Glasses. These are those round spectacles that many of us will have to begin to don once we turn 40 and sometimes make use look more "mature" than we would look without them. Outside of the typical usage of these to increase one's ability to read road signs from a distance or read a book that right in front of one's nose, there is also a metaphorical uses of glasses that can help each of us in our daily interactions with other that will improve our ability to live more productive and fulfilling lives. I refer to the ability to look at the world (different scenarios, people, yourself) through different sets of glasses when the situation merits it to accomplish a number of different tasks that will benefit us throughout our lives. In this week's blog, I wanted to share some of the major benefits of making this a regular practice in your life by focusing on its three major areas of benefit.
It can help you see your areas of weakness.
Often, when we look at ourselves, we generally think about what we see in the mirror. We typically feel that there are very few things about us that are not "perfect" but, surprisingly, we don't know many other people that are. For this reason, it helps tremendously if you are able to take a hard, objective look at yourself from time to time, as a stranger would. One exercise that will initially help with this would be to look at yourself in the mirror as as stranger would and quickly assess what would be your initial impression. Is your hair somewhat disheveled? Do you have extra weight that isn't attractive? Do your close fit on your well or are they too tight or too baggy? By doing this, we can get a quick snapshot into how we physically may come across to people to improve any areas of deficiency that we may see. Whether it gives you motivation to lose weight, do a better job of with your hair, or buy a whole new wardrobe, this can help you quickly assess where you need to improve. Now, let's turn this inward and identify the psychological or emotional areas in which we can do better. We should look at our behaviors and, instead of rationalizing them by the different "special scenarios" going on in our lives, we should look at them from the outside as a stranger would to get a sense of what they would think. This will allow us to more objectively assess our behaviors and give us more motivation to change those that present the wrong image or are holding us back from our various goals.
It gives you a different perspective to solve problems
Whenever we are put in a tough situation in which we just can't seem to come up with an answer, often if we remove ourselves from the scenario and look at it from the perspective of someone from the outside looking in or from the perspective of the adversarial party (if there is one), this will often give us an opportunity to come up with a creative solution that we may not have identified before due to our intimate involvement, and often skewed perspective, on the situation. This can be done in a number of ways. If you are typically a very emotional person, perhaps trying to look at a situation more analytically would help you identify a solution that is better for all parties involved. If you're in one specific group of people that is facing a problem with another group, perhaps trying to understand what is important to them by looking at the situation from their perspective will shed light on a resolution that would've never been identified had you not put yourself in their shoes.
It allows you to be more sympathetic to others
We know ourselves better than we know anyone else, so there are number of different things we may say or do that we automatically know what they indicate about us and what we mean by them. Unfortunately, everyone is not wired in the same manner that we are and often, our reaction or approach to a situation can be interpreted completely different from what we intended. This can often lead to negative impacts in your interactions with others and not allow you to achieve the results you desire. When working with other people (especially at work), always try to think what their lives are like and what this means in relation to how they may approach a situation in contrast to your approach. This can often allow you to easier communicate with this person and have a better overall understanding of who they are and what makes them tick to establish a deeper and more meaningful relationship. This is also very helpful in relationships/friendships in which a disagreement can be resolved by just truly understanding the other parties point of view. At the end of the day, this can make all the difference in the world.
Perspective. It seems so easy to have, but we often have a tendency to only have one: OURS. By consistently practicing wearing the glasses of other individuals in our lives, we are way more apt to identify our flaws easier, solve problems faster, and relate to others better. And while some people may not like the way they look in a pair, the benefits of sometimes having "four eyes" will beat out what two can do any day.
Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Applying the Pareto Principle to Life
Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone enjoyed their time off and took time to truly enjoy some family time with their loved ones. This is always a good time of year to reflect on all the blessings we have been given that make our lives so special. It is also a good time to reflect on a number of things we set out to do in 2013 that we did not accomplish to get a sense of why and then create a plan to make sure that this doesn't happen in 2014. One concept that has paid tremendous dividends to me when I am beginning to evaluate how to make a complete change to take my abilities and level of success to "another level" is to apply the Pareto Principle to my life. The Pareto Principle is an ingenious discovery by Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 in which he observed that 80% of Italy's wealth was owned by 20% of the population. What this basically led to was a discovery that in many things in life, 80% of our ROI is usually associated with 20% of our actions. By applying this principle to our lives, there are several truths that come to the forefront that should allow us to improve the quality of our lives if we accept them and take actions to adjust accordingly.
80 percent of your headaches come from 20 percent of the people in your life.
This is one that is very dear to me because I am very much the type of person who believes you should only have positive people in your life. There are those individuals who are only energy-takers and never energy-givers. It seems their whole point in life is to find the negative in everything and then to make everyone see it as well. You should eliminate, or at least marginalize, these people's influence on your life. You can do this by simply eliminating the amount of time you spend with these individuals or removing them from your life all together. In relation to situations in which you cannot completely stop all interactions with this person (i.e. work), you can attempt to discuss these differences and see if you can come to any resolution to improve your relationship. If not, you may want to see if you can move to a different department or group if possible. If that still doesn't work, you can just try to eliminate the amount of time you must interact with this person or, as a last resort, look for a new job all together.
