I’ve been thinking a little bit about motivation these past few days, which has also led me to do some noodling on values. This horrible train wreck of a thought process started because I’ve been re-reading Covey’s 7 Habits, and I’ve noticed one big difference between his and Allen’s approach: Covey wants us to start our self improvement with “the end in mind” whereas Allen just wants us to start.

On the surface of it, Covey’s approach feels right, but in reality, Allen’s approach is much more practical: how can you really know what your end you want unless you clear away all of the clutter in your life and better manage the many demands on your time? You can’t.

But why would you start any kind of self improvement program if you didn’t have a goal you wanted to achieve? My answer: motivation. It’s not as solid as a goal or as daunting as defining a goal. It’s squishy. Nebulous. Abstract. Motivations are the desires that spur us to better or worsen our situation. Some examples:

• I want to be happier
• I need to get better organized
• I need to spend more time with my family
• I want to be a better person

A motivation alone is a great deal of sound and fury that amounts to nothing, but it’s enough to get us started. People who start a diet or exercise program are motivated: They want to lose weight or be healthy. But what happens when that motivation is gone and they haven’t built any self-discipline on top of that motivation? They fall of their diet, stop going to the gym, and gain back the three pounds that they just lost.

Unless you build on your motivation, you will fail because motivation means nothing: You want to be healthy? Great, but it takes more than desire.

This is where I began 6 months ago: I wanted to better manage my time. I didn’t have any real goals in mind. I just wanted to be more productive at work so that I would have more time to spend with my family and do other things that I was passionate about.

But then, of course, I had to ask myself: what drove me to be motivated? (Tell me you saw that question coming.) That’s when I started thinking about values. (Told you it was a bit of a train wreck ;))

Values are the qualities or traits and beliefs that we prize in ourselves. They determine how we perceive reality. Some values we hold at the core of our being and changing them would be like making the sun rise in the west. Other values change on a daily basis. Some even on an hourly basis.

Our values determine our motivation. If we see ourselves as a victim, our values limit our motivation. Nothing we do will matter, so why bother. But, if we view the world as a “ours for the taking”, we will be motivated to improve our current situation. Our values may severly limit us, but they also set us free.

As you can see, Values and Motivations are closely tied together. If I believe that I can become rich, then I may be motivated to become rich—if becoming rich is something I would want based on my other values. However, if I think that I am not someone who could ever be rich, I will never be motivated to act on becoming rich.

I’m not sure how this fits in with my doodle from a couple weeks ago, but I am certainly noodling on it.

What would it take to squeeze the marrow out of every waking minute?

Lisa and Dan have really got me thinking about the finite lately.

We’ll start with Dan.

Dan Blohowiak interviewed Bill Jensen recently, and in the interview, Bill pointed out that there are 1440 minutes in a day and we should stop wasting them.

I don’t want to waste my life, but what does that mean—not waste “my life”? It’s such a long-term concept that it’s difficult to get my head around. I know I don’t want to wake up at 65 and think, “I wasted my life.” Beyond that? You got me. Hell, I have a hard time thinking out past the next hour. A lot can happen in an hour.

When Bill said that we only have 1440 minutes in a day, a flip switched—I finally understood what it would take to avoid wasting my life. Not wasting my life means not wasting another minute. I can get my head around a minute. A minute is immediate. Its presence can be felt immediately and its absence can be just as immediately missed. The number of minutes in a day has more meaning than the number of hours in a day.

And then I read Lisa’s “Tip of the Day - #27”: “Lead like there’s no tomorrow”. She writes:

A coworker of mine got some pretty wicked news that she has a very aggressive form of cancer at 36 years of age. Another coworker recently lost a parent in a tragic accident. An old coworker recently lost her job when her company went belly-up.

It is a shame that it often takes events like these to snap us back to appreciating each day and living fully for the moment.

What serendipity.

I’m not going to be someone who lets life happen to them. I want to take life by the minute—and make every second count. As Lisa says, “I don’t want to live in fear for what could happen, but I do want to get better at living well, healthy, fully and for today (with an eye to the future).”

As you can see, Bill and Lisa have me asking some heady questions: Am I where I want to be? Am I spending my 1440 minutes wisely? They’ve also got me asking about my future: what I want to do with the next 5-10 years? After all, how I spend each of today’s minutes will affect the possible uses of my future minutes. In a way, you could say that the future is happening today.

This past week, again, saw some modest improvements. I think my goals are set a bit too high. Time to face that reality and scale back a little.

First off, my failures.

• I did not exercise three times; I exercised twice.

• I was unable to get any lunches scheduled for next week. Got some possibilities for things in July, but nothing for this week.

I wasn’t a complete failure, though.

• I have consistently gotten out of bed every morning between 6 and 6:30. Pretty good for a guy who has considered himself a night owl for the past—well, since he was a teenager. We’ll leave it at that. I’m still getting tired before 11:00, and that is a problem. 8 hours just seems like a lot to sleep at night. I think my early exhaustion comes from my diet.

• I have not had a caffeinated soda in two weeks, and, most days, my energy level has remained high throughout the day.

I’m feeling pretty good about everything so far. I’d still give myself a “C”, but I’m out there. I’m doing it, and I will get better.

This week’s goals:

• Continue getting up at 6am. This has been the most successful thing I’ve got going, and I’m enjoying the early start.

• Stretch for 5 minutes in the morning and for 5 minutes in the evening. Ever day. This is my baby step toward creating an exercise regimine that I will stick with. Stretching is easy. Surely I can do it for five minutes twice a day. I’ll gradually build this up to 20 minutes twice daily over the next few months at which point, I’ll switch to a consistent exercise regimine.

