Author: alearningaday

“Never and always are two words you should always remember never to use.”

This is a quote I am going to live by. I know I use these words from time to time, I know they are “never” true, and I know I want to stop.

This will be similar to a move 3 years ago to stop using try. That’s been a fun ride. I smile every time I write “try” anywhere these days. If it’s legitimate (20% of the time), I use attempt instead. Otherwise, I make sure I’m clear about whether it’s a “do” or “do not.”

Here’s to catching myself when I use “always” or “never.”

Friendships matter to me. I believe calling someone a “friend” is the highest honour we can possibly award. We are born into families but we choose our friends. I find that the most successful parents are those that make the transition from parent to friend once their kids become adults.

There are lots of cool quotes that define true friendship as the ability to pick up from where you left off. While I think passive friendships and “lets-grab-a-beer” friendships are nice to have, I believe in nurturing active relationships.

Active friendships are those that are, well, “active.” It doesn’t mean you share or know every little detail of what’s going on in a person’s life but it does mean you get the big picture and are plugged in.

The big question, then, is how do you maintain active friendships? Below are a few ideas that I have experimented with over the past few years.

Ideas that have not worked
– Regular personal update emailing. I used to do a weekly personal update email to a set of friends every week. I managed to keep this up for close to 2 years but eventually ran out of steam. It was not all that fun as it was one way engagement – emailing is not everyone’s cup of tea.
– Regular Skype calls. This worked occasionally but was a failure overall. This is a two way engagement but you run out of steam very quickly. As you have more to do, regular calls becomes tough to keep up.

Ideas that have worked
– Working on projects together. This is probably the biggest success. Every initiative that you see featured on this blog is an initiative I’ve worked on with friends (e.g. RealLeaders.tv). Projects ensure regular contact while keeping a focus on doing something that has a shot at making a positive difference.
– Inclusion. Inclusion is a principle. It just involves keeping people who matter up-to-date with the small details without too much investment. Two tools that have worked very well here are Whatsapp and Fitbit.

An idea being tested
– A Mastermind group. This experiment is just 5 months old so I’m going to reserve judgment on this. For more on Mastermind groups, click here. In a way, you could call the Mastermind group a project but it deserves a separate mention because it gets to the heart of pursuing growth and development together and drives regular deep conversations.

These experiments have taught me a lot and I feel I’m getting better at active relationships now. For instance, a big group of us are in the process of launching Help2Grow.org, a charity, and that’s already turning out to be a wonderful way to stay in touch and do some good. More on this soon..

So, as a bit of homework for the first weekend in 2014, I would urge you to make a list of the friendships that matter to you and think about ways to keep them active. The best part of this is that the quest to keep relationships active has repeatedly lead me down the path of making it meaningful. That’s an incredible outcome.

Does cleaning ever end? Will there ever be a day when you say “that’s it – no more cleaning for the rest of my life?”

As long as we’re around, cleaning will be too. It follows then that we have 3 choices –

1. Go into it kicking, screaming, and whining
2. Accept it and do it with indifference
3. Embrace it and enjoy it

If cleaning is going to be around for the rest of our lives (and it is), whining is wasted energy. Embracing it and enjoying it is clearly the best solution. It is what it is. We just ought to make the best of it.

If cleaning is a given, isn’t failure a given too? Do we treat failure as an odd occurrence or do we understand that failure will be around as long as we are?

The next time you find yourself kicking, screaming, and whining when you fail, think about cleaning. If your attitude sucks for both, fix it. They are here to stay. Embrace them. Enjoy them.

I believe in living an intentional and examined life. I like making plans and care about how I spend my time. In Myers Briggs speak, my “J” is thus fully justified. As a result, over the past 5 years, I’ve had “theme years.” A theme could be anything – a commitment to learn a new skill, a commitment to do something better, a commitment to focus on a particular aspect of my life, etc. They haven’t always worked – the deliberate theme has worked in 3 of the 5 years and themes have emerged the rest of the time. Still, after fulfilling dreams like learning to play the guitar and nailing the exercise habit, I think it’s an idea with a lot of merit.

Some of my biggest learnings in the past year have revolved around an acceptance of things beyond my control. Our second family value is “Live Invictus – I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” My wife and I chose this line so as to remind ourselves to be proactive and take responsibility for how we live our lives. I have often taken this to an extreme in the past and pushed for progress when it wasn’t really productive. A couple of experiences have reinforced the need for me to learn to step back, push less, and let the forces that be do their work. As a result, I’ve worked on being a lot less intentional and a lot more patient in the second half of the year. A wiser friend once rightly pointed out that while patience will never be my strength, it’s a great life skill to have.

So, in a bid to teach myself to be patient, I’ve decided to start the year with no theme (even my “no theme” years are deliberate.. haha). There are many theme years lined up in the years ahead thanks to the many things I want to learn (ventriloquism and improv acting for example) but this won’t be one of them. This is new territory for me and I am very excited to see what emerges.

‘Often we spend all our time thinking how we can change situations instead of letting them change us.’ | Credited to a very wise friend

This blog hit 3,000 posts day before yesterday. As I think about the usual bevy of additions and changes to my life in 2014, this blog remains the ever-present part of my daily routine will. This habit of sharing a daily learning has made me a much better person and changed me in more ways than I can comprehend.

