Clinton Skakun

“How you handle failure determines your overall well being. Failure is only failure with the wrong mindset.” – Clinton Skakun

Nobody likes to goof up, especially when there are others watching. The worst part was not goofing up, but came later on, when you started replaying the scene over and over again in your mind, suddenly it seems like a big deal.

Or maybe you have memories of investing long hours, sacrificing time and money into a project that turned out flat. Now your attitude towards that project has turned ugly. You make excuses and logical arguments to back up your quiting. You build up a reserve of resentment towards future your projects and become a little more cynical, doing everything to avoid ever chancing falling flat on your face again.

• Do you put off practicing, instead flipping through books, because you’d rather not practice unless it’s “perfect practice?”
• Do you avoid going through with an idea or making a decision because you just don’t have enough information yet, and after weeks or months still don’t?
• Do you constantly put off giving a speech, making a phone call, or writing a letter(oops, I meant e-mail!:D) because you just can speak like John F. Kennedy, make phone calls like they do in the movies or write like Emerson?
• Do you beat yourself up after failing or messing up because failure is below your standard?

“Too many organizations today have cultures of perfection: a set of organizational beliefs that any failure is unacceptable. Only pure, untainted success will do.” – LifeHack

Maybe it’s fear of failure, perfectionism or sensitivity to anything that will cause pain, no matter what the potential gains may be. We work hard to avoid failing. But there’s one very important factor that all great performers have in common: they’re not perfect, and they fail more than anyone else. Who better to learn from than a person who’s failed so many times that they’ve succeeded?

The real question to ask ourselves everyday is: What have I failed at today that has given me something valuable to learn from?

You’re not going to speak like John F. Kennedy or write like Emerson until you first speak like a seal with a speech impediment and write like an iliterate drunk and stoned dude. It’s an embarrassing, interesting and unpredictable process that leaves you with something priceless and leads you somewhere great.

There’s an old saying, “success is a poor teacher”. Don’t ask, “what have I given myself a chance to fail at today?” That’s like asking, “did I give myself a chance to get out of bed this morning?” (if you didn’t you woke up dead)

There’s another old saying, “If you haven’t failed at anything lately, you’re not doing too much.”

Read the question carefully, especially “given me something valuable to learn from”. Don’t throw your life savings in the stock markets and don’t start a business selling apple peals, just for the sake of failing. You can’t learn a whole lot from failing at something you already know about. Fail for the sake of learning.

In web development a developer needs to make hundreds and even thousands of tweaks to his code before he or she can make a simple web application to work. I have yet to sit down, write a perfect peace of code and have it all work in one try. It takes these “mini-failures” to get the application running. Imagine if web developers and computer programmers were all afraid of making a mistake? We’d still be waiting for someone to develop HTML.

This is what it ultimately comes down to: You need to get over the fear of failure, and inability to generate a result(meaning a failed or successful result) at all costs. Sure you might find shortcuts along the way, like modeling experienced people, but a competent person knows what works and what doesn’t and has failed forward to get there.

“The fear of failure is perhaps the strongest force holding people below their potential.” – Pick The Brain

Losses that educate you aren’t really losses, but million dollar gains. Inaction doesn’t educate you, inaction is permanent, failure is temporary, inaction costs you millions. Inaction is the disillusion that success lies on top of an inexperienced foundation. Any success that lies on that type of foundation is helpless when bombarded by problems that demands experience.

Inexperience is always a challenge of getting something out of nothing. Experience is waking up 5 years from now and asking yourself, “if I could start again, knowing what I know now, what would I do again and what would I eliminate?” Inexperience is not knowing the good from the bad, besides what’s obvious, because of lacking enough experience to have the ability to discern.

Here’s a good exercise for you to do in order to learn from failure:

1. Which 3 greatest failures in the past have turned out to be the greatest learning experiences?
2. What am I pretending to be experienced at, but am many failures away from mastery?
3. Which current goals require me to fail many times before I accomplish them?
4. What attitude can I adopt to handle the emotional stress of failure when it comes? (e.g. The past is permanent and forever gone, live in the now, in 5 years the failure won’t be important but the lessons learned will be vital, this would be a good story to tell at a party, at least now I know what not to do.)
5. And ONE more, in honestly and carefully observing myself am I a perfectionist, am I afraid of failing or am I trying to avoid emotional pain?

