Mastery and Other Tricks: The Element of Understanding How to Give Yourself More Flexibility

We are living in a time of great flexibility.

Because we have cars, we can live in one place and work in another.

Because of cheap fiber, we can live in one country and serve customers across the world.

Because of all the developments in telecommunication, communication technologies and social media, we can do business with, and communicate instantly, with people anywhere in the world.

How do we harness the power of flexibility in our lives?

First, we need to understand all the things that impact the amount of flexibility we have in our lives.

We have to understand who has more flexibility, and who doesn’t, and why.

And we have to understand how to close the gap between us and those who have more flexibility.

People who are their own boss have more flexibility

When you are your own boss, you call the shots.

Want to hire somebody?

You can call them up and say, “You have a job”.

Want to hire 4 people instead of 1? This is something I actually did when I had my own creative shop Purple Patch.

You can do that.

Want to give your star employee a raise after a month on the job?

You can do that.

Want to close up shop for a week and go on a holiday?

You can do that.

When we work for a company, we have much less power.

We have to get the “headcount approved” before we can hire anybody.

We can give raises only once a year and there is a fixed amount of money we get to distribute.

Our power even over our own benefits is limited.

For instance, we have to get our PTO ‘approved’ before we can go on vacation.

Being your own boss, you get to decide when to work, how to work, what you can spend money on, when to hire and how many to hire, which customers to do business with, and so much more.

So hearken to that entrepreneurial spirit in you.

Failing that, know when you have the right boss.  Micromanager type bosses will never give you any flexibility. 

Find a flexible boss, if flexibility matters to you.

The smaller your business, the more flexibility you will have

Once your business reaches a certain size, and certainly if you go public, you cannot make decisions as easily or quickly as you did, when you were a small business owner.

The great part about owning a small business is the flexibility.

So as you grow your business, know what you are after.

People who have an education have more flexibility

If you have an education or specialized training, you will have more flexibility.

If your education or training is in demand, you will have even more.

Currently, training in Xactly and Varicent, as well as being an experienced commissions analyst, is in high demand.

This gives me flexibility to get assignments and to pick and choose between them.

Being in certain fields gives you more flexibility

If you are a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, an accountant – you can go anywhere and get a job; whereas a techie can only get a job in technology or manufacturing.  In both the fields I have worked in – advertising and commissions administration, I have had to be in big cities to get a job and have a career.

People who have broader exposure and experience have more flexibility

The more exposure and experience you have, the more flexibility you will have. As an experienced Commissions Consultant, with more than 10 assignments under my belt, I have exposure to multiple companies and plans. I have used Xactly in multiple assignments. I have used Varicent in multiple assignments. I have used Excel in multiple assignments. I have experience in administration, testing and implementations. All this gives me tremendous flexibility.

Look to broadening your exposure and experience if you want to increase your flexibility.

For instance, if I added Callidus to my repertoire, I would enjoy even more flexibility than I do now.

The more value you deliver, the more flexibility you will have

If we want to increase our flexibility, we have to look for ways to deliver value.

Delivering value means delivering something that is not expected. On every assignment, this is what I try to do. I have found a sure way to deliver value is to create a commissions process document for a company, if they don’t already have one.  I have created commission process documents for several companies.  Further, at some of these companies, I have used the commissions process document I have written to train a new commissions analyst.  This enabled me to make improvements to the document, based on instruction gaps which surfaced during the training.

At my current assignment, I created a Commissions Process Document, and I also created a Commissions Detail Report to enable crediting checks to be done simply and effectively.

These are examples of how to deliver value and increase your flexibility.

Note, if you want to deliver value, you may have to do it on your own time, or in your downtime. 

You were hired to handle some specific tasks.  You are expected to do that, and to do it well.  That should be your first priority.

But you should look for ways to deliver value over and above that, using any available time you have such as downtime, and, dare I say, even your personal time.

You have everything to gain and nothing to lose

The more mastery you have, the more flexibility you will have

Mastery will give you flexibility in terms of what you can charge for your work, flexibility in terms of how much time you take on a project, flexibility in terms of what you are allowed to do, and the freedom with which you can do it. 

Master architects and designers have this flexibility. 

Recently, in a book I was reading, I learned about a company that specializes in building and restoring church organs.  They have made a name for themselves.  Naturally, their customers will even wait in line for them to become available to do the job. 

Become a master at what you do, so that customers will line up for you and give you complete room to innovate and do the best job.

