Rashid Zakat

So, I was reading an entry of my homegirls blog and she wrote an post about how people just aren’t happy nowadays, and it reminded me of a conversation that I had a few days ago about the correlation between selfishness and unhappiness. I don’t want to talk to much about it, but I can guarantee one of the things that can make you happy is to make someone happy. I don’t know why, but it something that helps you take your mind off of your own problems, and empower you to help yourself.

Helping other people gives you some sense of self-worth, it reminds you that we’re all interconnected, and most of the time people are unhappy because they feel some sense of powerlessness. If you can change the course of someones day by doing something as simple as making them smile, you remember that you can do anything you want to. Trust me, helping someone with something is the greatest way to grow your confidence in almost any arena in life.

Ok, but that’s not what I wanted to get into today.

There are 3 things that I’ve noticed that I absolutely suck at professionally.
1. Saying no!
I’ve gotten better at it through the years, but I still have that 7 year old in me that doesn’t want to disappoint someone. Like I started a bit earlier, I like making people happy. I want to make your wildest dreams come true, but a lot of times, peoples dreams are unrealistic.

Now, I hate that word “unrealistic”. It is really easy to confuse it with lazy, pessimistic, or just plain “I don’t wanna do it”, but often times, given the parameters in which you have to work in (time, budget, skill, support, etc) certain expectations are just plain unrealistic. Why they’re unrealistic however is something that you need to be aware of so you can give an educated no.

An educated no is a much better no than a regular no. It’s a soft no, which isn’t necessarily a no, but an offer to re-negotiate. A no because there isn’t enough time to complete the project adequately is much better than no…just because.

To give a good no, more than you need balls, you need to know why you would say no. Which means you need rules. Good rules. Well researched rules. The first rule of boy scouts was “be prepared”, and it should be the first rule in any freelancing artists arsenal. You should enforce your rules as dispassionately as an employee enforces company policies. They are not a part of you. They are not something you arbitrarily came up with (even if you did). You have rates, pricing policies, an organized workflow, and deadlines that you have to strictly enforce to be a good freelancer. You can’t let something disrupt that, simply because you don’t to be mean to someone. If you have rules, you have something to stand behind. You have a reason for how you treat the clients you take in.

2. Being on time.
I. Am. Chronically. Late. All of the time. I’m late to school, I’m late with projects and I’m late for favors. Now, contrary to what most people think, this actually goes against my natural inclination. I’m an obsessive time watcher. No matter what I’m doing I always know I have something else to do, so I’m antsy. I keep a schedule in my head, my notebook, phone and on my computer; but somehow, I’m always late with almost everything.

I’ve reduced this to a couple of reasons, but the main reasons are intertwined. Time management and procrastination. I’m a really really really bad procrastinator. Like, really. I have a bad habit of not putting my work into a manageable sort of system, and doing it, so I end up working on parts of projects and not really getting anything finished.

Combating procrastination is really tough for me, and I’ve been trying to find solutions for myself and how to share them with others. The best things I’ve found to help with that are:

A. Make a list! Write out everything you need to do as soon as you think about it and find some way of recording it that you trust; a notebook, palm pilot, whatever. One of the biggest reasons I procrastinate is because I don’t know everything I have to do, or because I focus so hard on one thing I keep putting other things off.

B. Start! If you’re a procrastinator, the best thing to do is just start. Don’t worry about finishing as much as you worry about getting it started. For me, I worry too much about the end product and when its gonna be done and blah blah blah. Most of the work I do,I like…and I’m interested in, and once I get going I’m cool…but over thinking things, and worrying about what I make too much is always gonna be an issue for me. A strength I have is planning and a pretty decent attention to detail, but they can become hindrances when you start to live in your own head.

C. Make good habits! If you do something for 30 days, you commit it to memory, both mentally and physically. So for example, I procrastinate cleaning my room, but cleaning it isn’t as bad if I’ve practiced the habit of putting things into place…and the pay off is a lot better. It’s been proven that if you experience a good payoff from something, youre likely to do it again, so get into the habit of being a little more tidy. If you procrastinate paperwork like I do, get into the habit of doing it along the way. I’m personally working on developing better habits with keeping track of where my money goes.Its simpler if I keep track more often than look at statements and invoices every six months. Lol.

Really, try to keep something up for 30 days. You can get to 30 days by taking it one day at a time. One thing at a time, and if you get taken off course, then you do it again. Eventually it’ll be a habit, and you probably won’t even notice that you’re doing it.

3. Following Through.
I have lots of ideas. All of the time. If I were to write out every single thought, and idea I had…I’d spend more time writing than actually working on these ideas. The problem is, I often do. I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, so I keep writing it out. But sometimes, like I’ve earlier stated, thinking things out doesn’t work out so well. Like this blog entry. I’ve been meaning to finish it for about 2 weeks now.

I think the best thing to do, and its working for me, is to capture your ideas, write them out, and if you can do something towards it quickly, then do it. If not, delegate it for later. You go through this process every time you’re not doing something and especially when you get overwhelmed by stuff. It helps. I’ve been reading this productivity book that basically says if you need to get stuff done, you need to ease yourself into a working system of doing things. Have some sort of pile of things for a few different types of tasks, urgent, important…but not as urgent, time sensitive stuff and stuff that can wait. So for example, I have a due tomorrow pile, a due next week pile, a pile of personal stuff that I wanna do and has no time limit, and errand stuff that I can do while I’m out. That one type. The other type is to empty your entire memory bank on scraps of paper (and I mean entire like…learn Buddhism, sign up for yoga, eat healthier etc) and once you’re done, pull out each thing one at a time and quickly analyze it.

If it takes less than 2 minutes, then do it right then in there. Don’t think about it, don’t argue about it, just do it and its done.
If it takes more than 2 minutes, and you can’t do it right then and there, figure out whats the next step to getting it done…record that, and delegate time for it later.
Once you have all of the two minute stuff done, and you know the next steps to what you need to do, then start whiddling down at your work, one piece at a time. As new stuff comes up, capture it, figure out whats the next step to getting it done, and do it.

There’s a lot more to it, but the basic principle is simple. You eventually clear your mental ram, because everything is a lot less difficult than we think it is. We blow everything up to such big proportions, and really …spend more time thinking about how hard it’s gonna be, than actually working and finishing it.

Ok, I’ve rambled on enough and you guys get the idea. Next…video blogs! Holla!