Author: alearningaday

One way to live your life is to always feel owed.

How does that work? Well, you likely did something for somebody and they never returned paid you back. But, to add insult to injury, they don’t even acknowledge it much these days.

That ungrateful wretch. You’ll show them when you get a chance.

Of course, you probably way overestimated the impact of what you did.

But, that’s not even point.

Expectations are toxic. And, carrying these expectations with you just increases the amount of toxic material in your brain. It doesn’t just mess with how you think, it also messes with every other thought in your system.

Nobody owes you anything. You do things because they either make you feel better or because they appeal to some inner sense of purpose. So, if you’re walking around feeling owed, you’re inviting unhappiness.

Every once a while, it’s worth asking – “When do you feel owed? What does it take for me to feel owed?” And, find ways to take the time to shed all those expectations you are carrying around. Life feels lighter and better.

Being creative often involves being intellectual middlemen.

In an interesting study,  Kellogg school of Management Professors Jones, Mukherjee, Stringer and Uzzi analyzed 17.9 million research papers for novelty by assessing how much they’d been cited and what combination of sources they’d cited. They found that – the highest-impact science is primarily grounded in exceptionally conventional combinations of prior work yet simultaneously features an intrusion of unusual combinations.

Charles Duhigg interviewed Brian Uzzi for his book “Smarter, Faster, Better” and Uzzi said – “A lot of the people we think of as exceptionally creative are essentially intellectual middlemen.” That is, “They’ve learned how to transfer knowledge between different industries or groups. They’ve seen a lot of different people attack the same problems in different settings, and so they know which kinds of ideas are more likely to work.”

So, how do we become better at being intellectual middlemen? The abstract of the paper offers a clue – Novel combinations of prior work are rare, yet teams are 37.7% more likely than solo authors to insert novel combinations into familiar knowledge domains.

Successful iPad games these days are things of beauty. They are beautifully designed and engineered for one purpose – to get you addicted.

It makes sense, of course. That’s how game developers make money. You either get addicted enough to watch ads for other games or you make purchases within the app.

If you’ve ever tried one of these games, you learn very quickly that promising yourself to limit game time isn’t a winning strategy. You might be logical. But, the game developers don’t speak to your logical brain. Instead, they speak to your lizard brain. And, generally, the lizard brain wins.

It turns out that the easiest strategy to limit game time is to delete the game.

Just as the easiest strategy to eat healthy is to remove unhealthy food. Or, just as the better strategy to watch less Netflix is to cancel your subscription.

As a general rule, if you’re going into battle, choose conditions that suit you.

In May 1913, five San Francisco entrepreneurs (a banker, a wood and coal dealer, a bookkeeper, a lawyer and a miner) invested $100 each to set up the first commercial-scale liquid bleach factory in the United States, on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. The firm was first called the Electro-Alkaline Company and ran into difficult times during the first 3 years.

So, investor William Murray took over the company as General Manager. His wife, Annie Murray, saw the potential in a less-concentrated liquid bleach for home use. She built customer demand by giving away 15-ounce sample bottles at the family’s grocery store in downtown Oakland. The product was called Clorox and the rest, as they say, is history.

The birth of Clorox marked a century of dominance by consumer packaged goods companies. They made their way into our houses by selling us their soaps, tissues and the like, and sponsoring serials in our living room (“soap” operas). Their formula was –

1. Invest heavily in advertising to build the product’s brand and make customers want to buy it
2. Invest in retailer relationships so customers can find the product easily when they go shopping

In last week’s “Notes by Ada” note (/essay?), I argue, that we’re reaching the point where these giants are beginning to unravel. The signs are out there – multiple reports about their struggles, disappointing earnings and attempts to buy each other and consolidate. It is no surprise. The formula, if there was one, for succeeding in e-commerce is –

1. Sell direct to consumers online and cut out all middle-people and costs
2. Choose to either build a brand using smart digital advertising or build a subscription based relationship

This is another example of “old world” companies facing the chasm and finding the gap between them and technology firms (they’re stuck trying to figure out the cloud while tech firms are implementing machine learning) harder and harder to bridge.

If this piques your interest, the longer version is on Medium or LinkedIn.

When you first touch the water as you’re starting a swim, it generally feels cold. The first time it touches your back typically sends a shiver down your spine. Ah – the discomfort.

Do you take the plunge? Or not?

The plunge alone won’t suffice, of course. You’ll still feel cold.

Instead, the best approach is to jump in and swim. A few strokes later, the water feels good and you feel comfortable. If it still feels cold, a few more strokes will do the trick.

This is the point when you wonder why you spent time wondering if you did take the plunge. It feels comfortable. And, as you swim more, it begins to feel great.

Of course, this is analogous to every great growth experience.

We introduce ourselves all the time – especially when we meet people for the first time. These introductions can be pretty high stakes because many folks make their minds about us from our introduction. This is especially so if you are presenting to executives and investors who are used to be making quick judgments about people.

So, here are 3 tips that help with delivering great introductions.

