Seeking Coastal Utopia

What image does that title bring to mind? Boiling the ocean. What an immense feat! The level of effort that would be required to accomplish that task. The amount of work that would be required to boil the ocean. The immensity makes you wail internally with despair…. “a lot of water” photo by Giga Khurtsilava on  Unsplash This phrase is descriptive of a very difficult task, close to impossible . The project is massive in scope and scale, which may have been improperly scoped originally. It could be the type of project with an extremely ambitious goal which can potentially cause stress, frustration, and disappointment for those that are also involved because the project has an extremely low chance of success. So what do you do? Manage the scope. Scope is a life ring for the drowning person. In the case of a project that is out of control (or never in control), it is the tool that is used to ground everyone, in reality, providing a clear definition of the pro...

Check your ego at the door!  Or better yet, bring your ego with you, only if you can keep it in check! Why do we think that we have to do everything? Perfectly, every time? Do we honestly believe we have answers for everything that is presented to us? That we have to answer every person that comes to us with a deep, meaningful response, solving their problem for them — because we can (or think we can)? Is it because of ego? Is it because we do not want to be seen in a position of weakness? Or do we want to be seen as superior to others around us? Ego? Check! “woman carrying sack of hay on back while holding stick” by Graham Covington on  Unsplash When you are struggling under a heavy load, what do you do? Do you continue to struggle under the heavy load slogging through it trying to complete it yourself? Killing yourself to get the work finished? Then running out of energy and not getting it complete? Do you think that it would be faster for you to do the w...

We have all heard the adage there is an elephant in the room. Heck, we are probably all sick of hearing about the elephant in the room, even when we try to ignore it. The elephant in the room is the biggest thing in the room that everyone wants to ignore, but someone invariably brings it up. “elephant during daytime” by James Hammond on  Unsplash …ahem, excuse me. I want to bring up the elephant in the room… Dude, shut up! I really do not want to ignore elephants anymore, I think we should eat them! And then the following adage is how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! I think I am going to vomit, not because of too many elephants, but because of too many euphemisms. Stop it already. People freak out when they are presented with a massive undertaking, the large jobs, the elephant size jobs. The ones with a seemingly impossible action (note — there is no such thing as impossible) and the mountain of work looming in front of you is massive. You ca...

We all struggle with prioritization. It is a challenge to figure out what we need to work on next; we are continually firefighting. How do we figure out what we need to work on next and remain focused and disciplined enough to finish those tasks? There is always a giant list of things to do. When we are using the rule of threes , it makes it easier to figure out and remember what we need to do next. Don’t lie and say — I get all my work done every day — or — I know exactly what I work on each day, I don’t need a list — um. No. “printed sticky notes glued on board” by Daria Nepriakhina on  Unsplash When you go home every day, or more specifically, when you stop working for the day, and everything on your plate is complete… wait wait. You mean everything on your workload is complete? Your desk is clean, the inbox is empty? Stop trying to kid yourself (and BS others). If that is the case, you must not be doing enough for any business, yours or the one you work for! There w...

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”―  Mark Twain Photo by  David Clode  on  Unsplash Meaning — you really need to do the hardest thing first. Period. End of story. Stop arguing. Just shut up and get to work. It’s hard. It’s difficult to  get motivated  to do something that is challenging. You are afraid of trying to do something hard.  You are afraid that you will fail .  There are different schools of thought about what should be done first, on what sequence you should do certain tasks, but realistically you need to do the hardest things first. Why? Because I said so. Now with that, I don’t mean just jumping right in, tearing it open, trying to get it completed haphazardly. Sound and fury mean nothing. You still need to plan and understand the steps that are necessary to do those hard things. You would not just walk into the gym and deadlift 500 pounds, you would hurt...