I’m in the middle of reading Good to Great by Jim Collins and have just finished a great chapter on confronting the harsh realities that people love to sweep under the proverbial rug. This paragraph really struck me:

Now, you might be wondering, “How do you motivate people with brutal facts? Doesn’t motivation flow chiefly from a compelling vision?” The answer, surprisingly, is, “No.” Not because vision is unimportant, but because expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time. One of the dominant themes that runs throughout this book is that if you successfully implement its findings, you will not need to spend time and energy “motivating” people. If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people? And one of the single most de-motivating actions you can take is to hold out false hopes, soon to be swept away by events.

Acting with reality versus talking about dreams. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

The sprout of an idea occurred to be a couple of years ago while watching Bill Gates give his keynote at CES. He was doing his kitchen-of-the-future thing. Your kitchen worktop, he predicted, was going to be a touch screen monitor that showed you recipes. He followed this with his bedroom-of-the-future, where the walls were covered with monitors and you decorated your walls with the wallpaper of the operating system. Putting aside the nightmare of sleeping in a room surrounded by the Windows desktop, something else was bothering me: I knew this was never going to happen how he imagined it. And even if it did, it would be too many years away and pointless enough that it was not worth caring about.

The same month Steve Jobs got on stage at MacWorld and introduced the iPhone. He said:

When’s it going to be available? We’re shipping them in June — we’re announcing it today because we have to go get FCC approval… we thought it’d be better to introduce this today rather than let the FCC introduce this.

It struck me then why I had started to enjoy these Apple keynotes; every announcement came with a shipping date. They didn’t say anything until they’d built it. They weren’t talking about their plans; they were talking about what they had already done. They waited until they were forced to announce it to start talking.

Since then I’ve noticed this quality in others (though very much in the minority). I have grown to admire it. It’s far more interesting to hear what people have accomplished already, rather than what their goals are. Most people plan, dream and set goals, but how many of these actually get accomplished? I’d prefer someone to tell me they got up early this morning and ran a mile, than to hear them dream of running an ultra-marathon. Reality always trumps the dream.

But I had always thought that telling people your goals was a good thing. Tell a friend or publicly announce your goals and you will be held to account if you fail, right? Well I’ve tried this strategy and it has a fatal flaw: people don’t hold you to account. It is not embarrassing to give up; it just means you are like everyone else.

I started to try the opposite strategy: don’t announce what you are doing until you’ve achieved it. Planning to run that marathon? A week after training you can tell people you’ve been running every morning, but don’t mention the marathon you signed up for until you absolutely need to. This strategy, to my surprise, doesn’t just make you look like someone who gets stuff done rather than breaking promises, it is also motivating in itself. There is something far more motivating about telling people your accomplishments than your plans. It becomes something to look forward to. It’s frustrating to stay in stealth mode because you are excited about your plans, so you make sure you get stuff done so you can talk about it.

This strategy also stops you wasting time. I remember an evening many years ago when my dad couldn’t stop chatting away about a leaking tap in the bathroom. It sticks in my mind because he really didn’t have anything to say, but he kept on and on and I grew very bored. Actually fixing the tap took about five minutes. When you’re bored, you really notice how time consuming talking can be. Well that time stacks up whether you are being boring or not.

A year’s worth of gradual understanding recently got summed up by Mike Cane on Twitter:

A lesson I have learned the Hard Way: Those who talk about doing, NEVER DO. Those who STFU and show what they’ve DONE, win.

Shut the Fuck Up and DO IT.

STFU.

Yesterday this was running through my head while I was writing an email meant to motivate someone into getting some work done.

STFU, I thought.

And I did.

If my own motivation gets derailed by talking too much, maybe trying to motivate others by communicating a bold vision is actually destructive too. Maybe the way to motivate someone is not to express a compelling vision of what we can create. Maybe it’s just to start setting tasks and getting something done. To celebrate the achievement; not the vision. To let the motivation build itself.

Having goals, dreams and being visionary are all important. But I’m no longer convinced talking about them is a good idea. Not if you want your ideas to feed reality.

Of course no politician ever got elected by shutting up; so there’s already one case where STFU is bad advice. But then again, how much of what any given politician says actually gets done?

Well, I should probably STFU now.

As I continue to read about Abraham Lincoln, I’m finding traits in him which I’ve previously pinpointed as being interesting characteristics of success.

Today’s insight has been timing.

As I read, Lincoln is making himself known as presidential material by appearing in debate after debate around the country in support of the Republican cause. And yet he has not yet declared that he intends to put himself forward for the nomination.

His strategy is brilliant. He campaigns and makes his name known and yet the other candidates are not yet taking him as a serious candidate; his competition, therefore, is lighter.

But there is something else he seems to be doing that is even more impressive. He is timing his attitude to match the nations. He is taking a moderate position on slavery. While others are talking about abolishment, he is focusing on stopping the spread of slavery into the free states. It is a far less radical view and so is encouraging less severe opposition. At this time, the people are not ready for the more radical viewpoint.

I shall be paying close attention to see how he adapts his views over time. I only have a vague knowledge of what happens after he becomes president, so I have the benefit of a mystery to keep me interested.

