Category: Everything else

A sperm whale washed up dead in Spain with 64 pounds (29 kg) of waste – most of it plastic – in its stomach. The waste includes ropes, nets, plastic bags and even a plastic drum.

Ocean plastics are killing fish and corals at an unprecedented rate and this is just one in a long list of examples.

So, I hope we’ll do more than sigh and look away. I hope that every such piece of news will push us to be more conscious about how we deal with our waste. We need to be more conscious about what we use, how we dispose our waste, how we recycle and to be more conscious about how we use natural resources.

The problem may seem too large for us to influence. But, all of this is caused by all of us and our collective behavior via the communities and organizations we belong to. Bit by bit, we can change the collective behavior.

It matters.

Choosing to reflect on our own behavior is trading off feeling bad now for feeling less bad (and maybe even good) some day in the future.

This speaks to the biggest challenge faced if you’ve just begun journal-ling or some similar form of regular reflection. Reflection triggers the inner critic. We rarely think of our actions during the course of the day and pat ourselves on our back. Instead, we naturally catch the five or six dumb things that point to our need to change some aspects of our behavior.

This may not seem like a fun way to spend time at the end of a day. But, it is a necessity as time passes. As we work with more people in our careers and perhaps influence young minds at home, it is on us to develop an internal compass of how we need to get better. And, it is consistent reflection that enables the development of that internal compass.

The best part about the process is that it becomes easier the more we do it. We become more (but, vitally, never fully) comfortable with our inner critic, begin to appreciate the need to work on one or two key themes at every point and learn to better enjoy the process of attempting to balance our strengths and vulnerabilities. It is through this process that we come to realize and accept that we’re all just works in progress. And, it is how we acquire a growth mindset.

And, there are few better gifts we can give ourselves than that.

Dustin Moskovitz had a great post on the Asana blog about the “work-rest fractal.” A fractal is an object that exhibits the same pattern at every scale. Imagine peeling off a layer of an object to see a miniature layer. His hypothesis is that work and rest work the same way.

His articulation is simple, powerful and true. Over the years, I’ve made it a habit to to disconnect from connectivity in the evening, sleep 8 hours a day, and disconnect again from work for ~48 hours during the weekend. It doesn’t always happen but it happens most of the time. And, when I slip on occasion, I immediately realize the difference it makes.

Thanks, Dustin, for sharing this.

A woman was about to cross the 33rd street in New York City. As she was about to cross, she looked the wrong way and took a step forward. But, a bicyclist she didn’t see swerved and narrowly missed her. She fell.

Instead of taking a step back to the pavement, however, she began screaming at the bicyclist. This turned out to be an unfortunate error as a taxicab followed the bicyclist a few seconds later and hit her.

There’s a saying that it takes at least 7 consecutive mistakes or unfortunate occurrence for a plane crash to occur. And, we’ve all likely witnessed downward spirals of varying degrees of severity. For example, we see it frequently in sports when talented sportsmen fall apart once they make a mistake on a big stage.

In all these spirals, it is not the first mistake that counts. Instead, it is when we get caught in the emotions of the moment – anger, annoyance, fear – and refuse to move on. That’s when we commit the second, third and the costly fourth mistake.

It is much easier to write about avoiding downward spirals than it is to do it – especially if you are given to bursts of emotions. But, in these critical moments, the only way out is to recognize you’ve made a mistake, stop, take a few deep breaths and snap out of the emotion as quickly as possible.

Failure is not the falling down – it is the staying down. Downward spirals are what convert falls to failures. And, as with most mistakes, the first step in dealing with one is being conscious and accepting of the fact that it happened.

(Story source: The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin)

After reflecting on a year of attempting to “seek to understand and then to be understood,” I realized that my ability to do so seemed to decline through the day. I write a quick note at the end of the day with an assessment of how I did. And, I found that I was most vulnerable to interrupt-itis at the end of the day. This is especially the case if there were a series of meetings in the second half.

As a result, a skill I’m working on is learning to reset during the day.

My thought process at the moment is that my ability to listen gets lost as I flow unconsciously through the day. And, teaching myself to reset would be a reminder to be conscious about how I approach the next section.

This sounds great in theory. But, I’ve struggled, so far, to execute on the idea. So, as is usually the case, I’m writing about it to clarify my thinking on it and make a public commitment to do better at it.

I hope to have more on this in a few weeks.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage” | Anais Nin

Courage is not the absence of fear. Instead, it is when we take action in spite of the fear. We exhibit courage when we push ourselves to expand our perspective, have a difficult conversation and venture beyond our zone of comfort.

And, this quote is a lovely reminder of the fact that the depth and breadth of the impact we drive is a function of our ability to consistently venture beyond what is comfortable.

(H/T Tim Ferriss for the quote)

But, what if we did?

Would we spend as much time as we do at work?

How would it change the decisions on the margin when we are choosing between finishing that one last thing and going home a bit late?

Would we spend less energy at work so we come back home less tired and more willing to engage?

Would we still check our email in the evening?

This needn’t be limited to the home. It could be applicable in the gym, a book club, a yoga class or or a hiking group.

I’m not suggesting we start giving our spouse, our yoga classmates, or ourselves titles and promotions. But, the clear and measurable incentives that we have in place at work have a strong hold on our daily behavior. While this is great in the short run, it is the stuff that is hard to measure that gives us the kind of fulfillment and happiness we seek in the long run.

And, a good way to check in on our behavior is by asking – how different would we behave if there was a promotion on the line? If we’re talking about radical change, maybe it is time to change things up a bit.

First law: Success = Privilege x (Intention + Effort + Luck). Privilege acts as a platform for success and it’s height acts as a multiplier on hard work, effort and intention.  The more privilege you have, the more your hard work counts.

Second law: The biggest driver of privilege is birth – specifically who you are born to and where they are located. This combination ends up determining the ease with which you get opportunities to accumulate education, power and wealth – all of which combine to further increase the height of the privilege platform.

Third law: For every bit of privilege present, there is an equal and opposing internal force that refuses to acknowledge it. The more you have it, the harder it becomes to see it.

A simple step to increase the impact of your annual review – synthesize your development discussion into three goals for the year and share them with everyone who works closely with you.

Of course, sharing your goals alone isn’t going to help you work through them. You’ll need to follow up with frequent checkpoints with yourself and a couple with the folks you shared them with over the course of the year.

But, it is a first step that helps nevertheless. It is much easier to make progress on goals when everyone around you is aware and helping you make progress.

There doesn’t need to be mystery around development goals. Every one of us has a list. And, we can help each other ensure that next year’s list looks different from this year’s list.

In his book on Pixar, CEO Ed Catmull explains that drawing well requires us to learn how to see. The difficulty with drawing is that we let our mental models of objects get ahead of us and get us to jump to conclusions. For example, if we’re drawing a portrait as an amateur, we let our mental models of the size of the various elements of a face take over. This is why an amateur’s portraits don’t look like the real thing.

Art teachers teach students to conquer this by getting them to draw an object upside down or, more interestingly, by asking them to draw the negative/white space around the object. We don’t have mental models for what white space looks like. So, our mental models don’t get in the way.

The fascinating lesson here is that this “examine the white space” approach is applicable to problem solving. Don’t just look at the problem – look at the context/situation around it. For example, at Pixar, a scene could sometimes only be fixed by looking at the entire story or changing the preceding scenes.

This technique gets to the challenge of dealing with causality. We often make the implicit assumption that solving the symptom (what we see) will help solve the problem. That is generally not the case. And, taking a step back to examine the white space is a great way to remind ourselves to solve for the cause.