Most of our puzzling problems or potential opportunities are unique to us.  This is why you can’t Google the solution without getting some pretty lame advice.  Advice from the Web or from YouTube is either obvious, or you don’t want to do it, or it doesn’t apply to you and your situation.  
 
Last month I gave a guest Zoom lecture for an online course for graduating students. Part of the lecture was how they can change habits and get out of unwanted ruts.  There was Q&A at the end, and the last question was “How can a person find time to think more deeply about how to solve problems or make opportunities in their life?”
 
This is a great question because we all have tons of things in our lives that we would like to be better but we’re not sure how to do it.  We might try half-heartedly do one or two obvious things and shrug when they don’t work.  These can range from important things like “How do I find an exciting job where I’ll learn a lot” or “How can I find a great spouse,” to small, but nagging little problems like “How can my stop dog, Spot, from making spots in my apartment,” or “What should I do about all of that junk in the garage?”
 
But we don’t usually try too hard to solve these problems.  That is, we usually don’t come up with the right answers because we don’t think in a focused, deep way about how to solve them.  We moan about them, we avoid them, or we settle for an expedient band-aid solution.  
 
Still, no one’s better able to find the unique-to-you answers to these problems better than you.   If you had an easy strategy to come up with the answers, your answers might not be perfect, but they would be a huge move in the right direction.
 
When this person asked this excellent question in this class, I shared something with him and with the I’ve been experimenting with and modifying for couple years.  It’s been working well for me and although it was a bit off-topic from my lecture.  I thought it would be useful as they venture off to great new possibilities.  Over the past years, I’ve distilled into three steps:
 
Step 1. Find 30 Minutes of Undistracted, No-Phone time.  Find 30 minutes of undistracted, nonelectronic time, and grab a journal or a piece of paper and pen.  This can be first thing in the morning (best) or just before bed (next best).  At the top of the paper write down “10 Actions for .  . . . “ and then plug in your problem or opportunity.
 
Step 2. Write 10 Actions that would Solve the Problem that’s Most on Your Mind.  Write down 10 actions that you believe you could realistically take (if you wanted) to help start solving your problem.  The more specific your answer the better.  Your first 3-4 actions will come fast because they are obvious, but they’re also the actions you probably don’t want to take, or this wouldn’t be a problem.  The next 3-4 are going to take thought, because you’re stretching past the obvious.  The last 3-4 will be difficult to generate and might seem pretty wacky, but it’s often where your real turn-around insights will happen.  The key take-away is that you must write down 10, even if a bunch of them seem too far out of the box.
 
Step 3. Pick the Best 2-4 Ideas and Schedule a Time to Do Them. Schedule your 2-4 best and easiest ideas into your to-do list or calendar.  You can do more, but usually 2-4 is enough to get you unstuck and to make huge progress. 
 
If an example would be useful, let me show you want this has looked like for me so far this week.
 
Most mornings I think of one thing that’s on my mind that I’m unsure how to tackle.  Yesterday was Monday and my topic was how can I change the home page for a website I’m creating for family meals.  Today’s topic was how I can learn 14 new-to-me songs in four days for a new band I just joined.  Here’s what the first 30 minutes of my day looked like yesterday and today:
 
Step 1. Find 30 Minutes of Undistracted, No-Phone time.  I did them first thing in the morning.  I laid on my home office couch with a journal and a pen.  This was before anyone else was up, and before I turned on my computer or checked my phone.
 
Step 2. Write 10 Actions that would Solve the Problem.  This took me about 25 minutes with the webpage issue, but it took me about 45 minutes with the new songs issue because the problem was so unfamiliar to me that I spent a lot of time holding a pen and staring at the paper.  I spend a bit more than 30 minutes because I felt I was on a roll.  You’ll also notice below that for the web page, I put down 11 ideas on the page (and a couple others on the next) since things were flowing. 
 
Step 3. Pick the Best 2-4 Ideas and Schedule a Time to Do Them. For the website issue, I acted on idea last night and put the others on the calendar for next Monday (after the 3-day weekend).  For the songs, I started this morning and created templates for them. I’m sure have lots of problems, and I’ll change them, but at least it will get me over this 4-day hump. 

​This is fairly personal, and I never shared this approach with anyone (other than my brother and wife) until this person asked during class.  There might be a ton of ways you can modify it to work for you, but the main ideas are: Pick an undistracted (no phone) time with pencil and paper, write down 10 (ten) specific actions, and immediately do them or schedule them.
 
Here’s why this topic came to mind for a column – a full month after the original question was asked.  
 
