Category: Everything else

The double whammy principle

Let’s imagine 2 situations –
– You have an important interview tomorrow and are trying to get through as much of the preparation as possible
– You are going through an incredibly busy time and there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do the things you want to do

In both situations, you could justify an impulse to stop doing one or more of the following “basic” things – sleeping, eating healthy, or taking time to stay organized.

This is where the double whammy principle comes in – The return-on-investment of the “basic” things in our life goes up exponentially in times when doing them feels against the flow. Essentially, not doing them will feel like a double whammy.

So, even if you did pull that all-nighter for your interview and went a bit more prepared, your lack of sleep will ensure you don’t perform to the best of your ability. And, if you did compromise on taking the time to organize yourself before or during a crazy day, there is a very high probability you will lose a lot more time due to the disorganization and lack of planning.

So, what does that mean for you? Very simply, avoid the double whammy. The busier you feel, the more important it is to carve out time for the basic things in your life. In tough times, the time taken to sleep, eat healthy, to reflect and to stay organized will pay themselves forward many times over.

Starting ahead

I noticed something interesting in the way I approach the morning. If I’m up by around 5:30, I feel calm and ahead of the day. But, if I’m up around 6, I already feel behind and somewhat rushed.

I’ve been sensing this pattern of late but can definitely attest to it as of this morning. There’s a tipping point around the 5:30 mark that has a noticeable effect on my morning. And, it feels like a worthy enough tipping point to design around it, i.e., to make sure my alarms go off no later than 5:30. This, in turn, means being in bed by 9:30.

I find it fascinating to learn these little things about yourself.

This is also why I believe blanket productivity advice is useless. It is much better to explore productivity from a more overarching point of view – start from exploring what “the good life” means to you, understand what you value, what your ideal days would be like, how you’d like to work – and then work backwards to create an approach towards productivity. Once you have that baseline, it will still require a continuous chain of iterations as you reflect and learn more about yourself.

But, the fact remains that there is no productivity without a goal and there is no way you can approach the “how” behind productivity without understanding the psychology behind it. And, productivity goals and your mind’s psychology are uniquely yours. It helps to own it.

Art in human interactions

Art in human interactions is knowing when to ignore the science. There’s plenty of science out there that can tell you how to “win friends and influence people.” But, art is understanding what and when to ignore the science.

There are 3 pre-requisites that help us become artists –
1. An acceptance that universal popularity is a myth. This leads to a degree of comfort in just being ourselves.
2. Taking time to learn the science and understand human psychology and human behavior. Wisdom typically follows knowledge.
3. Developing the habit to be present when we interact and to take the time to reflect after interactions. That’s how we learn from our experiences.

There have been many great books written about influence and persuasion that have inspired courses in schools around the world. That’s great – it helps us understand the science. But, approaching human beings as scientific puzzles that need to be solved is one of the worst long term moves we can make. In the really long term, a purity of intent matters more than anything science can offer. That can only come with a genuine interest in understanding people and in building long term relationships.

Human interactions and relationship building isn’t a short term cash-and-carry game. There is a term for that game – networking. It doesn’t work in the long run.

No getting around focus

We’re all on a spectrum between obsessive compulsive and attention deficit. I am definitely firmly in the attention deficit side. We didn’t have too much testing for all of this when I was growing up in India so you just learnt to live with it. I am sure I’d have a dose of the hyperactive ‘H’ as well.

Ever since understanding this, I’ve designed my life around these characteristics. For instance, it used to really annoy me that I would never be able to hold my attention through an entire class when I’d observe friends around me do it with ease. It used to also annoy me that I could never get through an online tutorial or read a rule book. Now, I’m more tolerant to these quirks and don’t mind them as long as I’m aware of what’s happening. I don’t read rule books or watch online tutorials if I can help it. I listen to books more often than I read them. I prefer asking for directions rather than reading maps and I definitely expect myself to get distracted every few minutes. I treat that as completely normal and expect work sessions to be littered with lots of small breaks. I do email breaks and kill two birds with one stone. I banned Facebook feed breaks in April 2013 and have managed to stick to that ban – the Facebook feed is too much of a rabbit hole for someone like me. :-)

However, as I’ve been working hard on getting to my ideal life process (sleep, eat, exercise, read, meditate, be incredibly productive and reflect – consistently), I’ve realized there’s no getting around focus. And, here it is important to understand focus, both as a noun and as a verb.

Focus as a noun. Focus as a noun is our normal vision of focus – think someone bent over a library book for hours. This is hard when you are wired to be distracted. But, on the plus side, I’ve realized that folks like me tend to have speed on our side. I think our brains realize that the time we spend focused on something is precious and it aims to compensate for the distractions with increased intensity. In short, if you pay attention and work on this, distractions become no big deal. You learn to harness them productively.

