Be Your Best

Todd Gifford - Success Coach

I have to be about as guilty as anyone out there with the use of ‘No’, ‘But’, or ‘However’ in a sentence when I am communicating with people either written or verbally.  Something I was reading recently talked about the use of these 3 words at the beginning or middle of a sentence being something you really do not want to do — and to understand what kind of impact that makes with other people you interact with.  It can have a significant impact.

Why Not use these 3 words?

Essentially, by using these words when communicating, you are telling the other person or people that you disagree with them — even when you may not be disagreeing with them.  You are conveying: “You are wrong, and I am right.”  Of course, how many people like to be told “You are wrong”…. not very many.  At work? At home? 0.

This got me thinking about how often I use these words at the beginning or key point of a sentence when I am communicating, so I started to tune into this a little bit closer.  WOW!  It’s unbelievable.  Even though I don’t feel like I would use “No”, “but”. or “however” all that much, I do.

Some examples where I caught myself (and there were probably some instances that I did not catch):

“I think that is a good idea, but have you thought about….”

“I really like what you have done on this, however, I am not sure you…..”

“No, I am thinking it would be better to….”

“I agree with what you are saying, however, there is one other problem….”

Why Is It A Problem To Be Disagreeable?

We are generally taught not to be a pushover, and ‘don’t just agree for agreement sake’ — right?

Why should we care if we are disagreeable?  The key here is not what you ‘really’ are, but what you are ‘perceived’ to be.  Nobody likes or overly respects people who are “disagreeable people”.  You know the type — they never agree with anything.  They think the opposite of what you think every time.  This topic is not about your actual position on issues and whether you actually agree or disagree with someone (because many times you are simply trying to convey another idea), but rather your effectiveness at communicating, negotiating, and relationship development.  The goal is to be perceived as an open minded person, willing to listen to ideas, non-confrontational, non-defensive, etc…  This is the type of person that people like to interact with and more fully respect and admire.

So what is the Remedy?

“Thank you.”  Yes, it’s pretty simple to improve your perception as an open-minded person.  Just change your words (not your opinion).  Simple, but not necessarily easy.  Once you begin to catch and monitor yourself using “no”, “but”, and “however”, you simply replace “no …..”, “however, ……”, and “but, ………….” with: “Thank you, that is good information.” or “Thank you, I had not thought of that.” or “thanks, great input.”

If you absolutely cannot avoid disagreeing in some way, then…

…a good way to handle this is to say “thank you, that gives me something to think more about” or “thanks, I appreciate your idea and feedback.”

In practice this is fairly difficult to do.  It is easy to give up on making this change.  However, [whoops did it again] if you chip away at it, you can steadily rid your vocabulary of these words.  People will notice the difference.  It won’t be overnight, but over time you will be perceived as open minded, someone who people can bounce ideas off of, and a person who’s opinions are respected.  It’s kind of ironic —- the reason we use these 3 words is the natural tendency to win with our ideas.  By not using these “win-oriented” words to ‘win’, you…win.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford - Success Coach

If you think about what you do that creates great success for you, it typically ties into things you do on a repeated, consistent basis.  Whether it is creating substantial Cost Savings and Productivity Improvements at work, achieving or maintaining good health or fitness, or creating great relationships with people — it involves actions that you implement frequently and consistently.  The words discipline and regiment come to mind as a driving component to achieving this consistent and frequent action.  However, for me and others that I see who develop mastery on particular area, these consistent and frequent actions have literally become ‘habits’ or built-in personal routines.  The successful person implementing action on a frequent/consistent basis makes it look nearly effortless (as if it is somehow way easier for them to execute it than for anyone else, even when it really is not).

Success and exceeding your goals is largely driven by how many successful habits and consistent routines you have working for you.  If you rely on single shots of effort to achieve success, or effort relying on a reminder system, you will rarely achieve big success.

So, it would stand to reason that improving your ability to create new habits is essential to being successful and hitting your goals.  Creating habits is a lot like anything else you set out to be come good at — there is a method to becoming good at creating ‘habits’.

30-in-30

Most experts agree that it takes about 22-30 days for a person to develop a habit.  Let’s call it 30 days to develop a habit just to be safe.  Whether it is developing a habit to read books every day, putting in place an exercise routine, stopping smoking, or whatever it is — it takes about 30 days of repetitive consistent action to build it into a habit.  Sounds relatively easy until you actually dive into doing this.

30-in-30 is a process of creating a habit from scratch, whereby you complete the habit you are trying to form every single day for 30 straight days, without fail.

This Habit developing process is not limited to simple, one-dimensional things like drinking more water.  It applies to literally every skill or talent imaginable.  In other words, if you wanted to learn to play the guitar, the objective would be to first develop the habit of learning to play the guitar.  If you do not develop this habit first, you will likely never reach mastery of this skill, because you will be fighting the battle against your habit of “not” learning the guitar.

So, with the learning to play the guitar example, 30-in-30 would be getting 1 hour of practice on the guitar every single day for 30 straight days, without fail.  After 30 days, you will have developed the foundational habit to practicing the guitar that will take you towards mastery OR you will quickly decide that you really do not want to learn to play the guitar!

Your Massive Productivity Time Zone(s)

Just about every expert says that your most productive time is early in the morning, and therefore you want to be working on your most important projects early in the day.  However, I have found with myself as well heard from other successful people that you can have multiple ‘high productivity time zones’ during the day, and everyone is a little different.  The key is to determine when those best time zones are for you — and then leverage the heck out of those time slots.  It can literally transform your ability to get much more done.  If you don’t understand when these ‘hot’ time zones are, it can really work against you.

One way to figure this out is to look historically at the times of the day where you: get a lot of stuff done, have a lot of good ideas, have the most satisfaction at work, and seem to be able to concentrate the best.  This could be early in the morning, but then again very late in the day.  It could even be in the evening or over the lunch hour.  No matter when it is, identifying when these ‘massive productivity time zones’ are is step one.  The next step is to carefully guard those time zones and create distraction-free focus time in those zones proactively.  It might only be a 2 hour slot, but research has shown that you can accomplish 2x—5x in these high productivity time zones vs. during ‘normal’ time periods.  We have discussed ways to guard these ‘golden’ time slots in the past, but it is difficult.  No one else might understand that these time zones are what they are to you.  In certain cases, it makes sense to let people know when they are, so they stay clear.

Protect and maximize these productive time zones — then reap the benefits of exceeding your goals.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford