This is a post for future-Simon.

Background: Admin kills me. It absolutely hammers me into the ground. I hate it, I don’t value it and it torments me until I find a way to get it done. So much hate. Server admin – love. ActualReality™ – not so much love.

Running your own company ramps up the admin immensely. Accounts, paying people (love that I can, hate the process), taxes, random paperwork. It’s horrible. 

This morning while cycling to work conversation went something like this: “Do you think $hero has to do this?” 

Answer: “No he has someone do it for him”.

Wow. I like that.

This is a note to future-Simon:

• You don’t have to be good at this.
• You can outsource it easily.
• Outsourcing looks like “Make a checklist. Pay someone to work through the checklist once a month with you”
• When $item arrives, put it on the stack and forget about it.
• Hold the stack until the 3rd or 4th of the month (sometime not too early to miss end-of-month invoices, but early enough to make sure you get everyone paid nicely on time)
• Have them work through the list with you.
• Put this as a monthly, repeating calendar appointment so it just happens. 

Outcome:

• Worry less about the things you don’t enjoy
• Become better at asking for help
• “Some people actually enjoy this stuff”
• Live longer with less stress

That sounds pretty good to me.

Imagine some blind people describing an elephant. One might suggest that it feels like a tree. Another holding the tail would suggest it’s like rope. Each has a different perspective. And although they are all touching the elephant they end up arguing over whose perspective of the situation is correct.

This week I’m thinking about other ways of viewing thoughts. Too often I am not taking the time to be curious about the other person’s perspective or putting myself in other peoples’ shoes and getting their picture is a valuable exercise.

In cognitive therapy there’s the idea of ABCs: an Activating event, a Belief, and negative emotional Consequences. 

This ends up distorting our thinking and I know that I’m guilty of slotting events into categories based on beliefs that don’t serve me well. Some that I could think of as

1. Black-and-White – Thinking or either / or thinking.
2. Making Unfair Comparisons – usually in the negative
3. Filtering – honing in on the negative, forgetting the positive.
4. Personalizing – The Self-Blame Game
5. Mind-Reading – thinking we know what others think (negatively)
6. Catastrophising – imagining the worst case scenario
7. Overgeneralising – “I always mess up…”
8. Confusing Fact with Feeling – “If I think or feel this way then my thoughts/feelings must be correct’.
9. Labelling – I’m  a loser vs. I made a mistake.
10. “Can’t Standitis” – being unnecessarily intolerant

My theory on solving this is to change my inner voice. I heard someone describe it as “If we talked to our friends the way we talk to ourselves we wouldn’t have any good friends.”

Some of the through grooves in our brains are deeply worn. Noticing that some thoughts that aren’t so helpful for me, I’d like to work on developing more cognitive flexibility, more diversity in how I think and being more aware of when I’m falling into old thought patterns.

I think this should be possible by reducing the rushing, being more consequent and dare I say it, mindful (seems like it’s the phrase of the year).

I recently received a replacement phone and have been systematically going through and disabling every single notification that vibrates or makes a sound.

It makes me feel like I’m clawing back some control over the interruptions that divert my attention. And sure it might only last for a second, but I come back to my mental bandwidth thinking: we only have so much time per day to think and communicate. An interruption that pulls me away from what I’m focusing on is the same as someone calling me. It takes a while to get back into the thought I was having. And I’d like my thoughts to be higher quality than interrupt driven “A friend of your’s in San Francisco checked into a place you don’t even know”.

And still they keep coming… just when I think I’ve found all apps that interrupt me there’s a new one.

I’ve also been taming Facebook: friend’s from pre-primary school are now unfollowed. “Friends” are unfollowed. Friends are followed. And that feels good.

I like being around people who believe. I find their optimism about an imagined better future because of what they are building is a huge motivator for me.

Optimism is power. I imagine some of the worst hardships – solitary confinement: optimistic people tend to succeed because they believe that everything will turn out right and the expectation of success makes them work harder. Great leaders also have an unusual ability to face up to stark reality, so creating a single powerful attribute: tough-minded optimism.

There is no rulebook.

No Celestial Compendium of Benevolent Knowledge.

There’s many a 10 step programme. An infinite supply of advisors. And our parents.

Ultimately we all want happiness. A steady stream of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. Not too much all the time. Not too little ever.

How we get the right amount at the right rate is down to how we create our own rulebook. Get up. Make the bed. Shower. Eat healthy food. Be nice.

I once tried to write my life manifesto. And indeed still have a monthly “manifesto review” for the first Sunday of every month. In 2008 I read about 60 self-help books. And summarised the main points in each of them. From this I noticed that successful people have the following characteristics:

• Passion
• Belief
• Strategy
• Communication skills
• Working hard
• Being disciplined/creating good habits.

The other thing that came out of this was about belief in oneself: believe about yourself what you would like others to believe about you. The manifesto work was to make sure I was actively working on those 6 areas.

The other part was that there is a big gap between the knowledge or capacity and the acting on it. Be proactive.

In the next few posts I’ll dive into each of those areas.