Category: Everything else

I’d blogged last month about Attention and a resolve to start giving 100% attention to everything I do.

I tend to think most things as muscles these days – intelligence, ability, habit and the only way to build them, as a result, as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is a term used a lot in a great book I’m reading called ‘Talent is Overrated’ by Geoff Colvin. More on this concept later.

If you’ve ever done any sort of muscle building in the gym, you know that it is a painful process especially in the initial stages. And I’m going through the same, rather difficult process. The end objective here would be to have it so ingrained in my head that if I get a phone call (for example), I am 100% on the call. Being present, and doing one thing at a time – that’s the aspiration.

I realize now that I wrote about attention exactly one month ago. I feel there’s been a fair bit of improvement on this front. I do my best to take any phone calls away from my computer so I’m not tempted to open the browser or my email. As for work, I use a cool piece of freeware called the Procrastination Killer. This is a piece of freeware I’d learnt about 4 years or so ago but never got around to using it for more than a week despite many attempts over the year. The big reason is that the philosophy built in is to spend 10 minutes working and then take a 2 minute break. This never works. My breaks spill. I ended up keeping the same ratio and lengthening the work and break time by doing 25 minutes with a 5 minute break.

And I realized a few days into this new system that I had accidentally stumbled into the Pomodoro technique. That’s been working pretty well.

I am convinced 100% Attention is where true productivity lies. For now, it’s still the hard work phase involved with building this muscle. But, like all muscle building, I’m hopeful this will become part of the flow soon.

This week’s book learning is from ‘Inside Apple’ by Adam Lashinsky –

A big source of the politicking in big organizations is the concept of the P&L. Essentially, having your own P&L or Profit and Loss statement means you are wholly responsible for the profits of your business unit and defines your ‘domain’ as a manager.

i.e. ‘I run my own P&L and therefore I am.’ ;-)

Steve Jobs bucked the trend at Apple by ensuring only the CFO owned a P&L. This led to a few interesting outcomes – aside from removing all politicking about the amount of money executives controlled, it focused discussions around creating incredible products.

Managers at all levels were never asked to defend decisions on ROI or ‘Return on Investment’. The conversations around dollars and expenses were thrown out of the window and teams were made to feel like ‘rich kids’ and believe they could do whatever they wanted as long as their parents i.e. the CFO gave the final ‘okay’.

The overall P&L was closely monitored by Jobs and the CFO, of course. And keeping it centralized meant there were no repeat expenses across business units!

‘Inside Apple’ provides some interesting insights into Apple’s way of working. The most interesting observation here is that Apple consistently bucks all traditional management ‘best practices’ and has done exceptionally well.

Perhaps ‘best practices’ need to be overhauled once in a while? Perhaps learning to question, understand the rationale and make the best judgment is the essence of greatness?

Here’s to understanding the reason behind ‘best practices’ around us this week!

I realize that I’m quite the lab rat for my own little experiments. Every once in a while, I switch to the role of experimenter, test something new, go back to being the lab rat, step back out, check on how things are working and so on. It’s always an interesting process. Blogging ensures that stepping out and donning the ‘experimenter’ every once in a while is crucial.

As a result, it’s fascinating to take an outside view every once in a while and observe change – some of it intentional, most of it accidental.

One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed of late is my tendency to favor pull over push. For most of the first 21 odd years in my life, most of what I did and got was thanks to push. I have never been the smartest person in the room (what is ‘smart’ is a long and interesting discussion, I realize. Let’s leave that for later..) but I sure as hell was bloody minded and persistent. So, a lot of what I did was through sheer force of will.

Push, drive, change, do. And I did take the push part very seriously. Nothing moved without a bit of a push was the belief and school of thought then. It helped growing up in competitive schools in India as well. There were always more people than you could count and if you got your way, you literally better be a good persistent pusher.

All that changed when I met a wiser friend who seemed to barely rely on push. This approach seemed to be based on a belief system that when the time is right, push isn’t necessary. A slight pull was all that was needed.

This was tough for me to digest as it went against the grain of my natural style and I had been encountering great difficulties as I stepped out into a world realizing that I could control very little. I vividly remember my early days figuring out travel (as an example) – everything seemed to need a push – how else would the visa get done?

And I remember the first moment 8 months or so ago (after about a year of such struggles) when I realized that there was no way around this worsening situation – I just had to learn to let go. For a person who’s grown up being intentional about everything, I can barely begin to explain how difficult this was to learn. But now, I fully accept that there are natural energy flows and cycles. A bit of push is often necessary and worth it, but just a little bit. Too much is unnatural.

You can choose to keep a door open against a strong wind but it will wear you out. The moment you tire and move, the door will shut anyway. If you’re a fellow pusher, this might sound very familiar..

I heard another analogy today that reminded me of this.

You can only savour the sweetness of a mango when it is naturally ripe. If it isn’t ready, it isn’t ready. But when it is, it makes for an unforgettable experience.

I’m beginning to believe that’s the natural way of things. And I’m beginning to favor pull over push. That’s a huge shift in thinking and an overall gigantic change in approach. Change is the rule of nature after all..

Okay, it’s time to go back to being the lab rat.

It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday and I thought I’d bring in the weekend with a video you probably have already seen numerous times on the web.

I have too. But, I can never resist putting away 2 minutes to watch it again. This is sure to go down as one of my all time favourite commercials.  Well done P&G.