Life circumstances can give you more flexibility

Being single, being unattached, being married without kids, being an empty nester, any of these circumstances gives you more flexibility.  You can stay as long as you want at work, you can both travel without restrictions; you can take vacations in the off season. You have a lot more options and flexibility, than people who are not in your situation.

Make the most of being single, being unattached, being married without kids, or being an empty nester.

Don't whine.  Make the most of the flexibility you have.

People with an emergency cushion have more flexibility

I was able to walk out of my job in 2010, because I had an emergency cushion.  For the next one and a half years, I supported myself without an unemployment check, and what’s more, I earned less than what an unemployment check would have given me.  But because I had savings, I was fine.

Give yourself an emergency cushion and you too will have more flexibility.

People with no debt have more flexibility

The other reason I had the guts to quit my job in 2010, was because I had no debt.  I did not even have a car loan.

If you want to give yourself more flexibility, try to keep your debt burden to a minimum, and work towards getting it down to zero, even.  It is a worthwhile goal.

People who rent have more flexibility

There I said it.  I know it is everyone’s dream to own a home, but with renting, you have less fixed expenses, you have more flexibility to move, and more.

If you manage/use unstructured time well, it will give you more flexibility

I used to take the bus to go to my Varian Medical assignment in Palo Alto.  The bus ride was one and a half hours. I always had a book to read, plus a note pad and a pen. Many a Minoo Jha Life Strategies post was written on those bus rides.

I also think about ideas for posts, when I am in stuck in 5 mph traffic on the way to work.

If you make the most of your unstructured time – when you are in a waiting room, when you are stuck in traffic, you will have more flexibility.

If you combine activities, it will give you more flexibility

For instance, simply combining what you get done every time you make a car trip will give you more flexibility - such as buying your groceries on the way home from work.

I combine exercise with reading – I ride a stationary bike with a book in my hand.  A lot of my reading gets done that way.

Being spontaneous gives you more flexibility

In 2013, I was sponsored by an implementations company to go to Toronto, Canada to do Varicent training.

The GM of the implementations company called me up and said “We would like to sponsor you to go for training to Canada, we will cover all your expenses, but you will have to fly out next Tuesday”. It was less than a week away. I told him to give me an hour to figure out whether I could do it and I called him back and said yes.

The more flexible and adaptable we are, the more we can say yes to opportunities and options that come our way.

Having gaps in your calendar will give you more flexibility

I deliberately have a very open calendar so I can be spontaneous.  It gives me the flexibility to adapt to other people's schedules and be ready to do interesting things.

The fewer restrictions you have, the more flexibility you will have

Because of our life circumstances, we may have restrictions.  We should not try to add extra restrictions on top of that.

For instance, not being able to drive in the Bay Area would be a huge restriction in any resident’s life.

I realized this as soon as I came to America and my first priority was to learn driving.

If I hadn’t learned to drive, I would have much less flexibility both in my work life and in my personal life.

The more knowledgeable you are, and the more things you can do, the more flexibility you will have

We should try to become as knowledgeable and as capable as we can.

Because the things we are able to do will give us more flexibility.

And the things we are unable to do could hold us back.

To give you an example, if you know how to do your taxes, you will have more flexibility in doing your taxes and managing your money.

So think about learning to do the things that other people have learned to do.

Enjoy the benefits that they enjoy.

Don’t know how to drive?  Learn.

Don’t know how to cook?  Learn.

Don’t know how to use a computer to do certain things?  Learn.

You want to increase your flexibility, whether it is to get a job, or to manage your health, finances, or any other aspects of your life.

Fewer hang-ups will give you more flexibility

If you can’t do this, or you can’t do that, which everyone else is perfectly capable of doing, or you have too many requirements, you are not going to have flexibility.

For instance, to give you an example from the travel sphere, if you need a window seat and you need a specific kind of food that's not easily available, and you can only leave at a certain time, you will have less flexibility to fly.

Good health gives you more flexibility

With good health, you can do many more things.

If you have bad health, it will limit the kind of jobs you can take up and it will certainly rule out jobs where there is no health insurance.

Recently I heard a story about someone who applied to a job. She interviewed over the phone, and the hiring manager found her a perfect fit for the job.  He asked her to come in for a face-to-face interview just as a formality –she interviewed so well on the phone, he had a job offer ready for her.  Unfortunately, she was in bad health and could not climb a small flight of stairs easily.  At the end of the interview, when she got up, she fell off her chair and couldn't get up off the floor.  As a result of this, the manager declined to give her the job.

