Not according to a short but interesting piece Alexandra Levit recently posted to her blog, Water Cooler Wisdom. In it, she comments on a book by Richard Chang, called The Passion Plan, which draws a distinction between two kinds of passion:

The Passion Plan describes passion as both content-based (activities like writing, hosting events, or racing cars) or context-based (themes like innovation, nurturing, and risk-taking).  Chang says that we can experience both types of passion in our work, and can often find ways to weave our passions into a current job without making a drastic career change.

It’s a powerful idea for those struggling in a job they find less than enthralling. Rather than spend your time daydreaming about making a career change to another gig that suits you better, why not attempt to alter the context of your current job? You could push not only for more of the type of tasks you like best, but also more freedom in terms of where and when you work (and whom you have to interact with regularly), as well as more learning and development to ensure you feel both autonomous and nurtured. Of course, that won’t work if your boss is an inflexible ogre, but these types of changes may be a possibility in many workplaces — you won’t know until you try.

For those struggling to enjoy their jobs, changing how they work may be far more manageable than changing what they do, but the idea that context sometimes trumps content is also a powerful one for managers looking to get the most out of their teams. You may not be able to change what your employees need to get done, but by making changes to the environment in which work is accomplished, you may be able to create a more passionate, and therefore more productive, workforce.

When it comes to passion for work is context as important as content?

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This conclusion is noteworthy for anyone looking to hire web workers in Asia, but it’s also interesting for the gap it describes between U.S. and Asian attitudes. The ZDNet Asia article quotes Gavin Henshaw, head of Kelly IT Resources, who sums up the difference:

while telecommuting may be money-saving alternative in the United States, it is “definitely more for employee morale and retention” in the Asian context.

Are Asian companies increasingly positive about web working? And is it true that they’re developing  a rounded outlook on the subject, seeing it as a way to retain and motivate talent not just cut costs? Survey data and a handful of stories support this view, including a 2008 poll commissioned by Avaya and conducted by IDC in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, India and China, which showed that web work is indeed increasingly accepted:

81 percent of respondents in the Asia-Pacific either agreed or strongly agreed that telecommuting improves productivity, compared to only 61 per cent in 2005…. in 2008, 76 percent of those surveyed in China and 78 per cent of those surveyed in Singapore saw telecommuting as a means of improving work-life balance among their employees.

Several recent trend pieces underline the point that opinion on web workers is shifting in Asia. In a discussion of changing HR practices in Singapore in Human Resources Magazine Asia, for example, Ben Chew, Regional Business Manager of TBC HR Consulting, Singapore says that there “it has become increasingly clear that both employees and employers are more interested in the end-results more than the location of where the work is being completed.” AsiaOne Business reports the civil service in Singapore is increasingly embracing web working, while Indian firms are apparently offering more web working to help women balance their responsibilities.

If you have experience at Asian companies, have you noticed a shift in attitudes toward web work?

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As Ducker says, “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between motivating someone from a virtual standpoint and motivating somebody [...] where you’re working in real time with each other under the same roof. It just comes down to simple things, like being a nice guy, being understanding, being flexible, [and] wanting to spend a bit of time with them, above and beyond just giving them tasks.”

Here are a few things Chris recommends to help build stronger relationships with your virtual team:

1. Have an open door policy. “I always make time for my management,” Chris explains, “My management fundamentally run my company for me, and I’m well aware that without them, I would have to come in and start working ridiculous hours every single day. If they need to speak with me, all they have to do is pick up the phone, and I’ll make time to speak with them.”
2. Provide opportunities for career growth. Chris says, “I never want to hire externally, unless I truly have to. I’ll always look internally to try to promote people, if possible. That creates a great culture within a company.”
3. Provide opportunities for education. “I think there [are] other things you can do,” Chris says, “not only spending the time with somebody and giving them career opportunities, but also investing in them. I regularly put my management on different types of courses, training and things like that. It’s developing them as employees, and it gives them the opportunity to better themselves, and they appreciate that.”
4. Provide support resources. “We created our Live2Sell library, which now has just over a hundred books on everything from self-help to how to get over issues and problems in the workplace,” he explains, “People can come up to the HR department and borrow the books, just like in any other library.”
5. Spend time together as a team. “We do one yearly team-building weekend,” Chris says, “where we go out and stay the night at one of the resorts here, and everybody is together.” The purpose of the weekend is to build stronger connections in a fun atmosphere. He adds, “I’ve found that I have a lot in common with [team members]. We enjoy the same things. There is a lot more in common with workmates than a lot of people think.”
6. Treat your team members like family. “We have ten core values, and the first one is, ‘Treat everyone as family.’ That’s really important for any company,” Chris says, “We recently launched our company culture website, Live2Sell Family. It’s open for the public, but it’s all about us, [and] we’re now giving out little mini birthday cakes to everybody on their birthdays.” Another example, he adds, one of his assistants is a big music-lover, and every so often, he emails an iTunes gift certificate, because as Chris says, “The little things make big, big differences.”

