The Let Down Effect

Odds are many of you find yourselves in similar situations during the holidays or vacations. There is a condition that has been introduced to the world by Dr. Marc Schoen of the UCLA School of Medicine called The Let Down Effect.

Dr Schoen says that when under constant stress our bodies release hormones that strengthen the immune system. When we rapidly shift from a state of heightened stress to to relaxation our bodies stop producing these hormones. This means sudden relaxation that comes from your Thanksgiving holiday could actually be leaving us more vulnerable to sickness than before.

(That’s not to say you should sustain your stress, there are long-term consequences to doing that. You can learn more about it, as well as The Let Down Effect and how to minimize it here.)

What I Do When I Get Sick

When I sense the sickness coming on, I immediately start to take both defensive and offensive measures so as to not have too much effect on my productivity. I know I’m supposed to just take it easy, but in reality running my own business makes it nearly impossible to hide under the covers for a few days without prior planning.

Aside from following the generic “get as much rest and drink plenty of water” advice, here are some things I do to stay as productive as I need to be:

Zicam

Common homeopathic recommendations for managing colds or the flu are Vitamin C, Echinacea, and Zinc.

There are studies that have shown Vitamin C does nothing to help with a cold or flu. This is what got Airborne in a heap of trouble for false marketing. I may drink orange juice for the electrolytes and to stay hydrated, but I don’t go out of my way to get extra Vitamin C.

I’ve read about studies on Echinacea that have shown if you take it regularly your immune system could get a boost, but by the time you start feeling the early symptoms of your sickness it is already too late. It sounds like a waste of time and money to me so I don’t mess with it.

That leaves is Zinc. There are studies that show Zinc can reduce the length and severity of the common cold. My personal experiences have shown this to be true. Zinc is the active ingredient in Zicam and I start taking it according to the directions as soon as I think I am getting sick.

I used to use the kind that you shoot up your nose. Apparently that causes some people to lose their sense of smell so its been recalled. This time I bought the lozenges.

Yogi Tea Throat Comfort

This stuff is amazing. Not sure what they put in there and I don’t really care. It just works better than any other hot drink option I’ve tried. I buy it at Whole Foods and I keep a few boxes on hand just in case I ever get sick.

I like to drink it with fresh lemon and honey. It tastes great and feels even better on my throat.

Advil

I don’t mess with Sudafed, DayQuil or any over the counter cold medicines unless things get really bad. They just make me feel more sick than the sickness itself. If the packaging says you shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery, you probably shouldn’t be operating your business either.

I take the recommended dosage of Advil for the entire length of the sickness. This is mainly defensive measure to minimize pain from sore throats or headaches. If Advil doesn’t work on its own, I also have some cough drops or throat lozenges on hand.

Exercise

I can’t do my normal workout routine when I get sick, but I try my damnedest to not spend the entire time laying down. Following Dr. Schoen’s recommendations, I do short, fast workouts to boost my immune system.

I go to the gym in my building that is always empty during the day (if it’s not I try again later.) I do a brisk walk for 3-5 minutes to warm-up, run a mile as fast as I can then do 3-5 minute cool-down. I ignore the fact that my body wants nothing to do with exercise or the treadmill. I come out feeling great because of it. It takes a lot of discipline, but its worth it.

Avoid Taking NyQuil and the like.

NyQuil seems like a great idea as it does help you fall asleep faster. However, it doesn’t allow you to reach REM sleep, which is the only kind that matters. It actually prevents you from getting the only kind of sleep you need. That’s why you always seem to feel hung-over the morning after taking these types of medicines. Not really worth it.

If you have the Advil working full force, this is enough in the later stages of a cold or flu. Early on I take throat lozenges or cough drops before bed to give me enough relief to fall asleep.

If my illness is particularly bad I may break out the Sudafed before bed. I haven’t seen anything that says this blocks the REM sleep and it usually does help me sleep. I try to avoid it as a matter of principle because it makes me feel so loopy.

The Best Defense is a Good Offense

I hope all the American readers enjoyed their Thanksgiving and were able to get through it without getting sick. I wish I were so lucky, but I can guarantee during my next vacation I’ll be taking the advice towards the end of this post to avoid The Let Down Effect the best I can.

Now if you’ll excuse, me I must go make some more tea…

Your turn… What do you do to keep sickness from taking over your productivity and your business?

First:

Entrepreneurs believe financing is important, but many find ways around relying on large equity investments. Those who receive venture capital value it more than those who don’t.

