If you're not making the progress you want, you might be using the wrong rulebook.

When I started writing this newsletter, I was 13 years deep into a glorious banking career. A career where I'd been drilled on unwritten rules like "get consensus", "don't make mistakes", "your work is always urgent" and "writing is a means, not an end".

Can you imagine starting a newsletter following rules like these? 

I doubt you'd be reading this email if I had. I'm not even sure these rules work for corporate, let alone for a newsletter.

But what I am sure about is that every arena has its rules (written or unwritten) and that the rules in one arena are often the complete opposite to the rules in another.

Say you've got something you'd like to make progress on. Could be a newsletter of your own, a new position at work or some sort of creative project. Yet you're spinning your wheels week after week, month after month. Well, what if the problem isn't that you're not good enough, not motivated enough or not hard-working enough? What if you don't need more time, more discipline or more knowledge?

What if you're just using a rulebook that isn't set up for the progress you're trying to make in the arena you're trying to make it in?

If that sounds true, it could be time to use a different set of rules.

There are countless ways to do this. You can introduce new constraints, remove old ones, experiment with different rhythms, try stuff that other people won't understand, change the timescales, add some steps, take some steps out or redefine how you measure success.

For this newsletter, I gave myself permission to send emails with typos. Which meant a new rule that said "locked and loaded beats perfect". That's a radically different rule to the rules I’ve used at school and work.

But whatever rules you choose, the most important thing is knowing you have more say than you think you do. 

That you get to decide the rules you play by.

So with that in mind...

What might you try today if you weren't playing by someone else's rules? 

To fulfilment, 

Tom