“Above and beyond monetary gain,” he adds, “the fact of the matter is that, as long as you give opportunities to people, you’re nice, and they enjoy working for you, they’re not going to go anywhere. As long as you’re treating them well and with respect and paying them what they’re worth, you don’t need to lose people, unless you’re not managing your company properly.” By establishing these little connections, you’ll build better relationships with your virtual team and build a greater sense of unity and purpose.

How do you keep your virtual workforce happy and motivated?

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Certainly, some of us make half-hearted attempts to accomplish a few of our life and business goals. But how many people do you know who put everything on the line to pursue their deepest, most life-changing dreams? What are the rest of us doing, and what are we waiting for?

Choices and Challenges

Of course, circumstances get in the way. There are challenges, setbacks and detours. But each of us has a choice. Although it won’t be easy to navigate back to the right path, if we say that we can’t find our way around obstacles, we’re making a choice to leave things as they are.

Last night, I was reading about Roald Dahl, author of such hopeful and imaginative books as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That might be my absolute favorite story about an underdog who overcomes obstacles while continuing to believe in something, even when all is stacked against him.

It turns out Roald Dahl was a lot like his character Charlie. Dahl’s personal life was filled with hardship and tragedy. In spite of all the challenges he faced, he remained positive and achieved great things. As it says on his website, “The series of misfortunes and tragedies Dahl… suffer[ed did not] made him more bitter. Loss and physical adversity seemed to stimulate his enormous energies to positive action. He fought misfortune as if it was a dragon to be slain.”

Time to Dream Big

I hope that 2011 will be a year of great progress toward achieving our deeply-buried dreams, and a year of doing things that require us to step out of our comfort zones and test our abilities, even if they lead to failure or, even more frightening, success.

I challenge you, as we round out these last few days of 2010: dust off those gutsy dreams and ambitions you’ve kept to yourself until now. Dare to put yourself out there; do something big this coming year. It doesn’t need to look big to anyone else, but you’ll know it is, because it will require you to go out on a limb and do things in an entirely different way.

For 2011, live the way you truly want to live, and achieve what you’ve only ever dreamed you could achieve.

What big, audacious goals do you have for 2011?

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It’s no wonder. When else do we get a good ten days (or more!) off work, and can actually spend that time at home? For me, this is a good chance to make serious progress on projects, try ideas I’ve been toying with but have had no time to work on, and fuel the inspiration that will kick-start the new working year.

If you’re working on a personal project, or you’re considering resurrecting one over the break, here are a few ideas to help you stay focused and motivated, while enjoying the holidays at the same time.

Make Sure Your Break Is a Break

First and foremost, you’ll probably appreciate the break more if you accept that this is holiday time. For me, recharging the batteries is imperative — that’s what holidays are for. So if you can afford to, don’t force yourself to work if there’s something else you’d rather do. The idea of the passionate personal project is that it fills you with a sense of adventure, fun, and excitement — not that it feels like work. If the thought of working on your project seems blissful, do it. If it doesn’t, do something else.

The fact that you’ve decided to work on a personal project doesn’t mean you need to dedicate the entirety of your break to it. The thing I love about this time is that I can work when and as I feel like it. If I wake up and the sun’s out, I might spend the day outside instead of at my desk. On the other hand, if I get right into my personal project and want to pull an all-nighter, I can. Don’t force yourself into a timetable.

Experiment as Broadly as Possible

It can be good to use this time to experiment with the peripheral aspects of a project, as well as with its focus. I’ve found that this approach can help me understand what motivates and supports my work, and can make my money-earning tasks more enjoyable.

So don’t just experiment with your discipline, experiment with everything. As a remote worker, I like to change my work location while I’m focused on personal projects. Instead of sitting at the desk I use for the other fifty weeks of the year, I move around, and the simple change in location somehow alters my perspective.

I also rely entirely on my level of interest (rather than any of the usual motivations) for getting work done. I’m trying a different approach to milestone setting, as well as testing various discipline-specific techniques I’ve never used before. Doing things differently gives me more interest in continuing my personal project, because I’m not just creating something, I’m learning all the time. What I learn can be applied to my day job after the break.

Find a Balance

Working as you feel like it is great, unless you get to the start of the new year and feel like you need a holiday to get over your holidays! Giving yourself over to your passion for a personal project can be extremely fulfilling, but it can also burn you out. Balance is important.

Don’t forget to take time off, see friends or family, and have fun doing other things. By mixing things up and pacing yourself, you can maintain the impetus for your project without running yourself down or squandering valuable opportunities to be with the people you love. Balancing your desires can help you get more out of your project than a rigorous work schedule might.

Share Your Passion

When I’m working during a break, I tend to hole up, shut down my email and phone, and immerse myself in my project. That’s great, but occasionally it’s good to come up for air. One beneficial way to do this is to get in touch with someone else who’s also working on a personal project.

This gives me a sense of support and solidarity. Although I might be tucked away in my own world, I feel connected to others who share the same sense of passion (even if their areas of focus are completely different from my own). But finding out what others are doing can give me ideas for experimenting with my own approach, style, or project — all of which may improve the outcomes of my efforts.

What’s helping you stay inspired while enjoying the benefits of time off during the holidays?

