Category: Everything else

27

I asked myself what the major themes of the past year were as I woke up this morning. And, it was the sort of morning when about ten different theme ideas came to mind. But, I love a synthesis with three ideas instead of ten. There’s something about bringing things down to three ideas. As a friend nicely put it – it isn’t that there are only three things, it is just that there have got to be the three most important things.

After bringing it down to three ideas, I asked myself if I could bring it down to the one idea. And, it turns out that that is possible too. Everything I have learned comes down to one central idea – love is the single uniting life principle. And, to live life well is to live it with extraordinary love.

I have referenced psychologist Scott Peck’s excellent definition of love here a few times over the past months – “Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

To love, then, requires us to use our will to extend ourselves to grow and to enable the growth of others. It begins with learning to love ourselves. To love ourselves, we have to sign up for a journey toward continuous growth of the mind and spirit. In doing so, we expand our capacity to love others. But, to truly love others, we must be able to help them on their own journeys.

All of this brings us back an idea related to the central idea – doing things with extraordinary love is hard work.

It is hard because it requires us to commit to growth. Growth requires this constant cycle of self reflection, self awareness, self evaluation, and self improvement. This can be a tiring prospect because you are always aware of the fact that this is a journey of work that never really ends. One of the pit stops on my journey right now is to be less reactive – I thought I’d become better about this but realized recently that I still react way too quickly, too often. This is something I need to monitor over the coming months. Once I get past that, there will be the next thing, and the next thing.

If that isn’t tiring enough, love, the verb, requires us to pay attention. This means committing to depth and intensity when we spend our time in activities of our choice and it means actively saying no to the many distractions that would happily have us fragment our attention. Depth is hard and I certainly struggle with it every day.

Finally, to be able to mindfully grow and focus deeply, we need to learn to think strategically about our choices and understand the trade offs that enable us to do less, but better.

All of this is hard work. Committing to love means committing to this hard work every day, regardless of the weather or good mood.

This commitment is what I’ve been made aware of in the last year. It is a commitment I have, thus, consciously made – to do the small things in my life with extraordinary love. I fall short of it nearly every single day – I stumble one way or another by either saying something stupid, reacting quickly instead of taking a deep breath and responding or doing something I shouldn’t have done.

But, in doing that, I have also learnt that learning to love means falling regularly and learning from those experiences. It means being intensely focused on choosing the part of learning no matter what the situation entails. It means giving it your best shot and making peace with the fact that you only control processes, not outcomes… and that it matters less what the end result is simply because our lives are lived en route.

And, I’ve realized that if we can bring ourselves to keep perspective along the way and do things that are consistent with our values, we give ourselves that incredible gift – the gift of a life well lived.

(Past birthday notes: 26, 25, 24, 23)

Updating 180 book reviews

I went down a blog maintenance rabbit hole yesterday and checked and updated all reviews on my book review blog. I had been liberally sending folks over to the blog over the past few years and realized I needed to do a quick check as to whether some of my earlier entries made sense. I had 3 interesting observations from the experience –

1. Themes. It felt like going back in time to different phases of my growth. For example, there was a phase of reading sales books because sales was a part of my role for a start up in undergrad, a phase of reading books on personal finance and investing, a happiness phase, a marriage books mini phase, an MBA book phase, etc.

2. Reviewing and recommending. I changed a few reviews yesterday as I realized my review methodology settled after 80 or so books. It took me a while for me to understand what I appreciated in a book and when things resonated. I think I’ve normalized all reviews now.

The interesting thing about reviews is that they have a lot to do with the specific time in which I read the book. I have come to understand that there is an aspect of reader readiness for many books. If you aren’t ready for an extremely insightful book, you’re not going to make the most of it. So, when I send folks over to the blog when they ask me for recommendations, I always request them to just take the reviews as a guide. Instead, I request them to send me a few books that pique their interest and give me a sense of what they’re looking for. The chances are high that we’ll be able to find something that they’d be ready for. It isn’t so much about what is a great book – it is about what you need to read at that particular point of time.

3. What I remember. As I went through roughly 8 years worth of books, I asked myself what I actually remember from these books? And, I realized that it was often a few ideas combined with a feeling that really resonated for the books I considered “great.” But, I also realized that I wouldn’t have remembered this if I hadn’t taken the time to write down what I remember, synthesize and share.