Here are a few ideas you can use to set yourself to fail and learn from it:

• Quit taking yourself so seriously, you don’t have a reputation to live up to.
• Stop thinking of past failures as being negative, instead look back on them as the best times of your life.
• Think of the nature of your life. Is it exciting, full of experience and chances to learn OR is it dull, perfect and shallow?
• Do something different, even ridiculous for a change. Go out of character, try new things, look at people in a different way, ask different questions.
• Even a magic pill requires trial and error before it works, decide that your greatest education comes from trial and error in your life and the mistakes made in the lives of others(make sure you learn from others as well).

When times get really bad, think of it as a bunch of shit you have to get through to move up, to handle greater challenges in the future. One of your goals in life should be to get comfortable with taking on bigger and bigger challenges. The things that used to caused you great anxiety, will be a peace of cake. Avoiding failure makes your life less comfortable, staying in your comfort zone, getting devastated every time a small challenge comes along, that just so happens to be outside your comfort zone. It’s not totally about knowing how not to do something, but rather about desensitizing your emotional, mental and maybe even physical(if you’re an athlete) feelings, that hold you back, in a way that works for you. Successful people have bigger challenges than poor or unsuccessful people. Don’t look at success as a an avenue to a perfection. The most successful people have learned to handle challenges better than anyone else. Success is just a part of being able to handle it better.

“There is no failure.  Only feedback. “ – Robert Allen

“You always pass failure on your way to success.” – Mickey Rooney

Photo courtesy of Ben Heine(Scream)

1. Build a completely reliable system of trust and clarity that promotes your ability to relax. Create an empty mind to the whirlwind and a open mind to creative and higher thinking.

A large distractor and productivity killer is having open loops in your short term memory(think of it as your RAM). Another thing that will happen is, when ideas come to you you’ll have a potentially large chance of forgetting them, if you just rely on memory. Ever get that where you had one good idea after another, assumed that you’d remember it, and when the time came to use that idea you couldn’t remember it? We can assume everyone has at one time or another. When you constantly try to store your task list in your RAM(short term memory), it drains the resources you need in order to focus on hard tasks and to stay focused for a long period of time. It also depresses your ability to think on your feet, think creatively and feel relaxed while you work. The ultimate goal for your system should be to store everything in an external storage(note pad, PDA, your computer), one that you can trust will alert you and keep you updated on what you need to be doing, thus freeing your mind of the massive task of trying to remember a simple list and allowing you to focus entirely on the task at hand AND giving you room to clear your mind and relax(with out the “gotta remember this, gotta remember that, but what was it again?”).

The word “system” doesn’t refer to any particular technology. It basically has to be a convenient, easily assessable(and even enjoyable) system that you can update and review on a day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute basis(or however often you need). This can be on your computer, hand held device or just on plain old pen and paper. If you don’t have 24/7 access to your system use something simpler. I use a pen and paper, basically because I can use it anywhere and any time of the day. Use all the resources you need: Filers, calenders, simple sticky notes, what ever works best for YOU.

Now here’s the important part! As said above, the system must be completely reliable and your conscious and subconscious mind must trust it, or else it wont work. YOU CAN’T TRICK YOUR OWN BRAIN. If you end up thinking, “oopps, forgot to add next weeks’ supper with the family, ohh well I’ll remember.” Suddenly you’ll mistrust your system, your brain will be working constantly to remind yourself that you have a supper to attend on this certain date. And since this part of your brain often doesn’t have a concept of time I’ll will constantly remind you. (ironically you might end up forgetting when that reminder is needed.) So what’s wrong with this? It ruins your ability to handle large amounts of tasks and, at the same time, complete those tasks. In short, it screws your ability to get things done. This is a must. It doesn’t matter what your system really is, as long as it works very well for you. Make sure you write down everything you want to get done, projects, next actions, someday/maybe lists, urgent little things, priorities.

