Powerful productivity strategy recommended: How to leverage your ‘orphaned’ hours

Effective scheduling strategies, once reserved for the self-employed, are now crucial for professional creatives working from home. How can we—writers, architects, programmers, and designers —become more disciplined about the way we use our time, without sacrificing our creativity, when we’re already feeling burned out? That’s a question I’ve struggled with for years, and I set out to find an answer.

Stress is something my coaching clients and colleagues are reporting, caused partly by blurred boundaries between work and personal life. The benefits of technology, such as eradicated commute and travel times, have created the downside that we can hold meetings at odd hours and places, such as in our cars (to avoid waking up the family), extending work time into family and self-care time.

Working at home is plagued by increased interruptions. There is nothing more frustrating for a creative to have to switch gears once totally immersed and “in flow.” After discovering the difference between “manager schedules” and “maker schedules” thanks to an article by Dorie Clark, who introduced me to computer programmer Paul Graham’s post on the subject, I realized that the possibility of distractions made me unwilling to commit to writing in the first place. The half-day minimum was not enough for me. So, I started planning out my ideal week, dedicating entire days to my craft.

My Initial Strategy

My ideal week, I decided, would be split into three categories: self, work, and social/music. Within the work category, I applied what I learned from Clark and Graham. I turned two days into “maker days.” These would be for research and writing articles. I turned three-and-a-half days into “manager days” for appointments with clients, prospects, networking, professional development, and volunteering. I picked days these days around recurring appointments such as therapy, strength training and karate.

At first, it didn’t go as smoothly as I thought. After making Tuesday a “manager day”, I found it empty and I needed a day to go over the prior day’s writing. So, I turned it into a “maker day,” and converted my Saturday afternoon, which was reserved for the writing that I often missed due to admin, into “manager” time.

My Discovery 

Then, I found them. The orphans.

These were the sometimes present, odd, unclaimed, lone 45 unscheduled minutes. They were too short to do anything creative or to get into flow, but too long to just ignore. I wondered what to do with these outliers.

I looked at my commitments list. I had signed up for Dorie Clark’s Recognized Expert Course with its 50-plus hours of content to go through. I was enrolled in an IESE Business School financial accounting class. I realized that these commitments had been sources of stress, because I hadn’t been able to find the time to accomplish the course work. I had a lightbulb moment. Those “orphaned” hours were perfect for reading, and watching course lecture videos, and taking notes and quizzes. Yes! I would get through these courses after all!

A sense of relief overcame me. No, I didn’t have to sacrifice my free time to take those professional development courses. I could fit them into my workweek and keep my free time really free.

Now, I feel a sense of control and happiness when I look at my schedule and feel I’ve accounted for everything. Creating an ideal week and constantly updating it, helps me to juggle my commitments as well as my needs.

How would you, dear reader, apply this strategy to your calendar? Or what strategies have you used to deal with those orphaned minutes or hours? Why not schedule an introductory call if you are interested in working together to make your time even more productive and meaningful.

Constance Dierickx, PhD | 9 flags to look out for when onboarding new clients to save you money

As coaches, mentors, or consultants, we’ve all experienced those clients. You know, the ones we have to chase for payment, who send us War-and-Peace-length emails, cancel sessions at the last minute, try to micromanage our process, resist any real work in (and in between) sessions, or who—citing a lack of real friends—try to pressure us to attend virtual one-on-one coffee chats. 

Don’t you wish you had that magic toolbox to triage clients, separating out good prospects you can truly help from those who need clinical assistance?

That’s why screening prospective clients is key before onboarding them, according to Constance Dierickx, author, clinical psychologist and executive coach. But how? “I have a framework in my head,” Dierickx says, which she says is embedded now after years of clinical practice. Referred to as the “Uber-coach” or the “corporate secret weapon,” or The Decision Doctor®, Dierickx is used to pressure-cooker scenarios such as high-stakes decisions, transitions, and crises. 

As coaches, we don’t all have a PhD in psychology—like Dierickx has—to help us weed out those bad clients, but she says there are some behaviors to look out for. 

Saying no to income is hard for any coach, and takes courage. But here are 9 red flags that could save you time, money, and aggravation.

