The phrase death by a thousand papercuts has been around a while, and its origin is in ancient Chinese culture of which I will spare you the details but here is the link to the Wikipedia page on it. It was originally known as Lingchi. I have fallen victim to this, proverbially speaking of course for a variety of reasons but two main ones would be lack of organization and the inability to say no (boundary setting). I will delve into each as this blog progresses.
As someone who has spent their entire professional career in some form of sales, I can attest to the use of a CRM, despite my distaste for the tedious practice of it. I hate having to fill out fields of information on every person I speak with and every company I contact. Many of the companies I contact will not ever answer an email or take a cold call. So why do it? However, there has been ample evidence that it is a useful practice, as I have had people reach out at some point (sometimes a year or two later) after I move onto other targets. I can’t possibly remember details of a conversation with a potential client a week later let alone months later on. I don’t have the ability and I don’t try to fake it. And that is exactly why I force myself to use the CRM approach. Herein lies the magic of the CRM: Habitual Organization.
Using a CRM or any other type of scheduling and organizational tool is critical as you continue to add things to your plate. If at the moment you are juggling classes and a part time job, it may not seem like there is a huge need to populate these details into your calendar. However, as you continue to fill in your weekly schedule with tasks and chores that need to be accomplished, appointments and such, you will find the clarity it provides becomes vital. Tired of feeling scattered and doing everything in a “crisis management mode”? It is a simple solution, but it is not easy: Get Organized. Teach yourself to schedule things out in advance and then stick to it. Here is an example from my own life, and bear in mind, I have a much less hectic schedule than almost everyone I know. Many days I am done with my day job by about 1 or 2pm and prefer to work out in the mid-afternoon versus getting to the gym early in the day. I have never really been a morning person by nature and although I can do it and feel better when I do it, I still default to an afternoon workout session whenever possible. But there have been plenty of days where I intend to be at the gym at 2:30 and never get there. Life happens, things come up and get prioritized. It is an easy trap to set for yourself.
Here is the spiral that occurs when I allow this to happen: I miss two workout days out of five, and then I don’t sleep as well because of it. I don’t feel rested when I wake, so I don’t want to go to the gym in the morning. The next week I miss three days, and I slide backwards in my fitness level. I feel tired during the day, so I gain a boost with some caffeine in the afternoon, and now I don’t sleep as well that night and I am tired the next day. My diet starts to bend towards things that give me “energy (sugary foods) and so on and so on. I’ve done it plenty of times to know the pattern and the downsides of letting myself fall into this groove.
Just like the CRM keeps me organized at work, the calendar keeps my life in order. I love the Big Ass Calendar concept that Jesse Itzler has created. I have done my own version of this for a while, using a whiteboard with 12 sections, one for each month. I write in all of the following to be seen at a glance:
Trips/Vacations
Work travel
Talks/speeches
Significant events (anniversary, birthdays, holidays, etc.)
I can look at any time during the year and see what my commitments are and know to schedule around them. I have three work conferences each year that I feel I cannot miss, so they go on the whiteboard, and I schedule around them. I also add them to my Outlook calendar along with all of the other events for the year. If someone asks me what I am doing the week after July 4th, all I need to do is spin around in my desk chair and look at the board. The better organized and scheduled out my life is, the better I feel and the more I get done. I used to just go with the flow and deal with things as they came up. I guess when I was younger with less responsibilities this was a reasonable system. No longer; I have to keep my life organized to get everything I commit to accomplished.
Moving onto setting boundaries, this was a tough one for me for a long stretch of my life, and something I still struggle with occasionally. I hate to disappoint people, and I have a strong desire to be liked by everyone. Newsflash, it is not possible to be liked by everyone. Being someone who says “yes” all of the time seemed to be a good way to avoid the uncomfortable conversations which followed an answer of no to a wedding or a social gathering invite. But I am getting better with practice, as I started with the proclamation that I have attended my last wedding with the exception of a direct family member. I hate weddings, I don’t dance, the food sucks, the divorce rate is over 50% and I don’t really want to hear stories about things I already know since we are friends. It is nothing personal, but I am done with this social practice. And by the way, if they get divorced in less than five years, shouldn’t I get the gift I gave back?