80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your activities
If you are in sales (like me), you definitely get a sense of why this principle is true. Often, we spend our entire day doing a number of different activities, from documentation to reporting to follow-up. What we realize, however, is that there are really only a handful of things that actually put money into our bank accounts. For sales, it is often prospecting and spending time in front of the customer that ultimately makes the most difference in relation to success. This can be the same with any job, however, if you break it down to what are the 2-3 activities that you must be really good at and do almost every day that will have the greatest impact on the benefit you are able to deliver to your company. If you are a teacher, perhaps it is teaching the best lesson by staying as focused and "in the moment" as possible with your students. If you are a chemical engineer, perhaps it is consistently iterating your design and approach to the development of new chemicals that produces the greatest benefits to your company's bottom line. Whatever it is, identify it and do your best to maximize the amount of focus and time you are able to put into that particular area of your work for greater success.
80 percent of your LACK of success comes from 20 percent of your choices.
Anyone who has ever experienced marginal success in life but can't quite get over that hump is familiar with this aspect of life. Often, the marginally successful do a lot of things right in relation to how they approach their day and focus on accomplishing various tasks. There is, however, one or two things that this person is doing incorrectly, or not at all, that is holding back the super success that is on the horizon. One has to consistently review the different vices once has in her or her life and try to eliminate them all if possible. It can seem like a very small thing when your one vice may be your mom's sweet potato pie, but that small thing could be a huge deterrent to your goal of losing 20 lbs if you're eating sweet potato pie each week. Consistently identify those things in your life that when you do them, there is something in the back of your head is telling you that it isn't "right." Fight to remove those things from your life and discipline yourself to overcome those temptations and you'll be surprise at the 80 percent improvement you might see as a result of it.
While we learned in grade school that 1=1 and 2=2, it appears that as we mature in life and math (i.e. calculus), these truths seemingly aren't as set in stone as we once thought. As you look at your life in 2014, take time to identify that 20 percent of your life that is holding back the 80 percent of your success. This could be those individuals who only bring you down and bring nothing positive to the table, that small number of things that you are NOT doing, or that small group of vices that you know you should eliminate from your life. Whatever it is, identify it TODAY and begin working to make sure that you don't allow ANYTHING (or ANYONE) hold you back in 2014!
Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
80 percent of your headaches come from 20 percent of the people in your life.
This is one that is very dear to me because I am very much the type of person who believes you should only have positive people in your life. There are those individuals who are only energy-takers and never energy-givers. It seems their whole point in life is to find the negative in everything and then to make everyone see it as well. You should eliminate, or at least marginalize, these people's influence on your life. You can do this by simply eliminating the amount of time you spend with these individuals or removing them from your life all together. In relation to situations in which you cannot completely stop all interactions with this person (i.e. work), you can attempt to discuss these differences and see if you can come to any resolution to improve your relationship. If not, you may want to see if you can move to a different department or group if possible. If that still doesn't work, you can just try to eliminate the amount of time you must interact with this person or, as a last resort, look for a new job all together.
80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your activities
If you are in sales (like me), you definitely get a sense of why this principle is true. Often, we spend our entire day doing a number of different activities, from documentation to reporting to follow-up. What we realize, however, is that there are really only a handful of things that actually put money into our bank accounts. For sales, it is often prospecting and spending time in front of the customer that ultimately makes the most difference in relation to success. This can be the same with any job, however, if you break it down to what are the 2-3 activities that you must be really good at and do almost every day that will have the greatest impact on the benefit you are able to deliver to your company. If you are a teacher, perhaps it is teaching the best lesson by staying as focused and "in the moment" as possible with your students. If you are a chemical engineer, perhaps it is consistently iterating your design and approach to the development of new chemicals that produces the greatest benefits to your company's bottom line. Whatever it is, identify it and do your best to maximize the amount of focus and time you are able to put into that particular area of your work for greater success.
80 percent of your LACK of success comes from 20 percent of your choices.
Anyone who has ever experienced marginal success in life but can't quite get over that hump is familiar with this aspect of life. Often, the marginally successful do a lot of things right in relation to how they approach their day and focus on accomplishing various tasks. There is, however, one or two things that this person is doing incorrectly, or not at all, that is holding back the super success that is on the horizon. One has to consistently review the different vices once has in her or her life and try to eliminate them all if possible. It can seem like a very small thing when your one vice may be your mom's sweet potato pie, but that small thing could be a huge deterrent to your goal of losing 20 lbs if you're eating sweet potato pie each week. Consistently identify those things in your life that when you do them, there is something in the back of your head is telling you that it isn't "right." Fight to remove those things from your life and discipline yourself to overcome those temptations and you'll be surprise at the 80 percent improvement you might see as a result of it.
While we learned in grade school that 1=1 and 2=2, it appears that as we mature in life and math (i.e. calculus), these truths seemingly aren't as set in stone as we once thought. As you look at your life in 2014, take time to identify that 20 percent of your life that is holding back the 80 percent of your success. This could be those individuals who only bring you down and bring nothing positive to the table, that small number of things that you are NOT doing, or that small group of vices that you know you should eliminate from your life. Whatever it is, identify it TODAY and begin working to make sure that you don't allow ANYTHING (or ANYONE) hold you back in 2014!
Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
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