Month: December 2018

2018 Goals Review

What can be improved? I’ve named my failures, and shown where I succeeded. Some failures came from (or were narrowly avoided despite) procrastinating on setting dates or appointments.

Well, it’s the end of the year. Time for my 2018 Goals Review! This will become an annual tradition on the site, because of…

Accountability

I believe in setting goals for myself, and if you’re reading this coaching blog, you probably do too. But they’re pointless if you don’t create solid plans to achieve them (SMART goals) and if you don’t measure your success or failure.

One of the key benefits to having a coach is that there’s someone you’re accountable to (aka: an ‘accountabilabuddy’… yeah, fun word). Almost all of us perform better when we feel there’s someone we’d be letting down, than when only we ourselves know about the goal.

For example, when I first started blogging on the RetroNeo Games website in 2015, my first blog post stated that I’d blog every single weekend (silly me, I never put in an ‘until’ date). Because I felt accountable to my publicly stated promise and to my few dozen readers, I did blog every weekend that year, even over the 3 weeks I was away on holidays (I wrote in advance and scheduled the posts). For the two years after that I declared that I’d do one post per month, and I succeeded in that, too.

So, in a few days, I’m going to publicly post some of my 2019 goals, but for today, I want to review my 2018 goal results (which were never publicly posted, as the site didn’t exist yet, though they were measured by me privately) and do a review. These goals were not all specific. Some were aspirational and vague. I had daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and even lifetime goals. They weren’t really business related either as I was about to start a new employment last January.

New Year’s Resolutions/Review

Lots of bloggers and journalists currently love to be edgy by writing headlines like “New Year’s Resolutions are useless”, but then proceed to tell you why they’re actually great if you just define your goal in a SMART way (by the way, that means your goal should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timed – there are a couple of alternate versions, but they amount to the same thing).

So, I’m not going to say that. New Year’s Resolutions are great! My own resolution every year is to “100% give up alcohol for January” (checks all the SMART boxes), just to see how I’m feeling about it. If I ever miss it much, I’ll know I might be developing a problem. So far, so good.

But the main thing that’s worth doing is reviewing your SMART goals from last year to appreciate your successes, and recognise your failures, or where you need to get more specific. This then helps you set better goals for the coming year so that you can continue to grow, both personally and professionally, and hopefully make a bigger positive impact on the world.

I’ve been doing this for a few years, but just learned yesterday that my process is very similar to author Tim Ferris’ Post Year Review system.

It’s important as well to measure your progress towards these goals during the year. I do this at the end of each month, personally.