1. Self-proclaimed experts

It’s a simple but powerful truth: if your client isn’t willing to learn, your coaching engagement won’t go well. Recently, Dierickx decided against working with a very successful entrepreneur, because that person showed “a pattern of behavior wherein she could not give up being the expert.” This person had to prove to herself that all her learning came from her own choices about whom to talk to, what environment to be in, what decisions she made. She had to give herself all the credit for learning anything. “And I think it's very antithetical to learning,” Dierickx says. “I think one of the wonderful things about great leaders that I've worked with is that they can say, ‘I didn't know that. Tell me more.’ And so they're doing more than one thing at a time. One, they're learning. Two, they're reinforcing the behavior of someone else to share what they know. And three, if they do it in public, they're saying, without saying, to a group of people: “This is a learning environment. This is an environment where we're going to continuously learn and grow.’”

When leaders say they are learning from others but don’t demonstrate it, it shows a lack of integrity. “It's just the worst possible scenario because the leader is showing people that they're saying one thing and doing another,” she says. “Learn in public. Wander around and learn in public.”

“I will tell you that some of the worst people to try to coach are people who think that they're coaches,” she says. “And the same is true if somebody has a PhD or a law degree or whatever, and every five minutes, they're telling you that.”

Such clients have what Dierickx calls “cognitive rigidity” or the inability to think about something in a different way. “They are so defended that they can’t tolerate a new idea,” she says.

2. Potential rescue missions

During our coaching development, we learn to identify good prospects by their willingness to change. Dierickx takes it further. Being willing isn’t enough.

“It's beyond willingness, it's ability,” she says.

The way to determine a prospect’s ability to change is to explore his or her past changes. This determines whether they are not only open and willing to change, as well as whether they can change at all. The key is to ask them to tell you about something that they changed about themselves or their circumstances that they feel proud about. 

“I ask: ‘What's something you're proud of that took a lot of effort on your part to go from what was, to what it is now?’” she says.

They need to have actually changed something about themselves. If that prospective client can’t give good examples of prior change, then decline working with them. Any work with this client will become a rescue mission. They may change their behavior in the short term, or on a surface-level, and get a promotion, but the change will only last a few months. 

Ask provocative questions. Some clients—whom you may have been hired to help retain—are already hell-bent on leaving a company. You can save a lot of time and energy by finding out what they really want on the front end.

3. That ‘ick feeling’ 

Many people talk about the importance of heeding ‘gut feelings.’ But that’s only half the battle, Dierickx says. “So when someone says to me, ‘it was gut instinct,’ get it out of your gut and put it in your brain and analyze what’s going on because that’s going to help you more,” Dierickx advises. 

She tells the story of the CEO who came to her and asked her to work with a woman whom Dierickx later found out was ‘a train wreck’. “…this senior executive starts talking to me and just wants to be my best friend in 90 seconds. And my radar is going [off].” 

Although the woman was charming, enthusiastic, attractive, executive was well put together, and exhibited very high verbal ability, the interaction was “Too much, too fast, and too personal,” Dierickx says. 

“Going around saying, ‘I did it by gut,’ you’re depriving yourself of learning what we call pattern recognition. I took that feeling of ick about this person who had a very senior job and I moved it up to my brain and asked myself, so what made it ick? Too fast, too personal, effusive, high emotionality.”

“Pattern recognition for a coach is gold,” Dierickx adds. 

Such personalities can be seductive, and there’s nothing wrong with us if we get sucked in once in a while. Even the most rational types are human beings too and can be candidates for seduction.

Dierickx remembers a patient years ago who kept getting seduced by the wrong men. She cried in her office and was convinced there was something wrong with herself. Dierickx looked at her and said it was her radar—or detection system—of that particular thing that was the problem. It was too slow. Working on her radar and strengthening it to become more sensitive helped her and gave her a needed sense of control to make better decisions. 

4. Our own too-rapid judgments

When we form too-rapid judgments about potential clients and don’t examine them,  that can lead to taking on the wrong clients too quickly. We are all prone to making inaccurate judgments about people based on our distorted views or on incomplete information. Just because someone is able to cry about their mothers, doesn’t mean they are empathetic. They may be crying about themselves.

