On Limits To Your Opportunities and Writing Books

During June 2022 my home city of Saint John, New Brunswick has been host to the Canadian Hockey League championship, the Memorial Cup tournament. I have followed the results and attended one game in person between the Shawinigan Cataractes from the Quebec League, and the Edmonton Oil Kings from the Western League. It was a close game with Shawinigan winning 4-3. I enjoyed watching the game in person but it wasn’t terribly exciting with the teams focused on very close checking, extremely effective defense, and skillfully limiting exciting goal scoring opportunities for the opponent.

At its best hockey is fast, fluid and can bring fans to the edge of their seats. I appreciate defensive skills and in championships like this one, the teams are extremely disciplined in limiting exciting offensive plays. While mistakes do happen on the ice, and sometimes offensive skills simply overpower, typically in high-level championship games offence is minimized and opportunities limited.

I am a hockey fan.  In 2019 I decided to visit all the teams and rinks in the Quebec League and watch a game. This was primarily an excuse for an extended road trip because I enjoy driving and visiting new towns and cities. This road trip saw me visit 18 towns in Quebec and the Maritimes over 49 days covering 9,790 kilometers during peak winter conditions.  If the thought of replicating this trip appeals to you may enjoy the book which is available here amazon.com/author/jimkokocki

Limits On Your Opportunities

As I watched the Memorial Cup game and observed how defense in hockey limits the more entertaining goal scoring, I thought about limitations we place on ourselves. Here’s my example. In 2018 I had decided to write a book on public speaking, as it’s a subject matter in which I have a great deal of experience as a speaker and coach. To write the book I prepared an outline, opened Microsoft Word, wrote everything I knew about public speaking, edited and re-wrote, then hired a professional editor (which I recommend for any writer), then hired someone to properly format the material with page numbers, page titles a table of content and more.  I published it as a paperback on Amazon Kindle, because I tend to read paperbacks and hard covers. I would later publish the product as an e-book.   

The paperback version sold quite well but I hated how it looked.  It was my content and my ideas, but the sum of my knowledge and ideas displayed as about 45 printed pages.  I was unhappy with the look of my first product.

I should point out that I’m not a perfectionist. I wrote about perfectionism here https://gycz.blogspot.com/2022/06/perfectionism-is-kind-of-disease.html

Minimum Viable Product

Producing this first effort was an important step to opening more opportunity. I suppose it was a minimum viable product, and did have some acceptance. Regardless of that acceptance, I produced a revised version of the book by adding some more stories about my speaking experiences, adding some photos, and some other lessons. The revised version displayed as over 100 pages (which I recommend to aspiring authors) and looked much better to me. I am proud of that product.

Writing a Second Book – 9,790 Kilometer Road Trip

My second book about my hockey road trip was easy to write because I simply documented the planning and execution of visiting 18 towns and cities, and travelling 9,790 kilometers in January, February and March. The difficult part of this product was minimizing travel, grouping scheduled games for travel efficiency, and navigating around snow storms. With this book it was easy to produce more than 100 pages of content.

Writing a Third Book – Overcoming a Limiting Thought  

My third book came about because I was asked by a group to present on the topic of running effective meetings and injecting some fun and variety into meetings. Injecting some fun has become important as more and more meetings take place online these days and people are experiencing ‘Zoom fatigue’ sitting in their same seat while attending meeting after meeting.

I was happy to present on the topic, and after the presentation and the Q&A I thought that maybe I should write a book on this topic. Now previously I had a limiting perception of what a ‘book’ looks like. My perception was that a book is usually over 100 pages, is available as a paperback, maybe a hardcover, and maybe as an e-book. However, I have read material from other authors who challenged my limiting perception.

Many people these days consume books on e-readers. When an author publishes a book for consumption on e-readers the publisher wants zero formatting.  The formatting takes place real time as the content is presented to a laptop, or an iPad, or a phone or other device.  The formatting varies based on the device displaying the content.

While I didn’t believe I had enough content on running effective meetings to produce my traditional version of a 100-page ‘book,’ I had enough material to be invited to speak on the topic, and enough material to write something. So, I prepared and published an e-book.  It’s approximately 40 pages in Microsoft Word, but I don’t know how it might display on your e-reader or laptop. It too is available at this link amazon.com/author/jimkokocki

I had a limiting perception of what constituted a book, but was able to overcome this limiting perception.

