Tag Archives: ideas

‘Making it work’ mindset

This was in James Clear’s weekly 3-2-1 email newsletter:

“One type of person approaches a situation with the mindset of, “How can I make this work?” 
Another type seems to approach each circumstance with the mindset of, “What are all the reasons this wouldn’t work?” 
Both people will be forced to deal with reality, but the first person will only have to solve problems that actually occur while the second person will often avoid taking action entirely because of the potential problems they have dreamt up before starting. 
There will always be reasons to not do something. Be a problem solver, not a problem adder.” – James Clear

It’s not just enough to have the right mindset when you have to work with someone who has the wrong mindset. You lift an idea up, and it gets knocked down. You make a suggestion and three counter examples are brought up. I believe there are times and places that this counter argument can be healthy and even promote better solutions, but when you are still looking for solutions and you have someone knocking the ideas down over and over, well then the problem or problems become unsurmountable. It’s not just your own mindset that matters, it’s the whole team’s.

I remember working on a team where this one person seemed to undermine almost everything I suggested. Even when I went to her in advance to see what the roadblocks were, she’d still undermine my meeting with new problems after I thought we’d exhausted reasons it wouldn’t work. What I didn’t understand was that this wasn’t just about being stubborn and not wanting to change, it seemed more just a mindset of “This isn’t working, and that won’t work either.”

I left that job before ever solving the mystery of how to work with this person effectively, but that experience taught me that it’s not just important to have a solution-focused mindset, it’s important that the people you work with do as well… or that you plan meetings such that ideas are allowed to be developed before there are opportunities to knock them down. Because it’s easier to knock ideas down than it is to build them up.

Rinse and repeat

It was bound to happen. In fact, it might have happened before this and I simply didn’t notice. Writing a daily blog since mid July, I just caught myself sharing the same idea twice. It wasn’t until I published the idea that I caught myself rinsing and repeating the same idea.

Yesterday was the second time that I wrote about asking ‘What’s the third option?‘ when looking to make a tough decision. The first time I wrote about this was back at the start of November, three and a half months ago. The post, ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place (and…)‘, was the original post, and it is an identical idea, except with greater detail than yesterday’s post.

I had no memory of sharing the idea before. In fact I would not have known that I did this had I not reread the post after publishing it. As I reached the end, I noticed the original title in the ‘Related’ posts section. Clicking on it, I realized very quickly what I had done.

What prompted the rewrite was a conversation with someone who refused to allow any suggestion of a third option. Why I started this post saying, ‘it was bound to happen’ is because part of writing is helping to formulate and express ideas in a concrete way. The process helps me put ideas together in a way that defines my thoughts on an idea more clearly.

However, over three months later, I’m not remembering whether I shared the idea through my writing, I’m just thinking about an idea that is in my head. At first, it was interesting to me that the second post was less detailed than the original. Then, I realized that the first post was written on a Saturday, and it made sense because I give myself more time to write on weekends.

I’m sure this will happen again. I will have moments when my creative juices are flowing and I’ll share fresh ideas… or at least fresh ideas to me. And I’ll have moments when I end up recycling or repeating older ideas. The process of writing every day will lead to some repetition, hopefully though, the ideas I choose to repeat are worth reading and thinking about again. I probably won’t re-share this idea of sharing my repeats again even if I catch myself, but if you catch me doing this, please feel free to let me know.