“I'm trying to avoid a cognitive bias, which is really hard to do because we're all human and we have these,” Dierickx says. “And the reason I'm doing it is I don't want to get sucked in, and I know I can get sucked in. I'm not so grand about my ability that I think I can't get sucked in.”

“If somebody tells you, you're a horse's ass, that's just their opinion. If two people tell you, it's a coincidence. If three people tell you, buy a saddle,” says Dierickx. 

We should always be looking for data pieces that hang together. It’s a screening process that ensures we are “not simply looking for confirmatory data.”

 “And this is where adopting the mind of a scientist is incredibly useful,” Dierickx says. She goes on to explain the following methodology when she is trying to decide whether or not to work with somebody or if she is doing an assessment for a client. 

She listens, watches for, and captures data.  She writes “HO” for hypothesis, followed by whatever her head gives her, such as “controlling or unwilling to learn” or whatever her hypothesis is. 

“And then I force myself to come up with evidence for and against,” says Dierickx.

She goes back to the example of the effusive executive who gave her all those compliments. “Up to a point they were pretty pleasant. And then when she asked me to turn around, then it became unpleasant,” she says.

5. Loose boundaries

If someone is too effusive, too fast, too personal, too charming, that’s a red flag, such as when a potential client says: “I trust you. I trusted you from the moment we met.” “I'm thinking to myself: ‘You're going to hate me in about 90 days or less,” Dierickx says. The problem is that the person likely runs too hot, then too cold. 

Dierickx says this example is blatant. But what if the loose boundary is wrapped in charm and is more subtle?

Sometimes the “ick” feeling isn’t there. So what do we do then?

“Boundaries is it. Boundaries is a huge thing,” Dierickx says. We have to watch for signs.

6. Rate balkers and quibblers

Hiring a coach, consultant, or mentor is an investment. Dierickx advises us to drop prospective clients who argue about our rates. 

“You don't work with somebody and invest your intelligence and your experience and your goodwill and your hopes for them, you don't invest in them until they've invested in themselves,” Dierickx says. Interestingly, the self-proclaimed expert mentioned above had asked Dierickx to cut her fee in half. 

Dierickx counsels coaches to change peer consulting groups, if they find themselves being told to lower their fees. “Get a new group, because the problem isn't what the market will bear,” Dierickx says. “The problem is how we feel about ourselves and articulate our value.” 

People who quibble about the terms of the engagement. They may ask for eight references, giving the excuse they’re really analytical. But they are really showing a reluctance to commit to the engagement.

7. Control patterns

Coaching a micromanager or someone who is being controlling is possible, if the client can come to see the connections to other parts of their lives, according to Dierickx. If such a change isn’t possible, such a person might need a therapeutic intervention.

“As a coach, you're not responsible for that. That's their little red wagon, but you want to be able to detect it so you can make the decision, but it doesn't have to be no,” Dierickx says.

Identifying potential clients who might turn out to be the ones who try to micromanage every minute of working together is possible through the mind body connection. Typical  body sensations we feel when somebody is trying to control us include a feeling of constriction and flinching, according to Dierickx. The feeling may be intense. The key is to take that physical reaction, realize that it’s healthy and good, and ask ourselves what it is trying to tell us. If we try to verbalize what we are feeling physically, then we can do something about it rather than leaving it in the gut. The gut is the warning system, or “the sentry” that alerts us that something is wrong.“So what happens when a person is controlling is, they start showing you that very early,” says Dierickx.” They'll say things like: ‘Here's my number. Call me at the appointed time.’” 

Dierickx calls this data. That person is immediately assigning the caller role to us. 

Or controlling patterns will show in the form of questions or the following interaction:

"Well, how many times are we going to meet? What's your hourly rate?" 

"I don't work like that." 

"Well, you have to work like that because your fee has to be based on time." 

"It doesn't. And it isn't." 

"No, but you must have, at some point in time, figured out your time."

 "No, I don't."

 "Oh, come on." 

