Category: Everything else

What policy led to this bad outcome?

Julia Galef, a writer on rationality, had a great spin on how we can better separate processes and outcomes and pick where we want to maximize. When things go wrong, she asks herself – “What policy am I following that produced this bad outcome?”

For example, she shares a policy example wherein you always arrive 1 hour 20 minutes before a flight. However, this policy may result in you missing the occasional flight due to an accident on the road. But, if you over react to the bad outcome and change policy to be at the airport 2 hours earlier, as a frequent flier, you’re going to be spend hundreds of hours waiting at airports.

Similarly, I could spend 2x the time before sending every email to ensure there isn’t any typo or mistake. But, that would be a very expensive policy that would eat in to other productive time. So, it is best I assume that there will be mistakes and repeat sends that fix them from time to time.

There are a few places in life where we need a 100% success rate. It makes sense to choose fail safe, rigorous policies in those cases. But, otherwise, we’re better off picking good policies/processes/decisions that do the job most of the time.

And, in the off chance they don’t work, we must learn to habitually separate bad outcomes from good processes.

(H/T: Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss)

The jerk threshold

Every one of us is capable of exhibiting jerk behavior. We just have different ways of doing so – we either move against people, move towards people, or move away from people.

Put differently, some fight fire with fire, others fight it by exhibiting passive aggressiveness, and yet some others attempt to ignore the situation. Each of these behaviors are counter productive in tough situations. But, it is hard to catch them because they are flip sides of our strengths. There’s just a threshold after which these strengths become counter productive.

The questions that follow are – i) when is that threshold triggered? and ii) how can we better catch ourselves?

Some triggers are relatively easy to solve for. For example, most folks are triggered by a lack of sleep or food. The harder ones are when baggage in relationships activates a pattern that results in triggering jerk behavior.

Catching ourselves is really hard – there is no fail safe way I know of. The best solution is a consistent, high degree of self awareness that isn’t easy to sustain. The next best solution is acceptance of our own fallibility. If we can accept that we exhibit jerk behavior from time to time, it becomes easier to catch ourselves when we do…

 

Tool problems and clarity of purpose problems

When we’re trying to drive change, we typically run into two types of problems – i) Tool problems or ii) Clarity of purpose problems.

For example, I’ve come to believe I am one true reset away from being a much better version of myself. This is coming from months of observing my desire to ‘seek to understand and then to be understood’ wilt as I move through the day. I kept telling myself the importance of finding a way to reset over the course of the day – but, change never came as I was clear about why it mattered.

I finally got a timer app to remind me to do so every 30 minutes and resetting has worked better since.

Similarly, an organization may want its employees to start entering granular expense reports for compliance reasons. If this isn’t communicated, employees may not get on with the program. Then again, even if they do understand, if their expense recording software is draconian, employees may still be dissuaded from entering expenses.

When we’re looking to drive change, it helps to be clear if we’re trying to solve a problem with the tool or with a clarity of purpose. And, zooming back further, the best solutions are designed for problems that are well understood.

We decide how we show up

There’s always a reason to show up in a way that doesn’t reflect our best self. The weather, your mood, the current situation, the economy, that pain in your knee – take your pick. And, these extraneous factors seem to grow in importance the more attention we pay to them.

But, they are just manifestations of the resistance. They’ll stick around till we decide we’re done with the excuses.

No matter the weather, the situation or the mood, we can choose to show up to be positive, thoughtful, and learning focused if that’s how we want to show up. It is our call and deciding to relinquish that call is our call too.

It is a bit of work – especially on days when said conditions are not ideal. But, it is work worth doing.

A finance thesis sheet

Managing finances is a lot like managing our teams, work or lives. The principles we need to do a good job as managers of our finances are easily accessible – a penny saved is more valuable than a penny earned, compounding, time value of money, and diversification among others. There are many ways to apply these principles and it is on us to pick our own philosophy and style.

Like a management philosophy, picking a financial philosophy involves making peace with the fact that it won’t work at all times and in all situations. Every process has a range of expected outcomes. So, if we choose to be a low risk investor who expects to spend very little bandwidth thinking about money, we can’t expect to make an investment that gives us 1000% return. It may happen. But, the more likely scenario is that it won’t.

The challenge, however, is that we don’t start off knowing what kind of manager or investor we are. Luckily, thanks to the scientific method, that is a solved problem. We pick a hypothesis and begin working toward it. As we experiment and inevitably fail, we begin to learn and develop an approach that begins to work for us.

And, I’ve found that a reliable way to ensure that we’re extracting all possible lessons from our stumbles is to maintain a finance thesis sheet. The only requirement to maintain this is write out these principles, your philosophy, and your hypothesis. Then, keep a log of every key financial decision you make and what you learn from it.

Over time, this thesis sheet will become richer and better and will enable us to iterate our way into a style that suits us.

Just as in management and life.

