How to See and Seize Life's Opportunities
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Back in December last year, I wrote a guest post for Life Optimizer called 5 Things That Are Better Than a Plan, talking about how a sense of purpose, a direction, a moral compass, awareness of opportunities and a range of tools and techniques are better resources than a rigid plan in a changing world. It got a great response, with lots of comments. One comment in particular gave me an idea for this follow-up post.
Dana said: “Awareness of opportunities, that is the place we get stuckâ€.
That looks to me like an opportunity to say more. So here are my thoughts on how to create and recognize opportunities in life.
Sow many seeds
Another comment on my earlier post quoted the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes: “Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.†In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you want to have a lot of opportunities, start a lot of small things and watch to see which ones become big.
If everything relies on one plan – if there’s no plan B (or C or D or E) – you’re risking everything on the always-imperfect chance that plan A will work out.
A friend of mine is an aspiring actress. She auditions for everything. Fighting prostitute in Spartacus? Sure! Hobbit? Sure! Angel for one scene in the small indie film The Insatiable Moon? Sure! (She got two out of three of those roles. She’s too tall for a hobbit.) She gets tired of it – but that’s the way to create opportunities.
If you want to be struck by lightning, you need to go out in every thunderstorm and climb the biggest tree you can see.
Know what an opportunity looks like
Over Christmas my wife and I did a jigsaw puzzle. It was one of those where the picture isn’t on the box (the picture on the box is of the scene you’d see if you stood inside the puzzle facing out). It was a great lesson in spotting opportunities.
To find the right piece in a puzzle like that, you need to have an idea of what you’re looking for. You say things like, “It’s a Y-shaped piece, and it has that exact shade of yellow on the end tab, I should be able to see this…â€.
At the same time, sometimes the piece doesn’t look exactly the way you expect. Perhaps the little bit of yellow is smaller than you thought. Maybe the pattern changes suddenly on this piece. You don’t have the picture, so you can’t be sure.
What we did was to start with the pieces that were easiest to spot, that were clear matches to what we were looking for or obviously went together. Once we’d found those, we had more context to use in looking for the rest.
At the same time, while we were working on a face, or part of a building, if we spotted something that fitted somewhere else we grabbed it then – we didn’t wait until later.
Some of the best opportunities you’ll ever get are ones you’ll find when you’re looking for something else.
Have clear criteria
Exactly because opportunities come along all the time (when you’re looking for them), you need to have some criteria for which to take and which to leave alone. Good questions to ask include:
Does this take me closer to, or further from, my ultimate goal?
What benefits will it give me?
What costs are involved?
Does this have the potential to open up to something larger, or is it clearly a one-off?
If it did open up to something larger, would that be something I was prepared to pursue?
If I refuse this opportunity, does that close off others in the future?
Victoria Brouhard talks a lot about “no-brainer scenariosâ€, where you figure out what would have to be true in order to give a clear “Yes!†to an opportunity. This is exactly what I’m talking about.
Don’t despise small opportunities
Often, the first opportunity you get from someone else is small. They want to know what you’re like – do you show up on time, do you do good work, are you easy to get on with? My friend the actress isn’t going to be offered a lead role first crack out of the box. You have to, as they say in jazz, pay your dues.
When I was a freelance writer, I several times took small projects that turned into much larger ones. On the other hand, I also took small projects that didn’t go anywhere else – but that I learned interesting and useful things from anyway, like a book of photographs of wineries that I wrote the text for.
Be ready
One of the best things you can do to prepare for opportunity is to have an “opportunity reserveâ€. By this I mean, structure things so that you can act on opportunities when they arrive.
Think in advance about what would need to happen if your great opportunity did occur. Could you take time from your current work? Would you be able to survive financially? What other responsibilities would someone else have to take over temporarily – would you need someone to mind your kids, mind your house, feed your fish, guest post on your blog?
If you’re totally enmeshed in your life as it is now, with no room to maneuver, how would you be able to take opportunities if they did arise?
Having these essential things taken care of becomes part of your no-brainer scenario.
So, take a look around. What do you have that you can turn into opportunities?
