Month: October 2023

“Generally, say less than necessary.” | Kevin Kelly

Much to learn here, I have

Good leadership is when we define the why and the what and trust the team to figure out the how.

We exhibit bad leadership when we attempt to control (a.k.a micromanage) the how instead of focusing on hiring a team we can trust, giving them the right context and boundaries, and getting out of the way.

I started working as a product manager a few years back. Someone said – “In the long run, the only thing that’s going to matter is your answer to the question – what have you shipped?

If you can point to a good set of products that have been loved by users and delivered on value to the business, you’ll have done well. And if you can’t, then you’ll have done poorly. It’s a simple as that.”

I think of that note from time to time. When you’re in the process of building the product, it becomes easy to get caught in the internal noise. Your doubts, the team’s feelings, internal momentum, stakeholder feedback, user research, and so on. Some of these may be predictive to the outcome. The key is to not be distracted by any of this and instead to focus on the product.

Ultimately, the product truth will emerge and shine through.. or not.

Everything else is gravy.

“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” | Kathrin Jansen

I came across this quote in Seth Godin’s latest book – “The Song of Significance.”

I bookmarked this quote as it felt like quintessential Seth – constructive, forward-looking, and action-oriented.

It resonated.

The biggest challenge with unpacking a breakdown in a relationship or any complex system is that we’re stuck analyzing what happened in the immediate past when the seeds were likely planted many months or even years prior.

I didn’t appreciate the value of consistency throughout my childhood. I waltzed my way through most months at school doing the bare minimum. Then I’d go on a crazy sprint when it came time for examinations – pulling multiple all-nighters – to get the job done.

I began experiencing the limitations of this approach in the final 2 years of high school. So, after a rough junior year/11th grade, I decided to salvage my final year with more consistent effort.

Then I fell right back to old habits in my undergraduate years – only to definitively understand that inconsistent efforts result in poor results in the things that matter in this life. And that’s not just grades* – but domains like fitness, relationships, and learning.

This blog was created with 2 goals – to teach myself (a) how to better deal with failure and disappointment and (b) consistency.

And while this practice has delivered on the 2 goals above and many more I didn’t think of at the time, I think consistency has been the habit that has had the biggest impact on the quality of my life. No matter the problem – whether it is as important as figuring out how to improve my fitness or a challenging work issue, or something more mundane such as sorting out our family photos or diagnose a higher-than-usual water bill – I know now that it will be best solved with consistency.

This means breaking the problem down into a set of actions/or a system of actions. Then taking steps toward solving the problem consistently – daily or weekly or even monthly depending on the activity.

Nothing beats small things done on a consistent basis because it often has a compound impact on our outcomes.

*I did eventually trying a consistency focused approach to my academics in graduate school. No all-nighters were pulled and the results, to someone who hadn’t an ounce of consistency for all preceding years in schools, were astonishing. Good processes result in good outcomes in the long run.

I watched the Netflix documentary on David Beckham recently. It was a well crafted set of episodes.

In his heyday, David Beckham was one of the best right sided midfielders in the world. His right boot was majestic and his strengths on a dead ball (corners, free kicks) are likely unmatched. But he was also a lot more than that – a global superstar whose impact went well beyond football.

My biggest reflection from the documentary was on the theme of trade-offs. His marriage to Victoria Adams / Posh Spice and the celebrity lifestyle came with it ended his career at Manchester United. After a stint at Real Madrid, he then decided to move to the US at a time when the MLS was a shadow of the league it is today.

To continue his eligibility for selection in the English national team, he made his way back to Italy to play for AC Milan on multiple occasions before finishing his career in France.

It all culminated in a fascinating and successful career as a footballer and global superstar. But it also brought with it many “what ifs.” What if he had stayed on at Manchester United?

What if he’d stayed at Madrid for a few more years and so on?

It is hard to escape the thought that he sold his still-incredible football career short. But then again, he was still wildly successful and has since gone from strength to strength as a co-owner of Inter Miami FC (the club Lionel Messi chose to join this year) while amassing half a billion dollars, and still managing to be the family man he’s so fond of being.

The documentary pauses at all of these decisions and examines the trade-offs from different lenses. Many disagreed with many of these decisions – but such is life. It isn’t a popularity contest.

You’ve got to make peace with the trade-offs of your decisions. And, from the looks of it, he seems to have done just that.

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” | Paulo Coelho

It resonated.

One way to think about age – we become old when we think and talk more about the past than the future.

“We suffer more in imagination than reality” – Seneca

I was thinking about this idea recently as I found myself mulling over a potential issue. The key, of course, is that it was a potential issue – not a real one.

I reminded myself that there is no point suffering twice.

Turns out there was no need to suffer – there wasn’t an issue in the end.

We suffer more in imagination indeed. Things are often not as bad as they first seem.