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Saturday Sage: 10 Ways to Get Serious about Skylarking

Conventional wisdom says use time efficiently. But wisdom is unconventional sometimes. When efficiency excludes skylarking, it’s foolish. People say do everything you can to get the most done in the shortest amount of time. A sage knows wasting time is a virtue, not a sin.

Anyone who really wants to get more done needs to practice skylarking. If you have too much to do, go skylarking.

What is skylarking:

Skylarking is goofing off – outbursts of playfulness.

Skylarking was a term used to describe sailors leaping from mast to mast and sliding down, all just for fun. And it was dangerous!

Short-sighted officers on ships weren’t impressed with childlike play. They shouted, “Come down from there. Stop that nonsense! Get back to your chores. Stop goofing off.” They thought it was a complete waste of time and a distraction from responsibilities. But skylarking improved the sailor’s attitudes and the quality of their work.

Every firm needs a GOO – Goofing Off Officer.

Skylarking benefits:

The best use of time includes space for inspiration, creativity, and recreation. Playfulness increases productivity. Efficiency, in most organizations, trumps the idea of skylarking. But skylarking increases efficiency.

Geir Berthelsen, founder of the World Institute of Slowness, says, “A frantic morning is the beginning of a distracted day. Business leaders need to take time to forget about time, and that helps them to be creative when they arrive at work.”

“The fastest way to improve your life is to slow down.” Geir Berthelsen

10 ways to get serious about skylarking:

#1. Put goofing off on your calendar.

If busy meant getting things done, to-do lists would be short. But the busier you are, the more you have to do.

#2. Do something playful every day.

#3. Develop an unhurried attitude.

Don’t run around doing things. Quickly reject what doesn’t matter by knowing your goals and values. Does this matter? How does this activity take me where I need to go? When you’re sure you’re doing what matters, forget the noise and have fun doing it.

Practice an unhurried life.

Allow time between meetings to walk slowly. “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” John Wooden

#4. Think privilege, not obligation.

#5. Remove clutter.

#6. Express a ridiculous thought.

#7. Be the first to try something new.

#8. Rebel against standard operating procedures. (Not if you run surgery.)

#9. Listen for wacky ideas and think ‘what if’.

#10. Ask people to make…

3 Ways to Protect Good Managers from Becoming Jerk-holes

Lousy managers think jerk-holery is an asset. Well-intentioned managers can slip into obnoxious behaviors because some jerk-holes are great at delivering results.

3 ways to protect good managers from becoming jerk-holes

#1. Protect good managers from dancing egos.

You stay calm on the outside when you earn a promotion, but on the inside ego dances. A little ego is healthy and necessary. A dancing ego makes you a jerk-hole.

Ask newly promoted managers to make a list of 5 things they don’t want to do during the first 90-days of their new assignment.

Ask managers to think of the best managers they have ever known. Make a list of the behaviors that made them successful. Notice if they list skills or character qualities.

Discuss their list:

Which items reflect skills?
Which items reflect character traits?
Which three behaviors on your list are most valuable to you right now?
Which three behaviors on your list are most important for long-term success?
How might you practice humility as this assignment begins?

#2. Protect good managers from shrinking brains.

Jerk-holes know it all. A closed mind shrinks.

Success confirms. Failure opens minds.

Protect good managers by teaching them to stay open when things go well.

Open mind projects:

Track how many times you change your thinking over the next two weeks.
Ask, “What do I need to know about this?” 3x a day for a week.
Recall a time when you thought you were right, but you were wrong. What can you do to avoid that situation in the future?

#3. Protect good managers from the dangers of time-pressure.

Jerk-holes are rude and obnoxious.

A manager in a rush makes excuses for obnoxious behaviors.

Soften your tone. Relax your breathing. Remember what you like about the person in front of you. Say, “Thank you,” regularly.

What are some ways to protect good managers from slipping into obnoxious behaviors?

Still curious:

24 Ways to Challenge People Without being a Jerk-Hole – Leadership Freak

No More Working for Jerks!

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Calling Out Hypocritical Leaders – Leadership Freak

Calling Out Hypocritical Leaders

“The greatest harm in the world has been done by people with good intentions.” Anonymous

The most destructive hypocrites believe they’re authentic. They have good intentions but don’t see their own inconsistency.

Teams are destroyed by hypocritical leaders.

Hypocritical leaders:

The most destructive hypocrite is a sincere hypocrite with influence. Obscurity protects society from the unknown hypocrite.