I do a lot of different things, and the way I get to do these things I want to do is to say no to an increasing number of things. I love Derek Sivers concept of Hell Yes or No, and I recommend the book highly. I am getting better at saying no, but it takes practice. I used to dwell on that and feel badly about it for days or longer. But with practice I have learned to let go of the largely self-imposed baggage. Previously I would have not done this, but just this week I said no to a speaking gig that had a limited number of people and was on the west side of town about a 40-minute drive away. The pay wasn’t enough to make me want to fight traffic mid-week to get there, and the audience was not my typical target group either. I responded to the email inquiry quickly and politely, letting them know that while honored that they chose me, I am unable to fulfill the request at this time. End of story, no long-winded explanation, nothing more than a brief apology and then moving on. They will find another speaker (I may not have been their first choice anyway) and no need to feeling bad for drawing a boundary that I have chosen not to cross.
I am sure that as I get older that these things become easier, it seems to go that way for a lot of people. While my weekends used to be spent trying to be out and about, seen by the right people and do the cool things, now my days are filled with doing the things that I find important instead of what I think other people think are important. Social pressures lessen with time and shifting priorities, trust me. You may want to start at least some of that now…
So, in case you haven’t figured out how the title of this relates to the topics, allow me to spoon feed it to you. Death by a thousand paper cuts is losing time to disorganization and unfulfilling commitments. Slowly but surely, week by week, you lose time to your lack of planning/preparation and also to saying yes to things you didn’t really want to do. At some point in your life you will really start to understand that we are all running out of time, and to waste it is a crime against yourself. Loss of time equals death, even on a small scale. Little things like scheduling your week out in advance and saying yes only to the things that are a Hell Yes! answer and no to everything else are two simple keys to make your life run on cruise control more often than not. I have not quite achieved autopilot level of this just yet, but I am getting closer.
As always, I wish you luck in your endeavors.
by Darrin Schenck
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by Darrin Schenck
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The phrase death by a thousand papercuts has been around a while, and its origin is in ancient Chinese culture of which I will spare you the details but here is the link to the Wikipedia page on it. It was originally known as Lingchi. I have fallen victim to this, proverbially speaking of course for a variety of reasons but two main ones would be lack of organization and the inability to say no (boundary setting). I will delve into each as this blog progresses.
As someone who has spent their entire professional career in some form of sales, I can attest to the use of a CRM, despite my distaste for the tedious practice of it. I hate having to fill out fields of information on every person I speak with and every company I contact. Many of the companies I contact will not ever answer an email or take a cold call. So why do it? However, there has been ample evidence that it is a useful practice, as I have had people reach out at some point (sometimes a year or two later) after I move onto other targets. I can’t possibly remember details of a conversation with a potential client a week later let alone months later on. I don’t have the ability and I don’t try to fake it. And that is exactly why I force myself to use the CRM approach. Herein lies the magic of the CRM: Habitual Organization.
Using a CRM or any other type of scheduling and organizational tool is critical as you continue to add things to your plate. If at the moment you are juggling classes and a part time job, it may not seem like there is a huge need to populate these details into your calendar. However, as you continue to fill in your weekly schedule with tasks and chores that need to be accomplished, appointments and such, you will find the clarity it provides becomes vital. Tired of feeling scattered and doing everything in a “crisis management mode”? It is a simple solution, but it is not easy: Get Organized. Teach yourself to schedule things out in advance and then stick to it. Here is an example from my own life, and bear in mind, I have a much less hectic schedule than almost everyone I know. Many days I am done with my day job by about 1 or 2pm and prefer to work out in the mid-afternoon versus getting to the gym early in the day. I have never really been a morning person by nature and although I can do it and feel better when I do it, I still default to an afternoon workout session whenever possible. But there have been plenty of days where I intend to be at the gym at 2:30 and never get there. Life happens, things come up and get prioritized. It is an easy trap to set for yourself.
