Author: alearningaday

What shape does the resistance take when we express a desire to give something a shot? Polish.

The first time public speaker is unlikely to have polish. If he manages to manage his stage fright, his first time would be a success. Polish is something he might want to achieve in his 1000th attempt.

The first 3 times I participated in public speaking competitions was as a 10 year old. I was always the youngest in my category.. and I sucked by all counts. I tried to be really good at a time when I didn’t know what really good was. The advice I received from my school’s vice principal then was to practice in front of the mirror and just get comfortable with myself speaking. She told me not to worry if the next one didn’t work – “Maybe speaking is not your thing. We’ll have you try something else.” The next one didn’t. The one after that did, though, and it kept getting better.

3 years later, I was the “speech” guy. I was now described as someone who had ‘the gift of the gab.’ If only they knew..

My learning? Ditch polish and perfection. Go for comfortable and human. When it comes to speaking in public, I’ve learnt that it’s most important to be you. Don’t be funny if you’re not a funny person. Don’t be dramatic if you’re not a dramatic person. Don’t aim for polish. Just be you.

Human and vulnerable beats polish on most days.. in public speaking or otherwise.

I am always interested in learning how successful people become successful. I was initially curious about whether I could find a common pattern. But, my experiences so far (with books, personal contact and interviews via the The Real Leaders Project) tell me otherwise.

There have been many intelligent people who have tried categorizing what successful people do – they do things that other’s consider difficult, they love what they do, they have grit, they have great habits, etc., etc. Skipping a more fundamental question that involves defining what success is in the first place (its definition definitely varies from person to person), all of these make for interesting stories and are always great for perspective. However, I don’t think there are any such common categories or patterns.

I think every story is a custom fit. It seems to make sense when you look backward and connect the dots but that could be true of any story. We are great rationalizers and natural story tellers. The only factor that is probably common is luck and even that varies in degree.

My learning is to look at stories of successful people as a source of perspective. They tend to open our eyes to something we might not have paid attention to or noticed. There’s always something we can learn from the story of someone who’s made a difference and its value lies in that learning and the inspiration that accompanies it.

So, what about us? We’ve just got to keep plugging away, continue making decisions and mistakes, attempting and failing till we get really good at what we do.. and hopefully then, we will be aided by lady luck to be “successful” in our definition. Whatever else our successful story may be, I believe it’s certain to be a custom fit.

A few of my friends and family (me included), are using the Fitbit Flex and even have a Whatsapp discussion group around our 7 day step totals. Seeing the data has made our walking come into the spotlight . Every one of us is consciously thinking about how we can walk more in a day.

This isn’t surprising. What gets measured gets done.

If you’ve worked with poor customer service obsessed with “closing tickets,” you know that they’re measured on the number of tickets they closed. The system designer probably thought that tickets wouldn’t be closed if problems weren’t solved. Little did he/she know..

The question then is – what about the stuff we don’t measure? Relationships, love, happiness, kindness, integrity, honesty..

If we did have fitbits to measure these, how would we do? And what would we do about it?

Even better – how can we create systems in our lives to measure these things?

A friend was recently picked for an important project in his company. He was the youngest person to be chosen and he was told that it was his ability to be extremely open to feedback that got him in. He explained to us that he had first been given this feedback a few years ago. Soon enough, this became a label – he was the guy who was always open to feedback. It stuck.

Years later, he finds himself working extra hard to ensure he stayed true to this ‘label.’

The lesson I’ve taken away is that praise is identical to criticism in terms of process. Praising the process (e.g. a person’s tenacity, ability to work hard when the going gets tough, etc.) serves the person much better than praise to the person (e.g. you are so great, or so smart). That way, when the going gets tough, the person will always remember the process that worked for him/her and re-adopt it.

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Inspired by Lifehacker

I’ve been doing a lot of swimming over the past 2 months. For the first month or so, I used to touch the water every time I pass the pool to the showers. “It’s too cold” – my mind would say. Nevertheless, I’d take the plunge and immediately start swimming.

And you know what happens next – the water would feel completely normal.

I still touch the water when I pass the pool (I’m sure I’ll get to removing that part of the process soon enough) but I’ve learnt to ignore the weather report. Just get under the shower, jump in, and swim.

We all get mental weather reports before we attempt something new. It’s always too hot/cold/uncomfortable. I guess it is not too different from getting into the water to swim.

Get in and just swim..

This week’s book learning is part 6 of a 12 part series on The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The concept of a public company originated from the Dutch East India company or VOC. Instead of raising money for expeditions to the East from royalty, they offered parts of their company to the public (=shares). The initial promise was that the company would be dissolved in 21 years. But, their success led to other advancements. Instead of dissolving it, they started paying “dividends,” allowed their shareholders to trade shares, elected a board of directors, among others.

