Category: Everything else

A lot of the discussion around self awareness alludes to the idea of “becoming” self aware – as if you flip a switch or turn a corner one day and voilà! you have reached self awareness point.

My experience with self awareness is that it is just a really long march. You don’t become self aware one day. Instead, you become more self aware – ideally every day. And, over time, you learn what to do with that knowledge.

A big part of this process is gradually embracing your own quirks and developing your own library of tell-tale signals. For instance, I caught myself talking way more than usual (I generally speak up a fair bit – so you can imagine what this was like) at a group meeting. In my case, that’s a tell-tale sign that I was out of sync with myself. I was just reacting to discomfort.

Similarly, I realized another meeting was going nowhere recently as I just felt I’d hit a point of exhaustion. Instead of ploughing on, I decided to call it a day and work on it early next morning. I’d seen that movie many times and knew this would result in a better ending.

I think of all of this as a long drawn collection of experiments. You observe yourself, figure out the patterns, guess the causes, observe some more, try and attack the causes and, over time, understand why you behave the way you do in a particular situation. The beauty about this understanding is that, over time, you can bring most behaviors down to a few root causes (typically deep-rooted insecurities). And, once you understand those, you then figure out ways to work with the root causes and, hopefully, get to a more accepting, productive and happier place.

I can see why the switch flip idea sounds better/more easier. This is hard work. But, this is definitely one of the cases where the juice is worth the squeeze.

One of the interesting things when you design experiences for people is that your new users have no baseline understanding of the kinds of improvements you have made.

So, if you drastically revamped your website’s design and made it so much easier for users to navigate, it won’t really matter to a new user. To them, this is the base line expectation.

While you are sure to experience a bit of frustration and probably say to yourself – “They have no idea! If only they had experienced the old crappy model” – the reality is that such experiences are simply a lesson in how expectations work. The more better work you do, the more better work will be expected of you.

I think it all begins to feel negative if you expect plaudits at every step because they never quite arrive. Yes, you might have a small subset of grateful users who will thank you. But, their voices will likely be drowned out by noises of dissent and complaints about the (smaller) issues the new design has created. As Seth wrote yesterday, no matter what you do, failure of some kind is certain. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s focus on the impact.

The take away for me – do great work simply because you want to do great work. The reward at the end of the journey is not universal love from everyone your experiences touches. The reward is that you became a better version of yourself in the process of doing great work.

And, I would argue there are few greater rewards than that.

Often we spend all our time thinking how we can change situations instead of simply letting them change us.

I switched my routine this morning and just did a quick skim of the news – my diet these days consists of a roughly 10 minute read of The Economist Espresso, Quartz’ daily newsletter and the Skimm. There’s a bit of overlap across these 3 but I’ve still found value in each of them.

So, it is natural that the news is on top of my mind as I write this.

One of the funny things about reading the news is that I am regularly shocked by the amount of ongoing crap taking place. Yes, I understand that negative stuff brings about more readership but I do always wonder about the “real” ratio of positive to negative news in the world.

A quick example of the kind of stuff that shocked me this morning –

• Shell and ENI in Nigeria have had about 550 oil spills in Nigeria in the last few years. (550? How do you even get away with a number as crazy as that?)
• American Presidential hopeful Ben Carson lied about receiving a scholarship. (How could anyone make such a dumb mistake in this day and age?)
• Former McKinsey partner Anil Kumar, who actively participated in the insider trading scandal that got former McKinsey chairman Rajat Gupta and hedge fund owner Raj Rajarathnam in jail, constructed the elaborate scheme by creating offshore accounts in his maid’s name. The maid, Manju Gupta, now lives in poverty in Kolkata, India and hasn’t heard from her former employers in years. And, Anil Kumar walked away from all of this with a $25,000 fine. (This is so crazy that I’m not even sure what question to ask)

As humans, we tend to obsess about being perfect and getting everything right. It does, however, seem to me that we’d go a long way if we just did the basic stuff right – be honest (definitely don’t lie or cheat) and do your best to do good work. I’m not saying any of this stuff is easy – Anil Kumar, Ben Carson, et al, are smart folk. If anything, sharing my struggles with getting the basics right for more than 7 years now has definitely made me appreciative of how difficult it really is.

Nevertheless, this is likely a simpler undertaking than – go make a positive dent in the universe. It sure takes the pressure off. :-)

And, maybe, just maybe, it is the folks who go crazy about trying to make a positive dent who forget that there’s more to life than transitory wealth, fame and power.

I was reminded of the book ‘The Geography of Bliss’ on Twitter yesterday. So, I downloaded the book on my Audible and listened to the epilogue again.

And, here are a few quotes from the book that I absolutely loved.

We are shaped by our environment. In some ways, we are our environment. The word utopia has 2 meanings – good place and nowhere. That’s the way it should be – the happiest places are the ones that are just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with. Likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in a perfect place either. A lifetime of happiness – no man could bear it. It would be hell on earth. Happiness requires livable conditions but not paradise. We find happiness in a variety of places.

We thrive on messiness. The Good Life cannot be mere indulgence – it must contain a measure of grit and truth.

Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Familiarity should breed contentment and not just content. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It’s a conjunction. Connective tissue.

Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. … Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.

Have I found happiness? . . . I do experience happy moments. I’m learning, as W.H. Auden counseled, to “dance while you can.” He didn’t say “dance well.” And, for that I’m grateful.

And that brings me to my favorite quote whose beginning inspired the title of today’s post.

Maybe happiness is this…not wanting to be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

So true.

Wishing you a great week. Thanks, Eric, for a wonderful book.

I think the speed of our learning curve begins and ends depending on our answer to the question – “how do you react to being in the stretch zone?”

Most folk attempt to minimize that feeling of stretch and remind themselves that discomfort exists to be minimized.

Others accept the discomfort as a part of life and choose to dance with it.

Of course, we all want to minimize unnecessary stretch and we definitely don’t want to consistently feel stretched because others don’t do their job or because our managers consistently make unrealistic promises to our clients. We also don’t want to find ourselves stretched every minute of our lives. But, that said, if we feel relatively in control of our lives and schedules, our ability to deal with stretch can be developed – just like building a muscle.

And, I would argue that there are few muscles that are more important to build – after all, life begins at the end of our comfort zone.

A future self idea that inspires me is one where I’d associate myself with clinical execution.

Work gets done when you combine intensity, focus and time. I think time is not so much the issue – I am definitely prepared to put in the time and have been for many years. I have less of an issue with focus these days. A big part of that has been accepting my ADD/natural attention deficit nature and learning to be kind to myself when I find my attention drifting. It has also meant designing a life and a “getting-things-done” system that works well with this ADD.

The toughest nut to crack has been intensity. Intensity, as I define it, is choosing where to focus on. And, I think we can further divide this into making a decision and then executing on it. Over the years, through constant reinforcement and increased awareness about my priorities, I have found myself become better at making decisions that are aligned to my priorities.

However, it is in the execution where I face that demon – procrastination. For instance, I had a 2 hour window yesterday when I knew exactly what I needed to and, yet, managed to find ways to procrastinate. During periods when there is little time to waste, I find such wasted hours frustrating.

So, this is a reminder to myself to begin to focus on banishing procrastination. So, here’s to figuring out an approach to that.

And, maybe, just maybe, I will then be worthy enough to bestow the “clinical execution” adjective on myself. :-)

I’ve found myself saying no a fair number of times this week. For someone who attempts to be available and of help, saying “no” is always a bit of a wrench. I avoided it for years until I realized that I was both compromising on quality by saying yes too much and not taking care of myself. I’ve definitely found myself getting better at it with practice.

One technique that has helped me say no is to not think of it as a partial no and not a complete no. A complete no aims to end the conversation immediately while a partial no keeps it going by offering up an alternative. An alternative I typically end up offering is to continue the conversation via email versus scheduling a separate chat.

A simple example – over the past year, there have been regular requests from folks who found me via one of my “MBA Learning” blog posts asking for 30 minutes for a conversation about business school applications. While I’m unable to do a call justice, I generally send a list of FAQs I’ve compiled and also respond to any follow up questions they might have. It isn’t perfect but it hopefully, at least, covers most of the basic questions they might have.

The principle here is that every non-essential no is an implicit yes to something essential that’s high up our priority list. Focus less on the no and more on what you are saying “yes” to. And, where possible, make it a partial no and offer up a few alternatives.

Once in a while, when you see sparks of greatness, it is only natural to stand up and applaud.

However, if that greatness becomes a daily occurrence, it is only a while before you start taking it for granted. These acts of greatness can be in any sphere – a teammate who scores wonderful goals every time you go out to play, a spouse who takes care of you incredibly well every day, a parent who showers you with unconditional love and affection every time you spend time with them, a friend who is always around when you need her, an employer who takes great care of you at work, or a teammate who never shows up to a meeting unprepared.

This is why managing expectations is not just a good life skill, it is also a key ingredient to happiness. Because, the moment our expectations go up, we lose sight of consistent greatness. We become like the bangle seller in front of the Taj Mahal who doesn’t appreciate the genius in front of him.

And that is truly one of life’s greatest tragedies… because, I would argue that it isn’t really greatness if it isn’t consistent.

And, if we aren’t able to see and appreciate greatness, what the hell are we doing here anyway?

If we want to do build things that matter, we have to build as if you’ll be around forever.

Given how strongly we’re wired to optimize for the short term and seek instant gratification, it is impossible to make good long term choices unless we have an implicit assumption that we’ll be working on our projects in perpetuity.

The difficulty is that there is something inherently scary about the idea of committing to something forever.

But, if there’s anything we should learn from folks who do build things that matter, it is their willingness to do things that few others would.

Channeling Jeff Bezos, however, we also know that it is a sign of wisdom to know when to change your mind and stop.

Perhaps, therein lies the secret to building things that matter – when you do something – even if it is something small and even if it something for a short period of time, do it as if you’d be doing it forever.

In essence, leave everything you do a little better than you found it. That’s how we get into the habit of building things that last.

Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle had this (among many other things) absolutely right.