Category: Everything else

Maximizing learn-rate – Being kind to yourself

If your response when you taste failure is to beat yourself up, it is natural that you will eventually fear failing.

But, isn’t that what we all do?

Maximizing learn-rate is on top of my mind as I had 2 days of ski lessons this week. After an encouraging first day, I had a challenging second day. And, as we progressed to a slightly tougher slope, I found it much harder to execute what I thought I’d learnt. For a good few minutes, I began wondering why I wasn’t getting it and, soon, I felt paralyzed. Negative self talk is the first step of a cycle that takes us nowhere.

The next step was to reverse the self talk and just try again.

It went better. I need more of that as I practice today.

My understanding of the situation is that my skill level is just what it is. Self talk isn’t going to improve it. But, as I start learning a new skill, there are many insecurities that get in the way of performing at the skill level I am at. It takes a while to build the confidence required to shove the insecurities aside. And, negative self talk is as potent a confidence destroyer as they come.

This post in one line? To learn better, be kind to yourself.

Maximizing learn-rate – look for the counter intuitive

Learn-rate is simply the speed at which you learn. And, I have a simple tactic for maximizing your learn-rate. Just look for what’s counter intuitive.

Every skill you attempt to pick up has a few elements that are counter intuitive. I’d argue that the more counter intuitive elements there are, the harder it is to learn the skill. Here are a couple of examples –

– If you are trying to learn the guitar, you have to learn to gravitate towards pain. Our natural reaction is to stop doing something if it is painful. When learning the guitar, it works the other way around. If you feel your fingers hurting when you try playing the F-chord, that’s a sign that you need to do a lot more of it.

– If you are learning to serve in tennis, you should look at where you want the ball to go. This is completely against our instinct to look at the racket and the ball. Also, we have to toss the ball higher than our normal zone of comfort.

– If you are learning to ski, there are a collection of counter intuitive ideas. First, you should always lean forward to keep control. This goes against our instinct to pull back when we move fast. Second, to turn right, you must put your tilt your left ankle and put your weight on it. Thirdly, like in tennis, you must keep your eyes on the trail in front of you. Finally, you have to go slow to go fast. This means you spend a lot of time making S-shapes so you don’t just speed down the hill, lose control and fall.

So, when you’re picking up your next skill, keep an eye for what’s counter intuitive and spend all your energy learning it. It works like magic.

Customizable

We are all exposed to industrial systems sooner or later in our lives. An outcome of having 7 billion people on the planet is that we’ve had to build industrial systems – school, college, the factory, etc. One consequence of these systems is that we’re conditioned to think of life like an assembly line – go to school, then get into a great college, then get a prestigious first job, then an elite masters program, then work in an exploding start-up and then build our own company. Or, the other way to think about it would be – study hard till you’re in college, then work hard while finding a partner, marry the partner, have kids, send kids to school, and let the cycle go on. Not much seems customizable. If anything, it feels like a never-ending list of things that just “have to be done.”

We crave connection as human beings. And, a result of this craving combined with technological advances is a slew of services like Facebook, Twitter, and the like. However, if we’re not careful, these can soon lead us to believe that there is a certain socially acceptable way to have fun, to go on vacation, or to even relax. After all, can it be a great vacation if it doesn’t make for a great profile picture?

But, here’s where it all breaks down –
1. Every bit of life is customizable. While large groups of us exhibit similar kinds of behavior (=> industrial systems work on average), we all have unique quirks. And, our happiness is entirely dependent on our quirks.
2. As a result, happiness exists in the customization. The less we feel like we’re going through life working through a pre-designed checklist,  the more we’re likely to be happy. The less we care about what others think, the more likely we’ll find our custom approach.
3. The less stuff we “have to do,” the happier we will be.

Our life is entirely what we make of it. And, the first step to making it what works for us is to realize that everything we take for granted was invented by people like and you and me.. and, that it is all customizable.

I will do nothing else..

..until I make progress on my number 1 priority.

To this day, I haven’t found a single app or hack that accomplishes important work better than when I make this commitment. I’m just learning to be disciplined at breaking lists down into groups, prioritizing them and then getting to work.

Like all good things, the commitment just sets the stage for great follow up. There’s no way of escaping that.

The half-life of a failure

I heard back on 2 project outcomes yesterday – one went really well and one didn’t go so well. Guess which one I woke up thinking about?

The half-life of a failure is much much longer than the half-life of a success. So, the question then becomes – is there a way around it? Here’s how I think about it –

In the short term, I’m not sure there is. Successes and failures are a part of life and we have to learn to accept that failures stay longer with us. We expect negative emotions very intensely. There is no getting around that and you aren’t going to change your response overnight.