Focus as a verb. This is where the magic lies. Focus as a verb is an intensive, dynamic and iterative process. Focus as a verb is when you understand your big directional goals, are deeply committed to them, and are going to leave no stone un-turned to get to them. This involves a relentless pursuit of the things that matter. It requires constant reflection to make sure you’re doing the right things and a mindset that just refuses to give up despite the many challenges you are to face. It is an overarching idea that governs your life. This is what obsessive leaders like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have in spades.

The easier way to think about these 2 kinds of focus is to think of them as analogous to management and leadership. Management is getting things done efficiently while leadership is doing the right things in the first place. Once we learn to manage ourselves, focus as a noun becomes easy to deal with. The hard part is the focus as a verb. That’s where we prove our mettle as leaders of our own selves. That’s where the magic happens.

And, there is no getting around it.

Hat tip to Greg McKeown for the focus as a noun and verb insight

Ser Allister Thorne on leadership

My wife and I caught up with the 4th season of ‘A Game of Thrones’ over the past few days as it is finally available on the iTunes store. This would normally lead to a few rants about HBO’s antiquated approach to content distribution online. But, not today.

In one of the (many) war scenes in the season, Ser Allister Thorne says this to Jon Snow –

“Do you know what leadership means, Lord Snow? It means that the person in charge gets second guessed by every clever little twat with a mouth. But if he starts second guessing himself, that’s the end. For him, for the clever little twats, for everyone.”

As much as I despise Thorne’s character, I thought this observation on leadership was particularly insightful.

I’ve observed this over and over again. The idea “often mistaken, but never in doubt” is regularly used in jest. But, it is one of those characteristics that I find to be essential in leadership. No matter what you do, you’re always going to be second guessed. Yes, sure, an ability to listen to reason and change course matters. But, if you’ve just set sail, the right course is almost never clear. More often than not, conviction and self-belief matter more.

And, I’m not just talking about leading teams. This applies just as well to just leading ourselves..

The perfect spaghetti sauce

What is the perfect spaghetti sauce? How spicy, salty, or thick would the perfect spaghetti sauce be?

Howard Moskowitz’s breakthrough insight here was that there is no perfect spaghetti sauce. Instead, there are many different kinds of perfect spaghetti sauce that suit different kinds of people. Starbucks wouldn’t exist if there was a perfect cup of coffee. And, Earl Grey certainly isn’t everyone’s favorite cup of tea.

The best products, services, and businesses don’t attempt to be everything to everybody. There’s a simple and important reason for this – the best products stand for something. The moment they make that choice, they lose people who don’t agree with what they stand for. A multi-millionaire may scorn Ikea’s philosophy but, for every one of those, you’ll find ten 20-somethings who will swear by it. That’s part of the game. You can’t win them all. In fact, I’d go far as to say you don’t really want to win them all.

It is much the same for us as people. If we attempt universal popularity, we will almost certainly lose what we stand for. Unlike in the case of a product or service, that means more to us than a decline in sales. It is the difference between a life and a life well lived.

The stakes are much higher. Forget about choosing wisely. First, we must choose.

Immortalized through music

I am a quirky music lover. I don’t go out of my way to discover new music and, instead, rely on serendipity. But, once I discover a song I like, it goes onto my iTunes list – this is an eclectic yet carefully curated list that has grown with time. I buy my music because it solidifies this deep emotional connection with it. The other quirk is that I have music on through 60-80% of the time I work. Since my high school days, I’ve just gotten used to having music in the background. It suits my kind of ADD for some reason.

Now, the reason for this post is that the music I listen to often has some really powerful memories associated with it. There are songs that remind me of certain times in the last 12 years – some good, some tough, and some fun – and then there are many that remind me of people. In some cases, it was because a close friend loved it and, in other cases, it was because we listened to it on repeat during a memorable moment. These people and moments become immortalized in my memory through music.

Just this weekend, I heard a song that nearly brought tears to my eyes. The funny thing is that I didn’t even know the lyrics – it was just the “feel” of the song.  There’s something about it that makes me want to pause, take stock and reflect. I’ve been listening to this song often these past few days – my wife’s normal question when I go through the ‘listen-to-a-new-song-often-phase’ is – “are we listening to this on repeat today?” (I clearly have a long list of music quirks :-))

As I explained to the friend who shared this song, music is my favorite kind of gift and she’s been immortalized in my memory through this song.

This is an unusual mid-week post but, as I woke up this morning, I reflected on what’s been a busy few days. And, I felt I needed to take some time this evening to stop, reflect, and take it all in. But, as I started writing today’s post, I played the song and realized that the mini-moment of peace would go a long way in making sure I start the day in the right mindset. So, I deleted what I began writing about and thought I’d just share the song with you.

Maybe you might find it helps too. Here’s to a bit of pause, a bit of reflection, and a bit of peace this mid-week.

