Packing party

Have you ever tried a packing party? What is a packing party?

Assume you are moving from your current address and box everything you own. Only get out what you need to keep your life going. Give yourself two weeks. Anything you have not unboxed isn’t necessary for your life.

You can easily get rid of it without hurting yourself too much.

A packing party will open your eyes to the things that really matter in your life. We walk around with much more than we need because we have never taken the radical step to question why we have certain things in our life. This exercise can help you travel light along the journey of life. It is a minimalist and essentialist dream. What are some of the ways in which we can apply this to our lives?

While for many of us the idea of packing up all the stuff we have and getting out the necessities is a stretch, this discipline has a lot of value in many areas of life.

Your contact list.

If you take a long and hard look at your contact list, you will realize that you haven’t spoken to 80% of the people therein, for more than two years. A lot of them are random contacts you pick up along the way telling yourself you will get around to engaging them when you have some time. Five years later and you have never found that time. What makes you think you will get time in the sixth year. Some of these contacts belong to a remote server somewhere out there where you can retrieve them if need be. They have no business clogging your primary contact list. Our lives would be simpler if we kept our lists short and sweet. How does your contact list look like? Is it something you are proud of or can it do with some culling? How about moving all your contacts elsewhere and only retrieving those you need for the next one month. Any contacts you don’t interact with for the next ninety days can be kept where it is until the situation changes.

Your play lists for music, movies etc.

As I speak my own movie folder has about 350GB worth of data. You can be sure I have watched almost all of it but there’s only a few movies and series which have a chance of being watched again. If I followed my advice strictly (which I intend to do) I will be left with 50 GB of this. What will that mean? It means I will have more space to store the things that really matter and are critical to my work. It will also have an impact on the overall performance of this laptop I am using just to name a few of the benefits. Run through your own movie and music folders and see what needs to go. In these days of Netflix and others, you don’t need to clog your computer with a lot of unnecessary baggage unless that Netflix is also part of the baggage you need to let go of. 

Your Social Media tools/App list

This morning I deleted three apps which I have never used ever since I bought my current phone. You never really pay attention to some things until when they start being costly to maintain. It took a warning about the space available on my phone for me to take a look. I am planning to delete more. What’s the point of an App you haven’t used for over a year. One good way to do this is to uninstall every app on your phone and only reinstall what you need to use as the need arises.

This article was inspired by the invasiveness of Social Media and its impact on our ability to do high quality work every day. In his book Deep work, Carl Newport makes the case that social media is a hindrance to our abilities to do meaningful, high impact work. While he doesn’t advocate for a complete severing of links with social media, he calls on us to really examine our engagement on it and see what value it offers. He proposes that we take a 30 day sabbatical from Social Media and see what impact it has on us. If we find it necessary, then we can go back. If our lives and activities can go on without it, then there’s no point going back there. This is a big one. What would happen if you went offline for the next thirty days? There is no better way to find out than to actually take that step. A lot of the tools we use and cling to, are nothing more than a narrative we have told ourselves and been told many times over until we have come to believe it. When everything is analyzed, you realize there are very few tools we need to function. Ask yourself where there is impact and focus your attention there.

Your friend list.

This is a hard one. How do you choose your friends? I will use Jesus as a good example of managing friends. During his ministry here on earth, Jesus interacted with thousands of people. He commanded huge crowds wherever he went. What if He tried to form intimate bonds with each of these people? Would he have had the impact he had? It is impossible to have much impact if you stretch yourself too thin. Jesus had a solution for this. Beyond the huge multitude, he also had a smaller circle of 120 disciples who were in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. Then here was the group of 72. Out of this large group he chose 12 who walked very closely with him. And out of the 12, there were three Peter, James and John who were bosom buddies. Wherever he went these three would always be there. The best way to categorize your friends is to position them all at the level of the innumerable multitude. Let them choose whether they will be in the 120, 72, 12  or 3 basket. This will be determined by the degree of their engagement and involvement in your life. Some people will give up everything to be with you, others will give you up for anything. You need to spot the difference.

Subscriptions.

There are so many things we subscribe to in life. Some of us have no idea how much we lose every month through subscriptions we stopped using years ago. Think about what comes into your inbox and mailbox. Do you really need all of it? Sometimes our inboxes are overcrowded because we have subscribed to things on a whim. We need to do a better job of controlling our subscriptions. There are services you no longer need but you still keep paying a monthly subscription for. What are some of these subscriptions for you? Be radical enough to cancel all and see which ones you really need for the next 90 days. Only renew the ones vital to you and forget the rest. Not only will it save you money. It will also save you time and make your life simpler. The challenge of our generation is that we have too many options to choose from that we end up duplicating some of our subscriptions without detecting it.