That brought me to the final learning – the hard part about reading isn’t just reading. That’s where we ought to start. However, if you really want to absorb what you learn from books, it pays to take the time to take notes (~3-4 mins for every 20 mins you read), synthesize and share. That’s when you give yourself time to absorb and assimilate what you read.

Willpower

Unite or Divide

As a leader, you tend to have two choices – do I unite the people I lead or divide them?

Uniting people when you are leading huge communities or nations is actually not great strategy in most times. Our natural instincts encourage us to seek out divides and this is especially true in times of distress. And, in every century, we’ve seen plenty of leaders take the divide strategy. Adolf Hitler was probably the poster child of the divisive leader in the last hundred years. But, history offers many such examples – as a student of Indian history, I am painfully aware that “divide-and-rule” was colonial Britain’s chosen strategy to colonize India in the 19th century.

You can see why leaders pursue divisive strategies. They work fantastically well in the short term in most times. But, in the long run, however, they crash and burn. Organizations that become overly political stop innovating and performing. Countries that become divisive struggle to make progress. For all the negative aspects of the human condition that dominate during a period of time, one thing is for certain – humanity always triumphs in the long run. But, it is hard to play for the long term – just ask Angela Merkel. Despite showing humanity and leadership, she has only been losing popularity within Germany.

That is why it takes so much character to be a great leader of a nation. That is also why we deservedly sing the praises of Abraham Lincoln years after his passing. He could have done just fine as a leader by not abolishing slavery. But, in doing so and in resisting short term populism, he became great.

As I spend time in the US during this presidential campaign, I hear many surprised voices at the amount of support Donald Trump’s campaign seems to be receiving. The more I think of it, the more I realize that it doesn’t surprise me as much as it did a couple of months ago. We’ve seen this trend all over the world post the recession – every country has pushed for more protectionism. Even Singapore, which is about as pragmatic as a nation can get, became a touch more protectionist to appease popular sentiment. Why should the US be any different?

Brandon Stanton, the founder of “Humans of New York” had a powerful open letter to Donald Trump today, in which he said something insightful – “You are not a ‘victim’ of the very anger that you’ve joyfully enflamed for months. You are a man who has encouraged prejudice and violence in the pursuit of personal power.”

Leaders who choose prejudice and violence do so because it serves them well in the short run. They couldn’t care less about the downstream effects because they will always be insulated from them. The “divide-and-rule” policy eventually led to the separation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Many lives were lost due to these separations and they continue to be lost to this day.

The leaders who caused that have come and gone. But, the people have to live with those choices.

It is up to us to choose wisely.

Source

The tension between relationships and processes

Every leader or manager faces one particular type of tension on most days – the tension between relationships and processes. The balance is hard to strike – lean one way and you  become too nice or lean the other and you become unnecessarily dogmatic.

The keys, in my limited experience, are as follows –

1. Understand what your natural leanings are. Depending on how you like to operate and what drives you, you will have a natural leaning to either being too nice or too strict with rules. Understanding this is critical to figuring out what you need to work on.

2. Communicate your expectations and follow through on consequences. Next, communicate your expectations frequently and clearly. Everyone working with you should have a clear understanding of the norms associated with working with you and what happens when they aren’t followed.

3. Treat different people differently. Finally, keep an eye out for spectacular performance. Every once in a while, you are confronted with spectacular performers who feel that the norms and processes get in the way. The more creative the endeavor, the higher the chances you will meet with rule breakers. Again, there isn’t so much of a right answer as much as there are two questions – how much of the rule bending can you make peace with? and, most importantly, at what point does the rule breaking affect the culture of the team?

As with all good tensions, what matters isn’t the answer. What matters is repeatedly asking the question, looking inward, communicating clearly and doing the best to balance the various forces at play.

It isn’t easy. Mistakes are guaranteed.

But, that’s how we get made.

Tension(Image combined from 1, 2, 3)

Falling is guaranteed

It is impossible to learn how to skate or ski without falling. When you’re skating, you just learn to fall in a manner that doesn’t break any bones. When you’re skiing on the other hand, falling on your face is totally fair game.

Falling is such a critical part of the learning experience. First, you learn how to fall. Next, you learn how to pick yourself up and get back on track. And, over time, you learn how to not fall. Putting all your energy into not falling when you start only impedes your learn curve. Learning wouldn’t be possible without falling.