“And they just keep at you,” Dierickx says. “So I get that question about fee and time, because my fees aren't based on time. They haven't been for 12 years. I'm not pivoting to satisfy somebody who wants to implant their template on me about how I'm supposed to work.”

8. Going against advice from peers

“If you're struggling with whether or not someone's going to be a good client for you and you call a peer colleague and you ask for advice and they tell you not to do it. And you argue with them, you better look at yourself,” she said.

9. Quoting others 

If a prospect starts to quote other people when asking questions, be careful. 

That prospect may say a friend or a spouse told them to ask us a certain question. That friend or spouse is not the client in the room, so bringing them into the discussion changes the relationship from a dyad to a triad. You can’t work with someone who isn’t actually showing up. 

Dierickx had a prospect once who quoted her husband during an introductory meeting, to which she asked her whether her husband was in business with her and found out that the husband ran his own consulting firm and was not doing very well.

As Maya Angelou said, “be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” And in this case, the naked person isn’t even in the room.

Every coach or consultant wants to work with clients they can genuinely help. So we need to practice detecting behavior patterns and collecting data to help determine who will be a great client - and who won’t be. If in doubt, refer out to a therapist or psychologist or someone with a set of clinical tools. Who knows, that prospect may be able to change whatever it is that’s holding them back and return to you in a healthier, coach-able state of mind.

7 painful things that block or depress creativity (and how to fight back)

We all know that focus is crucial for generating meaningful work, but it’s actually hard to put into practice. As a writer, my lack of focus and excess of ego have posed daily obstacles to my output, and lately, the pandemic has brought back some bad habits.  

At the prompting of my executive coach, writing this article has helped me to reconnect with those useful tools that have served my creativity in the past. Here are some of the obstacles that I have encountered and some tips that might also be helpful to you in dealing with them, if you’re experiencing a similar challenge:

 1. Interruptions. Being a creator requires space. Lots of it. The kind of space I am talking about resides in our minds. It’s a space where we can focus on our craft. Without it, our minds race about from one waypoint to another. Much like a dog on a walk sniffing tree trunks and lampposts for hints of canine connection, we ‘sniff’ out traces of human activity on social media for hints of love, friendship, or a better life. We compulsively check our feeds upon waking and whenever resistance—creativity’s enemy, as Steven Pressfield describes in his book The War of Art—creeps into our day, luring us away from our creative goals. 

 A lack of space, fueled by our need to connect, feeds that resistance.

The solution for this is turning off all notifications on our electronics. Turning on the moon symbol on our phones and the “do not disturb” on our computers are a wonderful thing, as they will block disturbances and give us the distraction free space we need to create and get into flow.

Now we need to embrace the silence and connect with the self: the higher creative self. 

The world will not end in the next 90 minutes, I promise. Oh, and quit email. Seeing that red dot on your email icon is too tempting.

 2. Perfectionism.  Each time I sit down to write a new article, I want it to be the BEST thing that's ever appeared on the subject. Opening up a new white blank page on the screen, I freeze and resort to the comfort of a busy mind (see point one above).

Brene Brown defines perfectionism as “a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of blame, judgment, and shame.” 

So, how do deal with perfectionism? 

First, be aware that you have this tendency. 

Second, remind yourself that perfectionism in writing is a luxury or something one could call self-indulgent. As fiction writer Jodi Picoult so aptly said: “Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time.” Time was short on that weekly deadline in the newsroom at the local weekly newspaper where I once worked. Also, there was that desire to be of service to our readers that superseded any fears of imperfection. Reminding ourselves of our service to others will blow away ego.

Third, try taking an imperfect first step. For example, if writing is your creative activity, type into an empty email. Email has a rudimentary quality to it, and is great for tapping into that need to communicate. Pretend you’re writing to a best friend and give them really useful information. 

 Fourth, make your first step enjoyable. I use OMMWriter. It is a simple word processor that has cool background and keyboard sounds. It’s similar to writing an email in its simplicity but with an unusual sensory experience. It’s strangely satisfying and makes me want to write. Put on those headphones, and you won’t want to stop typing.