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ambition, n.: an earnest desire for some type of achievement and the willingness to strive for its attainment

Thinking about ambition reminds me of Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford. The words “stay hungry” have followed me ever since reading his address in a magazine soon after it took place.

It also reminds me of my first years in business and of my first venture that was a real success: my web design business, which has since taken a back seat to other ventures, but still has the power to motivate me when I think of it.

In the first full twelve months of starting the business, I had earned what was for me at the time quite a bit of money, but I didn’t really pay attention to that fact in the beginning. I just did the work. Now, though, I can appreciate that accomplishment and how I achieved it by myself, and for me, that’s what ambition is all about.

Take away spouses and parents, mentors, physical possessions. Take away everything, and you’re left with yourself; knowing that, no matter what, you can create something from nothing, and you can survive. Knowing that makes you think anything is possible.

It’s not about being on your own or not having anyone to help you, quite the opposite. The greater that inner source of power, the more you have to offer those around you and the more you appreciate the true strength that can result from coming together around a shared passion.

However, it is important to know that we can build something with our own hands, that we have that ability within us. When challenges find us, and they will, we need to know that we are resourceful and that, as before, we will find a way through them or around them, whichever comes first.

That’s so very powerful, but wanting something and being willing to do whatever it takes to get it are two very different things, and lately, I’m coming to appreciate how you need both the wanting and the willingness in order to achieve.

I’m starting to apply that distinction to my own decision-making when it comes to where I spend my energy. I’m coming to accept that if I don’t want something bad enough, I’m never going to do the work it will take to reach it. My time and energy would be better spent on something I actually want to achieve and for which I’m willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish: those things that make me want to get up early and stay up late, where sleep becomes unnecessary and something I have to force myself to do, because I simply can’t wait to do whatever is next on the list to move the vision forward. It truly is a hunger.

Over the last year, I’ve found it especially difficult to build a team of people who take pride in their work and are ambitious when it comes to their own success or sense of accomplishment. I’m not sure what the ultimate solution to that problem will be, but when I think about adding someone to my team, I know that it’s important for that person to have dreams and goals of his or her own.

I’m OK with the fact that he or she might see my business as a stepping stone, a means to an end, because that means that while that person is with me, he or she will be striving, reaching for something. He or she will be ambitious, and I need, we all need, people like that around us in order to make each of our dreams a reality.

Do you let ambition drive your business and the decisions you make around it?

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I call these items a “moving to-do list,” and I’m always on the lookout for them. They’re those things that follow me around for weeks or months on end, until I finally own up to it and say, “I’m never going to get to that. I might as well quit moving it forward.”

I’m not talking about those pesky to-dos that eventually really do have to get done. I have a couple of them on my list right now, things like fixing a mirror on my vanity or the trip lever on my bathtub. Eventually, if I keep ignoring those to-dos and moving them forward on my list instead of just doing them, the mirror on my antique vanity will break, and my bathtub won’t drain (not good). Hopefully, I’ll get to those things before that happens, but the point is, eventually, as annoying as they might be, we get to these kinds of things, because if we don’t, there are consequences.

What I’m talking about are those things that might not have obvious consequences if we fail to do them, or that have consequences we’re subconsciously willing to pay. These are things like:

• Writing that book we’ve been meaning to write, or
• Launching that new product or service. or
• Making changes to our service offerings or websites so that we stop taking on certain types of clients.

These are those tasks that we’re avoiding for some reason, and we need to figure out why. A few of the possible reasons?

1. Obligation. We keep saying to the people around us (business and accountability partners, customers and clients, family and friends) that we’re going to write that book. We say that it’s something we really want to do, or we say that it will bring in additional revenue for our businesses, but it turns out that we’re not really all that motivated to do it, yet we keep moving the task forward, because we’ve promised that that’s what we’re going to do.
2. Guilt. We think it’s something we should do, maybe because everyone else manages to get it done or because it’s our “responsibility” to do it, but internally, we’re doing it for all the wrong reasons and don’t really want to do it, and we feel guilty because of that, so we just keep moving forward and saying that we’re going to get it done.
3. Motivation (or lack of it). A lot of the tasks we take on are driven by financial motivations. Maybe we want to (or think we should) make more money, but in reality, we’re quite comfortable where we are, so even though we might think or say that we want to achieve greater financial success, the financial motivation alone is never going to be enough to make us do the task, but we keep moving it forward, because we think we should want more money.

At the end of the day, it comes down to acceptance. Acceptance of what we really want, of our own definition of success, and of who we really are (and who we’re not).

Once you accept all those things and are OK, saying, “You know what, I just don’t even really want that. It’s not who I am, it’s not what I want, and it’s not important for me to be happy,” give it up. Take it off the list and file it away as a “someday/maybe,” if you think it will ever come back on the radar or if you need that little bit of security, just in case you change your mind.

The bottom line is that a moving to-do list adds unnecessary stress and frustration and a feeling of failure, when really you’re just attempting to achieve something that you don’t even want or that’s some arbitrary achievement that won’t even matter to you if you do accomplish it. Let it go, and be OK with it. Free up that mind space for something that you actually do want and that you stand a chance of accomplishing, because you won’t get in your own way.

