The Plight of Being a Perfectionist/Completionist

Today while I was crossing off a couple things on my weekly to-do list (which I mentioned last year as a more viable alternative to “today” lists for people who don’t have a lot of things to do on a daily basis), my girlfriend poked fun at me for my need to “check things off.” This certainly wasn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, since I have lots of lists for all sorts of things. There are two reasons I make all these lists: 1) I have a horrible memory, so I will very quickly forget about things that I don’t write down, and 2) it definitely fulfills my completionist tendencies. This led me to the idea for this post.

There is certainly nothing inherently wrong with being a perfectionist or a completionist, but it does come with its challenges. The main challenge being that at some point, you have to accept the fact that you can’t truly accomplish either one, and it is something that you have to accept on your own. I feel like I have been able to mostly control my perfectionist side, but my completionist side is tougher to quell.

While perfectionism and completionism tend to go hand in hand, they are different. Perfectionism has to do with the impulse to keep working on something until it is, in the creator’s mind, perfect. Completionism has to do with the drive to finish a task or a goal with absolutely nothing left to do. It has to do with the former being more subjective, and the latter being more objective. That is why you tend to see perfectionism more often in creative types, and completionism more often in logical types. As an engineer, I get a mix of both sides, which makes it even more difficult.

The Plight

The main difficulty with being either a perfectionist or a completionist is that it’s mentally taxing. With every single thing you do, you just have to do it right. With perfectionists, it’s only right if it’s flawless; with completionists, it’s only right if the whole checklist is accounted for. And if you don’t do it right, then you are a failure, and that failure will eat away at your mind for a long time. So you end up with a lot of people with these tendencies who don’t like committing to things that they are unsure about. If they don’t know that they can do it right, they would rather not do it at all than risk failing.

One of the areas where it’s very easy to see both of these dynamics is in modern video games. Perfectionists will be aiming for flawless scores or runs, while completionists are trying to get all the achievements/trophies, or 100%, every game they play. A lot of times the developers of these games will mix the two so that you can only complete a game by being perfect at it. With those kinds of games, the only way to really win is to not play at all because it stops being fun very quickly.

This leads to the second biggest difficulty, which is that trying to be perfect or trying to complete everything is a gigantic time sink. The opportunity cost can be significant. Of course, for some players, they don’t mind it because the game that they want to be perfect in or do everything in is their game. They don’t care about playing other games besides that one, or maybe they just have a few that they rotate between for months or years. But for those who like having variety (like me), trying to get number 1 on a leaderboard or reach 100% in a 200+ hour game isn’t practical. So that leaves you with two choices: either be frustrated that you can’t master the game to the level you want, or be frustrated that you can’t play as many games as you want. I fight this battle constantly, and it really is frustrating.

The last big difficulty is that the two things above tend to compound on themselves. It’s a very easy spiral to get into where your expectations just get higher and higher, regardless of your rate of success, and your criteria for finishing get out of control. In fact, the more you fail, the harder you tend to be on yourself the next time around, making it that much harder to succeed. If you fail enough times, you don’t feel like taking any risks anymore, which means growth is no longer possible. This is why it is essential to get over that feeling of failure as early as possible.

Getting Over It

Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot that can be said about getting over these hurdles other than you just have to do it at some point if you want to escape the cycle. From my own experience, the only way I’ve been able to stop the tendencies is to just recognize when it happens, accept that I simply can’t let it control me, and then move on. It does get easier with time though. You can potentially get some help with pushing you forward, but I feel that only goes so far. You have to want to get better at it yourself, and having someone else tell you when to let go removes that decision making you need.

I will provide some examples of things that I do to make the decisions easier to make. The perfectionist in me tends to only come out when it comes to making things. When it comes to work, it’s easier to accept that nothing is going to perfect because there are deadlines and things are always going to be changing. It’s still frustrating at times, but I’ve had to do it for so long now that it’s easier to keep going. When it comes to writing, I find that the best way to keep moving is to set time restrictions on writing time, and do as few reviews as possible. With these posts, for example, I set aside about 3 hours to write them, no need to worry about it too much. The next day I will look over it for grammar/spelling mistakes, and then just post it. Is it perfect? Of course not, but at least something is getting done. As any productivity expert will tell you, getting a lot of average things out is always better than never getting out one perfect thing.