So! How did I do in 2018?…

Kevin’s 2018’s Goals

Successes

Conference Goal. Reboot Develop, Dubrovnik, Croatia.
At Reboot Develop in Croatia. This Panel had Patrice Desilets (Assassin’s Creed), Josh Sawyer (Pillars of Eternity, Julian Gollop (X-COM, my favourite game!), and Charles Cecil (Broken Sword). I met them all, and they’re all really cool! I met Tim Schafer as well.
  • Attend at least one Conference – Conferences, particularly small ones, are great places to meet people from your industry and learn what changes are coming down the line. If you’re lucky, they can be incredibly fun, too. I started 2018 still working in the games industry (which has some of the most fun-loving, talented, and welcoming professionals in the world) and for 3 days in April I attended Reboot Develop, in Dubrovnik (for the second time. Seriously, go to this if you’re a games developer).
  • Take an Overseas Holiday – I was in Dubrovnik, Croatia, for aforementioned conference, and it was incredibly fun, with some off days as well, but I don’t think the conference and holiday should be the same thing, necessarily. However, I did fly home through Amsterdam for a two-day break and met a couple of friends, so that counts.
    I also went to Paris for my birthday. I was primarily volunteering with a refugee charity for 5 days, but when I finished my shifts, and for most of my birthday itself, I got to play tourist.
    One disappointment is that these were short, I’d been to all locations before, and all were connected with work in some way, though I still had a great time. I meant to go Inter-railing around Europe, or to Japan in September, but it never happened due to what was happening in my job around the time. Then I started straight into this coaching business and never got away. Still, goal technically achieved.
  • Take a Survival Course – I’d wanted to do this since the year before, and finally signed up to it for October. The Summer groups were full. It was miserably wet, and I got hypothermia, but as I suspected, it was a valuable experience to get out of your comfort zone and put daily problems in perspective. We built shelters, fire, learned some basic survival skills, and even had to endure some simulated captivity and psychological warfare. Fun! We pushed our physical and mental limits and are all stronger for it.
    It wasn’t “fun”, but I think it’s important to do something like this once a year at least. You never know when you might actually need to survive a crisis situation.
  • Learn x2 New Skills – Great success here, with 3 (or 4?) new skills. They weren’t defined initially, but over the year I learned how to Moonwalk (Michael Jackson move), do some basic pole dance moves (my friend owns a studio and I finally made good on a promise to take some beginner classes), dance some basic salsa, and I’ve begun to learn to juggle, though I wouldn’t say I have that skill yet.
    Funny enough, 3 of those new skills are dance related. I hated any form of dance when I was a teenager. Go figure.
  • Do x2 Burlesque Shows – In 2009, and until 2011, I ran a burlesque troupe in Ireland called The LoveCats. My friends wanted to start it up and I was invited in to play the guitar, but wound up running it after one friend moved overseas. At different times I was host, band member, an extra in group numbers, and eventually had a couple of my own acts as well. It was great fun, and a great community. I’m still involved in the scene (Co-Producer & Judge on Miss Burlesque Ireland, mainly) but hadn’t performed in 7 years. I wanted to try out a performance again, so I got something ready during the year, and made my “comeback” at a show in Dublin in August, and performed again in September. I’ve also applied for some shows next year.

    It’s something I’d meant to do for a couple of years, but writing the goal down and beginning to tell other performer friends that I was “coming back” soon, made me accountable. When it got to June and I’d done nothing solid yet about creating an act, I really got into gear.

  • Invest 10% of salary – Simple enough. I bought some Bitcoin and Etherium. It’s down at the moment, but the point is that you don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.

    Volunteering in Paris
    I took this at Port De La Chapelle, 18th Arrondissement, Paris. Where 14,000 homeless and refugees sleep, during The Beast From The East, 2018. The neon sign at the top of that building reads “Life is Good”.
  • Run a Charity Event – Next year I want to be specific about how much I want to raise, but this is technically a success. I volunteered my birthday and raised some money for the refugees in France, also going over to help out for 5 days, but that’s not what I meant by “event”.
    The rest of the year passed by and I hadn’t organised a charity event. However, I was organising the Irish Game Dev Christmas party. On the day of the party, I realised my failure to reach the goal thus far, and quickly gathered some prizes, a donation bucket, and announced that at the party if you donated to the bucket, you could take a ‘lucky dip’ in a bag and pull out a game code, or some other prizes.
    We raised €114 for Dublin’s homeless.
    In spirit, I feel I failed this goal, as it wasn’t much money and it wasn’t specifically a charity event, but it was better than nothing, and technically a success, since my goal wasn’t that Specific. Must do better next year.

