December 2016

If you haven’t caught one of my previous posts on the subject yet, I believe deeply in the idea of just starting. It’s the first part of a simple formula. Starting + consistency = results. We’ll talk about what to do with those results towards the end of the month, but now the question is, how do you start?

There’s a saying by Mark Twain, “If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, that’s probably the worst thing you’ll have to do all day.” Basically, do the hardest thing you have to do on any given day first and then go down the list in reverse order, leaving the easiest tasks for last.

Then I read this blog post by Michael Hyatt, recommending that you do the easiest task first. For some of the very same reasons that I stated in my first post, in regards to forcing myself to write a post every day in December, Mr. Hyatt states that it’s about starting (Motion), getting some quick wins (Emotion) and Momentum.

In the end I think whether you tackle the most difficult task first or the easiest task first depends on a few factors.

1. The size of the project. This could mean complexity or time, but if you have a massive project in front of you starting with a few quick wins and getting the ball rolling is a good strategy.
2. Your expertise. Are you the expert? Kick ass! Dig in and knock out the hardest thing first.
3. The scope of your day. What do you have on your plate for the rest of the day? Is a 3pm meeting looming that could go over, leaving you little time at the end of your day for a big-think project or do you at least need one cup of coffee under your belt.  Plan around your day. In fact plan the night before if you can.
4. Your level of motivation. Some days you wake up ready to kill it; ready to take on the world. Don’t lose that magical momentum. It’s a gift, don’t waste it on easy tasks that will still be there after you’ve run your brain through the ringer.

With this blog I decided to start easy and ramping up the difficulty as days go by. Sending out the first string of emails, posting on Instagram and Twitter, all starting this week. The things that I’m definitely less comfortable with, than writing a few hundred words on strategies and learnings that have worked for me. I needed the momentum of starting and the backlog of content to feel like those things would be more successful, whether that’s true or not.

On the other hand, when I was working on a new feature for the website at my last job, I would often start by making a prototype of the most complex functionality as a placeholder, feeling like if I could get that piece working first, everything else would simply fall into place after that. If I couldn’t quite get it working I would then shift to easier tasks, and often times the roadblock I hit would become clear as I tinkered mindlessly. I like to call this the Don Draper effect.

“Just think about it, deeply, and then forget it. An idea will…jump up in your face.” – Don Draper

Of course, if I still had issues, then I could always reach out for help.

And, even though I shouldn’t have to state it again, I will. It doesn’t matter which path you decide to take as long as you just start.

There is a stigma in business of asking others for help. You’re hired for a job and in that moment you feel as if you’re expected to know every facet of it, and if you don’t they’ll see through the illusion…that you don’t know what you’re doing.

This expands beyond first jobs as well and into planning your future or diverging into a new career completely. More than likely (99.9%) there’s someone that’s done it before and will have valuable insight for you, but still you feel as if you have to go it alone.

Where does this all begin? This idea that we need to know it all and do it all on our own?

My family and I went to a holiday extravaganza at our local high school today.  There were booths to decorate cookies, color holiday drawings, make hats, sudo-stockings out of paper bags and Santa was there. One of the projects was to build a little tool box, with pre-cut wood, nails and a hammer. My son was struggling, trying to hold all the pieces together, position the nails and swing the hammer at the right angle. I watched and tried to offer help in as minimal way as possible, positioning my hand on the table so he could butt the wood up against it and give him some leverage, but even this was too much. He wanted to do it by himself.  And he did, and I am very proud.

But it made me think of all the times that I was struggling and help was there and I didn’t take it because I wanted to do it on my own, whether from pride or stubbornness or perhaps a want to get credit for the whole job instead of sharing the spotlight. Why was it so important to do it all by myself? Why was it so importnat for my son?

There are so many resources available to us, especially in the connected world we live in, to accelerate our learning and ease our path to the goals we set for ourselves. One of the best ways I’ve heard it expressed is in reference to professional athletes. Once they hit the big time do they sit back and say “I got this.” No.  They continue to look to the coach to help them refine and better themselves. Sometimes they have multiple coaches helping them with different parts of the physical attributes they need to hone while also having coaches that can help with visualization and mental challenges we all face.

Being the best you can at whatever you choose to do takes hard work and determination and as I’ve said multiple times now, starting followed by consistency, but that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. You have to have that internal drive to push yourself, to do your best, and to keep going, but find a good mentor, find an online community for support, or find a coach and you’ll up your chance at success.

“Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes they just need a little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen.”
– Pete Carroll, football coach

Saw this post on Instagram:

There will be days where you’re not motivated.

But the motivation comes after you show up.

Don’t start with the motivation – start with the doing.