What else do you think you can add to this list? I know for sure that this list is not conclusive. Go ahead and share some of the things you are going to pack starting now.

As you grow older, keep your list of things short and sweet. You will realize you can function just fine without a majority of the things which look like indispensables right now.

A lot of interesting stuff is going on right now. We have the Crossroads Virtual Summit coming up in less than two months. 

You can be a part of it by following the link below to register or share it with others between the ages of 17-25 years.

https://www.mtickets.com/buy/crossroads-virtual-summit/991

My book Blessed to be a Blessing has also been nominated for the ACABA Awards. You can vote for me by following this link. 

https://africanauthors.net/nominee/blessed-to-be-a-blessing/ 

I am also opening up the opportunity to join our Free Introductory class for Optimize Your Life. Feel free to book your spot following the link below if you haven't already. The time for you to level up is now. 

https://samuelmwinamo.ck.page

Goal Categories.

 

Not all goals are equal. Some goals naturally need to come before others in the hierarchy. Pursuing certain goals before you take care of the basics is like putting the cart before the horse. First we taxi, then we fly.

I learned from Dr. Benjamin Hardy three interesting ways of looking at goals. There are what we call Keystone goals, Means goals and End goals. In this article, we will look at each of these types of goals with relevant to gain a better understanding.

What is a Keystone Goal?

A keystone goal is described as one that has the greatest bearing on the overall outcome of your life. While it is not the ultimate goal, the achievement of a keystone goal sets you up to excel on all your other goals easily. It can be likened to what Brian Tracy calls the ugliest frog in his book Eat That Frog. There are certain goals which are big, scary, intimidating and unsettling. It is easier to bypass them and look for others which are slightly less intimidating. Brian Tracy says that if you can eat a frog for breakfast, then there is pretty much nothing else that could happen in your day which is worse off. He goes further to say that when you have more than one frog to eat, you do well to start with the ugliest. While this applies to daily chores, it can also easily be applied to your goals. Not all goals are equal. Achieving a Keystone goal drives your motivation through the roof because you tell yourself that there is nothing I can’t do if I have managed to get that out of the way.

For many people financial freedom is a keystone goal. Until you get to a point of financial freedom, there are many things which you are not able to do for yourself or others. Financial freedom opens up all manner of possibilities. You are able to move in whatever direction you will with a degree of financial freedom. When you look at Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you realize that survival is only big at the beginning. As you move up the ladder, you realize there are higher goals and ideals you want to pursue. Achieving a Keystone goal, gives you the liberty to pursue these higher ideals. Many of us in the developing world need to break out of the quest to survive and begin to live at a higher level. For us, financial freedom is a huge keystone goal to achieve. Do you agree? If yes, what represents financial freedom in your circumstances? If this is not your cup of tea, what is your keystone goal? Share and let me know in the comments below.

Means Goals.  

Another division of goals are what we consider means goals. Some keystone goals are means goals in that they pave the way for progress on higher goals. A means goal is any goal whose achievement opens the door for your ultimate goals to be pursued. As the name suggests, they are a means to an end. Means goals are very important because without their achievement, we remain stuck in first gear. They are also good at building momentum for greater pursuits. Every day you accomplish something you are driven to go for more and this is the magic of means goals.

A practicing athlete can set goals for themselves with regard to how much they want to weigh and how fast they want to run a selected course during their training. While this does not happen in the presence of many, it is an important means goal that ensures when the athlete goes into competition they are able to win the gold medal which is the end goal. Losing weight might not mean much on its own but in the grand scheme of the athlete’s target, it plays a very significant role.

What are some of the means goals you need to have in place when you think about your ultimate goal for this year? What’s your experience with means goals in the past and how have they helped you progress?

End goals.

End goals represent the highest ideals you want to pursue. They rank at the top of the pyramid when it comes to the Hierarchy of needs. What do you really want to accomplish when all is said and done? These are legacy type of goals. If you were told you had 6 months to live, what kind of things would come to the fore in a way you haven’t imagined before? End goals are those things you will be ready to pass on to the next life once you are done with. These are the goals you will ask for time to reach before you are ready to roll. Do you have any goals like that in your life?

At an individual level one of my end goals is to be involved in the conversion of at least one million people to the Christian persuasion in my lifetime and help them live out their full potential for service to God and humanity. A lot of what I do is geared towards that as ultimate. There are many things that need to be done in the interim to get me there but ultimately my chief Joy is to see many come to the knowledge of God and flowing out of that knowledge a life of self-giving service for the benefit of the kingdom and their fellow men. Your end goal is the thing whose accomplishment will live you with an immense sense of fulfilment. It is the thing for which you are willing to give anything to accomplish. It must be something that is hugely compelling and impossible to quench until its realization. Something you must be ready to die for if need be which will drive you to spend your every waking moment working towards without fainting.