Failures

  • Run a Marathon – This was an ambitious goal, as I don’t run, or really get much intense exercise. That said, I’m fit, healthy, walk every day, do my stretches, and want to run. The problem is I have an ankle injury of unknown diagnosis that’s been bothering me for over a decade, especially when I run, push something heavy (like a car), or even stand for too long.
    I started in January turning my walks into runs, but after just two days my ankle was badly at me and I couldn’t even walk on it for a few days. 
    Every now and again, I’d push a bit further, but really couldn’t run any more than a minute without triggering this injury.
    I’ve been to physiotherapists, osteopaths, had an x-ray, etc, but never found the cause of this injury. The only health professional I regularly see now is a (very good, and holistic) chiropractor, and while he’s improved my back, my ankle got no better, which was the expected result. 
    He recommended getting an MRI and maybe seeing a specialist, so in December I finally had the MRI and initially I’m told it looks like some form of tendinitis.
    I’ll be back to a different physio next year with the scans and hopefully I can sort this out and get back on track towards that marathon. It might be more than a year away, but the goal will be written, progress will be measured, and some day I’ll run a whole marathon. It’s not necessarily a 2019 goal, but working towards it is.
  • Volunteer one day per month – Big fail here. I never set up any relationship with a charity in my local area that I could regularly volunteer with. I did do 5 days with Utopia 56 in March in Paris, and allowed that to count for 5 months, but I never really followed up. For shame. I have, however, relinquished my role as Editor of the Imirt newsletter (that was a volunteer role, but not like ‘charity’ volunteer) and my organising of The Games Co-Op meetup in Dublin (same) for next year, so I should have a little more time.
    I did do 2 days of training with Cool Planet Champions in November, which is a volunteer climate activist role, but I don’t know if I’d honestly count the training, and I haven’t performed any actions/events for it yet, so, I definitely fell short of the target here.
  • Go to a comedy gig each month – It’s important to laugh, but I only went to one show all year (David Cross) and that was last-minute as my brother couldn’t make it and offered me the tickets. Fail.
  • Start Self-Defense Classes – I spoke to coworkers and friends about what martial art I might enjoy, and I got in touch with a couple of studios who didn’t return messages, but that’s as far as this went. Early in the year I was too busy with other classes I had taken up (salsa, yoga), games meetups, and commuting, and later in the year money was tight as I left my job in October, so this just never happened.
  • Any of my Life Goals – I didn’t achieve any, but didn’t expect to either. These are goals such as going to space, setting foot on all 7 continents by the age of 35 (only South America and Antarctica left to go!!).
    I did, however, move closer to working a year remotely while travelling. In deciding to leave my job and become self-employed again, I got closer. Coaching can be done remotely. It should also be more lucrative long-term than the games industry, hopefully allowing me to take an expensive trip to Antarctica via South America.

In-Betweens

  • Stand Up Comedy – I mentioned burlesque and music above, and I speak in public occasionally. When I was a teenager I did some drama, too. Basically, I’ve done most of the things you can do on stage except for comedy (and circus, but I’ve no plans for that). When I realised this, I decided that I’d do a newcomer stand-up set. I thought I’d take a few months to write funny observations and try develop a short set.
    In my last job, late in the Summer, I met a guy who turned out to be an amateur comedian, and he told me where I could go to do a newcomer night.
    I took a bit too long with the joke writing and too long to get in contact with the venue, but I am now booked for my first stand-up comedy performance… for January 8th…
    This goal was kind of successful, but technically outside of the year, even though I booked it inside the year. I’m reluctant to call it a failure or a success. Whatever it is, hopefully it’s funny.
  • Cook Meals, Time in Nature, Open Mic – I wrote these down as weekly tasks, and in reality I probably averaged once per fortnight on each, which is okay. I feel better for having done that much.
Time In Nature
I did get some good time in nature, courtesy of Glen of the Downs, Co.Wicklow, Ireland.

Other Daily & Weekly Tasks

I had other goals around physical and mental exercises, language learning, dating, coaching clients (even while working the games job, which was really just not feasible after commuting times and other goals), reading every day, and practicing lucid dreaming techniques (I was part of Dr. Denholm Aspy’s research group in late 2017, and wanted to keep up the practice, but rarely did).

I had middling success with these goals. Many of those tasks were getting done as others weren’t, and I’d switch focus, and then not be doing the original few.

Happiness & Unhappiness

I do an exercise where each day I write down my 2 favourite things that happened that day. Each week I circle the week’s best 2, and each month, the month’s best 2. Looking back over it, I can see that the things that made me happiest were time spent with friends and family, nights out (especially in rock clubs or concerts), time spent in nature (especially the sunshine), good dates, helping others (those times that I did volunteer, or with my clients), performing music, learning new skills, and accomplishing big tasks or goals. I will strive to do more of these things in 2019, then.

