A Learning a Day

As I think about the day today, there are many factors that are outside my control. There are deadlines I’m working on that were set by others, there are projects that depend on others, I don’t control the weather or the behavior of those I meet (they could be real surly, for example) and can’t ensure this week will be one without any mishaps.

On the other hand, there are so many little things that are actually in my control. I have control over a good proportion of my time and definitely have a fair bit of control over my energy. I can choose to make many micro decisions that would greatly improve the quality of my day and week.

So, are things largely in my control or out of my control? There’s enough data to argue this both ways. It all just depends on what I choose to focus on and the narrative I choose to believe.

The quality of our life is directly related to the stories we tell ourselves.

And, if that is the case, we might as well learn to tell ourselves stories that make our life better.

Source

I picked up an image from the mourning in Paris post the attacks on Charlie Hebdo last year.

In response to the horrible attacks yesterday, Joanne asked on her blog – How could people have so much anger at the world to kill innocent people? What happened that made people want to be a part of a terrorist group where their lives are so unhappy that becoming a human bomb and killing themselves doesn’t matter? Where do we go from here? How do we unite as a world to stop this? As parents how can we feel safe for our families?

There are definitely more questions than answers.

Barack Obama, in his own televised address, said the US stands ready to assist France, its oldest ally. “Those that think that they can terrorize the people of France or the values that they stand for are wrong,” Obama said.

But, as Quartz pointed out in their newsletter this morning, – “Except of course they are not wrong; their terror already has been committed. The question now is how the world responds.”

And, we need a response.

A lot of the discussion around self awareness alludes to the idea of “becoming” self aware – as if you flip a switch or turn a corner one day and voilà! you have reached self awareness point.

My experience with self awareness is that it is just a really long march. You don’t become self aware one day. Instead, you become more self aware – ideally every day. And, over time, you learn what to do with that knowledge.

A big part of this process is gradually embracing your own quirks and developing your own library of tell-tale signals. For instance, I caught myself talking way more than usual (I generally speak up a fair bit – so you can imagine what this was like) at a group meeting. In my case, that’s a tell-tale sign that I was out of sync with myself. I was just reacting to discomfort.

Similarly, I realized another meeting was going nowhere recently as I just felt I’d hit a point of exhaustion. Instead of ploughing on, I decided to call it a day and work on it early next morning. I’d seen that movie many times and knew this would result in a better ending.

I think of all of this as a long drawn collection of experiments. You observe yourself, figure out the patterns, guess the causes, observe some more, try and attack the causes and, over time, understand why you behave the way you do in a particular situation. The beauty about this understanding is that, over time, you can bring most behaviors down to a few root causes (typically deep-rooted insecurities). And, once you understand those, you then figure out ways to work with the root causes and, hopefully, get to a more accepting, productive and happier place.

I can see why the switch flip idea sounds better/more easier. This is hard work. But, this is definitely one of the cases where the juice is worth the squeeze.

One of the interesting things when you design experiences for people is that your new users have no baseline understanding of the kinds of improvements you have made.

So, if you drastically revamped your website’s design and made it so much easier for users to navigate, it won’t really matter to a new user. To them, this is the base line expectation.

While you are sure to experience a bit of frustration and probably say to yourself – “They have no idea! If only they had experienced the old crappy model” – the reality is that such experiences are simply a lesson in how expectations work. The more better work you do, the more better work will be expected of you.

I think it all begins to feel negative if you expect plaudits at every step because they never quite arrive. Yes, you might have a small subset of grateful users who will thank you. But, their voices will likely be drowned out by noises of dissent and complaints about the (smaller) issues the new design has created. As Seth wrote yesterday, no matter what you do, failure of some kind is certain. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s focus on the impact.

The take away for me – do great work simply because you want to do great work. The reward at the end of the journey is not universal love from everyone your experiences touches. The reward is that you became a better version of yourself in the process of doing great work.

And, I would argue there are few greater rewards than that.

