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Superhero Syndrome

Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, my Mom took me to see Star Wars in the theatre when it first came out, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about the effects of tackling too much.

Hello there everyone. I hope you’re having a great week so far. It’s been a very productive start of the week for me. Do you ever have one of those weeks when everything just seems to run smoothly? I had very little distractions on Monday and Tuesday and I was able to pump out job after job. It makes me feel good at the end of the day knowing how much I’ve accomplished. I hope it continues for the rest of the week.

Speaking of work, do you have any work related stories you would like to share on our Friday forum? Any lessons you learned from your boss or learned by being the boss? We would love to hear them. Visit goldenspiralmedia.com/feedback and use the form on that page to submit your written or audio message. You can also use the speakpipe widget to record something using your devices microphone. And of course you can call our voice feedback line at 304-837-2278.

Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: Sticking with the work theme, did you know that the likelihood of running your own home based business increases with the level of education you attain? People with post secondary education are six times more likely to start a home based business than those with only a high school diploma.

Here’s What I leaned yesterday.
Wether you realize it or not, almost all of us suffer from something called Superhero Syndrome. Most of the time you’ll hear this term associated with business leaders or entrepreneurs. But it can also affect you in your day to day life.

What is Superhero Syndrome you ask? It’s a condition most people, ahem especially men, suffer from.

You suffer form Superhero Syndrome when you try to take on too much, be it at work or at home. It’s when you want to feel empowered so you try to wear all the hats. It’s when you take on tasks that you really aren’t qualified for. It’s when you try to learn something that you really don’t need to know. It’s when you take on so much that every thing suffers because of it. You want to do it all, even when you have no business doing it in the first place.

So what’s the remedy for Superhero Syndrome? It’s both very simple and yet very hard. It’s to get help from someone else.

I’m often afflicted with Superhero Syndrome. Although not as often as I used to be.

Let me tell you a story.

As you probably know, I’m a graphic designer. I started off in print design, what I went to school for, and later branched off into website design.

When I first started designing websites I used what you call WYSIWYG web design software. If you’re not familiar with the term it stands for What You See Is What You Get. Meaning you drag things around on the computer screen, type where you want to type and then when you’re done you export your creation as a website.

This was great. I could use my design skills to create stunning webpages and then upload them to the internet without knowing a single line of code. The software would generate all the code for me.

At first this worked out very well and I created a few websites this way. But it didn’t take long for me to figure out that WYSIWYG web design software had some shortcomings. For one thing the world wide web is an ever changing environment and the software just couldn’t keep up with all the advances.

If I wanted to stay on top of things I need to learn how to code websites myself.
I bought a few books but eventually I discovered Lynda.com. There I purchased a course on HTML and on CSS, the two main coding languages that made up most websites at the time. The videos made it very easy to learn and before long I gave up on the WYSIWYG web design software and started coding websites from scratch.

BTW, let me interject something here. Lynda.com is a great place to learn new skills or improve on skills you have. They have business courses, photography courses and tones of courses on all sorts of software. And if you go to goldenspiralmedia.com/lynda you can try them out for 10 days absolutely free.

So where was I? Oh yes, a few years after learning HTML and CSS the web was evolving again. New coding languages were being used to make more dynamic websites and I felt I needed to learn them if I didn’t want to fall behind.

I went back to Lynda.com and bought courses for PHP and MySQL, two languages that when combined together open a whole world of possibilities for website design.

The problem was, no matter how many times I watched the courses, or how many books I read, I just couldn’t wrap my brain around these two coding languages.

I could code simple things, providing I referenced a book or video. But anything complex I just couldn’t figure out. And it frustrated me. When I learned HTML and CSS it came so easily so why couldn’t I understand PHP and MySQL?

I had taken on a couple of website jobs at the time that needed those two languages for what the clients wanted. I offered them discounts because it was going to take longer than normal to create their sites because I was learning a new technique. They were willing to be the guinea pigs because of the low price I was offering them but when weeks stretched into months they started getting frustrated with my lack of communication.

I was frustrated on my end as well. I had the design of the websites completed, I just couldn’t write the code to make them work and I couldn’t bring myself to tell the clients the difficulties I was having.

I ended up loosing one of the clients when they decided they just couldn’t wait any longer and I feared I would loose the other one as well.

That’s when I first heard about Superhero Syndrome. I was listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast 103 with Pat Flynn. He had Chris Ducker on as a guest, the man who coined the term.

Chris talked about how he suffered from it and how he broke away by creating his 3 Lists of Freedom and how it could work for everyone.

Here’s the basics of it.

• Divide a piece of paper into three columns.
• In the first column, write down all the tasks you regularly do that you really hate.
• In the second column write down all the tasks you regularly do but you struggle with.
• In the third column write down all the tasks you regularly do but really shouldn’t be doing. Even if it’s something you enjoy doing.

Now the goal is to find ways to eliminate these tasks from your daily life so you can concentrate on what you’re good at. The easiest way to do this is to find someone to do them for you.

Of course there’s a lot more too it than just this. If you’re interested to know more you could get Chris Ducker’s book Virtual Freedom though our Amazon link at goldenspiralmedia.com/amazon.

After listening to that podcast I realized that I didn’t need to learn PHP and MySQL. All the hours I wasted trying to learn it could have been put to better use.

I searched online and found someone who specializes in those two languages and hired them to code the website based on my design. It took him a total of 10 hours to complete what I had spent months trying unsuccessfully to do and he charged me a fraction of my regular rate. The client loved the website.

If I had only done that sooner. If I had overcome my Superhero Syndrome to try and do it all myself, I could have put all those hours to better use and probably made more money in the long run.

Here’s what I learned.
I’m not cured of Superhero Syndrome. There are still many tasks I do, both in business and home life that I know I would be better off getting others to do. But that’s the difference now; I know I’d be better off. I do them because I want to do them.

I’m a tinkerer. I like to know how things work. When something breaks down I like to look on YouTube for answers on how to fix it. And if I can afford the time I’ll try to do the job myself and learn. The difference is, I can judge that better now. I look at jobs and I determine if it’s worth me doing or if my time can be better used elsewhere. I no longer need to do it all myself.

Like when I finished my basement. I worked on it for over a year putting in an hour here and a couple more there. Sometimes weeks would go by without me working on it. Eventually, after putting up all the studs, running wires and pipes and eventually installing the drywall I got to the point where the joints needed to be mudded. I’ve done mudding many times before but I hate doing it. In the past I would have persevered taking who knows how many more months to finish and sand all the joints just to say I did it myself. But after learning about Superhero Syndrome I just said no thank you, and hired someone to complete the job. He had it mudded, sanded and painted in just a few days and I had a finished basement.

You have to pick and choose what tasks to keep and which to pass on. If you can afford it, you should try to pass on those that you really don’t need to be doing.

Darrell recently told us about his day changing his radiator with his son. That was a great father son bonding experience and was a great task for them to do together. But if Colby hadn’t been helping, and instead had been waiting for his dad to finish so they could do something else together, then maybe changing the radiator would have become a task to pass on to a mechanic.

I know it’s hard to accept, especially when passing on a task to someone else often comes with a monetary price. But at those times you need to look at the cost and determine if your time is worth more.

The hours, weeks and possibly months it would have taken me to finish my basement myself were worth the few hundred dollars I paid to have it done. Just like the programmer I hired to complete that website, and the others I hire to help me in my business, are worth the time I save trying to do it myself.

Superhero Syndrome is much easier to overcome once you know how to recognize it. So have a look at your life and see if there are any tasks you can eliminate.

I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.

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