Category: Everything else

I’ve been shipping a version of Notes by Ada, my technology focused newsletter, bi-weekly over the past few months. This isn’t strict bi-weekly but it is regular enough. However, I went on a 4 week stretch without posting. For the most part, it was listening to that inner voice that said it was hard to do a new topic justice.

But, this week, I felt something change. This wasn’t a – “Hey, I think you’re too tired to give a new topic the attention it needs.” Instead, it was – “I don’t think you’ll be able to ship anything good enough in the time you have. Try again next week.”

It is a subtle difference. But, it is one worth paying attention to. I’ve found that the inner voice talks about whether I can give something the effort. The resistance, on the other hand, talks about how the results might not work out. The fear of failure is the domain of the resistance

That’s when I knew it was time to buckle down, write and ship.

Great art – a powerful movie, a wonderful painting or photograph or stirring music – stays with us because we feel connected to it. Those moments has moving in sync with the art and the artist. And, those fleeting moment can stay a powerful memories.

Work becomes art when it connects with others and inspires thought or change. We see examples of such art from time to time. We have likely experienced a great customer service experience that touched us, a presentation that inspired us and a meeting that left us feeling energized. But, it isn’t as common as it should be.

It turns out that great art requires vision and detail. It requires the artist to imagine something that resonates, articulate it and then sweat the details. Pixar dedicated six engineers and artists for about 3 years to get the protagonist Merida’s curly hair to look real. Of course, they could have chosen to not sweat that detail. But, do that a bunch of times and the movie would lose its magic.

The questions for us, then – how often do we create work that connects with those around us? Can we work to combine vision and detail in that weekly meeting we conduct? What about that next presentation?

Work becomes art when we care enough to make it so.

Great strengths can also be great weaknesses because most traits work like seesaws. The strength is at one end of the seesaw while the weakness is at the other end. For example –

You listen very well —- You don’t speak up enough

You are very energetic —- You are too impatient

You are great with the details —- You need to get more strategic

Our goal through this journey is to be aware of the balancing required so we won’t tip over. The goal isn’t a perfect 50% balance – it is more likely a 70-30 toward your strength. That’s because it is strengths that give us extraordinary returns in our careers. Weaknesses need to be managed enough so they don’t get in the way of our strengths.

This is why “do the the opposite for a while” is generally great advice. If you are finding yourself at the end of too much feedback about a strength (E.g. you listen very well but we never hear you), spend a week doing the opposite. If needed, give everyone you work with heads up if you must so they aren’t surprised. But, spend a week fighting every instinct to listen.

Once you have experienced what it is like on the other end of the seesaw, it’ll soon become obvious that there are times when doing the opposite is effective.

And, that understanding of the right balance to strike based on the context is how we step change our effectiveness.

There are two ways to think about progress in our careers – slope and intercept.

Intercept focuses on where you are now – the role, company, or location you are in or the promotions and raises you have gotten.

Slope, on the other hand, is all about trajectory. There isn’t an easy measurement for slope as it measures direction and learn rate – i.e. where you are going and how quickly you are learning to get there.

There may be short periods of time when focusing on intercept is called for. But, when in doubt, I’ve learnt that a focus on slope serves us well. Intercept is static and indexes on easily comparable prestige (or the lack of it). Static measurements generally inspire envy.

Slope, on the other hand, is dynamic and indexes on learning and self. And, dynamic measurements inspire a desire for growth.

A focus on slope isn’t just a happier path (it is that too) – it is also far more important. In the long run, our slope defines our intercepts and not the other way around.

We all experience points in our lives when we realize that things that were humming along aren’t anymore.

It could be that the hours are getting too long consistently. It might be the regularity with which you find yourself taking shortcuts. Or even the fact that you find yourself short with people more often than you like.

These are powerful moments because the niggling feeling that tells us something’s not right precedes the full blown realization that something is broken.

When that niggling feeling comes along, I revisit a powerful principle and an old friend – “What got you here won’t get you there.”

I think of it as an old friend because it tends to be life’s reminder to take ownership and change things up before you feel pushed into a corner with no other option.

Always choose to change things up before you have to.

