Category: Everything else

http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/workplay_balance_at_mit/50_things.shtml

Ben Jones | August 23, 2006

“50 Things”

Dear Class of 2010,

This will be my last entry written specifically for you; beginning with the launch of our new site in early September, I’ll begin focusing on the future class of 2011. I hope that you guys won’t be strangers; stay in touch either in person (come visit us!) or online (please drop by the blogs from time to time and say hi).

As you begin your college experience, and I prepare for my 10-year college reunion, I thought I’d leave you with the things that, in retrospect, I think are important as you navigate the next four years. I hope that some of them are helpful.

Here goes…

Your friends will change a lot over the next four years. Let them.

Call someone you love back home a few times a week, even if just for a few minutes.
In college more than ever before, songs will attach themselves to memories. Every month or two, make a mix cd, mp3 folder, whatever – just make sure you keep copies of these songs. Ten years out, they’ll be as effective as a journal in taking you back to your favorite moments.

Take naps in the middle of the afternoon with reckless abandon.

Adjust your schedule around when you are most productive and creative. If you’re nocturnal and do your best work late at night, embrace that. It may be the only time in your life when you can.

If you write your best papers the night before they are due, don’t let people tell you that you “should be more organized” or that you “should plan better.” Different things work for different people. Personally, I worked best under pressure – so I always procrastinated… and always kicked ass (which annoyed my friends to no end). ;-) Use the freedom that comes with not having grades first semester to experiment and see what works best for you.

At least a few times in your college career, do something fun and irresponsible when you should be studying. The night before my freshman year psych final, my roommate somehow scored front row seats to the Indigo Girls at a venue 2 hours away. I didn’t do so well on the final, but I haven’t thought about psych since 1993. I’ve thought about the experience of going to that show (with the guy who is now my son’s godfather) at least once a month ever since.

Become friends with your favorite professors. Recognize that they can learn from you too – in fact, that’s part of the reason they chose to be professors.

Carve out an hour every single day to be alone. (Sleeping doesn’t count.)

Go on dates. Don’t feel like every date has to turn into a relationship.

Don’t date someone your roommate has been in a relationship with.

When your friends’ parents visit, include them. You’ll get free food, etc., and you’ll help them to feel like they’re cool, hangin’ with the hip college kids.

In the first month of college, send a hand-written letter to someone who made college possible for you and describe your adventures thus far. It will mean a lot to him/her now, and it will mean a lot to you in ten years when he/she shows it to you.
Embrace the differences between you and your classmates. Always be asking yourself, “what can I learn from this person?” More of your education will come from this than from any classroom.

All-nighters are entirely overrated.

For those of you who have come to college in a long-distance relationship with someone from high school: despite what many will tell you, it can work. The key is to not let your relationship interfere with your college experience. If you don’t want to date anyone else, that’s totally fine! What’s not fine, however, is missing out on a lot of defining experiences because you’re on the phone with your boyfriend/girlfriend for three hours every day.

Working things out between friends is best done in person, not over email. (IM does not count as “in person.”) Often someone’s facial expressions will tell you more than his/her words.

Take risks.

Don’t be afraid of (or excited by) the co-ed bathrooms. The thrill is over in about 2 seconds.

Wednesday is the middle of the week; therefore on wednesday night the week is more than half over. You should celebrate accordingly. (It makes thursday and friday a lot more fun.)

Welcome failure into your lives. It’s how we grow. What matters is not that you failed, but that you recovered.

Take some classes that have nothing to do with your major(s), purely for the fun of it.

It’s important to think about the future, but it’s more important to be present in the now. You won’t get the most out of college if you think of it as a stepping stone.

When you’re living on a college campus with 400 things going on every second of every day, watching TV is pretty much a waste of your time and a waste of your parents’ money. If you’re going to watch, watch with friends so at least you can call it a “valuable social experience.”

Don’t be afraid to fall in love. When it happens, don’t take it for granted. Celebrate it, but don’t let it define your college experience.

Much of the time you once had for pleasure reading is going to disappear. Keep a list of the books you would have read had you had the time, so that you can start reading them when you graduate.

Things that seem like the end of the world really do become funny with a little time and distance. Knowing this, forget the embarassment and skip to the good part.

Every once in awhile, there will come an especially powerful moment when you can actually feel that an experience has changed who you are. Embrace these, even if they are painful.

