Quote of the Day

Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway.

In the graduation-speech approach, you decide where you want to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? I propose instead that you don’t commit to anything in the future, but just look at the options available now, and choose those that will give you the most promising range of options afterward.

Don’t worry if a project doesn’t seem to be on the path to some goal you’re supposed to have. Paths can bend a lot more than you think. So let the path grow out the project. The most important thing is to be excited about it, because it’s by doing that you learn.

From: What You’ll Wish You’d Known by Paul Graham

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Theme-Based New Year’s Resolutions

The winter solstice is upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere (the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere). And this is the perfect time to start reflecting back on 2006 and thinking about 2007. Last year I posted an article on the six tips for setting theme-based resolutions. If you haven’t read it, you can read it here.

If you are looking for some inspiration and ideas of what your theme might be, click here to read over 40 contributions from readers. Feel free to add your own!

Happy Holidays.

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How to Move Through Negative Emotions

Sometimes you feel like crap. It may be a temporary bout of sadness - a feeling that the universe is conspiring against you. This could be caused by an undesirable event, such as the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Other times the feeling is elusive and unexplainable, thus attributed to the alignment of the stars or a chemical imbalance. Regardless, when we are feeling down, all we want is to feel good again. As a result, what do we do? We consciously or subconsciously create a goal to feel better, creating even more stress and adding to our negative feelings.

Goal-Free Living is about living in the present, embracing the moment, and not worrying about how things turn out. Maybe you will not be embracing what you like, but you will make a good start at accepting what is even though it is less than what you desire at the time. The more you deal with the now, the better the future.

I remember back in college, there were moments when I would feel a little melancholy. For me, it was typically due to women problems. Women were more important than grades. Unfortunately, I did not do particularly well with either. For these occasions of sadness, I made this mix tape, aptly titled “The Depression Tape.” It had the sappiest, saddest music you could imagine, containing nearly every song performed by Bread, Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful to Me,” and Elton John’s sadder songs. You get the point.

When I felt “down in the dumps,” I would pop that tape in the stereo, open a bottle of wine, turn off the lights, and allow myself to feel my sadness…deeply. I would cry all night until my eyes were red. I was miserable. Woe is me. Eventually I would fall asleep. When I awoke the next morning, I felt like a new man. Energized and refreshed. The experience was very cathartic.

I have since learned to turn this approach into something a bit more, um, healthy. I have replaced the wine with journaling (better for my liver) and replaced the wallowing with a healthy dose of “embracing the yucky.”

When my wife and I split up many years ago, I was at a loss. The separation was her idea, and I found it difficult to accept. Instead of burying myself in work and creating distractions, I chose to embrace the pain. And man did it hurt. I locked myself in a hotel room, and decided to stay there until the heartache subsided. Although I allowed myself to be miserable, secretly, I was hoping that the pain would go away. It was at this moment that I realized I hadn’t fully embraced the yucky. So I immersed myself deeper in the agony. I took baths and wrote in a journal. It was an incredibly painful period and I fought the instinct to wish it would end.

And then something amazing happened. About two weeks into my complete immersion, my emotions, almost instantly, shifted. Somehow, in the grieving process, I had moved through my negative feeling so much, that all that was left was possibility. I felt like a weight had lifted off of my shoulders. Although the sadness did not disappear 100%, I felt SO much better. I recently re-read my journal and was shocked to see how one day I was at the bottom of the barrel and the next I was excited about what was now possible. I know this shift may be hard to believe, but it is true, it actually happens if you let it.

The next time you feel a negative emotion – misery, anger, sadness – embrace the feeling. In fact, amplify the feeling. Feeling sad? Give yourself permission, for the next 30 minutes, to feel as sad as you have ever felt. If someone is angry with you, acknowledge their anger. In fact, give them permission to be even angrier. Tell them, “Your anger is justified. And I want you to be as mad at me as you can for the next 10 minutes.” It sounds silly. But you may just find that they burst out laughing and are no longer angry.

Being present means being present to everything – the good, the bad, and the crappy. I am not a believer in the power of positive thinking. Sometimes your feelings are just not positive, and you have to be with those negative emotions. Although I am typically an optimistic person, optimism is never a goal. Instead be present to how you really feel. If you feel yucky, embrace the yucky. You might just find that the yuckiness passes quicker than you would ever imagine.

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Buyer Beware

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a GPS device on BestBuy.com. The item was on sale: $200 off the regular price. Instead of having the item shipped to my house, I chose to pick it up at the local Best Buy store. I love this option because it gives me (almost) instant gratification. Once I got the unit home, I discovered that the device was defective. I hurried back to the store to exchange the GPS for a working model. Unfortunately, I was too late; they sold the last unit an hour earlier and did not expect any in for a couple of weeks. They told me to hold on to the item so that I could exchange it when they were back in stock, ensuring the discounted price.

Today I went back to the Best Buy store to exchange the item. I assumed this would be a simple transaction: I bring them a box with a defective unit, and they hand me a box with a working one. Nothing is ever that easy.

Because I bought the GPS on BestBuy.com with in-store pick-up, they could not do a simple swap (or at least they could not figure out how to do it). Instead, they needed to refund my original purchase made via the web, and then process an in store purchase. Unfortunately, the price had gone up $50 and they could not figure out how to sell me the item at the price I paid.

What did I do? I had them refund my money and I bought the item - for $20 less - at a competitor.

It didn’t bother me that they couldn’t solve the problem. What I found disconcerting was that the manager seemed relieved when I told her I wanted my money back. It was clearly too much effort for her to figure out a solution - a solution that would have resulted in a sale and a happy customer. Instead, she lost the sale, has a defective unit she needs to process, and created a (slightly) disgruntled customer.

Back in 1997 I co-wrote an article for the Economist about the Virtualization of Financial Services. One of the biggest challenges we discussed was “channel integration” - the seamless integration of the web, branches, and ATM (cash) machines. I am shocked that 10 years later, great companies are still struggling with this issue.

My guess is that Best Buy invested heavily in their supporting technology. But I wonder if as much attention was given to the process and people/culture issues - two vitally important, yet often neglected areas. In this case, the company needs to design itself around the way customer does business (buying online and exchanging in stores), rather than around the company’s existing silos. Design from the outside in. In today’s information age, we have come to rely heavily on technology. As a result, we often neglect human element: our employees. Do this, and you are certain to lose your most important people: your customers.

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Quote from Paul Graham

“Treating a startup idea as a question changes what you’re looking for. If an idea is a blueprint, it has to be right. But if it’s a question, it can be wrong, so long as it’s wrong in a way that leads to more ideas.”

Click here to read the rest of the article:

From: Ideas for Startups by Paul Graham

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