In a podcast about his new book “Skin in the Game,” Nassim Taleb said he didn’t believe loss aversion exists. He had a Medium post where he explained his view further – excerpt below.

Note: The flaw in psychology papers is to believe that the subject doesn’t take any other tail risks anywhere outside the experiment and will never take tail risks again. The idea of “loss aversion” have not been thought through properly –it is not measurable the way it has been measured (if at all mesasurable). Say you ask a subject how much he would pay to insure a 1% probability of losing $100. You are trying to figure out how much he is “overpaying” for “risk aversion” or something even more stupid, “loss aversion”. But you cannot possibly ignore all the other present and future financial risks he will be taking. You need to figure out other risks in the real world: if he has a car outside that can be scratched, if he has a financial portfolio that can lose money, if he has a bakery that may risk a fine, if he has a child in college who may cost unexpectedly more, if he can be laid off. All these risks add up and the attitude of the subject reflects them all. Ruin is indivisible and invariant to the source of randomness that may cause it.

I believe that risk aversion does not exist: what we observe is, simply a residual of ergodicity.

As psychology buffs know, loss aversion was a concept introduced by Nobel Prize winning duo of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. So, this is a fascinating assertion.

And, after mulling this over the last few days and considering my own experiences, I agree with Taleb’s point about the futility of attempting to measure loss aversion in a laboratory. I think we all treat risk as a portfolio. So, attempting to isolate and draw conclusions from one aspect of the portfolio isn’t going to generate meaningful results.

It is a compelling idea. I think I need to read more Taleb.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

In 2005, the late David Foster Wallace shared this short story as he began a graduation speech at Kenyon college. In doing so, he also immortalized it. The story sets the stage for a speech that warns against unconsciousness in face of the daily rat race.

This story always makes me ask myself – am I conscious of the water that surrounds me? Or, am I swimming around unaware of its existence?

Perspective is a powerful thing. And, I’m grateful for David Foster Wallace for a story that never fails to gift me some.

This is water.

My “release notes” for the last few versions have involved 3 synthesized lessons. Today, however, I thought I’d share a few random reflections from lessons I’ve either been learning or attempting to learn over the past year. I’ve written about many of these in detail – today is all about the abridged collection. :)

On relationships

The most important relationship in your life is the one you have with yourself.

Good relationships are self governing. They require two people who care enough to stay in sync – in spite of everything going on in their lives. The rest follows from there.

To get a good relationship going, one or both folks need to take a leap of faith and choose to invest in one another. For most folks, age brings a certain amount of risk aversion that gets in the way of taking these leaps of faith. We can choose to not let that happen.

We can find framily anywhere in the world.

Our hearts have an infinite capacity to love.

The best way to build relationships is to work on something together.

Love is the will to extend ourselves for our own or another’s growth. Love and growth, thus, go together. And, relationships go from good to great when both people are committed to each other’s growth.

Every once a while, we end up building relationships with folks who end up playing the disapproving voice in our head and make us feel un-worthy. They tell us it is to help us grow. But, growth is positive, not negative. When you sense negativity, walk away.

Seek to understand and then to be understood.

Hugs >>>>> Handshakes.

There are few things as beautiful as human beings who walk their talk. If you know them, hold on to them.

On wisdom and decisions

Wisdom flows from good judgment. Good judgment, in turn, flows from mental models that come from the habit of reflecting and synthesizing the lessons learnt from our experiences, those of others around us and from what we read.

Reflection can be a process that is painful in the short term. It is this pain that keeps many away from reflection and ensures that there is no correlation between age and wisdom.

The wisest decisions we make are those that involve trading off pain in the short term for growth in the long term.

The moment we decide to take responsibility for our outcomes is the moment we become mature.

The most important decisions we make are who we decide to surround ourselves with. The adage that we are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with is very true. It is why the decision we make on who we marry (if we choose to do so) is the single most important decision we will make.

Focus on decisions over outcomes. In the long run, good outcomes follow good decisions.

We can change.

On parenting

“Strive to be like them, seek not to make them like you.”

The more I plan and expect, the more I realize I must let go and grow.

The days are long, but the years are short. :)

On productivity

You often need a break when you feel you can’t afford to take one. When in doubt, take that weekend completely off. Re-entry is a powerful thing.

