Some 'Skipped' Boring Things Do Not 'Skip' Hurting Us

Consistence Is Boring, But It Provides Great Success Opportunities

Yesterday on the radio a DJ explained how to stop boredom in your family life.  She was describing how she was trying to get her three children ready to go somewhere this past weekend and one of her girls was not getting ready on time.  She described how her girl, a five-year-old, was one of those tinkering types.  This radio DJ was a single mom with three small children.  On the weekends it is important for the DJ to get all of her domestic stuff done before the work week begins.  She and her group were trying to get ready to go out to the grocery store, the post office and run some other important errands.  This five-year-old daughter was dragging her feet.  She was not getting ready like all of the others.  This time she was busy coloring in a couple of coloring books.  The DJ mom asked her daughter why she was not getting ready.  The daughter said going to town to do errands was "boring."

The mother agreed.  She undressed the rest of the kids and told the five-year-old to finish coloring the pages in the coloring books she was working on.  The DJ mom described how her daughter does not color like any other child.  She described how her daughter colors in 'rainbow.'  Everything is colored in a rainbow.  A shirt, a building, the mountains, the sky, a train...all of them are colored in rainbows.  Nothing has a single color.  Every item has a multiple of colors that are used to cover each item.  The DJ described how important it is as parents to permit our children to express themselves properly.  That is why she chose to allow her daughter to finish the pictures she was coloring.  It was a cute story and I can relate when I think back to how complicated it was to raise our three girls.  I remember similar experiences.  I remember some of the 'hair combing' wars my wife and the girls used to produce.  I remember some of the fashion wars developed when my girls picked out their own clothes to wear when we were going out into the public somewhere.  I could relate to the DJ and her challenging five-year-old who did not want to do the boring stuff in life.

One major problem with that desire.  Success, when done correctly, is very boring.  Success does not usually come from doing things that feel good.  Success does not usually come from doing things that change from one exciting project to the next one.  Success does not usually come from one person dominating all of the others because they stubbornly refuse to comply with how the rest of the group wants to go.  Success can happen without all of these things being placed in a boring line, but it does not happen very often without them becoming part of a boring routine.  True success is boring.  Success is usually the result of doing a lot of right things, a lot of necessary things, a lot of routine things and a lot of unwanted things all in a boring pattern of life movements.  Success does not usually come from random movements that are created to keep us interested in doing fun things all of the time.  Success becomes the by-product of doing a lot of routine things well, on a boring but consistent basis.  A lot of those routine things are not things that we all enjoy doing.  A lot of them are not enjoyable.

There have been thousands of times when I would prefer to color in a coloring book instead of doing some hiring or firing that was necessary for my business model to perform.  Sometimes the responsibility to do necessary routines is higher than the pleasure to ignore those duties by playing with stuff that is more fun to do.  When we skip doing the stuff we need to do we can begin to do the things we like to do.  We skip right past doing the boring things.  We find we prefer to do the exciting things.  Unfortunately, when we skip doing some of those important boring things and those 'skipped' boring things do not 'skip' hurting us.  Some of the important 'skipped' duties often turn out to come back and hurt our success efforts.  We 'skipped' doing them because they were boring.  As a result, we 'skipped' right over the necessary things that help us to produce more success.  We use our desire to do exciting things to justify why we can skip doing the necessary but boring stuff.  We get confused.  We want more excitement and less boring duty patterns in our lives.  We see this desire in our children and wonder why it does not happen more often in our adult lives.  We get confused and manage the wrong ways to honor both.  We forget how success works and compromise our walk on that path of life.  We give in and change the boring routine to honor the creativeness we see in our children.  We believe both cannot happen in the same plane of existence.  We are wrong but do not know how to manage the two together.  We therefore compromise success by giving into random patterns of movements and sacrifice boring routines that are necessary.  We limit our walk to success.  Unfortunately, we are dead wrong.  We can have both.

Concentrate On How Money Works, Learn to Solve Problems.

I watch a business leader work on more fun things to do every single day.  I watch how the decisions are made and when faced with one that is more fun to do as opposed to one that is necessary to do but more boring.  The fun one will always be selected.  This pattern has become the routine pattern for this leader to use in the way leadership is practiced.  The pattern to 'skip' doing the boring stuff in lieu of doing more fun things has become so routine that the fun stuff dominates the working schedule of this business leader.  The necessary and boring routine stuff gets ignored enough to begin to hurt the performance of this leader.  Coloring in rainbows is more fun to do.  As a result, getting the errands done gets put off and coloring page after page becomes the honor to respect.  This kind of pattern of work respect does not produce great results that help the numbers of the business work well.  Success is compromised.

