Category: Everything else

The most powerful force on earth

A few years back, I argued spiritedly with a wiser friend about the most powerful force on earth. I believed it was love and he believed it was fear. In the years that have passed, I have come to totally agree with him. If anything, I am tempted to get more specific and say that the most powerful force on earth is the fear of failure.

The power and ubiquity of this emotion never ceases to amaze me. It shows itself in literally every aspect of our lives –

– At home, we see it with parents who put enormous pressure on their children, with parents who always need to be right, and with parents who refuse to share their own failures with their kids. As a consequence, we see kids grow up with similar traits and insecurities – they constantly worry about whether their projects will work, they feel the need to seek approval for every decision they make, and they shy away from responsibility for the outcomes of the decision. And, we see both parents and children abhor risk and steer clear of projects that might not work.

– At work, we see it in colleagues who refuse to share credit, who bully each other and display passive aggressiveness, who would rather see someone else’s project fail than take up responsibility for a project themselves, who would rather criticize than cheer, who would rather play the politics rather than play on merit, who maximize a short term gain, and who refuse to worry about the collective and the cause. Work becomes about self preservation – “networking” with the right people, staying clear of projects that are risky, and attempting to latch onto projects that are going well so they get a share of the credit.

– In society, we see the fear of failure in community leaders and politicians who refuse to accept anything but the status quo, who fear everything they don’t understand, who fall prey to lobbyists and bribes also keen to preserve the status quo, who wage wars and seek to divide on the pretext of religion, creed, nationality, and color, and who refuse to let anyone outside their circle access to privilege.

I am convinced that the very worst in human nature has everything to do with the fear of failure. When I put together a 2×2 on how insecurity and self awareness drive behavior, I realize I made a mistake.

Fear of failure pervades the insecurity zone. With increasing self awareness, we just become aware of the fear of failure – aware enough to hopefully do something about it. With increasing self awareness, we will perhaps realize that our fears are just irrational, that we ought to exist for causes bigger than self preservation, that we do make the world better when we put ourselves out there, try, and fail.

Self awareness is our only hope..

The “Decisive” LearnoGraphic – A pictorial guide to making better decisions

Chip and Dan Heath published a fantastic book on decision making called “Decisive.”

We loved it so much that we spent many hours discussing it and summarizing it. Creating a “LearnoGraphic” felt like a natural next step.

Do check it out and do let us know what you think.
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We hope you find it useful!

Vaccinations

I am not a fan of injections. I grew up visiting a family doctor who administered regular painful injections. They worked every time.. but I also brought the house down every time. I think those images of pain and tears still linger and, hence, my reaction to jabs is still far from positive.

However, as I was thinking about vaccinations yesterday, I realized vaccines are completely aligned with the “a learning a day” approach. I think the “a learning a day” approach is to continually embrace pain, postpone immediate gratification, and build for the long term with a focus on learning from our successes and failures. With vaccines, we need to embrace pain, postpone immediate gratification and do so for the long term – near perfect alignment there.

So, after having taken 3 jabs today to boost my immunity along with a full health check up performed few days back, I’d just like to spread the health check up and vaccine love and request you all to take a look at your vital signs and vaccination status. If there is a vaccine or two due, go do it! A few dollars and a bit of pain is a great way to avoid weeks of trouble later.

 

Do this.. and you are set for life

1. No, you aren’t set for life and never will be. You might attain financial independence but that doesn’t mean life will go easy on you. The demons will just be higher up on Maslow’s pyramid. It is a video game with an infinite number of levels. Enjoying the game is just as important as moving through the levels.

2. “This” assumes things get easy after a certain goal or accomplishment. That’s flawed. It never gets easy. In some ways, that’s the point.

3. If it isn’t apparent as yet, let me re-emphasize – there is no “this.”

The slow burn

When I think of times when I successful changed a habit, almost all of them happened with a process I call “the slow burn.” And, in every case, the process was as follows –

1. Create a simple and clear goal – e.g. replace playing games on my phone before I sleep with reading a book, score 7 exercise points every week where 1 point = 20 mins of exercise
2. Think about my schedule and about how the new habit will fit in
3. Test it and keep iterating until it works

The most important aspect of the slow burn is the lack of finality. There are no statements like – “If this doesn’t work by this week, I’m really doing badly” or “it HAS to work by the end of the month.” It is not played in the spirit of win-lose. Instead, it is played in the spirit of the infinite game. We have until eternity to figure this out, and we will. We just need to really want to do it, listen carefully to ourselves for feedback, and follow it up by tweaking our schedule and environment to make it work.

For example, replacing playing games on my phone with reading a book required me to tweak the environment just a bit – placing a bed side lamp made it easy for me to switch off the lamp and head to bed (this was before I got myself an iPad and, while I understand this sounds incredibly lazy :-), this little tweak successfully changed a habit I really wanted to change). Similarly, hitting my exercise targets required many tiny tweaks to the schedule.