How will you know when your system is reliable? When you don’t feel you need to think about anything other than what you’re currently doing. If you’re still rolling something over in your head, put it in your system(unless it should be done right a way) and trust your system to remind you of it later. You will continue this until you’ve achieved clarity. You won’t believe how much of a difference it will make. Ever feel you need to be right-here-right-now but cant stop thinking about everything going on in your day/week/month? That’s because you feel you will lose it OR you aren’t clear on IF what you’re thinking about is even important.

If you need to think something through, write down in your system: “think Calgary Tower re-design through, solve [this] problem and decide next action.” (WARNING: you can confuse the crap out of you with vague, ambiguous phrases. Do yourself a major favor, ALWAYS be concise and clear, specify an “action” you must take and “why” and for “who” and “what” and “where” and “when” it needs to be done.)

There are a few key points to your system:

• It NEEDS to allow you to relax, it needs to put your mind at ease. (“How much you can relax is dereclty related to how much you get done.” – Unknowen)
• It NEEDS to be updated whenever needed to continue to be reliable and trustworthy.
• It must alert YOU.(the word “alert” means your review as well, not just a buzzer that goes off.)
• It should be simple, fun, and it should be 24/7 accessible(i.e. you jump up in the middle of the night remembering something you need to do Wednesday, DON’T “remember” it tomorrow, you might not)

2. Work on your own tenancies to be anti-productive.

“90% of everything you do is mental and 10% technical/physical, to have true control over the 90%, your mind, is to have control over destiny”
The best of us procrastinate and put off until the last minute, eventually causing the minor insignificant issue to escalate into an enormous, sometimes dangerous and costly problem that we are “forced” to deal with or else, our heads! Yeah, urgency has its own emergency system of telling us when we’ve put off for too long. Why do we put off when we know how it could kill us tomorrow? Because it wont kill us today. And because today we have our own pile of emergencies to handle and fires to put out. Fires will start and emergencies will happen, although most of the emergencies could be prevented with a bit of smart planning, some thought and some quick small action before hand. We really don’t have time for this crap. When there’s only time to put out fires and no time to run the store, we loose money. And if we don’t put out the fire, we loose money. The best question would be: how do we run the store, make money, and put out fires when they happen without diverting from priorities? The answer is quite obvious, practice prevention! Do the thing today while it’s easy, do it this week instead of next week. You’ll find that when you do today, what you putting off is now history and it feels like it was done and gone last month instead of a few hours or days ago. It’s almost effortless. This one simple practice can make you rich and free up lots of time.

The funny thing is, people who spend ALL their time on short term pleasure also spend lots of time getting rid of following, succeeded short term pain. The future comes faster than you think, thinking one week into the future is like preparing for tomorrow … or the next minute.

A few keys for killing procrastination and making your mind work for you:

• Do harder things impulsively, over calculating often brings hesitation and uses more energy.
• Ask yourself in the morning, what are the hardest 3 things I could do this morning? As the day goes on, you’ll thank yourself.
• Create a 1 day rule, do urgent things within the day they occur(or 1 week rule for harder or more time consuming tasks)
• Improve communication with your self, “The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your communication, with yourself and others” – Tony Robbins

“If you believe you can or can’t, you’re right on both accounts.” – Henry Ford

3. Separate the truly important from the *sarcasm* merely urgent

Ever wonder why people say, “I don’t have any time”? Any time for what? What’s your purpose for your time and how do you find value from time? We can talk about time management, actions, tasks etc etc but unless we truly know why we’re taking that action, the action lacks purpose. We might as well sit on the couch and watch TV. It’s stupid to put so much effort into DOing without knowing what it’s leading up to or what caused the decision to take the action.

Motivation basically comes from emotion. If you have the right emotion you will take action to either avoid pain or gain pleasure. It only makes sense, right? Have you ever done something for no good reason that didn’t cause you pain or pleasure? Probably not. Link anything in human motives to an emotion. Whether it’s fighting in a war, driving to work, having sex, or running a mile a day. There’s either a long term, short term gain or both involved.

Why do you need more time? Maybe, to spend more time doing things that feel meaningful to you. And you’re emotional about what you want to accomplish either short term or long term. (e.g. you go to ‘John’s Booze Mart’ to buy a 26 or Bacardi, drinking may mean pleasure to you or else you wouldn’t bother going there in the first place.)