I also try to write down what’s making me unhappy, when I can figure it out. A lot of these things are small and seem silly when you look back (like late buses, or inefficient government departments), but a lot of them had to do with my old employers, which reinforces now my commitment to being self-employed as a coach. More still had to do with rejection (from job applications I wanted, or in dating), or being treated disrespectfully. Respect is very important to me. Unfortunately, you can’t control how other people behave. You can only control how you respond to it. So, apart from stating my expectations and standing my ground where appropriate, I must endeavour not to let the behaviour of others upset me.

It seems wrong though to say “don’t get your hopes up, so you’ll never be disappointed”. But hey, this is life. We do our best. Still learning.

Lessons Learned

So, where can I improve? I’ve named my failures, and shown where I succeeded. I caused (or narrowly avoided causing despite) procrastinating on setting dates or appointments. I delayed the survival course and stand-up comedy because of fear alone. That’s ironic, because facing the fear is exactly why I wanted to do them in the first place. I’m glad I got them done, but I must be aware of when I’m procrastinating on the bigger, scarier goals.

I definitely made too many small, aspirational goals, without due care to how they’d fit into my timetable. A lot of the time they just couldn’t. I need to set daily and weekly tasks with more consideration for my timetable (I’ve cut out my big commute to Dublin since leaving my last job, so that will help), and assign the bigger goals to segments of the year, rather than rushing to complete most of them in the second half.

I also need to write shorter blogs… though an annual review seems like it ought to be somewhat lengthy, to be fair.

Thanks so much for reading. Do please leave a comment if you got some value out of this.

Merry Christmas!

Case Study: Told my first coaching client “Fire me!”

My first ever “coaching client” was my dad. I told him to fire me. Have a second full-time sales person. We needed to get someone who had been a mechanic, who was a great people-person, and train them how to do the accounts job I was doing.

My first coaching client was my dad. I told him to fire me.

I should say “client” in quotations because really I was his employee, but this was the earliest manifestation of my affinity for planning and coaching (‘consulting’ I guess is more correct in this case). This is the story of my dad’s family business, and my first job.

Once upon a time…

…Shortly after I was born, in fact, my dad and uncle started a trade selling car parts to local garages. My dad’s whole family are big gear-heads. I did not inherit this, nor a head for engineering (one of my brothers did though). A few years later my uncle left the business to work more directly (physically, as a restorative mechanic) on cars so then it was just my dad in charge.

When we were kids, my two younger brothers and I would be asked to help out occasionally. Many months we’d be given a few pounds to put hundreds of customer statements into envelopes and stamp them. When we were older, we’d help stock-take as Summer jobs, and the Summer that I finished school, I was trained how to do the bookkeeping (and produce the aforementioned statements. How far I’d come…). This became my first real part-time job during my 3 years in University College Dublin, studying for a Bachelors of Commerce degree.

My job title was “accounts”, but seeing as how there were less than 4 employees most of the time, everyone did a bit of everything, so I’d sell car parts too. Basically if the phone rang and someone asked for sales, the other guy (let’s call him Bill) would take it. If the second phone rang while Bill was on the first, suddenly I was sales, but if the question was overly technical or it wasn’t a day-to-day part, I’d usually have to take a message and let Bill or my dad get back to them. This is just how small/family businesses tend to be, I guess.

I dreaded the days when my dad was on the road (as our rep, two days a week) and Bill would call in sick, because not only would I be likely run off my feet answering two phones and dealing with drop-in customers, deliveries, and outbound orders, but my acute lack of mechanical knowledge would really start to show on these days, and I’d have to take notes, ring around, and “get back to you on that” for something that Bill would have known instantly. Sales would slow, customers would get frustrated, and business would suffer. It was just an objective truth that I couldn’t handle the sales end without some serious training. I also just wasn’t that interested in cars. They had no part in what I wanted to do, which at that time looked to be running an events company.

In short, to be part of this small business, it really would have paid to have spent some time working as a mechanic first. Every few weeks we’d seem to be playing catch-up, instead of ever getting ready to grow or expand. But this all didn’t seem to matter too much until the Recession hit!

A Downturn for the Worse!

