:::1::: Copyright Zach Browman - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

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2 WARNING: This PDF is for your personal use only. You may NOT Give Away, Share Or Resell This Intellectual Property In Any Way All Rights Reserved Copyright 2012 Zach Browman. All rights are reserved. You may not distribute this report in any way. You may not sell it, or reprint any part of it without written consent from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. :::2:::

3 Indecision The horse and the rider come to a fork in the road. There are few different choices. They ve got to make a decision. There s a parable about a donkey. There s a donkey and there are two bales of hay about 20 feet away from him. He looks at one he wants to get, but if he goes that way, he s going to get further away from that one. So, he goes over here. He keeps going back and forth until finally he starves to death because he can t choose between the two bales of hay. I can definitely relate to that. Part of the problem with indecision is that you take away your feeling of progress when you go around in circles. If you sit down and work for two hours, and you try this and you try that and in the end you're still unsure, you don t get that good feeling those good rewards of feeling like you've done something at the end of the time that makes it harder to go in there again. It s important to move past the course we all experience indecision. There s no hard and fast rule for how to make decisions to make them all easy. But there are ways that you can move through indecision more quickly so that again those things don t hold you up for longer, make it more of a punishing experience. Indecision lowers your feeling of competence and leads to frustration. Ultimately it lowers your drive. When you're indecisive, you keep experiencing failure in a sense. You're working but you're not moving forward, and that saps your drive. I experienced a lot of indecision in creating this program. Which should I start with? How should I word this? When we talk about writing a book, what do I write a book about? What do I start it with? I have all these concepts. How do I frame into something elegant? What business do I start? I like this but I also like that. Which one am I going to choose? :::3:::

4 Decisions are hard because each decision that we make closes doors. It narrows our options. We re fundamentally predisposed to want to keep our options open. In the book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely talks about an experiment they did where they had students at MIT play a video game. In the game, there are three doors there s a red door, a blue door, and a green door. You click on the door and you go in the room. Then when you're in the room, you click in the room and you get money ($1.63, $4.21, $0.19). Each door was giving different payouts. An average person would go and try one room, try the other room, try the third room, and they would figure out which one has the highest payouts and they d go in that room and stay. There were a couple of rules. They only had 100 clicks and changing rooms (clicking on the new door) used up a click that they couldn t get money from. The experiment done like this was fairly typical and they didn t learn too much from it. So, they decided that they would try a version of the experiment where whenever you clicked in a room, the other two doors shrunk. If a door wasn t clicked on in 12 clicks, it would disappear and that option would go. What they found was that people didn t stick with the best room. They desperately tried to keep the doors open. So, they clicked on this one and these two get smaller; they click on this one and this one is getting smaller; they click on this one and this now this one s getting smaller again. Desperately, people would try and keep the door open and they made a lot less money and got a lot lower scores when they did it this way. Then they tried a version where the door would close, but you could reopen it with a click. It really wasn t consequential. The doors were shrinking and then they get down to a certain point, but it didn t really make a difference. You could always just reopen them. Still, people desperately tried to keep those doors open even knowing that. :::4:::

5 Reactance There s something called reactance. It s an emotion really reactance and it s an emotional reaction to a perceived loss of freedom. It s an emotional reaction to our perception of we re losing the freedom to do something. This is why marketers say, Buy now! We only have two left. Two left? So if I don t buy it now, I m going to lose the freedom to buy it. It s like a frenzy kind of situation you get. I went to Whole Foods and they were moving, so everything was on sale and there were a lot of people there. There was this uncomfortable feeling that Oh my God, I don t need apples, but they're $0.05 and if I don t buy them, that guy s going to buy them. We all experience this. That s one reason why it s hard to make decisions. I don t want to cut off options. We want to keep our options. Being aware of that emotion of reactance is really important. Creativity and Innovation If you're innovating, if you're doing something creative, if you're taking initiative, if you're starting something, by definition you're doing something new at least something new for yourself and there s going to be uncertainty, so you have to learn to deal with it. You could keep doing the same thing again. You're going to have indecision if you're moving forward. One of the causes of indecision is what we call low self-efficacy. One of my favorite psychologists, a guy by the name of Albert Bandura, has done a lot of research on self-efficacy. What it is, it s your belief in your ability to accomplish something. This affects what kind of task you take on, how much you persist, how well you perform and that sort of thing. Obviously, say you're talking about writing a book, if you believe that that s something that you can do then you're going to be more likely to take it on in the :::5:::

