Blaz Kos

personal talent management

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  • T-shaped skills in every area of your life

    While the concept of T-shaped skills is not so new, it is now more important than ever. The world is becoming more and more complex and T-shaped skills are a razor that can cut through all the complexity.

    Your T-shaped skillset must constantly become broader (- general knowledge) and narrower (| specialized knowledge) as the world becomes more complex, nevertheless having T-shapes skills is one of the biggest competitive advantage you can have in the creative society when contributing value for the markets or when achieving your goals.

    Let’s see why. Well, to really understand the whole story, we have to go from dashes (-) and I’s to T’s, PI’s and even hashtags (#).

    Dash-shaped skills and low value added

    Dash (-) shaped skills simply means having some general knowledge about everything. You are a generalist, no real specialist at anything. This kind of people are usually called jacks-of-all-trades and considered as masters of none. If you are a generalist, your T doesn’t have any support to lean on and with that, several problems occur.

    The first problem is that it’s hard to gain respect from people, especially other specialists, if you don’t excel at something. The second problem is that the world is becoming so complex and saturated with information that as a result, being a generalist means pretty much nothing.

    Your general knowledge must be in a specific context to have any power at all. That context usually comes from having a connected specialized skill.

    Having dash-shaped skills usually also means providing low value added. With all the knowledge accessible to you with one click, it’s easy to become a generalist at anything. If you are a generalist, the value added you provide is only a little bit higher than providing manual work that anyone can do.

    Let’s look at some facts and practical examples:

    • People will respect you when you are really good at something. Furthermore, the halo effect will happen and they will think that you are even better in other areas of life. It’s hard to achieve that if you don’t have your own forte, but just general knowledge about something.
    • If you want to provide value to a team, you do have to be a generalist capable of working efficiently in a team, but people will recognize your value if you contribute a specific kind of skill.

    If you are an extremely good copywriter and additionally have general knowledge about internet marketing, then the combination of both is really powerful. But if you only have some general knowledge about the internet, then marketing is not nearly as valuable. General knowledge is context and foundation.

    Usually when you go to a generalist doctor, you can know more about a specific problem you have than he does, just by searching for information and cases on the internet.

    Twenty years ago, there may have been room in this world for generalists, from doctors, lawyers to managers, marketers and others. But the value of generalists was made obsolete by the internet, search engines and the curiosity of people who don’t want to be only specialists but want to know and master more from their industry.

    And there’s enough people like that. High competition, low value added.

    I-shaped skills

    The basic fact is that if you want to get paid well for your work, you have to be good at something that is high in demand, but has a rare supply. In other words: you need I-shaped skills: you need to be good at something that not many people on the market are good at.

    The good news is that there are more and more disciplines you can be good at. While internet marketing was a specialization 10 years ago, now you can be a specialist for paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing and so on. It’s not much different in other industries.

    The bad news is that it’s becoming harder and harder to be a specialist. We annually produce more information and knowledge than we have in the whole history of humankind. Thus becoming a specialist means very hard work and constant improvement.

    Another big problem is also that faculties are producing more generalists than specialists, so becoming a specialist is a task you have to undertake on your own.

    But there is an even more important secret to having I-shaped skills. Creative capitalism or the knowledge economy respects talented people more than anything else. Not only talented people, but those talented people who work hard to develop and capitalize their talent.

    The higher the demand, the rarer a skill and the better you master the skill, the more value you provide to the market. Markets are prepared to reward you completely disproportionately to the average for that kind of skill, to your advantage, of course.

    Four groups of I-shaped skills

    There are four groups of I-shaped skills that are highly respected on the market in general.

    The first group are business skills, like management, marketing, finance, sales, e-commerce etc. But you really have to be extremely good at it. Some disciplines, like marketing, are so broad that you need to find your niche inside the industry.

    The second group are engineering skills, from IT to biotech and all other promising industries. Scientists are extremely valuable in the knowledge economy. This group also includes specialists like doctors, lawyers, investors, etc. who are really good at their jobs and specialize for things high in demand.

    The third group are creative people – people who know how to be different and better, people who have awesome ideas and know how to bring them to life; entrepreneurs for example.

    The fourth group is show business and all successful musicians, sportsmen, artists, actors, entertainers and so on can be included in this group.

    In all four groups, you have the top 1 – 4 % who are paid extremely well (a.k.a. rich people), 16 – 20% of people who are above average (a.k.a. upper middle class) and others who earn average respect and salaries from other people and markets.

    There is no doubt that you want to become extremely good at something. At something that is rare, hard to learn; at something that is currently high in demand and will be high in demand in the future. But there is even more value added that you can put on your I-shaped skills. You want to see the forest, not only the trees.

    T shaped internet marketer
    Example of T-shaped internet marketer.

    T-shaped skills with E power

    People who are extremely good at something and become aware of how valuable they are usually become hard to work with. You know, everyone from assholes and divas to people who want to have special benefits all the time.

    Working with people like that is hard and if you aren’t a true star or Jennifer Lopez, your value added can start fading, since teams are becoming more important than individuals.

    When it comes to complex problems in the business world that are more difficult to solve, interdisciplinary teams provide the most value. And there is no I in TEAM. Thus you need to develop a broad set of skills that are a dash over your I.

    A combination of those two, being a specialist for one thing and a generalist for a few others, especially people skills, gives a really powerful combination.

    For example, the idea of agile teams in software development is to be cross-functional and self-organizing, meaning all members need to have some specific competences, but all members also need general competences that allow them to deliver everything by themselves and work together efficiently. In agile teams, there is no room for general project managers.

    I is something you are talented at. I is something you are passionate about. I is something you love to focus on and work hard for. I is something for which you have good ideas easily. I is something at which you want to constantly improve and push the limits. I is something at which you constantly persist and keep creating new products to serve people.

    A dash over the I is your curiosity. A dash over the I is context knowledge that empowers your I. A dash over the I is leverage, since you need to work with other people, understand paradigms, the rules of life and industry, and future trends. A dash over the I is your foundation that allows you to dive as deep as possible.

    General skills that are good to have no matter what you are doing as a specialist:

    • A broad knowledge about something (law, economy, software development, linguistics…)
    • A broader context for your specialized skill set (SEO expert – e.g. internet marketing)
    • A basic knowledge of how humans and the society work (biology, psychology, sociology…)
    • Understanding the industry you work in, its trends and paradigms
    • Basic knowledge of how the business world works

    Soft skills you have to be good at, unless you are an ultra-geek or a genius:

    • Teamwork
    • Communication skills and networking, with good enough English skills
    • Time management
    • Information technology
    • Tolerance and open-mindedness

    Soft skills that provide additional value (you can even become a specialist):

    • Leadership and organization
    • Negotiations
    • Presentations and giving lectures
    • Creativity and innovation
    • The basics of marketing and sales

    There is another competence I have to emphasize, no matter how good of an I, T or dash you are. That is execution (E). Ideas have almost zero value. We all have ideas. There are too many ideas everywhere. Execution is much more important than ideas.

    It doesn’t matter that you’ve read a hundred books about swimming if you haven’t done a single stroke in the water. It doesn’t matter that you have a very rare knowledge and a thousand ideas if at the same time you’re a lazy procrastinator, unable to deliver. I and T without E are almost useless.

    Different areas of life and T-shaped skills powered by E

    Until now, we’ve more or less talked only about business and skill combinations that can get you paid the most on the market. But you can use the same concept in all other areas of life.

    Having strong foundations and diving deep into something that interests you is a winning combination in all areas of life. With strong discipline and execution, of course. Let’s look at a few examples.

    Practical examples

    If you want to be healthy, doing only one sport you love isn’t enough. You also need to know the basics of a good diet, you need to work on your core muscles, flexibility, condition etc. All that is a strong foundation that enables you to be really good at a specific sport. The T-shaped skills approach.

    If you want to have good relationships, you need to find people with common interests and the same values. But you also need to be good at communication, know how to manage difficult situations, have ideas for what to do together and so on. Good people skills are a foundation for good relationships. But in order for relationships to work in the long term, you also need more profound connections, based on common values and interests.

    It’s the same with money. You need to have a broad knowledge of how financial markets work, about different investing options etc. But if you really want to make a good return, you have to become extremely good at one type of investments. You have to be better than 90 % of other investors in the same asset class.

    We can even apply the same concept to spirituality. Before you believe in something 100 %, be it a religion or any other spiritual idea, you want to understand why having such a belief is important. You want to understand different religions, spiritual concepts etc. It’s the foundation for finding something that will really empower you to the full. It’s the foundation that will give your life a greater meaning.

    Same goes for all other areas of life. You want to do things that you know are fun for you and you are good at, but that shouldn’t stop you from constantly trying new and new things. As mentioned your T-shaped skillset must constantly become broader (- general knowledge) and narrower (| specialized knowledge) in all areas of life.

    PI-shaped skillset can take you even a step further

    Becoming a really well-shaped and strong T in life is basically a lifelong process. It’s not easy and it demands constant improvements, hard work and finding a balance between acquiring general and specific knowledge. You have to keep expanding and narrowing your T-shaped skills.

    But more and more people are aware of the T-shaped skills advantage, so there is another level where you can take your skills even a step further and provide much more value added. If you are a true achievement-oriented freak.

    The concept is the so-called PI-shaped skillset. The idea is that you are a generalist on one side, but a specialist at two or even more things on the other.

    A magical power comes from transferring ideas and knowledge from one specialist area to the other and vice versa or from combining two fields into one product. For example, you are fitness specialist and a programmer, and so you make a fitness app.

    As mentioned before, becoming extremely good at more than one thing in life is pretty damn hard. Therefore people who are capable of PI shaped skills are usually people who have developed certain competences at a young age.

    For example, playing a specific sport or a musical instrument, practicing a certain type of art or hobby, the latter combined with a completely different field of study, can give magical results and PI-shaped skills by default.

    It’s good to be aware of the competences you’ve developed over your lifetime and whether there are any good ways to combine them.

    All others of us, who hadn’t developed certain specialized skills in our youth, have to make a decision whether being a T is good enough or we want to sacrifice more time and other areas of life to become PIs.

    It’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves. Nevertheless, make sure and work hard to be more than only a dash or an I. You know you have a greater potential and it’s your duty to work hard to bring that potential to life.

    Homework

    To sum things up together with pointing out action items:

    • Find something that you’re passionate about and is/will be high in demand, focus yourself, dive deep and constantly improve. Sooner, you start to go deeper, be better. Don’t feel bad that you won’t be able to master many things, the world has just become too complex.
    • When you are an expert, never lose your general curiosity. Constantly read about your industry and other subjects. Try new things. Understand how the business world and financial markets work. Understand how we humans work. Understand trends and paradigms. Combine different areas. Have fun.
    • Take your game to a whole new level by systematically combining your different specialties. Win.

    Reaching the ultimate level – Hastag

    You want even more than pi? Well, there is one more level, the ultimate competence level. Become a hashtag #-skilled person.

    • (Dash one) A generalist in a few industries.
    • (Dash two) Develop soft skills.
    • (I one) Be a specialist at one thing.
    • (I two). Be a specialist at a completely different thing.
    • Combine all four. Win big.