 3. Lack of enough creator time. A consultant once advised me to block off three hours of writing time in my calendar, because after all, shouldn’t I as a writer prioritize my craft? It sounded like a good argument to me. 

 So I tried it. Writing became such a BIG thing in my head, that I dreaded it. I allowed people to book themselves into my calendar during my writing block or I would move it to other times in the day, then deleted it all together. 

 “When I schedule it, it feels like work,” my teenage son recently told me about his experience with blocking writing time.

 That’s it! I don’t like to see writing as work! 

 After beating myself up for my lack of discipline, I came to the conclusion that booking writing time in my calendar was turning me into a non-writer and causing me to rebel. I also reasoned that the amount of writing time I was blocking off was in direct proportion to the number of potential distractions entering my life!

 I prefer keeping spaces in my calendar that are open and white so that I can write to my heart’s content. Since I took the writing block off my calendar, I am writing and once I get started I can't stop, and I can easily write for five hours or more. 

 4. The long to do list. One could say I am a Getting Things Done (GTD) geek. GTD is a productivity method created by David Allen that helps people deal with the stuff entering their lives. This method is a great way to process tons of mail in a short amount of time in order to capture all of those tasks that need to get done. In OCD fashion, I found myself tweaking various productivity applications, including Omnifocus, rather than actually DOING the tasks. Talk about displacement activity. Then I fell into the trap of wanting to tick things off my list before I could write. 

Cal Newport writes about this problem in his blog post called Getting (Unremarkable) Things Done: The Problem With David Allen’s Universalism. “My commitment to GTD had me instead systematically executing tasks, one by one, like an assembly line worker “cranking widgets” (to use a popular Allen aphorism). I didn’t need to be cranking widgets. I needed to instead be crazily focused.” 

My love of “cranking widgets” had been serving me to a point, as I became super productive in administrative ways, but it soon conflicted with my writing. 

Today, I keep creative tasks out of my Omnifocus/GTD system. I realize that my creator brain lives in a different place than that manager or administrative brain. I also have to remind myself that my world is not going to implode if I don't do these things right this minute." 

Newport summarizes this perfectly: “Deep work is fundamentally different than the shallow (though still important) work of keeping on top of the little things required to function personally and professionally.” 

 5. Imposter syndrome. Aren't we all concerned with what people think of us? It’s hard to always have a thick skin and remind ourselves that what people think of us is none of our business.

 And it's too easy to get into the mind-frame of: what the hell was I thinking? There are plenty of other writers who can write about this better than me! But this is ego talking.

 “Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly,” says Korean Zen Buddhist nun Jeong Kwan who appeared on the Netflix Chef’s Table. Her appearance on the show is especially meaningful because she’s not a professional chef; she just loves making food.

The reality is that anything creative that we undertake—be it writing, dancing, acting, singing, or painting—sets us up for judgment. We’re just not going to connect with and appeal to everyone, and that's okay.

 The goal is to create for the self. If you love it, someone else will. 

 6. Not knowing what to write. An independent writer's fear is not having any ideas that are perfectly formed. (Ah, that perfectionism again.) At the newspaper, my editor would assign stories, alleviating my having to come up with ideas. As an executive coach working for myself, I am my own editor.

 But the best way to come up with ideas is to have many of them. James Altucher and Seth Godin both espouse the idea of coming with many ideas, even if they are bad. 

 The truth is: it's hard working in a vacuum. That’s why I hire coaches and consultants. While writing the “vomit draft” of my memoir and various articles for this site, I hired people to help me brainstorm and come up with compelling article subjects and headlines. Now, I discuss my bad ideas with my coach who helps me form them.

 7. Anxiety. It's hard to focus on writing when anxiety occurs. Take the early days of this recent pandemic as an example. I found it particularly difficult to focus on writing, while draconian public health measures were being announced on the news on what seemed like an hourly basis. This led to a kind of hyper vigilance that was not conducive to creating.

 Recently, Dr. Stephen Sideroff gave a webinar on C4 Events during which he talked about the nine pillars of resilience and how our cognitive functioning can be impaired by stress. 

 “We must unwind,” he said. 

