A good friend shared an idea from a psychology study in the 1980s – women tend to prefer speaking face-to-face and men tend to prefer speaking side-by-side.
It crystallized something I’ve observed over the years. For example, I love doing walking meetings when I can at work. And they tend to be more enthusiastically received by men over women.
A good reminder to be conscious about choosing whether to converse face-to-face vs. side-by-side.
I see two consistent patterns –
(1) A Friday with large chunks blocked for thinking and taking stock almost always result in a very positive end to the week.
(2) A Sunday that ends without a last minute sprint to finish chores almost always results in a great start to the next.
Despite knowing this, I don’t consistently implement this. On some days, it is because of things outside my circle of influence. But, more often than not, it is simply because of the difference between being aware of something and learning it.
Awareness is an important first step on the road to learning.
But to learn and not to do is not to learn.
An underrated skill that contributes to the longevity of our relationships is recognizing the other person’s need for space and finding the security within ourselves to give it.
We spoke to a doctor about a stomach ache recently. He said the stomach aches that seem scary are the ones that come quickly and feel intense.
But, ironically, those are the harmless ones. They’re just our body’s reaction to something it didn’t like.
The worrisome aches are the ones that slowly grow in intensity. They often have more serious underlying causes.
Lots of parallels to problems we face in this life.
(1) I will only go to meetings where my absence might/will be missed. As a result, I will let the people who will be missed have their space at the (sometimes virtual) table.
(2) I will use all the newly minted spare time to ship work that matters… and, where necessary, that will ensure I will be missed in the meetings I absolutely need to go to.
The goal is impact, not growing my high profile meeting count.
“It is not hard to identify a thief. It is the one who believes everyone else steals.” | Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living
Profound.
I sometimes think of the contrast between two homes we’ve lived in.
The first set of owners invested in the best. Nearly every decision they made was one that either maintained or raised the standards of the home.
The second set consistently went for the cheap option.
Now, and this is the interesting part, the contrast between the homes on any one dimension wasn’t massive. Yes, the floors or the sliding doors could have been a lot better. Neither one on its own was a deal breaker.
But when you put them all together, the difference was staggering.
Standards – first we make them, then they make us.
One way to measure if we’re stuck in our comfort zone is to look at all the projects we’re betting on for the next 6 months and ask ourselves – what percentage of these are optimization projects with guaranteed outcomes?
If we’re pushing ourselves, more than 50% of what we’re betting on will have unknown risks/rewards.
An idea whose wisdom I’ve come to appreciate more as time passes – “Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.”
Keep perspective. Keep plugging away.
The default mental model many of us have with new habits is to brute force our way in. That means committing to doing it starting tomorrow and then never breaking the streak.
This is a complete fine strategy.
Until we do break the streak for a few days. Then we do it again. And it gets harder and harder to summon the willpower to take the brute force approach each time.
An alternative approach I’ve come to appreciate is to approach new habits with a lot of patience. Try to start tomorrow. But if you miss, let that miss sink in.
If it is a habit we care about (if we don’t, it won’t last anyway), each miss will get us thinking about the system we need to get things on track. And it’ll increase our intrinsic motivation to do so.
This “pull” approach to forming habits takes a lot longer to take off.
But once it does, it has a way of staying airborne a lot longer.
A Learning a Day 