Tag Archives: work

On expertise

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Pick your one thing as early as you can and become an expert at it.

There’s an example I heard of a top tax lawyer being very happy with the way their life has worked out after a couple of decades or more working in a narrow, perceivably dull, area.

Go deep and narrow. There will always be good things going on there the longer you stay in the space, learning and evolving.

The tax lawyer will be satisfied at the end of their working days once they retire, financially secure, with a legacy earned from a raft of loyal clients.

They may have built their own practice or just be a well-known expert in the space in high demand.

Assume you can do this for yourself and work hard to achieve it in your space.

Your environment must support your goals

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Who you see, the tools you use, where you work, the position of your desk in your home, the stuff you experience every day – it all has to support you in the daily journey towards achievement of your goals.

How can you improve your environment along these lines?

Think in terms of people, process, and technology.

Do you need to be around a more supportive crew on a daily basis?

Is your bedtime routine making it hard for you to get up on time, and therefore start the day on time, and in a good frame of mind?

Do you use software tools that help you day-to-day, or are you the kind of person who signs up for everything but uses very little functionality of each app after the initial flurry of activity once the novelty has worn off?

It could be time to move your desk towards the window for more light, or even move to somewhere new.

Are you warm in the winter, and cool in the summer, or do you need to get warmer in the winter months, for example?

Could a new picture in a frame on your desk of someone you care about make a difference to how long you spend sat there, and the quality of work you produce?

Ponder on this topic for a while.

Understanding the impact of this overarching statement can have a big impact over time. That’s our shared goal, right?

Digging deeper: why an easy career is not always the best choice

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Just because something’s easy doesn’t make it right. A career you find easy might not be the ideal path over the long term.

One of my big mistakes from the last 35 years is not getting stuck into a career I enjoyed. I didn’t have a trade, a skill I could develop over time. I could get by without certifications and additional study. I made good money but the ceiling was low. Once I hit it, all I could see was 30 more years of the same. No thanks.

When the pressure is off, motivation is hard to come by. Skills get stale. Money flows but the drive to improve disappears (or at least it did for me).

I’ve now gone deep rather than wide in the area I work in – cyber security. It involves study to improve and the bar keeps getting higher. I wanted a career where some study effort would pay off. There are endless study paths, and it can take a while to find the right path for your own interests, but I’ve found it now. Doors are starting to open.

My purpose for this effort is to grow skills and rise through the ranks. As always, studying on your own time is a pain, but if the purpose is clear and you’ve got that motivation, good things happen.

When you’re making plans for the long term, keep this in mind. Economic security and a skill you’ve developed over the years will keep you on the up.

Being Quiet

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I think this is a page from Lao Tzu. Can’t remember for sure, but it resonates anyhow. Getting carried away in the chase for more, the hunt for shiny things, can take us to places we don’t want to go to. Balance need against greed and the answers will start to come to you.

Brim-fill the bowl, it’ll spill over

Keep sharpening the blade, you’ll soon blunt it.

Nobody can protect a house full of gold and jade.

Wealth, status, pride, are their own ruin.

To do good, work well, and lie low is the way of the blessing.

Unfulfilling work

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We all have work of some kind to do. When this work drains you and leaves you thinking ‘Why?”, over and over each day, you’re on a slippery slope.

I mowed lawns to help my Uncle out when I lived with him and his family. I was in my 20’s and had never thought about what made a job satisfying. It was simple work – we cut grass and took it away on the back of a truck – but it symbolised something bigger that I didn’t realise until much later on in life.

Turning a messy lawn into a tidy one is a cathartic process. As we drove away, we could see the difference our work had made. There was no deep-and-meaningful sense of amazement and wonder at what we had done – it was as simple a job as anyone could have, after all – but seeing the result of your work gave immediate, tangible feedback at the transformation.

Most of us spend our days pumping out emails about emails and attending meetings on everything and anything. Craftsmen and women are still around but in much smaller numbers today. Hitting ‘send’ time after time, rather than cutting grass, building a brick wall, or servicing a bike and handing it back to its owner, does not have the same effect on a human.

Knowledge work – the ‘keyboard warrior’ stuff done by the majority in our world today – has to be fulfilling or it can drain us of positive energy. All work types can be repetitive and monotonous at times and this can be hard to avoid. The challenge is to add meaning of some kind in a personal or organisational sense. Helping employees to achieve this can go a long way to keeping them engaged and away from the vacancies of your competitors.

Add systems to increase efficiency

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The more systems I have in place, the better everything is for me. I have a long list of jobs to do most days and I feel demoralised if I don’t get the majority of things ticked off. There’s a regular daily battle between order and chaos in my life and anything I can do to help order win is always a good thing.

Systems and processes make the difference.

My mind works in a lateral, logical way so if I can stay focussed on a task for long enough I’ll always complete it. 

If a disruption happens – the phone goes off, incoming messages ding (I send a lot of direct messages to people every day) or I’m drawn to my inbox – it can be the equivalent of slipping on a banana skin – there’s no going back once you start falling.

If I can reduce the number of decisions I have to make every day, I can increase my outputs and efficiency. Time spent deciding what to have lunch, what to wear, and what job to do first may seem trivial but it adds up and if I don’t have these decisions to make when I sit at my desk, my brain avoids the banana skins. 

Something as simple as knowing what I’m going to wear the next day and eating the same things for breakfast and lunch most days makes a big difference to the flow of the day and the number of things I get done.

Simplicity is also important. Avoiding complexity makes every day run more smoothly and I work really hard at this. I try to avoid complex travel plans where possible and if I have to travel somewhere different I spend time creating a detailed plan with a couple of alternatives to keep the stress levels low. 