Work on your health so it never becomes an obstacle in any areas of your life.

If you make more friends, you will have more flexibility

When I first came to America, I did not have any friends.

My car got towed twice during my first year in America. 

Each of those times, it was an ordeal to get to the towing company to get my car back, because I had no one to drive me.

I had to catch multiple buses, and a cab, with Tanita tagging along.

Two months ago, my car got towed, and I was immediately able to call one of my friends to get a ride to the yard where my car was.

P.S.  Lest you think I have a habit of parking where I shouldn’t, this recent incident happened after 19 years.

My daughter Tanita has lots of friends.  Her friends have helped her in lots of sticky situations.

Once when Tanita went to Santa Cruz, she accidentally dropped the car keys between some rocks.  After searching for the keys for half an hour, she gave up.  She got one of her friends to come to our house, get the spare car key from me and drive the key up to her in Santa Cruz, even though it was 8 p.m. at night.

This is just one of many jams her friends have helped her get out of.

If we don’t make friends, we will spend a lot more time (and money) on many things, because we have to do everything by ourselves.

If you make enemies, you will have less flexibility

Connected with this, if you make enemies, you will have less flexibility.

As an example, if you make enemies of the immediate people you work with, they will not have your back.

Here is a scenario that could easily happen – where you would be in a jam.

You accidentally leave some leftover food on your desk when you leave office on a Thursday.

On Friday, you find you are not able to go into work for some reason.

You should be able to call one of the people you work with, and say, “Hey, I left half a foil-wrapped burrito on my desk.  Do you mind tossing it in the trash can, since I won’t be coming in till Monday?

You won’t be able to do that if you have made enemies of your coworkers.

Being low maintenance and having few demands gives you more flexibility

I think what I am appreciated for most in my assignments is that I am low maintenance.  I adapt to the environment.  No computer? I bring my own. No access to shared folders? I create a Drop Box account.  No cube for me to sit? I sit in a conference room, work from home, or use an open space. No badge? I call when I get to the lobby every day. No really juicy stuff for me to work on, just what no one else wants to do. I do it without any trace of attitude. Also, I do not badger, or get antsy, as the end date of my assignment nears.  I stay focused on the work till the very end.  In fact, my promise to each of my hiring managers is “I will be here as long as you need me, and no longer than you need me.”

Being low maintenance should extend to as many areas of your life as possible for maximum flexibility.  This means you should be open to new foods, easy about adapting to other people’s schedules and tastes, etc.  If for example, a restaurant has to be picked for an event, it’s best to say “I'm fine with anything.” This is one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself - be able to socialize without being high maintenance.

I used to be a high maintenance person.  I changed about a decade ago. The benefits of changing were so enormous, I feel everyone should become a low maintenance person without a moment's delay.

I observe, as we become older, the more inflexible we become, and the more difficult it is for us to do things any other way, but the way we are used to.

This inflexibility does us no good.

So make a pact with yourself  - catch yourself in the act of being inflexible, and deliberately choose to go the other way.

In no time, you will be so flexible, no one will ever accuse you of being anything but.

Here are some quotes to inspire you:

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“That which yields is not always weak.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“I want to caution you against the idea that balance has to be a routine that looks the same week in and week out.”
― Kevin Thoman

“The measure of a person’s strength is not his muscular power or strength, but it is his flexibility and adaptability.”
― Debasish Mridha MD

“There may be arrogance – and the laziness of someone who is indefatigable when doing what he enjoys, but only when doing that.”

― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.”
― Jeff Bezos

“Yielding flexibility is a virtue of an ever-expanding heart.”
― Molly Friedenfeld

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M….a Pearl Seekerlike you.  Thanks to Ajay for his compliments on my last post, and thanks to the rest of you for your likes, pins, tweets and shares.  Much appreciated.

Related posts:

How to Become a Low Maintenance Person

The Making of a Mentathlete

The Element of Understanding How We Feel and Think is Not Going to Be How We Will Always Feel and Think and its Hope for Being Less Rigid

If I am a Good and Faithful Wife, I Deserve To be Loved

The Element of Staying Up to Date and Its Hope for Being One Step Ahead of Opportunities, Challenges, Changes, and Threats

Time can move on and leave us behind.

No matter what our business, field, line of work, or hobby, we need to stay abreast of the latest trends, skills, statistics (and technologies), so time does not leave us behind.

We should review our situation frequently, and we should identify improvements and changes we could make.

It will be tempting for us to wait for things to fall in our lap, “I am so comfortable where I am” or “I will let the cards fall where they may”.

