Happy Thanksgiving!
No time for a catchy intro today. We have football to watch and plates of food to devour. Let’s get down to business.
Five Things We Can Learn From Thanksgiving
1. You Don’t Have To Be The Best If You Serve A Purpose
As we discussed yesterday, turkey is not the best food, yet we still build an entire holiday around it. This is because it serves a purpose. Turkeys aren’t hard to find and they are big enough to feed a whole family.
We might not be the best hairdresser or our business might not have the best product. Don’t fret. We can still survive and thrive if we serve a purpose and create something that is beneficial for people. It might feel like an insult if our dream is called a turkey, but there are far worse things it could be.
2. Rest and Repeat
Here’s how our day will likely go today…Eat too much, watch a little football, take a nap, wake up and eat some more. People love naps and they especially love them on Thanksgiving because when they wake up they know they will get to eat some more.
When we are working on our dream, we might feel the need to work nonstop. The fear is that if we take a break we will lose out to someone who is working harder than we are. However, just as important as working hard, is working smart. Apply the Thanksgiving strategy to developing your dream. Just make sure to replace eat with work and nap with break. Work, take a break and work some more.
3. Repurpose
I am convinced that they only thing people love more than the Thanksgiving feast is the post-Thanksgiving leftover feast, which can last for days. The key to making this successful is not letting anything go to waste. A great way to do this is to repurpose. A turkey leg becomes a turkey sandwich. Stuffing + casserole becomes a concoction that for some reason goes well with pumpkin pie.
Comedian Ricky Gervais has got to be the king of the repurpose. He created a popular podcast, then added some animation and repurposed it into a popular TV show. Then he took elements from both and created popular books. He got amazing mileage out of hours of taking to his friends. Can we find ways to repurpose our products? Give it a try before you say no. We might think we just have a bunch of stuffing, casserole and pie, but we never know how it will all fit together.
4. The Little Things May Add Up More Than The Big Things
We don’t get stuffed on Thanksgiving simply because of that big piece of turkey we eat. Sure, that played a role, but you know what also played a role…all those rolls we ate. And the green beans, mash potatoes and cookies. Basically, a bunch of things added up to result a food coma.
Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook was asked what it felt like to be part of Facebook’s “overnight success.” He answered, “If by ‘overnight success’ you mean staying up and coding all night, every night for six years straight, then it felt really tiring and stressful.” The little things we do may not get the attention of the big things. They may feel like the green beans, mash potatoes and cookies of our company. But don’t underestimate the impact of those things.
5. Be thankful
As the name suggests, today is a great day to be thankful for everything we have. That is probably the most important thing we can learn.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
