Category: Everything else

I had a gut reaction about an event recently which led me to assume that the event hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. So, I said that aloud before looking at the feedback.

It turned out the feedback was great.

So, I spent some more time thinking about the difference between my instinctual judgment and reality and soon developed a couple of hypotheses for why I’d been wrong.

Such moments are important learning moments. And, while it is important to make the time to reflect on these, I’ve come to realize that the most important thing to do is to explicitly make a guess – either do it aloud to ourselves or to someone else.

When we skip that step, we have a way of changing the narrative/lying to ourselves – “Yeah, that’s the conclusion I was heading toward as well.” But, saying it aloud makes it hard to do that.

And, that in turn gives us the opportunity to use the data as feedback to keep refining our gut reactions.

There are dimensions we can choose to optimize a consulting firm or specialized help – Speed, Quality, and Cost.

And, as a general rule, we can only pick two. If you want something cheap and fast, expect it to be low quality. And, if you want something that is both fast and high quality, expect it to be expensive.

We cannot escape the trade-off.

The funny thing about inspiring change in ourselves – The more patient we’re willing to be to make the change we seek, the higher the chances we’ll make the change faster than we expect.

Often, we have to go slow to go fast.

Yoghurt is an important and loved staple in our household. As it doesn’t make sense to keep buying store bought yoghurt at our scale of consumption (only half kidding), we set yoghurt at home.

There’s a simple 3 step process that we’ve used to do this in the past few years –

1. Heat milk till it gets close to boiling over

2. Let it cool for 45 minutes and add a couple spoons of existing yoghurt (this can be store bought)

3. Leave it be for 8-12 hours (depending on the weather)

Over these years, I’ve attempted shortcuts at each of these stages – E.g. not heating the milk enough, forgetting the 45 minute timer or, as of yesterday, not waiting for the 45 mins, etc. And, in every case, the results have been sub par.

Shortcut yoghurt is crappy yoghurt.

Similarly, there’s a certain process that leads to producing good work. Begin with the end in mind, get started early, get feedback, and keep iterating. Any attempted shortcuts taken in this process shows up in the results.

Just like in the yoghurt.

From time to time, I am reminded of an exchange between Albert Einstein and his Assistant a few days before his passing.

Einstein had just walked into his office for what would turn out to be the last ever time. His Assistant noticed his discomfort and asked – “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is okay. I am not.” – he responded.

I am reminded of this exchange every time I seek more equanimity. Perspective is power.

The obvious benefit of written professional communication is the efficiency – in person conversations are both powerful and un-scalable.

The downside is that it strips away tone and, thus, makes it really easy to misunderstand intent.

Given that, I’ve found myself increasingly appreciative of the smiley. It is amazing how a colon and a closing bracket can combine to bring warmth and humor into an otherwise staid/serious written exchange. But, in my limited experience at least, they do.. and they likely prevent many a misunderstanding in that process.

The small things are the big things. :)

Saving a penny has a higher return-on-investment than attempting to earn an extra penny.

It is, on average, easier to do (since you’ve already earned the money). And, thanks to taxes, you’ll have to earn more than a penny to have that penny in hand.

This logic works for happiness too.

If happiness is reality relative to expectations, an expectation lowered has a much higher return-on-investment than a corresponding improvement in reality.

Aside from being undoubtedly easier to do, it has the added benefit of freeing us from the fear that prevents us from taking the kind of action that can actually step-change our reality in the long run.

Win-win-win.

What we often focus on as communicators attempting to land our message positively with our audience: 1) Substance in our message, and 2) Quality of our delivery.

What actually drives how our message lands: 1) Trust in the relationship (reputation in its absence), and 2) the motives, fears, and values of the folks receiving the message.

It is amazing how much psychological pain we can avoid by always assuming we’ll need to work harder over a longer period of time than that other person (there’s always one.. :-)) to get the same thing.

We had an urgent plumbing issue that needed solving recently and I spoke with a few plumbers before making the final decision.

One conversation stuck out – this person, within a few seconds of hearing the problem, outlined what he was going to do to solve the problem. The solution sounded a bit too aggressive for our case and I said as much. His response was – “I do this every day. I know what I’m doing.”

That was the moment he lost our business. Even if his answer was right (I’m not convinced it was), I was worried that he’d not be keeping his eyes open to problems that didn’t fit his existing assumptions.

It reminded me of the many times I’ve made the same mistake – attempting to be the problem solver without spending enough time as the problem finder. As I was on the receiving end this time, I think I’ve developed more empathy for the frustration folks on the other end feel.

Problem finding >> Problem solving.