Here’s something you never hear. I asked my 12 year old son what he was doing this past Saturday afternoon. “Playing a math game from school.” Huh? By the next day, my 16 year old daughter was also playing. I asked her if it was challenging at all. She said, “I guess I needed to get back to the basics.”
The Basics
In all business and life, there are basics and fundamentals. It’s what we all learn and then proceed to forget or abandon. We worry about the big stuff or the “new” and the tricky. But we lose sight of the absolute level one work that earns us a chance to succeed. There are basics all around us.
Where we get a bit twisted up are that there are different sets of basics for different parts of the process. The basics of me landing new customers is different than the basics of me serving those customers. The basics of daily living like doing laundry and making time for the gym and eating better are different than the basics of maintaining healthy relationships.
But this is all very manageable. And more importantly, it’s something we all have to push the reset button on quite often so that we can do our best work.
The Basics are Daily
My method is to list out the basics. I write repeatable plans called “action stacks” where I keep the basics ready to execute. I revise these often, either adding a few details I thought I would remember (I never do) or removing and paring when the basics get too complex again.
It’s work we all need. It’s what keeps the saw sharp before we chop down the tree. Right?
What are your basics?
