Some days I love my work. Other days I hate it. Love hate love hate. That’s usually the way it goes.
On Monday I want to take over the world. On Tuesday I want to sell the business because I can’t stand it. On Wednesday, I’m on fire. On Thursday, I want to throw myself off a cliff, set fire to all the paperwork, and condemn the whole government bureaucracy of TEC, NZQA, IRD and all the other acronyms of business and education to the seven levels of hell. Friday, I love myself because I’m so damn clever.
Am I insane? Is everyone in business subjected to this same roller coaster ride? Probably yes to at least one of those questions. Is your life the same? In any case, I do know that there are things we can do to make the good days better and minimize the hellishness of the bad days.
- Stay away from crappy people. I learned that from my blogging hero James Altucher. It’s so much better being around nice people. It’s not always possible, but I’m learning to to eliminate the crappy people in my life.
- Turn off email. Email is a drag. It’s a useless broken form of communication. Unfortunately, we need it. I hate it. It sucks me in every day. Some days though I turn it off. Bad me. I go entire days without checking it. Once I went four days. Forgive me if you tried to email me during that week. I had a blast though. If you really want to talk to me, txt me or message me on twitter @smith_graeme
- Create. Those days I turned off the email I was writing the first draft to my iBook. I was so happy. I was gonna get that sucker on the iBook Store and take over the world.
- Make lists. I’m big on making lists. Sometimes I get to tick them off and complete my tasks. Other times I don’t. I use http://teamly.com. It rocks. Unfortunately, I don’t. Most of the time. But writing lists helps with the bipolar disorder effect.
- Know when you’ve done something good. I always know when I’ve kicked butt. I don’t need external validation (as nice as that can be). When I’ve made something, done something, finished something, started something, called someone, I know that it’s good and that I rock.
Now I’m feeling good. Queue James brown theme music…