But “Comfortable where I am” is fine, only until it is not.

We may wake up and find out time has left us behind.

The longer we stay in one-track thinking and acting modes, the higher the risk.

Before I became a consultant, I was employed at one company for 5 years.

The learning curve was steep when I joined. But after 2 years at the company, I knew all the ins and outs of the job, and my work became routine and comfortable.

So I chugged along at my job for another 3 years.  Besides being familiar with the work, there was the added attraction that my boss allowed me to work from home 3 days a week, and in the afternoons on the other 2 days of the week as well, so I was pretty much working from home. Who could ask for more? It was a happy place to be in.

That is, until it was not.  When the economy took a nose dive, a new manager was brought in over my manager.  That was when the trouble in paradise began.

I found myself fighting. Fighting to hold on to my telecommuting; fighting to justify the hours I spent on my work; fighting to stave off being made to take on work unrelated to commissions, such as MDF and revenue recons.

One fine day, I quit – I had an emergency cushion to support myself, but little else.

I gave up my job in a depressed economy with sky-high unemployment rates.

I did not know if I would ever be able to find my footing again.

Looking back, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

I discovered there’s nothing like a little bit of self-induced life stress to caffeinate the brain.

By quitting, my brain moved from auto-pilot to pilot.

To use a riding analogy – when a horse is new, our brain is in high alert, and we have to focus.

After a while, we get used to the horse, and riding the horse becomes second-nature for us.

The longer we ride the same horse, the more comfortable we get, and the more resistant we are to the idea of riding a new horse.

To us, a new horse carries the risk of being wild, and untamed, and problematic.

A new horse also carries the risk of us falling flat on our face.

Some of us secretly fear we may not be as smart, clever, or successful at riding, as we appear to be.

We secretly wonder if we just got lucky - getting a good horse to ride, and being able to ride it all this time.

This second-guessing repeatedly plays in the back of our mind.

Along with that, there’s the associated fear, if something ever happens to the horse we are riding, we may never be able to find another horse to ride.

As we advance in life, the fear of not being able to find another horse to ride, becomes bigger and bigger.

Well, when I walked out of my full-time job in 2010, I was forced to deal with this fear head-on.

I had an emergency cushion, but nothing else to fall back on.

Would I be able to find a horse to ride again, and would I be able to have staying power on that horse? Both of these were unknowns.

Happily, the answer turned out to be yes.

What was my secret?

I was willing to look at different stables, and learn to ride new horses – that was my secret.

I decided to learn Xactly.

It was an unusual decision.

In my field, every Commissions Analyst learns Xactly (or Varicent or Callidus) by being sponsored by their employers for training.

But I decided to take the bull by the horns, and to do the training on my own dime, and on my own time, ahead of getting a job in a company that uses Xactly for their commissions.

I called the Xactly Trainer and said, “I am unemployed, and cannot get a job because I do not know Xactly.  Can I do the Admin course? I will pay from my own pocket.”

And so, thanks to Sonia, the Xactly trainer, who convinced Xactly to bend the rules to accommodate my request, I did the Xactly Admin course.

A few months later, Sonia put me on to an implementations company.

Again, I had a choice to make.

Wait to get a full-time Commissions Analyst job with benefits, or do contract work for this implementation and testing company, and get Xactly implementations exposure.

There was the risk of falling on my face, but I chose to ride this new horse.

I earned less than an unemployment check in the next 14 months, but I learned to ride a new horse, and it has benefited me ever since.

What new horses are you afraid to ride?

If you are afraid to ride these new horses, think back on all the things which made you uncomfortable once, but which you are relaxed about doing now.

When things are unfamiliar, we make a bigger deal of them than they are.

Because of growing up without a phone, and getting into a career where I had to spend my time writing advertising copy, I used to be uncomfortable about talking on the telephone, even scared to.

If I had the choice, I always wrote someone, rather than call them.

Now since I have gotten over this fear of talking on the phone, I cannot believe this scenario once actually happened in one of my jobs:

Scenario:

I was waiting on some information from the sales reps, which I needed to process commissions.

In spite of sending repeated emails to the sales reps, requesting the information, some of them had not responded.

When my manager asked me where I was on that work, I complained I hadn’t been able to finish it, because some of the reps had not responded to my email.

I still remember how he irritably turned to me and said:  “Minoo, please get on the phone and ask them for the information.  You shouldn’t have waited this long.”

As a Commissions Consultant, going from company to company, I have to learn to ride new horses every few months.