The completionist in me is a little harder to keep down. As stated above, I tend to make a lot of lists to keep track of everything that I have going on. And while checking them off is very satisfying, it is still a burden that I don’t really like having to worry about. I look at my backlogs all the time with a feeling of helplessness, knowing that I can never finish them all. So, all I can do is accept that I can’t finish them all. I have to choose which ones are most important to me, and just focus on those. I have to constantly get over the fact that I have spent a good amount of money in the past on things that I will never get to enjoy. And you know what, that’s okay. It’s just money. I learn from that and spend my money more wisely in the future.

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Part of me feels like this post is useless since it doesn’t give any good advice or tips, but the other part of me knows that I had to get it out of my head. Like I said already, it’s not perfect, but it’s something to keep me going. Maybe someday I will hear from a real expert on the topic and I’ll be able to revisit it with better advice.

Until next week.

Organization and Productivity: My Current Methods

I was originally planning on doing another series of posts about getting organized, but those proved difficult to write (mostly because my mind has been churning on other ideas that I’m more excited to work on). I wanted to write about the topic because it’s something that I’ve been working on this year, and I think I’ve been making some real progress in it.

As someone who has a ton of interests (reading, writing, playing games, playing music, watching TV shows and movies, and learning new things to name most of them), giving enough time to each one has been one of the biggest challenges of my life. This has resulted in huge backlogs in each area, since I will get really passionate about one interest, spend a few months focusing on it, and then moving on to the next thing. Of course those few months aren’t nearly enough to go through all of the crap I’ve accumulated, whether it be unplayed games, unwatched movies, or story ideas that haven’t been written about at all. Just about the only thing that I have been able to keep up with is music, but I’m more easily forced into that by being in a band.

And that doesn’t even include all of the time I need to spend just being an adult. Chores always have to be done. I need to eat everyday. Exercise is becoming more necessary as I get older. I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen when kids start appearing. And of course I still have to spend the majority of my days making money. Thankfully, I love what I do for work, it is my one true passion that never gets old (though the projects I work on often do).

So I have been working on ways to get the most of my time for years. It will always be a work in progress as things change, but I thought I would share some of the things I’ve been doing lately that seem to be working quite well.

Dealing with Chores

Ah chores. No matter how many times you do them, they always need doing. I’m sure it is for that very reason that most people put off chores until the last possible minute (or just not do them at all). I haven’t really been having that problem lately though, and I’ll explain why. There are basically two things I’ve done to make chores easier to get done.

First, I categorized my chores in terms of priority, frequency, and amount of time needed. Just as a few examples:

• Wash the dishes - high priority, daily, 10-20 minutes depending on amount of dishes
• Empty the catbox - highest priority (don’t want to miss this), every two days, 5 minutes
• Make dinner - medium priority (I can always go out if I don’t have time), 3 times a week, 20-40 minutes (any longer than that and I tend to not be interested in making it)
• Take out trash/recycling - medium priority, 2-3 times a week, 5 minutes
• Dust and vacuum apartment - low priority, once every 1-2 months, 2 hours

Second, once you have things categorized, batch them into chunks and put them at times when you are more likely to actually get them done. The latter point is probably the more important aspect as I’ve recently discovered. I used to be horrible about doing the dishes every night after dinner. I would usually just let them pile up for a couple days and then do a whole dishwasher load in one go, which would take way longer to do. So I made one simple change that has gotten me to do dishes every day and it takes a lot less time: I moved the chore to the morning instead of the evening. Now when we have dinner, I put the dishes in the sink and let them soak overnight, then take care of them in the morning after I shower. A very simple change, but I don’t stress about doing them after dinner now, so I have more relaxing evenings, and doing them in the mornings is a snap.

The other aspect is batching them. So now in my mind, I have a morning batch and an evening batch (weekends are usually just one morning/afternoon batch). In the morning batch before work, I have dishes and catbox (sometimes dinner if I’m using the slow cooker). In the evening batch, I have dinner and any trash/recycling that needs to be taken out. By knowing this in advance, I can judge how much time I will need since chores are no longer spontaneous. The other thing I do is that I make sure that these batches get done as soon as possible. I do my morning chores immediately after showering, and I do my evening chores immediately after getting home. The instant you sit down to relax, the likelihood of procrastinating skyrockets. You will actually save time and stress this way because when it’s done, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. If you decide to rest a bit before doing it, the need to do it just gnaws on your mind and you start hating the task. Just get it over with first and enjoy your day/night.

