Author: alearningaday

Kuldip, a regular in the comments here, sent me a post from another blog that asked the same question. The blogger in question went through an “impact crisis” and felt his attempt at making a difference wasn’t working. As a result, he began calling up as many of his readers and began asking them if his posts were making a difference.

He found that most were thankful for his writing. They had just never told him so.

The tough thing about regular blogging is that you often have an indirect impact on people. It’s not easy to discern. But, yesterday, I was reminded of the power of blogging again.

My mom has been beginning to build up her own entrepreneurial venture of late. She is very early in the road and has been looking for blogs to inspire her. My top recommendation, as is always the case, was Seth’s blog.

Now, it turns out my mom has been debating taking a decision for a while. It involves a small up-front investment and she has been wondering if it’s worth it. When I was asked, I responded saying I wasn’t sure I’d take it at this moment. The issue was still clearly on her mind and a couple of days ago, Seth had a post on the best way to get unstuck.

The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.

I am happy to share that my mom has decided to go down the path of making that investment. It’s easy to underestimate how important it is as it is easy to underestimate how difficult it is to move forward with such a decision when those close to you aren’t sure themselves (what do they know, anyway? Haha).

We then went to discussing another recent post by Seth on “I know what you should do” and laughed.

I am not saying that all bloggers have the kind of impact Seth does. But, I do think we occasionally manage to make a small difference in somebody’s life. And like my mom, we may never know what it is. The way I see it – as long as you learn and grow from sharing your ideas, you are sending good karma and positivity in the world. And only good can come from that.

And, of course, thanks Seth. I guess I must thank you most for taking the time to comment on this small (but growing :-)) blog. It’s a nice reminder to me about the importance of encouraging others who walk down a path, similar to yours.

This week’s book learning is from ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor E Frankl.

I’ve been listening to Viktor Frankl’s incredible book this week and the moment I heard the following paragraph, I bookmarked it to share. As a funny coincidence, another learning service I subscribed to shared the same paragraph. I took it as a sign. Here it goes..

“Again and again, I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America: Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

And it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run, in the long-run, I say(!), success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”

Success must ensue.. – Image by Dan Taylor

Reading Frankl’s book and experiences as a survivor of a concentration camp have been an experience in itself. The depth of insight in the book is unparalleled. If you haven’t read it, I sincerely hope you do..

Here’s to listening to our conscience and doing our best, this week!

The 37 Signals blog had a recent post about a visit by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ advice.

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He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

He’s observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary.

What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time? Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.

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I’ve been thinking about this piece over the last couple of weeks. And I realized (belatedly..) that Bezos is spot on. The people I admire the most are those who are constantly revising their thesis on life. The points of view they hold today are very different from the points of view they held few years ago. They test their thesis, adapt it with feedback, read and reflect, test again, adapt again and so on.

I never thought of that behaviour in this light though.

Really smart insight. Thanks Jeff.

I remember being fascinated by the concept of musicians performing in tube stations when I first came to this city 2 years ago. I generally just passed them by. And, on the rare occasion, put in a small tip.

2 years in, I put in that small tip nearly every time.

What changed? I think what changed was the simple fact that I started learning the guitar myself and experienced performing to people who weren’t really listening. I can feel the difficulty involved. And that’s the difficulty experienced without my livelihood depending on it.

Suddenly, I find myself connecting to the human being behind the guitar. I find myself wondering about their life, their story. For those moments, I forget about what occupies my life and think about theirs, a life unconnected to mine.

Maybe that’s why we ought to have varied experiences?

Maybe that’s why we ought to immerse ourselves in understanding the arts, sports, sciences and the world?

Just to teach ourselves to be human?

One of my favourite executives says this a lot. Explain your thinking and you will likely hear “I don’t understand” a few times.

And what would I often tend to do if I were in his place? After a question or two, I’d probably say “Ah. Ah. Okay. I got it.” (even if I haven’t)

That way, I’d make sure I have a suitable interpretation in my head and also not indulge my fear of coming off looking stupid.

That’s the difference between him and me. While I am encumbered often by false pretences, he just freely says “he doesn’t understand” if he doesn’t. That way, he makes no assumptions and makes sure he really does understand. He doesn’t worry about what people think. He worries about making sure he does understand the information that comes up to him to make the right decision.

I resolve to do better.

If you would like nice behaviour, be nice.

If you would like empathy, be empathetic.

Reciprocity is amongst the strongest human traits.

And even the strength of reciprocity does not guarantee that we get back all the good vibes that we give. But like everything else in life, it’s all about maximizing our chances..

An observation: Many tend to do this until they reach a position of power.

‘Anyone can survive adversity. To test a man, give them power.’