Last weekend a former graduate student is moving with his family to start a new job, and he has 400 things on his mind.  He asked me about two questions/problems/issues he’s facing.  After talking, I described this approach to him as a way of tackling the other 398 issues he’ll be facing daily once he drives the moving van into town.
 
He said, “I do something similar.  I come up with 3-4 ideas.  I just never do anything about them, and then I forget them.”
 
I told him the key isn’t usually the first 3-4 solutions to the problem.  It’s the next 6-7 pretty great ones come up after you’ve stared at a blank page for 20 minutes.  And writing them down helps with remembering.  And having them in a journal keeps them organized.
 
Good luck with trying this out.  Give it a week and email me and let me know how its working for you and how you might have adjusted or modified it. 
 
In the meantime, I better get back to playing a lot of wrong notes so I can get them out of the way.  
 
 

The 10 Principles of Burning Man

Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
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Radical Inclusion.  Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting.  Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification.  In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance.  Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-expression. Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort. Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility. We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace. Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation. Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy​. Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

I retire from Cornell tomorrow, two days after I turned 59.  My Mom and Dad both retired from their union jobs within days of their birthdays, and I never remember them saying much about their jobs after they retired.  Someone else took my Dad’s place on the production line, and someone else took my Mom’s place filing papers.
 
But academia is different. It’s one profession you never really have to retire from.   A lot of us have a lot to say, and we’re passionate about saying it even when we’re officially through with our job.  Many academics imagine themselves retiring in their early 70s, and then transitioning to half-time until they pad-lock our office door shut to keep us out.
 
Even retirement parties are somewhat pro forma.  If you feel you have a calling, you don’t feel any different the day after retirement except you're just no longer being paid.  I just had my retirement party last month, and it seemed like a birthday party, except that people gave speeches and gave me a nice, cherry wood Cornell captain’s chair with a metal plaque on the back of it.
 
In 30 years of academia, I only once went to a retirement party that didn’t seem like a birthday party, and it had a striking effect on me.  It was about 15 years ago and I was asked to be one of two faculty speakers at the annual Spring meeting of the university’s Business Advisory Committee. 

What excited me the most was the other faculty speaker. He was one of the most notable economists at the University. He had won a boatload of awards and occupied a rare niche at the intersection of economics, real estate, finance, and law. He was widely published, widely influential, and people—even his economist colleagues—often spoke of him in awe. This year was his retirement year, and his speech would perhaps be his Last Waltz in front of a group like this. We got to know each other throughout the day and at the closing reception. 

On the rainy long ride home, we sat next to each other in the back of the chartered bus. I asked him which of his many accomplishments he most proud of, and which had the most impact. At one point, however, I asked a question that was not met with the same warmth and candor. I asked, "In light of all of the remarkable things you’ve accomplished so far in your career, what’s your biggest professional regret?"

Silence .Then he said, I don’t have any regrets. If I had to do it again, I would do everything pretty much the same way.  After another much longer pause he said something like this:

“Well, maybe I have one regret. My work lies at the intersection of four areas – economics, finance, real estate, and law. I have a very complete picture of how these interact and how they influence everything from real estate prices in ghettos to land speculation prices in the middle of nowhere. The problem is that I’m the only one who sees the big picture. My papers are published in econ journals and finance journals, while others are published in real estate journals and law reviews. Nobody else sees the big picture because they only read one type of journal.”

I said, “Would it be easier for people to see the big picture if you were to write a book that pulled all of this together? That way, everything would be in one place and you could connect all the dots.”  He chuckled and immediately dismissed this, “I don’t know about marketing, but in economics they don’t reward books.”  After 45 years of research, he was retiring with one needless regret. This was unfinished business that he would now have the chance to finish, but he was still letting a now irrelevant barrier get in the way. 

The metaphor of an "unwritten book" can be a useful metaphor for us who are feeling that our routine is getting too predictable, who are feeling restless, or who find themselves retiring with a feeling there's something more to contribute.

Most people have at least one metaphorical book that would take our ideas or interests to a new level of expression.  Importantly, it doesn’t need to be writing a book.  It might be starting a website and blog, or teaching an adult ed course we’ve wanted to teach.  It might be mastering a musical instrument and joining a band, starting a photo travelogue, moving to that lake house you always dreamed of, or starting an online business. 

What’s interesting is that most of these “unwritten books” probably wouldn’t even have to wait until you retired.   They were something that could have been started much earlier if we would have removed our make believe barriers. 

Time to start the next chapter.