Living a Life Based On Results
We live one life. Let’s live it on purpose and without regrets. Saying that out loud always gets people nodding and in quick agreement. But then life has a way of taking over and pushing us and our grand intent around.
I consider myself a master of living life consciously and maximizing my days, weeks, months and years. But I sometimes find myself being pulled by kids sports, theater productions, social life, work, family and maintaining life stuff. I have a pretty specific technique I used to get back on track, and it starts with reviewing my desired results. I’ve got my big life priorities well defined, that part is easy, but the key to achieving all the things I want is focusing only on the results.
Don’t be satisfied with just effort in life, effort alone often doesn’t lead to a result.
I live a results based life, in business, parenting, friendships and my marriage. The result is my guide, nothing else. Even if you have a high work ethic and put in a ton of effort and it doesn’t yield a result, it’s a waste. Keep the efforts that end in a defined result, and stop the efforts that don’t yield results.
Start with defining a desired result, NOT with the strategy of how to accomplish your goal. Then make a commitment to not stop until you figure out how to achieve the result. It’s that simple.
How I used this simple technique in business, family, and friendships.
My 50 person company runs 98% without me
In my largest company, Red Giant, early on my partner and I set a simple, yet audacious goal of being able to run the company from anywhere (we used to say beach), and ensure the company never dominates our lives.
Sean and I started Red Giant 16 years ago, we still own it but haven’t worked in it for 4 years. It has 50 employees, that live all over the world and the entire company can be monitored and run from any computer that has internet access.
Sure this is an extreme example, but what happens over time when you define and commit to a specific result, you make decisions that direct that outcome. Often you need to reject big opportunities along the way, we turned down multiple lucrative deals that didn’t fit our desired result.
From day one at Red Giant, we used 100% online systems (before SAAS was a real thing), and always hired people that enjoyed and were capable of working on their own. Our current situation is NOT by chance, it was a result we defined 16 years ago and figured out how to achieve it and stayed committed.
My teenage daughter stopped talking to me
I have a teenage daughter, she’s nearly 15. We’ve always had a good relationship and do a lot together. About 3 months ago she started pushing back and rejected almost everything I said, and our relationship was suffering. My goal is to be a Dad, not a “friend” but the direction of the relationship wasn’t ok with me. The result I needed was to improve our communication and reset our relationship.
I tried spending more time in her room, which never turned out well. I had my wife talk to her for me, which didn’t help much. But I kept watching and thinking about the issue. I noticed she was constantly using the phrase, “don’t judge me” when I would talk to her. Although, I was just being a “Dad”, she took it as judgement. (Dang teens…). I stopped all “advice” or “feedback” of any kind for one month.
Our relationship totally swung back to normal, and she now asks me to tuck her in every night, which I’ve done for 15 years. My point is, I didn’t know how to solve the problem, but didn’t stop until I achieve the result I defined. I put aside my pride, the fact that “I’m the parent” and that she is only a punk kid, and focused on the result of a renewed relationship.
My friendships were waning
I value relationships more than anything in my life. But I realized more than a year ago that I wasn’t as connected to my guy friends as I’d like to be. I set the result of reconnecting to a small group of people on a more intimate level.
I started by cancelling Facebook and making a list of friends that I would call and text directly on a monthly basis. That went ok, but I still didn’t reconnect on the level I wanted. So I decided to make in person visits a higher priority, which I did for most of them on my short list. Over the year and through several changes to my efforts, I feel great about these relationships and feel more connected that I have in a long time.
I have strong ethics, little principles.
Steve Jobs used to say he had, “strong opinions, weakly held”. I love this and it really resonates with me. I’m willing to put aside certain principles, pride and ego to accomplish results. I know this is a big key to my successes. I have a high level of ethics and moral integrity, but when it comes to getting stuff done and achieving results, my very strong opinions can change with the tide of attaining results.
Listen to a podcast interview on The Mentee covering this topic. Listen here