At one company, instant messaging was the new horse. 

Before I contracted at that company, I did not like instant messaging.  But the manager at the company had a fondness for instant messaging. It was her preferred method for communicating with her team. Once when she instant messaged me, and I didn't respond, she came by my desk a little later, and irritably inquired (yes we can provoke irritation by not being willing to ride some horses), why I had not responded to her instant message. I quickly adapted to instant messaging after that day.

At another assignment, the horse I had to learn to ride was converting text information into tabular information.  I was writing an FRD for a Varicent implementation, and, accustomed to my copywriting ways, I described all the plan calcs in long paragraphs.  The implementations architect I was writing the FRD for asked me to convert all the paragraphs to tables.  It was a challenge, but I was grateful for the challenge after I finished the FRD.  It turned out to be the best FRD I have written till date, and it is because of those tables.

Thanks to working for different implementation companies, I learned to ride all of the following horses –Kick-off documents, FRDs, DMS documents, Prototypes, Solution Process Documents and User Operating Guides. I learned to write test scenarios and conduct UAT. And I learned all the tools to make presentations remotely. My post Are you a Virtuoloso? was inspired by some of the things that became second-nature for me.

And now I have a confession to make. I was a Luddite when it came to smart phones.  I resisted owning a smart phone for as long as I could.  Then when T Mobile acquired Metro PCS, my carrier, I was informed by Metro PCS I would need to upgrade my phone to a 4G phone and to go to one of their stores as soon as possible. I was slow in acting on this, and by the time I got around to it, only the smallest flip phones were available for me to upgrade to; I knew that wouldn’t work for me, because I communicated with several people, most importantly Tanita, via texting; so I took the plunge and opted for a smart phone (the cheapest smart phone available).

Am I glad I did?

Not only, do I use Google voice search and Google maps on my new phone all the time, but in my current assignment, to log onto VPN, we had to download a smart phone app in order to enter a mobile token.  A year ago, I didn’t have a smart phone, so this wouldn’t have been possible. 

What are all the areas in which we could benefit from being up to date?

Not all of them are connected with our jobs and businesses.

In our personal lives too, there are many areas in which it would benefit us to stay up to date.

Take taxes, for instance.

The tax rules change every year.

Tax credits change, 401K and IRA contribution limits change, also our circumstances change.  We need to keep abreast of the changes.

Will we earn any 1099 income this year?

If we are on top of things, we will know we have to pay advance taxes to the IRS on that.

Did we take money from our 401K? We will have to pay a 20% penalty, plus tax at our normal tax rate on the amount we withdrew.

Did our 19 year old child file her own taxes, and claim herself on her taxes? We can't claim her too.

These are just examples.

In general, we should stay up to date on all the rules and laws that are applicable to our lives and circumstances.

Another area in which we should try to stay up to date is in health matters.

This is even more so, if we have a condition such as pre-diabetes, diabetes, blood pressure, or anything else.

We may be surprised by what we discover.

My eyes have been opened so much in the last six months, thanks to medical and health professionals, practitioners and writers, such as Dr. Ronesh Sinha, Dr. Jason Fung, Martin Berkham, Marty Kendall, Dr James Watson, and even the much-dismissed and much-maligned Dr. Mercola.

Here is just a sprinkling of what I learned:

o    When you cross 50, you are more likely to have too much iron than too little iron

o    You can be overweight and deficient in Vitamin D, especially Vitamin D3

o    You can be overweight and deficient in folate and B vitamins.

o    You can improve your insulin resistance more by ‘not eating breakfast’ than by ‘eating breakfast’

o    The insulogenic index is more important than the glycemic index

o    A little extra fat is less harmful to someone with insulin resistance, than a little extra carbohydrate.

So open your eyes, and don't be afraid of finding new horses to ride.

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week…..M…..a Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay for his compliments on my last post, and thanks to the rest of you for your likes, pins and shares. Much appreciated.

Links to the health information mentioned in this post. I hope you will check them out:

Dr. Ronesh Sinha – on carb trafficking, body fat storage and insulin resistance

Dr. Jason Fung - if there's one video you should watch on Intermittent Fasting, this is it.

Martin Berkhan - Lean Gains - a body-builder and trainer who has been doing and writing about Intermittent Fasting since 2007

Marty Kendall - lots of great info on the Insulogenic Index, and other topics relevant to diabetes

James Watson - writes on anti-aging topics such as Alzheimers

Dr. Mercola - writes on lots of health topics including aging.