What needs to be taken off your moving to-do list?

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A post from Chris Brogan stirred my entrepreneurial spirit. In it, he discussed how the phrase “looking for work” used to mean mean looking for (and creating) opportunities to work, rather than just looking for a job. He laments that, “We’ve somehow decided that ‘security’ equals working for someone else who has all the cards and pulls all the strings.”

Brogan goes on to describe how people can create their own work by being entrepreneurial. Certainly, that applies to creating opportunities where others might say they don’t exist (starting a new business, for example), but it also applies to how you look at your business right now.

For the guy running the screenprinting shop, don’t just make t-shirts; create opportunities to make t-shirts. For the lady running the bakery, don’t just make cupcakes; create opportunities for people to want cupcakes.

For each of us, we have something we want to make, do or sell, but we can’t just do the work; we have to actually create the opportunities for doing the work.

So, how does this work in practice? Let’s take the cupcake lady. Business is slow. People aren’t buying cupcakes. She needs to find a way to make people want to buy cupcakes. How can she do that? A trendy idea I like is people substituting cupcakes for their actual wedding cake, so why couldn’t she position herself as the local baker for the job? She could find and create unique wedding cupcake displays and showcase them in her bakery window or in posters around her shop. Certainly, in big cities or in trendier locations, this might be something seen at every bakery, but what if she’s the first in her area to offer it? Cupcake gold, at least for a while, and then she’ll have to create a new reason for people to want cupcakes.

So, how can you implement this for your business? You just need to think outside the box.

Think about your product or service. How do people use it now, and is there a way that you can get them to want to use it more? No matter what your business, your customers and clients all want the same thing, whether that’s more time, more money, less aggravation and annoyance, or a greater sense of security, well-being, acceptance, or achievement. How can you help them get one or more of those things?

No matter what you do, no matter what product you create or service you provide, you can find ways to create demand around your business. All it takes is a little bit of that entrepreneurial spirit and a good dose of creativity.

How can you “find a place to apply what you know how to do”? How can you “create work” for yourself instead of waiting for it to come to you?

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A Story About Change

My friend Betsy Talbot and her husband Warren are forging their own path and making their own way. Two years ago, they decided that they wanted to travel the world. Life was too short, they decided, to wait for that dream life to magically create itself. They had to figure out a way to make things happen — their own way, right now. They created a plan for saving money and paring down to make room for an around-the-world trip of one to two years, and one month from now on October 1, just over two years from originally setting out their intentions, they will be embarking on an adventure of a lifetime.

What’s Their Secret?

Betsy and Warren’s story is very inspiring, but unfortunately, the most probable initial reaction as an outsider is to think, “I could never do something like that. I have [x, y, z] obligations, and anyway, even if I wanted to do it, I wouldn’t know where to start.” The thing is, I have known Betsy for many years now, and she’s just like a lot of other people I know, myself included, and yet, somehow she and Warren have made this happen, so what’s their secret?

One thing that struck me that Betsy said recently was, “I’m becoming more comfortable with the unknown.” I don’t think it occurred to her that she and Warren had become comfortable with the unknown quite some time ago.

I’ve watched them carry out their plan over the past couple of years, and at almost every step of that journey, they were not exactly sure what to do or how things would go, and yet, they kept going and remained confident that they would figure things out along the way, and that’s exactly what they did.

When You Don’t Have the Answers

As business owners, we have to get used to not having all the answers, knowing that if the answers were easily found, anyone and everyone could attempt to start a business, and they would all succeed at it.

I think our first instinct, anytime we don’t have the answers or when things don’t seem to be moving along as smoothly as we might have expected, is to think, “I must be doing something wrong,” when in all likelihood, it’s just that what we’re doing has never been done before in quite the same way, and maybe that’s a good thing.

Instead of immediately thinking we should change course and do things the way someone else has done them, perhaps we might step back and ask ourselves, “Is there really one answer, one right way to do this? Has this even been done before, or do I simply need to become comfortable with creating my own way?”

Working in Spite of Not Knowing

Perhaps the biggest part of it is learning to stay the course, even when the course doesn’t yet exist. There’s no path laid out ahead of you, and you’re learning to navigate as you go. Learn to keep going, in spite of not having clear directions. Create a plan you believe is most likely to succeed by studying the cues of those who have succeeded before you, but accept that you are forging a new path in many ways, so the answers may not always be immediately available.

How have you learned to become comfortable with the unknown?

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Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. — Thomas Edison

There comes a point when being a business owner gets really hard (and I mean really hard). You’ve come up with your big idea, you’ve done all the initial legwork to set it up, and now comes the hard part: Getting the word out about your business and, more importantly, hanging in there while you get the word out about your business. The hard part now becomes not giving up too soon.

The Real Work

When you start a business, when you start a new product or service, when you launch anything really, that’s when you feel like you’re working really hard. That’s when you’re willing to stay up late and get up early to get all the groundwork completed so that you can start making money. As hard as it can seem during this time, you generally know what to do, or you can at least figure out what to do, and you just plow through getting the work done. Then you finish the work. (Cue sound of crickets.) Now what?