Exercising More Often

I like exercising. I don’t love it, but I do enjoy it. However, I have always been bad about actually doing it, at least since I’ve had a full time job. When I had a part time job I was exercising every day, but what else are you going to do? For the last five years it’s just been a cycle of getting into a good mindset, signing up for some gym (or using another available facility), aiming to do at least 3 times a week, and then never actually getting there for a couple months before quitting again. So then I tell myself it will just be easier to do it at home, I have enough equipment to do it. Doesn’t change anything. I try moving my schedule around to exercise in the morning before work, right after work, or right before bed. Nothing works.

At least until now. One of the things I decided last year was that, since I enjoy running now more than I ever did before, I want to work up to doing a marathon in the next couple years. So I’ve been doing a 5K every month for a few months, and I discovered something that I didn’t expect. While I was terrible about going to the gym to get conditioned for the 5K, actually going to the 5K was easy. Why was that? It couldn’t have been because of money, I was paying for both. No, it was the time constraint. Doing a 5K is easy because it starts at a time and it goes until I’m done with it. Most gyms don’t have that unless you want to pay more money to sign up for classes.

At around the time I was realizing this, an Orange Theory Fitness opened up in my area. I didn’t know anything about it, but I knew my current gym plan wasn’t working, so I started investigating other options, and it came up. Instead of being a normal gym, all you have are classes, and you just pay for what you use instead of having the buffet plan of regular gyms. I immediately thought that this would be a great solution to the problem I was facing, and so far I have been absolutely right. I’m only obligated to go twice a week, a time is set, and it’s very easy to show up.

So if you are like me and have trouble getting motivated to go to an all-purpose gym (mostly by yourself, having a buddy will help significantly too), then just doing classes might be the right solution for you too. Granted, it will usually cost more, but it has been well worth it for me.

Killing the Backlog

This is probably going to be the most obscure one for most people, mostly because I’m using a tool that few people will know about or understand. As I stated in the beginning of this post, I have a lot of interests. Having a lot of interests (and a decent amount of spending money) leads to big backlogs of things that I want to do. Big piles of games, books, movies, TV shows, etc. Also being the kind of person that I am, I want to keep track of all these things so that I can measure progress and know what I still have remaining.

Back when the lists were small, I could get away with just having a simple computer document that listed them all out. But then that became a hassle. So then I looked for online solutions and realized that there’s a backlog type of system for every geekery. I was using Netflix to keep track of TV shows and movies I wanted to watch, Goodreads to keep track of my books, Backloggery to keep track of games, and so on. And this worked for a while. But then I was having to juggle multiple sites to keep everything going. I needed something simpler.

And then I came up with an ingenious idea: bug tracking software. Specifically the one we use at Amazon, JIRA. Certainly not what it is designed for, but it has two major advantages that I’m absolutely loving. First, it has a lot of flexibility, so it’s very easy to keep track of my tasks (aka a game/movie/book) and categorize them for quick access. Second, with the sprint planning functionality, I can plan out what I want to do for the next month and be able to set realistic expectations for myself. I know that I can manage about 3 hours a day, on average, to do things that I want to do. That comes out to around 90 hours a month, so I can set up that much stuff to do and feel confident that I can get most of it done.

To me, this tool makes perfect sense because I’m a programmer and it’s something that I already use regularly. For most other people, it probably doesn’t make sense, but I would bet that another online program with similar functionality wrapped in a more user-friendly interface would probably do really well. I can attest that my focus has been a lot better since I started using it, and I get encouraged when I see how many things I’m actually getting done every month.

Incentivizing Goals

Just one last section before I leave you, and this one is more recent so I can’t say if it’s really going to work in the long run or not. It was just an idea I came up with after listening to an interview about gamification. The general concept is that you can get more engagement from regular people by providing a game-like reward system for doing things, specifically things that are not games in and of themselves. A lot of apps do this to retain customers, especially when it comes to fitness or learning, which is absolutely great because those are great areas to use reward systems.

