Aka: Why I decided not to push my decorators on every single, little detail 🤷🏻‍♂️

Do you realise quite how much your general mood impacts your decision making? 😡 😊

When you’re in a positive mood 😊, you’re more likely to apply optimistic assessment to every situation and therefore be more of a risk-taker. You’ll tend to be drawn more to the big-picture and you’ll make faster decisions ⏩

In Shiageto speak this will likely have a positive impact on your strategic FQ and EQ when it comes to effectiveness (although your strategic IQ may take a little dent).

On the contrary, if you’re in a negative mood 😡, you are more likely to make cautious and more risk-averse decisions.

Your decision making will be slower and you will tend to get more immersed in the detail of each decision 🔍

Whilst this can be good in some circumstances, in most cases it can be detrimental to your effectiveness and you want to address it sooner rather than later.

My recent effectiveness has been clearly diminishing

In the last few weeks I’ve come to realise that, because of all the Stress related to my recent flat purchase (the buying process, the packing, the moving, the cleaning, the unpacking, the decorating, the learning new processes, the meeting new people, the not having furniture, and so forth), I’ve been building more and more of a negative mood and this has been impacting my performance.

I noticed it first in a few business development meetings that didn’t go so well, and then I made a couple of faults on a client piece of work 😳

I then spotted it in my personal life as I was sluggish at networking events 🥴, had a spectacularly bad date 😬 and eventually snapped at my darling mother for no reason 💣.

I had to take a step back and look how to address this quickly; it was not good for me nor my business.

One thing I realised was that I had a lot of small simmering issues ongoing:

• Trying to get my decorators to come back to address some snagging (see the door handle example above) 🖌️
• Trying to get my carpet fitters to complete the job they had started 🏠
• Trying to get my deposit back from my old landlord 💰
• Trying to change bank accounts 🏦
• Trying to get a rebill from my previous energy company 💡
• Trying to accelerate delivery of some furniture 🛋️
• Trying to sort out a Travel dispute 🚂
• Trying to get an insurance pay-out 💷
• Trying to chase a client’s Finance team on an outstanding payment 💰
• Trying to get a previous neighbour to return something they had borrowed 👥
• …

The list goes on and on; it wasn’t until I wrote them all out and the decisions I had made against each of them that I saw the pattern of slow, lower-quality decision making that built more stress and fed the cycle.

Each of the issues was progressing so slowly and the end wasn’t in sight 🫩

A simple(ish) fix

Once I saw the big list in black and white 📃 , I began to think how am I going to fix this 🤔.

One macro, immediate solution became apparent; for all the ones that involved some sort of dispute; I could just accept and move on 🤲

Those that know me will realise that this is not my default approach; I like to fight for every aspect in matters like this that are a bit more transactional.

But I realised this time it wasn’t possible so I decided to do the opposite.

In one simple Stroke, I just settled with the other party in each matter.

No more haggling, no more squabbling, no more chasing 🤝

It might have lost me a bit of Money but it released a lot of the stress 🛀

As soon as I did it for each of them I could feel the relief:

• Less things on my to-do list
• No more breathing in when my phone rang from any of the other parties
• No more staying up late doing an inventory of where I had got to and determining the next steps
• No more overloading conversations with friends on these trivial details
• No more chasing

It was like being handed back my good mood (and a large chunk of time).

That alone was worth the small value I may have lost.

It really reminded me of something a friend said to me once:

“Every problem can be sorted by throwing money at it”

I had always taken this literally and so had dismissed handing over more money, but rarely thought about it as agreeing to settle rather than fight on.

Don’t get me wrong, this won’t be something I do with the important things in my life — it’ll take a lot more to change that behaviour (we all know there are some things that are simply not worth settling on)

But I can now really see the benefit of not sweating the small stuff; in fact: Get rid of the small stuff as soon as possible is my new mantra.

I encourage you to do the same; go make a list and see how many things that are adding stress to your life you are currently juggling.

It’ll probably be way more than you think.

Close down as many of the small ones as quickly as possible; whether that means accepting less money, stopping the chase, taking the lower quality or whatever.

You might not appreciate it at first but your effectiveness will definitely go up ☝️.

Let me know how you get on; in the meantime I’ve got a door handle I need to fix 🚪

Faris

Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here

Success = IQ x EQ x FQ

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Faris Aranki Strategy & Emotional Intelligence

Having spent over 20 years delivering strategic change for the corporate and non-corporate worlds, Faris has experienced first-hand the fine differences between strategic success and failure.
His work has spanned numerous companies (from global behemoths to small start-ups), in numerous countries, across a range of sectors, supporting them all to unlock strategic success.

He came to realize that often what hinders institutions from achieving their goals goes beyond the quality of their strategy; it is their ability to engage effectively with others at all levels and remove barriers in their way. This has led to his passion for improving strategic effectiveness within all businesses and individuals and the foundation of Shiageto Consulting.

Over time, Faris has worked to distill his knowledge of how to solve complex problems in a structured manner combined with his skill on engaging effectively with others and his ability to quickly determine the barriers to a strategy's success. This knowledge has formed the foundation of Shiageto’s workshops, courses and methodologies. Faris believes that any firm or team can adopt these improvements; all it requires is a little of the right support -something Shiageto provides!

On top of leading our business, Faris is now an accomplished speaker and contributor for a variety of outlets.