Research has revealed that we are all culpable of falling short of our own standards. The best way to avoid this is to frequently remind ourselves of our own culpability and fallibility.

Let this morning’s note be a reminder for all of us. Have a great day!

It makes a lot of sense to waste time because we want to. Downtime is important. It’s great to chill out every once in a while and do nothing – just because we can.

It makes no sense to waste time because we are stuck (and frustrated..) or have nothing else to do. Stuck in a queue or in-between meeting? Pop on an audio book, catch up on the news or blogs you read. There are no excuses.

Wasting time when we don’t want to because we don’t know what to do in this day and age is criminal. It could be argued that all we need is a list.

In the final reckoning, how we spent our time is all that will remain of us. There’s a lot of good to be done. And much less time than required to do it in.

Let’s get a move on, then and start making those lists…now. There’s not a moment to be wasted.

Until recently (in age of the earth terms), our survival as human beings depended a lot on our physical strength. The ability to physically toil on a field for harvest or to fight in gruelling circumstances was often directly proportional to our wealth and success.

In the last 50 odd years, this has changed. We are now in the age of mental toil. There have been many a news article and blog post detailing ideas to beat stress. The popularity of “Stress clinics”  and “stress doctors” is on the up.

Can you imagine telling a farmer in the 5th century that he would need to go to a “muscle doctor” to improve his strength? He’d probably laugh and tell you that what he really needed to do is spend hours lifting irons and working even harder on the field so he gets used to it.

Many of the solutions to mental toil suggested are in similar vein – short term balm on wounds. If we really need to be capable of dealing with it, we need to work our mental muscles a heck of a lot more and make them stronger. We need to expand our perspectives by reading more, traveling more, meeting people that share interesting ideas. We also need to learn to get organized enough so we spend our time focusing on what matters and curb decision fatigue. Unlike our farmer ancestors, we have thousands of options on what to do with our time. They paralyze us.

All of this is hard mental work and requires a mind that’s open enough to experience the world and hold conflicting ideas together.

It’s far easier to complain about stress, of course. It’s always hard to open our minds before opening our mouths..

This week’s book learning is from ‘9 Things Successful People Do Differently’ by Heidi Halvorson.

Last week, we looked at two types of explanations for performance and excellence – entity theory i.e. abilities are fixed and incremental theory i.e. abilities are fluid. To test the effect of this beliefs on anxiety levels, researchers tested a group of college students on difficult reasoning problems. At the end, everyone was told they were in the 61st percentile. This was followed by a lesson on problem solving, and a 2nd set of problems.

This time, some students were told nothing changed in their performance while some were told they were in the 91st percentile. And it was observed that entity theorists in the 91st percentile had a significant spike in their anxiety levels!

In the 3rd and final set of problems, it was found that the entity theorists who were told they didn’t improve much did much better.

Researchers came away with a very interesting insight – when we don’t expect to improve, improvement actually comes with a significant spike in anxiety which, in turn, kills performance.

Do you believe your musical ability is fixed?

Image source

Okay. It’s clear that it’s best for our own blood pressure to approach new tasks with an incremental i.e. “I will get better if I practice view”.

Does this now mean we can be the best in the world at whatever we want?

The answer based on this research seems to be Yes, with a huge caveat. You should be willing to put in 10,000 hours of practice, with most of it being deliberate practice. And you should also have started at an ideal age.

That said, it seems clear that we all have the ability to be really good at anything we attempt as long as we believe it is possible and put in the hours of deliberate practice..

Here’s to incremental theory + deliberate practice this week!

We all wrestle with problems of varying shapes and sizes every day of our lives. We all have our ways of approaching these problems.

It is not uncommon to face problems that seem unsolvable at first. That’s just life. These problems stretch our thinking, enable us to question our assumptions and ask meaningful questions. I would argue that the more “stretch” problems you have, the better it is. Stretch”, not panic is the way to go.

Two elements are vital to problem solving – imagination and persistence. Imagination is a direct result of two things – what we’ve been exposed to in the real world and how much we allow ourselves to dream (this might involve resisting or disregarding conventional institutions that exist to prevent any kind of dreaming). So, if you read, travel and experience life while also making sure you give yourself the leeway to dream, you will likely have a fertile imagination.

The mistake we make is to assume that imagination is a function of intelligence and that problem solving begins and ends with intelligence, and thus, imagination. Intelligence helps. But, it’s not everything. Besides, intelligence in art is not always the same as intelligence in math.

The piece that always tends to be ignored is persistence. Einstein once quipped “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

It’s a thought that inspires me to no end. And it serves as a nice reminder to cut the excuses, the whining and the moaning, and to do just that – stay with problems longer.

We could do much worse than learn a thing or two from the great man..