How to be Successful: 5 Lessons from Sherlock Holmes
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Sherlock Holmes is undeniably talented. But is that what makes him successful?
How to Be SuccessfulI’ve always been fascinated by the idea of Sherlock Holmes, the eccentric but brilliant English detective. From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories to the Robert Downey Jr. film, to the most recent three-part mini-series, Sherlock, that aired last summer on BBC, Sherlock Holmes has always had a firm grip on my imagination.
His success, however, does not rest its laurels solely on his innate talents. Of course, he is known for his power of deduction, and a number of quirks that seem to come with the territory, like drug binges and indoor target practice. But it is the congregation of his other qualities with his talent – in spite of his vices – that make him successful.
As any professional knows, you cannot just rely on talent to make your way in the world. By taking a few pages out of Sherlock Holmes’s book, we can learn a few lessons that will help you to be successful in your work.
1. Details matter
Whatever incarnation Sherlock Holmes appears in, his best quality is his exacting eye for detail. Nothing gets past him. He can often tell, the moment a person walks into a room, where they have been, what they have been doing, and at least some partial knowledge about their history or their habits, simply by observing them.
If you pay as much attention to detail in your work as Holmes does, you will find that little will get past you. For example, you may be able to anticipate your bosses’ expectations or your clients’ questions by observing their daily habits, or their history. It takes time to acquire the patience and the eye for this kind of deductive reasoning, but the more you do it, the easier it will become. Not only will it be worth the effort, but it will certainly benefit you by making your job easier in the long run.
2. Some mysteries are never solved
In the stories, more than the films or TV shows, the endings to many of Holmes’s cases leave as many questions unanswered as problems solved.
In crime, as in life, there are often more questions than there are answers. But for Holmes, this is not a bad thing. It doesn’t bother him that he can’t find the answer to everything. Instead, he finds it fascinating and files the information away for future use. To Sherlock, the puzzle is the main thing. If every case were so neatly resolved, he would probably lose interest, being prone to boredom as he is without a puzzle at hand. The infinite nature of the puzzle keeps the fun alive in his work.
That’s how it should be in your work, too. It should be a puzzle to solve, a question to answer. It should fire your brain to find new, creative solutions for your problem. If your work doesn’t interest you like that, you’re either in the wrong field or you’re not being challenged enough.
3. Partners are indispensable
As we all know, Watson is Holmes’s partner, his assistant and follower. He is also the audience and narrator of Sherlock Holmes’s most unique adventures.
Whatever you do, it’s good to have a partner in crime (or crime solving), or at least someone to talk to. Whether your partner is actively involved in your case or simply pointing you in the right direction, or even just nodding and listening while you voice your thoughts or vent your frustrations, in the end you will benefit from this collaboration. Even the brilliant Holmes likes to have someone to bounce ideas off of, and Watson’s mere presence is sometimes more useful than any other tool at his disposal.
4. Your reputation precedes you
Holmes gets many cases by actively pursuing them. It is his passion. However, people also come to Holmes with their problems for the sole reason that they heard he was the man for the job.
It is the same way whatever field you are in. Sports teams scout for new players based on reputation and statistics. Letters of recommendation are requested for new hires in many jobs because they are certified reports of a persons character and ability. Whatever you do, your work reverberates into the future. Whether you do good work or bad work, people will hear about it. If you do bad work employers and clients will avoid you. If you do good work, they will come looking for you.
5. There is more than one way to approach a problem
Sherlock Holmes uses many problem solving approaches. Sometimes he goes out in disguise and asks the right questions. Other times, he sits up all night smoking a pipe and thinking about it. At yet other times, he uses clever deception to draw the players into the game.
If one approach fails, Holmes wouldn’t stop there. He would try something else. Take a page out of his book. I’m not suggesting indoor target practice, but if shooting a gun helps you free your mind, more power to you. I hope you use a proper shooting range, however. And if that doesn’t work, try a different approach. There is always more than one.
Final Words
There are many lessons you can learn from Sherlock Holmes that will help you in your work and in your life. These are just a few of them. But whatever other talents Sherlock has, know that it is his passion for his work that drives him to be the best consulting detective there is. If you can muster a similar passion for your work, there is little holding you back from success.