Month: March 2020

I maintain a One Note page with ideas for future blog posts. I don’t always write about what’s on that list. But, more than half of my posts originate as musings on this page.

Toward the end of last year, I noticed that I was subconsciously avoiding any notes written on this page. So, for a few days, I made a conscious effort to go down the list of ideas. Still, no change.

That was frustrating – I had a long list of ideas going back almost 18 months and, yet, they weren’t being put to any practical use.

So, as part of my end of year reset, I just purged the list.

In the three months since, this page has gone back to being as useful as ever.

Every once a while, even the most dependable systems in our life stop working for us. The worst possible response in such situations is to beat ourselves up. Our systems exist to serve us and not the other way around.

It may just be time for a purge and reset.

Much of the daily practice of focus involves mentally celebrating the things we chose to leave undone just as much as we celebrate completing what we planned to get done.

In our teams, the presence of the latter is a result of good execution while the presence of the former is a sign of sound strategy.

“Violence is what we do when we don’t know what to do with our suffering.” | Parker J Palmer

I was reflecting on three separate incidents – my reaction to an incident, an exchange I had with someone, and a situation I read about.

In each of these cases, the violence (verbal/emotional in any case) was a direct consequence of an inability to deal with suffering in Parker J Palmer’s words.

As you can imagine, the quote really hit home.

I came across this lovely illustration on relationships by artist Olivia de Recat for The New Yorker.

So many of these are on point. It is amazing how much she communicates with two lines and a few words.

And, the “Dog” illustration does what it is meant to do… by melting your heart.

As the experiment with remote work has begun, I’ve found it tempting to fall into the high pressure optimization trap by asking questions along the vein of – “how do I do this right?”

But, of course, like most things – there isn’t any “right” way and there’s no formula. What works for some will not work for others. And, we tend to be better served when we replace questions about “being good” with questions about becoming better.

Viewed from that lens, I see lots of interesting ideas pop up – virtual hang outs, slack amas, the occasional in-person team working session for folks feeling lonely, etc.

So, my biggest reflection has been to give myself (and folks I work with) some time to make all the wrong moves, test hypotheses, and keep iterating till we find the right set up.

With patience and a willingness to learn, we’ll experiment our way to the right set up and find that all the steps we took along the way were purposeful after all.

Much like building good products.

And much like life.

Periodic check – are the games we’re trying to win the games we want to be playing?

Pyrrhic victories are best avoided.

As California has declared a state of emergency as of a few hours ago due to the Coronavirus, companies all over are beginning to mandate that everyone works from home for the foreseeable future (~4 weeks at minimum).

As I get ready for an extended period of working from home, I’m curious about 3 questions –

1. How productive is remote work going to be – especially for those working on projects/in roles that involve coordinating large teams?

2. Is there going to be a visible difference in the productivity of folks with kids vs. those without? (How will this even work for folks with kids at home?)

3. What tools are going to be most useful?

I’m certain I’m going to miss many things about our offices (whiteboards, for example). It promises to be a fascinating few week period.

Here’s hoping that these measures help control the spread of the virus.

I came across this lovely story shared by Anne Lamott – a writer.

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day.

We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.

Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’” 

It resonated.

Values are what we believe. Virtues are beliefs that we pursue or embody.

Values don’t need to show up in our actions. Our virtues, on the other hand, are based on what we do,

As what we do is who we are, our values matter a whole lot less than our virtues.

So, it is worth asking ourselves – what are our values? And, do they show up in our lives as virtues?

(H/T: “What You Do is Who You Are” by Ben Horowitz)