A well-known hypocrite causes more damage than an obscure one.

The more influence you have, the greater your potential to corrupt.

Hypocritical leaders who feel authentic destroy organizations.

Self-deceived hypocritical leaders:

Hypocritical leaders say people matter and act like they don’t.

Leaders who say, “It’s all about the people,” but spend their days building systems, making plans, and signing papers are hypocrites. They might be sincere but they say one thing and do another.

Sincerity makes idiots of leaders when it’s the reason they don’t examine themselves.

Leaders who say, “It’s all about the people,” but avoid people are self-deceived.

Leaders who say it’s all about the people but run around barking at people like frightened lapdogs with bulbous eyes are the worst kind of hypocrite. Micromanagers don’t believe it’s about the people. They believe it’s about themselves.

There is a type of hypocrisy that has enough sense to see its own absurdity. Micromanagers don’t see the absurdity of their own inconsistency.

The answer:

The answer is people.

The answer to organizational challenges is people. You might protest, “What about planning and action?” Who do you think makes plans and takes action?

Programs and systems are helpful but extraneous apart from people. Additionally, leaders who create systems that drain people are hypocrites, regardless of sincerity.

Reject sincere hypocrisy.

Leadership is about people.
Pour yourself into people.
Invite people to pour themselves into you.
Look for answers in people because people are the answer.

What do people-centric organizations look like?

Still curious:

Calling Out BS

Hypocritical Leaders Make Poor Leaders

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If You Hate Small Talk Read This

Small talk creates advantage.

You harm yourself, limit opportunities, and frustrate your career when you avoid polite conversations.

Who enjoys more opportunity? The person who avoids people or the person who gets to know people?

4 reasons small talk is a big deal:

#1. Healthy relationships are never all business.

Very happy people tend to be highly social. Unhappy people have social relationships that are significantly worse than average.

Social relationships are not sufficient in themselves to produce high levels of happiness, but they are an essential ingredient. Diener and Seligman

#2. Thin social connection comes before deep trust.

We get to know people before we trust them.

#3. Collaboration includes chitchat.

We collaborate with people we know. Laughing together over lunch is one way we get to know people.

#4. Lighthearted conversation sets a positive tone.

A kind word and a smile say you care. We let people know we care about them in casual ways.

5 steps to successful small talk:

#1. Show up with a plan.

Planned spontaneity is better than winging it.

Reflect on ways to put others at ease.
Determine the goal of casual conversations.
Show up with a set of questions.

#2. Deal with discomfort by turning outward instead of inward.

Dwelling on yourself shrinks your world. Small talk expands it. (Potentially)

#3. Talk to yourself in helpful ways.

Tell yourself ‘you can’ when your inner critic says ‘you can’t’.

#4. Show up with a set of questions.

What do you do? How did you get interested in that?
Where do you live? What was your hometown like?
What place would you love to visit?

#5. Share a bit of yourself.

You’re nosy if you only ask questions.

Bonus: Give yourself an exit strategy. “Great to meet you. Please excuse me, I want to greet some other people.”

What small-talk-tips can you add?

Still curious: Please Stop Talking about Work for 10 Minutes

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How to Defeat the Dark Side of Imagination

Imagination causes anxiety.

I was afraid of the dark when I was a kid. Monsters lurked in the closet. I still imagine monsters where none exist. A headache is a brain tumor. Indigestion is food poisoning. A strange noise means the car’s engine is shot.

Imagined enemies are harder to kill than real.

Imagined monsters are like body odor. They go where you go.

Imagine the worst:

I imagine the worst. Maybe you do too.

The boss says, “Can you hang back after the meeting?” Your heart races.

When new ideas are suggested, imagined monsters fill your mind.

You imagine obstacles based on past experiences. When your boss typically plays it safe, you anticipate resistance to new proposals.

Imagine success:

Reflecting on the future is an act of imagination.

Imagination is where success begins.

If you can’t imagine it, you can’t achieve it.

It’s silly to think imagined success is real success. It’s foolish to think fantasy trumps grit. But imagination is a necessary beginning.

5 ways to defeat the dark side of imagination:

The person who imagines success is more likely to succeed than the person who imagines failure.

Winners imagine success and act. Losers imagine failure and stay the same.

#1. Don’t dismiss negative imagination.

A person who doesn’t imagine obstacles and challenges is unprepared.

Imagined monsters are useful when they inform action and destructive when they prevent action.

#2. Dedicate time to imagine success.

Imagine positive results.
Visualize the process of winning.