What is your end goal dear reader? What is the one thing for which you are willing to give up everything?  Go ahead and share it with us. The time is right for you to pursue it with every fibre of your existence.

If for any reason you are having issues getting started on your goals or you are stuck somewhere along the way, we can help you proceed. Send a DM on +254725832477 with ‘I need help.’ And we will get in touch.

I am opening up my free masterclass for all who want to get the most out of their lives. Follow the link below to register. 

https://samuelmwinamo.ck.page

 

Goal Metrics

Evaluation is a critical component of goal-getting. Goal setting is a great thing but it is only half of the job you need to do. Goal getting is what moves you from where you are to the next level. Evaluation helps you tell how far you have gone in reaching your goals at any given time. What metrics do you use in evaluating your performance?

In his great book Deep Work, Carl Newport suggests the use of two important metrics you can use to show you how far you have come. They are Lead and Lag measures. In this article we will explore what the two metrics are and why you need to pay attention to them as you go along.

Lag Measures describe the ultimate thing you are trying to improve. They come much later and by the time you measure them, it is too late to change your behavior. By the time you receive them, the performance that drove them is already in the past. This explains why we say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. When you think too much about the final outcome with little focus on your actions today, you are likely to miss out on the immediate adjustments you need to make. Lag measures have a way of taking care of themselves if only you learn to do a better job of tracking your lead measures.

It is wildly important to distinguish between your lead and lag measures because when you focus too much on what is so far out there, you might lose track of what you can change immediately.

Lead measures tell you what new behaviors you need to track that will have an impact on your ultimate outcome.  They help you turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control in the near future that will have a positive impact on your long term goals. For every goal that you pursue, it is important that you are clear on the actions that are in your direct control. This gives you what to act on in the short term.

Let’s say you have the goal of raising Kes. 10 million by the end of the year. That acts as your lag measure. You will only tell that you have done it or how far you have gone in doing it towards the end of the year. On the other hand, there are certain actions you can begin to measure right away. If you are a salesman, you will be asking yourself, how many presentations have I made today? That becomes an important lead measure for you. This is because the higher the number of presentations the greater your chances of reaching the intended goal of Kes.10 million. You have greater control over the number of presentations you are doing every day. It is something you can adjust relatively quickly by booking more appointments. If you get paid by the hour, your lead measure will be along the lines of how many hours you are putting in every day. Since the number of hours you can work in a day is limited, you will also want to ask yourself what you can do to increase your hourly rate. To hit your income goal, you will want to deploy your hours in the most productive of activities and deploy as many of those hours as possible.

Think about all your goals in great detail today. What metrics are you using to track your performance? It is easy to get discouraged when all you focus on are lag measures. This is because you will feel like you are not making any progress whatsoever in the short term. When you shift your focus to lead measures, your motivation increases and you are able to build momentum. There is nothing better at building momentum than to know that you are making progress every day.

Lead measures also help you improve your behavior right away. This is important because it means you have the ability to take action on your goals in the short term. This has an impact on your self-esteem as well because you begin to see yourself as capable of setting targets and going for them from the get go.

It is important to track your goals because you act differently when you keep score. When there is no mechanism to keep score, as humans we are likely to let things slide. If you want to excel as a goal getter, clarifying your lead measures is something you cannot afford to operate without. 

I am curious to know. What is your wildly important goal? What lead measures have you been using/are you going to use going forward?

I am strongly invested in helping people reach their goals. If you would do with a little hand-holding, do not hesitate to get in touch with me on +254725832477.

Leveraging Technology Part 3

 

We started by looking at different types of technology and went on to look at the benefits of embracing it alongside the losses we suffer when we don't. In this last segment we take a look at.....

How do you make tech work for you?

As an organization, you need to create a culture that encourages and embraces technology. You also need to adopt elements of technology that work for you. Not every technology out there is meant to find its way to you. The question you must ask and answer is does this tech work for me? If not you must go further down and ask how it can be tweaked to fit in with your needs.