 He had many recommendations that are available in his paid programs and in his book The Path. He said using relaxation techniques—including breathing in for 4 counts and out for 6—help to balance our nervous system.

What's helped me has been staying off-line as much as possible, focusing on breath, cooking, doing jigsaw puzzles, hot baths, calling a friend, walks in nature, reading or listening to a book, and playing an instrument. 

“Listening boundaries” — not believing everything we hear or read on the news or in our feeds — are crucial. As Pia Melody writes in her book The Intimacy Factor, it is crucial to protect ourselves and if we hear something potentially upsetting, it is our responsibility to determine if what is being said is “true”, “not true’ or “questionable.” If we believe everything we read, we risk experiencing uncomfortable emotions unnecessarily.

Overcoming these seven obstacles can begin to help you gain focus and to increase or improve creative output. I wish you many meaningful moments in flow.

Richard Amos | What are the 5 karate principles and how they could benefit any leader

Take a high-level karate master and strip away tens of thousands of hours of physical training. 

What are you left with?

A human being on a spiritual path.

This path is governed by principles designed to develop an individual’s physical, mental, and spiritual being.

These principles—rooted in centuries of wisdom dating back to the Shaolin warriors and to the first ancient Indian monk who came to China—create a framework that binds all traditional karate practitioners all around the globe.

In karate class, we must move from our core. On a spiritual level, our core are our principles.

As Stephen R. Covey wrote “People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.”

I asked one of the world’s top karate instructors, Richard Amos—an 8th degree black belt—to give us an insight into the principles of Shotokan karate. Born in the UK and based in New York City, Amos lived, trained, and worked in Japan for over a decade. He’s fluent in Japanese, and trained under Asai sensei, regarded as one of the greatest Japanese karate masters to have lived in recent times. Amos is the second westerner to have completed the three-year instructor’s course in Japan as well as placing second in the All-Japan Championships, at a time when no non-Japanese had ever reached the semi-finals before.

Here are five principles he shared:

1. Strive for a whole character – Some translations say, “Strive for perfection of character.”

Amos says:

“Perfection is impossible. A more accurate meaning is whole or complete. It is about having a certain knowingness that I have only really seen in yogis such as Radhanath Swami.”

The famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, in his book, The Book of Five Rings: A Classic Text on the Japanese Way of the Sword, exemplifies this well when he says that a true master is never taken by surprise because he is wise. 

Being willing to strive for wisdom means being willing to learn from our mistakes, make amends, and move forward. 

 “I know I can get relentless when I feel that my students aren’t getting it,” he said.

In business, good character is essential from the C-Suite down to the production line. A well-run company needs employees who are hard working, conscientious, honest, and helpful, as much as a company needs a CEO who represents the whole organization with integrity.

Management exhibiting poor character will bring about high turnover, dissatisfied customers, and ultimate failure. Take Enron and Kmart’s bankruptcies as examples. In one year, Enron went from $100 billion in revenue to zero, all because its executives used accounting loopholes to hide billions of dollars of debt as well as mislead their board of directors. Similarly in 2002, Kmart’s leaders lied to shareholders and company officials while syphoning off company money for their own gain. 

2. Defend the path of truth - Some variations of this principle use the word sincerity or faithfulness, and Amos says it’s about your chosen path in life and sticking to it. It’s about integrity, matching your actions to your words. It’s about walking the walk and talking the talk.

 “Who are you? Do you live by your life values or do you change when a better offer comes along?”

As the founder of Shotokan karate, Gichin Funakushi, wrote: “First understand yourself, then understand others.”

When Amos was a junior instructor in Japan, he decided to recite the five principles of karate before and after class, along with the non-instructors. At that time, the instructors were exempt from saying them out loud. Amos felt, as he does today, that the self-programming of constant repetition ensured that important principles entered his subconscious. Surrendering to your path takes humility.

In business, knowing our “why” is key, as Simon Sinek talks about in his Golden Circle TED talk, or as Guy Kawasaki discusses regarding making meaning within an organization. If our sole goal is making money, we will fail, Kawasaki says. On the other hand, if our goal is to improve the quality of life for others, to protect something good or to rectify a wrong, we have a better chance of creating meaning and in turn of making money as a by-product.