So I posed a question to myself: is there a way that I can gamify my long-term goals so that I’m more likely to do continuous work on them? Some things I thought of specifically were: learn enough French to get by when we visit Paris later this year, get into good enough shape to run a half/full marathon, actually publish some works of fiction, get better at playing guitar, and become a more proficient cook. There are plenty more, but those are things that I’m actively working on.

My solution was an incentive system. If this proves to be successful, I can post the full rules that I came up with, but the basic idea is this: You define some goals to work on. Using those goals, you create rewardable actions that you can do that will get you closer to that goal. For example, when learning French, you just have to do the lessons, so doing lessons counts as a rewardable action. Each rewardable action is worth a certain amount of points, generally 1-5 based on difficulty. You get points each time you do a rewardable action, and you can exchange those points for an actual reward. I have it set up so that the reward has to be provided by someone else since it’s too easy to just reward oneself for no reason at all. The better the reward, the more points it costs. Very simple system.

To be honest, it hasn’t been catching on with my girlfriend and I too much yet, but that might just be because we don’t have any pre-defined rewards yet, so we don’t really know what we’re working towards. I think once those are in place, the incentives to do well will increase. It’s an experiment, so I will probably talk more about it in the future.

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This ended up being pretty long, but it probably should be considering that I’ve been silent for half a year. It is in my goals to be better about this, and I’m using my successes above to make it easier to find time for writing. It’s been on the forefront of my mind for a couple weeks, so I suspect it is about that time for writing to make a comeback for me. Look forward to it.

Year in Review: 2013

Well this past year has been pretty rough and tumble for this website. I restarted everything with a goal in mind, and got a good start, but then getting a new job completely threw me off. Not just that, but I'm continually getting myself over-obligated for other things, so all my time just gets eaten up. Maybe I should make that a resolution for this year. More on those at the end.

For this, I just want to give a brief review on what was awesome about 2013, including my favorite games, movies, and books I consumed during the last year.

Awesome Events

New job - Definitely the most significant event of the year, and it's been a quick ride so far. The best parts of the job are that I can walk to work everyday, the work is incredibly varied and challenging, and the people there are all great. The huge pay increase was pretty nice too.

New apartment - The second most significant event of the year. My girlfriend and I have pretty much the best apartment in the city (at least the best one I've seen) for the price. I absolutely love it.

Lost weight - Not a huge amount, only about 15 pounds overall, and it was up and down all year. I tried a lot of different things, didn't really stick to any of them, but I think I've finally figured out the correct solution to lose weight consistently and maintain it. Now I just need to do it!

Ran my first 5K - In fact, I ran two this year. I didn't get around to any more than that because I realized that the shoes I'd bought for running were screwing up my arches. So once I get some new shoes and get back to running a couple times a week, I will sign up for some more. I'd like to be running 10Ks by the end of the year.

Got some cool new things - Mainly a Tempurpedic bed (it is so hard to sleep on anything else now) and an electronic drum set to practice on at home.

Additionally, visited my girlfriend's grandparents for the first time, went to my sixth PAX, did Bloomsday for the sixth time, played a couple great shows with my band, made a lot of great new music as well, and just had an overall fantastic year.

Favorite Games

Borderlands 2 - I finished the first one this year as well, but the second one really knocked it out of the park. Just so much fun and lots of hilarious content. Going to continue playing through this one for a while.

Saints Row The Third - I also played the fourth one this year, but it didn't satisfy nearly as well. When I played the old GTA games on PS2, I never really had that much fun going the chaotic route (unless it was in a tank), but with Saints Row, you pretty much have to go that route, and they make it feel so good. I would definitely say that I had the most overall fun with this game this year.

Rocksmith 2014 - I have been playing this almost every day since it came out a few months ago. This really is a remake rather than sequel. They took everything that needed work with the first game and completely nailed it this time around. My guitar and bass playing skills have been increasing drastically, and I cannot wait to continue to use it for months, maybe years to come.

I will also give honorable mentions to Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider. Both games were really solid and fun as well, but not enough to reach favorite status. I imagine The Last of Us would be on this list too, but I haven't finished it yet, so it doesn't qualify.

Favorite Movies/Shows

Django Unchained - I've liked/loved all of Tarantino's movies so far (yes, even Deathproof), and this definitely shot right up to my top 3 (along with Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds). It's just so good.