All right, now you figure out that you need a marketing plan. Great, that gives you something else to do! You finish the marketing plan and begin implementing it. (You believe in this plan. You’ve given it a lot of thought. You feel really confident about it. It’s going to generate the business you need.) You run through your plan for several days, maybe even several weeks, and then … nothing. Nothing happens, and in our instant-gratification-seeking world, this is where things start getting testy:

• When you’re over the rush of your big idea,
• When you’ve completed the work of creating it,
• When you need to pay the bills, and
• When it feels like you’re sitting on your laurels.

When you’re doing all that initial setup (building your website, creating the product, etc.), it feels like real work. Marketing doesn’t feel like real work, and it gets harder to justify and explain to those around us, particularly those who don’t have businesses. Marketing? What’s marketing? Building a website people get; that sounds like real work. Marketing? Marketing on Facebook and Twitter? All right, now you’re just playing around. Those are the conversations you have, both with yourself and with others, for justifying what you’re doing.

Writing posts for your blog, replying and posting on social networks, doing interviews, commenting on other sites and forums, searching for opportunities to guest post — all these things don’t feel like work, but they’re very necessary for building a successful business, and sticking with these activities for the bulk of your time each day for the six months or year it’s going to take you to gain some traction seems impossible.

Not Giving Up

So, how do you do it? How do you avoid giving up too soon?

1. You make a commitment. Do you want to do this? Are you willing to bet the next 6-12 months of your life on it? You have to be willing to say, “This is my commitment. These are the milestones I intend to reach. This is my intention.”
2. You maintain discipline. Each and every day, you have to say, “This is what I’m committed to doing. These are my top priorities.” You have to focus on what you believe to be the “highest and best use” tasks that will get the word out about your business and start generating income for you. You stay focused, not only on what you’re going to do, but also on what you’re not going to do (compulsively checking email, surfing the Internet, taking a dozen breaks each day, etc.).
3. You trust your plan. You’ve given a lot of thought to the best way for promoting your business, and now you just have to believe in it. Don’t keep switching plans and changing things up. It’s going to take time to see results. Give yourself at least a 90-day test with your current plan before doing any tweaking.
4. Be willing to stay up late and get up early. Although it’s not easy to think about, success isn’t just going to be handed to you. You’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work to get things going. No one’s going to do it for you. As you start to get more successful, you still have to continue getting the word out, and juggling priorities can be a challenge. Know that handling incoming work and generating opportunities for future work are equally important.
5. Find support. Get an accountability partner to help you stay the course. It’s a lot easier to waiver when you don’t have someone else holding you responsible and accountable for your original plans and intentions.

Finding a way to hang in there and not give up on your vision can be the hardest thing you ever do to see your business to success, but you have to figure out how you’re going to stick with it for the time it will take to gain some momentum and start seeing results.

In the past, how did you find ways to hang in there until your idea took hold?

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I just finished one of several big projects I’ve been working on lately. It was probably one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, and several times throughout the project, I could easily see why most of us:

• Don’t take on big challenges at all,
• Procrastinate when needing to deal with big challenges, or
• Quit halfway through them.

There are tons of obstacles that get in the way and make starting and completing big projects or challenges very hard to do.

Obstacle #1: Fear

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, fear (of success and failure, of ticking people off, of looking stupid, etc.) is debilitating. A lot of times, it’s easier to just keep our heads down, avoid eye contact, and not raise our hands (even when we know the answer). We ask ourselves:

• “What if it doesn’t work?”
• “What if it gets me fired?”
• “What if I do this, spend a lot of time/money/energy, and it gets me nowhere?”

Fear is always going to be present, but nine times out of ten, the thing we fear doesn’t even eventuate. Yet we still let it hold us back, even though we know it’s not likely to occur.

Obstacle #2: Avoidance

More often than not, we know what we need to do, yet we make excuses about why we can’t or haven’t made progress. Maybe we need to get that new marketing strategy off the ground, maybe we need to start that new business, or maybe we need to write that e-book. Whatever the case, we don’t get it done or don’t even get it started and instead say things, like:

• “I would have started it, but I’ve just been so busy at home.”
• “I’ve been meaning to finish that, but I’ve been swamped lately.”
• “I got sick, then the kids were off a week, then my in-laws came to visit, and I just haven’t had the time.”

We convince ourselves that our complete avoidance of getting things done is caused by legitimate delays and distractions, because they are legitimate. The question is, how badly do we want to complete that big project/challenge? For example, how much do we really want to get our businesses off the ground, or how much do we really want to see them succeed?

Obstacle #3: Motivation (Or Lack of It)

I think a lot of times, we say we want something because maybe we should want it (or think we should want it).  Maybe we say, “I want my business to make more money,” but in reality, we’re pretty comfortable where we are, and even if we’re not completely comfortable, the discomfort is not so overwhelming to make us want to put out the extra effort to effect change in our situation.

