Do One Thing...Really Well.

I’ve recently been reading Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta, and I think it’s a great book. Babuta is the author of the Zen Habits blog (http://zenhabits.net/). Power of Less is all about how to do fewer things in a more directed and clear way in order to achieve more balance and happiness in the meantime.

How do we do this? Well, according to Babuta, we focus on one thing at a time. He discovered this process when he was an overweight smoker with piles of debt. Rather than get overwhelmed by the number of changes that he needed to make, he decided to focus on one: quitting smoking. It was his entire focus. After he mastered that, he felt so encouraged by his success that he moved on to the next goal: his health. He broke each goal down into manageable components, and accomplished each one slowly and steadily-and thoroughly. This kind of change lasts.

It’s exactly the opposite of what I call “New Year’s Resolutions Syndrome,” which is when someone (it might be you) goes into a flurry of activity for about three weeks, determined to completely overhaul everything about one’s life-all at once. Of course, this pace is not sustainable, and once the first wave of excitement wanes, the hopefulness turns to hopelessness-or, at the least, inertia. Giving up. The worst part of the syndrome is that it creates a story that we use to inform our future decisions. In this case, the story becomes “well, I’d like to make changes, but I never follow through.” We pull out these old stories every time we’re thinking about taking a risk or making changes, and they shame us into giving up. It's an extreme example, but I think that it's a metaphor for how a lot of people live on a daily basis.

Well, what if you’re not weak in character or determination, but you’ve just been using the wrong approach? Putting too much pressure on yourself? What if this is just about having an open mind and facing this in a different way? Just take a deep breath, and let's go at this from another angle.

So here are your choices: you can a) multi-task franticly, rushing around and getting a lot of things a little bit done, or you could b)be calm and grounded and do a few things well and deliberately and with greater success. Ok, so assuming you choose the latter, here are some tips:

1) Instead of starting your day by checking your email, start by meditating, praying, or doing yoga. You’ll start the day centered, instead of reactive.
2) Write down your most important goal for your life. Read it every day before you start work.
3) Schedule work related to your goal FIRST and build the rest of your day around it. For instance, if learning to paint is your top priority, schedule time every day to do it. Maybe on certain busy days, you’ll have time to paint and you won’t have time to do housework. So what? Your world won’t collapse. And it may be that you only have 10 minutes a day to work toward your goal. So what? Little steps turn into big changes over time.
4) Every day when you start work, write down the 3 most important things that you want to accomplish that day. Do them first.
5) If you’re working hard on a project and feel stuck, step away and take a walk. You’ll clear your head and figure out the solution with less effort.
6) Ask yourself several times during the day, “Is this really necessary?” In other words, are you spending all your time, energy and money on people, things and activities that deplete you, instead of enhance your life?
7) Only answer email once or twice a day. Don’t react to each email as it comes in. Remember, you have choices.

I think it comes down to this: paring down to what is absolutely necessary in life. When we take away the chaos, the frenzy, the busyness, we are left with what we love most. And, suddenly, there is a spaciousness of time and energy that can be used in ways that make our lives better.

Finding and Keeping a Job, Grocery-Store Style

The summer after freshman year of college, I worked for three excruciatingly long months as a checkout person at a grocery store. As a counselor and a coach, I remind my clients of these lessons on a daily basis, but I’m going to translate them to you here, grocery-store style.

Here’s the first one: don’t procrastinate too long or you end up having to take what’s left over. In my case, the procrastination involved a long-distance boyfriend and far too many trips to Athens, Georgia, waiting too long to look for a summer job, and having to work at Delmonico’s in Birmingham (may it RIP). My friends were heading to great internships and working in music stores and I was getting verbally abused and wearing a uniform every day. Enough said. Lesson: don’t wait until you’re desperate to start looking. You’ll limit your choices.

Here’s an important one: don’t cater to bizarre demands. Ever. You’ll get trapped repeating them over the long haul. Example: On my second day of work, a co-worker pointed at a sour-looking customer in a red fedora, looked at me grimly, and said, “You better hope that HE is never in your line!” When I pressed her on the topic, she told me that he was exceedingly picky about how his groceries got handled. As in, he complained to the manager if he perceived that you were “too rough” with his stuff. Three days later, he was in my line. I tried to be as careful as I could. He glared at me menacingly as I took 15 minutes to scan his groceries, hands trembling, placing the Metamucil in the bag as if it were a newborn. With two hands, I placed the orange in it’s own bag so that it wouldn’t be bruised. By the time I finished, he was the only person left in line, and he was quivering. He snatched the bags from my hands and walked over the manager, and started speaking, gesturing wildly and pointing at me repeatedly. I was terrified. After he left, the manager walked over to me, a wide smile on his face. He said, ‘he told me, "that red-haired girl is the only person in this store who KNOWS how to handle groceries, and I won’t go to anyone else again, ever!"” And he didn’t. For the rest of the summer, he lined up every two days to watch me like a hawk and rattle my nerves. Lesson: don't do stuff you feel uncomfortable with just to make people happy in the short run. You're just setting up bad habits that you will have to undo later.

Here’s a good one: be nice to people, for a couple of reasons. First and primarily, everyone you meet is a person too, and it’s crappy to treat people badly, from a karmic perspective. People in service jobs see the worst aspects of humanity on a daily basis, and you have to have worked in retail to truly appreciate this. The nice people stand out in a sea of impatience and intolerance. So get off your high horse, if you are on one, and be nice.

And here’s why you should be nice to people, part 2:when you are kind to people, not in an Eddie Haskell sort of way, but in a genuine way, people want to do nice things for you. They want to help you. One of the nicest people I remember from that summer was Carole Griffin, who I only knew as one of the few customers who looked me in the eye, remembered my name, and was patient and kind. Years later, I met her again, remembered her, and when I learned she owned a local business (Continental Bakery/Chez Lulu), I spent my money there, because I remembered her as someone who has goodness flowing out of her. How this translates to a job search: be really nice to everyone you encounter during your search; you never know who you will meet and how it may help you later.

Conversely, don’t treat people like crap. This is a different rule from “be nice.” Being nice is taking the time to really see people. It’s active. But treating people like crap is a whole other beast, and it’s bad. If you treat people badly, they will remember, and you will get yours later. I’ve worked in enough coffee shops and restaurants to know that the abusive customers get served sneezers (if you don’t know what that is, trust me, you don’t want one). In the rest of the world, here’s how it translates: don’t miss appointments, badmouth people, be disrespectful to assistants or anyone you consider “beneath” you, be disrespectful of people’s time, or take stuff for free without saying “thank you.” It’s rude, and it WILL bite you in the butt, because people do remember.

These lessons don’t just apply in Delmonico’s: they apply in the rest of the world too. Mind your P’s and Q’s, and remember, there is opportunity everywhere you go.