Back to the book I go.

I used to be a pessimist, and found that didn’t work out so well. Over time I became an optimist, and found that didn’t work out so well either. Eventually I learnt to be proactive.

Optimism is far superior to pessimism. You look for the best, you find it and that makes you happy. But, I found it also made me slightly delusional. At some point reality came knocking and I realised that thinking positive thoughts only brought peace and happiness to me and to those I now smiled, rather than frowned, at.

Other people, on the other hand, were still bullied, fell ill, got injured, got killed, still suffered financial hardship, took addictive substances, still had their woes.

So the next stage was to be proactive. I used my re-awakened pessimism to find the problems. Looked for the good, the opportunities and the solutions with the optimism. Then got to work.

When I first made the distinction between dreaming and doing, it felt like an insight that would dramatically change my life in an instant. But the trouble with self-improvement is it’s never as easy as the books tell you. Yes, I thought to myself, I shall be proactive… but my first attempt involved pacing my house merely thinking about being proactive while the washing-up remained un-washed-up.

Over time, I did start being proactive on things that really mattered. Lots of things. A new thing every day. I wanted to solve all the problems in the world, and ended up solving nothing.

I learnt that I had to focus and the focus was to start with something selfish. I was reaching my middle-twenties and I had not yet established a career for myself. A career had to be the first stage, and I’d been neglecting it. I had fallen in love with the open-source software movement. I saw what good it could do to provide useful software to everyone for no cost and with the freedom to use it how they needed. More specifically, I found Drupal and examples of it being used by charities to help them organise, raise money and communicate. I loved how I could work on building a tool for commercial or even fun reasons, and then see the tool used for great things I could not foresee. I had found my career.

When that clicked I really did become proactive. I had found what I wanted to do and so stopped getting distracted. Over the past year I have spent my time learning to code, learning to design, and learning all the other ins and outs of being a web development professional.

I’ve learnt a lot in that year and a half. Not in small part because I didn’t stop for things like evenings or weekends. I got hooked on a dream – had a solid reason for following it – and managed to block everything else out.

My view of the world over that time has gradually matured. I keep on finding new bits of the puzzle and figuring out how they fit into the big picture. That’s exciting. Sooner or later I realised that I could make my own pieces and change the picture slightly. That is even more exciting.

It is addictive.

Right now I am learning how to make my first piece. It’s difficult and hard work but I am determined to figure it out.

But here is the problem: I hunger for my picture of the world, and the disparity between that and reality annoys me. There is a sense of having my optimistic delusional-self back, but somehow being aware of it. There is an arrogance in there, which wraps itself around an inferiority complex. And probably worst of all, although I love my family and my friends and would go to huge lengths to help them, I also resent them interrupting me or otherwise distracting me from seeking the world I would like to create. I want to help on my own terms. Somehow I’ve found a way to mix selfishness and selflessness together.

It’s not like this is a new personality for me. I’ve not really changed just because I now have a solid goal. It’s just that there now seems to be a reason for being the way I am. Not a cause, but a reason.

Unfortunately, I’m not really happy with who I am. I don’t have the fun that I could fill my time with. I don’t live stress free like I could. I’m not always there for my friends like I probably should be.

And yet, for the first time in my life, I am not willing to change.

Yesterday was my most favourite day in a long time. This is perhaps surprising when you consider the day started with getting up early and walking to the tax office!

I wanted to check whether I had to register to be self-employed with the HMRC. Turned out I did, but my situation is a bit odd so I haven’t done it yet. Instead I’m booked in to attend a workshop on self-employment next Monday. Basically I’m going to be learning about tax, but I’m actually quite excited. It makes things more real.

After that I spent a few minutes checking out a war memorial and dedicating some of my thoughts to the troops. That always humbles me.

Then I went scouting for a job, which will support my self-employment in the early days. I got a couple of leads for basic shop assistant work. Although I probably didn’t come across amazingly, I did enjoy the interaction. There was a certain pressure there for me to impress and the atmosphere of the exchange was different to a shop/customer exchange. The whole thing felt like a mission.

Then I realised I could get a lift home if I waited about an hour; otherwise I’d have to catch a bus. I decided to use this an excuse to check out the library. I’ve not been in a library in too long, and although this was nowhere near the quality and size I’m used to, I felt immediately at home. I think I’m going to visit more often.

I did all this before lunch. The tax office and job hunting were things I really didn’t want to do, but I pushed through them. The war memorial and library were impulse stops and are just always incredibly worthwhile things to do. To some people this probably doesn’t seem like it would make a particularly amazing day, but self improvement is all about pushing yourself a step higher that where you were previously. It doesn’t matter which step you reach; just the fact that you are one step higher.

I’ve decided something I really need to do is travel to the cities more. It takes about 50 minutes to get to Cambridge from my town, but I have to find my way to the local station first. If I can make use of that time somehow, I think it will be worthwhile commuting there more frequently. I may just spent the time in the library, but my main purpose is just to get used to travelling around and meeting people. London is only 2 hours a way, so I should do that too (though that is 4 hours travelling total). A lack of funds is still stopping me in both cases though.