FOR PEOPLE WHO MAKE THINGS BETTER

Author Archive for Geoff Welch

You Don’t Need My Advice (But You Already Know That)

by Geoff Welch
February 16th, 2012

Let’s cut to the chase: You don’t need my advice.

I write about things I care about, and I hope that what I have to say encourages you as you work to make things a little better every day, but I have no illusions that you need me.

It’s okay. Really. Because it’s not about me. It’s about the people who benefit from you making things better.

You see, I read a lot of blogs and books and all sorts of stuff to help me do my best work. I’m one of these people that needs to be reminded of the stuff I already know until I really know it.

Often I read blogs that are inspiring because they reinforce something I already know, or force me to face a challenging perspective I already know I need to wrestle with.

Some would call this a gigantic waste of time, but I call it the fuel that helps me do my best work. Perhaps it’s a shortcoming, but if I need those reminders to do great work then I’m going to seek those reminders out.

So trust me, I know you don’t need my advice today. You don’t even need me to tell you that you don’t need my advice.

But maybe you could use a reminder that the world needs your greatness. Badly. That what you do matters and that you are, in fact, making things better. That without you pushing your light into the darkness, even just a little, the darkness might win the day.

It does, you are, and it might.

So please, please don’t stop.

Categories Musings
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Don’t Be A Giant Tool

by Geoff Welch
February 9th, 2012

I was recently reminded of the fable about the tortoise and the hare. I think the point of that story was lost even on it’s author. Slow and steady does not always win the race. Truthfully it almost never does.

Slow and steady, in fact, never beats fast and steady. It also never beats somewhat fast and steady or incredibly fast and focused just long enough to complete the race.

The problem with the race between the tortoise and the hare had nothing to do with speed. It was arrogance and carelessness and lack of focus that cost the hare the race.

The moral should have been, “Don’t be a giant tool: Take a nap after the race.”

That means that you must approach your work with humility, and passion, and appreciation. It means that you must do the hard work up front. It means that you must endeavor to display excellence and mastery in the work you do.

Slow and steady is fine. Being consistent is incredibly important. But we need you to do consistently great work, and to care. It’s not enough to just show up or to turn in every assignment. You have to want to be better than the status quo…and then prove it.

I know you can.

Categories Discipline & Focus
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If You Want To Make Things Better, You Can’t Be Too Careful

by Geoff Welch
February 2nd, 2012

Danger-Sign

I’m putting a new spin on an old yarn.

I’ve heard people say, “you can’t be too careful,” for years and have recently decided the phrase is in need of a new meaning.

Instead of it meaning that it’s impossible to be overly careful I think it should mean that being overly careful is devastating.

Yes. Instead of applauding someones cautiousness by confirming that you can’t be too careful, I want to warn people that you can’t be too careful or the good things in life will elude you.

Things like love. Have you ever known someone to experience the full wonder of love by being extra careful? Love requires you to set your cautiousness aside and allow for the possibility that someone could deeply injure you. Jon Foreman of Switchfoot sings, “If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love.”

And what of making things better? How exactly do you go about that if carefulness is your first priority? You can’t.

This is not to say that there is no place for caution, but that it’s time for caution to stop riding in the front seat. Or worse, driving.

Categories Better Things
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That Will Never Work And Here’s Why

by Geoff Welch
January 26th, 2012

I’m in the midst of planning a family vacation and am learning things about myself that, apparently, everyone else already knows.

It turns out I am very, very good at illustrating to others why things are a bad idea. I have always thought of myself as a pretty positive person, but man, I can find every reason something won’t work like it’s my job. (to be fair sometimes it actually is my job)

This can be very helpful in some settings, but I’m about to drive my wife crazy letting her know all the possible problems or inconveniences that I can conjure related to a cruise to Mexico with our daughter.

The best part is that she gets frustrated by how negative I am and I just don’t understand why. I’m being helpful!

Of course, as is true in most situations, she’s right.

So I’m trying to give my skepticism a rest and just choose to give more weight to what is likely to go right than what might, in the worst case scenario, go wrong.

