bythemethod.com blog

Does being older mean that you are wiser? I don’t think so – read on to find out why.

There is an assumption in life that the older you get the wiser you get. There is much evidence to support this – not least through personal experience. I now know, for instance, that you can’t assume girls will laugh at you just because you speak to them.

However let me ask you a simple question.

Who is the wiser? The person who knows little but applies what they know or the person who knows much but still does nothing.

I would suggest it is the former. Wisdom is in the application of knowledge and not in the knowledge itself.

Now I have four (youngish) children and I know that they don’t understand much about the world yet and yet what they have learned they put into operation (generally). They are pretty good at using the knowledge that they are gaining.

However I know an awful lot more than they do about life and the way it works. So why then do I still sometimes make mistakes? Why is it on some days I will get up and I just can’t be bothered to look at my goals? I teach other people, for goodness sake, to set goals and use them and yet some days even I can’t be bothered.

This extends beyond me and mere goal setting. What things do you do that is not wise? Do you ever ignore something that you know you should do something about? Do you ever say anything to anyone which you later regret? Do you ever eat something which you later wish you hadn’t?

Most of us by the time we reach our forties know how to be happy in life and yet why are so many of us miserable?

Never assume that somehow being older had made you wiser.

It seems to me that wisdom is often a choice – it’s something we do not something we are. We must choose to make a wise decision.

The wise thing to do, of course if to choose to be wise.

I don’t like writing about this topic because it’s about something that is wrong. I even feel a little nervous mentioning it because I don’t think it can be justified that this situation exists. However it does exist and one of the things about being successful is learning to accept and work within the limitations that the world imposes.

The subject now is about the game that is played in every office and every workplace.

The truth is that everywhere you go there is an established game that determines how successful you can be within that situation.

Now just for the record I believe that people should get on because of their merits and talents not because they know how to work a system. Yet systems exist and if we ignore them it will impact our chances of success.

If you watch the programme the Apprentice in the UK (I believe the USA has similar – don’t know about other countries) you will discover that there is a game. One element of the game for Sir Alan Sugar is that it all comes down to results. If you are the one who is responsible for bad results you have better find a good explanation otherwise … “you’re fired”. It doesn’t matter that someone else is more odious than you or that you have better qualifications the biggest factor is results. It seems that most of the candidates don’t get this.

So if you want to get on in your office you need to learn the rules of the game.

In any game there are usually various players and here are just a few:

The King: This is the person who will be responsible for your success or not. This is not always the big boss but sometimes it is. This person may be your own boss or it might be the boss in another department. Whoever it is this is person you need to impress the most.

The Gatekeeper: This is the person (or persons) who can open the gate so you can get access to The King. This might be the PA or it might be a friend of The King who works in the office. This person has the ear of The King. Keep your ears open though because sometimes these people are not who you might think they are and anything you say gets back to The King.

The Joker: This is a person who will trick you into thinking they are the gatekeeper when they are not. Be wary of this person because time spent trying to impress them might well be time wasted. You can recognise these because they will often be telling you how they can help you succeed. Be wary though because just occassionaly a Gatekeeper tells you this kind of stuff.

The Black Knight: This is the person (or persons) who oppose your success. They might be in competition with you or they might just like being nasty. Listen carefully to what they say and how they act. Sometimes they will be a friend to you so they can stab you in the back (watch the Apprentice if you doubt this). However, like in any good story they might just help you to succeed in the end (it’s a funny old world).

The Wise Man/Woman: These are people who understand the game and how it’s played. You can learn a lot from them. Be careful what advice you follow because sometimes they hate the game so much that they fight against it. You need to be wise yourself.

There are many other players in the game and you can probably work it all out for yourself. Learning to play the game (especially if it is coupled with a desire to work hard and succeed) will help you enormously.

I personally hate the game but sometimes even what you hate has to be played.

I’m sure we could all relate stories about stuff we have spent hours doing which turned out to be a complete waste of time. Wasting time has to be one of the biggest problems in anyone’s life. The problem is that too many of us have no idea what is important and so we waste time on what other people think is important.

Remember also that just because something is urgent doesn’t mean it is important. This is a big mistake that we all make from time to time. We assume that a sense of urgency means that something must be important.

Throughout today ask yourself the question of everything you do: Is this important?

Ask it about everything you do. Ask it about the things that are urgent as well as the things that are unimportant.

It will be tough to decide what is important but I will provide more help on this in my next post. For now though simply use your intuition to decide.

These days we have a very short time available to us to impress people. For instance on the Internet you have less than 1 second to get peoples attention before they go somewhere else.

I’m told that if we want to communicate something 30% of that communication will depend on words the other 70% will be down to appearance or the visual. It’s a disturbing statistic but I’m sure it’s true. I’ve seen this happen time and again in business where a lesser product wins because it is better looking.