  • Success brings success and failure brings failure, but…

    Let’s start with the statement that life isn’t fair. I think almost everybody would agree on that. But if life isn’t fair to everybody, then it somehow is fair to everyone?

    Well, not so fast, this is just a little mind game to open your mind. Now let’s try to really analyze whether or not life isn’t fair.

    On the micro-level (everyday life) we really could say that life is fair. We all have our struggles, we all have to face obstacles, unfulfilled desires and disappointments.

    The extent of the challenges we have to face is very different for each of us, but we all lose some and win some. Nobody can live on this planet without having problems and facing obstacles.

    No matter the goals that you have in life, if you lose it hurts and if you win it feels good. Losing is a bitch but you have to face it from time to time.

    We can also say that the harder you work, the more that you invest into achieving your goals, the higher is the probability of achieving those goals. Reward comes to those who work the hardest (and smartest). And all of that is quite fair.

    The story is completely different on the macro-level. When I say “macro-level” I mean the environment you were born in (your country, your family etc.). That is the level where life isn’t as fair and you have to deal with it somehow.

    I am talking about:

    • Genetic lottery (your DNA)
    • Your parents or people who raised you
    • The country you were born in and its cultural legacy
    • The social system you are functioning in
    • Market trends and geographic trends

    The biggest advantage you can have in life is where and to whom you are born.

    On this “macro-level”, the sad general statistic is that success brings even more success and failure brings even more failure.

    There are exceptions, of course, but they’re pretty rare. It’s quite obvious where the problem lies. You have zero or very little influence on these “macro” factors but they have a great influence on your life. You can influence some of them to some extent later in life, but only with extremely strong willpower.

    We can say that all of these factors working to your advantage are simply privilege and luck. And not all people have that.

    These factors are basically the starting point in your life. The worse the starting point and the greater the goals, the smarter and harder you have to work. Let’s see why.

    Positive and negative spiral

    Very important phenomena in life are concentration, acceleration and leverage. These phenomena are the reason why success brings even more success and failure brings more failure.

    Advantage accumulates. That is to say concentration, acceleration and leverage lead to either a positive or a negative spiral in life.

    Based on your genes, markets and your primary and secondary socialization and other factors, you find yourself on either an upwards or a downwards spiral in different areas of life. Turning the course from down to up is quite hard, sometimes almost impossible.

    I don’ want this to sound so negative, since there are many things you CAN DO to change the course of your life – but sometimes it takes super human effort.

    We will look at some ideas how to do that soon but before that, let’s take a look at some practical examples, very stereotypical and extreme, just to very clearly show the point I am trying to make with the downward/upward spiral.

    If you are born in a rich family with supportive and loving parents who do sports with their kids, the following will happen. From a young age onwards your parents will encourage you to do sports, eat healthy, they will stimulate you to develop your talents, they will pay for the best schooling, help you with connections, mentor you etc.

    Even more than that, having access to funds and having a good relationship with your parents also helps you develop good self-esteem, self-image and self-worth. Parents encourage you to blossom in life, they prepare you for challenges. I know that there is no such thing as a perfect family, but generally speaking successful parents also try to raise their kids into successful individuals.

    On the other hand if you are born in a poor family, with bad health habits, a lack of knowledge and resources, and maybe even constant pressure and fighting, your starting point is very different. Bad health habits and the fighting lead to a weak immune system, poverty usually prevents you from investing into long-term skills, your access to the best education is very limited, and so on.

    You have zero guidance in life, since your parents have no experience in how it feels to be successful and how to prosper. Sooner or later you start to lag behind other people who are in a much better position. Bad environment also brings additional psychological challenges and other factors that hold you back.

    In the first case, success concentrates in all areas, there are many leverages available to the individual and the speed of achieving new goals is extremely high. In the second case, problems accumulate in all areas of life, there are no leverages available to the individual and achieving goals is slow and gradual.

    • Money accumulates
    • Attention accumulates (fame, power, etc.)
    • Love accumulates

    Also, only at much slower rates:

    • Health accumulates
    • Knowledge accumulates
    • Everything else accumulates

    Everything accumulates when you reach a certain point (the tipping point) in your life.

    How hard it is to reach that point depends on your starting point and the leverages available to you. The better the starting point and the more leverages you have at your disposal, the faster your progress and the sooner the concentration can take place.

    That’s definitely not fair. But there is also good news in all that. The world is not designed to be fair.

    The world is not designed to be fair. The world is designed to reward those who master its rules.

    Now let’s look what to do:

    • If you have a good starting point in life
    • If you have a bad starting point in life

    What to do if you have a good starting point

    A study has shown that people who are exposed to privilege and luck in life usually aren’t even aware of it. They attribute their success much more to themselves and their competences than circumstances. If the success is pretty massive, people can even become cocky and conceited.

    If you’ve had a good starting point in life, be very grateful and appreciate it. Be aware of it. If you were born in a well-developed and stable country, if you have loving and supportive parents, if you received good education, if you have a supportive environment, good genes etc. be aware of that and don’t take it for granted.

    After being aware of it and grateful for it, the second step concerns what you’re going to do about it. The reason for a good starting point is not that you can lay back and enjoy it more than others. The privileged situation was entrusted to you so you could achieve even more than others in a certain way.

    You are in a position to create much more value and while doing that, helping the world become a better place. You shouldn’t waste any of your talents or leverages.

    You should also know that resting on your laurels means nothing but slowly losing your starting position. If you only fool around and don’t take your life seriously, you will sooner or later come face to face with the proverb that wealth (or success) doesn’t last more than three generations.

    Wealth (or success or any advantage) doesn’t last more than three generations.

    No matter how many times you succeed and win, stay as humble as possible and never get cocky. In the business world, it oftentimes happens that a businessperson uses the same winning formula over and over again.

    They become so confident using this particular formula that they don’t see the changes in the environment and circumstances that occur sooner or later. At some point, the formula doesn’t work anymore.

    You can find numerous cases in which a businessperson bet everything they have on a formula even after several cases of success and consequently lost everything. Don’t let success cloud your judgment.

    That’s why you need to do regular reflections on your actions. That’s why you need to stay humble. Definitely self-confident, but humble.

    What to do if you have a bad starting point

    The story is a little bit different if you don’t have such a good starting point. The worse the starting point, the more you have to play life in the hard mode.

    The greater your goals, the smarter and harder you have to work. You somehow also have to make up for starting behind others.

    The good news is that easy times very much soften people up, while on the other hand tougher situations can build up your character.

    Tough life situations build up character.

    A tougher situation can really develop your character, if the situations aren’t too tough, like war for example, and if you keep fighting and never give up. But trust me, I have seen many people whom life killed inside with challenges that were just too much. That is topic for another post.

    I only have some ideas for what to do if you want to be really successful and your starting point was not so good: you should keep fighting and make up in the areas. Here is how:

    Excel at something

    Life gave us all talents and gifts. That’s quite fair. You have to find your talents and develop them. The talents aren’t something miraculous.

    They’re not something that you discover and soon afterwards, your life becomes a success story. There are no shortcuts.

    Talents are simply the things that you are naturally good at (numbers, words, talking, building …). After knowing where your talents lie, you have to work hard to develop them.

    Developing your talents to the point where you really excel at something is the best way to start turning a downwards spiral upwards. Because if you excel at something, two things happen.

    The first one is called the “halo effect”. The halo effect means that if you’re really good at something, people attribute you better qualities and assume that you’re good at other things as well. Thus you are exposed to more opportunities.

    The other thing that happens is that exceling at something has a good positive influence on your self-confidence and all other areas of life. Basically success starts bringing success.

    Therefore the first thing to do is to find you talents and start exceling at something. It may even take you a few years to excel at something, but it doesn’t matter.

    Focus yourself and start building up your character and skills. Level up your game. You should also very carefully consider where you will apply your talents. You want to apply them to markets that are growing and rising.

    Start with small wins

    A person who wins one challenge has a greater probability of winning the next one. A win leads to better self-confidence, better body chemistry and higher motivation as well as to better readiness for the next challenge.

    It’s better to win small ten times than to lose big one time. Thus you have to be aware of your bad starting point and not try to compete with people who have a much better starting point right at the very beginning. You have to be smarter than that and make progress step by step.

    We know three zones in life. One is called the “comfort zone”. It’s the zone where you have mastered everything and there are no challenges at all. The second one is called the “learning zone”. It’s the zone with challenges that are just big enough to allow you to make progress and grow. The more you are active in the learning zone, the more your comfort zone expands.

    The third zone is called the “panic zone”. If you go from the comfort zone straight into the panic zone, you will burn yourself out. You could easily lose, damage your self-confidence and you could subconsciously start giving a negative connotation to a specific challenge, meaning you will not try next time, even in a smaller dimension.

    Thus you have to be much smarter. You have to know you starting point, and where your learning and panic zones begin. You want to take small steps and win them one by one, slowly improving your skills.

    Your wins will start to accumulate, your comfort zone will start to broaden, and over the years you will be able to catch up to most other people who had had a better starting point.

    Measure your progress exclusively to your past self.

    The more wins that you accumulate, the bigger the risks that you can afford. You still have to be careful to not take risks that are so big they can completely ruin you. And it can happen.

    For every success story you see in the media, there are thousands of people who failed really badly. Some of them so badly that they won’t be able to rise up ever again. You don’t want to do that to yourself.

    Increase your chances of getting lucky

    You have to be very assertive when increasing your chances of getting lucky. The more targets you want to hit, the more shooting you will have to do.

    Keep developing your inner resources, learn sales, learn marketing, build up your personal brand, network as much as possible, leverage social networks, expose yourself, stand for something, integrate yourself into the community of successful people, and so on. Innovate your way out of shitty situations.

    Many studies have shown the importance of the so-called hubs, where concentration and acceleration take place. In the start-up world we call these hubs incubators, start-up accelerators and technology parks.

    These are the points where talented people, information, resources, technology, good energy and the right values are concentrated. It’s the same in all other areas of life. You have clubs, associations and institutes for nearly everything, from business to health and hobbies.

    You want to put yourself in the centre of such hubs and then start shooting for your first wins. While doing that, you have to remember that marketing is everything and that whatever you’re doing in life, whatever your goals are, good sales and marketing will always accelerate your way to success.

    Under the condition that the product you’re selling (you) is the real deal. Otherwise marketing can kill you really fast. There is no fake it ‘til you make it.

    Here’s another trick. If you want to succeed faster, you also have to fail faster. Going from failure to failure without losing motivation until you succeed is supposed to be the formula for success. But we have very clearly seen that losing doesn’t bring you anything good. That’s why you need to introduce the search mode into your life.

    If you do the search mode correctly, there is no failure, just validated learning. Consequently there are no bad influences on your self-confidence and other success factors. And as said before, the more successes that you accumulate and the better position that you are in, the bigger the risks you can take and the more you can learn.

    Spiral Stairs to Light

    Get to know yourself and get rid of negative behavioral patterns

    An important part of getting to know yourself is identifying your negative behavioral patterns. If you were not brought up in a loving, supportive environment and weren’t raised by model parents, you probably have many destructive negative behavioral patterns.

