Friends of Dave #371: 😴 knockers up ⏰ 😳
When you are stuck, stop focusing on the "how" and instead think about the "why."
Friends, I gotta say, this was a pretty long, GSD week for me on this end.
I’m exhausted…good exhausted because I was able to G some 💩 D, but exhausted.
Have no fear, I still have something to say…but it will be quick.
Some of you might remember a while back we talked here about the importance of focusing on the “why” vs. the “how” when it came to selling, presenting or simply telling a story.
People get so enamored with the details around how things work that they often forget the most important part of a story: why it matters to the listener in the first place. It happens all of the time.
The story/pitch/presentation gets derailed because of too much “how” and not enough “why.”
This also happens when we are trying to figure things out — our problems, challenges, deals, products….you name it. We get deep in the weeds and start overanalyzing the “how.”
How did I get here?
How do I get out of this situation?
How do I construction a solution?
How do I build the most elegant product?
How do I make more money?
How can I close this deal? How can I get the best terms on this deal?
How do I make myself happy?
How do I fix this?
Don’t get me wrong — understanding these “how” questions is very important. Within the answers can lie everything you need to get yourself moving forward and generating progress.
It’s when we get so hyper-fixated on trying to figure out the “how” that we lose sight of the why it matters in the first place that that we get derailed.
And we when that happens, we inevitably get stuck.
Reminder: when this happens to you, take a step back. Stop asking yourself about the “how” — go back and ask yourself about the “why.”
Why did I go in this direction in the first place?
Why is it important that I get out of this situation? Why now? Why not later?
Why do I need to construction this particular solution? Why does this solution matter?
Why do I need to build this product in the first place?
Why do I need to make more money?
Why does closing this specific deal matter? Why do these particular terms matter?
Why is it important that I make myself happy?
Why do I need to fix this?
Test it out yourself the next time you, your family or your team feels you are at an impasse. When you shift the focus back to the “why” it makes you think more about the end state — where you are going. Not where you are now, which is stuck.
Another way of looking at it: the “why” is the strategy or the vision. The “how” is the tactics you apply to make it happen.
Maybe you (or a team) are stuck, not because you can’t figure out how to get unstuck, but perhaps the strategy or vision needs to be tweaked or changed altogether.
Asking “why” gives you the opportunity to make changes, see alternative solutions and uncover what could lead to them. THEN you can go back and start to build your path to it by asking “how” — but with a different or enhanced perspective or new end goal in mind.
Hope this helps!
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
In 1881, Otto von Bismarck proposed a radical idea for retirement: people above the age of 70 would be given a state pension, encouraging them to stop working.
Wealth management company Natixis analyzed 44 nations on four main categories affecting the ability for their residents to retire well in the 2023 Global Retirement Index. Each category has subindices, from which they averaged scores out of 100 to create this ranking.
“Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It’s really the opposite.”
We are impatient creatures, impatient for the future to arrive and prone to forgetting the past in our urgency to have it all now.
The Industrial Revolution ushered in a new need for timekeeping as society moved from agriculture to mass-scale factory work. With urbanization, fewer people woke with the crow of the rooster or dinging of church bells. Instead, they relied on other people—“knocker uppers” or “knockers up”—to wake them.
When pubs and bars in England removed the largest serving size of wine by the glass from their menus, patrons drank nearly 8 percent less wine, according to a new paper published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
The story I guarantee that not one living person had on their 2024 news hype cycle bingo card….wish I was the person who got paid to write this headline.