Author: alearningaday

Floats, sea monsters, and tact

I was watching an exchange between a few kids in a swimming pool the other day. Three had originally brought a float to the pool that was now being occupied by three others of similar ages.

The original owners decided they wanted their float back. So, one of the float owners politely asked the current occupants to please move so they could play on their float. But, she wasn’t getting much traction.

Cue: tension.

Just as this threatened to escalate into a fight, one of the dads of the temporary occupants stepped in. He told the kids that he was a sea monster and would give the kids 15 seconds to get on the float.

This resulted in a lot of squealing. But, before you knew it, all six kids were on the float and having a great time.

Tact is powerful.

Harrowing by Parker J Palmer

Harrowing by Parker J Palmer

The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.

I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.

Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—

The farmer plows to plant a greening season.

I was touched when I came across this poem this week. I marked it as a post to reflect on over the weekend – the perfect time to look back.. to look forward.

(H/T: Reboot by Jerry Colonna)

Creating great learning experiences

The challenge with creating a great learning experience is getting the mix between theory and practice just right. Most conventional experiences just end up separating the two for simplicity. So, we end up overdoing theory in classrooms and overdoing practice in our day-to-day at work.

Skill building, thus, gets really hard for two reasons. First, the theory needs to be low on information and high on synthesis to make it applicable. And, second, it needs to be followed by attempts at applying it – with access to feedback.

So, if we’re seeking to help ourselves (and/or others) build skills, we need to design learning modules where we spend 20% of the time absorbing one simple, synthesized, idea followed by 80% of our time spent on attempting to practice it.

The test? If our attempts at learning aren’t changing how we actually operate, we aren’t learning.

To learn and not to do is not to learn.

Reason as our legal and PR function

Why did reason evolve in human beings when it didn’t for other animals?

This becomes particularly interesting when we consider that few decisions are actually made using our pre-frontal cortex. As the saying goes, reason helps to get people to conclusions while emotions drive decisions.

One fascinating theory is that reason evolved to enable us to explain our behavior to others around us in our social groups. In a highly interdependent social species, the ability to explain/rationalize decisions became a valuable asset.

So, it follows that reason developed as our internal legal and PR function.

I’ve been thinking about this since I read this in Rory Sutherland’s excellent book, Alchemy, two weeks ago. Yesterday’s post was inspired by the book as well.. and I suspect there’ll be many more in the coming wees.

The Walkman decision

There’s a great story about a decision Sony made when they shipped the legendary Walkman.

Against the advice of market research, Sony’s co-founder had asked the engineering team to build a portable music player that would ease the boredom on long flights. The engineers then came back with what could only be termed a product manager’s dream – for nearly the same amount of effort and cost, they were able to add an additional feature – a record button – to this cassette player.

But, to their dismay, Chairman Akio Morita asked them to remove the record button.

By reducing the device to serve a single use case, he eliminated any potential user confusion. In the same way McDonalds removed cutlery from restaurants to make it clear how they wanted customers to eat their burgers, Sony released the Walkman with a lower range of functionality to give them the highest chance to change customer behavior.

And change behavior they did.

(H/T: Alchemy by Rory Sutherland)

Experimenting with different hows for the same why

For nearly eleven years, 95%+ of my writing during weekdays happened in the morning. Writing out a post for a day was a key part of my morning routine.

Since April, however, I’ve been writing in the evenings and it has become a key part of my evening routine.

Similarly, for a few years, I used to take a lot of care to start with thinking about my post for the day vs. getting to my morning news and feeds. Of late, I’ve switched that up to start with morning news and feeds followed by email.

There are reasons for both changes. Part of the motivation was to mix it up and try something new at a time when there was a lot going on. The other part followed a realization that the new routines flow easier with that of the kids’. The end of the day, for example, has become ideal for reflection given their long and calming bedtime routine.

I have no idea if these switches are for the short term or the long term. I’ve learnt to become a lot more flexible about the “how” as long as I’m clear about the why and accountable for the what. For example, as long as I’m clear about why writing here matters and ship a learning every day, I don’t need to micromanage how I do it.

This approach turns out to be pretty useful when we manage ourselves.. and just as useful when we manage others too.

Speed of response to feedback

Our ability to respond quickly to feedback is directly proportional to our ability to not take feedback as personal affronts.

It generally is about that thing we did, not about us. (And, in the off chance that it was about us, we’re still better off focusing on that thing.)

We learn faster when we train ourselves to get over ourselves.

The patience regimen

The biggest lesson I learnt in my first year as a parent was flexibility. That year was a journey in accepting that few things would go as per plan. I’m now more flexible than I’ve ever been. That, however, was the easy first lesson as our first was still a baby.

The second year was all about realizing that I needed to curb my instincts to fight fire with fire. I’ve written before about my instincts and the challenges posed by it. I was also fortunate to read Marshall Rosenberg’s wonderful book – Non-Violent Communication – at a time when I needed it.

This third year has been about figuring out a path to dealing with the root of those instincts – impatience. When I take stock of my good and bad parenting moments, patience tends to be the common factor.

In the good ones, I demonstrated plenty of patience and approached the situation with a desire to understand as well as a willingness to be creative and tactful. In the bad ones, I had none of it, rushed too quickly to an attempted solution, and sacrificed effectiveness for a misplaced sense of efficiency.

So, I’ve begun to think of my experiences as a parent as my opportunity to get better at being patient. I have the benefit of having plenty of opportunities to practice every day while also being blessed by a partner/role model who seems to always have plenty of it.

I don’t expect to become the most patient person around. But, I do hope to become more patient and learn to channel my impatience better in the coming month.

Here’s to that.

Reflections on The Algebra of Happiness

I listened to “The Algebra of Happiness” by Scott Galloway recently. There wasn’t much that was new as it was a compilation of posts from his weekly blog – “No Mercy, No Malice” that I’ve enjoyed reading over the past months.

I’ve shared a few of his posts from time to time as I find his writing a nice mix of interesting, provocative, and heart warming. Amidst notes with strong points of view and occasional humble bragging, there is plenty about the struggles he’s faced and continues to face. The struggle to be a better son, father, friend, teacher, and citizen.

It is that struggle that makes life interesting and challenging all at once. And, I’m glad he shares that. Those are the sorts of notes that help put things in perspective.

My notes from the book are sparse. But, as I look back on what I’ve taken away, there are three notes that resonated.

First, Prof Galloway observes that hard work and a lack of balance early in a career has a disproportionate impact later. In the early years, speed helps. There’s no right way to do this – only we can decide what trade offs make sense for us.

Second, the ratio of how much we sweat to watching others sweat is a leading indicator of success.

And, third, the most important decision we make is who we marry – if we decide to do so.