In the Summer of 2008, the Recession officially came to Ireland. I remember hearing the news report announcing this quite well. It came on the same day that I got the results for my final exams. I thought “I hope this won’t affect me too much”… yeah…

Now finished with college, I was looking around for jobs in my desired field(s), but none were to be found, so I stayed where I was. I switched to full-time hours at first, which allowed Bill and my dad to focus a bit more on business, but a Volkswagen strategic decision (to not allow Main Dealers to purchase parts from 3rd party suppliers like ours) was a major hit to our business. 

As financial hardship began to set it around the country (and the world), people were repairing their cars less frequently, and as our customers were feeling the pinch, so soon were we. It took longer and longer to get paid, and in turn we had to stretch out payment to our suppliers as long as possible, risking going on-stop at times. This is where I learned first hand how a company can have a strong balance sheet, but still die on its cash flow.

In my accounts role, I watched month on month as our average bank balance slowly but surely fell, eventually beginning to creep into Overdraft most months, until we basically lived there. This was all against a backdrop of efforts to improve sales like being more proactive with finding new garages in the deep corners of the country, sourcing cheaper parts, building a website, etc. All things that (apart from the website, which didn’t help all that much, since our customers were 90% regulars) I couldn’t help with as I couldn’t speak to mechanics on their level. 

Downsizing

Morbidly, one thing did help us survive longer here.

Our van driver, let’s call him Charlie, a plump, hearty, ‘paddy hat’ wearing, gentle and generous old gent whom everyone loved was nearing retirement age. He’d worked for my dad for decades across multiple businesses. He was employed all week but really only needed to be there maybe 10 hours or less with the reduction in business. There was no way my dad was going to let him go (nobody was suggesting it, let’s be clear), but the business wasn’t getting its money’s worth from him any more.

His wife had died a couple years prior, and he lived to work, so nobody, least of all him, had any idea what he’d do when he retired. This is the kind of man who’d never left the country in his entire life (I think he told me he went on a foreign holiday once, but he didn’t like it). Anyway, one evening on his way home, a few months before retirement, Charlie pulled over to the side of the road with chest pains, and died minutes later just a couple of miles from his house.

We were all saddened. All of our local customers knew him well and many came to the funeral. It was a shock to me as I’d known him since I was a toddler, and thought of him as an uncle, but it really was one of those cases where people agreed he may have been better off. He’d have been miserable retired and alone.

Anyway, while Bill got a well-deserved raise after this, and I worked a few more hours to cover the odd collection or delivery (I was part time again at this stage), we managed to save some salary costs from this, but were still on a downward trajectory with no improvement in sight.

The Plan

My dad had ideas on how to save the business, but was also keen to get input from us junior staff (a great Leadership trait – take note). So this is when I first really became involved in strategic business planning, with a company’s very survival actually hanging in the balance. No pressure. My dad’s ideas, all still useful, revolved around marginally reducing costs here, or pushing harder to sell our higher-margin parts, or re-engage with dormant customers.

We weren’t often that busy. Here’s a box fort we made once.

We really needed to make more sales though. What we needed was a second pro-active sales person who could bring money in and find new business. Bill was great at this, but he was only one man. My dad was having some health problems, and also his interest in the business seemed to be waning, so he wasn’t putting 40 hours in any more either.

He talked as well about moving the premises to a more visible location (we were extremely well-hidden in a private laneway and got no foot-traffic, though this was kind of a blessing, too).

My suggestion: Fire me!

The best answer seemed to be to clone Bill! Have a second full-time sales person. We needed to get someone who had been a mechanic, who was a great people-person, and train them how to do the accounts job I was doing. That way all the company admin would still be taken care of, but we’d always have someone available to be selling, and could probably put another rep on the road to find new business. A couple of new big accounts was all we really needed, though big accounts are hard to find since the franchised main dealers weren’t allowed to buy from us any more, and the independent garages were having a hard time of the recession, too.

So we put out an ad and eventually found a local guy who’d been a mechanic, and was keen to do an accounts + sales role. I trained him up on the accounts. I’d trained both of my brothers at different times (to cover me on Summer holidays or whatever), and had trained Bill on the accounts too, so I was used to having to be really clear, have them take notes, and expect to have to repeat a few things. I did have to repeat some things, but he seemed able to get the job done.