Here is the spiral that occurs when I allow this to happen: I miss two workout days out of five, and then I don’t sleep as well because of it. I don’t feel rested when I wake, so I don’t want to go to the gym in the morning. The next week I miss three days, and I slide backwards in my fitness level. I feel tired during the day, so I gain a boost with some caffeine in the afternoon, and now I don’t sleep as well that night and I am tired the next day. My diet starts to bend towards things that give me “energy (sugary foods) and so on and so on. I’ve done it plenty of times to know the pattern and the downsides of letting myself fall into this groove.
Just like the CRM keeps me organized at work, the calendar keeps my life in order. I love the Big Ass Calendar concept that Jesse Itzler has created. I have done my own version of this for a while, using a whiteboard with 12 sections, one for each month. I write in all of the following to be seen at a glance:
Trips/Vacations
Work travel
Talks/speeches
Significant events (anniversary, birthdays, holidays, etc.)
I can look at any time during the year and see what my commitments are and know to schedule around them. I have three work conferences each year that I feel I cannot miss, so they go on the whiteboard, and I schedule around them. I also add them to my Outlook calendar along with all of the other events for the year. If someone asks me what I am doing the week after July 4th, all I need to do is spin around in my desk chair and look at the board. The better organized and scheduled out my life is, the better I feel and the more I get done. I used to just go with the flow and deal with things as they came up. I guess when I was younger with less responsibilities this was a reasonable system. No longer; I have to keep my life organized to get everything I commit to accomplished.
Moving onto setting boundaries, this was a tough one for me for a long stretch of my life, and something I still struggle with occasionally. I hate to disappoint people, and I have a strong desire to be liked by everyone. Newsflash, it is not possible to be liked by everyone. Being someone who says “yes” all of the time seemed to be a good way to avoid the uncomfortable conversations which followed an answer of no to a wedding or a social gathering invite. But I am getting better with practice, as I started with the proclamation that I have attended my last wedding with the exception of a direct family member. I hate weddings, I don’t dance, the food sucks, the divorce rate is over 50% and I don’t really want to hear stories about things I already know since we are friends. It is nothing personal, but I am done with this social practice. And by the way, if they get divorced in less than five years, shouldn’t I get the gift I gave back?
I do a lot of different things, and the way I get to do these things I want to do is to say no to an increasing number of things. I love Derek Sivers concept of Hell Yes or No, and I recommend the book highly. I am getting better at saying no, but it takes practice. I used to dwell on that and feel badly about it for days or longer. But with practice I have learned to let go of the largely self-imposed baggage. Previously I would have not done this, but just this week I said no to a speaking gig that had a limited number of people and was on the west side of town about a 40-minute drive away. The pay wasn’t enough to make me want to fight traffic mid-week to get there, and the audience was not my typical target group either. I responded to the email inquiry quickly and politely, letting them know that while honored that they chose me, I am unable to fulfill the request at this time. End of story, no long-winded explanation, nothing more than a brief apology and then moving on. They will find another speaker (I may not have been their first choice anyway) and no need to feeling bad for drawing a boundary that I have chosen not to cross.
I am sure that as I get older that these things become easier, it seems to go that way for a lot of people. While my weekends used to be spent trying to be out and about, seen by the right people and do the cool things, now my days are filled with doing the things that I find important instead of what I think other people think are important. Social pressures lessen with time and shifting priorities, trust me. You may want to start at least some of that now…
So, in case you haven’t figured out how the title of this relates to the topics, allow me to spoon feed it to you. Death by a thousand paper cuts is losing time to disorganization and unfulfilling commitments. Slowly but surely, week by week, you lose time to your lack of planning/preparation and also to saying yes to things you didn’t really want to do. At some point in your life you will really start to understand that we are all running out of time, and to waste it is a crime against yourself. Loss of time equals death, even on a small scale. Little things like scheduling your week out in advance and saying yes only to the things that are a Hell Yes! answer and no to everything else are two simple keys to make your life run on cruise control more often than not. I have not quite achieved autopilot level of this just yet, but I am getting closer.
As always, I wish you luck in your endeavors.
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