#3. Be a cheerleader. Get a cheerleader.

The people around you either strengthen your heart or weaken your knees.

#4. Ask, “What if we do nothing?”

Consider the consequences of staying the same.

#5. Imagine something you might try.

When can’t-do fills your mind, imagine a small thing you can do. Action answers anxiety.

How can leaders address the dark side of imagination?

4 Tips to Answer Anxiety – Leadership Freak

How Compassion Answers Anxiety – Leadership Freak

Sir Ken Robinson – The Power Of Imagination

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28 Words Every Leader Needs to Thrive

Book Giveaway!

Author Bill Treasurer is giving away five signed copies of his new book, “Leadership Two Words at a Time.” Just leave a comment on today’s post to become eligible.

Winners must be residents of the continental U.S. Deadline for eligibility is 10/8/2022.

Success in leadership is a three-legged stool. When you fail in one area, you fail. My friend, Bill Treasurer, says the three legs of leadership are:

Leading yourself.
Leading people.
Leading business.

You can succeed in one area of leadership and still fail.

You might get things done but if you can’t lead yourself, failure is around the corner. You might be great with people but if you lack courage to deal with tough issues, you’re doomed. Everyone might love you but if you can’t deliver results, you’re ruined.

28 words leaders need to thrive:

Bill’s book, “Leadership Two Words at a Time: Simple Truths for Leading Complicated People,” captures the core of leadership in 14 two-word principles.

Leading yourself principles:

#1. Know Thyself

Transform your leadership with self-awareness.

#2. Model Principles

Live the values you want others to live by.

#3. Aspire Higher

Continually lift people, performance, and profits.

#4. Gain Control

Be better for everyone through self-mastery.

#5. Practice Humility

Prevent hubris by keeping your ego in check.

#6. Cultivate Composure

Purify your motives with daily reflection.

Leading people principles:

#7. Trust First

Build trust by first being trustworthy.

#8. Create Safety

Promote courage with psychological safety.

#9 Nurture Talent

Develop people so they can add more value.

#10. Promote Inclusion

Create a just, fair, and equitable workplace.

Leading business principles:

#11. Love Business

Keep learning and you’ll enjoy the adventure!

#12. Get Results

In my house we say, “Get’er did.”

#13. Master Management

Apply fundamentals to have more impact.

#14. Lead Up

Succeed by supporting your boss’s success.

Two more words:

Bill’s book begins with, “Be courageous.” Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important virtue.”

I chatted with Bill about some of the two-word principles in his book. Here’s the video:

Which two-word principles do you find most relevant today?

Connect with Bill Treasurer:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courage/

Facebook: http://facebook.com/bill.treasurer

Twitter: https://twitter.com/btreasurer

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Time Management: 7 Golden Rules for Golden Hours

We need reminders that everything we hope to do requires time and energy. Time management is the power to manage your schedule and your energy.

You have two or three golden hours every day. You get more done in your golden hours than you get done the rest of the day.

Do priority work when you’re at your best.

I can get lots done other times of the day, but my best hours are before breakfast.

Time management: 7 golden rules for golden hours

#1. Do impactful work.

Do big-rock work during your golden hours.

Fools spend time on busywork. If it’s not useful and meaningful, don’t do it. Better to check off one high-impact task a day than to spend one hour doing busywork.

#2. Organize before.

Choose peak-hour tasks before peak-time begins. Don’t waste peak performance time figuring out what to do.

#3. Narrow focus.

Multitasking makes you stupid.
Close your door.
Don’t surf the Internet.
Return calls later.
Turn off email.

#4. Use maximizers.

Does classic rock fuel your jets? Turn up the volume.

I prefer a dark quiet room during my golden hours.

#5. Make time management social.

Everyone on the team needs to know and respect everyone’s golden-hour-time. Hang a do not disturb sign on your door.

Give everyone on your team permission to maximize golden hours.

#6. Schedule playtime.

Playfulness expresses our humanity. “Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays.” Friedrich Schiller

Surf the Internet when you feel like taking a nap, not when you’re bright eyed.

#7. Delete stuff.

Delete anything that’s older than two weeks from your to-do list.

How might leaders take time management to new levels?

Still curious:

How to Flame Up, Not Out

Saturday Sage: A Playful Life Is a Better Life

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4 Things I Learned after 2 Weeks Vacation in Maine

Some vacations are about doing stuff but the best vacations don’t have agendas. When you need a vacation to recover from vacation, you did it wrong.

Our plan was to live without a plan for two weeks.