What systems and processes do you use to stay on track?

Solve your own problems

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I’ve spent a lot of time over the years wracking my brain for ideas. Money has been short and I’ve had to find something new to sell, or I’ve hit a brick wall on a particular project and it’s time to refresh, and so on.

The answer has normally come from within. As I’ve solved my own problems, it’s the answers that I’ve found along the way that have eventually become new services.

This hasn’t always been a steady linear sequence from idea to cash. It has taken years in a couple of cases for the idea to finally bear fruit. But the answers to my own questions have been helpful to a lot of other people, too.

The resources we have at our disposal today (the internet), it should never be a problem to find a new direction or solution, or so you might think. I disagree.

There is so much already out there and there is nothing new. Everything has been done before. The internet is full of the same solutions, styled to suit a different market or customer. So looking inside ourselves and solving our own problems is a good place to start.

The New Reality

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A conversation yesterday gave me a nice frame of reference for our current situation. We move from a crisis (stage 1), to recovery (2) and then a new reality (3).

Crisis has two parts – the twilight zone and then a new dawn. We are definitely in a new dawn phase now as things are changing in so many ways (mass communication, working from home, lockdown, etc) and the whole world is adapting to what we all face in the form of the pandemic.

What’s your new reality going to be? This is something I will be thinking about over the next few days and weeks. What’s the new dawn telling you about how you operate and how this change is affecting your life?

When we hit the recover phase it will be interesting to see what becomes the norm. I think we’ll all react like it’s the end of a war and we are all allowed to come out of hiding again! But working from home is definitely a step in the right direction for modern workforces (all of our team work from home).

But, for now, it’s back to the twilight zone…

Learnings from the last couple of years

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A long time has gone by since I last wrote here, and a few things in life have changed, so here we are…

We are living in Australia as permanent residents and we are striving to build a solid foundation for ourselves. My business is growing and there are now three of us in the team, and as I continue to drive this business growth I’ve had a few things in the back of my mind, helping with the steering.

I’ll share them below in no particular order. Some are attributed to a couple the people that I read and follow for guidance and inspiration, but not all:

  1. The more genuine your interest in other people, the more people trust you.
  2. The better you are at listening, the more people want to spend time with you.
  3. Be precise in what you say (Jordan Peterson).
  4. Be very careful what you wish for as it will come to you in time.
  5. Remember people’s names if you can and use them.
  6. Let others save face. Don’t drop them off the cliff unless you have no choice.
  7. Be somebody by doing something.
  8. Become an expert and work harder at this than anything else in your life.
  9. Our minds control everything we do.
  10. Our attitudes will always define our results and outcomes in life.
  11. Do things that are hard, often.
  12. Save money and build a stack before making investments.
  13. Think like the seasons (from Jim Rohn) – be ready for them, plant seeds and work hard to grow them.
  14. Stay cool and shut up.
  15. Struggle teaches us who we really are. Accept the struggle that is life.
  16. Improve what you’re not happy with. Obsess on the things you have to improve.
  17. The easy option = bad results.
  18. Honesty is the way to progress.
  19. Get people on payroll doing things they are great at and that you can’t do.
  20. Negativity will bring you down in the end. It repels all things.
  21. Build self confidence through small daily actions done well to then rise above your circumstances and achieve more.
  22. If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re likely to be the opposite.
  23. Massive action taken towards a goal gets results.
  24. Patience, passivity and caution are killers for anyone entrepreneurial.
  25. Find your why. It will drive you through bad times and keep you focused.
  26. Know the way broadly and achieve in many things (Musashi).

 

Preparation and why it matters

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child-head-in-hand

I had to take some tests yesterday. Nothing to be concerned about (until I find out how I did, of course) and related to employment but the process I undertook highlighted how easy it is to become very anxious if you are not prepared.

The tests were psychometrics on verbal, numerical and logical reasoning and not something that I have ever had to do before in a formal setting, i.e. going for a job. I have administered tests in the past and provided practice tests to students whilst working at a university a long time back, but doing them for myself was tough.

Thankfully there was an option for practice and also a lot of information on how to approach and take these tests online, so I spent as much time as I had – not a great deal – attempting a few of these practice tests and getting to grips with the question types, the ‘race against time’ that these tests are, plus trying to ensure I was as prepared as possible.

The testing process is very important in hiring decisions and has been used with great success for many years, predominantly as a support to the deeper process of interviewing and assessing competencies of candidates. If I had been presented with these tests yesterday, say, just following an interview and with no time to practice, I would have been in real trouble and it rammed home to me how important it is to be as prepared as you can be for the things that we get thrown at us in our lives.

I did not think at this stage in my career that I would be asked to do a raft of psychometric tests but the fact that I did has shown how crucial it is to never get complacent or think that you have all the bases covered. Be prepared for ANYTHING that can come at you. Take some time to step back and look at the bigger picture. Think about what’s on the table in any particular instance. What am I going to need to do in order to get over the line and make a success of this?

One door closes, others open

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I’ve been working on quite a tricky project for a few months now and it is coming to an end very soon. I’ve enjoyed the work and am pleased with my own outcomes and learnings from it, but it has meant a lot of time away from home and a lot of travel.

It’s going to be great over the next few days to take stock of how far I’ve come and how much work there is in front of me and Katherine as a team as we build our business, St John, from here on.

Other doors always open when you make space and I’m looking forward to this space being filled very soon.

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Ian Mountford is a global recruitment expert and strategy coach providing motivation and guidance to entrepreneurs, wannabe or fully-fledged. He draws from his own experience of building businesses from the ground up and spending many years helping clients to consistently achieve their goals and aspirations. Ian works with clients face-to-face and internationally.