Engineering Opportunities
I recently started juicing vegetables on a daily basis. It feels great to get that daily dose of vitamins and minerals that my diet has been sorely lacking in years past.
And man, do I feel better – both physically and mentally. That certainly has a positive impact on my work and my business.
…
As I’ve been exploring new directions in my businesses, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I choose to spend my time at work.
What types of projects should I take on? Which business ventures are worth pursuing? Which meetings and calls should I take? What should I do today?
Everything falls into one of two categories:
- Production Tasks: Things that produce a known result right now.
- Opportunity Tasks: Things that have unpredictable results, but put me in a position for opportunity.
Production Tasks are easy. Build a new feature; Write an email; Make a sales call; Field support requests. These types of things are necessary to keep my businesses running day-to-day.
Opportunity Tasks are harder because they are seemingly less important right now. They can also take me out of my comfort zone. No wonder most people put them off or ignore them altogether.
Opportunity Tasks would include things like writing a personal blog post, hosting a podcast, submitting a guest article on another blog, attending or speaking at a conference or meetup, writing a book… Anything that puts yourself out there.
Every Opportunity Task runs the risk of turning out to be a flop. A waste of valuable time. But the potential benefits of Opportunity Tasks outweigh all of the risks.
If I’m investing time in putting myself out there, I’m opening the door to opportunities — especially those that can’t be predicted. Building an audience, bringing a community together, teaching, and seeking feedback — _publicly… _As I listen to the stories of countless entrepreneurs, the most successful ones tend to start out by doing things that positioned themselves for opportunities later.
I loved this exchange in Louis C.K.’s recent NYTimes interview:
Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?
Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?
You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.
So why do I have the platform and the recognition?
At this point you’ve put in the time.
There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.
The Alternative?
Keep putting off the blog/podcast/book for another day. Spend all my time hammering through whatever’s on my plate right now. Hustle and claw for every drop of traffic and every customer. This approach works, but it’s always an up-hill climb.
A healthier approach
Invest more time in Opportunity Tasks and prioritize them equally or higher than Production Tasks. Keep building and positioning my business for whatever is coming down the pike next month, next year, or later. When something does come around, building the platform, the audience, the community, the contacts, is what will propel it forward and with much easier success than grinding it out quietly, alone.
Gotta get those vegetables.