No matter what your political or religious beliefs, be open-minded. You’re going to be challenged over the next four years in ways you can’t imagine, across all fronts. You can’t learn if you’re closed off.

If you need to get a job, find something that you actually enjoy. Just because it’s work doesn’t mean it has to suck.

Don’t always lead. It’s good to follow sometimes.

Take a lot of pictures. One of my major regrets in life is that I didn’t take more pictures in college. My excuse was the cost of film and processing. Digital cameras are cheap and you have plenty of hard drive space, so you have no excuse.

Your health and safety are more important than anything.

Ask for help. Often.

Half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at any given moment. Way more than half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at some point in the next four years. Get used to it.

In ten years very few of you will look as good as you do right now, so secretly revel in how hot you are before it’s too late.

In the long run, where you go to college doesn’t matter as much as what you do with the opportunities you’re given there. The MIT name on your resume won’t mean much if that’s the only thing on your resume. As a student here, you will have access to a variety of unique opportunities that no one else will ever have – don’t waste them.

On the flip side, don’t try to do everything. Balance = well-being.

Make perspective a priority. If you’re too close to something to have good perspective, rely on your friends to help you.

Eat badly sometimes. It’s the last time in your life when you can do this without feeling guilty about it.

Make a complete ass of yourself at least once, preferably more. It builds character.

Wash your sheets more than once a year. Trust me on this one.

If you are in a relationship and none of your friends want to hang out with you and your significant other, pay attention. They usually know better than you do.

Don’t be afraid of the weird pizza topping combinations that your new friend from across the country loves. Some of the truly awful ones actually taste pretty good. Expand your horizons.

Explore the campus thoroughly. Don’t get caught.

Life is too short to stick with a course of study that you’re no longer excited about. Switch, even if it complicates things.

Tattoos are permanent. Be very certain.

Don’t make fun of prefrosh. That was you like 2 hours ago.

Enjoy every second of the next four years. It is impossible to describe how quickly they pass.

This is the only time in your lives when your only real responsibility is to learn. Try to remember how lucky you are every day.

Be yourself. Create. Inspire, and be inspired. Grow. Laugh. Learn. Love.

Welcome to some of the best years of your lives.

-B

There is so much uncertainty around us..

It’s difficult to predict what will even happen tomorrow, let alone a year from now.

It almost renders all planning for life and the future futile..

Having said that, the only thing we CAN do to keep our sanity is to make sure we focus on the stuff we can control.. keep making plans, tear them apart, move on – still focus on what we can influence and then let life do its bit..

Its wonderful isn’t it- we begin with just a thought that we are in control.. more often than not, it isn’t and doesn’t end up the way we thought it would end up.. yet, when it does, it makes a difference and I guess we learn, how to influence the end product more and more as we realized what is worth giving input into and what is not..

It’s a wonderful learning curve. I don’t know if what I am saying is making clear sense to whoever reads this.. but what I am getting is.. it doesn’t matter what the results are(almost), what matters is that we learn how to plan better to achieve certain results and give THAT our best shot. For eg: we should learn how to plan realistically.. yet aim high eg: Maybe not aim for A+ grades but realistically an A-. Doesn’t mean we give up on A+ on day 1 but means we are as happy with an A- and A+ is just a bonus.

Once we can calibrate our mind to expect what is realistic, yet aim high and keep stretching that reality, we’ve got a winner! (probably).. :D

Exercise your self control muscle..

It works like any other muscle, and it’s crucial to your professional well-being.
It has been a long morning. You started with an invigorating run at 5:30 and had a breakfast meeting at 7. Since then you’ve wrestled with your leadership team, sparred with analysts and delivered a tough message to your chief marketing officer. You’ve felt sharp and in control. But by your 11:30 review with a struggling product team, you’re beginning to feel tired, fuzzy and prickly–not to mention hungry.
The stage is set for a lapse in your self-control. Not just a little burst of anger or a poppy-seed muffin binge but the kind of momentary lapse that can undermine your leadership. You might, for instance, get stuck on a detail and find yourself unable to move on, or fail to see that certain assumptions are no longer supported by the facts, or drop into a pessimistic mood and overlook a sign of progress, or ask the product manager if she wouldn’t be happier working elsewhere–in front of her team.

