Category: Everything else

The success measure

Ever since my frustration with a day of 100% activity, 0% productivity 2 weeks ago, I’ve been starting the day with a small addition to my day’s to do list. I call it the “success measure” box and add 2-3 items whose completion would mark a successful day.

Success measure

This little box has changed everything. It helps that I do this first thing in the morning as I start the day with a clear understanding of what success looks like. I have just one rule – there can’t be more than 3 items in the box. As a result of this –

1. I can almost feel a bit of stress when I find myself mucking around with items outside the success measure box. That’s great as it clearly distinguishes activity from productivity.
2. I do everything possible to be efficient through the rest of my meetings and non-essential tasks so I can carve out blocks to complete these.
3. It helps with the idea of “focus as a verb.” Focus as a noun is being able to buckle down and get work done. Focus as a verb is a trait I consider more essential. It means being able to go through life with a clear idea of what is important at a given point of time.

Finally, it is my belief that we are happiest when we’re making progress towards our goals. And, the joy from ticking off the success measure items at the end of the day is one that makes the challenge worth it.

PS: And, of course I fail from time to time. But, the big difference is that the reasons and learnings are very clear, e.g, I typically realize I just have to do a better job scheduling everything else / building in enough slack time the next day.

Your dark side

The Hogan assessment company has an interesting video up on “The Science of Personality.” In this 37 minute film, they take us through the evolution in the study of personality with a focus on the developments in the last 100 years. While I was hoping for a bit more explanation around some of the modern developments, the movie has a few interesting nuggets.

It explains that there are 3 forces that guide human behavior –
1. The need to get along
2. The need to achieve within the group
3. The need for a purpose or frame with which to make sense of the world.

And, most of human life is a tension between the need to get along and the need to achieve. It also spoke about how effective leadership is the key resource that makes teams perform. And, how ineffective leadership, on the other hand, can destroy all sorts of progress. But, of course, personality drives leadership, which, in turn, drives organizations. And, that means personality is really powerful.

If I had to sum up the video’s takeaway it would be – “Learn more about your personality and be self aware.” I think that’s great advice. They touched on the idea of understanding both our bright and dark sides – our dark side comprises of behaviors we are either prone to during times of stress or when we tend to over use our strengths.

I think of the dark side as a manifestation of our insecurities. For instance, when I feel especially insecure, I seem to either respond with an ego that tries to act as a shield or find myself prone to envy. And, when I overuse my strengths, it often means coming across too forceful.

I’ve learnt to accept that my dark side will never go away. There are certain psychological triggers that bring them to the fore. I’ve attempted to design my life in ways to avoid these unnecessary triggers. For instance, given I am fairly attention deficit, I take many breaks during the day. But, I’ve avoided the Facebook feed for 2 years now. I use Facebook to share links, stay in touch and also participate in groups. But, the feed is a rabbit hole I’ve learnt to avoid. During a bad day, it is a perfect example of an envy generator. And, I’m better off focusing on everything I need to do. Similarly, when I feel insecure, I’ve learnt to recognize the sudden feelings of arrogance that it brings or a certain unnecessary forcefulness. I don’t think I succeed in avoiding them all the time (it results in a follow up apology or note to whoever was on the other side sometimes) but I realize that awareness is the first step towards acceptance and action.

Our dark sides are a part of who we are. Understanding and accepting that is the first step to being genuine.

Re-framing no

We often face great difficulty saying no to new opportunities. This is typically due to one of 2 reasons –
1. These opportunities offer clearer short term rewards – e.g., a bit of extra money or instant gratification
2. We don’t like saying no – we prefer to be liked vs. attempting to be respected for our choices

There is a link between the two reasons because if the rewards of saying no are blindingly obvious, it is hard to not say no. It is when the rewards are fuzzy that it becomes harder to make the like-respect trade-off. The problem with this is that we often neglect the most important things in favor of short-term wins. Clayton Christensen often talked about how it takes parents nearly two decades to see the results of the time invested in their kids. I think that is the case for most great relationships. They take consistent investments for a long period of time. They degrade similarly as well. We don’t see it coming.. until it does.

An idea that could help make it easier to say no would be to re-frame it and think about what you are saying yes to. By saying no to answering email in the evening, we would be saying yes to quality time with our loved ones, for example. By saying no to that extra project, we’d be saying yes to sleep, exercise, and better personal health. By doing this, we pay attention to the real trade-offs.

And, where there is awareness of trade-offs, there is likely a good decision that is being made.

The only question – Jiro Ono and Rene Redzepi

Rene Redzepi, the chef and founder of Noma – the restaurant that has been consistently ranked the best restaurant in the world, conversed with Jiro Ono at Ono’s legendary sushi restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro. I am a huge fan of the movie on Ono – Jiro Dreams of Sushi. So, I enjoyed every minute of the short 12 minute summary video.

My favorite part of the conversation was (paraphrased) –

“How long did it take for you to feel like you became a master?”
“Till when I was 50 years old.” 
“Between when you started as a teenager to when you were 50, did you every think of quitting?” 
“No. The only question I asked was – how can I get better?”

Powerful. Thank you, Rene and Jiro-san. And, hat tip to Matt Mullenweg for sharing this.