Basically the meaning we put on actions, and how we determine how much time they’re work, the priority level, stems from this:

Your mission in life … then
Your goals and dreams, filtered by your mission … then
Your planned actions, filtered by your goals and dreams, filtered by your mission … then
What you do right NOW, determined by your planned actions, filtered by your goals and dreams, filtered by your mission … then

The value of what you put on NOW is decided by what is deeper down. It’s hard to know what an action is worth unless you know how it relates to the truly important.

This is the truly important. Don’t confuse the important with the urgent, things like paying bills, washing the floors or updating your facebook status(unless, of course, these things lead up to your actual goals). When you learn how to measure actions between importance and urgency you will understand what deserves more attention.

4. Rest your mind, Review your lead and lag measures, sharpen the saw and see the big picture.

There are those who like to spend every waking moment on doing something and getting a little more work done. It’s great to push the limits and to strive to a little harder. It’s also harder to stop once you get into the addicting groove of work. People who tend to overwork tend to burn out every so often. Try not to do this to yourself, there’s more to life than work. If you neglect the big picture, how will you know when you get there? Will you just continue to fill your void of boredom with more work?

“If you don’t know why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.” – Unknown

“Work for the sake of work is a form of laziness, how many lazy people try to become more productive?”

“Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise” – Tim Ferris, Author of 4-Hour Workweek

Some things that are completely crucial to your focus and mental health:

• Review the big picture Friday or Saturday morning, plan the next week, organize, get everything off your chest. The only thing you should think about is how awesome the coming week’s going to be. Don’t stress about things you have to do and make sure they’re in your system.
• Enjoy the entire weekend, or one day if you have demanding work. Don’t think about anything business unless you absolutely need to.
• Talk to people you haven’t talked to in a long time, hang out, splurge a little at the mall, do something different.
• Since you have nothing on your mind, a flood of creative ideas will probably hit you. Make sure they are kept down on paper, otherwise just forget about them all together.

Have you ever spent the entire weekend catching up on work, just to find yourself on Monday morning wishing you could just take a day off and have some free time already? There’s an old saying, “Too much work and not enough play, makes Jack a …” yeah you know… life’s too short to not have fun. Your brain needs to understand that there’s a bigger world out there than that little problem you’ve been bashing your head out over for the past month.

“Life could be more enjoyable if we stopped taking so many un-serious aspects of life too seriously too often and just sat back … and to live and let live now and then! The variety offered to us in this short time on earth gives us opportunity to explore and to grasp a deeper sense of what life is, to explore, experience and continually be inspired and to eventually act in abundance and give back” – Westly Hartell

5. The Art of Elimination!

Some of the best thins in life, leave. Use the art of elimination to create a more productive life:

• The enemy of the GREAT is the GOOD! Get rid of the GOOD, make room for the GREAT!
• Use Pareto’s 80/20 principle to eliminate the 80% that only yield only 20% results and focus on the 20% that yield 80% results.
• Use the Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill the alloted time. Give work less time to fill: “The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource. The reverse is not true.” – cited from Wikipedia 3 hours can be more than 12 hours.

“One does not accumulate, but eliminate. It is not the increase but the daily decrease. The height of cultivation runs to simplicity.” – Bruce Lee

These are MY 13 personal tips on how to successfully manage time and boost productivity. Follow these tips and in a month from now you’ll see a difference in the way you go about your work. My experience with these tips have been more than successful in how I view my work and how I handle tough assignments. These are methods I’ve picked up from reading great books, blogs and listening to outstanding people.

The Caretaker move

• Infected aka Dark Island movie

#1 Partial Involvement in many things < Full involvement in a few things.

Taking on a ton of different projects may keep you busy. Focusing your energy on a few things is much more effective than spreading your energy across a ton of things.

American Psycho dvd #2 It’s not perfect and it never will be

I wasted a lot of time, yet learned a great lesson, by trying to perfect things that didn’t need to be perfected. Nothing is ever perfect and that’s what makes life interesting.

#3 You handle as well as you plan

I found out that writing out a quick plan helps your progress. It also great motivation and it helps clear your mind.

#4 Minimize to maximize

That is, minimize the amount of stuff you do to maximize your productivity. The similar things are the easier it is to focus and get stuff done!