As a senior executive, you are always being watched. One sarcastic comment or rash decision can set in motion a wave of unnecessary drama, confusion or conflict that can paralyze your whole organization. Your ability to control your thoughts, feelings and actions is critical to your effectiveness as a leader, whether at a 7 a.m. staff meeting or at a midnight curfew showdown with your 16-year-old.
Here’s a secret about self-control: It works like a muscle. With each use, that muscle temporarily loses some strength, leaving you with reduced capacity to handle yourself if the next self-control challenge pops up too soon.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that just like with any other muscle, you can be smarter about how you use it. And you can strengthen it with exercise. Here are four things to do to keep it in top shape.
1. Plan your time with depletion in mind. Whether you have a massive self-control muscle or a modest one, its strength declines each time you call it into action during your workday. Knowing this, take the ebb and flow of self-control into consideration as you build your calendar. If you know that an upcoming meeting will demand all your intellectual and emotional horsepower, be mindful of what you schedule before and after it. Think conservation before and caution after.
Try to avoid scheduling demanding meetings back-to-back. You’ll have less self-control strength for the second meeting, making you more susceptible to sloppy thinking and poor judgment. Also, watch out for the back-end booby trap. Just imagine: You’ve been razor sharp through a critical meeting in the late afternoon, managing yourself brilliantly. You’re depleted but feeling good and ready to relax. When you get home, your spouse surprises you with your child’s report card showing two D’s. It’s prime time for a meltdown, because your self-control muscle is out of gas from your big meeting.
2. Standardize recurring tasks. Albert Einstein in his later years wore a gray sweatsuit every day. Why? He wanted to save his thinking for the most important problems, like figuring out how the universe works. Bill Gates, my former boss at Microsoft, would get annoyed when, in our eagerness to be creative, we’d show up at a midyear review with a new way of calculating key metrics for recruiting or compensation. He’d have to burn precious time and bandwidth decoding our amazing new report rather than work on improving the company’s performance.
It’s a fine balance. No one appreciates a good new idea more than Bill Gates, but creativity puts a heavy load on your self-control muscle. Imagine changing your golf stroke every round just to be more creative. Policies, procedures and best practices can be as boring as a gray sweatsuit, but they also can free up your bandwidth for knotty new challenges.
Be as smart as Einstein and Gates: Standardize your approach to problems you know how to solve, and save your self-control for those you don’t.
3. Rest and refuel. A good night’s sleep or a nap will do wonders for your self-control muscle. But physical rest isn’t everything. The fastest way to rejuvenate a muscle is to avoid using it. And the way you avoid using your self-control muscle is by switching your brain over to automatic pilot.
Develop a relaxation routine that you can turn to when you sense that your self-control muscle is getting depleted. For example, take a 10-minute walk between tough meetings. Stretch. Read something fun. Anything that shifts your brain into neutral will help; what works will be different for each of us.
Your self-control muscle also needs fuel. Studies show that exercising self-control reduces your blood sugar level. One of my coaching clients discovered that meetings went bad more often when she was getting hungry. A quick, healthy snack will restore blood sugar and rejuvenate your self-control muscle. But watch out for chocolate bars and baked goods. They send your blood sugar level rocketing up, but the crash that follows may be even worse for your self-control and your health.
4. Work out your self-control muscle. You can strengthen your self-control muscle with regular exercise over time just as you can strengthen the muscles in your legs or back. Remember: Anytime you take conscious control of your thoughts, feelings or actions, you are practicing self-control.
If you’re willing to experiment, try this simple exercise for the next two weeks: Once an hour, take three deep conscious breaths from your belly. Follow the full length of your inhale and exhale. Sounds crazy, but it works. Why? Because most of the time, you don’t think about breathing. It’s an automatic process. So when you interrupt and take conscious control of your breath, you exercise your self-control muscle.
Since all self-control efforts work that same self-control muscle, exercising it in one activity (e.g., doing regular deep breathing) definitely helps in others (e.g., staying calm when a colleague blames your group for a customer problem).
Just knowing that the self-control muscle exists is a game-changer for the executives I work with. Recognizing when you are using the muscle and when it’s getting depleted is half the battle. You start to understand what it takes to be at your best when it counts the most.
Small changes to your self-control muscle can make a big difference in your effectiveness as a leader. Don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself.
Douglas McKenna is chief executive officer and co-founder of the Oceanside Institute. Formerly head of leadership development at Microsoft, he coaches senior executives around the world.