Category: Everything else

Paranoid optimism

After his wonderful post on non attachment, venture capitalist Brad Feld had another great post up on his blog on the idea of paranoid optimism. Just like after his post on non attachment, I thought about this over the days that followed and found that it resonated deeply with the way I approach life these days.

Paranoid optimism, as I understand it, combines two ideas that are seemingly at odds with each other – optimism and paranoia. To take the business analogy that Brad wrote about, an optimist would look at the rosy market conditions today and want to believe they will stay this way forever. A cynic, on the other hand, will expect the market to crash tomorrow. A paranoid optimist, however, fully grasps the idea that the market winds may change any day (thanks to the paranoia) and still makes decisions driven by his/her positive outlook. That is a potent combination and can lead to great positive impact.

But, all positive impact aside, I think of paranoid optimism as a healthy way in which to approach the world. For the longest time, I used to call myself a “realist.” I’ve since realized that that term doesn’t do justice to my belief system. I am definitely an optimist overall – if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to live the idea of “every day I get better.”  But, I’ve learnt to incorporate paranoia into my view of the world.

A few years ago, I’d written about this idea of checking in on the next potential “down.” I’d begun to observe a very noticeable pattern of ups and downs as I looked back at my mental states over the period of a couple of years. As a result, I developed this habit of checking in with myself every time I felt I was on a roll and asking the question – what could be the next “down?” For someone who was prone to high highs and low lows, this was a really helpful check in. It immediately grounded me and kept me focused on the present. More importantly, this injection of paranoia ensured that I wasn’t getting complacent. Falling down isn’t as painful as when we feel our pride has taken a beating. And, paranoia ensures pride doesn’t enter the picture.

I’ve written a lot about the idea of focusing on the process, of being mindful and of enjoying the present. These ideas make the journey incredibly fulfilling. And, when the journey is incredibly fulfilling, I find myself worrying less about the bad outcomes that inevitably show up and instead just focus my energy on plugging away.

It is paranoid optimism that makes this state of mind possible.

Interacting with a single stimulus

Every once in a while, you’re going to find yourself in a situation where a single stimulus will upset you. This could be a bad email, an angry exchange over the phone or a meeting that went awry. It could also just be a negative review or a disappointed user reacting to something you shipped.

Here’s an idea that might help – proceed with caution when reacting to a single stimulus. This is because we are wired to process negative responses with more intensity than positive responses. So, a single harsh email criticizing your recent presentation can threaten to cancel out ten positive responses. Of course, that’s if you let it.

There are a couple of ways to solve for this. First, try to get an aggregated pulse of a situation instead of focusing on one strong reaction. So, if you are picking a sushi bar, check out the average rating for the sushi bar on Yelp before diving into a single bad review. That seems natural when picking sushi bars, right? And, yet, when it comes to any kind of personal feedback, we tend to completely ignore this idea and fixate on the negative event. We need to go broad before we go deep.

Second, put extra weight on responses from practitioners or people you respect. Most people have an opinion on most things. Thanks to the proliferation of reviews online, giving feedback has become a sport these days. When you’re in the business of shipping, however, a lot of feedback is useless. This is because most feedback is given in isolation and, very few, as a result, have the level of insight required to be useful. This is where a practitioner’s view can be very useful. If someone has a track record of delivering the kind of presentation you’re seeking feedback on, pay attention. The feedback may still not be useful as we all have different styles. But, the chances of it hitting the mark are much higher.

Overall, it still comes back to the original point – beware interactions with a single stimulus. In fact, I’d even suggesting actively discounting it until you see widespread evidence that tells you otherwise.

There’s a nice quote that does this idea justice – ‘There are 7 billion people on this planet. Why, then, do we let just 1 of them ruin our day so often?’

Why indeed?

Ben Horowitz on adding value and not following your passion

As I’ve written here, I don’t generally watch videos of talks as I think they’re largely a waste of time. However, Ben Horowitz is an exception. Every bit of content I’ve read or watched from him has been incredibly high quality. His blog is fantastic and his book, The Hard Thing about Hard Things, is the closest I’ve seen a book come to an entrepreneur’s bible. So, I did what a fan would and jumped on watching this 16 minute video during breakfast yesterday as I just expected it to be really good. And, it was.