If there is no real motivation to do something, we have to admit it, own it, and say, “I don’t even want that,” and so, it’s not necessary to put out all that effort to complete some arbitrary project or challenge. If we can’t at least get to the place where we can accept our lack of motivation, then there’s this feeling of obligation or guilt that constantly nags at us.

Obstacle #4: No Map

Sometimes we’d do what we needed to do, if only we knew where to start or how to get it done. Especially in business, there are times when we walk around clueless and have to figure things out as we go, and that leads back to the first obstacle. If we don’t know what we’re doing, how can we get people to believe in us, and how do we avoid looking stupid when people figure out that we don’t know what we’re doing?

Seth Godin talks about working without a map in his book “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?“, and discusses about how we have to be OK with working without a map and just get used to not knowing our way around. If there was a map, everyone else would be following it, and then the journey and destination would probably not be as worthwhile.

It can be hard to take on big projects and challenges and even harder to actually complete them, but by identifying the root cause of our hesitation or procrastination, we’ll be much more likely to tackle those big challenges and get things done.

What are some of the biggest obstacles that hold you back when it comes to big projects and challenges?

Photo by Flickr user The U.S. Army, licensed under CC 2.0

“Gentlemen, what are your intentions?” — Jim Lovell, Apollo 13

In “Apollo 13,” Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) asks that question at a pivotal point in the movie, where the mission shifts from going to the moon to getting back home safely. I hadn’t really thought about it when I’d seen the movie before, but for some reason, that quote resonated with me when watching it the other day.

What are your intentions? Do you ever stop and ask yourself that question? Probably not. If you’re like me, you get up and kind of let the day happen to you — addressing emails, putting out fires, taking on whatever comes your way, and working in reactive mode until the day is over. Then you wonder why you’re so frustrated and swear to yourself that tomorrow will be different. On the rare day that you manage to control your direction, stand accountable for your results, and work from a place of intention, you end the day feeling exhilarated and more connected to your true purpose.

In the movie, Lovell asks the question so that the crew would get their minds off going to the moon and focus on what was really important, which was making it back home. By asking that one simple question, their attention moved from disappointment over not making it to the moon to doing what was necessary to ensure their survival.

How different would your “mission” be each day, if you asked that one simple question before you even got out of bed? What are your intentions?

Do you intend for your life to be one big scatter-gun approach toward success? Do you want to look back one day and see that your time was spent compulsively checking email and following social network feeds? Is there something that you would rather spend your time doing?

Personally, I know that I would rather spend my work time engaging with other entrepreneurs and small business owners, figuring out solutions to move our businesses forward and to make the biggest impact on the world around us. Spending time replying to countless idle emails isn’t what I have in mind for my life or business, and it doesn’t stop there. There are also some things that I want to do outside of my work life, things that don’t get done because I’m watching some television re-run for the third time instead of doing things that really matter to me.

What would happen if we distilled our days down to a very concentrated core focus, where we spent the majority of our time pursuing our intentions? Maybe that’s unrealistic, but what would it hurt to try? Seriously, what do we stand to lose, a few days of not replying to emails the second they hit our boxes? What do we stand to sacrifice, hours of concentrated effort and attention toward the things that we say matter the most to us so that we can not do things we say we don’t want to do anyway, things that aren’t moving us forward and distract us from our real goals? If you’re comfortable accepting that risk, here’s a challenge for you.

The Challenge

1. Stop everything you’re doing right now, and aside from any really important tasks or appointments that must be done, clear the rest of your day, if necessary, to give this the real attention it deserves.
2. Turn off your email alerts. Close TweetDeck. Turn off all the time-nibblers.
3. Now get a note-taking tool. Open a Zoho or Google document, or just grab a notebook and pen.
4. Think about your ideal day. In an ideal world, how would you spend your days, both professionally and personally? How would you interact with customers or clients? What would be the service or product that you would provide the majority of the time? How would you deliver that service or product, ideally? How would you spend your days? What time would you wake up, start your work day, end your work day, and go to bed?
5. Now figure out how to create it. If nothing could get in your way, how would you create that ideal world? What would you need to do to make that happen and to only make that happen (and not start catering to other demands that might present themselves as a result of your efforts, unless they support your intentions)?
6. What core tasks and milestones do you need to meet each day, week or month to see this through? Do you need to get up at a certain time so that you can take that morning walk you’ve been meaning to get around to and so that you can start your day off right? Do you need to contact a certain number of people each day, post to your blog, or begin writing that book? Do you need to turn off your computer at a set time each day so that you can concentrate on other areas of your life and not be tempted to check email? Set it up. Put whatever you need in place — checklists, alarms, reminders, a vision board, whatever it takes.
7. Now make a commitment to your plan. Stop right now and ask yourself, honestly, “What are your intentions?“
8. Now stay true to them. For the next 30 days, commit to working from a place of purpose and intent. See what happens.

We have to step back and ask ourselves what it is that we really want to do with our lives and businesses and then figure out how we’re going to do it. Why not?

What are your intentions?  Are your actions supporting them, and if not, how could they?

