The Little Book of Less=More (How
to change your life by doing less)
January
Less=More: FUN, 85 Years Old, Visualisations, Affirmations, My Possibility,
Change Now! Have a Break, Roles in Life, My Updates, Organic Growth, More, Self
Promotion, More of the Less Bit, Organic Goals, Goals, Vision and Action,
Newspapers, TV, Sleep, Less, Introduction.
Feb Less=More:
Attributional Thinking, Success Motivates, Motivation and Luck, Mind Maps,
Priorities, Word Strings, Conscious Competence, Morning Pages, Unblocking The
Artist (Creative Expression), Mix with Positive People, Winning Formula – If
you want something doing then do it yourself, Confidence, Perspective, Work
Patterns, People, Awareness, Synchronicity, Breaking Promises!, Equal =, Play
Big in Life and Shine Your Light, What’s the Worst that can Happen?,
Perception, Good Days and Bad Days.
March Less=More:
Perfectionism, More Georgia, He’s Stupid Enough to be Neutral, Move On,
Anti-Role Models, Role Models, Sunshine and Vitamin D, Risk and Failure, Twix,
Doing Less Again!, Fitting it all In, Family, Paradox of Leadership, Commit,
Timetable, Neuro Linguistic Programming
(Six Step Reframing Outline), FreeCell, Quality of
Time, 2 Chairs, 3 Perspectives, Motivation Again!.
April Less=More: Sharpen the Saw, Reframing,
What Can You Give?, Action not Words, Play to your Strengths, Windsurf or
Cycle, 5 Memorable Things per Year,
Legacy, Anger, Commitment Again, Just Do It!, Roller Coaster Day, Smile,
Live Today, Animal, Dreams take time to come true, Eat LESS, Form Storm Norm
Perform, Shoot for the Stars and Hit The Moon, !, Get Up
Early and Go Out for Breakfast, Book Shop, Top Dog, Underdog, Parts of
Yourself, I Can’t Even Motivate Myself!, Myers Briggs, Beware of Symptoms and
not Cures.
May Less=More:
Having a Child, Group Psychology, Peer Mentoring, More Chaos Theory, Pain to
Change, Repeated Patterns, Tension for Change, Don’t believe the Hype, Looking
Forward, Be Careful of What You Ask For, Nothing, Coaching, Rhythm, Energy
Level, Hitting the Low, and Dreams, Give it a Go, Change, Can You Face What
You’ve Become?, Just one good thing each day, Yet More of the Less, Degrees of
Separation, Give and Take, Bad Hours, Be
Honest with Yourself, Sleep, Chaos Theory, Dreams Coming True Again, Draw a
line now and Start Again, What is it You Really Want in Life?, You are what you
Eat, Roller Coaster, Commit and all else will follow.
June Less=More:
Fate, Motivation Quote, Call Reluctance and Motivation, Kick Start, What Colour
is Your Parachute?, Best Use of Time, Nothing to write about. Baby Grounding,
Have a Dream, and Put in the hard work and it pays off later, Possibility
Again, Open your mind, Easy Networking, Luck, Joy, Money, Beating Oneself Up,
How to be an Artist, More Chaos Theory, Having a Child, Group Psychology, Peer
Mentoring, More Chaos Theory, Pain to Change, Repeated Patterns, Tension for
Change, Don’t believe the Hype.
July Less=More:
Back to Less, Hang in There, Back to my Goals, Conditions for Lack of
Creativity, Creative Watersheds.
August Less=More: Perfectionism, Think Big, Time Out for Nature, Scott
Adams, Making the Time, Home by the Sea, Bouncing
Back, Catch Phrase, Adversity,
Coincidences and Public Speaking,
Life Plan
Saturday 31st August 2002
Perfectionism
holds us back more than anything else.
It causes
procrastination and indecision because we want to have things perfect and make
the right decision.
Lose It.
And get on with
it.
Just Do It.
I should know, I’m
a big perfectionist.
You wouldn’t know
to meet me that I am such a perfectionist.
People expect
perfectionist to be perfectly dressed and perfectly organised.
But there’s
another form of this disease, which I have.
Unless it’s
absolutely perfect I won’t do it, or wear it, or complete it. I give up because it isn’t perfect.
I become all or
nothing and end up doing nothing.