Serpico - Yes, this is a very old movie, but these lists are for things I see for the first time, and I really enjoyed this movie. I didn't really know what I was going in for, but I was engaged the whole time. There's just so many things about those old movies that we don't get much anymore, and it's really sad.

Breaking Bad Season 1 - I'm really late to the party on this one, but this show is popular for a reason. So much happened in just those first seven episodes, and I can't wait to continue once I have a chance.

Legend of Korra Season 1 - Seriously, the guys who created Avatar: The Last Airbender seem to do no wrong. I loved that show, and Korra is just as good. Very excited for season 2 to come out this year.

Favorite Books

Minding Tomorrow Trilogy - This is a fun little sci-fi trilogy that most people don't know about because it's self-published. And it's free, so you have to go to the guy's website to find it. But it has a great mix of the potential future of Google Glass mixed with a fantastic use of time travel and other technologies. It's a quick read, so I would recommend it to anyone who likes sci-fi. You can find it here.

The Player of Games - A sci-fi classic and for good reason. I had never heard of Iain M. Banks before this, but I definitely want to go and read the rest of his stuff. It was kind of weird though because I finished reading it right around the time he passed away.

Foundation - Apparently all my favorite books were sci-fi this year, which is strange because I don't read that much of it. In any case, I had no idea what to expect here, and I loved it. Now just need to finish the trilogy.

The Contract With God Trilogy - One of the greatest comics ever written by the most famous comic writer of them all. I don't often get emotional when reading, but this one had me churning inside through a lot of it. This book has so much heart and character, I simply cannot recommend it enough.

I will also give honorable mentions to Brian K. Vaughn as I am currently working my way through both Y: The Last Man and his current work, Saga. Both of them have been great so far and I eagerly await reading the rest as they come.

Goals for the coming year

Now, just a little bit on what I hope to accomplish in the new year.

• Keep on the healthy path - I'm not going to say that I'm going to exercise a lot and eat well because I already know that I can't stick to a plan like that. But I do know the best way to drop the weight now, so I'm going to just focus on doing that to the best of my abilities, and just try to exercise when I can.
• Prioritize better - This is probably my worst sticking point, since as I said above, I have a lot of trouble with getting myself into too many things and I never have time to do any of them. So I'm going to make it a goal to be better about using my time and not stretching myself out too thin.
• Be frugal - This isn't a problem I have in general. I save money every month, though the amount varies depending on what happens. But I've gotten really bad about overspending on going out all the time, so I want to work on cutting that back. Another positive side to this is that by cutting back here, I also achieve my first goal.
• Cultivate positivity - I'm already a pretty positive guy, but one of the things I found this year is that when I force myself to be more positive about things, I tend to procrastinate less on the things I don't particularly like doing. So if I can do that more, I will have less guilt about wasting my time.
• Write more - Like anything else, writing requires mental muscle, and I've let it atrophy too much in the last couple years. It's probably the one thing I used to do a lot that I miss the most.
• Compartmentalize work - While I'm probably better at this than most people already, I used to be better about doing work at work and leaving personal stuff for out of the office. I also let my worries about work bleed into my relaxation time too much. I would like to find better separation between the two.
• Continue focusing efforts - I've started doing this in the last couple months and it's been working really well. Basically, my mind can be very scattershot at times, so I will often find myself starting up a bunch of things and trying to jump around between them is hard. They all end up taking much longer to complete than they would if I just focused on a couple at a time. As I said, I've been doing better at this lately, so I want to keep that going since it produces much more consistent results.

I think that's enough to work on. I was originally only going to put down three, but it bloomed into seven. I don't think any one of them is particularly difficult. Some of them feed into each other too, which will help getting them going.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to another awesome and productive year!

Achieving Greatness: Cultivating Success

The is the last post I will be writing about achieving greatness, at least for the first round. It’s possible that there will be supplementary material as time goes on. After last week’s post, I thought of a few more things that specifically pertain to becoming content, so that may become a post in the future.

So now that we have gone over how to improve performance and find happiness, this week we are going to combine those together and work on cultivating success. A lot of people will tell you that happiness comes from success, and that is true to a degree, but I feel like it is the other way around. A successful venture that comes from a place of discontentment is not really a success at all. In order to have lasting success that continues to build with time, you need to have the right mindset first.

