Author: alearningaday

First time analysis or code or construction of any sorts rewards scrappiness. It’s nice to blitz through to find the answer. Who cares if the analysis or code looks clean? Just get the darn thing done.

Over the years, I’ve endured many painful experiences when I have had to come back and re-use what I was building. Hacking through the piece of analysis to get an answer has almost always resulted in me having to rebuild it from scratch.

Do it right the first time if you can. If you can’t, do it with a good process so you can come back and pick up from where you left of – you’ll thank yourself later.

If you are doing well in your life/career, thank the environment. Thank your company/project, your boss, your teammates, your family, and even the place you live in. Superstars can just as easily be massive failures in environments that don’t suit them. The flip side could also be true. Folks struggling to perform can achieve huge shifts by a simple change in the environment as long as the reason for failure isn’t an attitude problem.

Sports is an arena where we see this so often. Some truly extraordinary players go through mediocre seasons at clubs that don’t suit them and go back to being extraordinary at environments that work for them.

The learning here is that you aren’t as important a factor in both your successes and failures as you probably think you are. There are many factors at work. That doesn’t mean you have no impact. You do.. but it’s smaller than you think.

So, don’t drink the kool aid and don’t take the anti depressants either. It’s all a game and the real gift is being given the opportunity to play. The better you are at playing the game with a consistently great attitude, the chances are higher that you will have the opportunity to pick environments where you have a higher chance of success.

The topic on my mind today is privilege. Ever since my Himalaya trek, I’ve been working on removing complaining. I dislike whining and more importantly, I dislike myself when I whine. In many ways, 2013 has been a year of gaining perspective. Thanks to some interesting failures/life experiences in the first part of the year, I’ve realized how absurdly lucky I am to have the problems I have. At any point, there are more than three billion people on this planet who would love to have my problems. This sort of privilege brings with it a responsibility to be humble and a duty to make as much of a positive difference as possible.

I’ve been thinking about privilege today thanks to a phenomenal blog post by a blogger I do not know. I would strongly recommend you read it. It is one of the better pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time. Below is my favorite part.

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Paul Bernal – a few words on privilege

When I read about Boris’s speech, and when I think about all the patronising, elitist, offensive stuff that this government and pretty much every government I can remember have said, it makes me angry. Things like accusing poor people of not knowing how to budget, how to cook, how to feed their kids, how to make good decisions, or of being lazy, stupid etc. Suggestions from ministers that they could easily live on the amounts people get in benefits. Suggestions that people don’t try hard enough to get jobs. Suggestions that they don’t work hard enough. They all make me angry – and they make it clear to me that most of those speaking don’t know how privileged they are – and what the consequences of that privilege are.

For me, there are a few things that I try to remember. The first is the most obvious – that I’m deeply privileged and deeply lucky. The second is that I still don’t know quite how privileged and lucky I am – because so much of the privilege is hidden and built into the system, so much that those who are privileged can’t see it. Until I asked, I never realised that all the women were being paid less than all the men. Until I went to Burma and met those Burmese people I didn’t realise how it was possible not to feel sorry for yourself for the smallest thing. Until I listened to the African people at the conference, I didn’t realise quite how many assumptions I was making about how to solve the world’s problems.

That, in the end, is the most important thing. Whoever you are, however intelligent and enlightened you are, you don’t know what life is like for other people. You don’t know how things are for them, how hard it is for them. I don’t know what it is like to be really poor, for example. I’ve been poor – but I’ve been poor and still known I have family that would support me in the end, that I have the kind of education and experience that can help me out, that I’m healthy and so forth. Men don’t know what it’s like to be women. Straight men don’t know what it’s like to be gay in the society we have today. Able-bodied people don’t know what it’s like to have a disability. White people don’t know what it is like to be black. Wealthy people don’t know what it’s like to be poor.

There’s an old saying: ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. There’s a degree to which it’s true, and it certainly seems that the current lot of powerful people are thoroughly irresponsible. I’d like to add another – though it’s deeply wishful thinking. With great privilege should come great humility. Those of us who are privileged – like me, and like Boris – should be able to find that humility. To know that we really don’t know what it’s like to live without our privilege. We can try to imagine – but we’ll never really succeed. And we should know that we’ll never really succeed – and be far, far more willing to listen properly to those who do know it. Most of all, though, we should know when not to talk as though we had all the answers. We should know when to shut up.

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”And we should know that we’ll never really succeed – and be far, far more willing to listen properly to those who do know it. Most of all, though, we should know when not to talk as though we had all the answers. We should know when to shut up.”

Word.

Every once in a while, life throws in a crazy outlier experience. These experiences often feel horrible. This could be an exceptionally bad project or a period in life when everything seems to be dark and depressing.

The good news is that they don’t last too long and the better news is that they are of high value in terms of what they add to our life experience.

Outlier experiences stretch our pre conceived limits. Let’s take a simple example – there are a lot of people who complain about bad commutes. I was among them. Then I spent most of 2012 commuting for 3 hours every day. It wasn’t planned and was just a product of circumstance but was painful nevertheless. As far as commutes go, it was an outlier experience that has given me a lot of perspective. I learnt how to make good use of time over long commutes and am generally thankful for shorter commutes (which is most of the time).

For long term happiness, or the state of happiness instead of the feeling of happiness, we need to hone the ability to put things in perspective. Bad outlier experiences help us do that better than anything else.

So, if you just had a tough week as a part of a tough period, I ask you to take heart. It will pass, and what’s more, it’ll give you some very useful perspective and wisdom if you’re willing to learn from it.

It’s a simple lesson in theory – once you know your deadline and expected result, work hard to front-load work so you finish comfortably.

It just took me the good part of 24 years to really learn it.