These are my three lessons from his talk.

1. Think for yourself because you add value to the world when you bring to life a belief that no one believes to be true. This was the story of Brian Chesky at AirBnB. He believed that we would rent a mattress in our home to strangers. While most people thought this was absurd as you could be housing a serial killer, he did 2 things. First, he ran an experiment at home and it turned out to be just fine. Next, he dug into why hotel chains exist. He soon realized that hotel chains are a fairly recent invention. In the old days, people stayed at inns. However, these inns had too much variability as you could have some very bad experiences at some inns. He realized that, with the internet, information and reviews could make this transparent and enable people to choose well. It is that insight that’s led to a company valued over a billion dollars.

2. Don’t follow your passion. You don’t know what you are passionate about. And, besides, passions change. Start with what you are good at – you’ll get to passion. (More on this thanks to Cal Newport’s excellent book on the subject here)

3. A period of great opportunities. Yes, there’s global warming, terrorism and many bad things happening all over the world. But, there’s also the following facts (a few of the many he cited) –
– the number of people in extreme poverty today is the lowest it has ever been and one-fifth of what it was in 1900
– child labor is in steep decline and fell 1/3rd between 2011 and 2012
– expenditure of food as a % of income fallen in half since 1960
– Life expectancy has increased and we have grown taller (a measure of nutrition) oin the last 100 years
– Worldwide battlefield deaths are down, violent crime and global supply of nuclear weapons, also, are down
– In 2014, carbon emissions were flat for the first time in the last decade

There are still issues but you have technology available to you as a tool for change. But, if you contribute and think for yourself, you will be the generation that unlocks human potential.

Fantastic, as always. Thanks Ben.

No ask, no get

The other day, my wife and I booked a ticket for the last show of The Avengers. We were, however, exhausted that evening. So, when it came time to leave for the movie, we realized we weren’t in any mood to sit through a movie.

As we were wrestling with the idea of trading in $20 for sleep, I decided to give Cinemark a call and explain the situation. After doing so, I asked them if they’d be willing to allow us to use the ticket for a different movie.

“Absolutely.” – the manager said. “Just come any time in the next few days.”

And so we did.

Who knew?

“No ask, no get” is an ingrained lesson now. But, I have to admit – the results of just asking what often seems to be an outlandish question still keeps surprising me.

PS: Thanks Cinemark! I’m sure it only applies when movies aren’t running full. But, they’ve acquired a new loyal customer.

I am leader

The more you find a leader stressing his title, her opinion or simply the fact that he is in charge, the more you can be sure that the team or organization is suffering from a failure in leadership.

When that happens, you also know that the leader in question is operating under a false assumption that the people she leads work for her ( I call that “the boss paradigm”) . That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Your only job as a leader is to create an environment for everyone on your team to be their best selves. At every step, you work for them. True leadership stems from what you do and how you do it. And, a big part of what you do is to help everyone working with you. Things that help this cause are consistently playing janitor, cleaning up, never being the bottleneck and just being helpful. Things that don’t are a continuous propensity to show authority or take credit.

If it isn’t obvious as yet, it is, of course, all about the process. Great leadership isn’t about what you achieve with your team. It is how you get to where you go.

And, great results follow great processes.

A friend sent me this image (thanks Pixshark) a few days ago. Thanks RB – this sums it up.

Getting comfortable with good enough

One of the challenges with attempting to ship a blog post every day is getting comfortable with “good enough.” Every once a while, there comes a day when I feel very pleased with the post of the day. On most days, however, it is just a struggle to get something “good enough” out of the door.

As I write this, I realize I make it sound like I was a recovering perfectionist. That wasn’t the case either. It is just that, when I imagined myself writing on a public blog, I imagined a thought-through blog post edited to perfection. Now, I’m just comfortable with the fact that, on most days, the grammar isn’t perfect and that the sentence construction could have been better. Good enough.

That is the trouble with not shipping. It makes you chase ideas like perfection that make it impossible to ship. It takes away all attention from the stuff that actually matters – learning to write, learning to observe, improving your creative process – and focuses it on stuff that doesn’t – perfection, adulation, etc. It results in too much pressure and makes it easier to do nothing. It just feels safer.