Perceptions That Limit You

My point in writing this is to highlight that I had placed a limitation on myself. It’s interesting how these perceptions take hold in us. This one could have prevented me from sharing my content about running effective meetings.  My perception of what a book looks like limited my thinking.  I have read other material on how categories and labels we apply, while helpful in most cases, can limit us in decision making. There is some fascinating material on how quick categorization and perceptions limit our creativity and opportunities. Here is an interesting academic paper on the topic titled Decision Making Under Uncertain Categorization

 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00991/full

Takeaway

Perceptions, beliefs and categorizations are helpful. They’re shortcuts. Here’s a good article on their helpfulness titled Categorization = Decision Making + Generalization  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3739997/

While these shortcuts are helpful, and unavoidable, they can limit us. If you have comments or experiences where you have overcome such limiting thoughts, perceptions and categorizations, I would love for you to share them with me.  It will be good food for thought and discussion.

 

 

 

 

Perfectionism Is A “Kind Of Disease”

Perfectionists don’t get anything done. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, although perfectionist tendencies can certainly be a barrier to production. And the actor who played Mr. Bean seems to agree.

Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean)

Rowan Atkinson, known for the character Mr. Bean among others, recently said “perfectionism is a kind of disease” and that he rarely laughs when he watches his own work. He elaborated on “thinking about whatever you’re doing, (that) you could do better,” and he sees that as a problem.

The article is here

 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rowan-atkinson-interview-man-vs-bee-netflix-sw7gfcvfc

I’m not convinced that believing you can always do better is a problem, but if it prevents someone from producing anything, then that is certainly a problem. It’s a surprising comment from Atkinson because he has been very prolific over his career.

Seth Godin on Perfectionists

My friends Dave Veale and Greg Hemmings host a podcast. They are quite prolific as well with over 200 episodes. Their Boiling Point Podcast has had some amazing guests over the years.  One of the most popular was marketing guru Seth Godin.  Godin has written several books and he writes the exceptionally popular blog  https://seths.blog/.  When Seth visited The Boiling Point, he told the hosts that perfectionists are cowards because they never bring anything to completion.   I’ve read his works before and he has pushed against perfectionism, but calling perfectionists cowards was quite dramatic and quite strong language.  Likely too strong but sometimes we need to be a little dramatic to land a point.  You can listen to the episode here.

https://boilingpointpodcast.com/boiling-point/seth-godin-says-perfectionists-are-cowards-heres-why/

Minimum Viable Product

Godin continued and clarified that he wasn’t indicating to ship product before it was ready, but to avoid trying to create the perfect product. An abundance of business material preaches to deliver a minimal viable product to a market that you believe needs the product, and let customer feedback shape future, improved, more feature-rich versions. 

I understand Godin’s strong comments. I also understand the perceived risk of content producers, however I believe that there will always be people that dismiss your work regardless how much polishing that takes place.

Tough Feedback in Philadelphia

I have a personal example of this. I‘ve delivered hundreds of presentations over the years. Sometimes after a presentation, the hosts collect written feedback and comments, primarily for their own purposes in determining if they should re-book a speaker in the future. Sometimes they share the comments with the speaker, as in this example.

About ten years ago I delivered a presentation on situational leadership to a group of about one-hundred attendees in Philadelphia.  It went very well.  As always, after the presentation I thought ‘whoops I forgot to mention this minor point,’ and ‘one of those transitions could have been much more smooth.’ But it went well. The audience was engaged, and there were lots of questions.

 

Feedback Comment Forms

Afterwards the hosts collected comment forms.  Usually, attendees simply comply, and quickly and half-heartedly check off high scores with comments like ‘was great,’ ‘speaks a little quickly at times,’ and ’good material.’    At this event three people wrote ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ ‘never want to see this speaker again’ and ‘I wasted 45 minutes.’  These are direct quotes because I’ve kept these forms, simply as a reminder to me.

These opinions are valid. These three attendees clearly didn’t benefit from my presentation. Their comments remind me that there will often be attendees who don’t enjoy my work. Rarely will an entire audience, of a significant size, enjoy a presentation. That shouldn’t stop me, and it shouldn’t stop you.

Perfectionist Tendencies

If you have perfectionist tendencies, take solace in knowing that someone won’t enjoy your work. But many will. If you think someone might not like your work, you’re correct.  That shouldn’t stop you from releasing your work in some form. Perhaps with a minimal viable version that will take you closer and closer to your ultimate product.