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.