At first glance, this can all sound like too much effort to create a habit. Why not just power through it by creating big consequences, e.g. a $100 fine every time you miss exercise? My experiences have taught me otherwise. Yes, there are many ways to “power through” changes – create big fines, ask peers to guilt you into making changes, announce your intentions on facebook and shame yourself. But, these are just hacks. And, while hacks help improve systems and make them more efficient, they don’t help solve basic effectiveness problems. Guilt-tripping ourselves into changes are a sure-fire way of ensuring they don’t last.

If we really want to make long term changes, we have to first want to make them. Once we decide we really want to make them, we then need to make a commitment to evaluate these changes every few months and re-commit. This ensures we’re mentally ready. Once we’re ready and committed, we are ready to begin testing them and making small tweaks in our schedule to ensure they’re here to stay. This process requires a willingness to fail, a willingness to be kind to ourselves, and a willingness to be thoughtful about the tweaks and changes we need to make in our lifestyles and in our execution of our priorities.

Yes, it is a tough process – but it is not tough because it requires massive amounts of willpower at one go. It is tough because we make a commitment to re-commit when the going gets tough and to relentlessly take in feedback and get better. It is not about the big push. It is about the slow burn.

And, when we revisit the progress we’ve made thanks to a slow burn over a long period of time, it feels like magic.

The law of painful progress

I had a realization when I was learning how to play the guitar – if my practice sessions didn’t have me wincing in pain, I wasn’t making enough progress.

This realization served me well in the 8 months I took lessons as I made faster progress than I had initially expected. The results were evident too – weeks when my practice sessions were more painful always yielded more progress.

The law applies to every skill, of course. The more we feel the pain, the more we’re likely making progress. There is no painless progress.

25 things I’ve learnt from 4 years of work

As I transition to being a student again, I thought I’d write down 25 things I’ve learnt. It started as a list of 7 but, somehow, there seemed to be many more that were just as important. Brevity is clearly not a strength as yet.

1. You are better off focusing on your “learn-rate” and skills than rewards that look good. Your learn-rate is the intensity with which you learn – focus hard on it. Seek learnings from all sources – teammates, bosses, peers, subordinates, books, movies – just be a learning machine and forget about rewards. In fact, be actively wary of jobs that give you too much of what’s considered good too early.

2. Being so good you can’t be ignored is one part. It isn’t enough – Learning to market your work is just as important.

3. The train you are on matters a lot more than how smart you are. Luck matters. I had a unique opportunity in the last 2 years that enabled me to work across 5 countries in 3 continents. Sure, I didn’t mess the first one up but I’d be a fool if I attributed it to my skill. Being at the right place at the right time helps a lot. And, being skilled, positive and open increases your odds of doing that. Allow luck to find you. But, don’t rely on it.

4. You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you ask for and what you negotiate. A PS here – you get the best possible results when you find others to champion your cause and negotiate on your behalf.

5. Build a great board of directors and do it deliberately. You are the CEO of Me, Inc. Execute well and seek counsel over long term strategy. A big part of learning is learning from the experience of those wiser than you and spending time with a great Board can vastly improve your learn-rate.

6. Last minute work will kill you in the long run. Avoid at all costs.

7. A well scoped project has no need for long hours of work and definitely no need for weekends. Your best 0 error work is done when you are working comfortably with 100% focus. Remember – we only have 3-5 super productive hours in a day. Focus on getting the most out of them – the rest is gravy.

8. Get your shit together. Be organized and responsive. That doesn’t mean checking email at 2 in the morning. It means banishing procrastination, being orderly and being responsible. It is a way of doing things.

9. Things have a way of working themselves out if you put in the work. The law of unattraction works here. Stay calm and let the universe do its work. (This is bloody hard)

10. Drive your own review and feedback process. Work hard on not allowing weaknesses to get in the way by actively working on them, one at a time (e.g. a weakness every 6 months/year). Pay a lot of attention to your strengths. Your weaknesses are a way of reducing unforced errors and your strengths are how you hit your winners. When you are a beginner, avoiding unforced errors matters most. But, as you get better, your winners count for more.

11. You can only push so much. After a point, it becomes counter productive.

12. Take some time to understand human nature. Working with and moving people is where great change is made. You may not like all you see but you can definitely learn to understand and accept it. Understanding what drives people is always useful.

13. Understanding people is only possible if you take the time to understand yourself. Self awareness is a learned trait and it boosts our ability to deal with that other large beast – insecurity.

14. Work on a project outside work. At the very least, have a hobby that you care about. Use your weekends well. Good weekends drive good weeks. That said, don’t take this to an extreme. Let your hair loose and do an all nighter that messes with your sleep patterns often.

15. Actively build and maintain a support system of people not connected to work. I call this group framily – or close friends and family. Keep them engaged in your life by working on small projects with them, e.g. by volunteering together.

16. Sleep 8 hours, eat breakfast, and exercise nearly everyday. A healthy mind lives in a healthy body.

17. Book at least 1 good vacation and 1 great vacation during the year. It does wonders to your productivity.

18. Read. A lot. This is the single biggest driver of your learn-rate. If  you’re wondering how to make time, here are 3 ideas. 1. Cut down your TV time 2. Try audio books while at the gym 3. Use every minute of your commute

19. Mistakes are an inevitability. Don’t worry about the mistake – worry about the process that led to the mistake and focus on a creative, constructive and corrective response. I repeat that every time I make a mistake – focus on a creative, constructive and corrective response.

