress.

How to stop making excuses: Take a look at yourself

1.  Have Confidence: Fight your fear

Be confident.  Don’t doubt what you can do.  Remember the old chestnut that even if you do fail, at least you will have learned a helluva lot more than if you had done nothing.  It’s easy to sabotage your ideas because you have a fear of failing.   When given a choice between a risk and sure thing, the sure thing will often win out.  Smile brightly at the opportunity you are creating for yourself and embrace what might happen by having a go.

This isn’t easy.  I daily toss up thoughts and ideas and shoot them down because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make them happen.  When I realise I’m doing this I usually go and have a chat with a few close friends who I’m comfortable bouncing ideas off and listen to them.  Sometimes an outside opinion is needed to help you get some perspective.

2.  Stop waiting: Why not now?

Timing is rarely important.  Don’t deny any possibility of success by waiting.   Avoid thinking that you’ll start going to the gym next week, next month, in the new year, or starting the project once you have a bigger desk, a laptop, a bigger screen.  As my friend Mark Foo said to me – he couldn’t just wait until English, his second language, was masterful before starting his site.  He had to get going to start fulfilling his dreams.

3.  Be Honest: What do you really want?

If you are serious about starting your own business, eating better, or getting fit, there’s physically not much to stop you.  However, your excuses for not doing what you want could actually be hiding the real reason for why you don’t do it.  Work it out.

A big one for me is that I like doing things with other people – especially physical activity. If you find that you don’t think you can do it by yourself, see if you can find a mentor, a friend, or a gym partner to help out.  Find someone or a group who can hold you accountable when you feel like slacking, and possibly punish you.  I play soccer (poorly!) for my local club here in Newcastle, Australia.  Knowing that if I don’t turn up to training I’m letting everyone in the team down – and risking starting on the bench – can be a big motivator for when I feel lazy.

How to stop making excuses: Organise and prioritise

It’s your choice.  Take back your time

Do you find you don’t have time to work on what you love doing?  Well, hang on just a tick.  You have the choice of how you spend your time.  Therefore when you say “I don’t have time” you’re actually saying: “That’s not my priority”.  It’s time to organise yourself.

Everyone wants you, especially if you’re talented.  It can be difficult to squeeze things into a busy schedule.  Consider making a new relationship with your time by sorting out your priorities and what really matters to you.  It’s hard to make an excuse when you have defined your number one priority as being getting fit.

That said – you might not be spending as much time with your friends and family.  I’ll remind you of a Mr Montgomery Burns quote for you to weigh up when considering your priorities;

Mr. Burns: I’ll keep it short and sweet — Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

You need to take action to fulfil your goals and dreams.  I don’t think there’s any other way.

Need any more inspiration? There’s no excuse to not watch this amazing video.

Matt Scott:

Time to start saying: I can, I will.

Image source: Jake Botter

Rushing blindly into a project is a great way to understand the old adage: Failing to plan is planning to fail.

You’ll get knocked around. You’ll realise you made a ton of mistakes, and that’ll learn ya’. You’ll definitely do better next time.

But we rarely get the opportunity to take another shot, or a second chance. If we do get that chance, it can be expensive or a big waste of time, or both.

Then there’s the other side.  Governments and councils know about planning.  Committees can be formed at the drop of a hat to dwell on important matters. There are meetings. Studies. Big unwieldy plans are made. Nothing happens for years.  It’s a case of analysis paralysis.

Planning is just as important and necessary as taking action, but moderating the two is essential.

If you want to lose weight for example, the best books and blogs on healthy living, dieting, and losing weight won’t help a bit if you sit reading them instead of exercising.  Use the blogs to help inspire, motivate and encourage when you need it.  Your planning must have a transition into action – and you need to know when planning isn’t really the answer to your problems.

You’re probably one or the other:  a sitter, thinker or dweller, who needs a kick along to get things going; or an impatient, go-getter who wants to charge off and patch things up behind you as you go.

I’ll focus this post on those who sit and think without ever starting with ways to take action:

1. Stop overthinking, start doing

It’s amazing how easy it is to get overwhelmed.  When there’s too many choices sometimes you can just shut down.  Overthinking your problems makes you get too far ahead of yourself.  You think only of the big picture, not how to get there.

Stop and simplify your approach.  Take things step by step.  End the creative speculation when discovery and definition are required.

2. Are ‘what-ifs’ helping or hindering?

A good planning session takes in account the ‘what-ifs’.  But if you dwell on these for too long, you will start to doubt yourself.  Try to reduce the insistence on completing all analysis before beginning by capturing it into a single thought:  What’s the worst that can happen?

If it’s just that you might need to bounce back from a small setback that you hadn’t thought of stop the doubting and start.  You’ll face challenges along the way.  That happens when you are learning on the fly.  But learning as you go means you have taken action and that you’re closer to your goals then when you were stuck planning.

3. Move past perfection

When I do something that’s important,  I’ll happily spend an eternity getting it right.  The thing is though, nothing can be perfect.  Striving for it will only cause heartache.  Remember that you can always improve, set a deadline for your work, and after that move on. Evaluate the most important things to get right or that will be difficult to change post-launch.  Then start doing it and fix it later.  Forgo perfection.  Perfection puts the brakes on action.