I did notice one disturbing trait, though. He wouldn’t really accept responsibility for making a mistake. It would usually be that “you didn’t tell me that”. But I’m someone who takes excessive responsibility, and if I’m the trainer it is my job to make sure that the message is received correctly, so I just took that as meaning that I hadn’t been clear enough.

Anyway, I’d signed up to do a Sound Engineering course that started in September 2010 (to help in my music/events direction). So I finished training the new guy just in time, and left the business to start on its new direction, while I finally started mine.

So much for that…

I still lived at home, so of course I was on hand to answer clarifying questions through my dad, or even drop into the shop if needs be the odd time. I began hearing how New-Guy wasn’t working out though. My dad seemed to have taken a dislike to him. If I remember correctly, it usually revolved around having to repeat himself to New-Guy excessively, or things not getting done as he expected them done.

So I mentioned how New-Guy wasn’t great at admitting if he’d gotten something wrong? Well, my dad has a very low tolerance for bullshit (namely ‘excuses’, or especially ‘lies’). Turns out those two personalities don’t mix well together. They were quickly finding themselves in daily arguments. My dad’s fuse may have been a little shorter due to the stress of this new business plan needing to work out, but to be fair, there’s little more annoying than someone who blames others for their mistakes.

Well, after just a couple of months, New-Guy was fired. I’m not fully sure what happened, but according to Bill, the guy really wasn’t what we’d hoped at all. My dad asked me to come back part-time. I was able to do this even with my course and still have free time to run events, but it left the company no better off (and I had to give up on learning the piano). I was only working 6 hours a week at this stage (it’s all that was needed of me). Things were bad.

Funny enough, my girlfriend at the time had known of New-Guy before we hired him, and she did not recommend him, but all the other references checked out and he was the best candidate so we went with it (we did seriously need to roll the dice).

The following year I finished my course and, seeing continuing disimprovements in the economy, I moved to Australia with said girlfriend. I trained my youngest brother in to replace me as he was now in college. The business was no better or worse off, but I’d have a chance to finally spread my wings a bit, and my brother would have some income to fund his college life.

The end of the story

told-my-first-client-to-fire-me
Street art in Adelaide, SA, that reminded me of the old job, since VW Beetles were a big part of my dad’s early business.

This was about my own experience in that family business, and that part of the story really ends there, but for the sake of completion:

When Plan A hadn’t worked out, they all decided to move premises up to a more visible part of the town. It was a big decision with a lot of literal heavy lifting involved (thankfully I was gone at this stage), but it was taking action, and that’s what mattered. Giving the business a chance.

Unfortunately, my dad had a major health scare which took him away from the business for several crucial weeks. Most of our customers only paid when he’d call around the country on the road as our rep, so money wasn’t coming in those weeks. This stressed him further and left us in a worse position. I was back from a year in Australia at this stage and, while not involved in the business, was still happy to look at the numbers, and offer advice. I’d to talk to the Tax Man (who we were now on a first name basis with) as well. Things were grim. My advice (for a long time now) was to shut down the business. It was eating into my dad’s life savings with no sign of turning around.

A few months later he had a second major health scare and the move in premises hadn’t much improved things, so as a family we all decided it would be best to shut it down. Bill was a real asset and had no trouble finding work with our competitors. My youngest brother graduated with a business degree in 2013, when institutions were finally hiring graduates again. He’s never been a day unemployed in his life and has had 5 or 6 really good jobs in as many years.

Retirement suits my dad down to the ground, and his health is doing really well, thank God! And me? Well, I’ve worked in 8 industries in 10 years, am no stranger to being laid off, but have circumnavigated the world, studied tax, taught myself to program, started a games company, worked for the guy who made Doom and Quake, and am now a business coach. Go figure.

In Conclusion

So, at the tender age of 21, I’d my first real exposure to strategic planning for a small business, and to consulting/coaching. Even then, I knew that Movement Beats Meditation, meaning that we couldn’t just make incremental changes and hope, or spend excessive time “wait and see”-ing. We were in trouble and we had to decide on an action plan and just take the chance.