Our favorite reading spot while on vacation in Maine.

My bride and I have two homes. Our home is Pennsylvania and we grew up in Maine. We just returned from two weeks back home in Maine, most of it spent in a small town 35 miles south of Canada, Machiasport. (Our real home is Central Maine, but the coast has the best seafood in the world.)

You could throw a rock into the Atlantic from our vacation rental and it was secluded. We saw two people on the beach the whole time we were there. The word ‘beach’ is misleading for the coast of Northern Maine. You wouldn’t dream of swimming unless you had a layer of blubber. Occasional patches of sand pretend to be beaches.

4 things I learned after 2 weeks vacation in Maine:

#1. Books inspire. Cable news contaminates you.

We didn’t see the news for two weeks.

I read Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung. He was brilliant, even if you don’t agree with everything he believed.

Cable news at night is idiotic.

#2. Ted Lasso is as good as my friends said.

We don’t have Apple TV at home but our vacation rental did. In the evenings we binged two seasons of Ted Lasso. Talk about a lift.

#3. The world doesn’t need me.

Everything kept turning without me. That’s freeing, not depressing. Brevity and frailty add value to every breath.

#4. Rituals and routines are good.

Living without an agenda is good for awhile but rituals and routines tell us who we are and where we’re going. Useful routines are channels of reliable contribution. Rituals provide stability in turbulence.

What have you remembered after time away on vacation?

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Idiots Don’t Take Notes – Leadership Freak

Idiots Don’t Take Notes

You had a brilliant thought and like an idiot didn’t write it down.

The opportunity to record a brilliant idea is the time between a lightning flash and the thunder that follows. If you hear the thunder and don’t take notes, the thought-gods take back their gift.

Your brilliant thought didn’t die. It drifted into the atmosphere looking for someone with respect.

People who respect ideas take notes.

A billionaire can take notes:

The founder of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson, takes notes. Did I mention he’s a billionaire?

“I urge everybody to take notes, whatever they are doing, wherever they are going. It doesn’t matter what form they take – laptops and phones are better than nothing – but I prefer a pen and paper.”

Fools hear wisdom and say, “I knew that.”

Wisdom feels familiar when you hear it. When you hear something interesting write it down, even if it feels familiar.

Branson says, “Become a great listener. Get out there and ask people questions and write down the answers.”

A genius poet wrote notes:

Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are the two leading 19th century American poets. Some consider Dickinson to be the greatest American poet of all time. She published 10 poems in her lifetime. All were published anonymously. She actually wrote about eighteen hundred poems.

Dickinson respected ideas. It seems she wrote down in the moment. Scraps of paper, envelopes, even the wrapper of cooking chocolate have partial or complete poems on them.

Keep your pen handy. You never know when an idea might pop in.

One of the most successful British business leaders and one of America’s greatest poets captured thoughts with notes.

Take out your pen today.

What note taking strategies do you use?

Still curious:

How Curiosity Changed My Life

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3 Ways to Respond to Failure: Get a Bigger Nail

Stephen King hung rejection notices on a nail when he was a kid. When he turned 17, the nail fell out because of all the rejections he’d received.

What did he do with failure? He got a bigger nail.

3 ways to respond to failure: Get a bigger nail.

#1. Know failure isn’t the end.

Failure is the soft underbelly of success.

Dr. Seuss tried to sell his first children’s book 27 times. He was on his way home to burn it when he ran into a college friend who just started a job with a publisher. The rest is history.

Beatrix Potter couldn’t find a publisher for The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She published it herself. It has sold about 45 million copies.

Literary Hub reports that Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times.

King trashed his first draft of Carrie. His wife found it, unwrinkled it, read it, and told him to keep writing. Carrie sold for a $2,500 advance. It was published in 1974. He was 27 years old.

King has written 64 novels and sold about 350 million books. He’s worth over 500 million today.

#2. Hug failure; don’t push it away.

Your most powerful stories are about overcoming failure.

You won’t enjoy failing; own it anyway. The alternative to owning failure is blame. Blame guarantees you stay the same.

Tell your friends what’s hanging on your nail. You reject yourself when you push away your own stories.

#3. Adopt a next-time approach.

The difference between success and defeat is response.

Commit to the one-more-try principle.
Notice what isn’t working. Don’t repeat self-defeating behaviors.
Adopt a do-differently approach. What will you do differently next time?

The more you try, the more you fail – until you don’t.

The alternative to failing is dying slowly.

What’s your advice to people who fail?

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