6 first place, you're going to persist more when you have setbacks, you're going to be able to continue longer without getting the feedback that you're doing it right, and you're going to ultimately perform better. This can come up when you have doubt in your ability. When you're feeling inspired you say, I m going to start a business or I m going to write a book. Then the nitty-gritty details of actually pulling it off start and you're in the middle of it, all of a sudden you think, I don t know if I m up to this. We all experience this. There are ways to increase your self-efficacy. Obviously, the best way to increase it is to have success. If you've written one book, then that s going to increase your belief that you can do it again. You know you've done it before, but as I say, we re talking about doing things we haven t done before, so you don t always have that option. You have to do it once. One thing you can do or to start with is you want to break down the different parts or the different skills that you're going to need to accomplish this the different things that need to be done. Let s talk about writing a book and let s talk about building a business. With writing a book, you need to be able to write sentences and paragraphs detailed writing. You also need to be able to structure chapters. You also need to be able to create a pitch to get an agent. You need to be able to go with your agent to a publisher. These are all the requisite skills that you need. So if you're feeling self-doubt about your ability, break it down and find out where exactly the self-doubt is. Let s say you ve had a blog for years, you're like, Well, the writing part I m good on. But I m not sure about the overall structure. Building a business is same thing. I know how to do sales and I know how to do marketing. But I don t know about a business plan, I don t know how to get venture capital, and I don t know how to get investors. That s something that I m not sure about. We re just zeroing in right now. :::6:::

7 Once you found what it is that you're not sure about, you can do a few things. One is you can find parallels with other things you've done. I ve never written a book, but I did do a course outline for my professor in university where I had to choose the sections. That s pretty similar. If I can do that, I could probably do this. Calling attention to those things increases your belief in your ability to do those things. You can also try it on a smaller scale and build from there. If you have a business idea that s really grand and elaborate, maybe try a smaller version first, see if you can pull that off and scale up from there. Another thing you could do is find examples of other people who are like you who have done similar things. It s important that you see them as being like you. If you feel like, I can t start a business; I don t have a MBA, find examples of people who started businesses without even graduating high school. There are a lot of them. It changes your belief when you see someone else do it. If you can see somebody firsthand, somebody you know, that s ideal, but if not, find examples of people who have done it with similar background to yours. The other thing you can do of course is get new skills or fill in the gaps in your knowledge. Jude Kusnierz dropped out of high school and she always thought that she was just going to get married and have babies. That was the plan for her. When she was 24-25, she started worrying and saying, What am I going to contribute to this world? She was doing some secretarial-type of jobs, admin assistant jobs, and wasn t really satisfied. She s kind of an artist, so she started making glass martini glasses, bowls and that sort of thing. She s quite good at and she started selling them and started shipping them to the States. This was in the late 90s. Martini craze was on and she started doing really well. She had to research the regulations of exporting and figure all the stuff out. She was making about $400,000-$500,000 a year. Then 9/11 hit, the economy tanked, the martini craze was over, and her business started tanking with it. So, she wasn t doing well. Finally, March 17, 2003 her :::7:::

8 studio burned down. She was looking around trying to find a studio. As she put it, I was trying to find a studio for my failing business. She had an idea. She said, One thing that I ve always found that s missing for me and a lot of people I know is affordable, safe studio space with like-minded people where we can cross-pollinate, a place I can afford and create. She paid her roommate $400 to write a business plan for her. She said, Here s $400. If we get financing, it will go up. I ll pay you more for it. She didn t know anything about business plans, so she paid somebody else to do it or to walk her through and to coach her through it. The end result was the space that we re in right now, Beaumont Studios. Jude is the owner of Beaumont Studios where we are. It s an art gallery, it s a theater space, it s exactly what she envisioned. We were talking just the other day and she s really happy. She does what she wants every day. She s self-directed and she was resourceful. She didn t start off knowing how to ship things down to the States. She looked it up. Sometimes you re indecisive simply because you don t know what to do. You lack the skill. There are a couple of things you can do. 1. You can use Google. Search for answers on there. It seems kind of funny, but I know a lot of people who as soon as they hit a gap in their knowledge, they stop. 2. You can ask friends, you can ask mentors and you can ask strangers, but the ability to search and find resources is key for self-leaders. You re not going to know how to do everything. 3. There are books and programs. If you can t find the resource, find the resource to find the resource. If you can t find someone to point you in the right direction, find someone who knows someone who can point you in the right direction. If you keep searching, you ll find the answers. :::8:::

