Padawan learner: Know the top priorities when asked.
Jedi: Habitually list the top priorities and check in on progress.
Jedi Master: Consistently say no to things in the “really want to do” list to make more time for things that matter.
Grandmaster: All actions and priorities are the same – live that priority list.
I was reminded of a post I’d shared 3 years ago from Dave Winer’s blog (one of the first regular blogs on the internet) called “Your human-size life.”
Dave wrote the post to explain why the narrative we have on wealth in society – “Until you’re rich, you’re miserable. Once you’re rich, it’s all great!” – is deeply flawed. And, there is a quote from that post that has stuck with me over the years.
One of the biggest mistakes rich people make is to try to live larger than a single human being can. A mathematical impossibility. You can buy a big house, but you can only sleep in one bedroom at a time. You can own twenty fantastic cars, airplanes and yachts, but you can only be in one at a time. You can own an NBA team and a MLB team, and you get to sit in the nicest seat in the house at games, but you still can only sit in one seat. In other words, your humanity doesn’t increase just because your wealth did.
At the end of the day, we can only sleep in one bedroom, drive in one car, work on one desk, and be in one place. If we’re lucky, we get to do all of this while spending time with people we care about and spending at least some portion of our day struggling to solve problems that matter.
Or, as Dave puts it –
“I think we all need a struggle, I think that’s where our creativity comes from. We need something that feels unattainable, but actually is not. But the struggle to rise above our humanity, that’s not going to happen for any of us. And the desire to have it robs your very human life of any value.
Joe had it right. Live a gentle human-size life. Go for a walk in your middle-class neighborhood and run into a friend of a friend and share what you see, and influence their life for the better. That’s the kind of thing a human can do. And it is, imho, where happiness comes from. “
“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” | Stephen King, On Writing
“Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” Applicable in writing and in life.
(Making slow progress through this Stephen King masterpiece. What a great read.)
Life presents us with difficult questions every day.
What’s the right way to balance/integrate work and life?
What do you choose to value?
How should you balance between the short term and the long term?
Should you persist?
What should you prioritize given the information you have?
There are many who claim to have the answer. For example, some will tell you that the secret to managing a workplace is by working in a calm workplace. Others will tell you it is all about your work ethic when you are building your career. And, yet some others will tell you it is all about achieving financial independence to do what you want.
All of these may be the right answers.
But, there is no guarantee they will work for you.
By all means, read the best books/posts on the questions you’re asking and listen to folks who challenge your thinking.
But, once you do the work, find some silence and ask yourself what the answer should be. Only you understand your circumstances and constraints. Only you can find a path that works for you… a path that will inevitably lead to more difficult questions that no one else will have the answers for.
“If your habit is to clear your throat, apologize a few times, minimize the quality of the work you’re about to share and in general, apologize for the assertions you’re about to make…
you probably realize that this is not an effective way to give a talk, lead a class or have a strategic discussion.” – Seth’s post on “The minimizing coin“
As I was reminded after a meeting recently that I minimized my/our contribution (and have been known to do this in the past), this post couldn’t have come at a better time.
In all the instances where I’ve learned that I do this, the awareness was brought about by feedback from someone else. So, the first step to solving this is becoming aware of when I do it.
All of this ties back to my new year theme to communicate constructively and with clarity. As the year progresses, I’m coming to realize that all progress on communication comes with more awareness.
And, awareness comes with intention.
It is easy to forge ahead and execute on days when we feel the wind in our sails.
In the long run, however, it is our ability to maintain forward motion and optimism on days when we are riddled with self doubt that gives us a shot at making the change we seek to create.
Efficiency = Minimizing effort for a given impact
Leverage = Maximizing impact for given effort
Periodic reminder – a focus on leverage > a focus on efficiency.
(H/T: Khe Hy)
There’s a quote about The Grateful Dead attributed to legendary rock promoter Bill Graham – “They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do.”
In retrospect, I realize that we grow up with a lot of emphasis on becoming the best at what we do. There’s not enough emphasis on becoming the “only.”
And, typically, the route to that is to become very good at (and, hopefully, enjoy practicing) three or four skills that combine and complement each other.
In his book “Ready for Anything,” David Allen shares a story about being stuck at a certain level learning Karate. Try as he might, he wasn’t able to break through to the next level. Out of frustration, he decided to take a break for a few weeks.
When he came back, he found himself breaking previous barriers with ease.
The lesson he shared in the book was one on the power of re-entry – “When you most feel you don’t need/can’t take a break is often when you most need one.”
Despite reading this book nearly a decade ago, this story is one that has stuck. Over the years, I’ve made an effort to be deliberate about breaks and re-entry. While these efforts have taken different flavors, the flavor I’m thinking about today is the weekend break.
Thanks to this story, I’ve experimented with various kinds of weekend breaks over the years. I have tried 24-36 hour technology black outs, no email Saturdays, and other such flavors. The current version that I’m liking a lot is the 48 hour break from work email. This means no looking at work email between Friday evening and Sunday evening.
I’ve implemented this over the past 18 months and have found that it gives me the space to re-evaluate how I’m approaching my work week while gaining much needed perspective on the challenging puzzle-of-the-moment. Most importantly, it provides the downtime to wholeheartedly connect with people that matter.
And, as I re-learn every week, re-entry is a powerful thing.
“Gully Boy” is a Hindi movie we watched twice in the last couple of months. It is available on Amazon Prime Video (with subtitles) and is a coming-of-age movie of a rapper from the slums of Mumbai. Hindi rap/hip hop is still a nascent music genre in India and the story is based on the true story of two Indian street rappers – Divine and Naezy.
There are many things I love about the movie – interesting characters, good music, and a nice story among them. Most of all, though, it speaks of the challenges of making your way up the privilege ladder when you are born in the slums.
Murad, the protagonist, needs several strokes of luck to make the leap – narrowly escaping going to prison for example – and also relies on the support of some incredible friends along his journey.
One of the most fascinating things about writing about privilege over the years is that nearly every one of the posts on the topic results in a response from someone arguing that I greatly under weight the importance of hard work. My thought experiment in response tends to be – how hard do you think folks in the slums of Mumbai work? I grew up witnessing abundant hard work in poor communities around me. What was absent was the platform that made all the hard work count.
Kids growing up in the slums worked hard to earn a few rupees to support their families every day while kids like me had the privilege to go to school and make something of our lives.
That is not to say a kid in the slums has no chance of breaking out. The odds of that happening are just infinitesimal compared to a kid with supportive parents going to an elite school.
Privilege is powerful. “Gully Boy” is a great reminder of that.
