There are many traits that combine to determine our effectiveness and one such critical trait is resilience.

When I think of resilience, I think of our capability to bounce back from adversity. I think of an appropriate response to failure, and success. I think of our ability to persist when there are plenty of reasonable excuses to quit.

I used to think that resilience was a function of character. Some people are resilient, others aren’t. But now I’m not so sure. I’ve come to learn that our ability to cope is as much a function of how we design our approach to our work as any other factor.

If we let ourselves get into a situation where proverbially all our eggs are in one basket, then we may have a problem. If we’re over-dependent on winning a single client, or landing a particular job, or being assigned to a certain project, then it will be tough to handle the situation if it doesn’t work out.

The alternative is to distribute our ‘risk’ across multiple opportunities. If the client doesn’t sign up, then we can work with others. If we don’t get this job, then we can look at other options. If we’re not on this project, then we’ll prepare for a better one.

This is very much common sense. But we often lose sight of it. Experts in happiness speak of the importance of having a balanced approach to life. If we have strength in our work, our relationships, our family, our friends, our activities, then difficulties in any one of these at any time can be supported by the others. When people become overly focused in one area, then they are less resilient in times of crisis.

The same principle applies to our work. If we allow ourselves to get into a position of scarcity, where it’s all or nothing, then we’re at risk. Many gurus talk about abundance and the belief that there’s always potentially enough for everyone. And I think they’re right.

We will be more resilient, and likely more successful, if we develop our capability to work with multiple clients, if we grow our skills so that we’re capable of different roles and if we develop the reputation that will have us in demand for many different projects. This is often a conscious choice, a careful design rather than an accidental characteristic.

But, but, but…

It is possible to take this to an extreme. Some are guilty of hiding away from difficult decisions and clear thinking by pursuing so many opportunities that they have the convenient excuse of not having the time to do anything different. Try to avoid having all your eggs in one basket but equally, don’t keep endlessly adding to your collection of baskets.

When it comes to setting goals and objectives and developing a system to help achieve them, it appears that the best advice can be whittled down to a few key points.

• Be clear, specific and tangible in setting the desired outcome
• Ensure your goal has a bit of ‘stretch’ but not too much
• Break the work down into small, achievable steps (not all at once!)
• Work on it and move the thing forward every day
• Build in some accountability by going public or enlisting the support/challenge of others

Is that it? Can it be that simple? If we do all of those things, then can we guarantee success?

I’m not sure you can ever guarantee success (even though many will try to sell you that) but I think following this advice will certainly allow you to make progress.

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(Aside)

I often recoil from the ‘simple’. I tend to equate simple with basic, with common, with mediocre. I tend to think, “well if it was that simple, wouldn’t we all be doing it”. I tend to look for a more elegant, sophisticated solution.

And, you know, a lot of the time, I’m doing the wrong thing. We often over-complicate our lives. There are tons of reasons why we do so. One that recurs for me is to prove that I’m a deep thinker and an innovator by hanging on for the ultimate solution. How can I use basic stuff with all my fancy-shmancy education and my work with famous companies? Of course, this is classic ‘fixed mindset’ thinking, as defined by Carol Dweck. It’s not helping.

There’s a time for simple and a time for complexity. I often get them mixed up. (Seth Godin talks here about simple, complicated and nuance).

Driving to work can be a pain in the ass.

You can spend all that time in your car and at the end of it feel frustrated, angry and demotivated. The perfect way to begin your day’s work!

Here’s a different way to look at the daily commute. Before you start the engine, ask yourself how you would like to feel when you arrive at your destination. Do you want to feel calm? Relaxed? Focused? Do you want to feel energised? Enthusiastic? Motivated? Or do you want to feel angry? Does it suit you to feel annoyed and flustered?

It turns out we have a lot more influence on this outcome than we might think. Even with the realities of dropping/collecting children, heavy traffic and the insane behaviour of our fellow drivers, we can actually get better at choosing our responses to those situations. Stay focused on the outcome – how do I want to feel when I arrive at my destination?

Do you listen to the radio in your car? Do you listen to music? Or take or make phone calls? All of these will influence how you feel at your destination. Do you think that listening to the news or current affairs chatter excites or depresses you? How does soothing music make you feel? How does high-energy music make you feel? How would listening to podcasts or audiobooks make you feel?