1. Start with why. Most self introductions end up beginning and ending with what we do. But, what we did is rarely as interesting as understanding why we did what. And, a great way to set that up is to start with what matters to you and tie the rest of the story to those themes. Even a simple start like – “I enjoy solving different kinds of problems” can go a long way in helping people understand how you make decisions.

So, given this, my ideal structure would be –

• Start with why
• Explain your professional path in a way that ties back to starting with why
• Depending on context, add a few personal notes – hobbies, partners, etc.

The beauty about starting with the why aside is that it doesn’t just add purpose to why you did what you did. If the context is professional, telling people what drives you is a beautiful way to add a nice touch of personality to your introduction.

2. Practice delivering your introduction within 3 minutes – ideally 2.5 minutes. I think a general sweet spot time for great introductions is between 2 and 3 minutes. Any longer and you better be Steve Jobs-esque engaging. I’ve added a time limit here because it is vital you write your introduction out once and practice it. Great introductions take a ton of practice.

3. Test and iterate. Every time you introduce yourself, take a mental note of the feedback you see from the introduction. Are people excited to talk to you? Are their eyes glazing over? Do you radiate a certain energy when you do it?

Our self introduction goes from good to great over time and it is on us to be conscious every time we deliver it.

We often describe any variation to our original plans “unexpected.”

But, is it?

Obstacles always show up and plans always change. Any journey worth taking comes with bumps you didn’t know about and twists, turns and re-routing that you didn’t imagine.

Perhaps, instead, we should only described a plan working out with absolutely no variation as unexpected.

Imagine what that would do to our mental state, stress levels and perspective.

I started 2017 with a post on my theme for the new year – engagement.

From that post – I believe engagement is the answer to the debates around managing energy versus managing time. As with most important things, it isn’t an either/or. And, I also believe engagement is a principle that a good life is anchored around. And, as with all life principles, it is very hard to consistently live it. Also, I think of engagement and consciousness (the ability to be aware and to choose) as sister concepts. They share the same core.

Engaging on engagement is easier said than done, of course. So, I broke it down to 3 sub themes – health, information and seeking to understand and then to be understood. And, I committed to a collection of processes at the beginning of the year.

But, change doesn’t happen with commitment alone. Change happens when you follow that commitment with consistent re-commitment. I have daily check points with myself. But, I found a half year review of this to be both fascinating and useful. Here’s what I found –

1. Health: Some aspects had gone really well. I had made some very good diet changes, was doing a much better job working out my whole body, and was consciously standing more and walking more through the day. But, my exercise volume had dipped post parenthood and a few other projects. So, I needed to do a better job here. Overall, however, I’d say this was positive.
2. Information: Aspects that had worked well included a much better use of email filters, almost no email reading in bed, cutting a bunch of news feeds that were more noise than signal and starting the “Notes by Ada” project to synthesize my thinking around technology. But, on the flip side, I hadn’t done a good job in “deep reading” (books), was still checking my phone far too often as a default action and was a bit last minute in the creation of “Notes by Ada.” I felt I needed to do a much better job here as it felt like 3 steps forward and 2.9 steps back.
3. Seek to understand and then to be understood: This was the most nebulous sub theme of the three as it isn’t that easy to judge. However, I ask myself how I’m doing with this (along with the other 2) every day. And, I had begun to perceive progress. I was more aware of when I interrupted folks in conversation and was doing a better job modulating my energy in meetings. I didn’t expect change in six months as this is a longer term construction project. Positive progress with an awareness that there’s a long way to go.

This half year review was a breath of fresh air as it injected much needed energy and purpose. I think we all tend to overweight the negatives. And, before I started this review, I thought I’d gone backward on 2 of my 3 objectives. But, the review revealed a lot more nuance – bunch of things going well, a few improvements required – and also made me realize that I’d made a lot more progress than I thought.

I’ve made a fair few changes since that aim to chip away at the areas I need to do better. But, more than ever, I realize how we frequently overestimate what we can get done in a day and underestimate what we can get done over the long haul – especially when we chip away at things, one small action at a time.

This is the age of the hustle. It is easier than ever to hustle. We always have access to the people we want to reach – via email and social networks. If you want to send someone an email a day to remind them of something that will help you, you can.

To hustle is also glorified. Isn’t that what the gritty entrepreneur and the storied networker does? The pursuit of this kinds of hustle abhors patience and diffuses the tension of waiting by taking action. Do something, anything. Bucket obvious mistakes under learning and “iterate.”

There are three problems with this approach.

First, mistakes we could and should have avoided with some thought are not signs of us learning. They point to stupidity.

Second, the tension of waiting and responding (instead of replying) is the tension that helps us grow. We sacrifice growth and wisdom when we sacrifice that tension.

And, finally, it should be obvious that this is the kind of hustle that only works in the short run.

Don’t glorify action. Action isn’t great. It is just, well, action. We make progress by learning when to act.

And, sometimes, as a result, the best thing to do is to just wait.