Modern stick in the sand

You need to remember you are human (If you are something other than human and reading this, welcome and thanks for checking in) and, that means one of our biggest strengths - our mind, can also be one of most vulnerable weaknesses.

When nothing is making sense - break your normal routine. Take some advice from our ancestors and do the modern version of grabbing a stick and drawing in the sand - call your friends, kick off your shoes, roll-up your sleeves, pull out the markers and put the whiteboard on the floor - it’s time to start idea sharing.

Don’t get caught in the weeds because of stress, don’t zoom into things so microscopically that you lose focus on what the problem was in the first place and don’t zoom so far out that you miss vital steps in getting from A to D.

Give yourself time to clear the clutter and critique your own ideas. Set aside an hour (No matter how busy your schedule!) and focus only on what matters the most - keep things restrained and look at bang for buck and break things down! If you put 5hrs into a problem and it results in a 25hr saving, question if it is this efficient enough. Could you spend 3 more minutes brain storming an idea that still needs 5hrs worth of work that may result in a 40hr saving?

Look for results that will bring immediate change and improvement and then keep working on the 1%ers after that. We can’t dance around problems and we shouldn’t just endure stress for the sake of it.

So, where’s the nearest beach? Next time I want to try doing this in the sand with a real stick!