    Here are the ten most popular ones:

    • Negative thinking
    • Self-criticism and self-labeling
    • Low self-confidence and passive obedience
    • Hopelessness and helplessness (not being aware of your personal power)
    • Overwhelming yourself and burning yourself out
    • Perfectionism
    • Fear of failure and fear of success
    • Fear of criticism and disapproval (looking for outside confirmation and being spineless)
    • Low frustration tolerance
    • Guilt and self-blame
    • Scarcity mindset

    All this sh*t is dragging you down, again clearly demonstrating how bad brings more bad. The bad environment you were brought up in (I hope not) results in bad behavioral patterns which then further result in bad life situations.

    Thus you want to deal with your inner negative psychological state. In adulthood, your outer world is merely a reflection of your inner world and vice versa.

    Read personal development books, schedule a consultation with a cognitive therapist, identify your negative behavioral patterns and start working on them. Otherwise your life can become a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Now you probably understand why the greatest battles won are not those won over physical enemies but over ourselves. You can be your own worst enemy. Don’t let that happen. It’s not fair but you have to deal with it.

    Never go to war, especially with yourself.

    Start changing your environment

    At some point in life, you have to start creating an environment that supports you. What really sucks is that if you hadn’t had a supportive environment at home, you will probably subconsciously look for the same unsupportive environment in all areas of life.

    Simply because it’s the environment most familiar to you and you know how to survive it. It’s the same situation when people look for abusive relationships because they had that kind of a relationship at home. That sucks big time and again it clearly shows how bad brings more bad.

    You have to become conscious of that fact and first work hard on your personal development and your subconscious tendencies. You need to build your first mutually supportive relationship, learn how to handle that kind of positive relationships and then work further on the next one and the one after that.

    That is how you change the spiral. It may take you years to completely change your environment, but that is the only way if you want to make positive changes in your life.

    It’s the same with other elements of your surroundings. People are the most important factor but they aren’t the only important one. Find market trends that will support you. Find countries where you function best.

    Nevertheless, the world has become a global village and the internet is opening up many possibilities for you to work internationally. Decorate your home so it supports you in the process of achieving your goals. Use apps on your phone and computer that support you etc.

    Actively construct your environment step by step and make it as supportive as possible.

    Rituals Celebration

    Rituals

    There is one more thing you can do that will help you on the difficult path to a more positive course in your life. Studies have shown that nations that go through traumatic experiences heal faster if they have strong rituals that help them go through this tough situation and any others that might be coming.

    It’s not always the case, but it quite often is. You have to find out for yourself. The key point is that rituals make you calmer and more stable. If they have that kind of effect on you, practice them and it will help you a lot.

    Here are ten ideas for that sort of rituals:

    • Being grateful and thankful for what you have
    • Celebrating every small win with people who also fight challenging situations in life
    • Spending time with people you love and knowing what you are fighting for
    • Helping other, less fortunate people, since there is always someone who is in an even worse position than you are
    • Meditating
    • Reflecting on your life
    • Believing in a higher power
    • Regularly reviewing your past victories
    • Taking time off after intense periods of time
    • Saying “fuck it” and surrendering to life

    Conclusion

    Knowing and understanding are the first steps towards a better life. We have analyzed why success brings more success and inequality brings more inequality.

    The bad news is that all that is unfortunately true to some extent. The good news is that you have the personal power to change the course of your life. You can change a negative spiral into a positive one. It’s not easy, but it can be done.

    At the end of the day, you can come out of difficult situations much smarter, stronger, wiser and with a much bigger capacity for creating value and making the world a better place to live. Because you understand good as well as bad situations in life.

    For the conclusion, let me give you an example that shows a pretty similar thing:

    If you look at the list of the most economically successful countries in the world, you can see that there are two types of countries at the top. The first type are countries with many natural resources, especially oil.

    These are the countries with a head start. It’s the same if you are born extremely beautiful, smart or with many resources.

    The second type are countries with much less natural resources that had innovated their way to the top. They are more creative, more cunning, more organized, more assertive, more connected, more supportive towards talented people, more hard-working and so on.

    Their success is not based on outer resources but on inner ones. The good news is that with inner resources, you can always make more of the outer ones.

    So who do you think will be in the better position when natural resources run out? Of course those countries that have invested natural resources really smartly into other assets like knowledge, innovation, talent etc.

    And those countries without natural resources that didn’t settle for an inferior situation but rather decided to fight and come out of the situation stronger than ever. You should do the same, no matter your starting point.

    I hope these articles gave you some good ideas how you can change your life direction, enter the positive spiral of life and accelerate your way to success.

    It’s not easy, but it can be done. Success brings success and failure brings failure, but there are many things you can do to turn a failure into a success. I wish you all the luck possible.

  • The ways of getting to know yourself

    You become a successful entrepreneur not because you know how to build a company, but because you have a superior understanding of the customers and their needs. You can simply hire people for everything else (very simplified). It’s the same in your personal life. If you want to be really successful and happy in life, you have to know who you are and what you want very clearly and also understand your environment in order to build the superior strategy for achieving your life vision.

    Knowing yourself is one of the most important things in life. It’s the first step. It’s also the most important foundation of the AgileLeanLife lifestyle. In life, you either follow your own goals or goals of other people. But if you want to follow your own goals, you must first know what you truly want and how you function as a person.

    Most really successful people had known what they wanted to become from a very young age. They discovered what they’re good at early in their lives and devoted their life to that one thing with all their passion and focus. Well, even if it doesn’t happen early in life, it happens at some point. When the right opportunity comes, you simply know you were born to do that with your life.

    You can unlock your true potential when you get the insights in your true self: not only into what you want, but also into how you function, what your psychological survival mechanisms are, your desires and fears, strengths and weaknesses and other personality traits, how the environment works, what are the upcoming trends and paradigms, then you can unlock your true potential. If you want to transcend, you have to first understand yourself.

    There are several ways for getting to know yourself. Let’s look at them.

    People and activities you like

    The first one is very obvious. People with the same values always group together. People who surround you and you like to hang out with usually have the same beliefs, values, likes and hobbies as you do.

    We all know that, but what you can do to systematically get to know yourself is to carefully analyze who are the people you like and what activities do you do together. Same goes for the activities you like to do alone. Think of your hobbies and why you like them. Ask yourself what topic you would like to teach if you had an opportunity or what you would love to blog about.

    You are and become more and more similar to the people you are spending your time with. Analyze the people who surround you.

    Your values

    Your values very clearly show what’s important to you in life. But here’s the trick. Your values are not what you say is important to you, but how you allocate your time, money and energy. For example, if you have to decide between working out and going to the pub and you choose the latter, socializing is more important to you than health. If you have to decide between spending time with your spouse or friends and you choose the former, your partnership is more important to you than your friends. And so on.

    Carefully analyze how you’re spending your time, money, energy and other resources. When do you say no and to whom, and how do you make a choice between two different activities. Analyzing that will clearly show you your personal values. You can also help yourself with this value list and then prioritize chosen values based on your decision-making system.

    You may find out one very painful thing, namely the inconsistency of what you say you value and what you actually do. But don’t torture yourself. There are no wrongs and rights. It’s about really knowing yourself and living life true to yourself. That kind of exercise helps you develop integrity and honesty.

    Your talents and fields of interest

    When you are analyzing yourself, a very pleasant part of it is analyzing your talents and fields of interest. Every single one of us has talents, things that we are naturally good at, and so do you. May it be sports, mathematics, some sort of arts or anything else. Each of us has special talents and gifts. This is also where one of your greatest potentials lies, be it financially or in self-actualization terms.

    Think about the subjects you liked when attending school, which activities were natural to you and you had to put in much less effort than other people, which activities make you lose sense of time and you simply enjoy them, what are your hobbies and so on. But also go one step further with your analysis. Think about all different kinds of strengths that accompany your talents.

    A good tool to do that kind of analysis is the so-called SWOT analysis. You analyze your strengths on the one hand and weaknesses on the other. You also analyze opportunities and threats as outside factors that can influence your ability to achieve your goals and desires. Much as you have to be aware of your advantages, so you have to be aware of your disadvantages as well.

    People you hate

    It may not seem that obvious, but we can really learn a lot from people we hate or dislike. We always dislike people who have personality traits that are a part of our character yet unresolved (we deny them) or that remind us of a bad experience we had had in our past. Additionally, we usually also have values very different from those of people we don’t like.

    Nevertheless, there are two different states or situations. We can have different beliefs and values from people and have neutral feelings about it. That is what we call rational behavior. People have different views on life and there is nothing wrong with it. Every one of us has the right to live life as they want, as long as they cause no harm to other people. But when we are not neutral in this kind of a situation and we get negative feelings about a person that simply means we have some internal issues that are not being solved. We can learn a lot about ourselves by observing who we hate or dislike.

    Thoroughly asking ourselves why we hate or dislike someone can tell us a lot about ourselves. Are we envious (of what and what our desires are), did somebody in the past treat us the same way etc.

    5 Whys

    5 Whys is a simple technique also used in business to identify the cause and not only deal with the effects. If you want to get rid of the consequences for good, you have to get to the root of the matter. You can identify the real cause by asking yourself “why” several times in a row. It’s a way of identifying your deeper volitions and why you behave in a certain way.

    Let me give you an example. I like geeky superhero movies. Why? Because the good always wins despite the inoperative formal protective and legal system. Why? Because there is “someone” more competent to protect the victim from the bad. Why? Because no one deserves to be a victim and bullied by others. Why? Because I know how awful it feels. Why? Because I experienced domestic violence as a child.

    Getting to know yourself

    Self-reflection

    There is also a big systematic step further you can do to analyze yourself. Psychoanalysis, the psychological technique popularized by Sigmund Freud, is based on you reflecting on your behavior, talking about yourself and coming to small epiphanies and insights into why you are behaving in a certain way and what drives you. It’s especially based on free associations, fantasies and dreams. And you don’t need a therapist for that.

    Explained in a very simplified way, self-reflection means that once per week, you take an hour or more to reflect on your goals, behavioral patterns, negative and positive emotions and everything else that is happening in your life. It’s even better to do this daily, by writing a journal, but you need a lot of time for that, of course. Nevertheless, you can have great breakthroughs by knowing yourself.

    Reflecting is also an integral part of agile software development (SCRUM), where the team reflects on how they work and where they can improve regularly on a weekly basis. I do self-reflection at least two times per week and I come to a small insight about myself every time.

    Having a persona coach is also a viable option to help you with self-reflection. You are always very biased when judging yourself and others. It’s a no-brainer that you judge others much more strictly and that you are indulgent towards yourself. An honest and tough, but fair, coach could greatly contribute towards more realistic reflection.

    Search mode

    A much more fun way to get to know yourself is testing and trying different things in life. Based on the AgileLeanLife principles, I call that the search mode. You may assume what you like and dislike in life but you don’t really know until you try it. Besides developing yourself (personal evolution) and providing value to the world (creating), another important purpose of your life is to be happy and experience as much as possible.

    Why not try as many things as imaginable. You can then do the ones you like over and over again, and simply discard the ones you don’t. But at least you know you’ve tried. You should always be in the search mode in your life – testing, trying and experimenting new things. New travel destinations, new meals, new people, new sex poses, you name it.

    Routine is a much more popular approach to life, but only because it’s easy and safe. Nevertheless, routine is a partly wasted life. There are so many things to do in life, so many things to try. Never settle for a routine just because it’s easy. Your life starts at the end of your comfort zone.

