Category: Everything else

Choosing information

Not too long ago, your family would have received just one Sunday newspaper. In our home, we typically called dibs on the pieces of the paper we wanted to read. Someone wanted the “supplement” while someone else wanted the sports section. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice in the matter. Some households afforded two newspapers. But, most just worked with one. But, now, we don’t need to worry about information scarcity of any kind.

The fantastic Quartz newsletter had multiple powerful pieces yesterday. There was one about free trade – what populist leaders have gotten right and wrong about it. Then, there was an important piece on the evidence gathered so far about the effects of direct cash transfers (the basic income idea). They also had an informative piece about the problems caused by the boom in the sushi business – fish stocks are depleting quickly. And, did you realize that Giraffes have been placed in the extinction watch list?

The Economist shared that Latin America leads the world in renewable energy. This is driven by hydro power. However, they’re investing heavily in solar power. Costa Rica and Uruguay met their power needs from renewable sources for more than half the year this year. This stems from the fact that Latin Americans care deeply about clean energy. Wow. Wonder what we could do to improve the state of things where we are..

Of course, both of these can come straight to your email inbox. The Economist actually works out cheaper than an old school newspaper subscription – the kind we used to have 20 years ago. And, they deliver not just a weekly stream of articles but all sorts of specialized services. They earn that fee. The Quartz newsletter is free. At that quality, it is one of the deals of the decade.

But, just as easily as these can make their way to our inbox, others things can, too. We could be hearing about the likes to our latest photo of our coffee shop. Or, we could be clicking on some piece of fake news that showed up on a news feed. Or, we could spend our time looking at the latest collection of viral cat videos.

As kids growing up, we earned our freedom with evidence of responsibility. The more responsibility we showed, the more our parents trusted us. But, information in today’s age doesn’t work that way. We have unlimited freedom to choose what we consume despite no evidence of responsibility.

Here’s the impact of that – what we consume informs how and what we think about. Then, how and what we think about influences what we do. And, what we do influences our world and, in many cases, the world.

It is all up to us, then.

Let’s choose well.

4031

I thought I’d pause normal service for a small celebration today. This is post number 4031 on ALearningaDay.

I knew I was approaching 4000 posts a couple of months ago. But, I only pay attention to the numbers every once a while. So, it was nice to find look up and find that that milestone had passed by.

I also thought I’d share an update I’d worked on over the past couple of weeks – I updated the logo. I would be surprised if you noticed the change. It is still a word cloud and it still has “A Learning a Day” running through the center in green text. However, the words have gone through a significant update. A close friend had helped create the first version with the kinds of words he thought this blog stood for few years back. I loved the idea and wanted to change the words. While I think (he and) I had an idea of the kind of words this blog stood for then, I think I have a far better idea now. So, I went back to Wordle.net and worked on it.

I hope they resonate with you as much as they do with me. :)

I said yesterday, in jest, to a friend that “Life is full of life lessons.” We laughed at how obvious it sounded. It is in so many ways. And, yet, it sometimes isn’t. Showing up here 4031 times has taught me just how many life lessons there really are.

And, of course, this wouldn’t really be a blog without you. Thank you for your support through various parts of this learning filled journey. It means a lot.

Thanks Wikipedia

I’ve learnt so much about so much from Wikipedia. So, when they shared a message asking readers/me to donate, I donated $15. It is a small amount. And, I hope it helps.

In doing this, they also taught me a lesson how to craft a simple and powerful marketing message. Inc.com had a nice article about the beautifully crafted messaging they use.

“Dear readers, Time is running out in 2016 to help Wikipedia. To protect our independence, we will never run ads. We’re sustained by donations averaging about $15. Only a tiny portion of our readers give. If everyone reading this right now gave $3, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. Think of it like buying a scoop of your favorite ice cream, only much healthier. And your donation supports the only non-profit on the list of the world’s top ten most visited websites. That’s pretty sweet. Please take one minute to keep Wikipedia online and growing. Thank you.”

As someone who works for a group supporting online ads, I definitely appreciate the resolve behind the stand. Wikipedia could become one of the world’s most formidable ad businesses by flipping a switch. So, it isn’t an easy stand to make. After all, your values are your values only when you lose money over them. And, they clearly do.