The behavior you expect

(Before I begin, I apologize to all of you who read this on RSS for going MIA on you over the past 4 days. The RSS feed was broken and I didn’t notice there was an issue. I got that fixed this morning so you should receive 4 days worth of posts today. It is an annoying problem that I run into every months – the encoding system seems to take issue with the occasional apostrophe / single quote as it is interpreted as code and that, in turn, ends up breaking down the system. Thanks to those of you who let me know. Apologies for the trouble.)

A team I am a part of organized a meeting yesterday for our “extended” project team. I was planning to sit in the back and get some work done. But, I noticed the attendees were joining me in the back instead of sitting near the presenter (also a team mate) right up front. So, the presenter asked asked everyone to move forward. I urged them to do so, too.

To that, one of them just said – “I’m just following your example.”

I realized I was the problem, not them. So, I moved ahead, shut my laptop down and got ready to engage. Things got much better.

One of the funny / difficult things about leadership is that we often forget that our behavior is always noticed. That’s just the nature of the job.

And, it is a reminder that the most powerful way for us to lead the way is to simply role model the behavior we expect.

The simple things

I am listening to “Wonderwall” by Oasis as I’m typing these words out. This was among the first songs I fell in love with and has so many great memories attached to it as it has stayed on every music playlist I’ve had since my early teens.

It is 8:07am on Wednesday – I am looking ahead at a packed day with a new project commencing, a project wrapping up, two assignment meetings and a couple of other notes. It is going to be back-to-back and I’m looking forward to that.

It is at such moments that I realize that it is in these moments that we actually live our lives. Too often, we think of the weekend / the next big break as our only respite. But, this moment is where we live have our day-to-day struggles and challenges. And, it is such moments that add up to a life where we’ve hopefully explored the length and breadth of the road we traveled.

Sure, it isn’t perfect and there are a few things that would be nice if fixed. But, I’m thankful for this moment. It is said that it isn’t happy people who are thankful but it is thankful people who are happy. I believe that. Remembering to give thanks takes work..

But, in the final analysis, I can think of very few other things that will matter as much as being grateful for all we’re blessed with and savoring the simple things that make up the bulk of our experience. Let’s live today.

Understanding the theory of constraints.

The theory of constraints views any system as being limited by a small number of constraints. This is easiest to imagine in a manufacturing process – there is typically one machine that limits the production capacity of the plant.

It is no different in our lives. 24 hours, for example, is a constraint that limits us. In fact, the smarter way to think about it might be to view 12 hours as the real constraint. It is hard to sustain 12 hour days over a lifetime even if you might work harder than that for certain periods. And, even then, we’re discussing quantity of work and not quality. So, a really smart way to think about it might be to think in terms of the 3-5 hours of productive time we have in a day. On the one hand, it can be less of a constraint if you can drive that number up. On the other, it is important that we begin by just being aware of that limiting constraint.

Once you understand your constraints, the theory of constraints recommends that you design your system around that constraint. So, in our daily lives, that would mean ensuring we free up bandwidth to ensure we get the most out of the productive hours. It would also mean we sleep well, eat healthy and exercise regularly so we’re consistently pushing up the quality of our thinking during those productive hours.

Understand constraints is critical to understanding reality. And, understanding reality is critical to doing great work.

Seeing yourself as you could be

If you want to be calm under pressure, just start describing yourself (to yourself) as someone who is incredibly calm under pressure.

This transformation won’t take place over night. But, the next time things go wrong (and, don’t worry, they will), you might catch yourself reacting to the mishap. When you do, write down what you learn about yourself. After a few such experiences, you will feel the psychological trigger coming and start learning to take control of your response. And, a few more such incidents later, you will actually feel very calm under pressure. After all, you are one of those people who is calm under pressure.

As human beings, we care about being consistent with who we think we are. This makes labels incredibly powerful. Some of the smartest coaches of sports teams are very quick to label their players as the “best in the world.” It doesn’t matter if they are. It just matters that they begin behaving like they are the best in the world. Sir Alex Ferguson was famous to label Manchester United players as those who had the strength of character to snatch a victory in the last minute of a game. It didn’t matter if a player showed up at United yesterday. He’d suddenly find himself capable of doing exactly that. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

A big part of being a great leader is bringing out the best in people. For that, we have to learn to see people, not just as they are, but as they could be. And, we’re best served if we begin doing that with ourselves.

Being a beginner

We gravitate to things we’re good at. Doing something we’re good at feels great – we’re in our element, we feel good about ourselves and we’re appreciated for what we do.

If success builds careers and failures build character, it makes sense that we gravitate to areas we can be great at in our careers. Notching successes matters. However, in our personal lives, I think it is critical we become beginners from time to time. We can do this by attempting a new difficult side project, learning a new skill or simply doing something we haven’t done.

I am experiencing this in a small project where I am, by far, the beginner. It has been a fun experience attempting to do the basics, feeling very grateful to the experts around me for having me around and encouraging me, and just experiencing the joy when I occasionally do a couple of things right. Being a beginner is a very humbling experience.

Someone I met said she would regularly ask people – “when was the last time you did something for the first time?”

That’s a question worth asking every once a while.