    Personality tests

    Another approach for getting to know yourself are personality tests. There are many different personality tests you can take. You can find many of them on the internet, some of them you can even take for free, but they are not usually the best.

    Investing into knowing yourself is one of the best investments you can make, so spending some money on that kind of a test should not sound like a waste of money to you. Maybe you can also contact one of the HR agencies or personal coaches to help you choose the right tests and give you additional directions. Well, even if you didn’t like tests in school, these tests should be fun.

    Here is an example of really good personality test.

    Primary and secondary socialization

    A good way to see some parts of yourself is to analyze your parents and their personalities and behavior, your family history, schooling process, your nation’s history and current state, culture and so on. The less you know yourself, the less you are determined to live your own life, the more you are only a product of the environment.

    Nevertheless, whether you want it or not, most parts of your personality are not chosen by you but are rather inherited and imparted. Understanding your roots, history and especially your parents can help you a lot in understanding yourself and becoming closer to your real self, in knowing which parts to keep and which parts to discard.

    Analyzing these factors can really help you understand who you really are, what are your inherited positive and negative behavioral patterns, what kind of stuff was imposed on you, how you are similar or different from your parents, what they did right and wrong when raising you and so on.

    Your environment

    Your outer world is merely a reflection of your inner world. At some point, when becoming an adult, you choose almost all elements of your environment. Besides analyzing people, analyzing your environment can reveal a lot about your personality and who you are.

    Is your desk tidy or not, where do you live, which applications are you using on your computer and mobile phone, do you have animals or plants at home, the culture of the company you work for, the places you choose to travel to or visit etc. Everything reveals small parts of your character and who you are. Analyze it carefully. You can help yourself with all the elements of life strategy.

    Ask other people

    The next technique for getting to know yourself better is simply asking other people. There is one simple trick to doing that. We all love praise and hate criticism. Thus we have to prepare ourselves for good and bad feedback, as long as it’s constructive and fair. The good thing is that we can usually learn much more from the negative than the positive feedback. Ask people to give you feedback.

    In business and human resources, there is a very well-known evaluation method called the 360-degree feedback. The main point of this analysis and reflection is to include direct feedback from all the different stakeholders – an employee’s subordinates, peers and supervisor(s), but a self-evaluation is also included. In some cases, it also includes feedback from external sources, such as customers and suppliers or other interested stakeholders. The more feedback, the more angles, the more ways to improve.

    Thus you can ask your friends, coworkers, spouse, parents, kids etc. for feedback about yourself.

    Alternative methods

    There are also some alternative methods you can use, like astrology (a natal chart) or other spiritual techniques (numerology and hundreds of others). I don’t see any arguments against that kind of tools and techniques if they work for you. And if you think they are useless, ignore it.

    That is the basis of the AgileLeanLife and I don’t want to go against it in any kind of situation. Choose the tools and things that work for you personally as an idividual. Having an open mind is essential in life. As the famous quote goes: your mind is like a parachute, it only works when it’s open.

    Listen to your inner voice

    If you really want to be happy and successful you always have to be in touch with your true self and your inner voice.

    The first problem is that you already somehow lose touch with yourself through primary and secondary socialization. The less your desires are listened to, the less you get heard and valued and loved at a young age, from your parents, teachers and other people, the more you start suppressing your desires and living to expectations of others and the society.

    The second problem is that there is too much noise out there because of all the interactive devices, advertising billboards, chores, tasks and other activities. Rather than listening to ourselves and our true desires, we tend to behave according to the society’s expectations.

    Don’t do that to yourself, your life is just too precious. Get to know yourself, always do regular reflections and stay connected to your inner voice and true self. It will do miracles for the quality of your life.

    You can help yourself perform self-analysis with the template below. Download it for free.

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    At the end, here are some additional ideas for what you should clearly know about yourself:

    • What you want to experience in life and making the list of it as a life vision
    • How you learn best – look at the different types of learning and think about which method usually helps you learn a specific topic the fastest
    • Environment in which you function the best – is it stressful, calm, organized, creative etc. How big of an organization suits you best etc.
    • What are your main talents, values, beliefs, hobbies etc.
    • How you can contribute to the world and make it a better place.
    • In which environments, organizations and with whom do you really blossom and can really be yourself.
    • Who you were, who you are and who you want to become (your ideal self).
    • What are the things that you would regret in life
    Homework

    Your homework

    Here is the homework you should do to really get to know yourself better:

    1. Analyze the people who surround you. What kind of people do you like and what kind of acitivites you do together.
    2. Make your personal enjoyment list, the list of activities you like, your hobbies etc.
    3. Carefully analyze how you’re spending your time, money, energy and other resources.
    4. Perform a personal SWOT analysis.
    5. Analyze what kind of people do you dislike and why.
    6. Learn to analyze your dreams and fantasies.
    7. Consider having a mentor or a coach.
    8. Try as many things as possible to figure out what you really like and what you don’t.
    9. Do the 16personalities or any other personality test.
    10. Analyze your parents and their personalities and behavior, your family and nation’s history and culture etc.
    11. Analyze environment you currently operate in.
    12. Go through the life strategy template to become aware of your different beliefs and behavior patterns (here it is).
    13. Ask your friends, coworkers, spouse, parents, kids etc. for feedback about yourself.
    14. Do your ideal-self persona.
    15. Think of all the things you would regret in life if not trying them. Ask yourself why.

     

  • The most effective way to learn new things

    The AgileLeanLife way of thinking makes you do everything as effectively and efficiently as possible. Learning is no exception, so let’s look at the most effective ways to learn new things.

    When you think of learning, you often first think of reading or even listening to lectures. But in reality, there are 7 different methods of learning, of which reading and listening to lectures are actually the least effective.

    Amongst the seven methods of learning, the first four methods encompass the so-called passive learning, while the other three fall into the category of active learning. Active learning is significantly more efficient than passive learning, which is why it’s always necessary to combine passive methods with active ones. Let’s look at these 7 methods and approximately how much of the learned content actually stays in your memory.

    Passive methods of learning

    Listening to lectures: 5 %

    You learn and remember by far the least by attending lectures where you are a passive listener. That is a well-known fact and with the fast advancement of technology, the techniques of formal education will also have to change drastically. The world’s best universities already put a lot more emphasis on discussions and other forms of learning. When attending lectures, you also lose a lot of time by being late, preparing materials etc. And you memorize less than 5 %.

    Reading: 10 %

    Reading is definitely an extremely important method of learning. If you read regularly each day, you do a lot for your competence, wisdom, rhetoric etc. Nevertheless, when it comes to the context of learning, you memorize only a very small percentage of what you read in the long term. There is also the important fact that you can read thousands of books about a certain skill, yet you won’t master it. A ton of theory cannot compare to a pinch of experience.

    Reading is important, but there’s more to it than that: it’s important that you are an active reader. This means that you connect what you are reading with other content you had already read and your own experiences in life (for example doing a mind map and connect new knowledge to your previous knowledge). You also have to be an active reader and at the same time very critical towards everything you read. You most benefit from reading if you also try out the things you read about. If the things actually work, you keep them, if they don’t, you discard them.

    The positive property of reading is that it can also be a relaxation. And on the top of relaxation you still practice your imagination and vocabulary while doing it.

    Listening to audio recordings or watching video material: 20 %

    The next method of learning concerns audio and video content. Watching television definitely doesn’t count here. The television is a multi-media ad display that’s programming you into consumeristic zombie. Besides, the ones living real life are the ones on the other side of the TV screen. This is why the only sensible thing to do is to throw the television away. An exception is definitely a good movie for relaxation.

    In fact, when we come to this method of learning, we are mostly talking about educational audio and video content. Your smartphone can quickly become an educational device, as can your car.

    Some gurus of personal development simply call cars a “university on wheels”. While it doesn’t make sense to overburden yourself, you spend hours and hours each day in queues, waiting in traffic etc. and don’t do anything productive. Audio content is more than welcome then. If you are interested in how and where to get audio content, look at Amazon’s Audible.

    Watching a documentary or an intellectual debate can also be incredibly educational.

    Demonstration: 30 %

    The next level of passive education is a demonstration. If somebody actually shows you how to do something, you will remember significantly more than if you just read about it or saw it on video. This is of course why private lessons are such a good business. If you find a mentor, a tutor or a coach who shows you how to do something, you will definitely increase your competence.

    A demonstration of how to do something is truly effective, which is why we also saw a boom in mentorship. It’s a way of helping someone improve their competence that gives significantly better results than consulting. When mentoring, you show someone how to do something and then “force” them, in a nice way, to repeat it.

    Brains at work
    You should combine all different methods of learning

    Active methods of learning

    Active methods are significantly more effective than passive methods. Each of the active methods is at least five times more effective than, for example, reading. Though active methods are a bit more demanding, the result at the end is that much better.

    Group discussion: 50 %

    How does a real group discussion look like? You have to defend your own opinion in an intellectual discussion. Before you can defend it, you have to shape it. When doing this, you have to think a lot and read a lot. Your opinions are rebutted by others who use their own arguments. You have to think about that, apply it to your own experiences and, if necessary, change your opinion. This is why discussions are an incredibly effective way of learning, especially if the group members have had completely different experiences and hold different believes in their lives and they challenge our point of view.

    Real life experience: 75 %

    At this point, we should well repeat the fact that an entire ton of theory cannot compare to a pinch of experience. Real life experience is by far the fastest way of learning and improving your competence. It’s throwing yourself into the water and starting to swim. But at the same time you combine learning in other ways. There is nothing more effective than proactively going into action.

    You cannot understand the things you haven’t experience in life.

    Teaching others after real life experience: 90 %

    However, you learn the most when you start teaching others (after real life experience). You learn and remember the most once you give lectures or write books or maybe even start a blog. You become expert at something.

    Well, this is mostly true when it comes to gaining knowledge, you can still develop skills more or less only on the basis of experience. Giving countless lectures on the topic of leadership for example doesn’t help you at all if you hadn’t ever been in the position of a leader.

    But it is true that teaching others is the fastest way to gaining knowledge, since you have to master a specific topic very well and addition to that of reprogramming your own subconscious and thus it’s the fastest way of embarking on the path of new experience. Teaching others about something forces you to experience it sooner or later.

    Combination of different methods is the real winner

    But the division of learning into individual methods, especially active and passive ones, shouldn’t lead you to learning by using a single method. When improving your competence, you achieve by far the biggest effect if you learn with a combination of several of the stated methods, passive as well as active ones. One time one method suits you more, some other time another. The most effective way to learn new things is combining all seven methods of learning.

    You learn different things in different ways. You can strongly increase your competence by connecting, repeating and finally by checking with your own experiences in reality. You are the investment with the highest potential yield in this world. So invest in yourself. And at the same time enjoy improving your abilities. The more you know, the more you’re worth.

  • Start with a life vision

    The first thing you should do after reading the Agile and Lean life manifesto is set your life vision. All the masterpieces that have been created in the world began with a big vision, and so should your life. As the famous quote goes: the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

    A strong life vision helps you clarify what you want out of life and helps you focus yourself. If you write down your life vision correctly, it should serve as a roadmap, helping you make your dreams and passions a reality. A life vision is your compass that helps you live life to the full.