This blog wouldn’t be what it is without you. So, it is really you I must thank for helping me learn and making me better. Thank you for subscribing via email, feedly, RSS, and Facebook. I am grateful to you for all your encouragement and hope these learnings help you in your journey.

Here’s to a wonderful 2014 – with it’s share of joys, frustrations, and memorable moments as we all grow as people and as professionals. There is never failure, only learning… so, let’s keep going, keep growing. Happy new year!

The worst way to do something is to do it in a way that cannot be repeated. This typically involves procrastination, anxiety and a mad dash to the finish line. The excel sheet is a mess. You got the answer required (or so you say) but you couldn’t do it again. You have no idea what worked. It isn’t repeatable. It isn’t a process.

The success habit is created by repeatable processes. It isn’t created by managing around crises. This approach involves front-loading the work and the stress and is typically characterized by a focused and relaxed finish with ample time to check and re-check the final product.

So, how are repeatable processes created?

1. Assume you will be back to reuse what you are working on. No compromises on excellence.
2. Make conscious decisions right from the start. Front-loading work and stress is a conscious decision. Postponing decisions inevitably results in procrastination and bad non-repeatable processes.

I am thinking about repeatable processes as I enter the new year. Perhaps it will emerge as the theme of the new year. It is definitely an idea I want to get my head around. Another such idea is decision making. I trust you will see many more blog posts on both in the coming months.

“Bran: Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?
Eddard: That is the only time a man can be brave.”

(Source: A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin)

Yes, taking a chance and speaking up could make you look stupid. And yes, keeping silent and taking the high road may require a ton of resolve. But, let fear not be an excuse for lack of courage.

True courage isn’t the absence of fear. It is knowing that there are other things more important than fear.

The 2 choice inhibitors – immaturity and an inability to look beyond your own self interest inhibit our ability to look beyond the obvious choice.

Choices always exist. Where others are concerned, the best we can do is alert the other to their presence. There’s not much we can do beyond that. It’s their decision to not look beyond that obvious choice. That’s a choice too.

Where we are concerned, we owe it to ourselves to look beyond that obvious choice. All we need is that bit of self awareness to alert ourselves of the narrow frame. If we can call our inability out in the heat of the situation, we’re half way towards solving the problem.

Finally, while we are it, we can, sometimes, find ourselves in situations where we can be made to feel bad because of someone else’s choices. A gentle reminder – it’s not your responsibility. Everyone has a choice.

take a moment and think about the effort that has gone into the meal.

It is very likely that –

– many farmers in different parts of the world have toiled for many months together to harvest the grains and vegetables that formed your meal

– many dealers and wholesalers in these parts then paid these farmers to transport this to the retailer

– the retailer team organized many a marketing campaign to make sure these were sold while fresh

– someone in your family or in the restaurant you are eating now spent a great deal of time attempting to cook it to perfection

– and, lest we forget, many people in the companies we work in made buying this meal a possibility (thank you, pay-check)

That’s a lot of people whose efforts have made this morsel possible. And yet, it is highly probable that we just gulp it down without giving this effort a thought. Perhaps we even mentally sigh at the imperfection of the meal because we don’t have something we wanted to eat.

So, today.. I’d suggest we do things a little differently. Before you eat your first morsel at the next meal, take a moment to give thanks.. to the many who made the meal possible.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate our gifts.

Buffer, a social sharing start-up, made waves when they put their salary formula and individual salaries on their blog. Understandably, this has generated much publicity and plenty of discussion in multiple places. As I was skimming the most up-voted comments on their blog post, I was drawn to a comment that said they wouldn’t want the world knowing how much they made and if any of the members in the Buffer team had pointed that out.

I found this response from one of the Buffer team members instructive

The learning for me here is that we often jump straight into make a judgment on a situation. Often, a tad too quickly. Practically, all I’m looking to understand when I see something like this is what I can learn. And I’ve learnt a few things from this –

1. It is easier to fight for your values than it is to live them. I applaud Buffer for living up to their value of transparency. Too many organizations and people pay lip service to their values.

2. This compensation structure will not work for everyone. I’m not sure if this will work everywhere. That said, it is thought provoking and should be a great discussion for every founding team.

3. Stop judging.. look for compatibility instead. A lot of folks on the thread are busy making a judgment of whether this is good or bad. I think they’re missing the point. No one knows if this is good or bad. It hasn’t been tried before. Even if it has, the context was most definitely not the same. The deeper point here is about compatibility. Buffer has made a strong statement about the kind of people it looks for. If you are the sort of person who will not be comfortable with having your salary out in the open, don’t bother applying to Buffer.

This isn’t all that different from life. It’s easy to go about classing people as good, bad, low quality, high quality, etc. Who the hell really knows this stuff? It’s smarter to just check for compatibility. We won’t work well with everyone. Hopefully, we spend time with people who work well with us and vice versa.

Overall, I’m impressed with what Buffer has done. I don’t know if this is the best business move. Only time will tell. I do however think this has raised the bar on defining “core values.” And, at the very least, it will make folks think twice when they talk about “transparency” as a core value. That’s a big win. Well done Buffer.