Managing Motivation

 

Think ONE Thing: How to Manage Change (Part 2)

To quote the internet, “Everything happens so much.” There’s no coincidence that the last few years have been the rise of a nihilistic sense of humor. But you may be surprised to learn that such 2020s-coded jokes such as the “This is fine” dog are not new. That poor pooch has been enduring the flames for over a decade now. It turns out that for many people, the world kind of always feels like it’s on fire. Well, we’re not here to tell you that the world hasn’t been on fire. We’re here to share a knowing glance and try to help. In our last issue, we discussed why people struggle with change. It turns out we’re hard-wired to hate anything that makes us feel uncomfortable. We must choose to be adaptable so that we can grow beyond our natural limitations and use change to our advantage. In this newsletter, we’re going to dig into how to overcome change fatigue with the ONE Thing. Because everything is probably going to keep on happening and the only way to make it through it to narrow our focus and push ourselves forward with the power of momentum, one day and ONE Thing at a time. Overcome Change Fatigue with The ONE Thing If you’ve heard people around the office talking about feeling bone-weary but not quite burnt out, changes are that too many changes are to blame. They may be suffering from change fatigue. According to Forbes, change fatigue is characterized by being passive-aggressive, complacent, and disengaged. Time has called it The Great Exhaustion. The first step to any meaningful change is acknowledgment. As Gary and Jay write in SHIFT, “When a market shifts there is only one thing to do—shift with it.. [you must make] a mental shift and an action shift” (p. 23). Adapting your actions successfully can only happen if you acknowledge that the situation has changed. Overcoming change fatigue throws in one more requirement. You must also believe you have power, that your actions can affect your outcome. You need to get unstuck.​ When someone feels powerless, it can be because they are trying to control things that they are unable to. We’re written about how you can regain peace by narrowing your focus onto what you can truly control, and that’s a good first step to overcoming change fatigue. Identify a small, single action that, once taken, helps with the overwhelm. Ask yourself: Imagine that you know a real estate agent who is feeling overwhelmed because they can’t seem to convert buyer leads into signed agreements. The potential buyers come to their appointments, but leave without committing to working with your pal. The ONE Thing that they could do to regain control in their situation is to practice and roleplay. They cannot control whether someone signs with them, but they can control how confident they feel in going through their buyer consultation and get better at showcasing their value proposition. By doing ONE Thing, we regain a sense of power. We also have the potential to kickstart a chain reaction that propels us toward success. Shoot for the Moon with the Power of Momentum The crazy thing about doing ONE Thing is that, if you keep doing the next ONE Thing, you can end up in places you never thought possible. “Success is built sequentially,” write Gary and Jay. And it compounds. This means that small feats add up--even if you’re starting out in a dumpster fire. Even if you’re knocking over a single domino, that force over-time could take you to the stars. Surviving change and thriving isn’t about doing everything all at once, it’s about adapting a little at a time. Let’s return to our imaginary agent friend. Maybe after taking some time to practice their consultation, they’ve found that they are getting signed agreements but now are having difficulty negotiating offers for their clients. Just because they did the first ONE Thing when they narrowed their focus, doesn’t mean they are off the hook. They now have to figure out the next ONE Thing. That may be speaking to other agents who are working in their market, having a colleague or mentor review their offers and see where they could improve, or it might be studying their comps. Each of these things could be the ONE Thing that unlocks their next skill-level and puts them on the path to changing their business and life. In The ONE Thing, Gary and Jay talk about a process called Goal Setting to the Now. In this framework, the idea is to connect our current actions to our future outcomes. When the future is not yet clear, it can feel frustrating to not be able to plan. However, if we are connecting one right action with the next right action, we can feel confident that we’re not straying too far off-track. Gary says “You cannot control outcomes, but you can guarantee that you can do the actions that are most likely to get you where you want to go.” Success is about doing the right thing, not doing everything right. When we’re overwhelmed with changes, keeping one foot in front of the other is more than enough.

 

Rest for the Best

According to the Pew Research Center, over 46 percent of US workers don’t take all of their paid time off. Their research shows that the more “successful” someone is (that is, their income is the highest) the less likely they are to take their PTO.