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate. Thomas Watson, Founder – IBM

4. Build momentum

It’s a piece of cake to pick something up and run with it when you’re enjoying it.  You’re enthusiastic and motivated.   Don’t let anything stop you – run with it, explore this new passion you’ve opened up.  Don’t stop to critically analyse your work, or stop and list obstacles.  Save that for later when you’ve come up for air and can given the project a review. Run with it for now.

5. Apply it – don’t acquire it

Chances are you’ll want to read up on a topic before trying it.  You’ll pick up tips, learn from others’ mistakes, avoid traps for young players.  But there is a tendency to focus on acquiring that knowledge in case we need it and never actually apply it.  Make the change.

A quote to inspire: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand – Confucius

6.  Don’t be afraid to get help

Compensate by getting help for your very difficult problems. Effective leaders acknowledge they have weaknesses. They seek assistance from competent associates or peers who have the strengths they lack. Some of the best business partnerships are created with opposing personalities – a planner and a doer is a great match to reach a good medium.

Part of each tip to beat this problem is recognising the weakness in yourself and taking the necessary steps to change your behaviour.

I’m really interested to know if you can take anything away from this that you can use. Feel free to leave a comment or to get in touch with me if you have anything to say.

(Time Lost by gothick_matt @ Flickr)

You are wasting your valuable time through procrastination.  Feel guilty?  It happens to the best of us.  It’s not necessarily bad either.  Procrastination can be great for you.  Some people would never have a clean house unless they had a report due.  Others delay about buying something and don’t make a decision which saves them money (but they possibly never really get what they want – something I’ve talked about here).

Now I’m going to keep this short.  This text is small, and you’ve probably got 100 other things to do.  Even right now you’re probably thinking I’ll bookmark this to read it later.  Well, I’m here to tell you about taking action, and you’re here reading so you might as well keep going…

Five ways to beat procrastination:

1. The Reward

If I just can’t get going, it’s time to change tack.  Unhook the internet and plug it back in once you’ve achieved something.  Buy a block of chocolate and enjoy some once you’ve done the hard yards.  Ring up a friend to meet for a coffee in two hours and go like stink until then.  Do these things as a reward for yourself, after you have completed a task.

Half the time the hardest thing to do is to start.  Once you’ve put pen to paper and pushed off the start line, you’ll feel the shackles fall off.  Plus, chances are good after you’ve been rewarded, you’ll be keen to come back and keep going.

2. The Power of 10 Minutes

If  I can’t seem to start, I sit and jot down a list of a few tasks that can be worked on in 10 minutes.  I’ll then work on one of these tasks with full concentration and focus.  It doesn’t have to get done, it just has to move forward within that 10 minutes.  After that 10 minutes, I’ll stop and evaluate where I am.  I’ll take a quick refresher and then go to the next task, or do another 10 minute stint moving that task forwards.

It’s all a trick.  I’m just trying to get started and involve myself so that I forget the break after 10 minutes, and end up doing half an hour or more without thinking about anything else.  This quickly breaks any resistance to the work, even if it’s not much fun.  If I do this, suddenly I’ve got my day underway and my workload feels smaller.  Forget multi-tasking.  It’s just multi-distracting and untasking yourself.  Do 10 minutes deeply focused in a burst or two, and without realising, you’ll be underway.

3. Be honest about why you aren’t doing ‘it’

If you’re avoiding ‘it’, whatever it may be, you might need to look at why.  It can be anything, an assignment, a job at work, or writing an article on your website.  When I’m consciously or unconsciously avoiding something, it’ often because I’m dealing with fear, and usually fear of failure.  Conquering this isn’t easy,  but as Leo Babatua might say – feel the fear and do it anyway!

Chances are if I’m avoiding it, it’s because I’m not really sure what I’m doing – so I’ll ask myself – what’s the worst thing that can happen?  It’s never as bad as I’m making it out to be.  Beat the fear, beat the procrastination, and create opportunities for yourself by getting it done.

4. The Use of Music

This won’t work for everyone, but music can be a useful tool.  You can use it in a few different ways.  Sometimes I’ll try and pump up and get inspired by listening to some tracks that make me jump (I like Creedence Clearwater Revivial – Fotunate Son) and get me going.  Or, on the flip side, try removing distractions by playing a nice bit of instrumental only or soft vocal music.  I often stick on a CD of Massive Attack to quietly drown out the world and help me dial in.

5. Give yourself guaranteed time for fun

Guaranteeing yourself fun is a great way to make you do something.  I’m often guilty of spending hours on a task getting nothing done because I know I have plenty of time.  Somewhat ironically, If I restrict myself to a certain time limit, I get more work done, work better, and enjoy my free time.  Realistically, a deadline is often the only reason people start things anyway.  Instead of working towards a deadline, work towards a “liveline” where once you have done it, you’re free to do whatever and live.

Thanks for making it this far.  Take a break – you deserve it!