My own personal conviction is that you shouldn’t judge something by the way it looks – it is definately what is inside that counts – however just because I believe this does not mean it is the way the world works.

So to succeed you have to adapt to the way the world works and perhaps when you are successful enough you will have a big enough sphere of influence to make a difference. For now we have to ‘play the game’.

So if you are going to meet someone new make sure your appearance is neat,tidy and appropriate. For instance if you are required to speak in front of a group of people you need to dress like you are an expert – not the same as them. People believe what there eyes tells them and if you look dressed down they will assume you take this same approach to your subject. It’s far better to be overdressed than underdressed. The only exceptions to this are if you are such a household name that everyone knows you are an expert before you start. Sadly there are very few people who fall into this bracket.

But it’s not just the way you dress.

Visual is about how you present yourself and your case. If you are in business what does your packaging tell others about you? What does your logo say? What about the letterhead you send out? Everything you use for your business says something to others about the way you run your business. You may be the most professional business in the world but if you have a website that looks like your six year old son/daughter produced it prospective customers will assume you are not professional.

So don’t neglect the visual in your striving for success.

I have just finished watching the latest episode of the “Apprentice” on the BBC. It’s great entertainment and if you watch closely enough it can teach you a thing or two about business. For instance last night the person sacked made the big mistake of not checking your work. I think most business owners expect their employees to make the occasional mistake but they then expect the person to realise the mistake early on and correct it. Selling lobsters at £5 a go was an obvious mistake and even if someone was nieve enough to not know how much lobsters should be a quick check in the book would have told him. I think ultimately though he hung himself in the boardroom.

However what saddened me at the beginning of the programme was the short interviews with the candidates where they were mostly quoted as being prepared to do anything and sacrifice anyone on the way to the top. A competative nature is a good thing but this kind of dog eat dog attittude has no place in the modern business world.

I don’t know if Sir Alan Sugar would approve of the attitude or not and I know he has more business experience than I do (tip: it’s a wise person who knows a wiser person he can learn from). However there are some fundemental life issues that I’d like to point out.

1. Success is not just about money. History is full of stories of the people who made oodles of money but died alone and very sad. Relationships are important for EVERYONE and if you ignore this important truth you risk being a very rich failure.

2. Success is not just about promotion. Getting to the top of any organisation doesn’t make you a successful person. Granted it can be very exciting and its nice to have the power to control everything about your life but if you end up lonely with no one to share that experience with it soon becomes boring and unsatisfying. For a competative person being at the top can be a problem in itself.

3. We all need people for success. There will be a time in everyones career when they need the help and support of those who they manage. Indeed even with very good management skills it’s near to impossible to manage a group that is hostile to you. The people you might push out of the way on your journey to the top might end up the very people who can make or break your career. We see this every year on the Apprentice. Someone annoys a person in the group who they then need to rely on for help later only to find they have been stabbed in the back.

By all means be so determined to reach the top that you will fight any battle necessary to get there but remember that the people you sacrifice in the fight might be the very people you need later. Learn to build strong relationships and to get along with anyone. If you must put your career before a relationship then make sure the person you are in the relationship with understands what you are trying to achieve – you will probably discover that they are willing to help you anyway. Ultimately some relationships will matter more than business – be careful to know what these relationships are.

Success is not about money. Money can be a trapping of success but money should not be anyone’s god.

Being a good speaker can greatly help your career. Good speakers are few and far between. There are many people who think they can speak well but it’s more a question of liking the sound of their own voice rather than people wanting to hear them.

If you are a bad or boring speaker you can learn to be different. Here are just a few tips to get you started.

1. Learn to listen. Good speakers are also usually good listeners. If they have to give a talk on a subject they have spent some quality time finding out about that subject before they ever stand up to speak. If you also know the group you are going to speaking to you can also get some wonderful insights into how to make the talk more interesting.

2. Prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare. There is no shortcut to becomming a good speaker. People can spot waffle a mile away so make sure you are properly prepared before you get up to speak. If you are called on to speak on a subject at the last minute make sure its a subject you know well before you stand up. It’s better to defer and lose the opportunity (more will come if you create them) to someone else than to end up looking a fool in front of a group of people. That group of people will remember what a fool you were and you will have to work hard to get a second chance.

3. Practice, practice, practice, practice. There is no shortcut to good practice. If opportunities arise to practice speaking then take them. Practice will help you deal with the nerves you feel when you stand up in front of others. Practice will help you work out the best way of approaching a subject and will help you discover your own “voice” (e.g. the way you can speak most effectively). If you don’t have any speaking appointments to practice with then practice on your own. Write a speach and deliver it to the mirror. If you can record it to listen to later so much the better. When you listen to yourself look for the opportunities to improve. Don’t beat yourself up over mistakes (everyone makes them) learn from them and grow better.