(The company took its profit making duties a tad too seriously though. It made more money from destroying ships and looting other European expeditions than by any other means.)

The stock market owes its origins to a shrewd Scottish gambler by name John Law. He tested the stock market idea in France (the only country that allowed him to do so) by taking ownership of the French territory of Louisiana. Interestingly, John Law went onto establish the French central bank (the first of its kind) and centralized all of the government’s in flow and out flow. But, over time, he gained such a stronghold that he became equivalent to the head of the federal reserve, reserve bank, and treasury all at once.

Then, in his attempts to enlarge the central bank, he issues shares of the bank at crazy prices, leading to people selling shares to get more paper money from the bank in return to buy more shares of the bank!

Sketch by EB

In essence, John Law was the French economy and he caused a massive bubble by issuing irrational decrees. Eventually, the bubble burst resulting in catastrophic consequences for the French; the economy never recovered leading to the French Revolution.

In contrast, the Dutch and British companies did much better thanks to consistent returns on investments of shareholders and they took a lesson from John Law to set up regulated stock markets.

When we speak of others around us, we typically play victim/hero. After all, they are the ones with all the annoying habits and idiosyncratic behaviour.

Today, let’s stop for a moment and empathize with those who deal with us. Our parents, spouses, roommates, and colleagues who see the best and worst of us on a day-to-day basis. And then our friends who’ve been with us through our highs and lows.

I, for one, know they have a hard job. They have to put up with so many of my annoying traits – taking things and myself too seriously, perennially correcting them especially on annoying little things like pronunciation (my wife calls this habit “pulling a Rohan Rajiv”.. ;-)), my insistence on a point-of-view before changing my mind and insisting the opposite. Man, I must be hard to live, work, and have fun with!

Luckily, they’ve stood by me for a long time.. and for that, I’d like to thank them (thanks guys!).

I hope you take 5 minutes today to remember and laugh at your most annoying traits and then follow that up with a lot of empathy and gratitude for all those great people who add so much to your life. It’s amazing how a touch of gratitude makes us feel so much better.

The company we keep determines the conversations we have. People involved in real estate talk about houses, stay-at-home moms talk about household chores, people who travel talk about hotels and airlines, bankers talk about money, and so on. The conversations we have are the source of our opinions, our world-view, and eventually, our identity. Our identity then determines what we think about and thus, what we do.

The question, then, is – what identity do we want to have? What impact do we want to have on the world?

If it’s impact by being the best version of ourselves, we must take care to have those conversations as often as we can with people who want the same thing. Yes, we can shape our audience to have the conversations we like to have but the chances are higher if we work on finding like-minded people who want to have conversations of that nature.

Our identity and impact can be shaped by circumstance. But, we can actively make an effort to shape it by seeking out the conversations we want to be a part of.

The choice is ours.

2 years or so ago, I used to play a game on the iPhone before going to bed. Somewhere down the line, I had begun to ask myself if I liked the habits that made up my day and if they were sustainable. My gaming habit failed both. My effort to change it involved installing a bed side reading light and books on the bed side table. That worked very well and the coming of the Kindle app on my iPad effectively sealed the deal. I’ve read a ton of fiction over the past couple of years as a result.

The next habit I’m looking to change is the sifting through email habit when I wake up. I’ve had periods of occasional success with this one but the overall effort has clearly been a failure. I don’t like it as it leaves me prone to responding to email that annoys when I’m drunk (sleepy = drunk). Thanks to “The Power of Habit,” I now have a more scientific approach to changing habits. So let’s deconstruct it –

Cue: Opening both my eyes and deciding I can’t be in bed any longer

Routine: Switching WIFI/3G on on my phone and browsing through email/feeds

Reward: Getting something done while still waking up

The cue will remain. The goal now will be to switch the routine from switching WIFI/3G on and heading straight to to brush instead.

I’ve found almost no process more singularly frustrating than changing little habits that make up my day. But, our habits make us or break us and they’re worth the effort. More importantly, the act of exercising control over these little habits leave spare willpower to deal with other more important things.

Here’s to change!

The space between a reaction and a response is just a matter of seconds. When someone gives you bad news, your body begins to react – the impulse is a choice between fight, flight, and freeze.

Give it a couple of seconds, though, and you’ve reached that magical space between stimulus and response. A few more seconds and you’ve reached the point where you begin to respond. You realize you have more choice than you initially thought and are aware of better choices every second. The problem isn’t that bad after all.

Once you get to response, you never want to react again. Why spend all that effort trying to undo a hasty reaction when you can invest a few extra seconds to respond? The process may take just a matter of seconds but the results can save you hours of unwanted pain.

Getting to response isn’t easy even if it takes just a few seconds. It’s a skill worth developing though; and the first step to developing the skill is to be aware that we want to develop it.

To response!