What if we convert our plans into experiments?

Last week, I attended a very interesting speech that linked science with businesses, organized by James Johnson in his Meetup "Talkbusiness" and held by Rachel Cruickshank, who has created another Meetup, Barcelona Fun Science, that has the purpose of aproaching science to the people. 

I had the honour one month ago to talk about my project in this meeting, so I still attend other speeches to know other material about businesses and management, and I think this was a specially inspirational one, and I think I can apply some ideas of it in my activities. 

I was asked to draw a scientific. I did it like this

Converting plans into experiments


If I understood properly the speech, we can drive business models like following the scientific methodology, like Lean Startup methodology tries to show us.

The scientific method starts with a question about something that we want to know or prove, but we ignore it at first. This question leads us to formulate hypotesis, that are the answers that we expect to find once the method is over. To prove that the hypotesis is right or wrong, we design an experiment, where we decide what we measure, how we do it, how many times we have to repeat it and which factors don't have to be changed. 

To sum up, we have:

   - Question

   - Hypotesis

   - Experiment design

•       What to measure?
•       How to measure it?
•       Which factors don't change?
•       How many times we repeat it?

My experiment


As I have created a method to work alone and one of its points is creating a plan to develop an activity, I thought that, instead of setting a plan, I could design a scientific experiment in order to improve my tests and my results measuring. That is my designed experiment to develop my project "How to work on your own and not die trying". 

Questions:

- Could someone be interested in a methodology that allows someone to work alone being constant and fluent, avoiding distractions and unmotivation?

-  Can I obtain an income selling a book explaining this method and organizing workshops?



Hypotesis:

-  Some people have to work alone, but they don't know how

-  The main problem of working alone is the lack of discipline, constancy, direction and motivation

-  Working fluently, starting and finishing the planned tasks, without stopping or concerning about the obtained quality, help us to have lighter tasks. Lighter tasks helps us to keep our discipline and complete plans and see any result

-  If we describe a clear direction at first, everything we do will aproach us to our goal or, otherwise, we will learn how to approach to it

- I can organize workshops with many attendants, who will be very satisfied with the learned things, many of them acquiring the book 

-  There are entities dedicated to entrepreneurship or work market that will be interested in showing methods like this to their public



Experiment design:

- What do I measure?

Entities that want to organize my workshops

Number of attendants to the workshops

Degree of satisfaction

Downloaded books


- How to measure it?

Contacting diferent entities that promote business and working opportunities.

Designing workshop contents.

Designing and delivering satisfaction queries.



- Which factors do stay?

The methodology and the book.



- How many times do I repeat the experiment?

According to my methodology, as many times as I need to get the desired result. 

When results are not coming

When we work alone, many times the achieved results are not in proportion to our effort, time and risk invested. 

This use to happen specially at the begining, when we lack almost everything we need to achieve results. 

Probably we try to get clients, followers or readers, but we listen many "nays", negative feedback or we are just ignored. Good results are hard to get, otherwise anyone could be successful easily. 

In these moments, we have to take a hard decision. Keep our plans away and try to be successful or just leave and look for "safer" and "easier" plans to do. 

There is a picture that shows perfectly that situation:

Picture from conwayadventure.com

As we can see, there is a guy who is digging a tunnel to find diamonds. After a while digging tirelessness, the guy gives up his task because he is not seeing any diamond, he thinks that he is digging to nowhere but, as we can see, the diamond are close to him. 

The picture is clear for us, because we see where the diamonds are placed, but is not so clear when we are this guy, who ignores completely if there are diamonds. 

In our activities, we are like this guy. We need to push hard for our goal, specially if we think that probably there is no easier and safer option. 

If we just give up and start another thing, we probably will find ourselves in this same situation, digging without finding any diamond, but we had lost a precious time starting from the begining again. 

Keeping the discipline alive

August is over, and we have to retake our daily routines, those ones that we left to take some days of relax and reset. 

During the last two weeks and a half I have not been doing anything related to work. I have been outside traveling or at home, but during all these time my agenda was empty and my mind empty of stuff too. Now it is time to restart and do everything I left before starting my vacation, and it is time to restart my discipline.

Picture from nightwriterpoet.com

Discipline, a very hard thing to keep alive


Discipline is hard to keep everytime, specially if you are not managed or you are not in a hurry. Discipline means that we have stuff to do (planned by us or by others) within a period of time and we just do it as it was planned. 

Easy to explain, but hard to do. What if we are tired? What if it makes me feel uncomfortable? What if I have the temptation of do funnier stuff? 

We are suppose to overcome all this and do all the planned stuff, but sometimes I decide to do it later, or tomorrow, or leave it now and take a rest, that lasts the rest of the day or I just feel too tired to do such an effort and I am not going to do a good performance. 

Definetely, discipline is hard to keep alive. 




Tips to keep discipline alive


My point is that the harder we think our tasks will be, the harder is keeping discipline alive. Therefore, to keep discipline alive, we must have a "lighter concept" of the tasks we have to do. 

That's what the "How to work on your own and not die trying" method goes mainly about. If we do our tasks just the way they come to our mind, it will be easier to complete them. If our tasks are easier, it will be easier to be disciplined and complete the planned stuff. 



Have a good September and a good return to your tasks. 

Summer disorder

July is a normal month for many people but, in many points, it is a very unusual month, especially in order to keep the daily routines.

Normally, we have to work in July in the same way as we have to work in other months, like October or May, but there is something different in the air, something that asks us to leave all the stuff and enjoy the summertime.

During july, we are thinking more in august than in our work

Schools are closed, and we can remember those times where school year was over and summer just started, and summer meant holidays, no work at all. Besides, many people take holidays in July instead of August, many others are thinking and planning their incoming holidays, many companies change their schedule and the weather is warm. 

Definetely, we are not in a normal month.

Problems with the agenda

July has been a difficult month to follow my agenda. My activities has been more discontinuous and hard than usual. 

During this month, there are many issues that start to stop, and that means that many plans have to wait until September. 

Besides, one can receive invitations to go out, to the beach or somewhere else. During these dates, many people is available for leisure plans, and this plans can be cooler than sitting all the day in a chair. 

Moreover, we feel that this is not a working time, because many people is enjoying free time. Honestly, what others do affect us, and if we know many people is enjoying holidays, we could enjoy them too, and we don't feel like we must do our tasks. 




Discontinuity 


In this situation, it is easy to leave our plans for another time, because we have another plans on the table and we don't feel to follow the plans are really necessary, as we feel like in holiday time. 

We would need to keep the discipline as usual, filling our agenda and do the planned things. If possible, we can do less tasks and try to leave empty space for leisure activities. Maybe they can make us charge our battery and work better later. 

If we work alone, we don't need to follow a squedule, just our plans, and meanwhile they are accomplished, we can let us go and have some fun. 

Enjoy this summertime.