Errors of ignorance versus errors of ineptitude

In his latest book (The Checklist Manifesto), surgeon Atul Gawande makes a simple yet profound distinction. Some mistakes are made because the person doesn’t know enough or know the right information or have the right skills (these are errors of ignorance), but other mistakes arise from not applying what we know.

In implementing strategies to move my life, work and income in the direction of freeing my time from money and still making a meaningful positive impact on the world, I must admit most of the mistakes and missteps I have made have been from not applying what I know.

I procrastinate on implementing what I know would help move me forward: hiring some more outsourcing help to implement the overwhelming number of ideas for projects I constantly generate; hiring a coach/project manager to “herd my cats,” that is, to help me stay focused and working on the right things and moving projects to completion in a more systematic and timely manner.

So, this post is to get you thinking about what kind of mistakes you make: Do you need more information or skills? Or do you need to use what you already know in a better way?

Advice on getting started building an email list and generating online income

Some in my advanced coaching group was having trouble getting focused and figuring out where to put her energy/time and what to do first.

Here were my suggestions. After I wrote them, I made them a little more generic and thought some of you might want to read them. Could they apply in your situation?

I would put together a free report on your topic. About 15 pages, written in Word, spruced up with some graphics and turned into a PDF. Put another free offer of an audio someone will record interviewing you on your topic. Mention this audio in the report so even if people forward it to others, your name, contact information and your offer will be in there.

Send the offer of the free report out to anyone you can think of that you have permission to email and ask them to forward it to anyone they think might be interested. Announce it on your Facebook feed; your Twitter feed; etc. Put up a YouTube video on your topic area and put a live, clickable link to the free report on the YouTube description box.

To do this, you’ll need:
1. To have set up a mailing list management service (like AWeber or Constant Contact or iContact or MadMimi) to capture emails, manage them and send out autoresponders.
2. Write the free report, get someone you know to edit it and check for errors. Then get some graphically-oriented person to fancy it up and turn it into a PDF.
3. Start thinking about what products or services you want to sell once you gather a list and get more well known. Begin to create those products/services; create a page that describes each one somewhere on the web (on a blog or website); set up an online shopping cart and set up the product or service you are selling on that shopping cart; then get the code for that product and service and put that on the sales page you set up.
4. Start thinking about what additional services/products you would offer people who bought anything from you (this is called “the upsell” in marketing/sales). It could be a more advanced course (audio, video, online) going more in depth on the topic, etc.
5. Set up another page to describe and sell your upsell and arrange to send people to that page after they have purchased your initial product.

The Power of Completion

Years ago, I attended a time management seminar and the presenter made a point that has stuck with me: Anything that is incomplete in your life can drain energy and completion can bring or free energy.

Every time you walk by that bill that needs to be paid or that paper that needs to be filed or that leaky faucet that needs to be fixed, a little bit of your attention and energy go into that unfinished thing.

I heard an organizational expert speaking the other day who claimed that every paper on your desk distracts you 5 times a day. I don’t know where she got that (I am suspicious of these kinds of statistics, like “we only use 10% of our brains”; first problem-how do “they” know this; second, stats rarely come in even numbers like 10% or 5%), but even if it isn’t exactly scientific fact, she has a point.

What can you handle easily that could create energy that can then help you complete or tackle other projects or undone things?

Try your own unscientific experiment and discover whether or not the principle is true for you. Does completion bring energy and do incomplete things drain your energy?