My move to Australia was another drastic action necessitated by circumstance. As hard as I find it to believe now, I truly never wanted to go to Australia at the time. It just seemed the best move for myself and my girlfriend then. Sometimes a risky action is just what it takes. Although, it’s nicer when the downside isn’t so drastic as my first experiences were, and nicer still the times it works out. This just wasn’t one of those times. It’s a real story. Businesses fail.

I also was willing to admit when I was the problem and get out of the way, even if it meant a lower standard of living for myself. I think this is an important skill to have, and I’m sure to have my clients reflect on this in their own situations to see if it rings true.

This post was a bit long in the tooth, but if you’re interested in my time in Australia, my tax-studying history, or how I got into games, see this post on my old games website. If you’d like to know how it worked out with that girlfriend or why I got out of my games company, see this follow-up post.

Thanks so much for reading. Do please leave a comment if you got some value out of this.

Talk to you soon…

Movement beats Meditation!

I’m a perfectionist. I’m a planner. None of these are bad traits, but if left unchecked they can cause you to spend a lot of energy spinning your wheels and going nowhere.

Hello and welcome to the site! First post! Woo! (It will soon become apparent to you that I’ve a somewhat informal writing style). So, why should a phrase as seemingly innocuous as ‘movement beats meditation’ be the topic for the site’s first post?

Well, I’ve spent days now trying to decide what the perfect first post would be for my new coaching website. Should I talk about the journey that led me here (it’s a good one!), or about my first client (my dad. When I was 23 I told him to fire me), or maybe about the purpose of the site itself?

Action counts

Planning is all well and good, but taking action is what counts! I realised that I was falling victim again to one of my own key character flaws, that I’m sure a lot of us share. I tend to want to know what the second step is before I take the first one. I’m cautious. I’m a perfectionist. I’m a planner. None of these are bad traits, necessarily, but if left unchecked they can cause you to spend a lot of energy spinning your wheels and going nowhere.

Basically, I tend to meditate on a problem, instead of move!

When I realised what I was doing, I was reminded of something that I heard not too long ago: 
“You’ll achieve more through movement than through meditation…in most situations”. It’s attributed to Joe Polish, a renowned marketer and entrepreneur. I can’t quite find where he’s said it, but I’ve heard a couple of the personalities that I follow mention this, and regardless, it’s true!!!

“You’ll achieve more through movement than through meditation…in most situations”

Joe Polish

Taking an action produces a result. Thinking about what action to take gets you exactly nowhere! Even if it was the wrong action, you’ve produced a lesson to learn from, instead of staying put where you were, wasting time, and learning (and producing) nothing!

The ideal first post?

Well, the purpose of my new business is to help entrepreneurs to get past the hurdles that are preventing them from creating a better world for themselves, their families, and the world at large. So, what’s the perfect first post to do that? The answer (or one of several right answers, more like) was staring me right in the face in the form of my own procrastination-shaped hurdle (this is all getting very ‘meta’ now, isn’t it?). Sometimes we just need to move!! Indecision and choice paralysis are the arch-enemies of entrepreneurs (well, more accurately they’re a couple of villains-of-the-week from a huge rogue’s gallery of arch-enemies. “Tune in next week and watch our heroes battle the dreaded ‘Impostor Syndrome'”. haha. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that).

Of course, as with all things in life, it’s about balance. You don’t want to take disastrous action that an hour of research could have saved you from. You don’t want to be overly impulsive, but when it comes to choosing a topic for your new blog that nobody is even aware of yet, all you really have to do is pick something of value. It doesn’t have to be the most valuable thing you’ll ever post. That can come in the future, and time will tell you what it was. You can’t plan for it, so just take an action!!!

Finished is better than perfect.

So, first lesson: When there are several right answers to choose from, don’t let yourself get slowed down. If there are no wrong answers, what’s the problem? Make your decision and go! Flip a coin if you really have to, but stressing over whether one choice might be 5% better or worse than the next is a waste of your mental energy.

Movement beats meditation!

Thanks so much for reading. Do please leave a comment if you got some value out of this.

Talk to you soon…

PS You might also enjoy this later article that I wrote on beating procrastination.