Building great teams

I’m making slow progress through “The Innovators” by Walter Isaacson. The book is a nice walk down technology memory lane starting from when Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace first conceptualized the computer.

The learning from the book that stands out most to me is the sheer importance of great teams in every technological innovation. Media and culture celebrate great individuals but history makes it apparent that it is teams that succeed. Taking the Tolstoy logic of “all happy families look the same,” I noticed 2 common traits of great teams through the book so far –

1. A mesh of individual and collective genius. Every team somehow managed to encourage individual skill while ensuring a collective ownership of the end product. Some of the biggest breakthroughs were indeed made by individuals. But, they wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the rest of the team. That’s a powerful idea for us as team members and team leaders. We need to be able to encourage individual skill while, perhaps, making sure everyone on the team has a collective ambition. The collective ambition is what allows for true collaboration.

2. Complementary skills, similar dreams and a lot of trust. Every great team had a mix of personalities with complementary skills – the founding team of Intel is a great example of this with Robert Noyce being the visionary, Gordon Moore being the innovator and Andy Grove being the manager who got things done. Despite these differences, they were united by similar dreams. When dreams or values differed, these teams disintegrated. But, when they aligned, it gave rise to great trust and chemistry stemming from a deep understanding of each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

For me, it goes back to the idea that teams are not people who work together, teams are people who trust each other. Yes, we all work in teams in our jobs and assignments, but, how many of those are real teams? How many times do we, as team members, make an earnest effort to get to know each other? We don’t need to be leaders to build great teams. We just need to care enough about collective success and want to really get to know our teammates. Understanding follows knowledge and trust follows understanding.

The days of the lone inventor are long gone. Science and business innovation builds on those of previous generations. And, it is my belief that, today, more than ever, the future belongs to those who can build great teams.

Looking for the next mountain

Life has a way of making sure we face a continuous stream of ups and downs. It is akin to mountain climbing. If you are on top of the mountain right now, you’ve probably endured a lot of hardship as you made your way uphill these last weeks. And, if you’re currently enduring hardship, you’ll be at the top in due time.

The wise realize this and ensure they don’t get too high when they reach the peak and feel too low when they’re stuck in the weeds. This perspective keeps them focused on the bigger picture. The important thing is to keep climbing.

The one trait I have observed in people who seek to make a dent in the world is that they don’t wait around for life to hand them the next mountain climbing assignment. Instead, they go look for it themselves. They take up new responsibilities, start projects, attempt to drive change and make things happen. This means they sign themselves up for more intense climbs than most and fail to reach the peaks they want more regularly than most.

But, as you might have gathered, it isn’t in the peaks that life is lived, but in the climbing. And, people who make a dent go out of their way to find new mountains and keep climbing. Yes, they fail. But, yes, they also learn how to be relentless in their pursuit of the next thing.

And, it is thanks to that relentlessness that great things happen.

The truth about admissions and hiring

Thanks to the MBA learnings series, I’ve been hearing from many who’re going through the business school applications process. In these exchanges, I always try to make sure I share 3 points that I find helpful.

1. After a point, it becomes a crap shoot. I’d highly recommend taking a couple of minutes to read Seth Godin’s excellent post on ‘The truth about admissions‘. Here’s my favorite excerpt –

Worth saying again: In admissions, just as in casting or most other forced selection processes, once you get past the selection of people who are good enough, there are few selectors who have a track record of super-sorting successfully. False metrics combined with plenty of posturing leading to lots of drama. 

The winter and spring quarters are internship recruiting seasons here in school and it is easy to spot similar dynamics. I remember asking a friend how he thought HR picked cover letters out of a competitive pool. He imitated a person throwing a dart on the wall. That’s not to say it is completely random but, echoing Seth’s view, I think there’s a fair bit of pseudo science at play once you cross the threshold of competence.

2. It is a tough process and one that never fails to touch our insecurities (“Am I not good enough?”).  That’s just part of the process. We just have to expect it and be aware of it when it happens. In some ways, we’re always going to have such questions pop up when we ship. It gets easier when we’re shipping a product we designed vs. ourselves though. But, it is a worthwhile process and can be educational if we treat it as such.

The one thing that does help here is to be a bit self centered and just focus intensely on your own process. We’re all on different paths fighting different sorts of battles. Focus on what you need to do and make sure you ask for as much help as you need. These sorts of challenges are hardly ever overcome alone.

3. You only need one to work out. A close friend gave me this perspective and it is one that has stuck with me. Whenever we get started on a job search-like process, we always begin by pinning our hopes on a number of options. And, as these begin to disappear, we get disheartened. The only perspective we need to maintain here is that all it takes is for one to work out. Ideally, it’ll be the one we want. My experience has shown that it almost always is the one we need (and, every once in a while, the two intersect).

All the best. And, if I can be of help in any way through your search processes, do send me a note (rohan at rohanrajiv dot com) and I’ll do my best to be of assistance.