This is a big problem. Hustle doesn’t replace happiness. And, without sufficient downtime, our capacity to handle the changes life throws at us is low. To have the bandwidth, we need the ability to rest.

“We underestimate how much good serious rest can do us. And we also underestimate how much good we can do if we take rest seriously,” Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes in Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less.

In his book, Alex shares four big insights about rest and its place in our lives. These insights have the potential to change how we think about powering our productivity and our purpose.

1. Rest and work are partners.

We tend to see productivity and rest as opposites. But this logic can only take us so far. If someone defines themselves by their job, then when they leave the office, they stop existing. Although that kind of life may be available in horrifying sci-fi, it’s certainly not one that we would want (for ourselves or for anyone).

In The ONE Thing, Gary and Jay write about the counter-balance of work and life. Counter-balance is the process of focusing exclusively on the important task at hand, whether it’s work, teaching our kids something or balancing our monthly P&L.

The ONE Thing, p. 80.
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The preceding image shows counter-balancing works best when we give extreme attention to work at less frequent intervals, while giving our personal lives more frequent attention, even if it’s a little less intense.

Now, life may be the “rest” of what we do outside of our work, but it is not always restful. The big idea that we want to illustrate here is that life and work, just like rest and productivity, are not exclusive. They are two-sides of the same coin, and we need to be mindful of their relationship.

2. Rest is active.

Rest isn’t about doing nothing. Anyone who has done nothing knows that rotting on the couch streaming entire seasons of a comfort show doesn’t exactly make anyone feel good.
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Rest is surprisingly more active than it gets credit for. Many writers and thinkers credit physical movement like walking or running with boosting their creativity. The time spent pounding the pavement creates a liminal space where thoughts can chase each other, connections can form, and the mind can reset. A Stanford study noted that walking could increase a creative person’s output by an average of 60 percent.

“Cultivate some gaps in your days,” recommends Jay. Find your white space. Do something that helps your mind wander, and you may find that when your path winds back to the task at hand, you’re feeling ready for what’s next.

3. Rest is a skill.

Sometimes, even if we are able to do something naturally, we need to become purposeful about how we approach it in order to get the results we want.

Consider breathing. Everyone does it, right? Kinda a requirement to exist. Do you think that you breathe the same as nine-time Olympic gold medalist long-distance swimmer Katie Ledecky? Absolutely not. At some point in her training, Katie had to get purposeful about her breathing – taking the deliberate effort to become skilled at something that she was literally born being able to do.

Rest is like that. If we’re hoping to rest in a way that will be restorative, creativity-enhancing, and help us crush it in the areas that matter most, we also need to be deliberate about cultivating the skill of resting.

4. Deliberate rest stimulates and sustains creativity.

Gary and Jay advise starting your habit of time blocking by first blocking your time off. Why? They argue that successful people know when they need it and when they’ll be able to afford it. We’d also add that it has the potential to change your perspective about productivity. When you’re planning around your time off, you are managing your work time around your down time instead of the other way around. You’re also setting boundaries and letting others know well in advance when you will be off the clock.

In Rest, Alex says that we should treat our white space with the utmost priority. He calls for taking it, time blocking it, and building a bunker around it.

“Rest is not something that the world gives us… it’s never been something you do when you’ve finished everything else. If you want rest, you have to take it. You have to resist the lure of busyness, make time for rest, take it seriously, and protect it from a world that is intent on stealing it,” (p. 10).

Our challenge to you, after reading this newsletter, is to pull up your calendar or take out your planner. Ask yourself:

Is there time blocked on my calendar and in my life for deliberate rest?

If you don’t see it in your calendar, you know what you have to do.

1% Principle Improvement Teaching notes for Leaders

 The 1% rule, often referred to as the "1% improvement principle" or the "marginal gains theory," is a concept that suggests that making small, incremental improvements or adjustments in various aspects of an activity or process can accumulate over time and lead to significant overall improvement or success. The idea is that by consistently seeking and implementing tiny, seemingly insignificant enhancements in different areas, the cumulative effect can result in a substantial boost in performance or achievement.

