The Dead Simple Guide To Making Things Happen

In last Friday's post I talked about the difference between getting things done and making things happen.  In short, becoming productive is necessary, but not sufficient, to becoming a Big Swinging member of your field.  Once you have capacity to put to good use it's time to make things happen, which you can do in 3 steps:

  • Redefine success
  • Look for opportunities
  • Take the first step

These are listed not only chronologically, but in order from most difficult to least difficult. 

Redefine Success: Never Confuse the Reward with the Goal

Most people that I know and work with have a goal of making more money.  Don't worry, I'm not about to get all hippy dippy anti-money on you.  Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact, in that I want you to make more at what you do by being more valuable.  The problem as I see it is that money is a reward, not a goal.  If you have money as a goal, you'll pass up opportunity after opportunity simply because you can't see the money in it.  If, instead, you take the approach of doing things and showing your value independently of money, you'll see tons of opportunity and by seizing these opportunities you'll have the chance to turn some of them into money.  If you redefine success as bringing something into existence (rather than getting paid to work), you'll find lots of chances to try your hand at it.  Making things happen is like any other skill in that you'll probably start out kind of bad at it, but as you practice you'll get better and better.  Once you're really good at it and have a track record you'll be trusted with riskier and riskier opportunities.  What's even better is that you'll get opportunities (high paying ones at that) that you would never have known about any other way.  Which leads us to looking for opportunities.

Look For Opportunities: Stand In Luck's Way

Let's say that you've chosen to believe me and have decided to define success as making things happen for a bit.  The next step is to take what you know and use it in ways and places that you typically wouldn't.  As an example, I used to have warehouse space next to a forklift sales and service company.  It was a small company and they didn't have much budget for IT work.  As a matter of fact, they didn't even own the domain name that matched their company name.  To me, this just isn't right.  I bought their domain name and put together a small, but nice looking website for them.  It was a great experience in low-cost, high-speed (i.e. I didn't want to spend a ton of time on it) web development.  While I would love to tell you that this led to a multi-million dollar contract through strange twists of fate, it didn't.  As a matter of fact, I never made a single dollar off of it.  Something could have happened because I created the site, but it didn't this time.  Oh well, I still consider it a success, because some really nice, hard working, honest guys got a good looking site that they wouldn't have had otherwise.  By creating the circumstances where something great could happen, I feel that I increased the chances of something great happening. 

As a contrasting example, I met someone who was interested in cloud computing.  I volunteered to do some writing about what cloud computing is, where it's going, and why it's valuable.  To me, the chance to write/speak about the subject and tell people what I think about an interesting subject was the goal.  I ended up getting an email a few weeks later from a colleague of this person which led to a paid writing gig and a little consulting work.  As it stands it looks like this opportunity may end up being one of the highest paying –and most interesting– in my entire career.  And it started by me wanting to see something happen . . . not by me wanting money.  So start looking around with fresh eyes.  Eyes that are looking to do things instead of eyes looking for a payday.  Once you start seeing these opportunities, you'll realize that there are more than you could ever jump on and you can pick and choose which to pursue based on your time and inclination.

Take the First Step: The "Making Things Happen" Part

Everything up to this point has been prep work.  Preparing yourself to see things and finding things to do are necessary steps, but you still need an action step where things start happening.  The key here is finding the first step.  For example, when I talked to the forklift guys the next step was to find out if their domain name was available.  When I talked about cloud computing, the next step was to outline what I thought was important about the technology.  When I meet others, the first step may be to build them a small piece of software that can lead to a bigger project down the road.  Because I've practiced doing these things so many times, they cost me less than they would cost others.  I know where to get inexpensive hosting, web templates, development tools, stock photos, etc.  I would never have had these skills, or they wouldn't be nearly as developed, if I had waited for paid opportunities each time.  Instead, once I saw something that I could do, I volunteered to take the next step since the next step cost me relatively little.  Right now I have a financial threshold of about $100 and a time threshold of about 20 hours.  Any time I see something that I can do in less than 20 hours for less than $100, I consider it "free" to me.  This means I can try something every other month for $600 and 120 hours per year.  That's 6 additional opportunities a year for something great to happen and through making things happen, I meet people, upgrade my skills, and uncover even more opportunities.

In summary: Take small, bounded risks where the payoff is doing something that may otherwise have not been done.  Over time you'll get better and better at both seeing opportunities and capitalizing on them.  And who knows, maybe one day you'll wake up and find out that something you did has paid off in a Big Swinging way.

Getting Things Done vs. Making Things Happen

I'm a big fan of Getting Things Done and other productivity systems.  I use  Nozbe as my action management app since it's dead simple and works well for me.  I carry a small  Moleskine notebook in my pocket to jot down things I need to remember.  All-in-all, I'm an effective and productive person when I want to be.

Here's the problem: Productivity is a prerequisite.

Becoming productive isn't the goal, it's just another skill.  What you do with your productivity superpowers is what really matters.  Maybe you can plow through whatever gets thrown in your hopper like an Asplundh chipper/shredder . . . you know, the ones that can turn telephone poles into a mulch that's beneficial to your garden in 15 seconds.  Even if you become a highly effective machine, you'll be treated like machine.  Machines are commodities and when their cost outweighs their output, they get replaced by cheaper machines.

Instead of just getting things done, you need to make things happen.

Here's the difference between the two: If you're just an expert on getting things done, then whatever is given to you could be given to someone else who could, eventually, get it done.  If you become an expert at making things happen, then the work you do wouldn't get done any other way.  Can you see the difference in value?  With getting things done, you have given inputs and given outputs and the best you can hope for is that you're worth 2 or 3 or n other people (until they read the GTD book and buy the Moleskine notepad).  With making things happen, you're invaluable . . . you literally cannot be replaced with someone else.  Sure, your employer or client may decide that they don't need what you do, but that's a much more manageable position than an employer or client choosing someone else over you.  Plus, if you're an expert at making things happen then when you notice your workload winding down you can simply make more things happen.

On Monday I'll post a dead simple guide to making things happen.  Since getting things done is a prereq to making things happen, though, please post your GTD resources or questions in the comments.