Chris Hargreaves

just some guy

Accomplishment, or Credit?

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When someone steals your awesome “viral” LinkedIn post for themselves, cut and paste, without acknowledging you… what do you do?

If you build something amazing, will it have your stamp on it?

If your idea sparks a great forest fire, that burns wildly and impacts the whole world… will you be in the press seeking acknowledgment of the spark?

When the case is won, the file is closed, the job is sold, the bill is paid… what do you hope for?

Are you content to change the world and those around you? Or do you want the credit for it to be worthwhile?

Trying to Scale

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It’s what all the cool kids are doing – start a business, make a thing, then “scale” it.

But what’s the virtue of scaling? Why is it good?

More importantly, how does scaling help:

  1. you; or
  2. your customers,

in any way?

Often it has the reverse effect.

So why scale?

 

Do This if you Want to Succeed…

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If you want to succeed, you must do X.

I’ve read this headline more often than I care to. I admit, sometimes I read the articles too, in the hope that I might learn something new. It rarely happens.

Much like in maths, X is not a constant – it’s a variable.

So X for you is not X for me, and X today might not be X tomorrow.

X might mean waking up earlier, or perhaps it means getting more sleep.

It might mean you need to “get after it” or it might mean you need to let it go.

All I can come up with is this: success isn’t about doing X, it’s about constantly solving the equation.

I Knew It!

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A quick Google search and PRESTO, I’m not alone anymore.

In fact look – there are 25,000,000,000 hits on my search – that must mean enough people share my opinion and that it’s not crazy after all.

As I read through the clever, thoughtful blog posts on the topic, I’m more and more convinced that what I already thought is definitely right. I mean, these people have really thought it through.

After a few hours I’m satisfied – no way there could be this much material if I was wrong. I knew it!

I call back my friend who had the audacity to disagree with me. They pick up and we both say “so Google says you’re wrong…”.

 

 

Haters Gonna Love

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This doesn’t rhyme, and it’s not going to make a smash hit.

Sometimes, haters are our best assets. Not because we enjoy their company, and not because they make us feel good.

But if we’re fortunate, then somewhere in the vitriol our haters will tell us the truth. They won’t pander to our sensibilities, or bow to our “wisdom”, they’ll simply say “no you’re wrong – and here’s why”. Maybe they’re less polite of course…

If we’re smart, we listen to our haters. Not so much that our spirit is crushed into a ball of pitiful misery, but with enough humility, enough courage, and enough self-awareness to take the hate and make it into something awesome.

Wisdom is to answer this: are your haters telling you an important story, or an irrelevant lie?

If you can turn your haters into valuable tools for your achievement – it’s amazing.

 

You Can’t Build Anything on Motivational Quotes

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I love a good bit of motivation to get my blood pumping and my energy up.

But nothing of substance was ever built off the back of a motivational quote.

There are two reasons:

  1. They’re shallow
  2. They lie.

Some Examples

Google “motivational quotes” and you’ll find plenty to work with, including things like this:

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Good, right?

Inspiring, even. Especially if you know who said them, and then you can fill in some blanks about what they were talking about and the amazing things they accomplished.

But what if the people who said these inspirational things were actually deep thinkers. What if these quotable quotes, with all their lovely encouraging juice, were actually just subsets of a much larger picture?

Too Clever, Too Shallow

First we have a problem: motivational quotes are always too shallow.

In order to build something, you need a strong foundation – and motivation isn’t it. It might be a tiny piece, but it’s not the entirety of the puzzle.

Life is complicated, subtle, nuanced and messy. These pure truisms that motivational quotes consist of might be helpful on a given day, in a given scenario, for a moment. They are not, however, the foundations of anything grand or majestic. They are not solid, dependable things on which we can balance a masterpiece, a business, a life, or a family.

In almost all cases, a motivational quote will provide you no solutions, no action, no decision, no wisdom. This is why they (at best) are truisms rather than truths – there is a big difference.

They might support you, make you happy, and increase your motivation – but they cannot be latched on in a time of need.

As a result, they are shallow, fleeting things.

Lying By Omission

“Failure will never overtake me if…”. Demonstrably false. Plenty of determined people have been overtaken by failure. Perhaps they were determined to do something stupid, perhaps they simply weren’t very good at it, and perhaps by all human measures they ought to have succeeded… but didn’t. As nice as it sounds, determination is not the only factor in success.

“It always seems impossible until…”. Some things ARE impossible, despite the nice statements to the contrary. Sure, great achievement results from people who see beyond what might seem possible, but not always. Often, it actually is impossible. They failed, went broke and never went back to their project.

“If you’re going through hell…”. Perhaps you’re going through hell because you made a wrong turn, and actually need to back track. Or perhaps not. The idea, of course, is to get out of hell (always good) but the concept isn’t universally great. Maybe if you keep going you’ll end up in more hell for a longer time than if you simply turn back.

And here we see the problem.

At most we can say “wow that’s awesome” and move on, accepting that in some cases there is something important we could learn from the experience of the quoted individuals.

But without the context, the meaning, the rest of the words – we actually haven’t learned anything at all. We just feel a little pumped up, like the guy at the gym watching his own muscles.

Wow… So Negative

Like I said – I love a good bit of motivation.

But you can’t build on it – it’ll fail you.

Merging Onto the Highway at Half Speed

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As I go to merge onto a highway at 100kms/h, I often find myself stuck behind someone who has decided that the only safe way to merge onto a high speed section of road is to slow down considerably.

