Don’t reinvent the wheel! For years that has been one of my favorite sayings. I don’t, or didn’t, believe in reinventing something that works just fine. I believed that right up until a friend of mine pointed out that if the wheel had never been reinvented we would all still be driving on stone wheels.
So maybe we need to start thinking in terms of “just because it works doesn’t mean it couldn’t work better. Which brings us to the above question, “why ARE you doing that?”
We need to be able to answer that for every action we take, there is not one of us that can afford to mindlessly go through the day doing something just because we’ve “always” done it that way. In fact, doing something simply because we’ve always done it that way is the absolute worst reason for doing anything. It almost guarantees waste. Challenge yourself and your behaviors, make certain you know why, exactly why, you’re doing what you’re doing.
Push yourself to find a better way, never assume an idea is the best idea simply because it is your idea. Successful people know what they are doing, the most successful people know why they are doing it.
Which one are you?
Man, I wish you could get in front of the British government, and give them some of this. I wish, I wish, I wish. Country is in recession, but nobody in the leadership has got a clue, on how to get it going forward again…nobody
I feel for you! 🙂 I wish I could say our politicians were any better.
Great post, Steve. This is precisely where I’m at. Not always easy to do, yet absolutely necessary if we want to get off the ‘doing the same things over and over again while expecting different results’ treadmill in life. 🙂
Indeed, it’s amazing how easy it is to just “keep on keeping on” with little regard to whether the “on” is the right thing to be doing. A little reflection now & then can go a long way.
Fear. People are too afraid to try something different. They like to keep it where it’s safe. Even if their safety comes at the cost of freedom.