20. Every experience is what you make of it.

21. Your reputation is everything. Guard it carefully. If you don’t create and manage what you are known for (i.e. your brand), someone else will.

22. Try to never be guilty of a bad attitude. This is hard, especially if you are stuck in frustrating circumstances, but important.

23. Manage people the way you’d like to be managed and not on how some bad manager managed you. Don’t be a jerk.

24. Make the effort to understand the politics. Politics is inevitable if there are more than 3 people in a room. Avoid politicking if you can, however. Keep the game as clean and as meritocratic as possible. (A general rule when it comes to politics – if you’re unable to identify the sucker at the table, it is probably you.)

25. What got you here won’t get you there. This is the simplest and most important principle. If you’ve been doing well so far, the bar will soon be raised and you will have to use your accumulated knowledge and wisdom to figure out the next curve and reinvent yourself. Drive the change actively… what got you here won’t get you there.

When will the excuses stop?

My mom pointed out this morning that a couple of my blog posts last week had a bunch of grammatical errors. My initial reaction during that split second was to get defensive and offer an excuse. It had touched an insecurity around my ability to write. And, I reasoned to myself, it had after all been a brutal last couple of weeks and, on some days, just hitting publish on a post felt like a victory.

That’s when a question crossed my mind –  when will the excuses stop?

Sure, the next couple of weeks may not be brutal. But, what about the next tough period? Will I make excuses then, too? ‘

The English football team offers a shining example of this problem. After every international tournament failure, the media points to one excuse after another. And, it typically ends with everyone blaming the English Premier League for not having enough homegrown players.

If the problem was that, how do you explain Costa Rica knocking out big wigs like Italy and England en-route to the quarter finals? How you explain a team like Algeria narrowly losing to the Germans in the Round of 16? Both these teams didn’t make it there by accident. They were simply teams that were good at playing together as a team. They got good while the others didn’t.

England’s failure was not a surprise to me. Germany’s success was not a surprise either (the extent of the thrashing they doled out to Brazil definitely was). The former makes a habit of making excuses while the latter simply focuses on clinical execution by a collection of excellent football players.

It is impossible to get better by making excuses. I ended up engaging my mom to help fix the grammatical errors. While I am glad I did, I also know that I was awfully close to making an excuse.

We always have a choice – to make an excuse or simply get better. And, I find it heartening that it is entirely my choice.

The 3 steps to be of help

We occasionally find ourselves at professional or personal events where we’re amidst a bustle of activity. We know we could be of help but we’re not exactly sure how. if you ever find yourself waiting around wondering how you can be of help, I’ve found these 3 steps to be really  useful.

1. You have to want to help. It begins here. Ask yourself if you really want to be of help. If the answer is yes, you will generally find a way to be useful. Often, a happy, positive, and energetic presence is help in itself.

2.  Start with the simple stuff. If you’re still finding your feet in a new environment, start with the simple stuff like getting folks food and water. Soldiers are only given guns once they learn how to march. Asking how you can help never hurts.

3. Stay calm. Events tend to be busy and full of last minute problems – the decorations don’t show up or the audio system doesn’t work. Stay calm. Staying calm is a learned skill and is one you can teach yourself. While others run around like headless chickens, you can always be the one thinking carefully about what needs to be done and ensure your effort is productive.

None of these 3 steps is rocket science. I guess that is exactly the point. Don’t wander around wondering if you can be of help (and this applies beyond events). There’s always a lot to be done – just ask productive people how you can help and help.

Losing 11-0

2 years ago, a few friends and I signed up for an amateur football league in London. We initially signed up for the 6th/bottom division and soon realized that there weren’t as many teams as required to operate 6 divisions. So, all of us were lumped onto 1 division. The next misunderstanding became apparent pretty soon – the teams who participated weren’t really “amateur.”

We lost 11-0 in our first game. I’d love to say it got better. But, it didn’t. We continued losing by huge margins and our problems only increased with time. For example, our team members soon lost interest in showing up on a freezing Saturday morning and getting thrashed (imagine that). After a particularly bad 15-0 defeat, we decided to call it quits. Our average score in the 10 or so matches we played was a 11-0 defeat.

Just yesterday, a friend (from this football team) and I exchanged emails and laughed about our 11-0 defeats. As I was thinking about it, I realized that I learnt a lot from that experience. First, it was a true test of willpower to wake up and head half way across London on a cold and rainy Saturday morning knowing fully well that a 11-0 thrashing awaited us. Second, I tried really hard to make the best of it – even resorting to send “a learning a week” emails to motivate the team after a particularly bad thrashing. It didn’t work.

And, perhaps, the attempt not working was the most important learning of all. We realized we were completely out-classed and would never be good enough. We just needed to call it quits and go home.

Sometimes, that’s as good a lesson to learn as any.