Much of the daily practice of focus involves mentally celebrating the things we chose to leave undone just as much as we celebrate completing what we planned to get done.
In our teams, the presence of the latter is a result of good execution while the presence of the former is a sign of sound strategy.
“Violence is what we do when we don’t know what to do with our suffering.” | Parker J Palmer
I was reflecting on three separate incidents – my reaction to an incident, an exchange I had with someone, and a situation I read about.
In each of these cases, the violence (verbal/emotional in any case) was a direct consequence of an inability to deal with suffering in Parker J Palmer’s words.
As you can imagine, the quote really hit home.
I came across this lovely illustration on relationships by artist Olivia de Recat for The New Yorker.
So many of these are on point. It is amazing how much she communicates with two lines and a few words.
And, the “Dog” illustration does what it is meant to do… by melting your heart.
As the experiment with remote work has begun, I’ve found it tempting to fall into the high pressure optimization trap by asking questions along the vein of – “how do I do this right?”
But, of course, like most things – there isn’t any “right” way and there’s no formula. What works for some will not work for others. And, we tend to be better served when we replace questions about “being good” with questions about becoming better.
Viewed from that lens, I see lots of interesting ideas pop up – virtual hang outs, slack amas, the occasional in-person team working session for folks feeling lonely, etc.
So, my biggest reflection has been to give myself (and folks I work with) some time to make all the wrong moves, test hypotheses, and keep iterating till we find the right set up.
With patience and a willingness to learn, we’ll experiment our way to the right set up and find that all the steps we took along the way were purposeful after all.
Much like building good products.
And much like life.
Periodic check – are the games we’re trying to win the games we want to be playing?
Pyrrhic victories are best avoided.
As California has declared a state of emergency as of a few hours ago due to the Coronavirus, companies all over are beginning to mandate that everyone works from home for the foreseeable future (~4 weeks at minimum).
As I get ready for an extended period of working from home, I’m curious about 3 questions –
1. How productive is remote work going to be – especially for those working on projects/in roles that involve coordinating large teams?
2. Is there going to be a visible difference in the productivity of folks with kids vs. those without? (How will this even work for folks with kids at home?)
3. What tools are going to be most useful?
I’m certain I’m going to miss many things about our offices (whiteboards, for example). It promises to be a fascinating few week period.
Here’s hoping that these measures help control the spread of the virus.
I came across this lovely story shared by Anne Lamott – a writer.
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day.
We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.
Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
It resonated.
Values are what we believe. Virtues are beliefs that we pursue or embody.
Values don’t need to show up in our actions. Our virtues, on the other hand, are based on what we do,
As what we do is who we are, our values matter a whole lot less than our virtues.
So, it is worth asking ourselves – what are our values? And, do they show up in our lives as virtues?
(H/T: “What You Do is Who You Are” by Ben Horowitz)
Elad Gil wrote an excellent post synthesizing much of what we know about the Coronavirus. His intended audience was start-up founders – but most of what he’s shared is broadly applicable.
I’ve also copied sections 1, 2, and 5 of the post below.
The Coronavirus outbreak (note the disease is officially named COVID-19 and the virus SARS-CoV-2) is catching many technology startups unprepared. The second community transmitted case of the virus in California, with no known ties to others, was just reported in Santa Clara county. New cases were also reported Friday night 2/28 in Washington State and Oregon.
Below is a brief summary of some of the data behind the outbreak as well as what I have seen larger companies quietly adopt. I have also been on a number of small group calls with some of the epidemiologists working on this, so passing some of this on. These calls were under Chatham House rules. Hopefully this is useful for startups not in the loop.
In December 2019, cases of a new respiratory virus emerged in Wuhan, a major city of over 10 million residents in the Hubei region of China. Although information on this disease was initially suppressed by the Chinese government, the WHO was contacted on December 31, 2019 and a new virus was identified on January 7th. The first non-China cases were identified on January 13 in Thailand and January 16 in Japan. On January 23rd Wuhan was placed on lockdown by the Chinese Government. The virus is a coronavirus, which is a family of viruses that cause SARS and MERS, but also are endemic in people. Humans have at least 4 coronaviruses already that cause 10-30% of all seasonal colds.
At this point, over 80,000 people[1] are infected with the new COVID-19 virus and 2700 dead (mainly in China). Many epidemiologists believe these numbers from China are underreported by up to an order of magnitude, and it may be closer to 800,000 people infected in China alone.
There are major outbreaks happening in Korea, Italy (locked down 50,000 people in 12 small towns), Japan (Prime Minister asked people work from home and 38,000 person Tokyo marathon cancelled), Iran (deputy health minister infected and cases spread across middle east), and other countries.
Despite the WHO’s assurances that things can still be contained, every epidemiologist I have spoken to thinks the virus has broken out and will spread around the world. Many think >20% or more of humanity will be infected due to a lack of baseline immunity and therefore herd immunity for this disease (as an example, the 2009 H1N1 flu infected 16% of all humans)[3].
Data on the virus is quite preliminary. So far the following appears to be true (you can also play with primary data here):
In general, much of the western world’s policy to COVID-19 appears to be one of delaying arrival of the disease. In particular, delay the disease so that:
If the disease makes it to the US (or your country) the government may enact techniques to decrease spread. This usually means cancelling gatherings, sporting events, schools, or other situations in which groups of people will aggregate. It is possible your movements will be restricted (for example, the 50,000 people locked down in Northern Italy).
In many epidemics disease course follows two waves. In wave one, an initial infection happens followed by governments tightening movements, shutting schools, and in general decreasing the spread of the diseases. Controls are eventually relaxed (people need to work, kids need to go to school etc.) and then a few months later a second wave of the disease hits and infects a subset of the people who were not infected in the first wave. Eventually, enough people get sick, develop antibodies, and there is a strong enough herd immunity in the population to decrease future out breaks in size.
1918 Spanish Flu had two predominant waves of virus spread.
2009 H1N1 flu in the UK had two waves.
If you’re feeling anxious about COVID-19, I hope having some of this info helps. If it doesn’t, it may be helpful to seek help from a medical professional as well.
I shared the post below a few days ago and wanted to follow up as I’ve just closed the form.
The big change this year is that we’ve gone from 30 requests to 77. While this is a nice opportunity for me to e-meet so many of you for the first time, it is also substantially more than I expected.
The next step is on me – I will need to find ~50 colleagues/teammates who’ve still got subscriptions they can give away. I expect to have an update for all who submitted the form by Mar-15. And, I will do my best.
Finally, for the many of you who took the time to share context or write lovely thoughtful notes, thank you. Much appreciated.
I work at LinkedIn. Our vision is to provide economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. One of our initiatives is called the #plusonepledge where every member of the LinkedIn team helps someone in their network with finding economic opportunity – finding a new job, a new contract, a new client, and so on.
As part of this initiative, I am able to gift 6 months of free LinkedIn Premium Careers subscription to 4 folks who are actively seeking a new opportunity. For example, LinkedIn Premium could be helpful if you’d like the ability to get in touch (selectively :)) with recruiters and hiring managers of jobs you believe you are a fit for.
After posting this last year, I received ~30 requests and ended up requesting (and receiving) help from a bunch of wonderful colleagues. I intend to do the same this year and will do my best to share these subscriptions with as many of you as possible – on a first come, first serve basis.
My only request is that you fill this form by Fri, 2/28. I’ll aim to get back to you by mid-March.
Job seeking is a tough process and, if you choose to use one of these subscriptions, I hope it’ll help you in some small way. If it doesn’t, I’d appreciate feedback on what we could have done better too.
A Learning a Day 