Sticking to our why or our meaning is key to success.

3. Cultivate a spirit of perseverance - This speaks to daily practice and to the laws of nature. There’s no hack or quick fix in becoming a karate master. 

“I like the word ‘cultivate’ because it speaks to the daily, constant, ritualistic, all year, every year labor that is required. This is a perseverance that requires constant attention, much like farming.”

This farming analogy parallels Stephen Covey’s Laws of the Farm in his book  First Things First in which he points out the impossibility of “cramming on the farm.” University students may get away with cramming for tests, he says, but farmers cannot expect to have a harvest, if they do all the work at the last minute. They can’t expect anything to grow overnight.

The laws of nature govern farming, much like karate, health, self-development, or business.

“You can’t decide to persevere,” Amos says. “You just do it. The thought is superseded by action. Funakoshi said to keep your karate bubbling. But be careful not to boil it too high. I’ve seen people boil themselves dry. You want to keep it bubbling.”

4. Honor the principles of etiquette – The most visible outward sign of etiquette in a karate class is the bowing and kneeling, even to an adversary. In Japanese this is called rei and means “respect.”

“It’s about propriety, good manners, consideration, and hierarchy,” Amos says.” It’s about when to speak and when not to speak. It’s about knowing your place within the dojo and understanding the human condition as well as empathetic emotion. Bowing is humility.” 

Amos reminds us that knowing your place in a military setting is crucial. Breaking rank could, as he says “sever the thread in the battlefield.” The original meaning of breaking rank was a straight line of soldiers falling into disarray and causing chaos. Severing the thread on a battlefield would be similar to an employee not using the lines of protocol and going over his superior’s head. 

High ranked students should nurture the lower ranked students. In turn, the lower ranked students should appreciate, accept and respect the higher ranked students. 

Karate practitioners greet each other with the word  "oss." They come to class 10 to 15 minutes early, with a clean body and pressed karategi (or uniform). Some dojos require participants to wash their feet prior to entering class and street shoes are not allowed in the training space. Chewing gum, wearing watches, or idle talk is forbidden.

In business, etiquette is professionalism. We wouldn't dream of going to work in our gym pants, smelling bad, or with dirty fingers. A clear organizational structure is also important, as it allows for better communication, clear reporting, and efficiency. Salespeople understand etiquette and strive to make the client's life easier. They are respectful of the client's time. They answer emails and calls promptly. They aren't too personal, yet not too distant. There is a spirit of respect.

5. Guard against hot-blooded courage – “There is no first strike in karate,” wrote  founder of Shotokan karate, Gichin Funakoshi. Some translate this as “guard against impetuous courage.” Amos says that the actual translation is “energetic blood,” and reminds us that the use of ‘guard against’ is key.

“This may well happen to you,” Amos says. “You’ll feel the power. The training will give you the tools to be courageous, but watch yourself, handle with care, and don’t forget humility.”

In business, overconfidence or impulsivity could lead to bankruptcy. Jean-Marie Messier’s disastrous leadership of Vivendi can only be categorized as impetuous and overconfident. The way he turned a once highly lucrative utility company into a heavily indebted global media group could be seen as the epitome of irresponsibility. He overpaid for businesses as he ventured into new industries he knew little about. Stretching an organization too thin removes any reserves needed to withstand stock market fluctuations, which was particularly true for Vivendi following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Having multiple income streams is key in a downturn. In this Covid-19 era, this rings particularly true.

People with impetuous courage put themselves and others at risk. Stay away from them. Don't get in a car with them, don’t marry them, and certainly don’t do business with them.

These five principles were created and molded to form a warrior whose wisdom would help to bring about a better, more peaceful world. A better world is one where frameworks exist to contain and help us strive for our better selves. By applying these timeless karate principles to our businesses, we can increase our chances of success.

Chasing Bushido: How I Learned to Just Say Osu by my sensei Richard Amos is a book that I devoured in two days. It’s entertaining and I recommend it to a general audience because it covers themes of resilience, persistence, humility, and mastery, and does not get into the details of karate to such an extent that it would lose non-martial artists.