Often we spend all our time thinking how we can change situations instead of simply letting them change us.

I switched my routine this morning and just did a quick skim of the news – my diet these days consists of a roughly 10 minute read of The Economist Espresso, Quartz’ daily newsletter and the Skimm. There’s a bit of overlap across these 3 but I’ve still found value in each of them.

So, it is natural that the news is on top of my mind as I write this.

One of the funny things about reading the news is that I am regularly shocked by the amount of ongoing crap taking place. Yes, I understand that negative stuff brings about more readership but I do always wonder about the “real” ratio of positive to negative news in the world.

A quick example of the kind of stuff that shocked me this morning –

• Shell and ENI in Nigeria have had about 550 oil spills in Nigeria in the last few years. (550? How do you even get away with a number as crazy as that?)
• American Presidential hopeful Ben Carson lied about receiving a scholarship. (How could anyone make such a dumb mistake in this day and age?)
• Former McKinsey partner Anil Kumar, who actively participated in the insider trading scandal that got former McKinsey chairman Rajat Gupta and hedge fund owner Raj Rajarathnam in jail, constructed the elaborate scheme by creating offshore accounts in his maid’s name. The maid, Manju Gupta, now lives in poverty in Kolkata, India and hasn’t heard from her former employers in years. And, Anil Kumar walked away from all of this with a $25,000 fine. (This is so crazy that I’m not even sure what question to ask)

As humans, we tend to obsess about being perfect and getting everything right. It does, however, seem to me that we’d go a long way if we just did the basic stuff right – be honest (definitely don’t lie or cheat) and do your best to do good work. I’m not saying any of this stuff is easy – Anil Kumar, Ben Carson, et al, are smart folk. If anything, sharing my struggles with getting the basics right for more than 7 years now has definitely made me appreciative of how difficult it really is.

Nevertheless, this is likely a simpler undertaking than – go make a positive dent in the universe. It sure takes the pressure off. :-)

And, maybe, just maybe, it is the folks who go crazy about trying to make a positive dent who forget that there’s more to life than transitory wealth, fame and power.

I was reminded of the book ‘The Geography of Bliss’ on Twitter yesterday. So, I downloaded the book on my Audible and listened to the epilogue again.

And, here are a few quotes from the book that I absolutely loved.

We are shaped by our environment. In some ways, we are our environment. The word utopia has 2 meanings – good place and nowhere. That’s the way it should be – the happiest places are the ones that are just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with. Likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in a perfect place either. A lifetime of happiness – no man could bear it. It would be hell on earth. Happiness requires livable conditions but not paradise. We find happiness in a variety of places.

We thrive on messiness. The Good Life cannot be mere indulgence – it must contain a measure of grit and truth.

Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Familiarity should breed contentment and not just content. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It’s a conjunction. Connective tissue.

Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. … Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.

Have I found happiness? . . . I do experience happy moments. I’m learning, as W.H. Auden counseled, to “dance while you can.” He didn’t say “dance well.” And, for that I’m grateful.

And that brings me to my favorite quote whose beginning inspired the title of today’s post.

Maybe happiness is this…not wanting to be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

So true.

Wishing you a great week. Thanks, Eric, for a wonderful book.

I think the speed of our learning curve begins and ends depending on our answer to the question – “how do you react to being in the stretch zone?”

Most folk attempt to minimize that feeling of stretch and remind themselves that discomfort exists to be minimized.

Others accept the discomfort as a part of life and choose to dance with it.

Of course, we all want to minimize unnecessary stretch and we definitely don’t want to consistently feel stretched because others don’t do their job or because our managers consistently make unrealistic promises to our clients. We also don’t want to find ourselves stretched every minute of our lives. But, that said, if we feel relatively in control of our lives and schedules, our ability to deal with stretch can be developed – just like building a muscle.

And, I would argue that there are few muscles that are more important to build – after all, life begins at the end of our comfort zone.