This is obvious but interesting none the less. Why would those who can build a business without giving away the farm see any upside in doing so if they don’t have to?

Second:

The most significant source of funding for all respondents (41% were running their first company) was personal savings. Even in subsequent startups, more than half of the entrepreneurs relied on personal savings.

So most of us are boot strappers, yet if you read the start-up news it seems like our kind barely exists. I wonder why…

I wish they would have defined what success meant and broke out the results by category. For example, it would be interesting to see how those who build highly profitable business differ in their views from those who think eyeballs are the new currency and go for a big exit.

(via The Making of a Successful Entrepreneur – BusinessWeek via Ken Nowack)

As it turns out there is actually a lot of research! Here’s a summary he wrote up for me that compares entrepreneurs to managers:

Recent research in the field of psychology suggests that personality has a great deal to do with being a successful entrepreneur.  In a recent study published in the highly regarded Journal of Applied Psychology (2006, Vol. 91, No. 2, 259-271), Hao Zhao of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Scott E. Seibert of the Melbourne Business School analyzed and combined the results of twenty-three independent research studies.  A statistical method known as meta-analysis was used which allows research studies to be combined in a way that yields overall trends within a field of research.

The twenty-three studies included in the meta-analysis compared entrepreneurs to a group of managers on the five factor personality (FFM) traits.  Statistical differences between entrepreneurs and managers were found on four out of the five personality traits.   Entrepreneurs scored significantly higher than managers on the scales of Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness.  In general, entrepreneurs can be characterized as more creative, more innovative, and more likely to embrace new ideas than their manager counterparts (Openness to Experience).  Second, the results indicated that entrepreneurs were higher than managers on Conscientiousness (i.e., drive and work ethic).  Further analysis indicated that the differences were due to the entrepreneurs having a higher achievement orientation as compared to managers.  Entrepreneurs and managers did not differ on other aspects of the Conscientiousness factor such as dependability, reliability, planning and organizational skills.

The second key set of results showed entrepreneurs to be significantly lower than managers on Neuroticism and Agreeableness.  In general, entrepreneurs appear to be more self-confident, resilient, and stress-tolerant than non-entrepreneurial managers.  These results are logical given the highly stressful, demanding, and changing  work environments which entrepreneurs usually find themselves.  Entrepreneurs are able to tolerate a greater amount of stress without anxiety, tension and psychological distress.  This may help entrepreneurs handle ambiguity, take risks and feel greater comfort with failure.

With regard to lower scores on Agreeableness, entrepreneurs were found to be tougher, more demanding, and more likely to use more negotiation and influence skills than managers.  Finally, no significant differences were found between the two groups on Extroversion.  Therefore, entrepreneurs were no more or less outgoing than the managers.

To simplify, entrepreneurs have a few very specific traits that separate us from our managerial brethren.

1. We are typically more driven and have a stronger work ethic,
2. We’re less susceptible to stress,
3. We’re more self-confident,
4. We’re tougher, and
5. We’re better at influencing others.

(Take that, managers!)

Who are you?

The next question I asked my partner is “How does this research relate to the Innate Index?”

Innate measures 8 personality factors that are the most relevant to the workplace. Here’s how the key traits mentioned above match up:

• High Conscientiousness = High scores for Achievement, Energy and Self-Confidence on the Innate
• High Openness to Experience = High score for Adventuresome on the Innate
• Low Neuroticism = High score for Resilience on the Innate
• Low Agreeableness = Low score for Sensitivity on the Innate

You should take the Innate Index here if you haven’t already then come back to compare your results.

How does your profile compare to the ideal? And…

What if your scores aren’t a good fit?

Have you considered management? Just kidding… Sort of…

Your scores on a personality test are a measurement of how high or low you scored yourself as compared to others who have taken it before you. The test results offer an imperfect mirror, albeit one that is pretty accurate if you were honest while completing the questions.

If the results are telling you that your profile isn’t a perfect match for entrepreneurship it doesn’t mean you are doomed to fail. If you’re way off on a lot of the factors, I would say that you’d have a harder time dealing with the ups and downs inherent in steering your own ship but it is not impossible to succeed.

“What do I do with this Information?”

That’s the question many people have after they see their results. The first step in dealing with what you perceive to be a problem or shortcomings is to be aware it exists. That’s where tests like the Innate get their real utility.

Take my scores for example:

They are in-line except for a pesky, very low score on Energy, which I believe is tied to my low scores on sociability (I appear to be not very excitable because I am shy in social situations.)