I will quote a service provider in the UK technology sector. it’s not the availability of technology nor the means to pay that’s the problem; it’s many businesses’ failure to plan that trips them up.  There is significant lack of strategy on how to adequately use the technology that is available to us all, which collectively slows us down and wastes a considerable amount of valuable time. (Mikkelsen, 2018)

There is a number of things you can do to inculcate the use of tech in your organization or even personal life. I will share them in no particular order. Among them is incentivizing tech use. If you make scores for tech use a part of appraisal processes, many more people will get on board if not for anything else, just to get good scores. Think about how else you can reward the uptake of tech in your own situation. We as humans are always looking for what we will gain by embracing certain habits and ditching others. The prospect of using technology must be made enticing enough to ensure faster uptake. (Richter &Sinha, 2020)

Invest in the infrastructure. Make it easy for the people to take it up by reducing the struggles involved in embracing it. Make the infrastructure around it supportive and user friendly and you will have it more easily adapted.

Make reskilling and learning part of the plan. You must ensure that you and your staff are well versed in making use of the new tech you are about to introduce or already introduced. This makes it easier for them to adapt. You must also in your training cover aspects like what is in it for them. The benefit must come out clearly to boost the degree of adoption.

Don’t tokenize it. This should be approached from a holistic perspective. You cannot afford to be occasional in your insistence that people adopt tech and run with it. For sustainability, the focus must be consistent.

Have an implementation strategy. When you introduce a new technology in your place of work, the question you need to answer is how will you carry it through to successful adoption? More important than buying the equipment is how you are going to ensure that there is sufficient buy-in from the users of the same. Without a strategy, your new tech investment might be dead on arrival. You cannot use a scatter gun approach and expect to see great results. Your strategy must be clear and easy to follow for the best results.

Communicate that it is a tool. The message from the top across the organization needs to be one that says tech is a tool not a master. Whatever tech you bring in must be seen as a servant to the workers and not the other way round. When your people view tech as a master, the chances of resistance and revolt increase which doesn’t help you get the most out of your investment. 

Advance planning. You best be clear where new tech is needed and why before you spend a single shilling (small business UK.) This will keep you from spending money on new shiny objects that add little to no value for your organization. At best you want to be sure that even your own staff see the benefit of introducing the new tech before you do it.

Another thing to help tech work for you is to evaluate its performance over time. You need to interrogate to find out whether it is making things easier or not. If you don’t like the answers you are getting, then it is critical that you find out why things are not as you envisioned. Whatever you discover should help you decide whether this is something to keep working at or let go. If the issues can be fixed then by all means fix them. If they are beyond fixing, it is best that you cut your losses and move on to the next thing. There is nothing capable of hurting you more than persisting with a piece of technology that is clearly working against you.

Select the right tools. Finding the right fit for you is critical if you will make tech work to your advantage. The wrong tool will make your life miserable. The right tools however will improve the quality of your life and your productivity. Do not buy it simply because someone else got it. Be sure that it can make a real difference in your life before you buy it. This also extends to you choosing tech that addresses your most pressing needs. Think about where you are wasting time the most and what tools you can take up to do things better. (Forbes Technology Council, 2017.)

Keep your tools few. You do not have to use every App out there. Choose the ones that contribute the most to your situation and ditch the rest. I know there are many apps on your smartphone that have not been opened for a whole year. Such should not be clogging your space. They are simply filling up the plate with nothing to show for it. You must become ruthless with your selection of tools to retain only what is relevant. 

 Make your use incremental. Do not go for big, sweeping changes. It is better to introduce little tweaks to your way of doing things. Humans don’t like revolutions, they work better with evolutionary changes. To increase your chances of staying on course, as a business or individual, choose to take small steps forward at a time.

Use it to handle repetitive tasks. Are there aspects of your work that can be automated because they are simply repetitive and monotonous? That is a good place to start in your efforts to use technology. If there is a machine out there that can take care of those tasks, then by all means go out of your way and use them to do it. your life will be easier for it.

Moral considerations. Use tech that aligns with your values. When you realize that certain tools are being used for sinister purposes which end up hurting other people, boycotting their use or protesting against it can go a long way in correcting the wrong. Remember tech must remain a servant to the user and not the other way around. You can also protest by becoming a co-creator of the kind of tech you want out there. This is what has led to the rise of open-source developers and developments for the benefit of all like Ubuntu.

I believe that even though this list is not conclusive, it will go a long way in helping you interact better with tech as a person or a business going forward.

I would also be honored to know your thoughts around this whole issue and how you make tech work for you in your own situation. Let’s share in the comments.

 

Leveraging Technology Part 2

 

Last week we looked at what technology is and the different types of technology available out here. We also went further to discuss what impediments stand in the way of people being able to embrace technology. 

In this week's segment, we look at the upsides of embracing technology and what you are likely to lose if you don't either as an individual or a company. 

Read on to find out more. 

What are the benefits of embracing Technology?

