The LEGO® Productivity Secret You Didn't Know Existed
Do you remember building with LEGO® when you were a kid? Do you remember any lessons? I bet you read this headline and said: "No one gave ME no LEGO® productivity secret!"
Here's why . . .
There's this strange notion that taking on big challenges is how people achieve big things.
Of course, this is ridiculous.
People who are shooting to be the next Google, Facebook, or Apple are thinking big--but they're not thinking of the practical approach to getting there.
Stop thinking it's "will power."
Stop thinking it's your ability to execute.
Stop thinking you don't have the right shoes, camera, laptop, pen, climbing rope, bicycle, car engine, or professional network.
Almost no one started with all that.
No one builds a huge, 1000 piece LEGO® castle by looking at the box and making it happen with just some good ol' fashioned elbow grease.
They use instructions that break the build down into small, achievable chunks.
It's not about huge willpower. It's about writing your own LEGO® instructions and breaking things down into actionable and achievable pieces.
It's less about you committing to some huge goal and it's more about making a small commitment to a reasonable goal.
Exercise is another really good example.
"The hard part about going to the gym is putting your shorts on."
- Chris' Dad
Thanks, dad.
It's less about facing some huge challenge and it's more about tricking yourself into smaller challenges.
It's these smaller challenges, when pieced together, that make the whole LEGO® build.
Okay, so how do we pull out this LEGO® productivity secret from all this?
Understand: Achieving what you want is not about going after the whole big picture, it's about building repeatable systems, made up of small achievable tasks, that make you happy when you complete them.
Successful people are not magical.
Successful people are a combination of protocol and opportunity.
2 Minute Action:
What is a goal you have?
Let's just say it's running a marathon.
How do you go from couch to 26.2?
- Register for the race.
- Lookup a training plan.
- Find someone who will run with you even when it's cold and raining outside.
These are all things you can do today, pretty quickly.
You don't have to run 26.2 miles right now. In fact, that's a terrible idea. You'll hurt yourself and never want to try again.
No matter what your goal is, I challenge you to find something you can do to move forward in 2 minutes or less.
When you string together all of these small actions, you arrive at your protocol or system for getting things done.
That's the LEGO® productivity secret.
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Is Quitting Good or Bad?
I was just standing in line today.It was taking forever.I started counting the people ahead of me and estimating the minutes until it was my turn.Then, when I was finally about 3 people away from the front, the guy in front me threw up his arms and left the line.We’d both been waiting for over 25 minutes but my estimate was that we only had 5 minutes left to go.It was so obvious:No one quits a marathon at mile 2 when everyone is cheering you on, they quit at mile 22 when it feels like they’ll never make it.Of course, this is the worst time to quit!Of he’d stayed in line another 5 minutes, he’d have gotten all the benefits of waiting.There was a sunk cost, sure he’s never getting that time back, but the cost of leaving the building and finding another line to stand in was so high compared to what was left.It would have cost him far less time to stay put than to switchJust a little quick math and he could have estimated the time he had left. He chose to react in frustration, instead.There are two lessons here: sticking it out and responding with a cool, calculated head. Either might have saved this guy.
2 Minute Action:
What’s something that’s really pressing on your patience right now?Is it a sunk cost? Should you bail?Or can you “do the math” to figure out if patience might be worth the price?If you’re going to quit, quit early. Somewhere, somehow, quitting got a bad name. It’s not bad, it’s useful—it’s just that most people don’t know when to quit.Tip: It’s almost always wasteful to quit late in the marathon, at mile 22.