Vlad: On to the next one

Note: This is the first in the series of blog posts about stuff that has served me well in the world of business. The success of Own Web Now, ExchangeDefender and Shockey Monkey has been well chronicled, these posts are more about me – some stuff I was born with, some I learned after hitting the wall with the head too hard and often. Take it for what it’s worth, forward it to your friends if you like and if you’re interested in these please feel free to join my private list by clicking here.

It’s natural to think about the should have, would have.. things you could have said in the argument, things you could have changed, tweaked or done differently to get a different outcome. In business spending time dwelling on the past decisions is crippling.

If there is a single personality flaw characteristic that has helped me through the years it would be the sunrise.

Every day I wake up, I have a chance to try it again.

Now I’m not a motivational speaker so I’ll tell you the truth – failing is f’n agonizing. There are days when I have a reverse Midas touch – when everything I touch turns to shit. On those days, if I’m smart, I will just quit early and call it a day. Those are the good failure days. The bad failure days are the ones that never end – where I don’t admit to myself that things suck and I just keep on turning the stone over and over and over again.

Yet, eventually I fall asleep. Eventually, I wake up again. It’s go time.

If you’re lucky and capable of doing so, keep what happened yesterday in the past. Focus on what you’re doing today, tomorrow next week.

Stressing over the ways you’ve failed at yesterday are not going to make it any better in what you’re trying to do today.

Look to the future

If you’re good, you’ve sold yourself on what you’re doing next so your mind should naturally be consumed in your next step. Focus on taking that step, if you fall get up again, try again. It’s that simple.

If you’re great, you can already see yourself failing. Too often business owners and managers have sold themselves their own dream and they can’t see what they are doing or how badly they are failing. If you go into something with the expectation that it’s not going to be all roses and champagne you have better odds of being pleasantly surprised.

Remember the big picture

Each day is a piece of the puzzle. Don’t let momentary distractions trip you up.

Every day I show up in my office I have to deal with crap. Not just my own crap that I’ve caused but all the client crap and employee crap. Whose it is doesn’t really matter, it’s still being showed my way and I have to deal with it. The same goes from the executive office down to the lowest paid / lowest appreciated person in your company – everyone has someone trying to drive them away from what they need to do. It could be phone calls. It could be that the A/C is running at 300% and you’re freezing. It could be that you know you have a crappy meeting to attend to later. It could be that your bank account is running on E. Whatever it is, can you do anything about it? If not, don’t worry about it.

Way too often things just don’t go our way. Shit happens. Do you want to spend your whole day focusing on it? If so, it will consume you. There are millions of ways you could have done something differently – so just remember it until the next time you have to make a similar call. In the meantime, take a deep breath and just ask yourself.. what can I do now?

I deal with a lot of people and to be honest, most somehow feel like their stuff is predestined and dictated by someone else. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s not up to your boss how you feel about your job, it’s not up to your guidance counselor to tell you what you like to do and it’s not up to anyone but you to actually do it. Unless you work at McDonalds, you could just deal with the french fries tomorrow.

If you’re sitting around reading this blog post thinking… “I wish I was doing something else” then that’s probably a great indication that you need to make a change. If you’re not mentally committing all of your concentration on being successful at what you are doing.. .. .. Well, how’s it going for you?

Perseverance or Reckless Ignorance?

I suppose it’s a thin line between the two.

In my context, I live to design software solutions.. from communicating securely to communicating more efficiently. I am always sitting here trying to think of a way to do it better.

Yet, if I look at my past there is a long long long list of failures. We’ve probably spent more time developing features people don’t use than the ones they do use. We deal with the irrational market that is not willing to give up the legacy solutions they feel good about even as they admit they aren’t working for them. Change is hard – and having to deal with living with a better solution that people ignore while the crappy solution still limps along? – it’s a failure no two ways about it. But I don’t think it’s the failure of the solution – after all it has no conscience – I just haven’t figured out the right way to pitch it yet.

See how that works? If I thought I was so smart that I could beat the computers I wouldn’t be in the IT space. I’d be the guy working the bulldozer running over PCs at the junk yard because that’s the only one out there beating it. The rest of us are just trying to make them better.

I’m not saying you should ignore your failures. What I am saying is that past acknowledging your mistake there should be no more. Leave it in the past and move on to dealing with the next problem. Dwelling doesn’t make the mistake fix itself, it doesn’t make the next problem any simpler and it doesn’t give you all the resources you could be using.

You have to believe what you’re doing.

You have to believe in yourself.

So long as you’re OK with failure and your ego is not bigger than your rational thinking.. get back to it. There is always another opportunity and another day.

Hope you liked it. Tell a friend.