Additionally, Wikipedia is a wonderful reminder that, with a bit of leadership and organization, volunteers around the world can collaborate to build something special.

I think a non-negligible percentage of my Google searches are actually to find the link to the wiki. Long may that continue.

Thank you, Wikipedia – for all you’ve taught me.

Am versus habitually default to

We generally say – “I am xx” and “I am yy” when we describe ourselves. “I am short tempered.” Or, “I am a relaxed person.” The question, then, is how much of these descriptions is what we are versus what we habitually default to?

A close someone recently said – “I am emotional. I have high highs and low lows.” This resonated with me as I had struggled with that for a long time. A quick search for “highs” on this blog points to that trend.

There’s a 2008 post that says “Highs and lows are not necessary” and I ask myself to “play it cool.” There’s a 2014 post that talks about how the highs aren’t all that high. And, there’s a bunch in between that talk about the evolution. Describing myself as emotional and as someone who had high highs and low lows would have been accurate in 2008. But, it hasn’t been accurate for a while now. It was a case of something I habitually defaulted to. And, after a lot of work, that changed.

While there are portions of our behavior that are very hard to change, there are huge portions that can be changed. We’ll need to first want to do it. Then, we’ll need to reflect and catch ourselves behaving that way after the fact. Then, slowly, we’ll hopefully develop awareness as we do it. And, over time, we’ll understand the triggers well enough to prevent it. Change doesn’t happen overnight. But, it is possible.

The first step is to stop describing things as if they are permanent. There is not as much “I am” as we think. And, there’s a lot more that we “habitually default” to than we think as well.

We are more malleable than we give ourselves credit for.

Grapefruit and Spinach

Grapefruit, spinach, or bitter gourd versus any snack with processed sugar.

Exercise versus lying on the couch.

Reading a non-fiction book versus watching television.

Quality sleep versus browsing the web till late into the night.

People who push back and challenge us versus people who always agree.

On first sampling, the latter options typically win hands down. There is a correlation between things that don’t taste great at first and things that are good for us. But, do more of the former, and they’ll begin to grow on you. After a while, exercise, reading non-fiction, quality sleep, grapefruit (and other healthy food) and interesting conversations become things we can’t live without.

But, we’ve got to look past first impressions, think long term and commit to taking action.

There’s a life lesson in here somewhere.

More and better

I was trying to get more push ups in at the gym the other day. In isolation, that’s not a bad idea. However, there was plenty of room for me to do fewer, much better.

I realized soon enough that this behavior was due to an incentive I had in place. I used to give myself a small check mark at the end of the week if I counted 100 push ups as a proxy for time spent at the gym. However, it wasn’t relevant anymore. So, I took the check mark row off. But it got me thinking about incentives.

First, whenever you see a person or an organization pushing for more/faster instead of better, take a good look at the incentives. People compensated for the short term will push for short term wins instead of longer term value. And, this compensation need not be in terms of pay. It could also just be about more praise in the short term or “culture currency.”

Second, we overestimate the amount of time “more” is useful. This is likely because our emotional system, the amygdala, was trained in thousands of years of scarcity. The last hundred years have created more abundance than our amygdala can ever imagine. So, yes, every once a while, we do need more in our lives.

But, as a general rule, better is always better.

Is everything alright

On the day before he passed away, Albert Einstein’s assistant, seeing him in pain, asked – “Is everything alright?”

“Yes, everything is alright” – he said – “but I am not.”

In 1916, Albert Einstein predicted that gravitational waves transport energy as gravitational energy. In February 2016, scientists in California confirmed this prediction a fully hundred years later. I remember saying “Wow” as I read this piece of news. How do you develop such a deep understanding of first principles and make a prediction that turns out to be spot on a century later? So, I ordered Walter Isaacson’s biography on Einstein.

While I only started reading a few months later, I made slow progress and even considered stopping at some point in the middle. I’m glad I didn’t, however. As I made more progress, the book just kept getting better. And, by the end, it was clear that Walter Isaacson had done a great job with character development.