Success is very boring stuff.  Success is doing a routine pattern of things that are important to do and they will eventually produce the success that is needed for the business to survive and grow well.  Sometimes doing what feels good, what is more exciting to do or what is more fun to do is not necessarily the best way to produce success.  More often than not, success comes from doing the things nobody likes to do and doing them routinely well.  This truth sucks but it does not get to disappear if you want to produce better success.  Success is very boring stuff.  Getting the errands done on time is very necessary for the business machine to work smoothly.  Successful leaders understand this very important rule.  They honor the boredom higher than the ones who do not produce as much success.  They do not color as many rainbows during the time when errands need to be run.  They color rainbows when they travel to other regions for recreation because they can afford to color rainbows on the other side of the world.  There is a huge difference between these two methods of coloring rainbows.

Remember this, we need to be reminded how money works when our five-year-old decides to interfere with the work we must perform.  We need to learn how to solve problems instead of creating them.  Money works better this way.  Remember, money runs away from problems and gravitates to solutions.  When the five-year-old did not want to go run some boring errands, even though they were vital to family success, her current desire became a problem.  Blending the two during the routine efforts to honor success was the DJ mom's new problem.  She came up with a solution that was a good one.  She allowed her child to be a child and permitted her five-year-old to continue coloring for fun.  It was a good choice, not the best choice, but a good one.  She was kind of a good manager.  Unfortunately, she created a new problem.  The necessary errands did not get done.  Remember how money works in the business and private life world.  It runs from problems and gravitates to solutions.  Let's stop to think of ways the DJ mother could have decided to select to better resolve this immediate problem that her five-year-old delivered.  How could the DJ mother provide a solution that would honor the stake everyone has in the balancing demands of a good life development?

Could she look at all of the children and ask them if they all would like to bring their coloring books along with her to do the errands?  I wonder what the dynamics of that approach would have produced?  First, she would not be subconsciously teaching the other two children how to hijack mom when boring routines need to be completed.  Instead, she allowed her five-year-old to do exactly that and the other two children witnessed how it is done.  Her future boring routines will now be faced with not one creative challenge from within, but likely two more added.  I watch business managers do this silly stiff all day long.  They get their needed duties hijacked from within and they eventually wonder why they cannot produce the success they need to produce.  It is so simple to see but so difficult to anticipate.  Successful leaders recognize this difference.  This DJ mom 'skipped' doing something important because it was boring.  It will eventually come back to hurt her.  She had other choices that would have honored both desires.  Her management skills were being tested and she elected the one that fit well on the path of least resistance.  Unfortunately, it may not have been the best one to select.  She had other options to exercise that may have developed a lot of win, win opportunities.

Second, teaching her children how to totally respect doing the necessary boring stuff in life would have been a good model to provide when this problem surfaced.  Her children had a golden opportunity to see how this is done by a master of management.  She missed the opportunity to provide this role for her children to witness.  She did not promote to them how important doing the boring things in life are as she side-stepped the routine for producing success.  They did not get that very important lesson.  She did the easy one that felt better to do.  That is the lesson they learned with this example.  That is the lesson they will grow up to honor even when the future demands of their working world requests a separate view.  They will not know and do what they need to know and do.  She missed a teaching opportunity.

What is wrong with allowing the kids to color in her vehicle as they traveled around to do those necessary errands?  It does require more work, but so does success.  Success comes from going the extra mile.  Sometimes success does not come from doing very convenient things.  In fact, most of my business successes came very inconveniently.  If I had 'pressed' them to arrive with more convenience, they may never have occurred.  That is part of the territory where success lives.

Thirdly, and more importantly, she did in fact need to honor her children's coloring desires.  She got that one dead on.  That part of the problem she solved wonderfully.  Her five-year-old needed to color her rainbows.  That was the most critical solution on the table.  That DJ mom got that most important one fixed immediately.  Applause to her for that move.  All of us could use a little more time to respect the coloring of more rainbows in our lives.  The DJ mom got that one right.  Her five-year-old will always remember how important creativity and expression is in her world of personal development.  Hats off to mom.  Good job on that one.

Just try to remember how money works.  Solve problems better.  Also remember that success is boring.  Doing the boring things on a routine basis is vital to producing good success.  Do not form the habit of looking for exciting ways to sidestep the boring stuff that needs to be done.  It will eventually come back to hurt your success efforts.  It always does and it always will.  Some 'skipped' boring things do not 'skip' hurting us.  Success likes boring routines.  It also likes rainbows of creativity, but it does better when things are routine and boring as heck.  Learn how to stay your mind in a solution mode.  Solve the interference's your routine to success will face.  Learn how to balance the two in your life travels.  Find better solutions to those troubling challenges.  One thing I can promise for sure, you will forever be faced with these kinds of troubling problems in your life to perform.  They will tug at your heart and pull your focus away from the path of success you are trying to achieve.  You will forever need to develop a simple routine that is as boring as heck to help you manage those tugs and pulls successfully.

Color with the kids, in a park after the routines are done.  Check out all of the pictures they made during that trip and tape them onto the back of each car seat so they can parade them around while you drive from place to place doing what you need to do.  Go to the park and color some more.  You paid for that park, use it.  Learn how to creatively solve your problems.  Make sure your routine to boring success is not hijacked on the way.

Until next time...