In the medium term, there are a few ideas that can help. The first is to develop a coping mechanism. I have developed two coping mechanisms that tend to help me. First, I give myself a certain stretch of time (depending on the size of the failure) to play victim. And I allow myself to kick myself and curse things a bit. Once I’m done with playing victim, I think about I learnt from the process and write about it. This part enables me to look back at the process that led to the outcome, draw my own conclusions about what went wrong and look forward to things that I should do better. The beautiful part of writing a daily blog that talks about seeing failures as learnings is that failures help me keep a steady pipeline of content. That’s not a bad outcome.

And, finally, in the long term, I see it as a part of a quest to become more zen – to accept the things I cannot change and focus intensely on the things I can. Every minute spent on a past result is a minute taken away from a future process, after all. I know this but it doesn’t make executing on it any easier.

As you can tell, I am in the “medium term” bit. This process has taken me about 6 years to internalize. Let’s hope I’ll be writing about the long term part 6 years from now. :-)

Being entrepreneurial vs. being an entrepreneur

The media loves the entrepreneur’s story. Just search for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Larry Page and you will find no shortage of press articles and books that detail their obsessive habits, their exercise routines and anecdotes from their childhood. Why blame the media? We love the entrepreneur story too – the story of the one person who came about and changed everything. Many dream to be that person. It is definitely a worthy dream if the goal is to make a positive difference during your time on the planet.  And, it is definitely one way to approach the many problems our planet and the human race faces.

The other way is to just be entrepreneurial – wherever you might be. The entrepreneurship concept is built around three phases – idea/problem -> initiative -> action. Those who go about registering a new company to solve the problem/execute the idea are called entrepreneurs. As you might have guessed, this post is about all those who don’t, all those we will call entrepreneurial.

Let us consider the story of Brent James at Intermountain Healthcare who has been at the forefront of a movement to make health care better by making it easier for doctors to access data and make better decisions. Or perhaps the many change-makers at hospital networks and medical device manufacturers around the world who have helped save an enormous number of lives through changes they lead. Perhaps we could think about those in companies that have led agricultural innovations or maybe the early team at Twitter including folks like Jason Goldman who have helped make Twitter an agent of change around the world. Brent James and folks like him may not have started companies but, as change agents in large organizations, have probably driven more tangible change than most could hope for.

The way I see it – there is a small group of people who will have the combination of smarts, resources, and luck that Musk, Bezos and Page have had in shaping the world tomorrow. And, while they will undoubtedly make huge dents to life on this planet, the change they will make will be dwarfed by the change made by the many entrepreneurial folk who are driving change in their neighborhoods, tribes, communities and companies. These people may not have articles dedicated to their childhood on Fortune magazine and may just be lauded in an internal company-wide memo. But, it would be foolish to underestimate the impact that they have on our lives. We’ve been innovating at an unprecedented rate of late. That’s not because we have more superstar entrepreneurs. In fact, the number of superstar entrepreneurs has stayed constant over time. For every Bill Gates, there always was a Rockfeller. However, with more availability of information and resources, we do have more people who’ve been taking initiative and attempting to make a difference wherever they are.

So, you might have many reasons to not be an entrepreneur. That’s completely okay. There is, however, no excuse to not be entrepreneurial. You have more access to tools that can drive change than ever before. You can also spot people who’re out there attempting to make the world a bit better. If you don’t feel strongly enough about pushing an idea forward, be good at spotting those who are and join them. Just ask Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive – that works too.

We make the world better.. together.

Wired to compete

Homo sapiens have been on earth for about 200,000 years. For 199,950 (99.9%) of those years, most of the human population wasn’t assured easy access to food. We’ve been hard-wired to compete for survival. That instinct to compete translates into everything else we do.

But, you know what? We don’t need to compete any more. A large proportion of us don’t need to fight everyone else for food and survival. We don’t really need to compete for any of the basic needs on Maslow’s hierarchy. Instead, the questions we have in front of us are –
– How can we make sure the rest of the human population have the basics in place – food, shelter, access to clean water, education, etc.?
– How can we be happy?

The second question is the tough one. Our instinct to compete combined with the many opportunities out there directs our focus to “the chase.” “The chase” is a metaphor for whatever is sought after in societal terms. It is easy to spend our time in “the chase” because it is extrinsic. As long as our struggles are extrinsic, we can focus on appeasing our insecurities and circumvent any questions around happiness.

