Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

productivity

Checking

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It is so great to have something to check. Something to check means progress is being made. The package is on the way, the project is moving forward, the numbers are ticking ever higher. Checking can be encouraging, exciting, and instructive.

But checking is a trap. Things don’t happen because you check, things happen because you take action, make a move, share something. The checks are the ripples from the first drop.

Checking is tricky because it can be nuanced. You can create new ways check; new ways to filter the spreadsheet, or create a new ratio. But this nuanced checking is still checking at its heart.

The more time you spend checking, the more likely it is you’re being distracted; doing things that are important but secondary.

By all means, check. But don’t lose site of the fact that you must keep doing things, over and over, to make the checking informative and useful.

Focus

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Our attention is limited by time, the nature of the mind, and by our choice of focus.

The more we focus on one thing, the less likely we are to notice another. Whether it’s doomscrolling, writing a memo, or churning something over in our head, our focus can be both productive and a distraction.

You don’t have to be absent-minded to miss something. It doesn’t mean you’re not smart if you have to re-read something after you catch your mind wandering. We all have limited time, limited capacity, and we need to focus to get things done.

Just remember: while you focus on one thing, you ignore another. So every now and then make sure to take a step back and make sure that whatever it is you’re ignoring, is by your own choice of focus.

The lazy genius

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There are definitely geniuses. Da Vinci comes to mind. Socrates. Einstein. Mother Theresa. Helen Keller. People whose very existence has such an impact on the world that they’re remembered for centuries.

There are also people who are famous, powerful, rich, or some combination thereof. These people are highly regarded for their impact. Some people may call them genius now, but time is still testing the merit of that descriptor in many cases.

In either case, we are really celebrating persistence.

What it takes to be a genius is showing up, putting in the work, and doing it again tomorrow. Focusing on incremental change. Getting back to it after a stumble. Refocusing on the most important thing after a distraction.

Most of us are geniuses (who’s to say you aren’t?) – we just might have a persistence problem.

Traction

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Skis are slippery on the bottom, which is great when you want to ski down a hill. But how do you get up a hill if you don’t have a ski-lift?

This is where skinning comes in.

Skinning is an old indigenous practice of affixing seal skins to the bottom of skis. If the sealskin is attached so that the grain of seal hair faces in the right direction on the bottom of the ski, it creates traction and you can slide your skis up a hill.

If you’re just starting out, you may feel like you’re not getting anywhere, and that can be frustrating. Just remember the beauty of traction is that once you have it, your entire journey becomes possible.

Send another email

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It’s important to you, this message you’ve crafted. The attention you want.

You’ve thought about just the right thing to say – it isn’t too long, or too short.

The timing has to be right, because the data shows that the best time to send an email is at 4am on Tuesday. Of course only suckers do that because everyone is sending their email at that time – so you’ll do it Wednesday.

Sending this email is work. It’s productivity. It’s marketing. It means you’ll be busier, and busier means you’re doing your job well.

The email is saying “there, I tried – I thought a lot about it too. I did it at the time I was supposed to, at just the right length. Just like everyone does.”

So you click send. And then you wait.

You wait because you don’t know the person on the other side or what they care about. But I’ll give you a hint: it probably isn’t getting more email from strangers.