Leo Babauta’s brilliant little book Zen Habits helps you think your way through this problem. His program is simple: Attempt to create only one significant work a year.
Instead, they realize that a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be. The.
The magic of the creative process is that there is no magic. Start where you are. Don’t stop.
We don’t need more noise, more variety, or more pitches. There’s noise all around us, but it’s often the idle chatter of people hiding in plain sight, or the selfish hustle of one more person who wants something from you. Our world is long on noise and short on meaningful connections and positive leadership.
The Bhagavad-Gita says, “It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else’s perfectly.
As Susan Kare, designer of the original Mac interface, said, “You can’t really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you’re lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it’s meaningful.
I’m imagining that your colleagues aren’t stupid. But when the world changes, the rules change. And if you insist on playing today’s games by yesterday’s rules, you’re stuck. Stuck with a stupid strategy. Because the world changed. Some organizations are stuck. Others move quickly. In a changing world, who’s having more fun?
To Be of Service Isn’t that what we’re here to do? To do work we’re proud of. To put ourselves on the hook. To find the contribution we’re capable of. The only way to be on this journey is to begin. But there isn’t a guarantee. In fact, most of what we seek to do will not work. But our intent – the intent of being of service, of making things better, of building something that matters – is an essential part of the pattern. Because most of us, most of the time, act without intent.
You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.
Yes, you’re an imposter. But you’re an imposter acting in service of generosity, seeking to make things better. When we embrace imposter syndrome instead of working to make it disappear, we choose the productive way forward. The imposter is proof that we’re innovating, leading, and creating.
Leaders understand a different calculus. Leaders understand that change is not only omnipresent, but the key to success.
The lesson is that one person with a persistent vision can make change happen, whether climbing rocks or delivering services.
When you lead without compensation, when you sacrifice without guarantees, when you take risks because you believe, then you are demonstrating your faith in the tribe and its mission.
Reacting, as Zig Ziglar has said, is what your body does when you take the wrong kind of medicine. Reacting is what politicians do all the time.
Tribes are about faith – about belief in an idea and in a community. And they are grounded in respect and admiration for the leader of the tribe and for the other members as well. Do you believe in what you do? Every day? It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy.
Tennis has a Dip. The difference between a mediocre club player and a regional champion isn’t inborn talent – it’s the ability to push through the moments where it’s just easier to quit. Politics has a Dip as well – it’s way more fun to win an election than to lose one, and the entire process is built around many people starting while most people quit.
Where does the scarcity come from? It comes from the hurdles that the markets and our society set up. It comes from the fact that most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The system depends on it.
This desire for external approval and authority directly undermines your ability to trust yourself, because you’ve handed this trust over to an institution instead. Now, more and more of us are seeing that it’s a fraud. The institutions have no magical powers, as they’re regularly proved wrong in their ability to select, to mold, and to amplify human beings who care enough to make change happen.
Too many organizations care about numbers, not fans.
The art of leadership is understanding what you can’t compromise on.
Deep change is difficult, and worth it.