Once you have the other tips under your belt (feel free to go back through the blog to find the first three posts if you haven’t already), these three will help propel you forward into becoming the great person you want to be. These are things that I have done and continue to do, and while success is slow to come, I am always making progress.

Define a Legacy

When we are all kids, one of the most common questions we get from adults is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That question later turns into “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” when we hit high school and college. How many people actually have answers to these questions? Sure kids are quick to come up with an answer that they think is cool, but those dreams are often forgotten over time. Very few people actually have a dream from the beginning and stick to it. Most people either pick a practical profession to get by or don’t pick anything at all and just float through life wondering when things are going to turn around for them.

This is why I prefer this question more than the other ones: “What do you want your legacy to be?” I had thought about this before, but the importance of the question didn’t really hit me until I heard this interview with Dr. Jeffrey Spencer on what he calls the Champions Blueprint. Defining your legacy is not only a vital step to achieving lifelong success, it is the first step. Until you have a destination, you can’t really know what to do next to get there.

The best part about defining a legacy is that legacy can mean anything. You can reach for the stars (“I want to be remembered as one of the best presidents ever!”), or you can keep it simple (“I want to be the one that my whole family can rely on in all situations”). This can in line with your chosen profession, but it doesn’t have to, it can be completely outside of it. Perhaps what you really want to be remembered for has nothing to do with what you are currently doing. If that is the case, then it’s even more important that you decide now what you want to leave behind so that you can make the next steps towards it. Deciding what your legacy should be will put you into the right mindset, which you will need to be able to work towards it every day.

Just to take myself as an example, I have three main aspects to the legacy I want to leave behind. First, I want to be remembered as a great provider of entertainment to millions. Second, I want to be remembered as a great teacher to young and old alike. And third, I want to be remembered as a great friend and family man. As I said before, your legacy doesn’t have to be big. When you boil my legacy down, all I need to do is be a good person, help others grow, and be creative. Of course I also want to be well-known too, I’m not ashamed of having a little ego.

If you haven’t given your legacy much thought, I encourage you to do so sooner rather than later. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but you need some end point to go to. Otherwise you just end up sitting at the starting line.

Learn Useful Skills

I remember late last year when the internet blew up over an article written by David Wong on Cracked. A great number of people didn’t like what he had to say about being useful to others. Personally, I think it’s one of the best articles written on the subject, and you really should go read it if you haven’t (fair warning, lots of expletives ahead).

If you just want the short version, your usefulness is 100% tied to the skills that you have. Being a good person doesn’t make success. Doing things for others makes success. So if you don’t have skills that are useful to others, you’re not going to go very far. The best part about gaining skills is that you can do it whenever you want. And the rarer the skill is, the more likely you will get asked to do it and get rewarded well for it.

I would suggest that you do what David says at the beginning of the article. Take a piece of paper and write down five skills you have that you can use to help others. These can include the skills you use for work. And remember that a skill is something that is difficult enough that most people cannot do it with zero training. I will go ahead and do five for myself as an example:

• Can program in multiple languages
• Can play drums
• Can write
• Can teach mathematics
• Can cook

Obviously I’m better at some of these than others, but I never stop trying to get better at them. And there are plenty of other skills I would love to add to my repertoire. Things like learning to play guitar. Becoming conversationally fluent in German. Learning to knit and sew (yes, seriously). Becoming a mixologist. The list just continues to grow.

Learning a new skill can seem really daunting, especially for adults who are busy just trying to get other things done. But I think most people will realize that they have the time, they just don’t prioritize enough. They spend more time consuming things than producing. There is certainly nothing wrong with consuming media to unwind, but you need to also spend some time progressing. Which leads me to the last point.

Be Creative Every Day

Much liking reading every day helps focus, being creative every day helps progress skills and goals. Now being creative is not limited to producing things for others to consume, it just means using your brain to do things that require some thought. It could mean spending some time writing a blog post, or it could mean working on a painting. It could mean coming up with something different for dinner, or it could mean coming up with a bedtime story for your kids.

