Experienced happiness (which could be customer happiness, employee happiness, or your own happiness) could be said to be the experience of reality meeting (or exceeding) expectations, and when reality fails to meet expectations one experiences unhappiness.

It’s common to focus on increasing the upside, namely working to make sure that we meet or exceed expectations. But as with many things in life, there’s probably easier value to be captured by guarding against the downside, namely making sure that we rarely, if ever fail to meet expectations. I think this is one of the hygiene factors of the experience economy.

If we seek make sure that we rarely fail to meet expectations, we can again divide this into two buckets. One would be managing expectations, and the other would be rarely failing.

Managing expectations is the subject of another post, but foreshadowing helpful.

Rarely failing sounds like a daunting task, but it becomes easier if we consider this quote by Warren Buffet;

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

Warren Buffett

When we say yes to almost everything we create chaos for ourselves and for those around us. Amid that chaos it becomes almost impossible to guard against the downside of failing to meet expectations, and inevitably we become a bad experience to the world around us. Not good.

I think that what we can distil is that creating a good experience, for others and for ourselves, requires a reductionist, almost laser focus.

As Seth Godin likes to say, “Who’s it for, and what’s it for?”

Figure that out, and then just do that.
Do only that.
Do not say yes to other things.
Do not get distracted by shiny objects, by other opportunities.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”

Steve Jobs

Figure out who it is you’re doing the work for. Sometimes that’s a customer, sometimes that’s a team member, sometimes that’s a family member or a friend, and sometimes, perhaps to seldom, it’s you.

Get very clear on what the person wants. If that person is you then some quiet introspection is helpful. Honestly, when was the last time you spend 1hr sitting silently thinking about what you want out of life?

Ok, in each of the key areas in which you expect energy, do you know who it’s for and what it’s for? Good. Now merely do those things.