In essence, the 1% rule emphasizes that continuous, small improvements can be more effective in the long run than striving for one major breakthrough or radical change. It highlights the power of consistency, attention to detail, and a relentless pursuit of excellence in all areas to achieve significant success over time.

Managing Non-Performance:

"What specific areas of your performance would you like to improve by 1%?"

"Can you identify one small change you can make in your approach or habits that could lead to that 1% improvement?"

"How can we measure and track your progress toward this 1% improvement goal?"

Pursuing Big Goals:

"What are the major milestones or components of our big audacious goal?"

"Which of these components could benefit from a 1% improvement to accelerate our progress?"

"How can we break down our big goal into smaller, manageable steps, each with its own 1% improvement target?"

Continuous Improvement:

"Are there specific processes or systems within our organization that could benefit from minor enhancements?"

"What 'low-hanging fruit' improvements can we implement quickly to gain momentum in our continuous improvement efforts?"

"How can we encourage team members to identify and suggest 1% improvements in their respective areas?"

Teaching New Skills:

"What skills or competencies are team members currently learning or developing?"

"How can we help them recognize and celebrate small gains in their skill development?"

"What feedback mechanisms can we establish to track and appreciate these incremental improvements?"

Managing Priorities:

"What are our top three strategic priorities at the moment?"

"How can we apply the 1% rule to each of these priorities to make steady progress?"

"Which priorities can we temporarily move to the 'to don't' list to maintain our focus on the top three?"

Additional Questions:

"What are some overlooked or unexpected areas where we can apply the 1% rule for improvement?"

"How frequently should we review our progress after implementing a 1% improvement?"

"What resources or support might be needed to facilitate these small but impactful changes?"

Emotional Intelligence

 

A Four-Part Model of Emotional Intelligence

The following model by emotional intelligence pioneer, Daniel Goleman, breaks down the four flavors of emotional intelligence. All are important, but many individuals tend to thrive in some aspects of EI more than others.

1. Self Awareness

Self-aware individuals are in tune with their emotions, behavior, values, and motivations. This isn’t to say that they don’t have blind spots. They’re human, like the rest of us. But people with high self-awareness tend to understand how their behavior (both positive and negative!) impacts others. Self-aware individuals care about how they show up in relationships. They will seek to repair harm, or reach a respectful impasse, if they sense they have wronged someone or something feels off. Like people with high self-management skills, they tend to have high leadership potential because they are self-motivated and value personal development.

2. Social Awareness

Socially aware individuals are sensitive to the emotions, behavior, and motivations of others. They are often great communicators and will pick up on subtleties like nonverbal facial or body language cues. Mood changes, too. These individuals may also be great perspective-takers, teammates, and leaders because they understand group dynamics and give credit where it’s due.

3. Self Management

People with strong self-management skills are generally able to check their emotions or urges when they feel themselves getting triggered. And if they do sense a disruption to their steady emotional state, they know when to press pause and take a break. They likely have a solid list of coping skills at their disposal. Strong self-managers can adapt to change gracefully and are not paralyzed by setbacks or challenges they may encounter.

4. Relationship Management

People with strong relationship management skills are great with other people regardless of their communication style or leadership level. Relationship builders express ideas clearly, seek clarity when they do not understand, and make an effort to consider other points of view. They find a point of connection and help others feel heard, valued, and at ease.

Two Quick Ways to Level Up: Greetings and Turn Taking

Simply greeting the teachers, classmates, neighbors, or colleagues you interact with on a regular basis is a surefire way to boost your social awareness and relationship management emotional intelligence areas. Waving, smiling, or saying, “Good morning!” will do as a start.

When we greet other people, we’re acknowledging their presence and building a bridge for future collaboration. When you walk into the office without your first cup of joe, you might not want to greet other people, but this simple action is the first step to creating a supportive and productive environment.