Next time you sit in your car, ask yourself how you would like to feel when you arrive at your destination.

The first of the two key elements in effectiveness, at least as I’m defining it, is knowing what we need to be doing. And this covers the full spectrum, from the purpose behind our work all the way down to the best use of our time on a given day.

As I’ve been working through this process, I’ve learned (at least) a couple of things about my biases and preferences in this regard. I tend to veer towards what I ‘should’ be doing and I seem to crave structure.

I realise these are two separate things but they are connected in a certain sense. And, they’re not always faults necessarily, depending on how flexible and aware I am at any given time.

Every now and again, it’s seems appealing to be able to present our situation to someone else and ask what we should be doing next. Almost like our desire to get a prescribed medicine when we visit our doctor. We’re hoping that our own ‘yellow brick road‘ will be revealed ahead of us.

And that’s where I find myself on questions of making a successful business more successful, of making valuable offerings more valuable and available to more people, of delighting happy clients in a new and unexpected way. Maybe it’s time to suspend the urge to think about what I ‘should’ be doing and to leave the goals and project plans aside for a while? Maybe it’s time to pause, and listen, to both my valued clients and to my own instincts?

Maybe this dilemma is relevant only to me or maybe you also recognise your own situation as you read this. What I’m thinking now is how I want to avoid any road lined with yellow bricks and how I might be better paving my own path.

Surfing the internet is such a wonderful alternative to work! If I didn’t check myself, I could easily spend several hours every day consuming the fascinating, educational and useful content that is generated from all manner of inspired sources.

Social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have made it easy for us to sit back and ingest content as an endless stream of links and recommendations are flung at us from our friends and contacts. It’s difficult to switch it off. Join the conversation, man!

Yesterday, one such link was highlighted by someone in my network, and when I saw it I couldn’t help laughing. It was introduced as ’3 tips on how to be an expert’. Are you curious now? Would you like to know how to be an expert (and it’s just three quick tips!)

Well, here’s my tip: be an expert.

That’s it. No more. No techniques, short-cuts or magic potions. It takes time and effort and work and practice. And you don’t get to decide if you’re an expert or not. It’s a subjective judgement from someone else.

I have a problem with the concept of the ‘expert’ in any event. Very few people can truly be deemed to be experts in areas of life and business that impact us all. Everyone can claim legitimately to be an expert in being themselves. Beyond that, it gets fuzzy.

You’re still curious about the three tips though, aren’t you? Well, here’s the first tip: “Call yourself an expert”.

That’s right. Call yourself an expert! Apparently, if you start describing yourself as an expert, then others will begin to see you as such. Magic, right! Who knew it was so easy?

Oh dear.

This is part of a larger problem we have, which is sometimes called the sucker’s hierarchy. There will always be someone else willing and eager to believe what we tell them when our message is offering them a faster/easier/cheaper way to their holy grail. And don’t think that you’re immune to it. We all have blind spots. We all can be suckers given the right circumstances.

Most of us learn the hard way. We discover that the Wizard of Oz is just a little guy pulling a few strings behind a curtain. We feel conned and move on. But many don’t. And unfortunately, too many people are trying to make a living by selling to (exploiting?) these people. Often deliberately, sometimes without considered intention.

Still interested in the other two tips? Here they are, and you know what, they’re actually not that bad!

It seems most of us resent being told what to do. We don’t like taking orders. We often recoil and end up resisting the path that has been laid out for us.

And yet.

And yet, when comes to solving our problems, we seek out someone to give us advice. We complain, sometimes to ourselves but often to others, when ‘proper’ advice isn’t available. It’s as if we’re being cheated.

How do we reconcile this apparent paradox? As long as we pretend to ourselves that the advice we get from others was actually down to our own initiative and ingenuity, then we’re ok. We’ve bought in to it. We feel good.

This is actually the key to good management, to good parenting, to good mentoring. The perception of ownership is all important.

One critical factor in growing our effectiveness is how much control we have over how we spend our time, how we expend our energy and how we focus our efforts.

