In my last blog I mentioned that I was speaking to a group of business students at the U of T. What an impressive bunch! Over 95% of them are in the International Foundation Program which means that in addition to their regular studies they are studying English because it is not their first language. Pretty amazing that on top of all that, they’d come out to a non-mandatory workshop on starting businesses.
I was planning to say to them to not get side tracked by a problem that doesn’t have an easy answer. The instructor beat me to it with a slide that made the point but in a more helpful way:
- What’s another way to get what I want?
- What similar outcome might also work?
- Who might be able to help me?
- What else can I try?
Related to the idea of forward momentum, I was listening to a podcast by Mel Robbins last week, author of the 5 Second Rule. One comment she made really caught my attention: “We are always one Google search away from learning how to positively impact our lives.”
One Google search away!
It’s a neat way to put it: the how-to is usually not the biggest problem.
A Big Green Egg smoker cane with our new house in February and Andrew has become a master smoker by watching videos of big burly Southern men explaining how to make brisket. Our protein cupcake project feels like it has become a “thing” but started very simply by filling in one of those online information requests on the George Brown College website.
If you’re procrastinating on something important to you, imagine that you are handing the whole idea or project over to someone else. In telling them about it, what would you suggest that they do first?
