Now, not everybody stays on a diet for very long in January. In fact, I’d wager that by now, the people who went on the most aggressive, restrictive diets on January 2 have probably already thrown up their hands in despair and headed to Baskin-Robbins. (more on that later.)  But if you are going to go on a diet, January is the right time.  Why?

Well, have you ever noticed how everybody goes on a diet in January?  Lots of people do, and lots of people, especially people in the diet and exercise business, know it.  So the best deals on gym memberships, healthy foods, and weight loss programs tend to come around in January.  When you participate, you’re riding a wave of supportive messages with thousands of like-minded people. The world is supporting your strategy.

Consider, by contrast, what it would have been like to try dieting in November and December. You’re surrounded by marketing messages and bargains on sweets and rich, heavy food, overcommitted with errands and social obligations that make going to the gym a hassle at best, and everything around you is about abandoning all forms of discipline in service of seasonal merriment.  You’re really up against it, right?

Now, let’s think about this idea in a more general sense.  We know that with all the good things we talk about in professional development like self-discipline, goal-setting, affirmations, positive self-talk, and organizational skills we can do absolutely anything we set our minds to, and we can do it whenever we are truly ready.  And that is all true. I am not in any way condoning that someone who is ready to lose weight in November should put off the process until January.  What I am condoning is taking a look around you at the environmental factors that are making your chosen strategy easier or harder to achieve.

Diet-related stuff is not the only stuff with “seasonality.”  If you know you or your business needs to make a major purchase in the near future, a little research about when the item(s) you need tend to go on sale could save you a bundle.  By the same token, the product or service you are selling may have seasonality as well.  Are you maximizing the opportunities afforded by that?  And the product example is only one among many. What other environmental factors affect your business, positively or negatively?  How can you work with them instead of against them?  If you don’t know, how can you go about finding out?

In business and in life, there will be things you can’t control or change.  Knowing how to catch the wind, whichever way it’s blowing, and trimming your sails accordingly, will get you where you’re going faster and with less effort.

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

Either or both would make a great gift for the entrepreneur, small business owner or executive on your holiday shopping list!

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

1. Producing and managing involve different skill sets. A person who is brilliant at doing the work may not be brilliant at facilitating other people doing the work, which is what managers are supposed to do. A great producer with poor management skills will mistrust her subordinates and have trouble delegating responsibilities.  Her subordinates will quickly tire of her constant micromanaging and criticism of their work.

2. Star producers may not be interested in management. It’s going to be very hard for a producer to turn down a promotion, particularly if it involves perks like higher pay, better hours, or an office with a door. But a promotion from something he is really great at, to something he is not great at, may be a recipe for frustration and failure. A producer who loves producing will miss that direct involvement in the work, and will not feel like this move from expertise to cluelessness is much of a “promotion.”

3. Your best producers are a tremendous asset on the production line! Why would you pull someone who is brilliant at doing the work into a position where she’s not doing the work?

4. If management is the only “promotion” path, it may be time to change your attitude about your producers. Just recently, I found the best example of this I’ve ever read — Hollywood. At the risk of creating some confusion here, in Hollywood the “producers” are the actors.  They are the ones who do the major work; the ones without whom the “company” cannot exist. One could extend this example to all the cameramen, stage hands, etc. — but you get the idea. The artists and craftspeople of Hollywood are the front line of production in that industry.  Now suppose Hollywood did what other industries do, and “promoted” the best actors to paper-pushing office jobs at the studio.  The very idea seems absurd, right? And yet that’s exactly what happens in manufacturing and engineering companies all the time!

So what could you do instead, that would provide your producers with the salary increases, benefits and recognition they deserve, without taking them away from the realm where they do their best work? Give it some thought and please, share your ideas here!

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

In the world of continuous improvement, success strategies and the endless quest for achievement, we sometimes get a bit overzealous about “the next big thing.” We pursue some dream or goal, achieve it, and set the next one, just like all the success literature tells us we’re supposed to. Perhaps we even feel a sense of accomplishment when we cross a finish line. But happiness somehow continues to elude us.