Some might see this as a function of the roles that we have. If we’re working for a particularly directive boss, for example, then we give up some of that control, often in a willing trade for predictability, security and responsibility.

The control we do have, or don’t have, is tested in a number of different ways but one area that’s common to almost all of us is how we manage the seemingly endless flow of incoming messages and requests. Jeff Jarvis suggests bringing back the busy signal in this excellent analysis of our 21st century dilemma.

This strikes me as a design challenge for all of us. How do we structure how we work and how we want to work with others? How do we set expectations and negotiate agreements with those who need our help?

Like Jeff, I don’t have any universal solutions for this. I do see it though as an area we need to review on a regular basis and be honest about what’s working and not working for us. It is possible to develop certain practices over time that work well for ourselves and for others, and most of these are found through experimentation.

Did you spot Seth Godin’s suggestion in the comments of Jeff’s piece? Stamps! Now there’s an interesting idea. For the next five messages/requests you send to someone today, ask yourself how much would you be willing to spend on a stamp that would guarantee delivery and the attention of the recipient. That practice alone would help us clarify the relative importance of a lot of our communications.

January tends to be a month where a lot of time is spent on setting goals and objectives. A new year is opening up and is, for many, a blank canvas on which to paint a new picture. Most of us feel a rush of enthusiasm and a sense of possibility at the start of a new year.

So why have I found it so hard to come up with goals and objectives for 2012? Why haven’t I kicked off my planned evaluation of different systems, philosophies and techniques around goal setting and long-term objectives?

Because I’m not yet clear on what I want to do.

And here’s the thing. I’m probably not that different from most people in that regard. We often say we’re clear or act as if we know where we’re going. But it seems that we rarely, actually, really, do.

This comes back to the two sides of the effectiveness coin: understanding what we need to be doing and then getting it done. There’s no point perfecting my getting-it-done technique if I’m unclear on what I need to be doing.

What am I doing to address this? I’ve been working hard on some of the tough, and exciting, questions behind my business. What’s the next phase of its development? Should I/we be adding new offerings? What’s the long-term ideal?

Fun questions. Scary questions, especially if you’re obsessing and working through these on your own. And that’s where I’m fortunate. I have a support team that are helping me through this.

I’ve been banging on about the need for a support structure for a while. I’ve given talks on the topic and have nudged and cajoled many into taking action on this. Bottom line: every ambitious, progressive individual in the world of work needs a personal support system. Think of it as a personal board of advisors, there to challenge and support you, to hold you to account, and to assist you on the road to doing your best work.

I’m blessed. I have access to a network of really good people, knowledgable about business and how to support individuals. But it’s important to note that they didn’t just drop down from the sky. They didn’t magically appear as a result of my making a call to the Government Department for Support (not that it exists). I’ve built this support over the past couple of years and, interestingly, most of the people who are now supporting me I hadn’t even met four years ago. Some I didn’t know just one year ago.

So, the goals are coming. They’ll be clarified, scoped and broken down. Targets will be set and various techniques will be employed. But not until I’m clear on where we’re going.

Back to work!

If you’ve ever watched The Weakest Link, you know exactly what I mean.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t do this often enough. We’re more likely to focus on the negatives, on what we didn’t do or could have done better. Even worse, we don’t give ourselves time to stop and reflect as we’re stuck in the latest thing, whatever that is.

This is especially relevant to those of us who aren’t as confident as we should be. Lack of confidence opens the door to our fears and self-doubts. And this ultimately means we don’t do the work of which we are capable.

Fear, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. It screws us up though when we listen too closely to it and retreat. I’ve learned that getting rid of fear isn’t what we need, but instead learning to feel it, hear it and drive on as we should.

We often think that successful people don’t experience fear, or doubt, or a lack of confidence. But that’s not true.

I was fascinated by this tweet from Tom Peters, from a conversation with Hugh MacLeod. Even guys like Tom feel it.

This is why banking the positives is so important. It’s like building our self-esteem muscles, it’s like drinking a confidence potion, it’s like eating a self-belief bar. We have to feed and develop our sense of capability.

So, here’s my list of things to bank from one of the most eventful and adventurous years of my life, 2011. And yes, there are personal things here. They all count. I don’t become a different person when I’m working or when I’m with my family.