Productivity is focus x intensity x time. Focus is the constant, iterative process of doing what’s most important. Intensity is getting the most out of the hours you put in by committing to depth instead of shallow, multi-tasked attention. Beware any productivity gains from increasing time as it doesn’t scale. Focus instead on focus (ha) and intensity.

The busier you are, the higher the RoI on a bit of planning. Planning helps us focus and keep the main thing the main thing. Mindfulness flows from this focus.

Single best lesson on prioritization – stack rank the 3 things you’d like to get done at the start of the day. And, proceed in that order.

Optimize for creation over consumption. When in doubt, choose to write instead of reading.

The optimal amount of content consumption is the bare minimum required to inspire reflection and creation.

Afternoon naps are special. They help us get more done too.

On money

A penny saved is worth more than a penny earned (you lose some amount to taxes :)).

We over estimate the amount of happiness money brings.

Money doesn’t buy class.

There is a lot of happiness available for free or for cheap.

On careers, workplaces and teams

Focus more on slope versus intercept.

Strong professional bonds almost always translate to strong personal bonds.

Great professional relationships follow knowledge -> understanding -> trust. When you start working with a new group of people, take the time to get to know them. You have to go slow to go fast.

Learning to contribute to and build great teams is among the most useful and rewarding skills we will learn.

We are all in sales. The more we grow in our career, the more our jobs becomes sales jobs. Soft skills are the hard skills in the long run.

On leadership

Leadership is caring deeply about people, processes and results.

Leadership and management are different in the exact way effectiveness and efficiency or focus and intensity are different. One deals with doing the right things and the other deals with doing things right. As different as they are, they can’t exist without one another.

On privilege

The more privilege you have, the harder it is to see it.

Success is intention + effort + luck atop a platform of privilege.

The more privilege you have, the more your hard work counts. The biggest mistake privileged folks make is that they assume folks who are struggling aren’t working as hard or as “effectively” as them. The opposite is generally true.

Debating values is a privilege. When you don’t have enough for sustenance, you don’t have time for values.

On happiness 

Our daily happiness is reality over expectations. Working on the denominator is as powerful as working away on the numerator.

If you do insist on increasing happiness by shaping your reality, just know that our ability to do so is directly proportional to the amount of time we spend focused on what we control.

Expectations have a lot to do with perspective. Perspective is our ability to keep things in context. It allows us to examine our expectations and better appreciate what have it. It is why happiness and perspective go together. It is also why I wish people perspective these days.

It is not happy people who are thankful. It is thankful people who are happy.

On life

Our problems are, generally, first world problems.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

What got you here won’t get you there.

Do not fear mistakes. Fear only the absence of creative, constructive and corrective responses to those mistakes.

Life isn’t just about living in the present. It is about integrating the past, the present and the future in the right proportions.

It is harder, and generally, better to be thoughtful over smart and kind over clever.

Our lives are a collection of stories made possible by many wonderful co-authors. And, today, more than ever, I’m grateful for all those co-authors.

As I look ahead to v29, I hope to make all this privilege count.

(Past birthday notes: 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23)

Dentists generally start with the question – “How often do you brush your teeth?” If you don’t give the expected answer (2), that will be the first and most important recommendation. Then, you’ll likely be asked – “How often do you floss?” Again, if this isn’t daily or near daily, that will be the next recommendation.

It is only after that do they have the conversation about how well we do it.

The principle here is that quantity typically precedes quality. If we want to make better art, we have to first commit to making lots of bad art. If we want to write well, we’ll need to commit to writing poorly and doing it often. Similarly, the analogy for productivity is that some hard work and experimentation precedes smart work.

The challenge, however, is making sure that we’re conscious of this process and taking ownership of our learning.  Deliberate practice is far more effective than practice.

So, as you are working your way up the learning curve on a new gig, commit to quantity – just show up and plug away for a while. Allow yourself to experiment, stumble and fall during this time – but, use all these opportunities to soak up the learning and get better.

Then, do better.

The purpose of planning isn’t simply to be planned and organized.

Instead, the purpose of planning is to be able to deal with the unexpected and unplanned with the kind of engagement and spontaneity that comes from knowing that you have done your best to deal with everything you can control.