Photo by Flickr user DraconianRain, licensed under CC 2.0

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

During those long months, when you can’t remember what the sun looks like and are slightly surprised at its appearance in films and on television, productivity can take a major nosedive, along with mood and attitude. As a long veteran of Canadian winters, I like to think that I’m prepared for the changes that major weather upheavals can cause in a person, but I never cease to be shocked by the strength of the effects. Accordingly, I’ve put together a list of ways to either get over — or work through — the funk. 

Take a Vacation

As mentioned above, I’ve been less than active here during the past few weeks. That’s partly because my cup was temporarily running over with work elsewhere, but it’s also because I decided to step back and take a significant chunk of time off for the first time in about a year. Making a decision about stepping back from work for a while is far preferable to the alternative, which is continuing to try to maintain a regular schedule, and having the quantity and quality of your work suffer as a result.

Planned time off, with a definite ending, will help you feel focused and eager when you do eventually get back to work. If you love what you do, that is. If you still find yourself dragging your heels, you might want to take a long hard look at what it is you’re doing that isn’t satisfying any longer.

Lower Your Expectations

A big part of the problem of trying to fight the winter doldrums is that people are often their own worst critics. Getting into a blame cycle with yourself won’t help you get work done any faster. In fact, you’ll probably get a lot less done, and just give up on days where you could otherwise have gotten at least a little bit ahead.

If you are perennially cursed by a lower work ethic as the thermometer mercury dips lower, then acknowledge and prepare for that eventuality. The best way to do that is to work more during the months that you feel more productive, and generally behave like a squirrel getting ready for the lean winter months. That way, when you’re doing less than your maximum potential output, you won’t feel nearly as guilty about it, and you’re less likely to get caught in negative attribution patterns. Believe me, if I could actually hibernate, I probably would, but this is the next best thing.

Stay Fit, Active and Healthy

As at-home workers, we’re already severely at risk of falling into a sedentary lifestyle, and that risk is amplified a hundred fold when the outside environment seems intent on killing us. Go out of your way to counter the impulse to stay inside and remain immobile, and I promise that after a few days you’ll feel much, much better for having done so.

Make sure your fruit and vegetable intake stays high, at least on par with what you normally take in during the summer. My registered dietitian friend couldn’t stress this enough. She also recommended taking Vitamin D supplements to make up for the absence of sunlight that normally provides this much-needed nutrient to our systems.

Sign up for a gym near enough to your house that you won’t be discouraged from going by the weather. Failing that, invest in a good Tai Chi or yoga DVD and treat it as a necessary part of your work day, akin to filling out invoices or checking your email.

It’s Only a Season

My parting advice for those of you plagued with a long cold winter, Canadian or otherwise, is to remember that it doesn’t last forever, despite sometimes appearing to. Keep that always in mind, and strap on some skates or grab a toboggan and remember that the cruelest season does have some advantages over its gentler cousins.

How do you work through — or avoid — the winter work lull?

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In the long run, it’s probably no substitute for hard work and building smart routines without resorting to lying to yourself. But in a pinch, when your motivation might be low for other reasons not related to the jobs that you’re working on, self-deception can be a very handy little pick-me-up.

This is Due Tomorrow (It Isn’t Due Tomorrow)

Changing the due dates for projects or project elements can be very beneficial to your work ethic. The key to getting away with this particular trip is to set your revised (earlier, in case that wasn’t clear) dates well ahead of time, preferably at project outset. Don’t share these personal due dates with the client, of course, of they’ll make them official and you won’t have gained anything.

So set your dates early quietly to yourself and then repeat them over and over again. Treat them for all intents and purposes as if they are the actual client-mandated due dates. At first, this will take an effort of will, but I think you’ll be fairly surprised with how quickly you’ll find yourself buying your own hype.

I’ll Take Tomorrow Off (I Won’t Take Any Time Off)

A great trick for getting myself to produce more than I normally would during any given day is promise to take the next day off, or at least have a reduced workday. So for example, I’ll say that I’m going to work a little bit extra tonight and then take the afternoon the next day to do something fun.

The trick is that I’ll often do exactly the same thing the next day, and the day after that, and pretty soon it’s the weekend and I’ve doubled my workload for the week. It works so well that I’m actually doing it right now, as I write this post. It’s become my new favorite trick, but the potential downside is a bad case of burnout, so use it sparingly.

My Alarm Clock Displays the Correct Time (It Doesn’t Display the Correct Time)

This is an oldie, but a goodie. People have been setting their watches, alarm clocks and clock radios back a few minutes since clocks were invented in order to ensure timeliness and provide the comforting illusion that they are always ahead of time. My own method is a twist on this venerable classic, and adds an element designed to both make the deception more effective and to help you steal even more time.

The twist on the classic trick is to set your clock back a bit every time you set your alarm, probably a minute or two at most. Eventually, you can probably manage to gain an extra hour without throwing your schedule completely off whack, and (best of all) it feels like “bonus” time in a way that it wouldn’t if you just set your alarm an hour earlier.

Stealing Time

When you work from home, the clock is your constant companion, and yet, it can be incredibly easy to lose track of time and find that you’ve done far less than you set out to do. I’ve found that over time, I gradually lose more and more of my day to distractions and less-than-important things, like Facebook and Twitter.

