Personal Improvement for Geeks
23 November 2006(First off – I’ve absolutely nothing about geeks or nerds. I use Star Trek, Star Wars, and computer programming terms more often than I can think of. This post is to help people who are career problem solvers, those who think in very sequential, logical ways)
I was talking to a friend at the weekend about goal-setting. Brian Tracy advocates that you write your goals down, and claims that a far higher percentage of people who do this accomplish them than those who don’t. According to Tracy, people who don’t write down goals don’t really have goals, only wishes.
I asked him “What’s more important, knowing what you want or knowing why you don’t do what you want to do?†I figured this would stop him in his tracks, as it does most people. It forces them to stop focusing on what they don’t want and to reconsider what they do want. But to my surprise he retorted with “It’s my nature, I’m a trained problem solver. If something doesn’t work I look back until I find the problem, fix that, and then work forward.â€
This took me back a second, as to him it genuinely seemed to be the way to go about getting over this hurdle. But the problem he had was not faulty programming; it was being unclear on what he wanted. I can see the “benefit†of this. If you’re unclear on what exactly it is that you want it can seem very daunting to try to figure that out. By looking back over your problems and analysing them it feels like work. But as I mentioned in “The difference between Intentional and Diagnostic thinking,†if you’re just mulling over problems without looking for an outcome you’re not progressing towards your goals.
As career problem solvers (like most programmers/technology/accountancy based jobs) when you have problem you look at the code, and go back until you find out what’s wrong, fix that, and move forward. It seems like this is a good idea in life. You lack motivation, so you look to find the reason why you don’t have motivation. Once you find that, you can move forward (have motivation). But the problems in life are almost never where we think they are. The problem in this case is not a lack of motivation, it’s not really knowing what you want.
When you’re fixing broken scripts or programs, you know exactly how the program should look when it’s working fine, yes? So in that case if something goes awry, you can make adjustments and see how it compares to how it should work. When you’re designing a new program, do you start with the script/programming or what the program will accomplish and look like? You obviously start with what the end product will be, and then start working towards building that.
Getting clear on what you want to be, do, and accomplish is the first step, the most important step, and the step we absolutely need to spend the most amount of time on if we want to life our ideal life.
Now I’m all about clarity. I spend most of my time trying to clear up ambiguous terms (like Confidence) and to really get clear on what I want and what my goals are. But you don’t need to be HD clear right away. Even if you just start to think of the direction you want to go in, you can begin to take action. The closer you get to your goal, the more you’ll need to clarify parts that were vague before you started out.
So if your aim is to be successful in social situations, you can start with that as your goal and begin improving your inner confidence and people skills. Congratulations, you’ve begun to achieve your goal. But success in social situations is vague enough in and of itself, so for some it can mean being able to make friends really easily. For others, it could be the ability to build trust and intimacy with someone special. For someone else, it could mean being the life of the party. I’m sure there are hundreds more examples, but it’s important to know what success means to you.
Do you really need to look at the reasons why you’re shy in order to become more confident? Actually, no, you don’t! Chances are if you go down this route you can stuck in diagnosis and self examination, never moving forward and always concerned with the past. But what if you really want to find out why you had this problem in the first place? Well, a funny and pleasant side effect of being future focused is as you near you goal, you’ll realise why you stood in your own way. The payoff you used to have of wallowing in self pity or apathy will become apparent (and usually foolish!) as you approach your goal.
Overall let’s s look at the “what†of the situation: What do you want to achieve? Saying “I want to find out why I’m shy/lethargic/lazy†isn’t a what, it’s a how. You can quite easily add the following – “so that I can…†It’s what comes after the “so that I can…†that’s important. If you’re actually saying “I want to find out why I’m shy so that I can be more confident,†being more confident is your “whatâ€, the end goal. Finding out why you’re shy does not directly lead to being more confident. Working on your confidence directly leads to being more confident.Â
I understand that trying to figure out what exactly what you want can seem like a lot of work. Looking at the problem seems like it takes less energy and commitment. It does initially, but you spend more time and energy looking at your problems than you do looking at solutions and your outcome. Put bluntly, it’s inefficient when you’ll actually discover why you were self destructive as you move towards your goals.
Once you get a clear picture of what you want to be or achieve, you can then go about writing the code. Then you can test it, tweak it, update it with patches until you’re ready to launch YOU2.O to the world, enjoying all the confidence and success you can handle. But messing about with the code before you know what the end product will look like and perform like seems a bit pointless, doesn’t it?Â
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December 12th, 2006 at 10:30 am
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