The challenge is that falling and failing are often viewed together. They seem to be similar and they’re even spelled similar. However, falling is just the falling down. Failing is the staying down.

Falling is a guaranteed part of the learning experience. Failing is not.

"Falling is guaranteed"Image Source

Tim Cook on RoI

VentureBeat had a nice article yesterday on Tim Cook becoming the Silicon Valley’s conscience with his stand on various important social issues. There was one anecdote that stood out –

In March 2013, I was in Cupertino for Apple’s annual shareholder meeting. After 18 months leading Apple, Cook had been feeling some heat from investors over the stock’s performance. During the meeting, Justin Danhof, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, had criticized Apple for its connection to industry groups that believe global warming is caused by human activity. At one point, Danhof confronted Cook and asked him to commit to only taking on projects that help the environment or fulfill other social justice aims if they directly benefit Apple’s bottom line.

Cook, clearly trying to remain calm, shot back: “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI [return on investment]. When I think about doing the right thing, I don’t think about an ROI.”

Cook then offered his own bottom line to Danhof, or any other critic, one which perfectly sums up his belief that social and political and moral leadership are not antithetical to running a business. “If that’s a hard line for you,” Cook continued, “then you should get out of the stock.”

In our push to hold people accountable to something measurable, we’ve long attached ourselves to metrics such as returns to the shareholder, RoI, etc.

All that’s good and very important – especially when you are starting out. But, once you are solvent and reasonably successful, it is your responsibility to work on projects that create long term good in the world. If not you, then who? The RoI may not be as good as an existing project that sells something to people who don’t fundamentally need it. But, it doesn’t matter. Just because an RoI is easily measured doesn’t mean it is right to measure it at every excuse.

Some of the most valuable things we do are things that aren’t easily measured and that can’t easily be quantified.

Thank you for showing us the way, Tim.

RoI, Apple, Tim Cook

When playing law enforcer

2 things help a lot when you are playing law/policy/rule enforcer –

  1. Take a moment to understand why the law exists in the first place
  2. Explain the rationale to the person you’re speaking to

Doing this helps avoid two issues that make such interactions tasteless – mindless policy-itis and a lack of empathy. Mindless policy-itis is when we say “It is not possible because that’s not how we do it here.” And, a lack of empathy is when we just shove the rule on someone’s throat without ever taking the time to understand why they might be asking for clarification or an exception.

Norms, rules, policies and laws are very important. But, when they don’t involve life and death situations (and, instead when they deal with – “Can I get a refund?” or “Can I return that product?” or “Can I please come to this event?”), it is worth revisiting why they were created. Every once a while, we might just realize it is worth making an exception or, in some cases, realize it is worth re-writing the rule.

law enforcer

The main thing

It is going to soon be 8 years of daily writing on this blog. During these 8 years, I’ve spent 2 years or so as an undergrad, 4 years as a consultant and about 2 years as a graduate student. During this time, there have been a collection of other projects on the side. But, in every one of these phases, there always was a “main thing.”

Toward the end of my undergraduate years, it was finding a job. As a consultant, it was delivering quality work for clients. And, as part of my graduate student experience, I’d say thinking about career direction, then switching careers and now preparing to give it my best shot is the “main thing.” For simplicity, I’m going to categorize all of these under “Professional” and put everything else I do with my time under the “Personal” category. If I have to now think of the “main thing” personally, it has always come down to one thing – building and maintaining a collection of strong, meaningful personal relationships.

I call these the “main thing” because there is such an incredible amount of noise – more so today than ever before. There are so many avenues for people to hear about what you’re doing and give you feedback – whether or not you want or need it. But, if you’re looking to create value, it is particularly challenging to cut through the noise and focus on what matters. Do the number of likes on your most recent post really matter? What about the number of people who said they’d come to that event you’re hosting?

The “main thing” idea is very helpful because it puts everything you do in perspective. For example, when I go back to the full time work world in 3 months, the main thing professionally is doing great work. Everything else is secondary. If I am able to do that, it is likely it will spill onto everything else I do – e.g., I will likely have richer insights to share here. And, if all goes well, insights from the act of reflection here will spill back onto my work. But, the main value driver in the long run will still be the work. Similarly, I may have 2000 friends on Facebook but it won’t matter if I don’t feel strongly connected to a small group I trust. As Stephen Covey once said, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. This isn’t easy but having clarity on this greatly helps separate the signal from the noise. And, the quality of our lives is directly proportional to the ability to keep the main thing the main thing.

