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A blog post I wrote for my firm recently

Recently I started this blog. In doing so I quickly discovered how much easier it is to get sucked into the trap of spending lots of time customizing the layout of the blog, coming up with a name for the blog, and a dozen other superfluous items, than it is to actually blog and publish content. That parallel carries over into other areas of life:

• It’s easier to re-tweet than it is to tweet an original thought
• Its much easier to talk\dream about the future than it is to actually act
• It’s far more fun to plan than it is to execute
• It’s less scary to proof read this post one more time than it is to publish it and move on to creating the next post

All of this reminded of the wise words of John Wooden, the legendary UCLA men’s basketball coach who led the Bruins to 10 titles in 12 seasons:

“Don’t mistake activity for achievement”

I love this quote because it’s such a succinct reminder of the importance of actually doing work (and not just patting myself on the back for spending a lot of time thinking about it).

An aside: If you’re not familiar with John Wooden I highly recommend his book,Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success as an introduction to his wisdom.

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The other morning I arrived at work to discover that we had no water, and thus no coffee. Several people immediately complained about it, most people did did nothing. However, one person drove a mile down the road to McDonalds, bought six coffees, brought them back to the office, and left them in the kitchen for anyone to enjoy.

It was a great reminder: a lot of problems have a relatively easy fix (even if its just temporary one, like in this case). If you can get past the initial, “Oh, no!” reaction when discovering a problem, and take a couple of minutes to think about it strategically and creatively, you may be surprised how easy it is to fix that problem. In this case it was easy for the person to fix, cheap to fix, and quick to fix. Yet this simple, cheap, time effective solution was remarkably efficient at helping others and bringing a smile to their face.

This made me ask myself: next time a problem arises, will I complain, or will I offer a solution?

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