Issue #26 You can’t do it either

In 2009 a group of people were plopped down in the middle of the Sahara desert with no compass and told to walk in a straight line.

Do you think you could do it?

There is a reason we have compasses: they give us direction; they tell us which way is North to be sure we are moving in the right direction, whether that be straight or curvy.

When the Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics put those people in the Sahara, they discovered that the participants walked in circles if they did not have a compass or a reference point.

And not big circles. People walked in circles as tight as 66 feet.

They all thought they were walking in a straight line. They all KNEW they could do it, even if the others couldn’t.

But they wouldn’t have even made it across a football field.

Your business is the Sahara desert but with water.

It is a blank canvas, you can go in any direction, but you must pick one and keep going to thrive.

Without a direction, you will go in circles.

You will confuse busyness with business.

It is natural; it is how we are built as human beings. We strive, create, do, and without a guide, we walk in circles until we collapse into an exhausted heap.

Don’t become an exhausted heap in the middle of the Sahara desert.

Build your compass, create your vision, strategy, and objectives so that you thrive instead.

Enjoy,
Jeff

Start Here: Your North Star Vision

If those participants in the study could see the sun or the stars or some other reference point, that was enough to keep them going in the right direction.

So, if you do nothing else, create your North Star vision. It is your guide; even just that one reference point is enough to keep you spinning in circles.  

Here is how to get started.

Going to the Sahara and Don’t Know How to Read a Compass?

As one who traipses through wilderness areas and prefers not to get lost, I can tell you that compasses are pretty cool gadgets. If you aren’t familiar with compasses, there is a lot more going on than you think.  

But to use them effectively, you have to spend some time learning how.  Here is a great video on how to read a compass from REI.  

All compasses take some work to learn but having one and knowing how to use it could be the difference between thriving and going in circles.

From Around the Web

• 💸 Do you think you have a hiring problem?  At least you are not Amazon; they just announced plans to hire 55k technology workers; this is the first push under CEO Andy Jassy.
• 👩‍⚖️ No plan B?  Elizabeth Holmes famously said that having a plan B is planning to fail. She is famous for founding Theranos, which claimed they could diagnose everything wrong with you with a drop of blood.  She had no plan B, her product didn’t work, and now her fraud trial just started. A quote from a juror who saw here on 60 Minutes: “I’m just glad I didn’t invest.” Once you have your compass, pivoting is not a weakness it is a strength.  
  
  🚀 Have an extra $250,000? Virgin Galactic has sold 600 tickets for a few minutes of almost space travel.  (Note: “minutes” and “almost.”).  Can we all agree that we want to have strong enough businesses to be able to spend $250,000 like that?  And take the family?