Revenge of the Gamer

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution this year?  Most people didn’t.  If you are one of the few who did how is it working out for you?  Don’t feel bad if the answer is ‘it’s not’.  Ninety-Five percent of people broke theirs by January 15th.  Almost no one made it to the end of February.  Why is that?  Why don’t we make or keep resolutions?  Because we go about it all wrong.

Most of us come up with a resolution like ‘I want to lose weight’ or ‘I want to get a better job’.  Yet we have no idea how to achieve these things.  We have no plan.  The only time we’re even aware of our resolution is a vague sense of guilt whenever we do something that clearly violates it.

So what can we do about it?  How can we actually accomplish the things we want to? By understanding your own behavior and resolving to change it.  This article will teach you exactly how to do that.

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Create a Specific Vision

If you don’t know where you’re going how can you ever get there?  You need a clear goal.  A vision of what you’d like to achieve.  ’I want to lose weight’ is not a vision.  ’I want to be in the best shape of my life’ is.

Think about how nice it would be to drop every ounce of fat.  To tone your entire body until you make other people at the gym envious.  Think about how that would feel.  Think about how it would be to get up in the morning, how much energy you’d have and how good you would look.

That is a specific vision.  If you don’t have one then you’re never going to motivate yourself to achieve it.

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Is it Possible and Do I Really Want it?

Now that you have a specific vision it’s time to decide if it is something you can really achieve.  To do that you need to ask yourself two questions.  Is this possible and Do I really want it. If the answer to both isn’t yes you will never succeed.  If you believe you can’t or if you don’t really, really want it then how are you going to do it?  You just can’t.  It’s not possible.

So make it possible.  Don’t accept that you’ll never get what you want.. Resolve to you achieve your goal.  Visualize how amazing it would be to get what you wanted.  Yes I can get in the best shape of my life.  And I really want it.

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Identify Critical Behaviors

If you are overweight ask yourself why.  Do you eat a lot of fast food?  How often do you work out?  If you aren’t happy with your body the answers are probably yes and not very often.

These behaviors are a part of where most people fail, but they don’t get at the underlying reason.  They aren’t critical behaviors.  Changing either won’t get you were you want to be.  So what will?  What single behavior should you change to accomplish your goal?  Find the most critical one.

Make yourself accountable.  Step on that scale every single day.  Make yourself look at your weight.  Is it depressing?  Of course it is.  But do it anyway.

Doing so will ripple across a whole range of behaviors.  Every time you want that second or third piece of pizza you’ll know you’re going to regret it when you step on the scale in the morning.  Every time you want to hit that snooze button instead of going to the gym you’ll think twice because you know that scale is waiting.

Then find a second critical behavior.  Something else that will cause a similar effect across a wide range of behaviors.  In the case of weight loss what would have the greatest impact?

Make other people hold you accountable. Tell your friends that you are trying to lose weight.  Ask them to check in with you, to ask you how things are going.  Ask them to compliment you if they think you are really losing weight.  Have them watch what you’re eating when they are around you.  If they think it isn’t healthy ask them to speak up.

This social pressure will reinforce the first critical behavior you cultivated.  Now you know that if you eat that second piece of pizza not only will you have to face the scale, but you’ll also have to face your family and friends.

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Make Good Behavior its Own Reward

We all know how bad it feels to step on the scale when we’re out of shape.  We know what it feels like to go to a wedding when we’ve gained weight. Now imagine the opposite.  Imagine stepping on the scale and seeing the number go down.  Imagine going to the wedding having lost 20 pounds.

Following the right behaviors will make these things happen and you will enjoy them immensely.  Learn to love them.  They will propel you towards your goal and the more you accomplish the more you will want to accomplish.

You’ll gain momentum and before you know it you’ll reach your goal and be looking around for another one.

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Propinquity is  a Really Funny Word

Propinquity studies how physical distance affects human behavior.  Let’s go back to our weight loss example.  If your cupboard is stocked with cookies and your freezer is full of hamburger what sort of food are you going to eat?  All the wrong things are close at hand.

What if all you had in the house was healthy food?  What would you eat?  If you want a greasy hamburger you’re going to have to leave the house to go get it.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just eat those radishes you bought yesterday?

That is propinquity.  You can leverage it’s power to make good behaviors easier and bad behaviors harder.  If you drive by the same fast food place every night maybe you should find a different way home.  If you aren’t going to the gym maybe you need to invest in some equipment for your home.

Stack the deck in your favor.  It’s easier to do than you might think.

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Tying it All Together

If you do any one of the things I listed above you’ll probably see a small benefit, but if you do them all you’ll work miracles.  These techniques are far greater than the sum of their parts.  Each helps to build the momentum you need to reach your goal.

So harness them all.  Start with the vision and work your way down.  Add one a week and make sure you’re doing each before you add another one.  Do that and this time next year people will be amazed at what you’ve accomplished.

The essence of business is fulfilling a need people have before they know they have it.  Those able to do this become very successful not because of any specific industry or product, but because of their ability to reinvent themselves.  How do they do this?  By forecasting the future.  Not with a crystal ball, but with a keen understanding of emerging technology and trends.