We fear failure,
so we don’t do it at all.
I realise this
with a lot of underachievers. It’s not
that they’re lazy or incompetent.
On the contrary,
they’re deep perfectionists who won’t do it at all unless it comepletley right.
I put off all
sorts of things because I don’t have everything perfectly together.
Tax Returns,
Clothes, Housework, Ideas.
Instead of just
getting on with it, I want these things to be perfect, so I don’t do them at
all.
What’s prompted
me to write this is reading Tom
Peters’ interview with David Weinberger talking about his book Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
In writing these
pages and my website, I just got on with it and stopped my perfectionist trying
to create the perfect website.
I let go.
I ended up
writing about perfection in large part as a reaction against business's view of
itself. The chapter actually begins by talking about business's
anal-perfectionism. And the Web, I think, has a lot to say about why that type
of perfectionism not only is impossible, but is usually inhibiting.
The background
for this is business's insistence on only presenting itself as perfect. Because
it used to be able to control its image, control the information that it
releases to the market, it would only release information that made it look
absolutely perfect. Every product description, every product discussion, every
photo—perfect.
And of course, as the market, we've learned to totally discount that. We don't
expect the product to arrive and be perfect, or even look perfect. So, it's a
transparent game.
On the other hand,
the notion that the only thing that's acceptable, that the norm is perfection,
is damaging. It's hard to live up to that. And the Web, I think, revels in its
lack of perfection. The Web itself is hugely imperfect. That was one of the
criteria for it to be able to expand. If you had to wait for it to be perfect
and controlled, then you would build the old-style network, which is centrally
administered. And you make sure that everything is exactly right; and every
user is up and running; and every page has been approved, and gone through the
process. That's the old-style network. And that's good for a few hundred
people.
On the Web,
very explicitly, imperfection is okay. In fact, the architecture is such that
it allowed routing messages around imperfect routers. But, that's part of the
ethos now as well. It's okay to send an email without running the spell check.
It's okay to send an email without holding back and doing a second draft of it.
We don't expect new drafts of email. It's a much more direct communication.
It's okay to be a jerk, to express one side of yourself, and not try to get the
balance right. It's okay to flame occasionally.
Here's why it's
okay. You can't have a voice, a human voice, if you are insisting on it being
perfect. Business sanitizes its voice, gets every marketing statement right.
And so, it sounds like a committee. It sounds like a business. Out on the Web,
we don't want to do that. We're going to talk as ourselves. And we're not
perfect. Therefore, the Web cherishes imperfection.
David
Weinberger interviewed by Tom Peters
Friday 30th August 2002
I just had a deep
insight today.
What if someone
came and offered me $100m.
Or if someone
asked me what can’t I do now if I had some investment.
The answer to both
questions is I don’t know.
I guess $1m would
buy me some time to do some thinking.
But if it had to
be an investment in my business, what would I use it for?
What would I do
with $100m or $1 Billion?
This is key and
important because I’ll bet if I work out what I’d do with each sum of money,
I’ll attract that money as investment!
I’m thinking in
terms of what I care passionately about.
I’d love to
create a company with buzz and customers who buzzed.
I’m disgusted
with service levels at 95% of client facing companies.
It would take so
little for polite companies to generate extra business and profit and extra
customers.
That’s my
developing passion right now.
Virgin but
better. EasyJet ethos.
What would you do
with $100m?
What would you
set up?
If it’s not for
profit what would you invest it in?
If it’s a
commercial company, how would you generate profit?
How would you pay
back the money?
Answer these
questions and it will come true.
I haven’t
answered them myself so I don’t have a spare $100m. Yet!!
Thursday 29th August 2002
Georgia asleep in
my arms on the plane today, and I was looking at her thinking how perfect and
complex nature is to produce (with some help from me and Annie) such an amazing
thing as Georgia. The detail, the ears,
the cells, the colour, the hair, the nose, the snot, the breathing.
Millions and
billions of things linked together into a conscious form.
And we notice the
perfection of nature in babies even more.
It seems to focus
our attention.
Small but perfectly
formed.
It brought tears
to my eyes and made me feel both humble and privileged to be part of this
world.
Wednesday 28th August 2002
If you want inspiration, go read Scott Adams.
He’s the Dilbert guy.