9 I mentioned last year I had to get this website up and I knew nothing. I knew a server was the computer where the website sits, but I didn t know. So I called the hosting company and said, I need hosting. They said, How would you like it configured? I said, What does that mean? You got to start at the beginning. They re like, Well, which language do you want to configure it in? Do you want Linux? I said, What s the difference? You keep asking the questions. At that time, it was really intimidating to get into that stuff. I didn t know any of it, didn t know where to start, and didn t know what I didn t know. But I asked some friends who are programmers. Whenever I had a question, I d ask a friend. I said, Is there a book where it just lays it all out? He said, There s too much knowledge. Just keep asking questions so they come up and you ll start to get a picture of it. He was right. 4. There are forums. You can ask questions and then the answer will bring up more questions and you ask those. But eventually, you will start to understand. It s key. It s a very important skill to have. One cause of low self-efficacy is comparing yourself with others, particularly because you re not really comparing yourself with others; you re comparing your perception of what they are. There s that famous phrase, Don t compare your insides to others outsides. Since I ve been working on this procrastination program, it comes up a lot in conversation. People ask me what I m doing. It s very rare that I meet someone that doesn t think that their procrastination problem is worse than average. Statistically, that s impossible. One hundred percent of people cannot be worse than average. Take me, for example. I hid it for so long. I got through; I got things done. I really do think mine was much worse than average if I look at the circumstances. But we think that other people are being authentic and we re the only one that s :::9:::

10 hiding it. We think that other people are sure of what they re doing; we re the only ones that have uncertainty. I mentioned this before when you re doing a new venture. Take wildly successful people they were unsure. They didn t know. But they took action in spite of that and it s important to recognize when you re feeling that and feeling, I don t feel ready. Well, maybe you have some more preparation to do, but maybe you get to a point where you ve prepared and it s time to take the leap. One reason for indecision is sometimes you have competing goals. We talk about writing a book. What are your goals for writing a book? Well, I want to get my name out there, I want to impress my dad and get his approval, I want to help people, I want to use my knowledge to get out there to people, I want to be seen as a thought leader and books are a good way to do that. You have all these goals, and these are fine. These are good reasons to do it. Sometimes they compete with each other. You sit down and you re writing this book. Same thing for why you re creating business. You say, If I do it this way, that s going to get my dad s approval. But if I do it this way, this is going to help more people. I m verbalizing what s going on behind the scenes. If you don t verbalize, if you re not clear on what that is, you just feel this conflict and you keep on coming back to I don t want to let this version go. You keep on getting pulled. One technique that I use when I have indecision is to really zoom out to my larger goal. Does this serve the overall purpose of what I wanted to do? For example, this is a program we re releasing online rather than writing a book and publishing it, where it will allow me to reach more people. I ll make more money doing this than I would through a publishing model, but it will be less credibility and respect and that sort of thing. That was a decision that I had to make that I had to recognize because of course we want all those things. Recognize what the most important one is, and then be willing to sacrifice. :::10:::

11 A big cause of indecision is perfectionism. It s a kind of indecision: perfectionism. It doesn t typically stop people from starting projects but keeps them from completing them. One of the reasons is that the vision that we have in our heads of what it is that we re trying to create, we can t possibly live up to that with the actual details when we sit down to create it. It just can t live up. It s this mismatch between what we re actually doing and how big it could be if we did it perfectly. Perfection usually comes from a fear of negative evaluation fear that people will judge you harshly. When we start building something, we start doing something creative like writing or painting or acting or entrepreneurship, usually our judgment is better than our skill. I saw Where the Light Is. It s a John Mayer concert video, and he goes backstage between sets and basically asked for people to tell him he did a good job. He said, Was it good? They said it was good. It wasn t that crass, but he s like, Was it good? Was it really good? He said, Because my ears are better than my hands. People have a lot of opinions on John Mayer. I think he s a fantastic guitar player. I ll leave it at that. He s a very, very good guitar player. But his ears are better than his hands are. He can hear the mistakes. He can hear everything that s wrong with it. For someone like me listening to him play, it s absolute flawless. We often get into things these things because we have good taste. We have the ability to judge. One thing that has definitely held me back from making decisions or trying to make things perfect is that I ve negatively judged other people s work, and I have this thought that I don t want to be like that. I ve read some bad copy my time and I ve made fun of it. I said, That s bad. That guy s got to be an idiot. But you know what? That person got it down, they got it done, and it s out there. If you re creating something, you re being so selfcritical that you can t even get it out there, then you don t have to risk failing and you don t have to risk people judging you. :::11:::