Once you identify the main thing, it is easy to understand what single thing you do drives value. In my case, that single thing is “deep work” time – time I have carved out where I am focused 100% on my work or the important people in my life. No email, no phones and no nothing else.

So, simplifying this whole thing further, the quality of my life is directly proportional to the amount of time I spend in deep work mode. You might object to calling time spent with those close to us as “work.” But, I’d argue being 100% present takes work. Mindfulness, the same concept as “deep work mode” is hard.

It was only a year or so ago when I first realized this. And, it has greatly simplified how I think about my day and my life. Over the past 3 months, I’ve been working hard to be more mindful about scheduling “deep work” time. And, yesterday afternoon, I felt a certain discomfort as I was about to get some food. As I dug a bit deeper, I realized that I was feeling that way simply because I hadn’t spent a chunk of time in a state of depth for 2 days. Something or the other had come up and I had worked on multiple projects and felt my attention was very fragmented. I was itching to sit down, shut off distraction and focus on an afternoon and evening spent in depth. So, that’s what I did. And, it felt great.

Through all of this, I am probably most pleased about that discomfort I experienced. It reminded me to do what drives value in my life. And, long may that continue.

the main thing

Responding to mockers and haters

I shared a post on “To do” Archives yesterday with a picture of my own archives list. While it is possible to author blogs (possibly even daily ones) on specific topics without revealing a whole lot about yourself, I’ve found it nearly impossible to write one based on learning without baring your soul. I say that because so much of what we learn is based on who we are. So, in writing here every day, I definitely end up sharing my quirks.

One of my quirks, for example, is my morning routine – a topic I’ve written about plenty of times. Getting that first hour and a half right is an important part of starting the day and I love building momentum by checking off a few simple tasks. In this case, I shared a screenshot of my lists yesterday and I can still remember the trepidation when I used to share such stuff here a few years ago (even if there was barely anyone who read it). I still find it a bit uncomfortable. That discomfort doesn’t go away with time – I think you just develop a thicker skin.

I woke up this morning to 2 comments from yesterday’s post mocking my lists.

responding

The reaction a couple of years ago would have been that uncomfortable feeling of the muscles in the stomach constricting followed by a need to either say something sarcastic or perhaps vigorously defend why the lists are the way they are.

But, the beauty of doing this for a long time is that you learn, over time, to see the light side and keep a bit of perspective. When you take a few leaps and put yourself out there, it is always possible for you to fall flat on your face. Sometimes, even without falling flat on your face, there are people who stand on the side laughing at your attempt.

But, if you do happen to be one of those leapers, you are generally very empathetic of others who’re out there giving it their best shot. Yes, it doesn’t always work. And, no, it isn’t always perfect. But, in putting themselves out there, they’re attempting to be the best they can be. And that, to me, deserves all the respect in the world.

So, my suggested response to those who mock you is to just walk away. It isn’t worth engaging. I’ve found it much more worthwhile to move onto building the next thing.

(A side note: There exists an age-old philosophical debate among bloggers about whether or not you should turn off comments. Seth Godin is one of the strong proponents of turning them off while many others, e.g. Fred Wilson, are big proponents of leaving them on. I’ve found more positivity than negativity as a result of leaving them on. However, this can change as you move from a small-time blog as in my case to a large blog with a lot of haters and trolls.)

Keeping a To do Archives file

I’ve used Microsoft OneNote as my “to do” list tool for 8 or so years now. Over time, it has become more of a life organization tool and has records of my thoughts on nearly every project I’ve worked on in the past few years. However, I use it most to list and work through key priorities and tasks – so, it is a nearly always open on my laptop.

Two years ago, instead of deleting my list of tasks once I was done for the day, I began transferring it to another OneNote file I call “To do Archives.” This “To do Archives” file has a daily chronological list of all tasks I’ve completed in the past two years.

I think I started doing this because I thought I might find it useful. I’ve probably checked in once a while for specific purposes – more so at the identical OneNote file at work. But, the real benefit of doing this has been something intangible – every time I start the day and transfer a few of the morning routine items to this list, I see this vast repository of tasks and feel a sense of positive momentum. “I’ve gotten so much done all these days. Why should this day be any different?”

And, indeed, why should it?

Momentum is a beautiful thing.

Todoarchives2(Example archives from last week – with names removed)