But, it isn’t of course. Good enough is what sheds light on the way forward. We only get better with practice. And, we need to practice with good enough till our good enough today becomes the perfection we sought yesterday.

The same long task list

Take a look at a long task list at the end of your day. And, you’ll find the following set of emotions accompany you – hopelessness, pessimism, negativity and discontent. If you force yourself to work on that list, you could sit for a good few hours and find yourself stuck on task #1.

Take a look at that same long task list once you wake up the next day. This time, you’ll likely find that hope and optimism appear. And, with that hope and optimism, you’ll get to work on that list. Rearrange it, start with a few quick wins, postpone the low priority items and, before you know it, you’ve built momentum.

The task list didn’t change. Your perspective did. The same long task list that looked insurmountable became doable.

When complaining about their inability to get things done, most folks point to a lack of time. But, as this example illustrates, all the time in the world wouldn’t have helped you that evening. All you needed was rest. Manage your mental energy well and you’ll find yourself amazed at how much an energized mind can accomplish. Manage your mental energy by resting your mind, exercising it (reading to it, challenging it by taking on tough problems) and providing it the right kind of fuel.

Sure, learn how to use time well. But, spend your energy managing your energy. It is that skill that separates the masters from the professionals.

Prioritizing rest

If you’re like most people, the first thing that gets de-prioritized when push comes to shove is your own body. We are always capable of pulling that all-nighter, cutting down on sleep, eating take-out to save time, and canceling our exercise plans.

And, yet, our bodies never complain.

Well, until they do.

When I do fall sick or find myself down with a stomach bug, for example, I’m consistently amazed as to how I never even noticed my stomach when it was functioning well.

So, just for this weekend, let’s put away our plans for taking over the world. Instead, let’s appreciate this incredible machine – our body – treat it well and prioritize it over everything else. Let’s eat great food if we feel hungry, treat it to a great run or a fun game when we feel restless and, above all else, get as much rest as we need.

The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of our health. And, we get just one shot at living well. Let’s use it well.

Cattle leadership

On one of Mandela’s long morning walks, he turned to his biographer and said – ‘You have never herded cattle, have you, Richard?’

Richard Stengel said he had not. Mandela nodded. As a young boy of eight, Mandela had spent long afternoons herding cattle for his mother or some others in the village. He explained, “You know, when you want to get the cattle to move in a certain direction, you stand at the back with a stick, and then you get a few of the cleverer cattle to go to the front and move in the direction that you want them to go. The rest of the cattle follow the few more-energetic cattle in the front, but you are really guiding them from the back.”

He paused. “That is how a leader should do his work.”

The idea Mandela wanted to convey that day is that leadership at its most fundamental is about moving people in a certain direction – usually through changing the direction of their thinking and their actions.

If you’re waiting for the opportunity to move people in a certain direction, look no further than yourself. Do you feel you are moving in a direction? Do you feel you changed the direction of your own thinking and actions? If so, why did you do it? Nelson Mandela’s greatness was not just because he succeeded in moving people in the right direction – he was, of course, outstanding at doing that. It was because he did so while living these principles himself. How else do you forgive those who kept you in prison for 26 years? It is that integrity – the consistency his words and actions – that made him an incredible leader.

Leadership begins within.

5 pieces of internet etiquette

1. When you send a LinkedIn request to a stranger or to someone who may not recognize you, take a moment to write an introduction.

2. Don’t take offence if an acquaintance declines a “friend request.” Expect that different people have different approaches to social media. Some people may add anyone they know on LinkedIn and be very selective on Facebook. Some (like me) may try to do the best to do the opposite.

3. Avoid typing negative comments using pseudonymous internet profiles. If you want to share a negative opinion, at least have the guts to put your real name behind it.

4. If you can’t respond to email, create an auto responder so people who try to contact you know that. It is completely okay to be a knowledge worker (e.g. researcher) who doesn’t respond to email. Just don’t attempt to be a connection worker who collaborates with people in teams. (And, if you can’t process email, that’s okay. It is a skill like any other and it is worth learning how to do so in this day and age.)

5. As a general rule, always ask for permission before connecting/introducing people. This doesn’t apply in many scenarios (close relationships, for example). But, if in doubt, ask.