I actually knew this from other tests I’ve taken over the years and have wondered if it would be “easier” to be an entrepreneur if activities like networking came more naturally. Alas, It doesn’t matter; I’m an introvert.

Because I’m aware of my natural tendencies to shy away from social situations, I can do something about it. For example:

1. I can hire or partner with extroverted people to balance things out and stay away from sales-oriented or customer service activities
2. I can suck it up and work twice as hard to compensate for my weakness with the hope of reaching a “good enough” level.

If you look at your own results, you can start to imagine how a high or low score on certain factors could affect your relationships and your business-building efforts. From there you can start to figure out what you’d like to do about it, if anything.

Are Entrepreneurs Really “Better” Than Managers?

That depends on who you ask. As you can see, my personality fits pretty closely with the typical entrepreneurial type. The thing about personality test results is that the results should reflect who you are. For those of us with high self-confidence, it’s hard to understand how you’d want to be any other way.

If I were forced to be 100% objective, there are traits that the typical manager have that are “better” than Entrepreneurs. For example, is it really so great to be insensitive? Especially if you knew that good employees will probably leave you if you are a bad boss, which is true, and most employees will judge you on the basis of your interpersonal skills, which is also true.

The Bottom Line

Knowing who you are helps you leverage your strengths and manage with your shortcomings before they become a problem. Go find out.

True entrepreneurship involves the creation of processes, not just the creation of work. If you’ve created a project that requires continual inputs from you and relies on your own work to keep all the plates in the air, congratulations! You have just built a job for yourself. Yes, you have built a job, and maybe even a better job than most people have—but it’s a job, not a business.

A business earns money while you sleep and while you are on vacation. A business is an asset that can be bought and sold. A true business is largely independent of its owner, although of course this is a matter of degree and only rarely is 100% independent. Therefore, entrepreneurs pay close attention to the creation of processes that will eventually allow themselves to focus on what they’re best at, or perhaps even leave the operation entirely.

via The Art of Non-Conformity » What Entrepreneurship Is and Isn’t.

This is a small, but oh-so-important important point about entrepreneurs. Many quit their jobs to do some form of work as a one-man consulting company. In reality all they’ve done is swap one job for another with better hours and less security.

There seems to be a new push for “solopreneurship” but I just can’t get behind it for the reason’s quoted above. This is one of many facets of building businesses that I plan on exploring later on.

Over the last dozen years, I’ve devoured thousands of books on business, leadership, success and lifestyles and learned a ton through my own experience as an entrepreneur and marketing hired-gun. In an effort to shortcut the knowledge acquisition process, I offer these 11 rules for Moguls In Training or MITs:

1. On Leadership: Give a damn

2. On Product Development: Solve a huge problem at the point of greatest pain

3. On Customer service: Give a public damn

via 11 Rules for Moguls in Training | Jonathan Fields. Check out the post to see the other 8.

I collect companies and business ideas like many productivity lovers collect pens and notebooks. Entrepreneurship is in every fiber of my being. My record is far from spotless, but if I judge my performance against the statistics I’ve beat the odds when it comes building businesses.

Productivity’s Role in Entrepreneurship

Overall my successes and my failures have given me interesting lessons on how to start a business from nothing and bootstrap it to profitability. In a bootstrapped company, maximizing both personal productivity and organizational productivity is an absolute requirement for success. You cannot afford to waste time or money along the way to reaching profitability.

It doesn’t end when you reach profitability either. Once profitable, the next step is staying productive enough to keep all the plates spinning and reach extreme profitability.

Once you reach extreme profitability, the next step becomes profitability while reducing your time required to maintaining it…

And then you find another idea you’re passionate about to do it all over again with a new product or business, only this time you do it faster while making fewer mistakes.

My Definition of Productivity

Minimizing the amount of time, money and sanity that is required to reach your goals is my definition of productivity and the only real reason anyone should care about it.

Business building offers countless opportunities to squander away all three of those factors and that is why I believe being an entrepreneur necessarily intersects with maximizing productivity.

The Future

After taking an extended hiatus for a variety of reasons, I’ve realized that I can’t effectively write with the aim of helping others if I’m not doing it from the entrepreneurial lens. I plan on posting whenever I find something worth sharing.

Please check back often, subscribe to my feed or follow me on twitter to be notified of new posts. I look forward to sharing and connecting with fellow entrepreneurs out there!

