The Truth Curve

I can’t make dinner because the dishes are clean.  What?!

Let me explain. 

I want to fill my big pasta pot with water to boil pasta but I can’t fit it under the faucet because the sink is full of dirty dishes.  Bummer!  I open the dishwasher to put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher but the dishwasher is full of clean dishes.  Hrmph!  So, I have to put away the clean dishes so that I can put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher so that I can fill the pasta pot so that I can boil water so that I can make pasta for dinner.

Ah, the domino effect.

As you may have figured out, the domino effect is the situation in which you can’t do the task you want to do until an earlier task is done.  Just like dominoes standing in a line, the first domino has to fall before the others fall.

Do you have a to-do list with some items on it that have been there for weeks? months? (years??)  Look at them.  Ask yourself whether those items are not getting done because something else — perhaps something small but easily overlooked – needs to be done first?

In my dinner example, I easily traced the holdup to the first “domino” task — the clean dishes – and took care of that before I was able to take care of the next “domino” task.  But there are cases where it’s not so clear what’s going on or what the first “domino” task is.  All you know is that you have a vague feeling that you don’t want to do a certain task and you procrastinate instead of figuring out what’s wrong.  There are many reasons why people procrastinate on their tasks but the domino effect is a sneaky one, one that’s once identified, makes it easy to zip through the task that you’ve been dreading.

Do you need to “call Bill” but you’ve been putting it off for a while and you don’t know why?  Think about what’s holding up this task.  Could it be that you don’t have Bill’s phone number and you don’t know where to get it?  If that’s the case, you need to add the task, “think about whom to ask for Bill’s number” before you can get to your original task.  Now that you’ve traced the task to its true beginning you can get this done.  Your brain will no longer be trying to call Bill without a phone number.  Your brain will have a new directive to think of the person who might know Bill’s number.  Once you’ve come up with the person, your task becomes easier.  You go ask that person and now, armed with a phone number, you can  finally “call Bill.”

Now, wasn’t that easy?

Are there any tasks on your to-do list that are held up by other tasks that you need to do first?

Tags: Procrastination, Productivity by Julie
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“Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

- Stephen King

In a previous article, I made the argument that it is deliberate practice - that daily slog through the unpleasant and the difficult - that gets you to success.  If success is overwhelmingly comprised of hard work, like Stephen King suggests, then does talent matter? 

I would say, yes.  Here’s why:

Let’s assume that talent comprises a small part of success and that it really is hard work that accounts for most of one’s success.  Then why bother with talent at all?  It’s so limiting, after all.  Why not be and do whatever you want to be and do regardless of the talents that you were born with?  A lot of us (especially in my generation) grew up with the notion that you can do “whatever you set your mind to.”

Even if talent accounts for a small percentage of success, it’s visible to us.  We’re able to pick out the Picasso from the Shmicasso.  Now, Shmicasso may be creating paintings exactly like Picasso (or so it seems) but there will always be something about Picasso that makes his work brilliant and that of Shmicasso just average. I don’t know how we know but we do know and we see the difference.  Perhaps when Picasso chooses to put a yellow line here, it’s brilliant. Shmicasso instead puts the yellow line over there.  We can’t put our finger on it but there is something about that yellow line that gives the Picasso painting a sense of “just-rightness” but makes the Shmicasso painting seem just average.  Shmicasso’s work may look competent and solid but it doesn’t wow us, and all because he misplaced the yellow line on the canvas.

I don’t know what talent is exactly; it has always struck me as a mysterious gift.  But I believe it is about having the right judgment.  Talent is the ability to generalize from one situation to another without the benefit of previous experience.  It is the ability to use intuition about what is good and what is not good.  It is about making the right aesthetic or strategic choice nearly all the time.  The person who has no talent in a certain domain can be taught the rules or steps to follow and he will follow them, do well and turn in a solid performance.  But as soon as there is a twist or an unexpected situation, the talentless person is lost; he does not know what to do because it’s not in the steps or rules he learned.  He can’t improvise.  The talented person, on the other hand, knows what to do even though he has never faced that exact situation before.

So what?  If you do not have the talent but work hard enough and succeed, then isn’t that enough?

Is it?  Is it enough to be average in something?  Are you okay with being average?  Godin argues that you should be the best; that average is not a good use of your limited time.  Not only is this not a good use of your time but you would also be depriving the world of your unique contribution.

However, if you just have talent but don’t work to develop it, then you won’t even get out of the starting gate.  People with far less talent will beat you and enjoy success.  Their work won’t be particularly brilliant but at least it will be done.  Having talent and not using it is like sitting on a diamond mine and never doing anything with it.  By itself, the diamond is worthless: it’s a lumpy rock that has little value.  It only has potential.  The value is in the cutting of it.  How you cut it and set it brings out its brilliance.

True success and satisfaction will come not from your ability to work hard but from your ability to identify your unique talents and then work hard to bring them out.  Now that is a powerful combination.

Tags: Productivity, Success, Talent, Work by Julie
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