But, that question is going to keep coming back. If it isn’t clear yet, there’s enough out there for us. We just have to be willing to get to know ourselves, understand what we really want, and keep our eyes open for opportunities. This isn’t about what’s out there. It is about what’s in here. We need less competition, less insecurities, and less frantic activity. Instead, we need more calm, more confidence, and more wisdom.

The challenge is that all of this goes against our wiring. Perhaps that is the biggest challenge that awaits our generation.

The first step to surgical precision

The first step to surgical precision is a plan. The plan might change depending on what the surgeon sees when he operates. But, he’s going to have a defined plan nevertheless.

It is like a general going to war. As they say, no battle plans survive first contact with the enemy. That doesn’t mean great generals didn’t make them. They just adapted their plans depending on the situation.

I just read a nice quote that said –

‘Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be fat, lazy, broke, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan. ‘| Larry Winger

Having a plan doesn’t guarantee that it’ll all work out. But, not having one really messes your chances.

So, improve your chances. Start with a plan. When things change, adapt your plan. Get everything that is in your control sorted – that’s how we get to surgical precision. So, take a few seconds today and.. plan. There is power in just being intentional.

(And, yes, “plan” was intentionally repeated. :-))

Toyota experiments and Intuit – The 200 words project

Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Fastcompany.com.

How can a loom maker located in the Kansas of Japan decide to go into the car business after everyone else and become better than GM and Mercedes in the core business of making cars? Why is it that when Nissan sells a hybrid, it’s got Toyota parts in it?

Even as a student, Intuit founder Scott Cook was fascinated by Toyota. Along with his professors at Harvard, he went to the Toyota factories and observed Toyota’s approach to manufacturing. And, one of his professors pointed out that Toyota ran itself as a massive series of experiments from the production line worker to the CEO. They had the line supervisor teach 70 or 80 people how to run experiments with their team – little scientific single variable experiments to try out their ideas on how to improve production. He later saw the same dynamic repeat itself at Google.

Scott Cook concluded that the reason big companies with insanely smart people made bad decisions was because they relied on the 3 P’s of politics, persuasion and PowerPoint instead of experimentation. He was so inspired by Toyota that “leadership by experimentation” became at the center of his leadership style at Intuit

Leadership by experimentationSource and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com

‘We got beat because Google runs itself as a series of experiments run by its engineers. They are constantly trying new things at a ferocious rate. A Google chief scientist says they run 3,000 to 5,000 experiments a year. If you use Google in a week, you’re likely to be in three experiments. You don’t know you are, because they are experiments.’ | A Yahoo engineer on Google

Absolute time vs. effective time

Most folks who have an interest in personal productivity have probably experimented with tracking time. This is challenging because this can cause large amounts of overhead – e.g., if you’re spending a minute every fifteen minutes noting down what you did. It can also be very distracting. After a few attempts with minimal success over the years, I think I have finally developed a system that works for me. More on this coming soon at a blog post near you (yes, this is just a teaser :-)).

A key part of the success has been learning to focus on effective time vs. absolute time. People call “effective time” by different names – focus time, flow, deep work, etc. I think of it as “effective time” as it is the time that was really spent in getting stuff that matters done. So, a few tweaks that have helped me focus on “effective time” are –

1. Not measuring time spend on email or admin. That’s not to say admin doesn’t get done. It is just that I know I will end up doing it. Admin and email also tend to be my favorite tools for procrastination. So, not measuring them means I keep focused on the things I ought to be working on.

2. Being strict about measuring “effective time.” After a 2 hour burst, for example, I record it in the form of a calendar event on my Outlook. I’ve generally erred on the side of being strict around exactly how much I put in. If I feel like I spent only 1 hr 40 mins, I generally put in an hour and a half (generally measured in 15′ intervals as it is easy to count at the end of the week).

3. Not sweating the small stuff. I’ve been measuring how I spend my time for 14 weeks now and have learnt that I shouldn’t worry about small slippages. It is completely okay to sleep an extra hour, spend an extra 15 minutes enjoying your lunch or to just stare into space. What really matters is what you do when you get to work. In fact, the less stressed you feel, the more you will probably get done. If you can squeeze in effective time when you are at your work desk, the small stuff doesn’t matter.

It comes down to understanding and then measuring the effectiveness of the time you spend working. Meetings, for example, are an example of time you might measure as “work” but it is typically low effectiveness work. So, you definitely need to think about what you really need to do to get work that matters done. Once that is done, then it is all about creating a clear list that spells it out, not worrying about absolute time you’ve spent on your desk and just maximizing the effectiveness of time you spend working.

Once again, don’t worry about time spent at the office. Worry about what you do when you are actually there.

(This is the sort of post that feels so obvious and simple once you write it. Somehow, the execution tends to never be close to obvious or simple..)