3 lessons from 6 months of effective front-loading of work –

1. Scoping work, i.e. making sure the deadlines are realistic, is a valuable skill. If your deadlines are unrealistic, no amount of front-loading will save you. It might ease a bit of pain though. The most important principle of scoping is to under promise and over deliver – it’s a hard one to get right. I’m hoping I’ll have a few tips on that in a year or two.

2. Front-loading work doesn’t remove stress. It just makes sure the stress is positive. Stress quickly moves from positive stress/pressure to negative stress as the deadline nears.

3. Be ruthless about removing bottlenecks early. It is okay to be impatient 4 weeks before the deadline. The joy of being able to check and double check your work in peace as your deadline nears makes all the impatience worth it.

“In my experience, one of the most reliable indicators that your product will be a hit involves your customers’ hands. In the early days of Dilbert, people were cutting out their favorite strips from newspapers and hanging them on walls. That requires the use of hands to operate the scissors, tape and pushpins. People were putting Dilbert in their PowerPoint presentations, and that requires hands on the keyboard. Some readers collected their own books of Dilbert comics, organized by theme, in three-ring binders. If your customers are only responding with words, lower your expectations. But if they start using their hands, strap yourself in; it’s going to be a fun ride.” | Scott Adams

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If you are wondering why your service or product isn’t getting the attention you feel it deserves based on the feedback received, pay close attention to the nature of the feedback. Are people actively using their hands to click “share,” or post on their soap boxes, or are they just talking about it?

As George R R Martin’s fans would say – “words are wind.” They don’t count.

Watch their hands, not their mouths.

Happiness = Set point (50%) + Conditions of living (10%) + Voluntary actions (40%)

Set point => internal cell balance – while this is mostly genetic, your set point is typically the average of a range and you can work to get to the top of that range.

Conditions of living => your fancy car, house, and standard of living

Voluntary actions => acts of gratitude and how you live life

I was reminded over the weekend that conditions of living only constitute 10% of your happiness. So, material pursuits under the excuse of happiness makes very little sense.

So, where do we begin to focus? I suggest starting at “voluntary actions.” Little actions like giving thanks for our gifts regularly contribute to 40% of our happiness.. a great place to start.

The hotel I’m staying at requires you to sign for everything delivered to your room. However, they don’t really care if your signature is real. For instance, I just marked the sheet with a small dash yesterday. No reaction. The guy bringing the tray thanked me and moved on.

Here’s how this system came to be – some guests in the past complained about additional items on the final bill. Some internal or external consultant looked at the data and suggested they add a signature to the order process to avoid exceptions. Cue: an organizational habit. They probably stuck to the habit of checking every signature for a while before they realized that the exceptions aren’t worth the additional effort of training their organization to check the signature. Or even more likely, perhaps they just forgot to do so. So, they are now stuck with a habit that doesn’t meet any real purpose.

There are a couple of interesting learnings here –

1. It is easy to accumulate bad/unnecessary habits over time. Perhaps we ought to think about a system reboot every couple of years and examine how we run our lives. Perhaps we ought to do this in our teams too.

2. It is not anywhere as easy to accumulate good habits. For a hotel, it would be amazing if there was an “unnecessary” world class service habit – e.g. saying thank you one too many times. These things rarely happen. We hardly ever find people who say they exercise too much or spend too much time reading great books.

3. Aside from an overall system reboot every couple of years, it is likely very worthwhile to sit down every few months and ask ourselves “why” we do what we do in a day. Just like the signature, we might find that we’ve forgotten the “why” and are simply stuck with the “how” and the “what.”

In the spirit of acting on yesterday’s post on change, I had an announcement today to the subscribers of 2 free services I offered – “Good morning quotes” and “Book Learnings.” Regulars in this blog have probably noticed multiple series of book learnings on sundays over the last 4 years.

I’ve taken these links off. More in the email below.

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I hope you are doing well. I am writing today with a different sort of learning – very different compared to the book learnings/good morning quotes you are used to receiving in your inbox.

This learning is inspired by a quote from the late J.P.Morgan, founder of the Wall Street bank, – He said “I can do a year’s work in nine months but not in twelve.” In saying this, Morgan referred to the fact that he kept a workaholic schedule for 9 months a year in New York but made sure he had at least 3 months away from work every year to ensure he kept his spirits up and got enough perspective.

After 204 book learnings and 1110 quotes over the last 4 years, I feel the time has come for me to get some perspective and ask myself what I can do differently/better. Inspired by Monsieur Morgan, I’ve decided to take a month off and think about how these learnings will/should play out over the next 4 years and more. There are some thoughts of integrating it all into one weekend learning but I am still unclear on what that would look like.

I am sorry for the sudden disruption in the learnings and quotes. Change is painful – for none more so than me as these have become deeply ingrained habits over time.

I am hopeful the learnings so far have helped and have added some value to your day every once in a while. I would love to hear from you on any ideas you might have for me as I ask myself how I can do this better and of course, if there’s anything you have particularly liked or disliked over these years.

Thank you for all your support and encouragement. I wish you a wonderful Christmas break and of course, a very happy new year!

Best wishes,
Rohan

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It’s going to be quite a change for me to wake up tomorrow morning and not send a quote to the list of subscribers first thing. It feels like the end of an era! That said, change is key to reinventing ourselves.. and I am looking forward to seeing what insights the coming month brings.

Onward and upward, hopefully.

3 things I have learnt about change –

1. It is always easier from the outside.

2. There is no point telling people the answer. They always have to work through it. All you can do to support them through it is give them a framework to think about it, ask the right questions, and provide unequivocal support.

3. Dealing with change is essential to being relevant. Steve Jobs realized this when he came back to Apple – his management style had to change. Sir Alex Ferguson did it over 3 decades at Manchester United.

Fighting change is a waste of energy. Change is the only constant.