    The old way of setting a vision

    Writing down a life vision is not all that new. It’s a very well-known concept in personal development. But unfortunately the way it’s usually done is outdated. The big problem of “the old way” of setting a vision lies in the linear approach. When doing it the “old way”, you should answer questions such as where do you see yourself in five, ten or thirty years. By answering these questions and thinking about the future, you project partly your own goals and wishes and partly the society’s expectations (when to get married, when to retire…).

    For example, when you are in your twenties and setting a life vision, you assume that in ten years, you should have a home, kids, a well-paid job, and so on. Those are the expectations of the society and you add details and specifics according to your desires and personal preferences. For example, you could write down that in ten years, you will live in New York, have a big house, two kids and a managerial position in finance industry.

    The problem here is very obvious. Today no plan survives contact with reality. Not that long ago, life was quite linear, so linear planning of a life vision made sense. Today, the environment is too fast changing, complex and turbulent to make linear life visions. It’s impossible to predict what kind of a job you will have in ten years, what will happen to financial markets and your net worth, whether you will get or stay married, and how many countries you will visit.

    What can happen is that a few years after writing down your linear life vision, you can clearly see that you are not moving towards that life vision and become depressed or disappointed. It is very naïve to expect that you can just write down what you want out of life in a linear way and it will happen/and this will make it happen. Even if you do have a sound strategy and fight for it.

    But there is another way. A way where you don’t regard your life as a linear story that should unfold, but as a list of things you want to experience.

    Life vision

    Your Agile and Lean Life vision

    First things first. You should definitely have your life vision written down on paper. If you don’t have your own life vision, you won’t be motivated enough, you won’t be focused enough and there will be too many directions to move in to make any sound decisions for moving toward your real goals.

    Your life vision is the hope for what your life could be and something you can share with people you deeply care about, want to spend time with and who support you and empower you. The vision is your true north, a final destination to keep in mind.

    Your vision should be huge and exciting and breathtaking. Your vision should be your biggest inspiration in life. It’s what makes you ready for a new adventure every morning.

    To define your life vision, you should answer three simple questions:

    1. Who do you want to become (your personal evolution)? … and make your ideal-self persona.
    2. What do you want to experience in life (and how to enjoy it)? … and make a list of it.
    3. What kind of a legacy do you want to leave (what will you create)? … and write down a strong emotional statement.

    Who do you want to become?

    Your actual self is who you are at the moment. It represents the attributes you currently possess. The ideal self is the person you want to become. The ideal self is what motivates you to change, improve and achieve. When writing down your life vision, you should definitely include who you want to become as a person. It’s about your personal evolution and about how would you like to be remembered.

    We all have strengths we want to keep, assets we want to develop, and weaknesses we want to get rid of. The best tool for creating your ideal self is to make a persona. Here is the Agile and Lean Life guide on making personas.

    When making a persona you should look at the following elements and decide which one you want to keep, which one to strengthen, which one to develop and which one to get rid of.

    • Beliefs
    • Values
    • Behavioral patterns
    • Talents
    • Knowledge
    • Skills

    You develop and change yourself with identity shifts, life experiences, finding new better ways of doing things, epiphanies and many other ways. When thinking about who you want to become, you should also think about the situations in life that can shape you in that kind of way. Even if some of the experiences have to be tough. In fact, we usually develop the most through tough experiences.

    What do you want to experience in life?

    There are three main purposes in life. One is to evolve (grow, improve, learn…), the second is to experience as much as possible, meaning enjoying life, and the third is to create and leave a legacy. This part of setting the life vision is the really exciting and fun part. You should simply sit down and make a list of everything you want to experience in life. There are seven life areas you should start with and brainstorm further on.

    • Body (diet, sports, sex, food, massages…)
    • Relationships, emotions and romance
    • Money and wealth
    • Career, achievements and respect
    • Fun, creativity and travel
    • Spirituality
    • Technology

    The list of what you want to experience should be long and thorough (your bucket list). You can browse the internet, magazines, listen to your inner voice and so on.

    The countries you want to travel. The food you want to taste. The things you want to buy or rent. The things you want to experience with your spouse and other people. The things you want to create. The crazy achievements you want to accomplish, like dancing in the rain. The jobs and occupations you want to try. The sports you want to enjoy. All the types of chocolate you want to taste. The mindsets you want to live by.

    When writing down the things you want to experience, you should think about all those things you know you want to experience, or already like and want to experience more of, and those things that you think you want to experience. Remember that wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups, thus you have to know which parts of your life vision are only assumptions. For all the assumptions, you should first do small experiments to get better insights on what you really want.

    Testing and experimenting in life

    Testing and experimenting allow you to test each element of your vision and what you truly desire from life. Testing and experimenting help you discover and clarify your real vision and separate vision from illusion. Testing and experimenting also help you discover, clarify and expand your vision. You should constantly test new things, question everything and be encouraged to be curious and experience life to the full.

    Let me give you an example. Maybe you assume that you would be much more successful having your own business than being employed. You assume that being a business owner is something you want. But you’ve never been a business owner. Before making any big life decisions and opening your own business, it makes sense to carry out a small independent project for one of your hobbies in addition to having a daily job. In doing that, you can test yourself on how well you perform in inspiring people, managing teams, innovating, administrating and selling. If you see that you don’t like all that, maybe having a business is not something for you. While doing it, you can find out that you can work great as a multi-level marketer or whatever.

    Here is another case. I personally assume that I don’t like all the adrenalin stuff, like roller coasters etc. Maybe it’s only fear or maybe I really don’t like it for whatever reason. Nevertheless I don’t want to not do things just because of fear. Instead of going straight to bungee jumping and potentially dying from a heart attack, I can start with a slide for kids and then try experiences with more adrenalin rush. In the process, I may start loving it or maybe I’ll find out that those kinds of things are really not for me.

    Make environment and global flow your friends

    The final question is how to build a life around the vision you have, juggling all the areas of life. I think that the best answer to that question is adapting to changes that happen in the environment and to exploit the opportunities that come into your life. Thus you align your life vision with the flow around you. It’s not always possible, but it’s a big accelerator of experiencing things in life.

    For example: in my career, I want to experience and try many different occupations. I have all of them written down on my life vision list. I can always choose the one that has the most potential in a certain period of time. Sometimes the opportunities come by themselves, sometimes you have to make them with your own effort. But the key point is that you have a list you can choose from. Just the right amount of options that you are not lost, but are at the same time still aware of your personal freedom (options to choose from).

    For bigger experiences that you want out of life, you have to break your vision down into small parts. The small parts are like smaller visions you want to experience.

    And for some experiences, you have external limitations like your age, biological clock etc. For these kinds of experiences, you probably need some timeframes and perspectives on when is the latest that you can experience them, and make sure you shift your priorities if the deadline is fast approaching.

    Last but not least, I probably don’t have to emphasize that each and every part of your life vision should benefit others, not do any harm to them.

    What kind of a legacy do you want to leave?

    Life isn’t easy. But we can make it easier and more comfortable for the generations to come. Like the past generations did it for us (most of the time). Your greatest inspiration in life and a very important part of your life vision should be your plan for making the world a better place. You can do this by either investing your money, your time or both. The best way to do it is with your will to create.

    There are so many things you can do and contribute to help make the world a better place to live. Pick one and make it the strong emotional part of your life vision. You have to be aware of your personal power to positively change the world, and make use of it.

    You can choose difficult problems like: Domestic violence. Drugs. Human trafficking. Poverty. Depression. Bullying. Armed conflicts. Diseases. Climate change. Etc. Or you can tackle smaller, but no less important, problems like: Unhealthy diets. Information overflow. Materialism. And so on.

    The strong positive emotional situations you will experience with other people and the legacy you will leave for the generations to come are the most valuable parts of your life. These are the things you’ll remember with pride and joy on your death bed. There are the things that will make your life count. These are the things that will make your life worth living. Fight for something good. Change the world. Create. Innovate. You have the power to do it.

    The agile, not linear way

    The most important fact you have to be aware of when setting your life vision is that your life vision is not a linear plan or path. It’s a list of who you want to become (personal evolution), what legacy do you want to leave (creating a better place to live) and what you want to experience in life (how will you enjoy it).

    Everything when the right time comes; regardless of the expectations of the society; regardless of your own expectations towards life, how it should be. Expectations lead to disappointments. Experiences lead to a full life. But know that experiences are not only the easy and fun parts of life.

    Your life vision is a list that should constantly throw you out of your comfort zone and routine, and remind you of what else you want to experience in life. The list is your reminder to not waste your life and to live it to the full.

    You should regularly update your list and happily tick things off when the environment enables you to improve yourself, create or experience something new. Well, your environment or your personal will, or both.

    You should put no pressure on yourself about how your life should look in ten or twenty years. You should have a smart list of what you want to experience in life, and fight to experience as many things as possible that are on your list. Again, when the right time comes, since nobody knows when that is. The most important thing is that you are ticking things off the list. Except for the time-sensitive things where you have to make more effort, maybe even against the external forces.

    The vision is as important as the drive to achieve it

    There is one important word I’ve used in the previous paragraph. All this is about a smart list. That is the really important part of it, one not to be missed.

    You don’t win or achieve your goals only because of the life vision, but also because of the superior strategy. Thus, the first step is setting a life vision, but what happens next is even more critical. You also need a superior strategy for achieving your vision.

    How the Agile and Lean Life superior strategy looks like:

    • You sit down once a month and look at your Life Vision list.
      • Who do you want to become?
      • What do you want to experience?
      • What do you want to create and the legacy you want to leave?

    Download a template to help yourself with the exercise. You will also find an example of a life vision below.

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    AgileLeanLife – Vision Template

    Example of my life vision

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    • You make a reflection on what have you experienced, how you have changed and how you are moving towards your ideal self.
    • You should look at all the things you want to experience and, based on the analysis of your environment and your life situation, pick the things that make the most sense to experience in the next time frame.
    • You can simply plan smaller and more pleasurable things in your calendar. These are the fun things you want to experience in life.
    • For bigger experiences, you should devise small steps for how you will achieve them and how you will make adjustments based on the feedback from the environment. This part of your life vision should be broken down into small steps and defined by experiments that show you the way to go further.
    • You should move the experiences for which the time pressure is increasing higher up on your list of priorities. You still have to consider all the settings and how favorable they are to help you positively experience a certain thing.
    • You should keep updating (adding and removing) the list with all the things you want to experience.

    You can find more inspiration on how to do it in the Agile and Lean Life manifesto.

  • The key principles of the Agile and Lean Life – Have it ALL Manifesto

    This blog post is the Agile and Lean Life Manifesto, setting the foundations and key principles for living the Agile and Lean life. The twelve principles introduced in the manifesto are based on best business practices like “lean manufacturing”, “lean start-up”, “agile development” and other advanced business strategies, transformed so they can be used for managing personal life. In addition to that, a few best personal development practices and my own, already tested, ideas are also included.

    The five most important goals of living an Agile and Lean life are to:

    • Acquire inner assets faster (knowledge, skills, decision-making power …)
    • Create more external assets (time, money, revenue streams, status, energy, relationships…)
    • Have the tools to tackle the biggest challenges in life, such as career change
    • Successfully manage negative situations like anxiety, information overload and indecision
    • Blossom in all areas of life and thus live a more happy and quality life

    The key philosophy behind achieving these five goals is to eliminate waste from your life. Everything you do and have in life (decisions, material things, relationships etc.) either adds value to your life or drags you down. There is no third option. You can either make a return or loss on your every investment.