Learning how to take turns in conversations, games, or collaborative work sessions is another easy hack that improves all four areas of emotional intelligence. Toddlers practice these skills when they learn to use words like, “It’s my turn now,” to advocate for themselves instead of using negative actions like hitting a classmate. Imagine if Steve, our Marketing friend, had respected the agenda for the planning meeting. The meeting would have stayed on track, and other stakeholders would have been included in a timely manner. Steve would also have known when it was or wasn’t his turn to speak! Having emotional intelligence is respecting other people by recognizing that our words and behavior have impact. Taking turns shows that respect.

Newsletter: It's love month, xoxo! from The SELLING Team!

 

Five Mental Models from Charlie Munger

 Five Mental Models from Charlie Munger

Many years ago, I stumbled upon a PDF of Charlie Munger’s famous 1994 speech at USC. In it, he championed the idea that with 80 to 90 timeless mental models you could better navigate the world. This inspired me to create a list of models I believed mattered in early 2018. I often draw from that document for these articles. Almost six years since I began, I’ve assembled exactly 80 mental models. Many were learned through costly mistakes I’d rather not repeat.

Charlie Munger passed away just shy of his 100th birthday on November 28, 2023. Today, I’d like to share five of my favorite mental models that he inspired.

1. Build Your Latticework – The first and most important idea is collecting and internalizing models. As Munger said, “The first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form … You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.”
2. Teach to Learn – Munger referred to this model as the “Orangutan Effect” which I covered in an earlier TwentyPercenter post. He noted, “If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.” Ironically, no one learns more than a teacher.
3. Mental Accounting – Munger explained the idea that how we make money informs how we value it. He described how gamblers would go to a casino with $100, win, and have $500 in chips, but keep playing until they left with $300. Most would say they made $200. Munger was clear that they had lost $200. Just because they were playing with house money, didn’t make that money not real. They could have left with $500. I remind myself and others of this model whenever I find myself with an unexpected windfall, like a tax refund or a bonus.
4. Invert, Always Invert – One of Munger’s most famous sayings is “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” Many use that quote to illustrate this point. I prefer his reply at a Berkshire Hathaway annual stockholder gathering where he shared this lesson from his days as a WWII meteorologist: “When I was a meteorologist in World War II, they told me how to draw weather maps and predict the weather. What I was actually doing was clearing pilots to take flights. And just reverse the problem.
   I inverted. I said: ‘Suppose I want to kill a lot of pilots. What would be the easy way to do it?’ And I concluded that the only way to do it was to get the planes into icing the planes couldn’t handle or to get the pilot into a place where he’d run off fuel before he could safely land.
   So I made up my mind, I was going to stay miles away from killing pilots by either icing or getting them sucked into conditions where they couldn’t land.”​
   Inverting the problem doesn’t always produce the solution but it almost always highlights the biggest mistakes to avoid
5. Follow Your Interests – “Another thing that I found is an intense interest of the subject is indispensable if you are really going to excel,” Munger shared. “I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things, but I couldn’t be really good in anything where I didn’t have an intense interest.” Mastery doesn’t come easily. If you’re serious about getting great at something, start with something that interests you intensely.

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Honestly, I could list many more. If this has piqued your curiosity, I highly recommend Shane Parrish’s book, The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts. If you have a great Munger quote or model you love, feel free to reply back and share.

One question to ponder in your thinking time: How can I collect the lessons I’ve learned such that I don’t repeat my worst mistakes?

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan

Discovering PURPOSE

 p.u.r.p.o.s.e

Positive - Positive emotion is a success strategy.  Happiness causes success, not the other way around. Learn to cultivate joy in your life.  3:1, you need 3 positives to every one negative

Use challenges and uncertainty as a growth opportunity.  Where you are TODAY, is just the starting point.

Replenish and Restore.  What restores my energy; replenish your energy daily

on your To Do list:

• DO

• DELAY

• DELEGATE

• DROP

When I win, I will celebrate by doing:

Perspective: put it in perspective.  It is not what happens, its how you process what happens

Optimism: operate with optimism.  Think accurately; what is possible; what is the obstacle

Serve: serve as you work.  How are people's lives better because we crossed paths?

Embrace: embrace your journey. How far you go is determined by how much you grow.

What do you WISH you would have done in the last 5 years?  What is stopping you from going after it now?  JUST DO IT.

