Quick Biz Skills

The Most Important Skill

What’s the most important business skill?  You may think it’s interpersonal communication, or sales, or IT.  Nope.  Those are all great skills to have, but the single most important skill is the ability to consistently self-motivate.  If you can get yourself to consistently pursue a goal until you succeed, even when you don’t feel like it, even when you’re discouraged, even when getting the goal looks impossible, then you will come out ahead of almost everyone else.   For example, world class golfers play in a tournament, then go directly to the driving range and spend 6 hours working on aspects of their game they thought weren’t good enough.  Are they tired? Yes.  But their motivation to win is more powerful than their desire to rest.  When Bill Gates was a teenager, he spent every waking moment of many weekends writing code.   Every moment.   Did he get tired?  Probably.  But look where he is today.  Superior performance takes superior motivation.

Here’s how to improve your self-motivation.  Whenever you undertake a new task, whether it’s losing weight, getting more organized, writing that novel you’ve had in your head for years, or saving for retirement, first write down exactly what’s important to you about achieving it.  Use emotional language, such as, “It will make me feel valuable, it will increase my self-respect, I’ll feel much more fulfilled.”   Then write down what success will look, sound, smell and feel like.  Describe in Rich Detail everything that will let you know you have succeeded.  For example, if you want to save $10,000, don’t just write down, “I’ll see the $10,000 in my bank account.”  Also write down things like, “I’ll see the look of pride in my wife’s face when I tell her,” or, “I’ll hear my father congratulate me on doing a great job,” or, “I’ll smell the champagne and steak at the fancy restaurant I’ll take my boyfriend to as a celebration for doing such a great job.”   The more sensory information you create in describing your success, the more likely it will be to come true.

Learn to successfully self-motivate, and you will own your future.

Proactive Hindsight

Supposedly, hindsight is 20/20, but in fact, it’s highly innacurate and very selective.  One way to combat the distortive effect of hindsight is to use proactive hindsight – that is, imagine a future you want in as much detail as possible, then look back to see how you got there.  Because we like to believe ourselves to be successful people, our subconscious minds will only present the actions we took to become successful.  Proactive hindsight enables us to create a roadmap to success.   This concept is so important, I wrote a book about it which will soon be available on this site as well as through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.   Art

LOL at new word definitions

Who says language isn’t always evolving? Here are some hysterical alternate definitions of everyday words as provided by entrants in the Washington Post’s annual neologism contest. I wouldn’t advise using any of these definitions in your business writing, but they’re definitely good for a laugh. And who knows, they may find their way into Funk and Wagnel’s someday. Art

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3 . Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

Quoted in Yahoo Hotjobs

I was recently quoted in an article in Yahoo Hotjobs about the 13 best ways to sabotage your job search. Take a look at http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-13_ways_to_sabotage_your_job_search-1325. Art

Punctuation and the Panda

A panda walks into a bar and orders a beer and a burger.  He finishes, pulls out a gun, and shoots the place up.  The other patrons hit the floor, the bartender dives behind the bar, and broken glass is flying everywhere.  As the panda turns to leave, the bartender sticks his head over the edge of the bar and says, “What was that all about?”

The panda throws a wildlife manual on the bar, sneers, “I’m a panda.  Look it up,”  and storms out.  The bartender thumbs through the manual and finds the following entry – “Panda: eats, shoots and leaves.”

The point of this little story?  To illustrate how important proper punctuation is in getting across the real meaning of your written communications.  After all, if a misplaced comma can turn a cute, cuddly vegetarian into a vicious, burger-noshing gunslinger, what might an improper apostrophe or a troubled comma do to your writing, maybe even your career?

Most of us haven’t thought about proper punctuation since third grade, so maybe it’s time to upgrade our mental punctuation checkers.  Try a copy of Lynne Truss’s wonderful little book, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves.”  Lynne pulls off the near-impossible.  She makes punctuation fun, sometimes even funny.  And her book is a great reference tool as well.  Everyone who writes for business should have one, even if it’s only to have a laugh every now and then.

Art