So, it follows that one of my biggest takeaways from the book didn’t have much to do with Einstein’s smarts. Instead, it was his attitude toward life that resonated deeply.

Walter Isaacson characterized Einstein’s approach as one of a “wry detachment” (I think of it similar to non-attachment). Einstein himself called out the fact that he didn’t take his life or work too seriously. That, in turn, helped him deal with challenges with a good measure of equanimity and a sense of humor. This becomes apparent as Isaacson shares many interesting stories from an eventful life. His charm and wit made him very quotable. And, I was fascinated by the regularity with which Einstein and his work appeared in the front page of “The New York Times.”

Can you imagine that happening with a modern day scientist? Einstein’s fame meant he was like a modern day rockstar.

And, yet, he maintained perspective. “Wry detachment” describes his attitude toward life well. He seemed to have mastered that human ability to be able to look at oneself as an outsider. And, he managed to do so by not taking his life or contributions seriously.

That’s why I thought his response to the “Is everything alright” question was among the more powerful lines in the book (and there is no lack of competition). Most of us might interpret the question as being about us. But, not Einstein. Despite his out-sized contributions to life on this planet, he understood his place in it better than most of us ever will.

I’d love to be able to emulate a bit of that wisdom in my life.

Healthy means and healthy ends

I heard a refrain the other day about someone who passed away before their time – “He/she used to exercise and lead a healthy life. Sometimes you wonder, did all of that help?”

I’ve heard similar refrains in the past.

There are many quotes around smoking from the years it was in vogue. An example is – “Smoking kills but we were born to die anyway.” These quotes have been re-purposed for other unhealthy habits left, right, and center.

The strain of logic assumed in both examples is that healthy living would help us prolong our lives.

But, should it?

The question we must ask is – is doing something good a means to an end? Or, is it simply worth doing because it is good?

I would posit that it is almost always the latter. It is worth living healthy because we live every day feeling in our elements – feeling alive. Similarly, you don’t read because you are going to die the most knowledgeable human being you know. You read because you will be able to use what you learn to live a wiser, happier life.

Let’s not confuse quality and quantity. After all, it isn’t the years in our life that count. It is the life in those years.

When companies become corporations

When do organizations and companies become big corporations? I think there are a few tell tale signs –

  1. You stop feeling treated as a customer and begin to feel yourself treated as a number. For example, you need to pass the annoying robot voice or 4 numbers test before you speak to a person. That’s when you know they have “scaled.”

2. Customer services loses the power to say or do something that isn’t in the manual.

3. You get a 30 page legal document for your terms and conditions.

4. You get corporate speak instead of a real apology.

5. You don’t feel you can trust them to help you or care. This tends to be the surest sign.

Of course, the big corporation is just something we feel. Nothing may have really changed in the company’s exterior messaging.

But, as customers, we know when it happens.

Who you look at in meetings

When you are presenting in a meeting, who do you look at? I’ve generally observed some combination of 3 approaches –

1. Don’t freak out: Do whatever it takes to keep you calm (look frequently at the material while moving your head around in general).
2. Focus on the boss: Focus on who you think is the most important in the room.
3. Equal opportunity presenter: Make an attempt to make eye contact with most people in the room.

Experienced presenters don’t have to worry about keeping themselves calm. So, really good ones do a combination of 2 and 3. They look at most people but make sure they give the key decision makers the largest portion of time share. That makes sense as a strategy.

However, I’ve been in a few meetings over the years where the presenter is ONLY focused on whoever he/she feels is the most important person in the room. On a few occasions, I have been that person. And, in all others, I have been totally ignored. In both cases, I’ve found it to be a bad experience. When I was the point of focus, I would shift uncomfortably in my seat and find myself looking at other people to give the presenter a hint. And, when I’m ignored, well, I generally lose interest in the material very quickly.

The bigger issue with the “focus on the boss” approach is that you just, unnecessarily, deposit negative credits in the emotional bank accounts of the other folks in the room. And, who knows when you might end up needing their help – especially if you work in the same company.

Who you look at isn’t generally emphasized as an important piece of presentation preparation. I think it should.

Consciously choose your approach. Your material will get forgotten in time. How you made people feel will not.