“It is more effective to design an environment where you don’t need willpower than to rely on willpower to conquer your environment.” – James Clear
Forcing things to happen is not a great thing. We break things that way. You can create a culture and lead a culture that is intentional in innovating. To say I did something different and to say I did something different that had lasting change that out lived the moment is very rewarding. Equally harder to achieve. Patience is key. Slow build for ultimate sustainability and growth. Not everyone or every company has the ability or patience from their share holders/customers/direct reports to allow this to happen.
Like the picture and sign though, it’s the true direction we need to figure out and take. I’d rather take a downhill trajectory enjoying the journey because I took my time coming through the pass to get there, than rushing it all just to get through. Productivity is so much more than just taking on a truck load of things and mapping them out to all be done. It’s about making the right choices and maintaining the right mindset. Maximizing creativity, productivity, and success along the way is so much more rewarding as the ultimate thing to innovate.
Keep that eye on the big picture like I stated yesterday. It’s a very important element in reminding yourself why you’re all in on that project and keeping you motivated to continue. You will feel so much better when you know there is a point to the madness you set yourself on the path for. Instead of plodding along with no milestones, exhausting yourself as you go, stay glued to your why. Post it on a wall you see every morning when you get up for work or you will see before that gym visit. Remind yourself obsessively why you’re doing what your doing. Remind yourself everyday of what you want, even when it seems silly to do so for the 100th time.
Break that BHAG (bodacious, hairy, audacious, goal) into chunks that create intentional next steps of innovation to move from one milestone to the other. Make the stretch goals take on the biggest bit of innovation. You’ll want to be smart and super intentional with those in when detailing the work out. The more progress you make on those chunked out milestones, especially on the BHAGs, the more motivated you will find yourself.
“You can change how people act by asking them to think about goals differently.” – Steve Kerr, Chief Learning Officer of GE
Create some positive mental models of where you hope being innovative will get you or your team. Mental model practice and play like you are already there can teach you a lot. This will help you discover common distractions that potentially can come up, before they derail your efforts to change. Consider how you will handle those “practice” fire drills of derailment to get even stronger.
“Models help us choose where to direct our attention, so we can make decisions, rather than just react.”
Lastly, let those emotions guide your creative work. Innovation is not always about building something from scratch, yet we all assume that it is. Strive to take old ideas around you and make them better or reimagine them. Let emotions and intuition guide you more over trying to power through. It is exhaustive work trying to find something brand new all the time. Forcing yourself to feel like you have to innovate something brand new all the time is a great way to reach maximum burn out faster.
Making the right choices in what you want to innovate or how is just good for you, your team/friends, and company/social circles overall. It makes you and the people around you perform at their best. I find the best ways to innovate is to just write about ideas or thoughts you have. This is where this very blog came from. I don’t pretend to have the answers for everything or call myself a subject matter expert really in anything. I just love to share experiences. It’s my hope, one of them, will help you innovate your next break through.
Have a great rest of the week!
✌🏻Shawn
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