“When we talk about “hustle,” perhaps what we’re really referring to is one’s level of persistent tolerance and determination to do a lot of frustrating and tedious work that feels immaterial day-by-day but ultimately matters.” | Scott Belsky
This remains the best definition of hustle I’ve come across.
Our homes and workplaces demand plenty of it.
It doesn’t seem to lead to much for the longest time.
Until, of course, it does.
There’s a great folk story about an exasperated mom who was running out of ways to convince her son to eat fewer sweets. She finally decided she’d ask a village elder/”guru” her son respected for her.
The elder listened to her, sympathized, and asked her to come back in four weeks.
Four weeks later, she went back to him with her son. This time, he took the boy aside and advised him to eat fewer sweets for his own sake. The boy had tremendous respect for the elder and, thus, promised to listen.
The mother found the whole episode curious. So, she asked the elder why he didn’t just give her son this talk four weeks ago. He explained to her that he was guilty of eating too many sweets himself. So, he spent the past four weeks fixing his habits before having the talk with her son.
Many associate teaching to be all about passing on knowledge. In reality, the great gift of attempting to teach is to grow into a place where we earn the right to be worthy of doing so.
The Shape of Us is a beautiful song by Ian Britt, a yet-to-be-discovered British guitarist and singer. While Ian does a great job with the lyrics and the singing, the star of the song is a gorgeous acoustic guitar riff that plays in the background the whole time.
Now, if you listen carefully however, you’ll notice imperfections. As guitarists move their fingers on the strings for riffs like this, they make a scraping sound (listen to ~1:04 for example). If you listen for it, you’ll hear that sound through the song. And, if you haven’t listened for that scraping sound before, it is likely you’ll now hear it in most of your favorite acoustic guitar riffs.
That scraping sound is a natural side effect of playing gorgeous riffs on an acoustic guitar. Attempting to hide that imperfection or engineer that out would ruin the experience of listening to the acoustic guitar.
It turns out that playing to the guitar’s strengths by focusing on simple, melodious, music and accepting that a few imperfections come with the package is a recipe for creating magical music.
Somewhere in there is a learning for all of us.
Tools like slack and email on the phone have made it easier for us to go back-and-forth with colleagues on questions. I’ve been paying attention to the many times I’ve been guilty of initiating these sorts of conversations.
These start with an unassuming “Hey, quick question -” and soon spiral into – “Oh, does that mean….?”
Every once a while, these back-and-forths exist because of the complexity of the problem. It is hard to ask that next question if you know little about the problem. But, more often than not, a little bit of upfront thought could help us lay out the 4-5 questions we actually do want to ask.
Giving that extra bit of thought upfront and batching our questions can make a big difference to the productivity of the person on the receiving end.
Here’s to doing that.
There’s all this noise. The news, the chatter about others we know, the chatter from others we know, the plaudits about the movers and shakers of the day, and everything else that we think we need to keep up with.
The default setting for the noise in our lives at this time is “on.” And, it is easy to forget that none of it matters unless we earn our livelihood by writing about the noise.
For most of the rest of us, all that counts is just what we do with what we control and how thoughtfully we do it.
The more time we can spend with the noise turned off, the more we’ll ship, the better we’ll get at shipping what we want to ship, and, if we’re thoughtful about it, we might learn a thing or two about living these days better.
So, let’s put those proverbial headphones and get to work.
I’ve been mulling one of Nassim Taleb’s notes over the past couple of days – the difference between being resilient vs. antifragile. In his words –
“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love, adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better”
This distinction between resilient and antifragility has broad applications – in systems, businesses, teams, and even in our lives. It gets to the heart of the “why” behind being obsessive about reflecting about our own experiences and ensuring we are learning from them (as painful as that process might be in the short term).
The goal of all learning is to change what and how we do things. And, while our mental strength may ensure we are resilient, our ability to continuously learn and adapt is what enables us to go from resilient to antifragile.
PS: I am a relatively late entrant to the Nassim Taleb fan club. But, as I get to half way mark of his book “Skin in the Game,” I find myself committed to make up for all the lost time.
Here are 5 questions I’ve been thinking about a lot as I seek to explain problems better (no shortage of ongoing issues :-))-
1. What is the problem?
2. Where does it lie?
3. Why does it exist?
4. What could we do about it?
5. What should we do about it?
I’ve been finding it helpful to just write out my answers to these questions and then rearrange them in some version of “Situation-Complication-Solution.”
The principle here is to do a better job separating the thinking process from the writing process. And, the first step to separating the thinking process is ensuring the thinking is done in the first place.
(H/T Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle for recommending these questions when approaching problem solving)
In 1969, the Chief Scientist at Xerox – then a rich and famous photocopier company – suggested that they ought to invest in a second research center away from headquarters. They chose Palo Alto and created Xerox Parc.
In the next decade, the scientists at Xerox Parc incubated, among other things, the first graphical user interface controlled by a mouse, graphics display, and text editor.
Of course, Xerox never ended up commercializing any of this as their executives never saw the potential of these inventions. So, many of the best researchers left to places like Apple Computer and ended up inventing the future.
Xerox Parc was a one off in many ways. It was and will likely remain among the most productive research facilities in the history of mankind (Bell Labs, perhaps, would be its only real competition). But, the retelling of this famous story doesn’t fail to inspire humility. The executives at Xerox weren’t stupid – they were just not incentivized to recognize the potential of these breakthrough ideas. That could easily be you or me.
It also never fails to remind me of the importance of investing a small but consistent portion of resources – be it at work, in our financial investments, or in life – in research/exploratory projects with no immediate pay off. Many of these don’t seem to pay off for the longest time.
Until they do.
“When someone says something is ‘good for you’ when it is also good for them and when they don’t face the downside of the decision, it is likely not good for you.” | Nassim Taleb, Skin in the Game
The underlying structure of incentives in a system are more powerful in driving behavior than the individuals within it.
When in doubt, look for and understand the incentives.
PS: While this has powerful implications in business – whether you are hiring consultants (“extend our contract – it’ll be good for you”), bankers (“do the deal – it’ll be good for you”), or real estate agents (“buy the house – “it’ll be good for you”) – it turns out to be perfect when examining our motivation as friends and parents as well. Is what we’re saying good for them or good for us?
We love celebrating beginnings. Launches, anniversaries, and jubilees are a few examples of the various ways with which we celebrate beginnings. Beginnings are great. But, in our rush to celebrate them and encourage more of them, we often forget that they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for endings.
This week, for example, may be a great week to end…
… the project that isn’t going anywhere.
… that relationship whose negatives outweigh the positives.
… those unproductive recurring meetings.
… an annoying habit that you know you’d like to stop.
Every ending enables us to get started on a new beginning. Endings lift dead weight, throw out baggage, and give us the mental bandwidth to start afresh.
Here’s to more of them.