(in no order of significance)

• Running (and enjoying) the New York marathon
• Being the keynote speaker at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia
• Successfully parenting our newborn boy through to his first birthday (with no apparent damage to him, me or my wife!)
• Building Smarter Egg’s best business year so far
• Being interviewed live on George Lee’s The Business show on RTE
• Doing my best ever work (in my own view and based on client feedback)
• Taking some hard decisions (and sticking with them) about refining my business, including saying no to paid work
• Appearing on RTE TV’s Nationwide on a special show about a Smarter Egg – UmNumNum
• Growing my circle of friends, clients, collaborators and trusted advisors.

I’m probably forgetting a few. And I might be offending some people by their omission. But that’s not a bad list.

And just because I’ve listed all of those cool things, please don’t get the feeling that it’s been all sweetness and light. I’ve had some really, really shit days. And some dark ones. But, hey, we’re here now and I feel good enough about what I’m banking to reward myself with a mince pie.

Why don’t you do the same? Bank your positives from the year and enjoy your Christmas holidays even more. You might even feel brave enough to share your list. Go for it.

There is a quote, which is often attributed to Mark Twain, that goes something like this:

A person who doesn’t read has no advantage over one who can’t.

The truth is that most of us don’t read very much at all. And for those that do, a lot of that reading time is spent with newspapers, magazines or miscellaneous work-related papers and articles.

Most people don’t read books. Most business people don’t read enough books. Yet, if you ask them, they will admit that they should read more. Common reasons that business people will give are not having enough time, not knowing what books to read and not finding books that interest them.

I have noticed when talking to business people who do want to read more, who do want to find interesting books and who would like to learn more, that they have something of a blind spot to an option that can provide them with a lot of the benefits but with less of the hassle – audiobooks!

Virtually everyone I know in business has a CD player in their car. Very few use that CD player to listen to audiobooks. Most of us now have some form of digital audio player but only a few of us use them to listen to books. Are audiobooks one of life’s biggest hidden secrets?

I don’t have time! Really?

With busy lifestyles, it’s difficult to make time to sit down and read. It’s not impossible but it’s tough. However, there are many opportunities for us to listen to audiobooks every single day: while commuting, while walking/jogging and while doing household chores.

The technology is there. Pop a CD in the player. Turn on the iPod. Plug in the earphones.

If you want to learn how much time you have available, try listening to a 5-hour audiobook. Your initial reaction will be ‘Wow, five hours – that’ll take me a couple of weeks to get through’. Trust me, if you plug into the book every time you have a chance to listen, you will be shocked at how quickly you will get through it. We consistently underestimate how much time we spend, say, commuting. Some people I know would get through that book in a single day. But right now, they believe they don’t have time.

Why listening can sometimes trump reading.

More and more authors are now also narrating their own audiobooks. This can be good news for us, as in the case of authors like Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. Their passion for the material and the particular emphasis that they give to particular words and points gives us extra value over the plain written word. I even find myself listening to books before reading them (books that I need to research quite deeply for purposes of work). And once you’ve heard the author’s unique interpretation of the words, you just can’t read the book any other way.

Sounds great. How do I start listening?

Most mainstream books now have an audio equivalent. There are many of ways of sourcing these but I would recommend two: Audible and iTunes. Audible was one of the first audiobook retaliers online and has become the #1 source. I personally use the US-based Audible.com. It has the greatest selection to choose from. But there is also a UK site – Audible.co.uk, which may well suit you better. You can purchase books individually or sign up to a plan which gives you a certain number of book credits per month. Apple’s iTunes is another easy way to access and download audiobooks. You may well have some iTunes credit waiting to be spent – check out the Audiobook category, you will be surprised at how many books are now available.

And if you’re still holding back on making the jump into iPods and mp3 players, then there are still a decent number of audiobooks available in CD format. Some of your bricks-and-mortar bookshops will have a CD section. Better yet, have a look at what’s available in your local library. You will see if there is a CD format available when you look at a book on Amazon.

Go for it. Let me know how you get on. If you’re already an audiobook listener, let me know which ones you would recommend to others.