12 There are some reminders for perfectionism and I use these. When I find I ve reached a block of indecision or when I go through period where I m not making a lot of decisions, I do this right before I start to work. I take five minutes, I set the timer, and I write out in my own words things to remind myself to make decisions more. One is I can always change my mind later. Sometimes choose a course of action, choose a path and follow it through until it s clear that that s not the right path. The problem is when we go down that path and we re not sure, we try another path and we re not sure. We never actually find out that that one didn t work. There s that famous quote (a paraphrase) from Thomas Edison where he said he failed. Inventing the light bulb, he failed a thousand times. He said, I found a thousand ways not to invent the light bulb. It s a good mental shift, but it s also the fact that he had to do those things to find out This definitely doesn t work, so I m not going to go down that avenue again. This is how we learn. This is how we build up confidence so that down the road those things become more and more clear. When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice. - William James Recognize the cost of not deciding. My marketing video that I talked about five months of not deciding, what did that cost me? Wouldn t it had been better to do it in a month and do a terrible job, and then revise it, and then revise it, and get feedback? That was also six months without feedback. If you get something out there, especially in the age of the Internet, you create a business, you write something, you can get it out there, you can get feedback, and then you can rework it. If you're manufacturing or something like that, you really need to get it right. It s difficult to change. But things are easy to change now. A business mentor of mine uses a famous saying: Ready, fire, aim. Those are the people who are successful. Prepare something, put it out there, and then adjust it rather than trying to hit the mark the first time. :::12:::

13 Accept that some things will never be perfect. Don t be afraid of wasting time pursuing the wrong decision. Worry more about wasting time not making a decision at all. Markus Frind, founder of Plenty of Fish said, I never tried to perfect anything. It didn t matter if things didn t work 100%. As long as it was good enough, I would move on to the next thing. That s how he grew his company so quickly. I like to ask myself a number of questions if I feel like it s getting to the point of paralysis by analysis you keep on gathering information and you think, I still can t make a decision; I need more information, and then you feel more overwhelmed with the choices. Have I gathered enough information? What s keeping me from making a decision? What s the worst that could happen if I make a wrong decision? Will it really be easier to decide later? Kill Your Darlings William Faulkner said, In writing, kill your darlings. Have you heard that expression? I remember this used to happen to me in high school. My mom was an English major, so in high school we would write essays and then she d help us before we handed them in. She wouldn t write them for us, but she d edit them, critique them and we d take it tremendously personally. It s hard to have your writing criticized. You get very emotional about it. I d always have these sentences where I just loved that sentence. There was something about it. And she d always hone right in on that sentence and be like, This doesn t make any sense, or This isn t really clear what you mean here. I remember I used to get really upset when she d say that because I was like, I don t want to change that sentence, because it was always something that sounded profound or sounded more meaningful. Sometimes we do that. We hold on to those ideas and we try and work everything around that. We realize maybe that s not as good as we think it is. Or :::13:::

14 maybe it s fine, but maybe it just doesn t work in this context. We need to let it go. You can fall in love with your own ideas and fail to see that they're not really serving your ultimate goal anymore. :::14:::

Worksheets :::1::: Copyright Zach Browman - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Worksheets :::1::: Copyright Zach Browman - All Rights Reserved Worldwide Worksheets :::1::: WARNING: This PDF is for your personal use only. You may NOT Give Away, Share Or Resell This Intellectual Property In Any Way All Rights Reserved Copyright 2012 Zach Browman. All rights