Drowning doesn’t look like drowning

Mario Vittone, a trained rescue swimmer and former member of the Coast Guard, has written extensively on drowning. I came across his article on Slate recently and was grateful for his insight when I read it. Here are 3 things I took away –

  1. We are conditioned by television to recognize drowning by a mix of waving, splashing, and screaming. In real life, drowning is almost deceptively quiet. It is the second highest cause of accidental death in kids below age 15. And, at least in 10% of the drownings, the adults will have no idea it is happening.
  2. When folks drown, they can’t call out for help or wave. Their bodies look vertical and their mouths appear to sink and reappear above the surface of the water. It doesn’t mean a person who is splashing and yelling in the water isn’t drowning. They are in aquatic distress but still have the power to do something about it – unlike in the case of drowning.
  3. And, in his words – “So if a crew member falls overboard and everything looks OK—don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you all right?” If they can answer at all—they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.”

We all spend time near the water. If you can, learn how to swim. And, once you do, be observant and safe.

Thanks, Mario, for sharing.

We only deserve a styrofoam cup

As a response to a post on power recently, Ashay shared the following story from Simon Sinek. It is one I’ve thought about it a few times since and I thought I’d share.

I heard a story about a former Under Secretary of Defense who gave a speech at a large conference. He took his place on the stage and began talking, sharing his prepared remarks with the audience. He paused to take a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup he’d brought on stage with him. He took another sip, looked down at the cup and smiled.

“You know,” he said, interrupting his own speech, “I spoke here last year. I presented at this same conference on this same stage. But last year, I was still an Under Secretary,” he said.

“I flew here in business class and when I landed, there was someone waiting for me at the airport to take me to my hotel. Upon arriving at my hotel,” he continued, “there was someone else waiting for me. They had already checked me into the hotel, so they handed me my key and escorted me up to my room. The next morning, when I came down, again there was someone waiting for me in the lobby to drive me to this same venue that we are in today. I was taken through a back entrance, shown to the greenroom and handed a cup of coffee in a beautiful ceramic cup.”

“But this year, as I stand here to speak to you, I am no longer the Under Secretary,” he continued. “I flew here coach class and when I arrived at the airport yesterday there was no one there to meet me. I took a taxi to the hotel, and when I got there, I checked myself in and went by myself to my room. This morning, I came down to the lobby and caught another taxi to come here. I came in the front door and found my way backstage. Once there, I asked one of the techs if there was any coffee. He pointed to a coffee machine on a table against the wall. So I walked over and poured myself a cup of coffee into this here Styrofoam cup,” he said as he raised the cup to show the audience.

“It occurs to me,” he continued, “the ceramic cup they gave me last year . . . it was never meant for me at all. It was meant for the position I held. I deserve a Styrofoam cup.”

“This is the most important lesson I can impart to all of you,” he offered.

“All the perks, all the benefits and advantages you may get for the rank or position you hold, they aren’t meant for you. They are meant for the role you fill. And when you leave your role, which eventually you will, they will give the ceramic cup to the person who replaces you. Because you only ever deserved a Styrofoam cup.”

Asking why and understanding why

We know that it is good practice to understand why things are being done a certain way. The better we understand why, the more effective we can become.

There are many ways to understand why. We can understand why by listening, observing, asking, or doing some combination of the three. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, asking why optimizes for speed and can be effective in some situations. But, it can also backfire. That’s because being on the receiving end of why questions is challenging and, occasionally, annoying.

When I was recently reminded to understand why things are being a done a certain way, I realized that, in my mind, asking why is often synonymous to understanding why.

But, on further thought, I realized it isn’t the same thing. Asking is just one approach to understanding why. If we seek to understand why, it helps to realize this and learn to tailor our approach based on the situation.

Phone detoxing

I’ve been experimenting with phone detoxing over weekends in the past few months. While my normal approach has been to play hide-and-seek with the phone by putting it in some obscure place and forgetting about it, I decided to do a complete switch off this weekend. My 3 lessons from switching the phone off for a 60 hour period –

1. I missed 3 use cases – i) Waze/maps when we were driving, ii) Ability to call contact other when we split ways at a crowded area, and iii) Whatsapp to send the occasional message to framily.

2. I did not miss the following – i) Checking if there’s any new email or message because the phone is close by and ii) Reading articles on my phone – I prefer a larger screen but the phone is really convenient.
Overall, I can’t say I missed the phone all that much. I did cheat a bit by sending some messages from my wife’s phone too coordinate with friends – but, it was minimal. I enjoyed doing all my writing and reading from a larger screen – it was more targeted and intentional than reflexively picking up my phone.

3. I’ve been disconnecting from work email for a full 48 hours between Friday evening – Sunday evening for a few months now. And, while that has enabled me to be better engaged through the weekend, there was something wonderfully liberating about switching off completely. We normally associate detoxing with the body. But, there’s something to be said for detoxing for the mind.

I look forward to doing this more.