For a lot of us, we are lucky in that our profession forces us to be creative. Being an engineer automatically makes me creative every workday because the whole job is about solving problems. For us, it can be hard to be creative outside of work because we only have so much capacity per day. It is much more important for those of you who have jobs that demand more physically than mentally. Admittedly, physical jobs can be just as draining as mental ones, so the preference is to veg out on the couch. But even if you spend just 15 minutes putting your brain to use, it will make a difference. Once you set a baseline, you will find that it gets easier to go for longer periods of time. If you can, try to do this as soon as you get home. You are more likely to get distracted the longer you wait.

Why is it so important to be creative on a daily basis? Surely it’s okay to just do it on the weekends or whatever days you have free. You can go ahead and say that, but when you get to those free days, you know what you’re going to do? The same time wasting activities you do after work. You don’t make good habits by only doing them twice a week. I know, I’ve tried. Lots of times. It never works.

Be sure to put some of the other tips to use when it comes to it too. I put a creative goal on my today list every single day. There are days when I cannot be fully expected to keep it (like this weekend where I was at PAX all Friday and Saturday), but it doesn’t break my habit unless I go for a week or more. And the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better you become at it. You’ve heard it a million times, but practice is the only sure way to improve. And the only people who are truly successful in this world are those who create products and solutions, so practice a lot!

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Thanks for reading my thoughts on how to become a great person. Again, if you missed the first three installments, just go back through the blog archive to find them. Next week I might do a shorter wrap-up post with some supplementary material. Or I might have some thoughts on my first week at my new job instead. We will see.

Achieving Greatness: Finding Happiness

This is the third of four posts I will be writing about achieving greatness. The first two posts were all about how I get more things done each day. This week’s is about how I try to bring more happiness into my life. I meant to do this post last week, but I was exceptionally busy with getting a new job and beginning the process of moving into a new apartment. I also had to deal with some severe neck pain early in the week which took me out for a whole day. So, a week late, but certainly still worthwhile.

Happiness is one of those topics that is really hard to quantify. No one can really come up with a singular definition that everyone can agree on. I took an entire college class on the subject and still couldn’t come away with a consensus. I think one thing that most experts can agree on though, is that happiness is not having constant joy in one’s life. It is true that the good feelings we get when something pleasant happens tends to happen more often to those who say they are happy, but it is impossible to be in that state all the time. Even people who are happy have bad things happen to them, and no matter how happy they are the rest of the time, those things will get them down.

I choose to think of happiness as a state where everything that happens, good or bad, results in a positive outcome, so I never get into a negative state of mind. It’s a state of being content with all things. I find that when I’m in that state, things just seem to go my way all the time. Bad things happening don’t really get to me as much as those do. The only things that do get me out of this state of mind are doubt and worry. The more I worry about things that I have to do or have doubts about where I am in life, the more negative I get.

With this in mind, there are three things that I’ve gathered from reading and personal experience that I find gets me more into the content state of mind. But before that, to throw in a fourth point I’ve already covered, eliminating unnecessary information and focusing my time on being productive has a major impact on my overall happiness, so don’t forget to do that too!

Let Go of People Who Hold You Back

This point was hammered into me by the fine fellows at The Art of Charm several years ago now, and it’s becoming even more important as time goes on. This strongly ties in with the elimination I just mentioned, except this is related to people instead of information. This is a hard one for most people to swallow for two reasons: 1) It is hard to do, especially as relationships grow over time; and 2) It can make you come off as callous, which is generally frowned upon. And it is true, doing this will result in people not liking you. But as any successful person will tell you, those people tend to be worthless and ignoring them is vital to continue succeeding. Remember that this is all about you.

It is generally easy to tell which people to avoid and let go of. They tend to be overly negative, though it can be in different ways. Some will try to bring everyone around them down to their level. They will tell you that anything risky you do will fail. Others are negative by complaining about things all the time, usually things they have no control over. They will be the drama spreaders. You need to avoid these people for two reasons: 1) Just being around their negativity will make you feel worse (just like how being around positive people will automatically make you feel better and more energized); and 2) Since nothing they say to you is productive, they waste your time.