    Things that add value to your life are the things filled with positive energy and emotions. That means:

    • doing various different things that make you happy and self-confident,
    • doing things that lead to creativity and greatness,
    • having loving and empowering relationships,
    • being a part of a group in which you fit in and prosper,
    • doing things that make you healthier and more energetic,
    • doing things that lead to building up your inner assets and external assets by providing real value to the world, developing your talents and using prestige – a non-dominant approach.

    A very important task for all of you who want to live a more quality life is to eliminate as much waste as possible, with the end goal of making room for things that really matter to you – bring value. Unfortunately today, it is very easy to get distracted by waste, having wrong assumptions about life.

    If nothing else, you are exposed to thousands of ads that are fighting for your attention and assets on a daily basis. As the famous quote goes (and is sadly not far from the truth), before you know it, you can find yourself working a job you hate, buying things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like. This is all a big waste of life that you should totally avoid. That kind of a situation is the opposite of the Agile and Lean Life.

    Eliminating waste is an endless process and, in addition to that, it’s also not an easy task to carry out. But it’s very worth it in the long run. Eliminating waste is an important step towards personal freedom and genuine self-actualization, no matter where your starting point is. The Agile and Lean manifesto sets the foundations and key principles for doing it.

    Too long read for now? Download the PDF file!

    The Agile Lean Life Manifesto Banner

     

    Life can be managed even in today’s complex and turbulent world

    Before we go to the key principles, you have to be aware that it can be done, that there is a way.

    It’s true, life is not always easy. In life, you have to face big challenges, a lack of resources, negative emotional states and disappointments sooner or later. The new digital era has added additional pressure on top of that, with challenges like having too many options and unrealistic expectations, dealing with information overload, extreme market complexity and hardly bearable uncertainty, like no job security.

    But as you know, the world isn’t that dark. We live in the best times ever. Life can be an awesome and beautiful experience. But only if you manage it correctly. Only if you have the formula for facing life challenges and turning today’s disadvantages into advantages; and deep down inside you know that the formula is not posting your happy pictures on social media, no matter the short-term satisfaction you get.

    And don’t forget. There are no second chances in life. You have to get it right the first time.

    But what is the formula? In school, they teach you everything from mathematics and chemistry to history and geography, but almost nothing is said about life management. There are thousands of books written about personal development, but most of them are either too superficial or only offer small insights on how to improve some areas of your life. That may have sounded arrogant, but it is not meant that way.

    Yes, you should definitely read as much as possible in order to gain new insights on life, and there are many great books, but what you also need and is missing out there is a systematic and structured manual for how to live and manage life in today’s turbulent and complex world.

    Life is too short and you want to figure out the formula for success as soon as possible, and then live life to the full. You don’t want to bother with how to live life all the time, making and correcting big mistakes, feeling sorry for yourself while life passes by. You want to achieve as much as possible, have as many good moments as possible, acquire enough assets to fulfill your desires, have deep and empowering relationships and so on – as soon as possible in life.

    It’s true that everything takes time to be achieved, but the Agile and Lean life is about speed. It’s about the formula for accelerating your success. It’s about doing it as fast as possible in the right kind of way, meaning not being an asshole.

    There was a pretty good formula for living life that worked very well two decades ago. The formula was: get a good education, find a safe job, get married with your first love, live by the values of the local church, write down your goals and try to achieve a few of them, and live happily ever after. Jobs were available, markets were booming, education was cheap. The formula worked.

    Unfortunately the formula doesn’t work anymore. The times have changed too much. In 50 years, the world has been turned upside down.

    The businesses were the first ones to be dramatically affected by the new digital age and struck with all the new challenges, from market saturation and globalization to new internet competition and financial markets’ meltdown. They had to adapt, there was no other choice. Adapt or die. Many manuals have been written on how to do it, about running a company successfully in the new digital age. For example, two very popular new age manuals are the “lean production” and “agile development”, while the “lean startup” philosophy offers a new formula for success in business today.

    There is no reason why you shouldn’t use similar techniques for managing your personal life. More on that is written in the About this blog section. This gives hope that it can be done. By adapting the agile and lean philosophy to your personal life, you have access to a new formula for living life and being successful.

    The measurement of success according to the Agile and Lean Life formula is very simple. On your death bed, looking back on your life, you want to say to yourself: “Life was an awesome experience and a daring adventure. I have faced many difficult challenges but I have played the game right. I have made the right moves and have taken the right decisions. It was worth it. And I have contributed to making the world a better place to live in for generations to come.”

    The Agile and Lean Life Manifesto will show you how. You can become happy and successful in life no matter how difficult your life situation is – as long as you have access to the internet and possess sufficient intelligence to comprehend this text. For the rest of the world, we must all work hard so that they will have the same options. By living the Agile and Lean life you may not become the next Bill Gates, but you can definitely make a move towards a better and happier life.

    Before we go to the key principles, you should be aware that:

    • We all have to face many (old and new) life challenges that are not easy at all
    • We all deserve to live a quality life with adequate resources, self-actualization and happiness
    • Life can be systematically and scientifically managed in order to achieve these goals
    • You can do it as well, no matter where your starting point is. You can live a better life.

    The Agile and Lean Life Manifesto is based on twelve principles that successfully replace old life management techniques like setting goals, looking for job security and giving personal power for the important life decisions to other people (formal systems, bosses etc.).

    The twelve principle of an Agile and Lean Life

    1. Search before you execute: Experiment – Reflect – Learn – Execute
    2. Go out and see for yourself, see in order to compose your dream life
    3. Optimize your entire life, not only parts of it
    4. Visualize, simplify and make a move
    5. Move fast and with focus in the execution phase by using the flow
    6. Plan regular intervals with reflections and adjustments
    7. Believe in yourself over looking for outside safety
    8. Relationships and environment over work and tasks
    9. Continuously improve yourself and your environment
    10. Create value, be flexible and modest over having an ego
    11. Life Accounting – measure everything
    12. Live life with love and respect

    1. Search before you execute: Experiment – Reflect – Learn – Execute

    The key to a more successful life is having a superior strategy for how to live it. Your life strategy is shaped especially by your values, beliefs, personal management system, and thus by your decisions about spending your time, energy, money, skills and other resources.

    The Agile and Lean life strategy begins with the old Ancient Greek aphorism “Know thyself”. If you want to be successful in life, you have to know yourself and what you want out of life very clearly.

    But how? The best way to get to know yourself and World is by experimenting, reflecting and learning (here you can find all the techniques how to get to know yourself better). The best way is to introduce a new search mode in life, the phase you should be performing every time before you do any kind of real execution.

    If you execute before you search, you could be climbing a ladder that’s leaned against the wrong wall. Somewhere midway or at the top, you can discover that this is not you, it’s not something you want. The higher you are, the more difficult it is to climb down. Most people never climb down, and instead start living a “zombie life” – a life of constantly running away from reality.

    Therefore in an Agile and Lean Life, you have to divide all activities of all areas of life into two groups:

    In the search mode, you shouldn’t have any expectations, you shouldn’t have any commitments and you shouldn’t do any hard work. Expectations lead to disappointments and before you understand something, you definitely have expectations that are completely wrong. Commitments lead to heavy energy investments, and you shouldn’t be investing before you know what you are truly investing in and whether the investment really fits your character. Hard work should always also be smart work, but you can’t work smartly if you don’t have the right map and coordinates.

    In the search phase you just try, experiment, observe, reflect and learn about yourself and the world. The most important thing is to have no fixed ideas and no expectations at all in this phase. Your job is only to test the assumptions you have written down, correct them, and try different things to find out what suits you best. Your only job is to learn about yourself and the world. No goals. No measurement of progress. Just learning and playing.

    After you find your fit in the search phase, you start executing. You set strong foundations, have laser focus, commit fully, start working hard and achieving your goals. You optimize, improve, and measure your progress. But first, you have to find the right thing. You must put the ladder against the right wall before you start climbing.

    After every experiment (action) you do in the search phase, you have to make a reflection. You learn about yourself by reflecting on your actions. Reflection is an insight into knowing yourself and life better. Reflection is an insight into how to do things in a better way.

    Why you need a search phase before execution:

    • To do adequate research and form first assumptions about yourself and life (for example you can write down your assumptions using the persona technique for people and organizations you interact with or you can just write down your assumptions on the spreadsheet)
    • To conduct small experiments and figure out what your best personal fits are
    • To not put pressure on yourself to achieve and do something that is not really you
    • To have fun and try as many things as possible in life and stay open minded
    • To set a realistic execution strategy that you can follow and really implement
    Practical examples

    Let’s look at an example. The old strategy was to write down a goal in a smart way (SMART = Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-bound). OK. You then write down something like: “I want to lose 10 kg by exercising and dieting in one year.” What usually follows is that after a few months, you look at your goal paper, you step on the scale and feel even worse. No progress at all.

    In the Agile and Lean Life Search phase, there are no goals yet and no pressure at all. The first phase is driven by curiosity. You know that you want to lose weight and you know that you lose weight by exercising and dieting. But instead of setting goals, you ask yourself: Is there a sport that I would really enjoy and wouldn’t even be hard exercise? Is there a diet for me that is tasty, healthy and makes me more energetic? With whom can I try the first sport I think I might like? Then you continue reading, trying and researching. In the first phase, you put no pressure on yourself, you just experiment.

    Let’s look at another example. In every company that hires you, you are usually on a trial period for a few months. They want to know if you and your skills are actually what you have presented in your CV. It makes complete sense and you should have the same approach towards the company. It’s not enough to just have a job. You must find out for yourself if you really fit in the company culture, if you like the work, if you can develop your talents further and so on. Only then you can decide if you really want to fully commit.

    2. Go out and see for yourself, see in order to compose your dream life

    The second principle of an Agile and Lean life is based on the “genchi gembutsu” philosophy, which means go and see for yourself in Japanese. It is an important concept in the Toyota production system, and is also known as “Go out of the building” in the lean start-up philosophy. The “go out and see” principle is an important part of the search phase.

    It’s a very simple rule in the Agile and Lean Life. Don’t talk about things, but go and try them.Don’t assume, go out and test. Testing and trying is the best way to gain firsthand knowledge about yourself and the world. For every new experience you get, you should decide whether to preserve it in your life or not (pivot). Every new experience should also give your ideas and insights into what to try next. The best way to test and try new things is with minimum viable experience concept. The idea is that you try as many things as possible in life (your vision list), and based on your physical, emotional and intellectual response, you decide whether you should keep something in your life or pivot to something else.

    The difference between what you think is valuable to you and what is really valuable for your life creates waste. Don’t assume anything, try and test everything.

    Let’s look again at the previous two examples to prevent things from sounding too abstract.

    There is plenty of advice on fitness and diet. You can even find contradictory advice. But you can test what works and what doesn’t work for you as an individual. For someone, being vegetarian is the optimal diet. For others, far from it. There is no single formula for success. You can only try vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian, paleo and other verified diets until you find the one that suits you best. It doesn’t make sense to only read about it or argue about it, you have to try it for yourself and see. With no expectations and by keeping an open mind. After the search phase and finding what works for you best, you can execute (keep, set goals, measurements…) by optimizing details.