It’s causes traffic chaos, and is extremely dangerous.

Sometimes, slowing ride down isn’t the safest option at all – in fact, sometimes it’s the worst possible thing you can do.

The problem is that it feels like a safer option. After all, if we’re going more slowly then surely less can go wrong if we hit a bump.

But in truth we lose a huge amount of momentum and leave ourselves vulnerable to being made roadkill.

Momentum Matters

It’s far harder to get going once you’ve slowed down than it is to keep going fast when you already are.

This is both a truth of physics and a truth of psychology.

The energy required to get the enormous mass of your life headed in a direction that you’ve actually chosen is huge. But once you’re going at speed, you can course correct and adjust far more easily than if you slam on the brakes every few minutes because you’re starting to get the heeby-jeebies.

The reason we slow down, most often, is because we get scared that we’re going too fast, doing to much, and that we’ll lose control or burn out.

But here’s my question: how often has that actually happened to you?

Controlled by Irrational Fear

There are certainly cases of burnout, and we’re right to be conscious of the possibility.

But most of us aren’t even coming close to the kind of pathological commitment to something that would be required to reach burnout.

In truth, we’re letting the fear of something that probably won’t happen control our decision making to avoid going all in.

Here’s my theory why: if we avoid fully committing to something and it doesn’t work, we can always just tell ourselves that it’s because we didn’t try hard enough, not because we sucked or the idea wasn’t very good in the first place.

More than being afraid of burnout, we’re actually afraid of going all-in on something and it not working out as we’d hoped.

As A Result…

As a result, many of us slow down before merging onto the highway, and end up crawling along the shoulder of the road because we never really develop the momentum we need.

If you want to get on the highway, you’ve got to hit the accelerator.

Rights Rather than Right

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So recently my wife had a conversation with someone. Without looking to embarrass anyone, it sounded something like this:

  1. [my wife] Hi! This thing you’re letting happen is a bit annoying for these reasons, and while you may not have known those reasons now you do and we were wondering if perhaps you wouldn’t mind adjusting those things as a result?
  2. [other person] Well, I have a right to do X, and so I don’t really care about your reasons because X is fine so I’m not really going to change anything or even give it another thought.

Despite being a lawyer, I thought this was a bit weird. Because it looked a lot like two different conversations.

A society built on people asserting their rights is almost always inwardly focused.

On the first part, a request. Not based on rights, but on civility. A thought that, perhaps, the conduct of another was done in ignorance of its impact, and if they knew then perhaps they might might desire to change that behaviour.

On the second part, an assertion of rights. A statement that what was happening was lawful and, therefore, OK.

It’s two different conversations, of course. One was about rights, and one was about what’s right. Of course, what’s right can be a complicated discussion some times, but it’s almost never a conversation that has anything to do with the law.

And that’s where society seems to be headed in many places. Some kind of strange philosophy where somethings righteousness is determined by sole reference to its lawfulness.

But it doesn’t take long before such a system crumbles into pieces. Here’s why:

A society built on people asserting their rights is almost always inwardly focused. Each individual is concerned with themselves and what they are permitted to do without intrusion by the State or by others.

By a society built on what is righteous is one that must look outwards. Each person’s life becomes concerned not only with themselves and their family, but how what they do will benefit others around them.

I have the right to keep every cent of the money that I make, and never to give anything away.

I have the right to run power tools from 7am to 7pm every weekday, non-stop, even if my neighbour is a shift worker and needs to sleep through the day.

I have the right to stay seated on a bus even if it’s jam packed with little old ladies with walker frames all of whom are standing.

These are the acts of someone concerned with their rights, but unconcerned with what is right.

It’s Just Not your Thing

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I love the idea of finding my “thing” – a sweet spot in which I function beautifully, enjoy my work and into which I can happily sink myself for the rest of my life.

That kind of contentment sounds nice, doesn’t it?

We’re normally first introduced to the idea of our “thing” when people start asking us annoying questions like “what do you want to be when you grow up?”.

The reason it’s annoying is that we don’t really know the answer. We have an idea of the amazing, exciting or fascinating but the subtle nuance of career choices mostly eludes us as young people. But with such a common and innocent question there comes a sinister downside too – why do we need to choose?

The concept of having a “thing” is mostly preposterous to young children, until we train them to have that idea. We tell them things like “you can’t be good at everything” and gently limit their choices to the things that they seem to be naturally more talented at.

But is that really the best way to do things?

Why is it necessary for us to have a thing? Why do we need to focus so heavily on one thing that we inevitably exclude the others? And how are we teaching our children the joy of exploration and experimentation* in a world with infinite possibilities?

*not the bad kind

For me this is a very personal issue. I’ve always been naturally OK at lots of stuff, but nothing has ever really twigged as the single, solitary thing that I should spend my entire life on. And I’m not sure that anything ever will, especially at the ripe old age of 37 as I currently am.

So what’s the deal? Should we spend hours, days, weeks trying to find that “thing” which will keep us inspired and active for our entire lives? Or can we accept that each of us are more than a single-purpose entity?

When I say “accept” I don’t just mean nod, smile and say “of course, Chris – we’re very complicated aren’t we?”. No, I mean we need to accept it in the way we behave, the way we speak, the way we teach, the way we encourage those around us.

We might have our main gig – a job, a hobby, a family, a calling – but all of us are capable of more than dedication to a single skill.

Think more of yourself, and of each other. Because our capacity for achievement is great.