His website is great, and especially his books (not just the cartoons)
are inspirational.
He hits the mark. And he tells you
how he does it.
He explains about creativity and humour, how he constructs his cartoons.
Funny and Inspiring and Spot-On.
Just re-reading The Joy of Work, and a whole chapter on Bringing Humour
and Creativity to your Job.
Tuesday 27th August 2002
Sometimes you have to plan ahead in order to make the time.
You might not change things this week or next week but plan the Important
but Non-urgent for a few weeks time and stop putting it off with urgent things.
The Important but Non-Urgent will catch up with you in the end.
Sunday 25th August 2002
I’ve always said I wanted a home by the sea.
Today I saw the type of view in my dreams.
Amazing when at least part of your dream comes true.
It means the rest of the dream has the possibility of coming true.
Saturday 24th August 2002
Back to this idea of setting dreams and goals for years hence and realising
it won’t happen today or tomorrow but maybe the day after.
Give yourself a chance of it happening.
Say to yourself in 5 years time……..
In 10 years time…..
Think about how many things have changed over the last 5 years, and where
you’d like to be in 5 and 10 years time.
Wednesday 21st August 2002
At a meeting of
presenters on public speaking on Monday, someone asked how you cope with
adversity, the lows which contrast the highs.
And one of the
panellists said something quite profound and striking.
You use the
stories of your lows and adversity and how you dealt with it, to illustrate in
your public speaking.
That is so spot
on and has set me thinking about the adversity and lows in my life and how I’ve
bounced back.
Also, another
panellist talked about having an “Evidence Manual”, a complete collection of
everything you’ve achieved in your life,
To remind
yourself of the good things about you.
Tuesday 20th August 2002
I had one of
those amazing days yesterday when everything comes together and it just all
happens.
Pointing in the
right direction.
I’ve had 24 hours of stunning coincidences and serendipity.
Annie printed out some Aussie stuff a year ago just before we
moved to Australia.
I sorted through it on Sunday, and chucked it all out except for
this one guys stuff who I thought I’d read again.
A guy who made contact with me invited me to a meeting of public
speakers last night.
Blow me down if the guy whose stuff I didn’t chuck out was the chairman
presenter to 150 people.
Next I get talking to a guy at the break and ask him what he
does.
He says he’s the next speaker on!
Then one of the other speakers who’s doing her routine picks on me
for singing her song to.
This happens so many times when I’m in an audience. I don’t know what it is about my face that
people on stage notice me.
It’s been my dream to be a professional public speaker, and I can
see it coming true.
I was totally inspired by this group, many of whom have written
books.
The guy who took me to the meeting is a comedian/compare who wants
to get into sales training, so we compliment each other. He gave me some
advice to open up more when I train and not to hold back.
Good advice.
Some of the notes I took down;
And finally, something struck me.
Each presenter had to limit their presentation to 12 minutes.
At the end we asked the panel of 6 who’d presented, and one of the
questions got them talking about planning for their 12 mins.
One of the presenters rightly pointed out that they put more
planning into a shorter time presentation because they have less time to
present.
That’s profound and has set me thinking.
The shorter the presentation the more time planning it is needed,
because there’s less room for error.
Made me think about what I’d like to say about myself or any
course I present in 12 minutes.
That’s where I’m currently struggling in.
The opening.
More planning Tony.
Monday 19th August 2002
Just written a list of things
I’d really like to do in life.
Things I’m giving up to make
time to do these things.
A timetable for how I might
fit them in during the day.
Unless, I snack less, ban all
TV, stop surfing and writing long emails, I can’t see how else I’m going to
find the time!
Things I’d really like to do
So what am I going to do Less Equal More of?
Less – Emails,
Internet Surfing, TV, Eating/Snacking/TV flicking
More – Melbourne,
Writing, Networking, Cycling, Roller Blading, Skiing/Snowboarding, Prospecting,
Big ideas put into action, Walks, Sea, Website.
And finally I tried to put together a daily/hourly routine to fit
all of the following in;
Walk, Cycle/Blade, Surf, Write, Contact/Network/Prospect, Develop
Material, Paperwork, Georgia, Annie, Friends, Eat, Break, Create/Big Ideas,
Email.
Phew, I’m thinking about it and working on it.