I think I might actually be happier and end up making a lot of things better.

There is a time and place to shoot holes in ideas and consider the possible negative outcomes, but it seems problematic that such a practice is my default. I mean, everything is not going to fall to crap if I don’t consider every single variable in every single situation.

So I’m going to elect to see the brighter side. For a while at least.

Who knows, things might actually turn out okay.

What about you? Do you ever sabotage your own happiness by dwelling too much on negative possibilities? Does your skepticism make it difficult to make things better? Or is it a necessary tool to vet ideas?

Categories Musings
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How To Solve Procrastination

by Geoff Welch
January 19th, 2012

I put things off to avoid discomfort. I’m racking my brain to find another reason…but I just can’t.

That discomfort comes in two flavors: The discomfort of doing something I don’t want to do, and the discomfort of deciding what the hell I need to do.

Now, actually solving this takes a reservoir of discipline that I only sometimes have access to, but it’s helpful for me to at least understand the root cause of my inability to move projects forward.

When I find that a particular endeavor is stalled, and I am brave enough to ask myself why, I find that I either don’t want to do the project or, most often, I don’t know what to do next, which frustrates me and makes me want to avoid that discomfort.

The kind of procrastination that is born out of not wanting to do the work is easy to solve: Do the work.

The other kind is trickier though because I’m not procrastinating what I think I’m procrastinating.

I think I’m procrastinating an action like writing an article or installing a vanity cabinet…but I’m really procrastinating making some hard decisions about those activities because I don’t really know what to do next.

And that’s the most frustrating thing for me. When I don’t know what to do next, but feel like I should, I tend to go into avoidance mode.

Hmmm… It feels icky to not know what I should be doing about this project. Asking for help might injure my pride because I should know what to do. I better stop thinking about this because it makes me feel icky.

Except, when I am really brave enough to ask myself questions about why I’m stalled I find that solving one difficult, but small, problem is all that stands between me and actually finishing the whole project. That moment of release where I become unstuck is simultaneously wonderful and horrible. It’s great to have solved a problem and get going again but, oh, the horror of realizing how such a small thing unnecessarily clogged up the works.

The solution to most of my issues with procrastination isn’t doing more stuff, it’s being brave enough to confront the uncomfortable decisions that stand in the way of the doing.

But what about you? Do you most often put off doing or deciding?

Categories Discipline & Focus
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It’s Time To Ship

by Geoff Welch
January 10th, 2012

I’ve been working on a particularly bulky project for some time. This has involved a great deal of planning and many power thinking sessions during hot showers, but very little doing. You see, the doing will put me on the line, the planning is so much safer. But the more I think and plan, the more daunting the doing seems.

Frustrated with my inability to move I finally hit a breaking point last Friday and scribbled this image out out one of my ever present junior legal pads:

Instagram Photo

It speaks to the fact that I have a knack for planning things to death and have to press myself to just move.

So today this post is short and sweet. It’s time to move. I’m taking Seth’s advice to start shipping on this project…today.

And I implore you to do the same. Find a project that you are stalled on and find a way to move it forward…today. I bet you could find a project or two that, if you really wanted to, you could actually finish…today.

Move.

Ship.

Today.

Categories Action
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A 4 Year Old’s Perspective On Life

by Geoff Welch
January 4th, 2012

If my 4 year old daughter could share her thoughts on life, with a suped up vocabulary, I wonder if it might go something like this:

Grown ups are weird. They make life look really hard.

This is what life looks like to me: Wake up, get dressed in clothes that make me feel beautiful (matching colors are optional), play, dance, draw, imagine, eat, learn, breathe. I can’t reach some things but I’m getting really good at the essential life skill of climbing on precariously stacked objects.

The world around me is an amazing place and I learn about a million new things every day. I am always discovering, imagining, creating, building, and wondering. I can’t believe that much of anything is impossible.

I may not know everything (yet) but life seems to be full of possibility. Why my parents can’t see that is a mystery…

***

I know that we can’t all climb around on random objects while wearing mis-matched clothes every day, but I don’t believe we should leave all of our childhood wonder behind.

