A Learning a Day

We watched a YouTube video about a day in the coldest village on earth. It was an amazing watch with some vivid images.

• Using melted ice first thing in the morning to brush and freshen up – there is no running water as pipes freeze at -40+ degree Fahrenheit
• School only opens when it is <-40 degrees (!)
• Kids can only walk outside 10 minutes at a time in the extreme cold and have to be fully covered from head to toe – with the risk of death looming every day
• Having to run out of the house in the freezing cold to use the bathroom
• Learning to fend for yourself every step of the way – e.g., learning to fish after drilling holes in the ice.
• Parents spoke of their wish for their kids to get educated and leave for better paying jobs.

As much as it was a great video for our kids, it was also a wonderful reminder for me about the privilege and comfort I take for granted every day.

More than I realize.

“There is no such thing as bad weather. There is the weather and your attitude towards it.”

As true with weather as it is with most things in this life.

The simplest way to improve our effectiveness as a facilitator of meetings is to continually measure ourselves on our ability to create a sense of urgency.

A sense of urgency does not guarantee a good meeting. There’s a lot more that we need to do to facilitate the right level of discussion. But it sure does reduce the chances of us wasting time on conversations that go nowhere.

There are 3 skills that we need to develop at an accelerated rate as we take on more responsibility:

(1) Synthesis: The ability to take in a lot of feedback and move people from ambiguity to clarity.

(2) Judgment: The rate at which we make high quality decisions.

(3) Perspective: The ability to take our work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.

I was feeling weighed down by a few things the other day. So I took some time later in the day to write down what these were.

It turns out I was anxious about 4 things. Of these, 2 were completely out of my control. 1 of them was 90% out of my control – but there was one small action I could take to make progress (I did).

And the final thing needed to be solved over the course of the next few weeks. But it was a good nudge to think proactively about what I needed to do to give it the best chances of success.

Until I wrote these down, I was dealing with unnamed fears. It reminded me of the Master Yoda quote – “Named your fears must be before banish them, you can.”

Naming these fears helped me better understand which ones were in my control vs. not. It is why problems well stated are problems half solved.

Taking the time to define problems right moves us from anxiety to action… to progress.

The biggest contributor to discontent in otherwise healthy relationships is an accumulation of unspoken and unclarified expectations.

We were going to give a couch away for free recently so it could be reused by someone in need. However, the service we signed up for refused to accept it due to a small stain – a bizarre/myopic policy.

So, we decided to put it up for sale for a small amount on Craigslist. We got a series of quotes and had someone pick it up within 2 hours.

After this happened, my mind wandered for a few minutes to explore another possibility – had I given this away too cheap? Maybe I could have charged significantly more?

3 reflections –

(1) It is amazing how quickly I went from “So glad we could find another home” to “Should I have charged more?” A full 2 days after writing about moving goalposts. :-)

(2) Money is such an easy factor to optimize for. It is so easy to ignore the many intangible trade-offs because, well, they are intangible.

Beware optimizing for things that are easy to optimize.

(3) The best way to think about optimization is to pick your areas in advance. There are very few areas in life that are worth optimizing. For the rest, best to be a “satisficer” and move on.

I remember first reading the quote “Money doesn’t buy class” more than a decade ago. It was one of those ideas that I thought I understood.

But I didn’t. I hadn’t interacted with folks with a lot of money up until then.

Over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to interact, meet, and get to know – directly and indirectly – people with vast amounts of wealth. And I have come to realize that wealth doesn’t correlate with class. Not one bit.

Wealth simply amplifies what already existed. If there was goodness, wealth brought out a lot of it. If there was insecurity, wealth made sure you could never miss it. And an absence of class stayed as is – regardless of the number of zeros in a bank account.

Money does not and cannot buy class.

Class is earned by emotional awareness and actions that don’t correlate with the accumulation of wealth.

I experienced an outcome a few days ago that should have, at least for a while, felt positive. But it didn’t feel that way.

Somewhere along the way, I think I had set my sights on a possible grander outcome. And now that I had moved the goalposts, what I had didn’t feel all that great.

I reflect on this idea from time to time – especially when someone asks for my career/life story. I don’t think I could have imagined the life I lead right now two decades ago. It was the stuff of dreams just a decade ago.

And yet, it is so easy to take it all for granted by simply moving goalposts. I’m here now – so it is natural to spend all my time thinking about how to get there. There’s always a “there” – a good reason to forget about the magic of “here.”

It is human to keep raising our expectations and to thus keep moving those goalposts. It takes a lot of discipline and commitment to nudge ourselves when we do and remind ourselves to not take our current reality for granted.

All that discipline and commitment is worth it though. When we habitually move goalposts, life just becomes a bottomless pit of unfulfillment.

Beware moving goalposts.

The simplest way to waste a day is to spend time and energy on areas outside our circle of control.

Spending time within that circle of control do not guarantee progress. We may still encounter frustration and disappointment. But, if keep at it, it all pays off in the long run.

Time spent outside our circle of control, however, doesn’t inspire any forward momentum – now or in the future.