If you are stressing a lot about finances or spending too much time managing your personal financial world it becomes hard to focus on your business. Here’s my favorite excerpt from the sales schpeel:

The focus is on ACTION

Think back to last January for a minute. We all started off the year paying off Christmas gifts, exhausted from the holiday spending, and swamped with emails back at work. We’ve been so busy looking playing catch-up that we have no time to look forward – to work on ways to earn more, plan for travel or get out of that rat race.

How many blogs and books have you read since then? Be totally honest: What have they done for you? Have you taken action on all the things they told you to do? Have you paid off debts and automated your saving and investing, optimized your spending, or started earning more money?

Look, if the answer is no, it’s not your fault. We all know we want to save more, earn more, and automate your finances — so why haven’t we done it?

Reading – no matter how many hundreds of hours you spend doing it – is just not enough.

That’s why I’m doing this Boot Camp where the goal is not more information, it’s ACTION.

via I Will Teach You To Be Rich | 6 Week Boot Camp.

(Disclaimer: I haven’t taken the course, nor is this an affiliate link. I just agree with the program’s curriculum and have historically agreed with Ramit’s evidence-based, kick-you-in-the-ass style of teaching on his blog.)

My last post was about doing the easy stuff that you’ve been putting off just because you don’t have all the answers or a grand plan. I decided it was time to eat some more of my own dog food and take a look at my incomplete projects.

The shot above is from my active projects list. Four months of inaction is pretty embarrassing for a productivity minded person. I did something about it.

The Re-Design

The Cranking Widgets Blog is coming to you with a new, professional and stylish design / logo combo. The foundation of the new design comes courtesy of WooThemes and a few hours of hacking. They have gorgeous themes by all the designers I would have dreamed of designing my blog.

For the feed-readers out there, come on over to the blog. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Update: Forgot to give a shout-out to Gary Gehiere of Pixel Press Icons for the cog icon in the masthead. I love Gary’s work!

P.S. Big thanks to my friend Chris Bowler and his beautifully relevant Fusion Ad network for alerting me to the awesomeness that is WooThemes.

Combine Ruby on Rails with some free CSS frameworks and APIs, and those in the programming know can develop version 1 applications far faster than ever possible.

Last Friday I was feeling unmotivated and a bit creative so I started thinking about how to scratch that itch. My business partner in a few ventures has done a brilliant job authoring a simple personality test for fun and we had just finished a very lengthy validation study to ensure its results were indeed sound.

I decided it was time dust off my programming fingers and put it online. The goal was to collect data, score the data and produce a report that compared people’s personality to everyone else in our database. I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible to see how people reacted to it and whether or not it was worth putting much energy into long-term.

Three Iterations + Three Hours of Coding = Version 1

Hour 1, Friday: Data collection page that collects and saves data

Hour 2, Saturday: I finished the v1 report graph and registered our domain name, innateindex.com.

Hour 3, Sunday: Another hour on Sunday gave way to v1 report pushing live some tweaks to help text.

We’ve since had a few hundred people check it out with minimal efforts on marketing and have made a few tweaks based on their feedback. You can take the Innate Index for yourself at innateindex.com.

What I used to get it done:

1) Ruby on Rails – The programming framework that controls the system

2) Blueprint – A CSS framework that allows non-designers like me to create layouts that are good enough. I’m not a designer, but I do have a good idea on what makes a good layout. Blueprint is great for people like me to get something released for others to kick around.

3) Google Charts API – A free and dead simple charting API that produces the graphs. I send it all the data as part of the image tag, it returns an image matching exactly what I asked for. No need for purchasing anything

What’s the Point? What does this have to do with Business and Productivity?

There’s a hidden point here that is much bigger than “modern programming is awesome.” As a programmer or techie entrepreneur, it’s never been easier to get a project up and running. If you have an idea that you think you can make money one day, just get going with it. Get something out there and get it out early. It doesn’t need to be perfect, start something and see how people react to the idea.

In our case, the out of pocket costs here were $11 for a domain and a few hours of time. If I didn’t program myself, we could have found someone to help on oDesk and our costs would probably have been $100-$400 to get here. If things take off, we’ll hire a designer to make it prettier. We’ll add in more functionality to make it easy to share. We’ll give people more reasons to want to share.

We know there are a bunch of ways to make money off of a validated personality test, all of which are predicated on being able to show we have a lot of data and statistics that show the data supports the results we give to people so that’s what we focus on for now.

What’s the outcome?