Finding Your Big Why

As Gary says in The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, “High achievers always have a Big Why!” A Big Why powers your daily routine. It motivates you to do the activities and hard work that lead to results. A Big Why gives you purpose, a mission, or a need that in turn gives you focus.

Bigger than a Number

Maybe you’ve never expected the source of your fulfillment to come during working hours. Instead, your career might be means to an end. If you’ve read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, hopefully you paid attention to the statement on the cover: “It's not about the money... It's about being the best you can be!”

It’s OK if you have a target salary, but your financial goal should be rooted in something deeper than just acquiring wealth for wealth’s sake. Do you need that money to fund your dreams of world travel? What about being able to send your child to the country’s top schools? Those aspirations are the basis for a Big Why that will fuel your fire for years to come.

Although “why’s” are often aspirational, a Big Why has teeth. Ask yourself hat happen if you didn’t achieve your goals. If your answer is, “Oh, I would just keep saving or spend a little less and try again next year,” then your Why is not BIG enough. You have more work to do. There’s no real reason to keep knocking on doors. But if your goal is to make more than $100,000 a year so that you can afford to pay your daughter’s tuition at Juilliard so she can achieve her dreams of becoming a world-renowned conductor and not going just isn’t an option, that sticks. That’s BIG. There is a consequence to failing. You must host those open houses.

Focus in service to a larger purpose can lead to extraordinary financial success as a consequence. In their 2016 research, Patrick Hill, Nicholas Turiano, Daniel Mroczek, and Anthony Burrow found that “our dispositional characteristics influence how we make daily and long-term decisions in ways that either facilitate or hinder our ability to accrue wealth.” The ability to form a sense of purpose was the primary characteristic these researchers focused on when measuring net worth and income. Participants who made purpose the driving force behind long-term decisions were better able to envision long-term goals, set occupational or personal objectives, and fulfill their financial goals. For this reason, whether you’re a rookie or a veteran agent, a Big Why will increase your productivity by helping have more focus. It may also have the side effect of making your life more fulfilling, too. After all, money is only good for the good it can do.

Unlock Your Passions, Find Purpose

What passion led you to real estate? Maybe your dream has always been to sell houses. You’re a salesperson at heart and have a passion for transactions. It gives you a thrill to see signatures on dotted lines.

Or, more likely, you choose real estate above any other sales job because a component of the industry brings you joy. Maybe you’re like Jay Papasan, and deep down you crave impact: to make a lasting, positive impression on individuals or the world. You love empowering people by teaching them about current market conditions or setting them on the path toward lasting generational wealth. Maybe you’re an outdoorsy type and your Big Why is spending as little time locked behind a desk as possible. Whatever the reason, your purpose is probably hiding in these passions.

If you don’t already have a Big Why, you can begin your journey to unlocking it by identifying the day-to-day activities that make you happy. Once you’ve identified these moments, do you notice anything they may have in common? What may they ladder up to?

To help you on this journey, you can download the above graphic here under “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent” tab.

You can use this model to organize your “whys” and place the most important at the top.

Crucial to Your Success

The truth is people can tell when you don’t have a Big Why. If you are caught up in whether someone says yes or no, if your only concern is getting a name signed on a dotted line and collecting a check, you’re not going to get very far. That’s because a “little why” won’t provide the necessary mojo to power a Big Life. A fiduciary goes above and beyond, and you’ll never be able to do that unless your heart is really in it. When you discover what your passion is behind getting someone into a home of their own, you can provide the service needed to be a fiduciary and get on the right path to achieving success.

Now, at the beginning this new year, there’s no better time to re-focus your priorities around a new or more powerful Big Why. It’s also a great time to go revisit and master business basics. That’s why KellerINK has completely top-graded its MREA Book Club materials and partnered with KWU Master Faculty to bring you a deep-dive into the core models, concepts, and habits from the Millionaire Real Estate Agent. Join us each Thursday at 3 p.m. CST starting January 11 until February 15 as we travel the path of mastery with MREAs like Gene Rivers, Linda McKissack, John Prescott and more.