Failure is no option! It’s easy to fuck things up and don’t do stuff we are uncomfortable with. Maybe it’s because neglecting the things you dislike seems like the right way to approach a task. Examples are all over the place… getting clients through marketing efforts, doing the paperwork, working on stuff others would judge you on or simply feeling bad to interact with someone else and coming off as spammy. Millions of different reasons might block us, a good example for this is the 31 day challenge.

31day challenge tasks I have brushed off…

The problogger challenge opened my eyes, taking part in it is a lot fun and the first tasks happened without hesitation. Which is nothing strange as those assignments already worked for me. Writing list posts every once in a while, posting comments on other blogs and improving the blog’s experience is something that I frequently do. Nevertheless there are things that I am good at ignoring. I did not…

…write an email to a reader.
…let other people who haven’t been on my site browse it.
…join forums in my niche (besides the problogger challenge).
…write a call to action.
…ask my readers a question.
…find a blog buddy.

Basically this pattern can be traced back to 4 different reasons.

Things people suck at…

There is a big fear of failure and most people don’t want to do things that they are bad at. Especially in public this rings true. Just do what you have to do and get over those fears. Failing or being bad at something is usually just a sign of insufficient training. I just have to start the stuff I am bad at and watch myself improve.

Things people don’t like to do…

Another reason why we don’t like to do certain things is that we simply dislike them. Paperwork sucks so does, cleaning up, or selling out …whatever… it’s one of the main reasons for procrastination. Nevertheless we have to complete those tasks in order to be successful. Getting over it is the only option and maybe we even start to like them along the way. And if we can’t find motivation within the job itself, looking forward to the outcome (more money, more free time, more output) can be motivation enough.

False models of reality…

We don’t do things, because we think(not know) that it’s not worth our time. The problem within false models of reality is that we think(not KNOW!) a certain approach towards a problem will not help solving it. Even though others might succeed that way, we think those ways are wrong and won’t work for us. Quitting with false models of reality is a great way to improve in different areas of life. You always have to re-evaluate which things are useful and which useless. If we constantly find ourselves running into a brick wall, then it’s about time to try something new.
Two good examples of this wrong behavior are

1. follow many people at twitter to get a lot of useful followers. This is plain and simple wrong, the best examples are the power users at twitter who only follow a few peeps but more influence than guys with 1000s of mutual friends.

2. Telling people what you think they want to hear instead of what you want to say or what has to be said. It’s the wrong model of perception, people need honesty and it takes guts to tell the truth. There might be people who will not get along with someone like that, but those are the people who we should ignore anyways. We need feedback loops to improve.

The lesson to learn is always ask questions! Why am I thinking this? Does this really ring true? Are there other ways to approach it? Why don’t I do this in another way? What did I do to improve my situation? Did my actions improve my situation? Which actions will lead to results? How are others getting results?
Question models that make no sense or are not working, sticking to old models, just because “Those models have to be right”, even though they are not is just stupid. Realizing this mistake within our behavior helps us to clean up with false assumptions and ultimately improve our output.

It’s useless anyways…

This point is pretty simple, we are not doing the stuff we are uncomfortable with, because you know that it does not work or have found a better way to get the same results. This is perfectly fine and we should stick to it as it saves us trouble and time. It’s important to know what we want and what we don’t want, it’s a natural process that helps us mature, know who we are and forms our identity.

What does this mean for us?

Do what is working, not what we assume what should work… We should learn that quitting with false assumptions is the key to being successful. Don’t over-analyze what you are doing and just get stuff done. It’s not about what you think what works, it’s simply about doing what works. There are a lot of ways to get things done and there will always be more than one way. The important part is that we should not not do things, because you are uncomfortable with them. That’s just a sign that it’s a challenge, which is not necessarily a bad thing. We have to learn mastering challenges around us and become aware of reality and not our models of reality to fully. What does this mean for the 31 day challenge? It’s time to interact with my readers on a new level and quit being a wuzz about it