It’s been one week we’ve had about 150 complete the Innate Index so far with minimal “marketing.” What we have now is far from perfect, but we’ll get it there if it proves to be worth the effort. We are having fun seeing how people react and how it spreads.

I recognize this isn’t world-changing success. First versions of anything we produce rarely are. What it has done for my partner and me is make us both pretty motivated to keep the development going.

Prior to pushing the Innate Index live for others to take it, we had the ready-to-do-something validated questionnaire for about a month or two. 150 may not seem like a lot but its 150 more than we had when we were sitting on our thumbs thinking we needed the whole grand scheme mapped out before we could do anything. These 150 give us something pretty valuable: the motivation to continue to take action.

Now it’s your turn.

Think about the projects, ideas or initiatives you’ve been sitting on that might benefit you, your family or your business. What can you do in a few hours to get them going and see if they’re worth the space they occupy in your mind or on your lists?

Oh yeah, and take the Innate Index.

As we get to about thigh deep, all of the sudden the waves started getting bigger and coming at us non-stop. With the weight of our gear and the pounding of the waves, the effort to keep moving out beyond the break-point became exhausting. As soon as we would come up for air, another wave would hit us, which gave us little time to catch our breath. At one point, someone in the group started panicking and froze. I saw her going under water. Immediately, I swim over, grab her inflation hose and air shoots into her BCD. She is now safely floating on her back just beyond the break point, but suffering from shock and exhaustion. I grab the back of her tank and begin the dead mans tow further out to sea, safe from the surf.

A Passionate Struggle

This was my first beach dive. I was getting PADI certified for open water diving. My instructor was named Justin. Justin loves diving. He’s is an amazing instructor and it was obvious to me that his passion for diving consumed every fiber of his being. I knew what to do at that instant because he taught it to me in a way that made me excited to learn about it. I’m a terrible student, but I respected his passion for what he does and it got me through my first trial as a diver my first time out without much thought.

Justin had a thing for a friend that took the class with me so I got to know him a bit more than the others in the group. Among other things, I learned that drives a beat up old truck, lives in a so-so part of town and has to work as a waiter during the night just to pay his bills. At one point he admitted he was barely getting by and doesn’t dive nearly as much as he would like to due to expense. He told me teaching more would allow him to dive more often, but it didn’t pay well enough to cover the bills.

In career theory passionate people are generally fall into a category known as specialists. Specialists want to do nothing more than what they specialize in. Great artists don’t become great artists by getting bored and becoming gardeners, they keep building on their greatness. Generally these passionate people are stuck behind a desk doing something they’re not so passionate about. Sometimes that gives them the funds they need to do what they love whenever they like, but more often they’ll earn barely enough to finance their passion.

It has always bothered me that good, passionate people are so deserving of a comfortable life, yet many are barely getting by. I know talented musicians, artists, wood workers and teachers who all fit into this category. It doesn’t seem right to work so hard to obtain a respectable skill in one area of life only to struggle to find the means to spend time doing that skill.

There is Hope… If You’re Willing to be a Career Renegade

When Jonathan Fields offered me an advance copy of his new book, Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love, I jumped at the chance to receive it. I had learned about Jonathan’s blog a few months ago and became a fan of his writing, and attitude towards life, almost instantly.

Career Renegade starts off by telling us about Jonathan’s history. He is an ex-attorney who worked himself sick — literally. After putting in 72 hours straight to close a large deal for one of his clients, he collapsed and had to be taken to the emergency room for abdominal surgery due to stress caused by his work schedule. This was a wake-up call for him and put him on a new path to find his passions, work with people who shared them and help others whenever possible. This book is a guide for how others can find the same path.

What I like about Career Renegade is that it is far more practical than other career books I’ve read. It doesn’t preach that you should simply find your passion and do it until others around you notice it and reward you for it. It doesn’t say you should live as a pauper because your passion is what really will make you happy. He recognizes that you have to feed your family and deserve to live well doing what you love.

Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love is an easy read from beginning to end. Jonathan’s writing is both practical and inspirational. I particularly like the use of case studies to illustrate points keeps the content fresh and easily digestible.  Often chapters will end with a practical call to action or exercises designed to get you going. It also offers a plethora of resources throughout the book, which are extremely relevant, cost-effective and stand to save hours of research.

Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love offers the inspiration and information you need to embark on your own renegade path. I highly recommend Career Renegade: How to make a Living Doing What you Love to those or you who are searching for, and often deserving, greater meaning and reward from the work you do.