What do I mean by that?  Consider the iPod.  Before it existing a few people had MP3 players, but they were a very niche product.  Most people still used portal CD players, because it was a hassle to convert your music to MP3s and then transfer them to the device.  I remember having one that held about 20 songs and had no screen so I had no idea what I was about to hear until I hit next track.

Then the iPod came out.  It revoluntionized the portable music player overnight.  The tagline ’1000 Songs in your Pocket’ really got people’s attention.  With the addition of iTunes it was really easy to get music onto the device and quickly find whatever you wanted to hear.  People loved it.  They still do.  Apple made it because they understood emerging technology.  They knew where to find all the components they’d need and assembled them  into something no one had ever seen.  As of October  2011 Apple has sold over 300,000,000 iPods.  One for almost every citizen of the United States.  All because they identified a need and filled it.

Apple’s advent of the iPod taught me two very painful lessons.  First, I should have dumped that $8000 into Apple stock (today that would be worth just over half a million dollars).  And second I should never have bought a Zune. 

I watched as the company everybody loved to hate(myself definitely included) conquered the music world.   It really got me thinking especially as I saw how everyone around me fell in love with their iPods.  I kept an eye on Apple because I wanted to see what they did next.  When they came out with the iPhone in 2007 I waited to see how everyone reacted.  People loved it.  Despite the $500 price tag Apple was selling them as fast as they could be manufactured.

I saw my first one in 2008 when my Apple fangirl friend (you so were Megan) showed me hers.  I was floored.  It was a phone, a camera, a GPS, an iPod and you could download apps for it?  Three days later I bought my first Apple product for $199.  The iPhone was the first pocket computer that felt real to me.  It was also the first phone I’d ever actually liked. 

The part that most blew me away was the app store.  The fact that I could buy thousands upon thousands of apps, some of which changed my life in unexpected ways. 

I remember thinking ‘man, the people who make these apps are probably making a fortune’.  And they were.  The developers of apps like Angry Birds and Goodreader became unexpected millionaires in a few short months.  That really started the wheels turning.  I even considered and then discarded the idea of becoming a developer.

Doing so  would have required buying a Mac.  Even if I could have afforded it I’d always been a PC guy.  I didn’t know anything about Macs or OS X.  So I reluctantly resigned myself to working collections for a local credit union for the forseeable future.  Until something caught my attention in a way I couldn’t ignore.

The iPad.

When I’d first heard about the device I’d dismissed the iPad as a big iPhone without the phone or camera.  But then I held one for the first time.  I was shocked to realize that this device was going to change everything.  I was witnessing what I call the VHS Moment, when a new technology arises that will erradicate an existing one.  Within a decade I knew everyone would have a tablet computer.

Laptops and desktops were a dying breed. I saw this a a clarity and certainty I hadn’t felt since I’d first discovered the web back in 1994.   All I had to do was see how kids and teenagers reacted to touch screens.  They loved their iPhones (and by that point their Androids).  They would embrace the iPad in the same way.

It helped me finally understand how people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had made their respective fortunes.  They risked everything to pursue their vision of the future.  Not blidly though.  They did it with an understanding of what people were going to want before they wanted it. 

To use a football metaphor they didn’t run to where the ball was.  They ran to where it was going. 

The iPad and iPhone are still in their infancy.  Smartphones and tablets will come down in price and increase in functionality.  All sorts of features we haven’t even conceived of will be added.  These devices will transform our world.  Within two decades every person in every nation will own one or both.

The visionaries of this decade will be standing in the end zone waiting to score a touchdown.

In March of 2011 I read a book that changed my life forever.  It’s called Getting Things Done by a guy named David Allen.  It taught me to manage my life in a way I never would have thought possible.  By following David’s system I learned to track literally everything.  Every project, every ‘someday I’d like to do X’, every birthday and every calendar event.  From my grocery list to my iPad applications I know exactly what next action to take to finish that project.

That was ten months ago.  In that time I’ve accomplished more than I ever would have thought possible and for the first time in my life I realize that I really can do anything I set my mind to.  From roleplaying games to novels to software if I can dream it up I can make it happen.

Part of what makes this possible is an app called Omnifocus, which David Allen had a hand in making.  I have it on my iPad, iPhone and Macbook, which means that no matter where I am if I have a good idea it isn’t lost.  I’ll often jot something down on the iPhone and then flesh the idea out later on the iPad or Mac.

This has lead to enormous emotional freedom.  Do you know that nagging feeling that there is something you should be doing but aren’t? The sense that there are a whole bunch of committments you’ve taken on, but you can’t quite remember what they are?  I don’t experience that any more.  I know what I need to do on any given day.  I know what committments I’ve taken on and when they are due.

I’m no longer tha guy who makes promises and flakes out on them.  I’m the guy who gets shit done.  If I agree to take on a project I make it happen and it feels damn good.  Being on top of things really does wonders for your confidence.  It cuts down on your anxiety in ways you don’t fully understand until the stress that is always lurking in the corners of your mind is gone.

This freedom means that you suddenly have the emotional energy to focus on long term goals.  You can stop worrying about the things you should be doing and start thinking about the things you want to do.  So if you’re reading this I urge you to take a look at David’s book.  You’ll be glad you did.