Happy New Year and Welcome To 2020!
2020! A year that lends itself to “double double” (a.k.a. “growth”, “asymmetrical ascent”, “double double” “double blessing” “multiplication” “replication” etc etc) … numerologically speaking, of course!
… If you pay attention to such things of course.
In this New Year post, I’m going to try to do 2 things with 1 blog post (not recommended by the experts).
First, I’m going to try to communicate the most important lessons I’m rehearsing to myself this year.
Next, I’m going to share a poem I wrote 20 years ago at the turn of the millennium. Okay? Okay.
First, the lessons:
2020 VISION – Have Your Most Impactful Year Ever (The Lessons)
Here are a few thoughts on getting the most out of your New Year:
Give yourself permission to re-attach your plans to your biggest dreams (read: “embarrassingly large in scope, potentially naive dreams”) and to unlock them from out of the closet where you locked them. Risk the embarrassment. Risk the failure.
The Age Of Politeness Is Over. The memory of the lessons of the era of global wars have been forgotten. Arm Yourself With Wisdom … And Wealth. Escape The Middle Class. I’m talking about this from a geopolitical/grand strategic view point, but this has domestic implications in every wealthy country, and significant economic and political implications for less wealthy societies as well.
The thing that information eats is “Attention”. Yours. There’s more information than ever. Guard your attention like your life depends on it. Practice “Coach Gogo’s Offense-Defense Theory of Attention”. Attract attention aggressively, dispense your own attention stingily. Run a positive “Attention” account trade balance.
Another thing that the “Inundation” (information flood) eats is a sense of contentment or “average satisfaction with choices made”. How? It gives too many “choices”, and thereby raises the “opportunity cost” (or options foregone) of any individual choice made. Read “Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz. Guard against this kind of “spiritual gluttony” as well. Like your serenity depends on it. Because it does.
Make this your PLATFORM LAUNCH YEAR: Plan a really big strategic move this year. Attention, information, networks, specialization and personality are levers. Be like Archimedes: find a lever, plant your foot on a difficult-to-move pivot point, and then … move the world.
Attack Asymmetric Ascent With Fury, Conviction, and Investment.The status quo is like gravity. It will take an unthinkable amount of momentum and force to break free from it. It’s that highly unlikely if you don’t attack it with force, fury, social support, and social network. Escape the middle class myth.
Work on Gratitude. Some people keep “Gratitude journals/notebooks”. Others just count their blessings every time they pray. Others actively meditate on their blessings. Do whatever you can. Find someone else to give to and fight for. There’s always much to be grateful for … if you look.
Work At Reality (Yes. W.A.R.!) This is seems to be the opposite of gratitude. But it’s not. I teach my coaching clients that we each have a hidden “Wealth Matrix” which we have to work hard to see. Of course, there’s also the “logical thinking”, “propaganda awareness”, “cultural/cosmological paradigm/bias awareness” etc aspects to “working at reality”. The idea is, ….Think. Actively. Rigorously.
Track Your Systems Not Your Goals. Set up (a) Strategic Catalytic Projects, (b) Spiral Growth (Flywheel looking, learning, launching and leading) Processes (c) Systems (Temporal/Calendar, Technological/Automation and Transactional/Processes) into a rhythmic regimen/schedule. Systems eat Willpower or “Goal tracking” for breakfast. (d) Support Circles/Social Networks – for your success. This will likely get you further along than old fashioned “Goal tracking” (See “Systems vs Goals“). In short, translate your goals into supported rhythms (see the alphabets above) and fight for/track those rhythms, not the goals.
Adopt a leverage mindset. Hypnotize yourself with weekly or monthly exercises where you simulate strong desire for what you already have. Pretend you were someone who didn’t have that thing (or that loved one) and desperately desired it. Why? What would you do with it? So much of us are caught in a perpetually wasteful state (me included). See if you can be a worthy steward of your gifts, talents, assets, personal attributes, and “personal privileges”. Force maximum output (fulfillment) from what you already have.
Assume Power. This is a two-fold instruction. Assume you are powerful. That’s the first. Second, prepare yourself for the responsibility and challenge of personally wielding power. Then go for more power. If you don’t, the jackasses will. Whoever you think they are.
Schedule Your Success. Consider the calendar the most effective personal productivity technology “app” of the last 6,000 years. Reverse engineer a “Platform Launch Year” around big catalytic projects (quarterly projects?) and cyclical retreat/recharge/renewal rhythms and “Learn ==> Launch ==> Lead ==> (re)Learn Spirals. I’ll teach about this later this year in “September Strategy” (look out for this).
Do you have any questions about any of these points? Visit my facebook page “Ask Coach Gogo” on Facebook, and let’s continue the conversation on this thread.
P.s.
Also, before you go on to the Y2K Bug poem below, go over and sign up for my “flight path” email newsletter. If you’re interested in upward ascent through digital marketing, online business, entrepreneurship and “expert business” income streams.
The Y2K Bug Poem – Some Background
I’ve kept it “secret” for 20 years, only sharing it with my wife (since she doubles as my best friend) and 1 other person previously.
It’s not so much that I “kept” it secret, as much as that I didn’t care about sharing it. Who was I going to share it with? I was going to collect my poems and publish them together in a book, but I don’t really care about doing that anymore. I don’t really relate to a lot of the poems I wrote anymore, so I’ll just release them as I feel like.
This one is like some of the others. Probably violates a lot of the conventions of good poetry. Or modern poetry. Or whatever. I don’t even read poetry … but for a few years in the 90’s and a bit afterward, I wrote poetry. And I generally liked my poems after I wrote them.
I still do.
In any case, here’s the poem:
Y2K BUG (Written in year 2000, publicly published now – January 5, 2020)
The noise was heard of his coming
first in the hilltops
and then in the market shops.
The town meetings so full of noise
that elders and leaders were losing their poise.
From patriot to idiot, every soul had his say,
and at the end of the tumult, confusion reigned that day.
“Store up grain and water in your basements” cried one
“These instructions are amusements”
jeered another, who was clearly having fun.
Many hurried and worried and wondered how this could be
that with all our patches and appeasements,
he would not let us be
But surely assured us of his terror
At the turning of the year,
when disrupting much between us,
he’d seek to make us pay.
Finally came the hour
as breathless we waited together,
seeing there was nothing left to try
nor even an army to defy.
And at that moment’s arriving …
watching …
nothing!
For at the moment of truth
the fang that once had threatened
now silently sheathed his tooth.
With great joy, the celebration erupted
which they had feared interrupted
For the plague from that distant ridge
had left off his menacing siege
and did to his own home return
to watch the millennium turn
GOGO EREKOSIMA
AskCoachGogo.com
(Note: All rights reserved. Gogo Erekosima 2000)
Did you like it? (Not that I care if you didn’t.)
It’s interesting looking back at it 20 years later. I still don’t know if I think the “Y2K bug” was an I.T. industry / consulting industry scam, or if it really really was a real thing. Perhaps it was what they said it was. I worked in the telecoms/networking industries but I didn’t have the sophistication in the field to know whether it was a real thing or not. I tend to be somewhat suspicious so … there’s that.