#5 Procrastination harms productivity

It wasts time and it throws your brain out of whack!

#6 Desire to GET STUFF DONE!

In a nutshell, start with the end in mind. Set a goal, think of how free you’ll feel after finishing your work.

#8 Try to be outstanding!

Be an achiever, think like an achiever and eventually your attitude will guide your work.

#9 Eliminate Worry

Worry causes mind fog, depression and hinders your work. Find out how to eliminate that worry and then ACT.

#10 Think in steps

Everything is more satisfying when done is steps.

Quick Change download Necessary Evil video #11 Activity does not equal ACTION

• Tristan + Isolde rip Duel divx

Nature Morte
A plan of action is more effective than a routine list of daily activities.

#12 Believe YOU can

• Jab We Met video

Remember that there where people in tougher times who have achieved more. Think of the dirty 30’s. Think of the people in poor countries who don’t get chances like these. You have the advanced so make the best of it. Something I head a little while ago that I thought was quite profound, “If we did what we are actually able of doing, we’d be greatly surprised.”
Your mind is the only thing that prevents you from accomplishing what you want. Change your mind.

#13 Last but not least. Stay organized

Antz buy
You are a product of your environment. Work in a messy unorganized environment and that’s how you’ll work. Be organized and eliminate clutter.

All the best!

Shutter buy

Strange Wilderness dvdrip

Sorry if I’ve been a little off topic lately.

Today I read something from Procrastination Post that inspiring me to write a quick post. You can read the article here(Procrastination’s Weak Rebuttal Flight of the Phoenix full

Sorority Boys divx )

This is my response to his article: Killing Zoe

Thanks for writing this post, it really hit home. I get this every once in a while. People who think that my ideas are a failure before I even get a chance to prove that they’re worth trying.

However, I think opposition is good for us even though it’s sometimes really maddening and confusing. It gives us a chance to strengthen our ourselves and to better understand where we really stand. I think instead of becoming bitter, which is always tempting, we should learn to respond in a calm and direct way. Maybe you don’t know how to respond to these type of people now or tomorrow but I’m sure it will eventually come. I admire the fact that you decided to write about it and get it out in the open.

Not everyone will agree with new ideas. History is full of failures, and I mean moments not people. No one landed on the moon the first time they tried and first attempt to create a plain was a failure. However, the people with the will to accomplish a dream or a goal are the only ones who did.

People who try to knock you over are the ones who are jealous or extremely narrow minded. They only see what’s at the surface because going a little bellow the water is a little too risky. These people think it’s their duty to stop you from going through with an endeavor just because it doesn’t align with they’re narrow view. Something I notice is that the bigger you think, the harder people will try to knock you down. The small, pessimistic thinkers toss every reason they can at you, “this won’t work”, “it’s a crazy idea”, “you can actually make it on that???”, “come work at Home Hardware for 11.59/hr…blah blah blah”. I personally think these people are f*ckin nuts! In their little mind they only see what job a degree will get them and a resume with their name on the top left corner. Anything other than that is a weird, and society claims that a sin. That’s where us “weird” people have to either stand up or mesh in with the crowd. I live in a free country, why should fear and peer pressure stop me from going further than those people who think my idea’s sh*t?

As for the topic of your blog(Procrastination Post). I say, keep with it. Why give up? I’ve read some great posts here and learned a few new things here and there. I read a lot of blogs, it’s surprising how much a person can say about self improvement, life, etc. There’s almost nothing you can’t say, because everyone’s different. Just because your Wordpress blog didn’t start out with a gizzillian unique hits  a day like a blog from CNN or some place doesn’t mean you can’t reach people through your insights.

In my opinion, what’s better. Giving into the people who try their best to knock you over or refusing to get beaten down and move forward?

For me, I’m not afraid of failure. If I fail at a blog or at an investment of some kind I can pick up and try again. Anyone can, if they have the attitude and the mindset.

Thanks again for writing this. I don’t think anyone who has become successful didn’t have to fight opposition. I’m using this comment to write a post of my own.

Thanks for the inspiration, hope to hear more soon.:)

-Clinton

• • download adaptation dvd

  Ms .45 psp

Transmorphers dvd