– Sean McCabe @seanwes

I am such a fan of this line of thought.  In the past I would let my thoughts and underlying fears create a state of paralysis by analysis. During the time at Grumble Games there were days where I had no clue whether we were doing the right thing and hours later, talking about adjustments or whole pivots to what we were doing we’d be in the exact same spot we were before but with hours gone.

If you’re having trouble starting, or finding the motivation to push through, just start doing something. For me that often is writing. As I wrote about yesterday, I approach problems through a flow of stream of consciousness and break things down from there.  Sometimes that’s enough.

If it’s a design I’m struggling with, free sketching helps, or just building things in Photoshop with no real end goal in mind other than to get thoughts onto paper.  Spending 20-30 minutes just playing is often times enough to kickstart the idea train and lead to an extremely successful day of work.

If it’s something I’ve never done before at all, which is the tallest order, setting aside a clear set of time to do research followed by a break and then digging in to first steps has been a very successful tactic for me.  The first time I had to create a product roadmap I had no clue where to start and I avoided it until the very last minute, then spent a night throwing it all together. Since then I’ve used the research, break, first steps method and it always creates the momentum needed to drive me forward. Remember the best way to eat an elephant…one bite at a time.

One last thing, if you know deep down that you’re going to put it off until the last minute, don’t spend the hours fixated on the fact that you’re not working. All that will do is stress you out and kill the productivity you could be having later on. Go to the beach, or play video games, or read your book and let yourself be. It’s risky, but if all else fails creating misery for days leading into a cram session does you no good.  And to be honest, sometimes that pressure creates amazing things.

In regards to the quote, I’m a big fan of the seanwes community and the information they provide about making a living online. I highly recommend checking out seanwes.com and the podcast (I listen on iTunes).

Follow me on Instagram @mspotten for posts about my life, my family and inspiration.

An important part of my process as I face any problem is writing. I typically write out the problem, stream of consciousness style, then break it into a bulleted list and in turn create talking points or an action plan from that.

But, since I decided to take writing more seriously and create a writing habit I’ve found that this process has become even easier. Writing has helped me to plan out this blog, create the basis for the content and also, like yoga helps to clear my mind.

There are many benefits to starting a writing habit. At a very minimum, being able to communicate clearly and effectively through writing gives you a leg up in the business world. Writing out what you know about a topic increases your confidence and decreases anxiety. Starting a project with writing helps you to anticipate points of failure and alternatives that may be more effective or trigger additional avenues of thought.

When starting a writing habit, I recommend setting aside 10 minutes and writing whatever comes to mind. No agenda, just write.  At first 10 minutes will seem like a long time, but as you become more comfortable just putting words to paper it will fly by.  After you’re comfortable with 10 minutes, bump it up to 20 or set a word goal (ex. 1,000 words a day), and when you’re in beast mode, set aside a day a week to write down the topics you’re going to write about every week, which will lead to a more directed method to the madness.

There are a ton of sites dedicated to how to start a writing habit, just do a Google search, or Bing, or AskJeeves, your preferred search engine. I personally like this one, simple and to the point.

Also, if you’re looking for reasons why writing can help your business, this podcast over at seanwes has a ton of value. I agree with a lot of it, but feel like starting and layering in your business strategy is completely acceptable, because the important part is starting and staying consistent, whatever form that means for you. Have a plan to evolve (as I wrote about yesterday), but start.

In my vision for this site, I stated that I want to help people build better things, specifically creative based products, but feel these lessons can be applied more broadly.

And I still believe that to be the case, but after consideration I would restate it as such:

Give insight on how to build better creative products.

I anticipate doing this through personal lessons, book and article suggestions and guest writers.

Going off the theme of this post, that’s one type of evolution; evolving my vision to be more concise and direct.  But, the impetus for this post came from a stream of writing exercise in which I was trying to get to the root of why my posts didn’t feel as tied together towards that vision as I would like and how to resolve it.

Through that exercise I established that a key function of this blog at it’s onset is to invite you, the reader, into the journey of creating something from step one as well and the struggle was how to balance that with posts full of the depth that I consider valuable. This blog will evolve, serving as a roadmap for growth (and missteps), like the great Pat Flynn as well as building towards Reduce User Friction and the other pieces I wrote about in my post on strategy.

Allowing your product to evolve and in some ways show you what it’s intended to be is a freedom you have to be open to. Your path is not a straight line, there will be twists and turns. This does not mean following your vision blindly.  It does mean, if something doesn’t feel right or if something’s not working as you expect, step back, take a breath and identify the gap.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Henry Ford

Henry Ford’s quote about people asking for faster horses is thrown around quite a bit in reference to trusting your gut. Trusting your gut is an essential skill for entrepreneurship and leads us to have a better idea of what to test and the questions to ask, but eliminating customer research and following your intuition blindly is irresponsible. Take those assumptions, get out there and test them. That could mean observing people using similar products, split tests or running a survey. Depends on what you’re hoping to find.