We should be learning every single day. We should be imagining. We should be playing. We should be constantly aware of the simplicity of each heartbeat and each breath.

Life can be complicated, to be sure, but if we’re going to make things better I think we’re going to have to remember what life was like before we drummed all the wonder out of it.

Categories Musings
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Today Is Your New Year

by Geoff Welch
December 28th, 2011

It’s the time of year when many of us consider the year that is past with romantic sentimentality and look toward the possibilities of the year to come.

We stand on the threshold of the new, ready to reach new heights in the coming year.

This thinking reminds me that every today is a new beginning. There is no need to wait for January 1 to make a change. In fact, I don’t believe anyone makes a choice on January 1 that changes their life.

Those who actually lose the weight, or write the novel, or learn the foreign language don’t do it because of a decision they made on a cold January morning. They do it because, as I wrote last week, they got up every morning thereafter and made the same choice.

And if you must make a choice every day to create and sustain meaningful change then it stands to reason that you could start that change on any day.

One way to prove this out is to start today. Don’t put off your change until the first. Start today. Make a move.

You are not a victim and the calendar cannot dictate to you when you can and cannot change. If you want something to be different, and you believe you have the capacity to make it happen, then don’t let January 1 hold you hostage.

And if you fall off the wagon, if you find yourself coming off the rails by February, come back and read this again. Be reminded, and encouraged, that there is no reason meaningful change can’t happen on the 8th of February.

Every day starts a new year. Every day is another chance to change.

Categories Action
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It’s Your Choice

by Geoff Welch
December 22nd, 2011

You have a choice today. It’s likely the same choice you had yesterday, and the same choice you will have tomorrow.

It’s a choice that could mean the difference between mediocrity and greatness, but you will probably not see it as such in the moment. It will likely seem like a choice between comfort and pain. And rightly so, but it’s not nearly that simple.

This choice is not really about today. It’s about the rest of your life. It’s like choosing between a brisk walk and a Twinkie. Both have long-term implications if you do them every day, and yet feel pretty meaningless on their own.

But this choice is not meaningless. This choice really can change everything. Making this choice might be hard as hell, but it will be worth it. I promise.

And you know it too.

But only you know what this choice actually is. I can’t explain your choice to you, and you really don’t need me to either. You know, intimately, about the choice you wrestle with every day.

My choice, most often, is whether I will create something new or rest in the comfort of consuming another’s creations. Will I spend another 20 minutes in a shower generating great ideas, or will I choose to actually make something out of them today?

Ideas are safe. Making something puts me in an uncomfortably vulnerable place. But I hate myself when I muzzle my soul to favor safety.

So let me encourage you to consider your choice to be paramount. Choosing correctly will likely not change your whole world today, but over days and weeks and months and years it will yield amazing results.

You know what you need to do. Will you do it?

Categories Action, Discipline & Focus
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Visionaries Are Kooks With A Plan

by Geoff Welch
December 15th, 2011

There is a delicate balance between being seen as a kook and being seen as a visionary.

The kook is dismissed but the visionary is revered. The kook is criticized but the visionary is praised. Both are crazy.

The fundamental difference between the two is often that the kook cannot illuminate how to make his ideas work in the real world and the visionary paints a picture of how these ideas will make everything better.

The visionary captures the hearts and minds of the people and they feel like her ideas can make a difference. The kook confuses people and they feel his ideas cannot be realized. The visionary makes people see how they can participate. The kook offers no way for others to connect to the idea.

A kook and a visionary can often have the same idea, but they are likely to produce an incredibly different result. The visionary is a kook that is in control of her ideas and she will find a way to make them real. The kook has wheels that are constantly spinning but never finding traction.

So, if you are going to be crazy, which I fully support, be seen as a visionary. That may sound difficult, but consider this: a visionary, the one we laud and love, is nothing more than a kook with a plan.

And that doesn’t seem so hard, does it?

Categories Action, Discipline & Focus
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