• Change “…but…” to “…and…”. I’m reading Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott, which I will review later. The short of it: “…and…” statements are better.

• Create a list of 20 people with whom I would like to have lunch. So, my goal of scheduling lunches has been a flop. I’m going to take a step back and create a targeted list of folks I would like to meet as well as a description of why I would like to meet them.

• Plan out my meals for next week. We’ve already done the grocery shopping for this week. I need to sit down and plan some tasty and healthy meals and snacks for next week. Otherwise, I’m not going to get out of the rut I’m in—nor am I going to lose this gut.

It may sound harsh, but this individual seemed, frankly, a waste of skin.

It is very much better sometimes to have a panic feeling beforehand, and then to be quite calm when things happen, than to be extremely calm beforehand and to get into a panic when things happen

Great post from Jason yesterday.

It amazes me how many people do not actually follow through. One easy fix: Do not say you’ll do something that you know you’re not going to do. It’s harder than you think because it requires a realistic appraisal of the future.

I would also add that you should not only follow through, you should follow through quickly. If it’s going to take you more than a few days to follow through on your commitment, let the person know. You’ll still lose some of the initiative you gained after meeting them, but at least they know not to expect an immediate response.

The remaining three roadblocks change the topic of the conversation. They communicate boredom on your part or that the problems of the speaker are unimportant to you.

• Diverting. “Pushing the other’s concerns aside through distraction.”[1] This is akin to going off on a topic that’s tangential to what the speaker is talking about.

• Logical Argument. “Attempting to convince the other with fact or logic.”[1] Logic has its place, but it is not usually received well when people’s emotions or relationships are involved.

• Reassuring. “Trying to stop the other person from feeling the negative emotion she is experiencing.”[1] This belittles the person’s emotions and prevents them from fully owning their experience.

Focus on the speaker—on what she is saying. You might actually connect with someone in a meaningful way.

[1] I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life, but don’t just take my word for it.

“Sending Solutions” roadblocks are solutions that you suggest to the speaker. Even if they accept your solutions over the short term, they will grow to resent you over the long haul—whether you solution was right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. People must be allowed take ownership of their decisions without intervention on your part. The amazing thing: if you listen to people—really listen to them, they will generally come to their own decisions. Might not be the choice you would have selected, but at least it is their choice.

The five “Sending Solutions” roadblocks are:

• Ordering. “Commanding the other person to do what you want to have done.”[1]

• Threatening. “Trying to control another person’s actions by warning of negative consequences.”[1]

• Moralizing. “Telling people what they should do.”[1]

• Excessive/Inappropriate Questioning. Excessive close-ended questions.

• Advising. “Giving the person a solution to their problem.”[1]

You might have a great solution to the problem someone is trying to work through, but when is trying to work through their problems, offering them other solutions will, most likely, just complicate the situation and create animosity between you and them over the long haul.

[1] I’m certainly no expert on listening. Most of the ideas and all of the quotes come from an amazing book by Robert Bolton: People Skills. IMO, it is the greatest book on how to apply listening skills in your everyday life, but don’t just take my word for it.

Carl Rogers called judging the “major barrier to interpersonal communication”. Judging prevents us from really knowing the person we’re talking to. There are four types of judging:

• Criticizing. How critical are you? And why? Bolton offers the idea that people are critical to help improve other people—that is, pointing out the areas that need improvement is the only way people will grow. Hear criticism from the person receiving it, and you get a different story: “Nothing I do will be good enough.”

• Name-calling and labeling. When we identify a person with a label—and all the qualities that we’ve associated with that label—and we do not take the time to really know them.

• Diagnosing. Diagnosing is similar to labeling. Telling people why you think they do what they do. “You’re being defensive…” or “You’re being obsessive…” Diagnosing someone else’s problems shuts them down. They don’t listen to you—how can they when all you want to do is tell them why they’re doing what they’re doing. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. But what good does it really serve?

• Praising evaluatively. General praise. For example, “It was a good story…” or “You’re such a good girl.” Praise should be given for specific items or actions. If you liked the story, say what you liked about it. If you daughter is a good girl, praise her when she is being good. When you praise the general instead of the specific, you either set unrealistic expectations, create anxiety, or trigger defensive statements. For example, if you told someone that they wrote a good story, they might respond: “Eh, my friend thought of the idea.” He shuts down, stops listening, and doesn’t accept the praise.

I would add one other judging roadblock:

• Judgemental body language. We also communicate the judgements we pass through our body language. Even if we never voice our judgement, we may communicate that judgement by the way we look at the person, stand near them, or the tone in our voice.

Removing judging roadblocks from your conversation is tough. Once removed, though, you will have more effective conversations with your family, friends, and co-workers.

I’ve talked some about how to listen in past posts:

• How to listen

• How to Listen: Attending Skills

• How to listen: Following Skills

• How to Listen: Reflecting Skills

I’ve yet, though, to talk about how easy it is to shut a conversation down—that is, what are you saying and doing that has a high likelihood of shutting down a conversation—of making the other person (or persons) involved in the conversation feel like they are not really being heard.

In his book, People Skills, Bolton identifies 12 responses that he terms high risk responses. They don’t always ruin the conversation, but they do it often enough that you should strive to avoid using them. The 12 responses are

Judging

• Criticizing
• Name-calling
• Diagnosing
• Praising Evaluatively

Sending Solutions

• Ordering
• Threatening
• Moralizing
• Excessive/Inappropriate Questioning
• Advising

Avoiding the other’s concerns

• Diverting
• Logical Argument
• Reassuring

I’ll review each group of roadblocks over the next few days. By understanding what not to do, you get a better understanding of how to listen to peopel—and not just react to what they’ve said.