As I get this further along I’ll share the user research and testing towards fine-tuning and optimizing this site.

Evolution – Belief: Optional / Participation: Mandatory

Today I had a plan. The day was open, with one meeting, one small task to complete and 5-6 glorious hours where I could focus on writing blog posts, getting the site closer to the style that I have envisioned in my head, send out an email finally inviting people to see the wonders that I have so far bestowed upon the internet.

I had a plan, and a checklist, created the night before and ready to attack the day.  And then the day started.  Run, shower, pack lunches, get the kids to school and head to my coffee meeting.

Meeting was at Order and Chaos, a cool little coffee shop in Baltimore, the brainchild of Planit, an advertising agency. Has a great vibe and great coffee. Check it out if you’re ever in the area.

By 10am, my inbox is flooded with emails, which is unusual for that early. Most of the emails are quick replies, but two are opportunities for work and they also happen to be quick turnaround projects that must get done today.

So, priorities shifted and things moved from today to tomorrow and so there is less done on the site than I had hoped, but I still had to post for today and I made sure to keep one other small win on my list so I felt the sensation of forward progress.

Part of the idea of consistency is to stick to it and make time every day to do a little more, but sometimes that’s just not going to be possible. Sometimes you’re going to miss a day or a weekend or a whole week. Truth be told, coming back after the longer breaks is going to be harder than the sixth day in a row you’ve made progress.  It’s going to be a lot harder. Remember, don’t break the chain (if you can).

In relation to building products there are two things that this makes me consider.

Iteration from good enough to pretty damn sweet.
When I worked at Millennial Media we used to have to come up with new creative concepts in order to reel in the big clients. Games were a big hit and once we would sell one, we’d sell a dozen. Getting the first one out the door was always a late-night, stress induced situation, running through QA, fixing bugs, manipulating pixels and doing it all over again. But then we had our base and from that point every time we released it I required that it be a little bit better. Whether that means running a little faster or adding a feature that we couldn’t get in the first time or whatever, it just had to be a little better, until it was a true V1.  Then we’d take that and templatize it and make it so we could build it just as quickly as our basic units.

Engineering is unpredictable.
I plan on writing a longer post about this in the near future. If you’re in a company that is still using a tactical product road map, I highly recommend switching to a goal based product road map and stop promising dates further ahead than the current priority. Give a basic idea of what’s coming next, but focus on delivering value and not hitting dates. More to come.

In addition to this fine (longer than anticipated) post, I also implemented the basic SumoMe package…so as you’re trying to leave (at least for today), you’ll get a popup asking you to sign up for my list.  I’ll be updating it tomorrow, probably to a paid package, if I can’t get the look feel I want from this free version. See, little bits of progress, just like those games we made at MM. It works and it makes me feel good.

“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” – Oscar Wilde

In yesterday’s post I threw out the word habit in regards to writing this blog. It’s a super hot word right now and for good reason – The totality of our habits make us who we are.

I remember when the word habit was reserved for evil things like smoking, drinking and overeating, but nowadays it’s also entrenched in startup culture, self-improvement and positivity.

All this habit talk and research is due in large part to Charles Duhigg’s excellent book, The Power of Habit, so it’s only fitting to use his words to define a habit:
“First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.”

He also speaks of, the evolutionary reason for habits, quite simply, the brain is trying to conserve effort.  The strongest example I have of this personally is from when I was on the first day of my juice fast and walked downstairs to watch TV and without thinking grabbed my favorite snack out of the pantry. For me the cue was walking down the stairs and watching TV. That was completely eye opening to a habit I was totally unaware.

This all ties back to the idea of being consistent in whatever you decide to do. The easiest way to create consistency is to make it something you do every day and if you’re like me, picking a time that you do it every day helps too.  Another helpful tool comes from Jerry Seinfeld, suprisingly and it’s very simple. Get a calendar, mark the day if you’ve done your thing that day and “Don’t break the chain.” Since implementing it I’ve been way more consistent about exercise, writing and working towards my goals. Credit to seanwes for bringing this to my attention.

Little things every day, change your habits and improve your life, because, as I said, you are simply the totality of your habits.

—

“Your desires can easily lure you into biting off more than you can chew.” – James Clear
Good blog on self improvement with a ton of content.

“Our thoughts become our words, our words become our beliefs, our beliefs become our actions, our actions become our habits, and our habits become our realities.” – Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass.
Not specifically about building habits, but using habits to create other beneficial change in your life.

