Everything Figured Out: Part 2

Sutherland -

Rory Sutherland is an ad man, and in my humble opinion a sort of pudgy, funny marketing genius who refers to NPR as "National Pinko Radio" but then refers liberally to Darwinian beliefs in his subconscious marketing techniques. He states here that our deep desire to be worth something sometimes drives us to do things that actually harm us. Not that it is our first effort to harm ourselves, but sometimes we set into motion the needed actions and those actions must simply be left well enough alone. Jacko and Elvis both had full time physicians and yet both died to young, Sutherland explains that it must be extremely difficult to have your full time job justified when you are looking over a fairly healthy person, so you continue acting. I find this crushingly true in business.

When a small business first takes off there is a whirl wind of activity that keeps everybody frantic. Frantic, one of my favorite words. I like to tell my construction guys that the level I am looking for is just below dangerous and just above sane and this cool little existence is called frantic. You can't do anything wrong inside of frantic, your rushing around, your fixing problems, your not thinking or analyzing just doing-doing-doing. If you are lucky enough that your small business gets off the ground however, then there is this awkward time you must not be frantic but rather calm, you must sit back and let the good things that you started percolate, like delicious life giving coffee. This is hard to say the least. As a business owner it makes me feel lazy and worthless sometimes and this is usually when I figure out I AM LAZY AND WORTHLESS!

I'm lazy because I should not be taking action on things that are already set and in motion but I should be taking action on the un-urgent/important matrix if your a Steven Covey fan. I should be helping my people do what they do but better. I should be making sure that as things progress as they should I'm moving furniture out of the way and opening doors even if I'm not actually carrying the couch. To take it back to private doctors they should simply be observing their patients and figuring out what they should not being doing (crack or speed would be a good start Dr. Jacko) to increase their health rather than giving their patients even more medication. These doctors should be stepping in and saying "we are going to go for a one hour walk during our visit today instead of me prodding around a body I just examined yesterday". Is this cool? No. Is this cutting edge? No. But we should be doing the same thing, we do not need to be cool or cutting edge. Like a parent who figures out their model for discipline we need to then take that model and run with it for eighteen consistent years with tweaks instead of total overhauls.

So yesterday we found out that satisfaction comes from working and the only reason we have leisure time is so the man can squeeze our hard earned money from us. When I say the man I speak of Henry Ford and I mean it as both "THE MAN!" followed by a high five in an intimate moment between bro's and as "the man..." followed by a slow sip of coffee and a raised eyebrow from hipsters. Getting back on track, we find pleasure and meaning in work and yet today I'm telling you do not overdue it, leave well enough alone, step back and let things flow. What could this all mean? Relax, I've figured everything out and this is only part two. Come back for more so you too can figure it all out.