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.

 

 

 

 

Listening & Paying Attention: An Opportunity For A New Book

 In March I was invited to speak to the Atlantic Chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society (https://www.cprs.ca/) on the topic of running effective meetings and injecting some fun into meetings.

I have a well-defined approach to speak about running effective meetings, however while I do believe I am skilled at injecting some fun and levity, I wasn’t quite sure how to advise a group on how to do so. But I considered my approach and experience, performed some research, and did speak to the group on this topic.

Injecting some levity into a meeting depends on situations and opportunities spontaneously occurring, and on leader skill, confidence and readiness. If the leader is nervous when running a meeting, then the climate won’t be relaxed and inclined for humor and levity. However, a leader can plan for some fun. 

Planning to inject some fun makes me more nervous than responding in the moment, as I worry about whether the participants will think the planned fun activity is frivolous or a waste of time.  That said, during my presentation to the public relations society, I mentioned a couple of planned fun activities I’ve tried in recent years, and mentioned a couple of options I recently researched. The best I discovered is one called Zoom Tic-Tac-Toe, or “X and O’s.”  Or I suppose you can call it Skype Tic-Tac-Toe or Teams Tic-Tac-Toe or any another platform Tic-Tac-Toe.  

How To Play Zoom Tic-Tac-Toe

All attendees turn off their video except for nine attendees. Then the two combatants alternate instructing those visible on screen with instructions like “Amy make the shape of an X with your arms,” and “Matea make the shape of an O with your arms” until a player completes a line of three.  Part of the fun in this is that the attendees on screen display in differing sequences for the combatants and for everyone on the call. So once a winner declares that she has completed a line of three, you can ask the winner to take a screen shot and share it with the group - if you have concerns about Tic-Tac-Toe fraudsters.

Here are some other online game ideas should you feel daring https://teambuilding.com/blog/zoom-meeting-ideas

My  Lesson

The lesson for me resulting from this request to speak has been that I should be alert when someone is asking me to speak or provide significant commentary on a problem or issue. If someone has interest in my point of view or experience, then that is an opportunity to write a blog or a short book. Being opportunistic, I did write a new book on this topic. The book is only 5,000 words or approximately 20 pages, and approximately 10 times larger than this blog post, but the content is relevant and good.  

Because of the small size of the book, my intention is that it is a Kindle e-book only. I released it on Kindle on May 7^th, 2022 and I have done no promotion whatsoever, but there are already some decent results. So, it appears the theme and title are attractive to Kindle readers. 

In the future I plan to pay better attention to requests for speaking or commentary, and leverage the material with a blog or perhaps an e-book. If you’re interested in the new Kindle product Run Better Meetings: Get Better Results please see amazon.com/author/jimkokocki

I offer this post to you because perhaps you the reader may also have the chance to be more opportunistic and be better attuned to what people consider your expertise. No sense letting opportunities pass unrealized and without thoughtful consideration.