Global analysis by Deloitte shows that companies using AI predictive data analytics and other technology tools are more successful than those who don’t. These companies enjoy 18% higher revenue and 30% greater profitability.

Tech augments human roles by taking up their menial, repetitive tasks while leaving workers to focus on the more creative, flexible and selective aspects of their jobs. We just need to learn how to collaborate with machines. While AI delivers speed, efficiency and mass data analysis, humans will add emotional depth, wisdom and nuance. (Jessica Marchant, People management, 2019.) This increased efficiency means more time is freed up and money is saved to be deployed in other endeavors. (Matthew Warner, Blockpass 2019)

AI can help in sourcing for candidates in HR departments through the use of AI driven CV formulation software in order to reduce the time demanded of recruiters and candidates. It also helps in mitigating against conscious or unconscious biases.

New technologies are essential to fostering economic growth, meeting human needs and protecting the environment. (Calestous Juma)

Embracing technology can help your company operate at its maximum capacity in many different ways. It can be a differentiating factor when it comes to beating your competition. It also makes it easier to store and organize vast amounts of data which if kept physically could take up acres of space. In this era of lockdowns and restricted movement, communications technology is allowing people to hold virtual meetings with ease and collaborate virtually from anywhere in the world. What this also means is that businesses can also serve clients from anywhere in the world and they will have a seamless or almost seamless experience.

Embracing technology will also keep you longer at your job as an employee. The more comfortable you are around new technology, the longer you are likely to stay on. A failure to adapt could mean the need to replace you with someone who is more comfortable around tech. Just like companies can collaborate on projects, individual employees too benefit from this kind of tech on projects they are working on. It is possible for people from different continents to work on an issue and resolve it from wherever they are because of the possibilities created by tech. (Jon Hauer, 2019)

For businesses, tech also gives you the benefit of a strong industry presence. Being present both on and offline goes a long way in helping you stay front and center in the minds of industry stakeholders. Apple is a dominant player because they have learnt to leverage on R&D in building their products. As a business do you have R&D ingrained into the way you do things?

New technology can be a game changer if you want to disrupt an existing industry. The proper application of new tech can position you in a place where you are able to challenge the big boys of your industry and win. Tesla’s story is testimony that this is doable. While there are many automobile manufacturers who would have had enough resources to do electric vehicles, Tesla saw the gap and ran away with the prize. What prize is there in your current industry that you can run away with if you innovate right?

Embracing new, relevant Technology guarantees business success in the long run. While the initial cost of setting up might be steep, if well thought out, new tech can more than pay for itself quickly.

Technology enables better customer service through improved processes and even security of data stored in your systems. There are a ton of technologies you can use to improve your customer’s overall experience.

Technology makes it possible to standardize products. While human hands can introduce a degree of error, products made by robots have an almost guaranteed consistency no matter how many times the robot does it. That automation has the advantage of uniformity and consistency.

Disadvantages of Resisting Technology.

Instead of protecting jobs, the reluctance in embracing new technology has resulted in curbing innovation, reducing job creation and restricting industry growth.

When a company fails to innovate and evolve, it suffers setbacks like loss of money and time as a result of inefficient processes. Those who thought the dotcom bubble was a passing wind have in some cases failed to ever catch up to this present day. That has meant a loss of dominance in the market they used to rule. We can also see it in the switch from feature phones to Smartphones. It is clear that the dominant players in the smartphone market were not the biggest in the season of the feature phones. Whatever happened to the likes of Nokia and Motorola? They are no longer the giants they were back in the days and that has meant a heavy loss of market share and thus revenue. Product obsolescence is a reality companies live with. (Petersen, 2019)

When customers don’t see an effort to make things better, you are likely to lose them in the long run.

It stifles your ability to expand and explore larger markets as a business. 

A failure to embrace technology also holds companies and individuals back from achieving their full potential. The same way embracing it creates new possibilities, resisting tech results in you not being able to take advantage of efficiency, convenience and so much more brought about by new technology. (Richter &Sinha, 2020)

There is also the issue of waning industry influence (Petersen, 2019.) This failure to embrace technology can lead to a decline in the influence a company once held in its industry. This has implications on its image and contributes to a difficulty in attracting the best talent and even funding. Worst of all is when competitors know about it because they can then use it against you for a long time.

Low morale among employees. A stagnant organization dampens the drive of employees which thing affects performance and brings about talent flight. This is because of the perceived lack of growth and opportunities to expand their skillsets. Simply put, an organization that doesn’t embrace technology punishes itself in the long run.  

Resistant employees can create a disruptive working environment due to conflicts with management and also spread their sentiments to other employees.

What other benefits of technology can you think of? Any regrets you have had for failing to embrace tech in the past? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.