A lot of people don’t even realize how much the negativity gets to them. Especially when they are reading it online, it doesn’t tend to be as oppressive as it does in person, but the overall effect is still bringing you down. It’s for this reason that on my Facebook, I only read the positive posts that my friends put up. If someone is being negative all the time, I remove them from my feed because I know that it is subconsciously causing me to worry about them. Again, it seems callous to admit that you don’t care about someone’s problems, but when it is that constant, it has more to do with their mindset rather than any problems they actually have. I also actively avoid websites and forums that are well known for people being mean to others (which seems to be all of them these days). And even on the sites I do visit, I never read the comments, no matter how hilarious I am promised they are. More often than not, the “hilarity” comes from the commenters being stupid or ignorant. In other words, I’m supposed to be making fun of them, which is a negative attitude to have towards people. Being mean to people gets you nothing. I’d prefer to think the best of people and be positive as much as possible. Being positive is the only way I know to be content in life.

This is something that you need to do slowly, get used to it. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Start with those people farthest away from you and work your way inward. And always be trying to make new friends with people who are more positive. They aren’t hard to find, and they will provide you with so much more.

Travel Often, Never Tour

I will never fully understand people who don’t like to travel. If there’s one thing that pretty much every rich or successful person has in common, it is that they travel all the time. Why? Because when you have enough money to not worry about material needs, the only thing to spend it on experiences. I am a strong proponent of gaining experiences as they will generally do more to improve your outlook on life than things. Don’t get me wrong, I spend plenty on entertainment, but none of those compare to the fun I have going to new places.

So yes, you should travel often. But what do I mean by never tour? Basically, travel is great, but acting like a tourist is never great, at least in my opinion. I personally rarely have any fun doing tourist activities, which usually involve visiting landmarks. Things like natural formations or castles or museums or some dead guy’s house. While some are admittedly impressive to behold, they don’t excite me. Immersing myself in the culture of the place I’m visiting is much more fun to me.

For example, I visited England and Ireland several years ago. I saw a lot of castles and churches there. A lot of them were amazing, but I had a lot more fun just doing the normal things. Using the tube. Getting paninis at the cafes. Roaming the streets and parks. Navigating the roads. Watching the sheep wander around. Things that people who are living there do all the time. It was on that trip that I finally realized that when I visit a place, I want to see the way a regular citizen would. I want to do the things that they find cool, not the things that are designed to get tourists. I think those kinds of experiences are much more worthwhile than doing what an airport guide tells me to do.

Of course everyone’s mileage will vary on this one. I know my parents love seeing the landmarks. But I feel that if you really want to experience other cultures, you need to do more than just visit their cool stuff. You should actively try to be like them.

Aggressively Help Others

I think helping others is one that everyone can relate to. I’m pretty sure everyone has helped someone else at one point and felt good about it afterwards. But, there are still a lot of people who view it as an annoyance. You don’t want to be that person. You want to feel good about helping others, and I encourage you to seek out opportunities to do so. And be aggressive about it.

Now when I say be aggressive, I don’t mean force your way into helping someone who doesn’t want it. I mean that when you find an opportunity to help someone, convince them that it is in their best interest for you to help them. If they still don’t want the help, then respect their wishes and move on.

I could be wrong in this assumption, but it seems like most people don’t really like helping others. Think about the last time you asked people to help you move. You don’t want to be like those people. You want to help others. No successful person ever got where they are without help from others. And the best way to get others to help you is to help them. That’s why you should be aggressive about it. It changes your mindset so that you are always trying to help others, and the help that comes back is often much greater than what you put into it.

Not every opportunity is going to be fruitful. Plenty of people get help from others and don’t appreciate it, so they never give anything back. It happens, but you shouldn’t let that deter you. For every one of those people, there are nine more who will thank you. Many of them will even go out of their way to help you out with something you need. Who knows? You might even make a great friend along the way.

I know that personally, helping others feels great. Even something as simple as giving someone directions puts a smile on my face. Leveraging your skills will also make it easier and more enjoyable. I don’t get many chances to anymore, but I loved tutoring in math when I was in school. Math has always come easy for me, so teaching others seems like an obvious use of my talents, and I ended up benefiting from it too. Someday, when I get tired of my profession, I would love to go back to teaching all the time.

It doesn’t really matter what you do. You can tutor like I used to. You can give some time to a volunteer organization. You can donate your money to a cause you believe in (I give money to Child’s Play because I want to give comfort to kids in hospitals). You can do something as simple as help a co-worker with a problem. Or offer to take on a task that no one else wants to do. You can even be the one who is glad to help your friend move! The important thing is that you see where people need help, and put yourself in a position to help them.

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Next week, the final post about greatness. See you then!