    While experimenting, you must be careful you don’t do anything that would really damage you. If necessary, you should consult specialists.

    The second example would be looking for a new career. Your emotions show you complete dissatisfaction in your current career. Here is how you would tackle this challenge in the first phase of an Agile and Lean Life. In your free time, you write down assumptions for careers you think you could blossom in. You start testing how much passion awakens in you when reading about specific industries, join forums and attend online courses etc. You take some part time projects, even for no payment, just to see how engaged you become. You continue experimenting until you find the new perfect fit for you. Then you go into the execution phase. At the end, you may find that design is your thing after trying to prepare an outstanding CV for a completely different industry.

    These are two very simplified examples. This phase must be done scientifically and systematically, and on this blog, we will talk a lot about how to do it and which tools to use.

    Your task in an Agile and Lean Life is to find your perfect fits in all areas of life by searching and experimenting. Trying completely different things, hanging out with different kinds of people and so on.

    At the end of the day, you must find your best fits and have your dream life composed like a beautiful mosaic – perfect diet, best exercise, best fitting career, investments best suited to your character, perfect partner etc.

    If we have started with the Agile and Lean Life rule that you have to search before you execute, this rule is all about you searching for your perfect fits by performing experiments in real life – actually doing and trying, not only talking about it. Talk is cheap and gives zero insight into you and life.

    3. Optimize your entire life, not only parts of it

    You can’t run a successful business if your marketing or cash flow management or any other key business functions suck. You have to optimize the entire business, not only a few business functions. In the same way, you can’t have a happy and successful life if you only focus on some parts of your life and forget about the others. There is no running away from any area of your life. You have to look at your life as a whole, and optimize it on the macro level.

    If one of the life areas collapses, everything else can collapse as well. Your health greatly affects your earning potential and the quality of your relationships. Your income level has a big influence on all other areas of life. There are some periods in life when you have to put more focus on a single area (e.g. when getting a baby), but you should never let the bigger picture out of your sight.

    Ten key areas of life

    You have ten key areas of life you have to juggle:

    1. You
      1. Your personality – knowing yourself, your beliefs, values, behavioral patterns, daily habits, your ideal-self etc.
      2. Your environment – country, city, home, office etc.
    2. Health and primary needs (body)
      1. Diet
      2. Fitness / Sports
      3. Other (sleep, sex, breathing…)
    3. Relationships and people skills (love and belonging)
      1. Spouse
      2. Family (primary, secondary)
      3. Friends
      4. Coworkers
      5. Others
    4. Money and wealth
    5. Career, achievements and respect
    6. Emotions (your emotional body)
    7. Competences – Intelligence, knowledge and skills (your intellectual body)
      1. Formal education (degree, certificates…)
      2. Informal education
    8. Fun, creativity and travel
    9. Spirituality, self-actualization and giving back to the world (your spiritual body)
    10. Technology as a leverage for being more productive on all areas of life

    The Agile and Lean Life formula for managing life at a macro level is pretty simple. You should do constant linear improvements (kaizen) in certain chosen areas of your life, and one big rapid improvement (kaikaku) in one area of your life, when the time is ripe. At the same time, you should maintain all areas that are currently not your priority.

    Out of the ten life areas, you should choose, best in one year time frame:

    • One area where you plan to do a rapid improvement (that is your focus area for the time being)
    • Two to three areas where you will implement a few linear improvements
    • In all other areas, you try to maintain the current level (of course improvements on other levels will, in most cases, also positively affect the areas you are maintaining)

    You cannot implement too many changes in your life at once. You only have a strong enough will to do a few linear changes, and you can only implement one really big change in your life at a time, provided there are foundations strong enough for it. Therefore you should do only a single rapid improvement at a time.

    If you want to live a happy and successful life, you have to optimize your life from all ten perspectives. Of course all the areas are interconnected and consequently improving one area leads to improvements in other areas. The important thing, however, is to not only think about money, sex, fun, career or any other isolated area, but rather look at your life as a whole. First see the woods, then go and cut down trees.

    You should always thoroughly think about how every major decision influences all ten areas of your life. That is the principle number three, and the additional thing you should find out in the search phase.

    You can decrease the quality of your life or even destroy it with:

    • One or several big wrong decisions (for example choosing your spouse, industry, career…)
    • A series of small wrong decisions (unhealthy diet…)

    For every big decision you make, and for all the small decisions you are making almost every day, you should ask yourself where they are leading you and how they impact all ten areas of your life. Short-term history is a good predictor for short-term future. Ask yourself where your past decisions and current behavioral patterns are going to lead you in one year’s time in all ten areas of your life. That is the best technique to use for determining priority areas of your life: where you should be doing rapid changes and linear improvements.

    4. Visualize, simplify and make a move

    Brain neurons for our visual perception account for approximately 30 % of brain’s grey matter. When we look at pictures, our brain can process several pieces of information simultaneously, which means it is processing around 60,000 times faster than when reading a text.

    Therefore you first have to “see” what you want from life before you can have it.

    A very important rule of an Agile and Lean Life is to visualize everything. In the future, we will talk a lot about the fact that in an Agile and Lean Life, you have to do all kinds of creative stuff, from Kanban boards, “want-to-have experience” boards and master list visualizations to outlining mind maps and constantly drawing, sketching and sticking pictures together. Even if you suck at it, like I am.

    Much like the business model canvas is a much more fun experience in the business planning phase compared to a dull business plan, boards and visual materials are similarly a much better and more fun tool in a personal life compared to writing down goals. And they work so much better.

    This rule of an Agile and Lean Life is pretty simple. You must have extreme fun when outlining your life and designing what you want to experience.

    For your better performance you have to visualize everything.

    Besides better clarity and comprehension, you should get two more answers by visualizing and sketching your desired life experiences:

    • Scenario-based thinking: What are all the potential moves I can make and which ones will I try first? With more options, you get a feeling of more freedom and personal power.
    • Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication: What is the simplest thing that would work for every move I can make? You can take action only if you don’t feel overwhelmed.

    Having everything visualized and outlined makes it become obvious to you. There is always a move to make towards a better life. There is always a way to live a better life by implementing simpler and faster solutions. That should give you a feeling of inner security.

    Let’s review

    The next, fifth, principle is a step further from the search mode to the first execution step. So let’s look back at the first four principles we had covered so far:

    1. Get to know yourself by searching, experimenting and trying. Don’t execute and invest yourself strongly before you find your perfect fit. Don’t have any commitments and expectations in the search phase. There is no failure in the search mode. Only playing. That should free your mind of pressure. You should do regular reflections in order to acquire knowledge about yourself and the World.
    2. You have to go out and see for yourself. You have to try things and experience them in order to gain knowledge. Don’t talk about it, experience it. Don’t judge if you haven’t tried it for yourself, don’t assume if you don’t know how it feels. You are here on Earth to experience as much as possible. Do it. Test, try and experiment.
    3. Think about how every action you plan to do influences all ten areas of your life. You have to optimize your whole life to be happy and successful, not just a few isolated parts.
    4. Visualize everything you are doing or planning to do in your life and want to experience. Pictures, sketches, mind maps, boards and so on are the best tools for our brain. Use them and have as much fun as possible while visualizing it.

    5. Move fast and with focus in the execution phase by using the flow

    In the Agile and Lean Life, interested does not equal committed. “Interested” and “interesting” are the two main enemies of real progress in the execution mode, after you have conducted the search mode. No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. After the search mode.

    When you find your fit, you have to make more than a hundred percent commitment. You have to move fast, be focused and learn more about which innovations work and which don’t. The more energy you put into a few of your key goals (one major, a few minor ones) the faster your progress will be. In the execution mode it’s all about speed.

    In the Agile and Lean Life, the following is strictly forbidden in the execution phase:

    • Multitasking and other bad time management practices (read The best time management guide ever)
    • Doing too many things and having too many goals at once
    • Not having a place where you can work without any distractions and be in the flow at least once a day for a few hours (you can help yourself to achieve that with No interruptions day)
    • Losing focus because of distractions and urgent tasks, instead of working on the important ones
    • Not working on your goals on a daily basis
    • Not regularly measuring your progress in the intervals you have set with visual elements

    The key point in the execution phase is to work on your goals on a daily basis, and measure progress at regular intervals. An example of the right mindset would be: if your goal is to live a healthier life, there is nothing that can get in the way of me doing my daily exercise.

    Most of the work should be achieved in the flow. The flow is a superior creative and execution phases. The flow is a divine experience that enables you to create, deliver and capture real value added quickly and efficiently. The biggest killers of the workflow, the most productive state for a human being, are distractions. Therefore you need a place for yourself where you can get real work done.

    Laser focus by eliminating all distractions and being in the flow as much time as possible is the formula for good execution results. Use it.

    It’s also very important to break down your “life vision” with all the desired experiments into small steps you can easily take. You should break down all the goals to extremely small tasks that you can perform immediately, and gather feedback to do reflections.

    6. Plan regular intervals for reflections and adjustments

    When living an Agile and Lean Life you don’t just do work and execute tasks. You have to think regularly about why you are doing it and how you are doing it, and whether you are making real progress – the progress that brings value to your life. Being strong and passionate about the reason why is the best motivator you can have in life, and there is always a way to do things better.

    You need regularly planned introspection intervals for:

    • Reviewing the tasks done in the previous interval
    • Connecting with yourself and straightening out your life vision (and whys)
    • Measuring your real progress
    • Adjusting the strategy and plan
    • Reflecting on new things that were learned
    • Gathering new ideas
    • Identifying potential improvements
    • Setting new tasks for the upcoming interval

    First of all, in life things will never go as you assume, think and plan. Even less so in the future, since the environment is becoming even more complex, turbulent and unpredictable. Be prepared to change your strategy frequently and constantly. Your goals will be constantly changing in the Agile and Lean Life. You have to constantly adapt to the fast changing environment.

    The best way is to have reflection days at 14-day intervals. Every two weeks, you take two hours to reflect on your life. You look at all ten areas of life, determine your progress and do strategy and goal adjustments.

    In the 14-day reflection intervals, you also set tasks for the following two weeks (the so called sprint) based on your strategy adjustments. You should visualize your two-week execution sprint on the Kanban board.

    • In the Agile in Lean Life you have so called Sprints – 14-day intervals
    • Every single working day within a Sprint you should be working in the flow as much time as possible
    • You start your working day with a short morning meeting with yourself

    The sprint and the flow are your execution techniques in the Agile and Lean Life.

    Let’s review

    After the search phase, you enter the execution mode. We have looked at two principles you have to follow in the Agile and Lean Life execution phase:

    1. In the execution phase, you fully commit. You laser focus yourself. No excuses are acceptable. Most of the work you do is in the state of flow.
    2. You set 14-day intervals in your calendar. Every two weeks, you take two hours to reflect, adjust your strategy and set activities for the upcoming two weeks (sprint). You use visualization tools to have a clear picture of your progress during every sprint.

    Now let’s look at some other important rules that aren’t in the scope of search and execution, but are very important for living a happy and successful Agile and Lean life.