4. Practice using your voice. The more monotone your voice the less interesting it will be. If your voice is weak and small then practice making it big and loud. It’s possible to make use of even the smallest of voices – especially with modern amplification equipment. As a last resort invest in a portable amplification system (remember you only need one speaker as a minimum because voices are mono not stereo) so that you have something you can use if you are ever asked to speak and when you turn up they don’t have any amplification. Read poetry out loud and exagerate your voice – especially the pitch – so that you begin to make your voice more interesting. Remember you can use volume to great effect when you speak.

Talking is a major topic but I hope these simple tips will be enough to get you thinking. Learning to talk well can take quite a while but it is well worth the effort. Talking well might be one of the most important things you can do for your career.

Listening is a skill that can be learned with a little persistance and being able to listen can really pay off.

 Some of the benefits of being able to listen are:

1. it gives the person you are listening to a feeling of importance
   This is a great way to encourage people to think positively towards you. The more people who think positively about you the better chance you have of success.
2. it enables you to learn
   You can learn things from even the simplest of conversations. If you are listening to someone who could have a key part to play in your future success you have an opportunity to learn something about them that you may be able to employ to your advantage later (I don’t mean juicy gossip). The more you discover about a person the better you can make your relationship with them.
3. it demonstrates a good character
   Everyone hates people who are full of their own self importance. Those who believe they have power because everyone has to listen to them are deceiving themselves. If you are this way you will discover (if you listen carefully enough) that nearly all those people you force to listen to you probably don’t like you and many of them will be looking for ways to stab you in the back. Showing you care by listening (and this applies ten-fold for those who have power over others) will make you a hero to people.
4. it gives others the chance to talk.
   One of the greatest gifts we can give to someone else is the gift of time. When you listen to someone you are giving them the gift of your time. The longer you listen the more they will respond by opening up to you. The more they open up the deeper your relationship with them will become. The deeper your relationship the greater chance that you will be able to help each other. It’s great to have a little help from others when you are trying to succeed.
5. etc
   There are loads of good reasons to listen – too many to list here.

To start enhancing your listening skills you need to practice really concentrating on what people are saying and to practice allowing pauses in a conversation. People like to fill silences and if you leave a few they will start to talk and you get the chance to listen.

Learn to listen well and it will help you succeed.

It seems to me that we spend a great deal of our lives fighting against time. We see time as the enemy – something we must fight against if we are ever to succeed. When we are young we can’t wait to get older so we can be more independant and be taken seriously and then when we get older we just want to be young again.

However all this struggle is counter productive. Struggling against time won’t change it. In fact it’s often said (and it’s true) that time is the one thing we can’t change about life. No one can make you extra time but you can use time more effectively. You can make more money, more friends, more opportunities but you can’t make more time. The sooner we understand the futility of fighting time the sooner we can start benefitting from it.

Time can be a great tool for the person who is willing to work with it rather than against it. Making the best of the time you have is an excellent approach to life. We work with time when we take a pro-active approach to it. Rather than struggling to stop it passing we should make plans to work with it. Set goals that are time linked; make use of the time you have (no matter how small it may seem) to better yourself; find time to have some fun and build relationships.

Make time your friend not your enemy.

One of the most important traits of successful people is persistance. However this isn’t just any old ordinary persistance that keeps you going when things get a little difficult. This is defy the odds and ignore the doom-sayers and keep going even though common sense told you two years ago you shouldn’t have kept going.

Persistance always needs a little wisdom associated to it. If you are persistant in persuing a dream that is not realistic then it won’t matter how much effort you put in you will never succeed. However if you have a realistic dream and you persist with it you stand a great chance of success.

How do you know if your idea is realistic? If it’s a personal goal it needs to be something that your body and/or mind is capable of. If it’s a business goal then it needs to be something that people will want to buy. You might also seek out people you consider to be wise in these things and ask for their opinion (this doesn’t mean that bloke you met down the pub but someone who really knows their stuff).

So keep going. When everything is going wrong and you feel like their is no way you can win in this – it’s time to keep going. The successful people are those who kept going when others gave in. 

I love to learn new things and I always have several books on the go at the same time. However I could know everthing about the world and still not be a success. There are some very clever people who never ‘make it’ as well as very talented people who stay in the same job for their whole lives. Some are like this because they chose to be but there are many more who were never successful. Why is this?

One of the reasons is that they never put what they know into action.

It’s better to have a bad plan in action than a good plan in a drawer.

What I mean is that the best plans in the world won’t help you if you never put them into action. So by all means plan but make sure your focus in on action rather than planning.