Comments

The Only Two Trends That Matter — 14 Comments

  1. Need to high light both ‘trends’.
    You really only high lighted the first.
    Measuring your weight is objective.
    But saying your diet is improving I feel pretty
    certain the criterion you use are probably subjective,
    not listed. I agree about measuring of complex system,
    this what oracle would call instrumentation, over the years they
    Added more and more, which has made tuning more affective.

    The confused mind says no, this has gotten into trouble a few times. I have understand
    Before I agree. I may be dumber the rest so may take longer to understand, so end up viewed to
    Be delaying the project. Then along way in you am then see as the only honest person
    For stating that the project was not fully understood!!

    • Hi Everton,

      I think you may be missing the point a little here.

      The point of the article is really simple – you’re either moving closer to your goal (any goal, big or small) or further away from it. It’s then up to you to decide whether you want to be objective or subjective about measuring that and both have their place.

      In addition you may wish to take a step back (further away) in the short term in order to take 2 or 3 steps forward (closer) in the long term but the point is to be mindful of these things and avoid ‘sweating the small stuff’. If, overall you are ‘trending’ in the right direction then that is a good thing and a focus people often lose.

      The thing you mentioned about projects is potentially confusing the word ‘confused’ with the word ‘complexity’. Whether a project is complex or not does not determine if you are confused about it – if you are, then this principle still applies, and if so, remember that projects can be broken down into smaller tasks.

      Consider this: there is not a single person in the world who knows how to make a kettle and can do it (think about it) – yet you would consider this a simple endeavor – why is that?

  2. Hi Alan.
    Just found your post on Allie Rambles blog and thought I would drop by.

    I was reading this post and I hit this sentence “You’re either moving closer to your goal or further away from it.” A lightbulb went on and I thought, you know, it really is as simple as that.
    A couple of sentences later and you wrote “Am I over-simplifying things here? No. ” It made me grin to myself.
    We can make things a lot over complicated for ourselves.
    Each time I plan to do something from now on, I’m going to just stop and ask myself, does this move me closer to my goal.
    Simple.

    • Hi Steve,

      thanks so much for doing so, I hope you like ‘my place’ too. Take off your shoes and make yourself at home. We go for minimal around here but hopefully you’ll find everything you need 😉

      I really do believe that often simple concepts such as this one can often be the most powerful (and I have plenty more where this came from) and you’ll see a lot of my advice (both for life and also for business) here is of a similar nature.

      take care & best wishes,
      Alan

  3. It is that simple yet many people overlook this simple fact. Setting goals and objectives gives you a challenge. It gives you something to strive toward us and to other people.

    • Hi Mika,

      thank you so much for stopping by and commenting!

      My thing is really that simple things can often be the most powerful. Don’t underestimate the power of simple concepts!! 😉

      taking it a step further, when we over-complicate problems we often get in our own way,

      thanks again for the comment,
      take care & best wishes,
      Alan

  4. Hi there! I know this is kind of off-topic however I had to ask. Does managing a well-established blog like yours require a massive amount work? I’m completely new to blogging but I do write in my diary every day. I’d like to start a blog so I can share my experience and feelings online. Please let me know if you have any kind of recommendations or tips for new aspiring blog owners. Thankyou!

  5. Hey Alan,

    For me and obviously for you, things take time to work. So by jumping into quick with wanting results, we aren’t giving it enough opportunity to actually do what we want. Now in the end some of it may not work which is why you will always here, test, test, test things.

    I use to obsess over things too and then had to realize that I have to give everything time to work. If it’s moving toward my goal then keep it up. If it’s working against my goal, move on to something different.

    Patience is the real key, something a lot of people today don’t have. We are that quick fix society and we want everything yesterday. Greatness doesn’t come overnight though.

    Thank for sharing this with us as always. Great information my friend.

    ~Adrienne

    • Hi Adrienne,

      I wanted to share this concept before writing about my diet system, because it’s kind of a fundamental basis for it, and important to understand in terms of motivation and sustainability (for anything, not just diets).

      Though the results of my experience with Tim’s diet aren’t what it said on the tin, that’s cool – I’m actually happy as long as the trend is positive. That being said, the system I will introduce next week goes one better:

      1) because it is a system and
      2) because it follows the principles outlined above (i.e. things can only really go 2 ways (better/worse), what gets measured gets improved and that you should be tracking the right information – i.e. what’s important and makes the most sense to you).

      More next week 😉

      take care & thanks for stopping by!!

      Alan

  6. ‘A confused mind always says no’ – it was ME who first said it, Alan ! (I’m kidding, obviously….)

    I too am a big believer in systems and the simpler they are, the better. This is what I teach to my students as well. The great thing about them is that if something doesn’t work, at least you know it doesn’t through the use of your system, rather than guessing or flitting.

    Is this the nature of a scientific mind?

    • Hey Razwana,

      I thought it might be you – but How come Google doesn’t know that?

      Weird. Perhaps they’re not as clever as I thought they were.

      Yup, I’m a big believer in systems and in keeping things simple too. I also happen to believe if you can combine those two things well, then you are on to a winner!

      Scientific mind? Hmmm, not sure – sounds a bit swish. Curious mind is probably the closest I come to that…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Content Protected Using Blog Protector By: PcDrome.