    7. Believe in yourself over looking for outside safety

    If you want to live an extraordinary life, you have to do extraordinary things. If you want to do extraordinary things, you have to extraordinary believe in yourself. You must find your inner security and be aware of your personal power. You must find safety in knowing that there is always a move you can make towards a better life, no matter what kind of a situation you find yourself in.

    The path to an extraordinary and awesome life is full of little risks, experiments and failures. If you cling to your current relationships, especially the bad ones, if you seek job security, if you are not willing to try new things, you will get what most people get: an average life. An average job, an average paycheck, an average relationships. But being average is not awesome, it’s boring and dull. You may even become a zombie.

    Don’t get me wrong. There is a big difference between stupidity and doing extraordinary things. Being certain that you are more productive if you are texting while driving is completely stupid. The probability of causing an accident if texting while driving is pretty similar to the probability of causing one if you were driving drunk. The latter is also very stupid. And you don’t want to do stupid things that can ruin your life. That is forbidden in the Agile and Lean Lifestyle.

    What you want to do is firmly believe in yourself by developing and executing a superior life strategy, as well as taking smart risks (opportunities with low risk and massive potential reward). For that, you need courage, self-esteem and knowledge for mitigating risks and scientifically measuring progress.

    For example, you must have the courage (trust yourself enough) to speak the truth, regardless of how unpleasant it is. Honest communication builds trust. That doesn’t apply only for communication with others, but also with yourself. Lying to yourself and making compromises merely brings hardship in life later on. There are many cases like that in Agile and Lean Life where you need courage and where you have to believe in yourself.

    If you don’t believe in yourself, you will never make a move towards a truly better life. You may make small linear improvements, but you will never gather enough courage to make a quantum leap in the quality of your life. Doubt kills more dreams than failure. Therefore the rule of the Agile and Lean Life is to look for safety in yourself (your inner assets like knowledge, skills, competences…) and not in external things, like relationships, money and contracts.

    In an Agile and Lean Life, there is no external security (although it’s of course good to have safety nets in assets, loving relationships etc.). There’s only the World you must experience to the full. For that, you need to free yourself by believing in yourself. It’s the key enabler for executing a superior strategy for better life quality. Forget about social pressure. Forget about expectations of other people. Forget about rotten compromises. Live life true to yourself.

    Two important mindsets that can help you to believe in yourself better are:

    8. Relationships and environment over work and tasks or money

    The two most powerful influencing factors on your life are your relationships and the environment you work in. They can either drag you down or empower you, thus helping you achieve your goals. The more ambitious your goals are, the more empowering relationships you need, with less room for compromises.

    You can have ambitious goals and high expectations for life, but if you are not in an environment that supports you, you will never thrive. You will never achieve your goals without an adequate support system. You are more a product of the environment than you might think.

    The rule of an Agile and Lean life is to surround yourself with motivated individuals who have goals similar to yours. People you spend time with, including your spouse, are the most important decision in your life. Choose your environment very carefully. Much like your mindset should not be fixed, your environment should not be fixed either. You are the one who chooses your own environment.

    Make sure that the following environmental elements are supporting you in achieving your goals:

    • Market (chosen industry trends, occupation potential, structural changes, market size…)
    • Country (political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental factors)
    • City (logistics, culture, fun, nature, food, education, kids…)
    • Office (possibility of working with no distractions, no need for a long commute…)
    • Home (quality of sleep, room for visualization of goals…)

    Look for environments with 5T: Talent, Technology, Tolerance, Transparency, Transcendence.

    Make sure that the following relationships support you in achieving your goals:

    • Spouse
    • Friends
    • Family
    • Acquaintances
    • Coworkers
    • Business partners
    • Other people in your life

    There are two important things regarding relationships that are a part of an Agile and Lean Life.

    • The basic foundation for good relationships is outstanding communication. You have to communicate honestly, frequently and deeply with people you want to have good relationships with. You need to learn how to be a good communicator. It’s an enabler for the Agile and Lean Life.
    • Coaches and mentors, because no one can succeed alone. You need other people who empower you and help you. One segment are people who surround you, and another are people whom you hire to help you or who you have mentoring exchanges with. In an Agile and Lean Life, you accelerate your progress with your personal mastermind group and coaches for different life areas.

    9. Continuously improve yourself and your environment

    You must never forget that there is always room for improvement, there is always a way to do it better. You should always look to improve yourself and grow. The foundation for an Agile and Lean Life is the growth mindset. You can always change yourself and by changing yourself, you can change your environment and the situations you are facing.

    Don’t be afraid of problems and challenges. Problems and challenges only present opportunities to learn and change. Don’t try to hide your mistakes. Expose them, talk about them and learn from them. But don’t make the same mistake twice. That is a big waste in life. Make sure you learn from mistakes the first time you make them.

    When making changes, knowledge and insights are your greatest assets. You can learn from your own past experiences and experiences of other people by reading, talking, watching, observing, listening etc. When using knowledge and insights of other people, go straight to the best knowledge and learn directly from the best people who achieved what you want to achieve. With the information overload, there is just too much crappy information and too many cheap copies. It’s better to read one really good book than 1000 average blog posts.

    To get the best out of life, you have to learn from the best or in other words learn from the best, forget the rest.

    Linear and rapid improvement

    You change yourself when you find a way to do something better. Self-improvement in your life can be either linear or rapid. When there is no more room for linear improvement, rapid improvement takes place, if the foundations are strong enough and if big enough motivation is present.

    You can only improve your current practice to a certain point. You can optimize your current behavioral patterns only to a certain level. Your current actions will only lead you to a specific level of success (it’s called a local maximum). You know you have reached a plateau when every new improvement experiment leads to an inferior performance.

    If you want to achieve more in that kind of situation, you have to do a dramatic (rapid) improvement. Painful situations and setbacks usually lead you to these kinds of more dramatic changes in life.

    The key questions to ask yourself when doing linear improvements:

    • What are my current values and behavioral patterns?
    • How can I make things faster or better?
    • How can I get the same result by using less resources (money, materials…)?
    • How can I make things simpler?
    • How are other people doing it more efficiently?

    The key questions to ask yourself when it’s time for a rapid improvement in your life:

    • What are my current values and behavioral patterns?
    • What is the best result that this kind of behavior can get me? Is it enough for me?
    • Why do I work like that? How should I work to achieve a quantum leap in productivity?
    • What is really holding me back from changing dramatically? Which values are holding me back?
    • How are other people doing it differently and being much more efficient than me?
    • What knowledge and skills am I lacking to do rapid improvement?
    • How and what would you work if you were totally free of your problems?

    You should also use the 5 Whys Technique when doing a specific linear or rapid improvement. It’s a technique where you ask yourself “why” five times, with the final goal of tackling the cause not the effect. Describe the situation you are facing. And then ask yourself five times: why?

    Question everything. There is always a way to do it better. Constantly push yourself to improve. Try new ideas. Never stop.

    There’s one more important thing for an Agile and Lean Life, regarding improvement and trying new things. It’s easy to be different. But it’s hard to be different and better. Different doesn’t always mean better. Try all the options, even the mainstream ones, and find the ones best suitable to you.

    10. Create value, be flexible and modest over having an ego

    In the Agile and Lean Lifestyle, your ego is the biggest obstacle on your path to a better and more successful life and personal growth. If you don’t believe that you can improve yourself and achieve your goals in a smarter and better way, you are driven by your ego. If you are driven by your ego, you are drawn towards exploitation and dominance. Both principles are short-term survival strategies, which are forbidden in the Agile and Lean Lifestyle.

    There are two options for how to act in life:

    1. You create, deliver and capture value, by serving and solving people’s problems (people pay you for solutions, skills, creativity etc.)
    2. You exploit, meaning that someone else has to create value for you (you take by fraud or force)

    There are two approaches for achieving social status in life:

    1. Prestige, meaning sharing expertise and knowing how to gain respect
    2. Dominance, which encompasses using force and fear over others

    The Agile and Lean Life is about creating value and achieving social status with prestige. You need to have a modest ego and trust yourself to live that way. You should never try to look superior in favor of learning something new and doing well. You must create value for people by using prestige.

    It is also very important that when you are creating value, you are market-centric not ego-centric. Markets always win, therefore you always have to count market structure and trends into your decisions (choosing a career, investing money etc.). You have to be flexible and not fixed in your assumptions about markets.

    The world will not change to be more to your liking. You have to be flexible and change to the point where you find common ground with markets, and then start making the world a better place.

    11. Life Accounting – measure everything

    On the one hand, the Agile and Lean life is all about creating, visualizing, testing and playing, but on the other, it’s life in spreadsheets. You have to very carefully and closely measure the progress you make in all areas of life.

    The most important thing is to avoid vanity metrics and the fake feeling of progress. If you are using olive oil, that doesn’t yet mean that you are living a healthy lifestyle. If you are driving a good car on a lease, that doesn’t mean that you are financially prospering. You want to be rich in life, not only look rich.

    There’s a simple reason behind the need for metrics. Numbers don’t lie and you can manage only what you measure. You should not talk about your progress in life at all, if you don’t have the metrics to show it.

    In the search mode, you should have sufficient insight and gather enough Intel and knowledge to set up basic metrics that need to be monitored. You should also know a few priority metrics and one metric you should focus on the most (the metric that matters). In the execution mode, the more experience you have, the more advanced and detailed metrics you can set and follow.

    12. Live life with love and respect

    The final foundation and the last principle of an Agile and Lean Life are respect and love. Respect yourself by believing in yourself. Respect other people you have chosen to be with or work with by empowering them and learning from them. Be humble and grateful for the relationships you have chosen in your life after the “cleaning” had been done. Lead, follow or just go away.

    Respect Mother Nature. Respect markets. Respect the global flow. Don’t expect them to change. You will have to change yourself first. You can change the world only after changing yourself. Never get cocky, never get full of yourself no matter how well are you doing.

    Besides respect, never forget about love, as it is the strongest force in the universe. The opposite of fear is not courage, but love and understanding. Courage is just a tool for managing fear. You cannot have positive and negative emotions at the same time. You cannot live a positive life with a negative mind. Life and happiness can’t occur where death and sorrow take place. Therefore do all things with love and respect. Love is the most powerful positive emotion in life.

    The moments you most remember in life are the moments filled with love and passion.

    It’s not about being happy at every single moment, but about doing things in a positive way for a positive cause. For yourself and for others. Do no evil. Be a good person. Create value. Share. However don’t expect that just because you’re a good person, life owes you something. You will still have to fight for a better career, a deeper relationship, a pay raise or anything else you want in life. Love doesn’t mean being soft and naïve.

    The final question at the end of this manifesto is how to start living an Agile and Lean Life. You simply start with your “life vision” – a list of everything you want to experience in your life. Continue now to the Agile and Lean Life productivity framework.

    Too long read for now? Download the PDF file!

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    Reference:

    • Liker, J. 2004. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from Toyota. New York: McGraw-Hill.
    • Blank, S. 2013. The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Second Edition. Amazon Kindle Books.
    • Ries, E. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Publishing Group, Inc.
    • Cheng JT, 2013. Two ways to the top: evidence that dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable avenues to social rank and influence. J Pers Soc Psychol
    • Dweck, C. 2006. Mindset: The new Psychology of Success. Random House.
    • Agilemanifesto.org