“My friends, my habits, my family. They mean so much to me.” – Modest Mouse, One Chance

A large part of my strategy in launching this blog in the fashion that I am is transparancy.  I know I have valuable information to share in a voice that is unique, but I am also fully aware that I have never done this before and there are many aspects which will be new territory. Which is why I made the conscious decision to be completely open about my process through these posts, in hopes that through my successes (and failures), you’ll have built in learnings.

Plus, if it inspires you to start and stay consistent then regardless of the outcome, I consider that a win. Seriously go get started, whatever it is.

My first post covered the month of December and the very clear goal of posting every day and this goal has two main benefits. The first is to create a bulk of content very quickly, thus eliminating any concern I can have over no one wanting to spend time on the site due to lack of content.  I’ve had this fear in the past when considering starting a blog, and I’ve heard it from friends thinking of starting a blog. Boom, eliminated in 31 days.

The second benefit, and probably even more important than the first is to create the habit and solidify the discipline. Writing is powerful tool for both creating and implementing your strategy and even though I take time consistently (3-4 times/week) to journal or stream of conscious, I know that creating a daily writing habit, and having those writings focused towards a common goal will pay dividends. I recommend listening to this seanwes podcast on writing. He does a great job of laying out the vast benefits of writing, even if you’re not a writer.

Writing and posting daily is only one of three goals that I have for December. Goal #2 – get the site looking better and flushed out to include an about page, a resources section and maybe a few other nuggets. Goal #3 – start an email list and get 100 people signed up.

Here’s the overall breakdown:

Today – create the habit, share some knowledge, inspire the masses (and by masses I of course mean my wife and my friends, at least to start), write, write, write.

Soon – create an email list by directing traffic to the site and obtaining sign ups from people who find my content worthwhile. I’ll go deeper into how all this is done as I begin implementation.

In the next 6-8 months – work on a book/course combo which will be very much tied to the work I’m doing here. As of now they will be complimentary and the working title is “Reduce User Friction”

Beyond and/or in conjunction – community tools, a series of meet-ups, speaking gigs and a podcast.  This could be a slack channel, coffee dates in different cities, a Ted talk and a podcast on product management, or it could be completely different. What I do know is that the vision I have for what I’m building involves aspects of all of those things (and if things go really well a lot more), but just as I would build any other product (which is what this is), feedback from my users (you), is going to be crucial and my own learnings will clearly take things in new directions.  Just from writing this post today I created 3 other posts all coming your way this week, including a post on habits, a post on my (non-existent) content calendar and a post on writing.

So, like the blog itself, my strategy is a work in progress, but I’m focused on the vision and on Today and Soon, and to a lesser extend the next 6-8 months. The important part is, you need to write it down and refer back to it frequently. Take 3 minutes every day and read your vision and high level goals. This will help keep them top of mind as you’re making strategic decisions as well as carve them a little deeper into your psyche.

Four days into mikespotten.com and I’m really pumped.  I’m so excited to share my knowledge with you as well as have you along for the journey.  It’s funny how close excitement and fear live in relation to one another, isn’t it?

Yesterday I wrote about vision (your why) and stressed the importance of identifying and following that vision throughout your entire process.  Monday’s post will be focused around how to identify your vision and boil it down into an elevator pitch and expand it around a mission, but before I dive into that I want to stress the difference between vision and strategy and explain why you need to have a grasp on both.

Vision is the belief that humans could one day master flight and fly through the air like birds. The strategy is building the first plane, or maybe even strapping some wings to your arms and jumping off a building.

Vision is colonizing Mars. Strategy is systematically eliminating all of the impediments that currently make that unrealistic.

Vision is losing 20 lbs. Strategy is the diet and exercise routine you write down and follow with extreme discipline until your vision is reality.

Vision is the end goal and strategy is the plan.

It’s crucial to seperate these things, because not every plan we make is going to work and sometimes the strategy needs to change, while keeping the vision in tact.

This type of adjustment is called a pivot, and very simply it is a change in the overall strategy without changing the vision. The first attempts at flight didn’t work (and some are even laughable now), but the goal to fly through the air like birds didn’t change, just the strategy to get there.

I’ll go more in depth on pivots and when to pivot in a future post, but for now just understanding that you need both and that your vision needs to remain solid through adversity is key.  That is not to say that your vision can’t change, it is just a much bigger deal and usually requires a complete overhaul instead of a minor shift.

Tomorrow I’ll write about my strategy and the steps I’d like to see completed in over the rest of the month and into the beginning of the new year.

In addition to day 3 of posting, I updated the theme today to a paid theme, which gives me much more control than the free one I was using before. A $39 theme called Salient. I began to tweak the settings, just a bit and the site already looks better. Each small step is building upon the work of the previous day and that consistency is culminating into something almost shareworthy.  And that’s only three days.  If you haven’t read it yet, go back and read my first post on the 31 day challenge and the power of consistency.