“Success is a journey, not a destination” so says the great wisdom. And certainly that’s true as far as it goes.  Success, happiness, contentment, even accomplishment — these are not events. They’re not boxes to check off.  They are states of being; sensory experiences that we savor when we are lucky enough to notice them happening to us. And they tend to be temporary. The key, though, is to notice them happening.  Success may be a journey, but that doesn’t mean we have to be in constant motion to achieve it. An important part of success is being aware of it when it’s happening — stopping to drink in the feelings of joy and satisfaction.  After all (and this may sound familiar if you read the post on goals being overrated), “success” isn’t really the point.  Most people don’t want to make a pile of money or run a marathon or lose 25 pounds or win an award for the sake of doing those things. They want to do those things because of the way they believe they will feel when they have done them. It’d be a little silly, and a little sad, if they forgot to feel the feelings after accomplishing the goal.

Noticing how you feel doesn’t have to wait until you’ve crossed a finish line. Checking in with yourself is an important part of your success journey.  Just as you wouldn’t try to drive from New York to Los Angeles in one continuous stint, your success journey requires stopovers to rest, refuel, and check your map. My friend Chip has been working on an energy management tool he calls “1-2-20-45″ — and the “1″ is about breathing. At least once a day, and preferably more like once an hour, take one full minute to just breathe. Check in with your body and your mind. Are you making the best use of your energy right now? Do you need something to eat? Some water? A stretch? A break? What is distracting you from your current focus? How can you record that safely so you can set it aside? When you regularly take the time to notice how you feel, you give yourself the opportunity to make small, quick course corrections before you’ve gotten really derailed. And when you take time to pause and pay attention to where you are right now, you also allow yourself to simply be there, wherever that is, and know that it is enough to be on the right path even if you are not hurtling down it headlong every minute.

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

If this looks familiar, it’s because much of the below was originally posted in my Google Blog in March of 2011.  I hope you’ll take a moment to read this entry even if you read that one, because I’ve learned some new things since then and made some notable edits.

What I’m increasingly discovering is that the old ways of setting and planning goals are getting harder to do and harder even to relate to, because the goals we’re setting now aren’t nearly as concrete as they used to be.  And even the concrete aspects of them tend to be a means to an end.  Think about it. When you set a goal like losing 20 pounds, managing your time better, finishing a project or quitting smoking, is that concrete goal really the point? And here’s an even more interesting question: how do you know when you’ve achieved your goal, really?

Let me start with the 20 pounds goal as an example, because it is nice and concrete. It’s one a lot of people can relate to, and several methods for doing it are fairly well understood (if hotly debated). So the WAY-SMART goal, written down, aligned with your values, yours personally, is specific (lose 20 pounds), measurable (on the scale), attainable (unless you only weigh 70 pounds to begin with), realistically high (20 is a lot, right?) and time-based (we’ll give it six months, so call the target date March 20, 2012* just for the sake of clarity). When you step on the scale on March 20 and it reads a number 20 pounds less than it did today, so what?

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

Congratulations to the teams for a great performance in 2011!  Working Magic looks forward to continuing our sponsorship in 2012.

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

Thinking of the issue as an “unusual attitude” is a way of making sure your group, team or organization understands that that way of thinking is not “normal.” This supports your efforts to build and sustain the culture you do want, without vilifying the people who have not yet become true believers in your goals.

What unusual attitudes exist in your organization? What control inputs do you need to apply to return to straight and level flight, so you can continue climbing?

EDIT: I regret that due to an excessive amount of spam commenting on this specific post, I have been forced to close the post to comment.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please register on my site (it’s free and easy) if you would like to comment on other posts.  Thanks for understanding.

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.

Sound judgment and aeronautical decision-making skills are a critical foundation of UAS training.  Especially in the realms of academic and commercial research, many participants in UAS development do not have an aviation background.  This leads them to take unnecessary risks and skip important steps because they don’t know what they don’t know. I have had about 80 hours of flight training and have created a curriculum for a college course on UAS.  This gives me a unique perspective — one of knowing enough about the subject to understand what’s important, but not enough to make a lot of assumptions or unintentionally skip steps.  This is what you want in a curriculum designer — someone who knows what questions to ask, but doesn’t know the answers.

A curriculum designer should be an expert at curriculum design, and NOT an expert at the subject matter.  As I create curriculum, I’ll be asking the same kinds of questions the students would ask. And isn’t answering their questions the point?

This article by Tracy originally appeared on Working Magic and is protected under applicable copyright laws.