Part of my strategy for combating these time thieves includes reevaluating and restructuring my work practices every once in a while, but that doesn’t always get the job done in the short term. For a quick fix, tricking yourself is a great way to steal some of that time back.

What tricks do you play on yourself to gain a little added productivity?

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Snap out of it! These are my favorite fast motivators: the tricks I use to get myself going when the going gets tough. Mix them up, combine a couple … and share your own speedy motivators in the comments.

1. Star jumps

Seriously! When my motivation troughs, I’m usually slumped over my desk, chin in hand, eyes glazed.

You might choose to take a short run, do some push-ups, or use the skipping rope — it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you get up, get the blood circulating and start focusing. A short bust of exercise — 30 star-jumps usually does the trick for me — is enough to kick-start my brain and get my head clear again.

2. Music

We know that music changes the way we feel, so why not use your favorite artists to boost your mood and motivation levels? Whether it’s Schumann or the Sex Pistols, there’s bound to be some music that motivates you.

If you can’t work to music, have a five-minute break to listen to a couple of tunes that really inspire you. If you can, crank it up and get cracking!

3. Change your location

If you’re finding it hard to concentrate in your home office, you might benefit by stepping out to the local library or cafe. But just making the move from your everyday desk to the kitchen table might help you get a fresh perspective and the focus you need (provided the kitchen isn’t crammed with family and friends).

A change in location changes your surroundings and outlook. For some, working in public provides a sense of involvement — or the sense of being watched — that remote work can lack. Knowing that someone (even if it’s just the waiter!) can see what you’re doing may well motivate you to get something done.

4. Disconnect

You know it, I know it — the web can be a distracting place. Close your browser, or, if you need to work online, shut down all your nonessential applications, including chat and email.

Don’t just change your IM status: shut it down. Clear your desktops — virtual and physical — of everything but the essentials you need to complete the task at hand. This kind of brief, self-imposed psychological isolation usually helps me refresh my focus and my drive.

5. Time yourself

Choose a small task, or a portion of a task, and give yourself a certain timeframe in which to do it. Ideally, the task shouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes; the shorter, the better (though admittedly five minutes might be a bit of a challenge!). Set an alarm for the end of that time period: when the alarm goes off, you need to have met the mini-goal you’ve set yourself.

The technique is a great way to slingshot yourself from a low ebb to high-impact productivity. Obviously, it’s not ideal for larger tasks, but if you can find something small — and easy win — as a motivating task for a given timeframe, this approach can be really handy.

These are my favorite five minute motivators. What about you? How do you boost your motivation and focus at crunch time?

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To continue the relationship analogy, having a successful and rewarding long-lasting career depends upon more than just initial excitement and chemistry. You have to put work in, think about your goals and make conscious decisions that lead to continuous improvement. Here are some areas to concentrate on.

Focus

If you are starting to feel a little ennui with your decision to do your work remotely, take a look at what you’re doing and make sure the cause is, in fact, the method, and not the nature of the work you’re doing. You might be bored with your focus, not with working online.

You have a couple of options to gauge which is the case, and to find out if you can’t give your web working life a much-needed shot in the arm. First, you could try adding additional work to your existing load that isn’t something you’d normally pursue, but think you might enjoy. Introducing small work packets along with your usual things shouldn’t cause too much strain, and will allow you an exit strategy should you require it.

The other option is to stop doing your existing type of work entirely, and throw yourself fully into something new. This has the disadvantage of being risky, and also of possibly seeming like it fixed the problem when in fact it hasn’t, since you’re just experiencing the thrill of the novel once again.

Motivation

Another reason your web working career might be losing its luster is that you’re not sure what it is that’s driving you to continue. One of the benefits of working for a large company at an office is that HR departments take on motivation as part of their responsibility, and, at good workplaces, take the pulse of their employees and create incentive programs accordingly.

Motivation can be the biggest challenge facing a web worker. Working for bonuses isn’t always an option, nor is working for advancement, in the traditional sense. The best way to get yourself in gear is to identify what it was that drove you to pursue working online to begin with, and see if you can’t find ways to amplify that incentive, or to set goals for furthering it down the road.

Expectations

Finally, you may be experiencing frustration with your web working career because your results aren’t living up to your expectations. Maybe you aren’t making as much as you anticipated, or maybe you aren’t finding that you have as much free time as you thought you would as a result of working remotely.

If so, regaining your passion for your career might be as simple (or as difficult) as reassessing your situation and changing your expectations in order to bring them more in line with the reality you’re experiencing. Any new endeavor will probably seem much more lucrative than it turns out to be, and even when you know your starting salary at a more traditional job, you often don’t take into account taxes, pension, and other deductions. Try to focus more on the positive results you are seeing than on the ones you thought you’d see.

If you’ve hit a wall in your web working career, don’t panic; it’s a good sign. It means you got off on the right foot, and managed to hang in there long enough to become more or less established. As with a successful long term relationship, it’s only natural to get cold feet. Step back, take a breather, reevaluate your situation and continue on. You won’t regret it.

Is your web working honeymoon over? What are you doing to get the spark back?

Photo credit: Neil T

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