The same long task list

Take a look at a long task list at the end of your day. And, you’ll find the following set of emotions accompany you – hopelessness, pessimism, negativity and discontent. If you force yourself to work on that list, you could sit for a good few hours and find yourself stuck on task #1.

Take a look at that same long task list once you wake up the next day. This time, you’ll likely find that hope and optimism appear. And, with that hope and optimism, you’ll get to work on that list. Rearrange it, start with a few quick wins, postpone the low priority items and, before you know it, you’ve built momentum.

The task list didn’t change. Your perspective did. The same long task list that looked insurmountable became doable.

When complaining about their inability to get things done, most folks point to a lack of time. But, as this example illustrates, all the time in the world wouldn’t have helped you that evening. All you needed was rest. Manage your mental energy well and you’ll find yourself amazed at how much an energized mind can accomplish. Manage your mental energy by resting your mind, exercising it (reading to it, challenging it by taking on tough problems) and providing it the right kind of fuel.

Sure, learn how to use time well. But, spend your energy managing your energy. It is that skill that separates the masters from the professionals.

Brain-writing – The 200 words project

Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Lifehacker.com and Prof Leigh Thompson on Brainwriting..

There are two leading problems with the average brainstorming session, as Professors Leigh Thompson and Loran Nordgren at the Kellogg School of Management explain –
1. In a typical six- or eight-person group, three people do 70 percent of the talking.
2. Early ideas tend to have disproportionate influence over the rest of the conversation.
The process, known as anchoring, favors the first ideas and forces the unique and creative ideas away through a phenomenon called conformity pressure.

So how can this be avoided? Professors Thompson and Nordgren suggest a process called “brainwriting.” The idea is pretty simple:
– Take 5 minutes and ask the group to write their ideas down on a stack of index cards
– Next, put all the cards up on the wall and ask the team to do a blind vote.
If done right, the best ideas will emerge very quickly.

Here’s to giving brain-writing a shot.

BrainwritingSource and thanks to: The Kellogg school

Prioritizing rest

If you’re like most people, the first thing that gets de-prioritized when push comes to shove is your own body. We are always capable of pulling that all-nighter, cutting down on sleep, eating take-out to save time, and canceling our exercise plans.

And, yet, our bodies never complain.

Well, until they do.

When I do fall sick or find myself down with a stomach bug, for example, I’m consistently amazed as to how I never even noticed my stomach when it was functioning well.

So, just for this weekend, let’s put away our plans for taking over the world. Instead, let’s appreciate this incredible machine – our body – treat it well and prioritize it over everything else. Let’s eat great food if we feel hungry, treat it to a great run or a fun game when we feel restless and, above all else, get as much rest as we need.

The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of our health. And, we get just one shot at living well. Let’s use it well.

Cattle leadership

On one of Mandela’s long morning walks, he turned to his biographer and said – ‘You have never herded cattle, have you, Richard?’

Richard Stengel said he had not. Mandela nodded. As a young boy of eight, Mandela had spent long afternoons herding cattle for his mother or some others in the village. He explained, “You know, when you want to get the cattle to move in a certain direction, you stand at the back with a stick, and then you get a few of the cleverer cattle to go to the front and move in the direction that you want them to go. The rest of the cattle follow the few more-energetic cattle in the front, but you are really guiding them from the back.”

He paused. “That is how a leader should do his work.”

The idea Mandela wanted to convey that day is that leadership at its most fundamental is about moving people in a certain direction – usually through changing the direction of their thinking and their actions.

If you’re waiting for the opportunity to move people in a certain direction, look no further than yourself. Do you feel you are moving in a direction? Do you feel you changed the direction of your own thinking and actions? If so, why did you do it? Nelson Mandela’s greatness was not just because he succeeded in moving people in the right direction – he was, of course, outstanding at doing that. It was because he did so while living these principles himself. How else do you forgive those who kept you in prison for 26 years? It is that integrity – the consistency his words and actions – that made him an incredible leader.

Leadership begins within.

5 pieces of internet etiquette

1. When you send a LinkedIn request to a stranger or to someone who may not recognize you, take a moment to write an introduction.

2. Don’t take offence if an acquaintance declines a “friend request.” Expect that different people have different approaches to social media. Some people may add anyone they know on LinkedIn and be very selective on Facebook. Some (like me) may try to do the best to do the opposite.

3. Avoid typing negative comments using pseudonymous internet profiles. If you want to share a negative opinion, at least have the guts to put your real name behind it.

4. If you can’t respond to email, create an auto responder so people who try to contact you know that. It is completely okay to be a knowledge worker (e.g. researcher) who doesn’t respond to email. Just don’t attempt to be a connection worker who collaborates with people in teams. (And, if you can’t process email, that’s okay. It is a skill like any other and it is worth learning how to do so in this day and age.)

5. As a general rule, always ask for permission before connecting/introducing people. This doesn’t apply in many scenarios (close relationships, for example). But, if in doubt, ask.

The biggest choice

As a child, we don’t see much choice. If something doesn’t go our way, the only way forward we tend to see is to cry. Growing up changes that. In fact, the single best sign of maturity is the ability to view multiple choices in any given situation and take decisions based on those choices. That is why we call adults who throw tantrums overgrown kids. They still haven’t matured enough to recognize that they have the choice to take a step back from the situation and respond like an adult.

While exercising the choice to respond is an example of a choice that can change the quality of our lives, I think the biggest choice we have is around how we interpret things that happen to us.

A lot happens to us over the course of a day or a week. Some say our lives only constitute 10% of what we do. The rest is reacting/responding to events that happen. And, I view our ability to view situations differently as a super power.

Here’s why – there is very little reality. Most of our lives are shaped by perception. If you are training for a marathon and feel your ankle hurting, you can view it as a debilitating obstacle that kills your chances of running a marathon. Or, you can view it as a challenge you will overcome. Challenges are temporary, after all. How we interpret the world around us determines how we will choose to respond. It is a bit like wearing spectacles. We all wear metaphorical spectacles of various kinds. We see something that happens and interpret it based on our lenses and views of the world.

Choosing the color and nature of these spectacles is the most important thing we do. We make that choice. And, it is the most important choice we make.

Do it for yourself – never mind everyone else

There’s a great episode in the 90s sitcom “Friends” where Chandler makes a claim that all acts on earth are prompted by selfish motives. Phoebe spends a lot of time attempting to disprove it and then reluctantly comes to the same conclusion herself.

I am Chandler’s side on this one – I don’t think there is a thing as a selfless act. From everything I’ve learnt about the human brain, I find it hard to believe that we’d take on anything without a connection to gratification of some sort – short term or really long term. Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton, wrote an interesting book called “Give and Take” where he shows research that debunks the idea of selfless giving. He talks about the concept of “other-ish” giving as the way forward. “Other-ish” giving, or selfish giving in my terms, is essentially finding reasons that clarify what is in it for you.

In addition, I feel doing things for yourself makes practical sense. First, it means you don’t have to find external reasons to motivate yourself. You have absolute clarity on why you’re doing something and that clarity helps you keep going. And, second, you rarely have control on other people’s experiences (even if you think you often do – that’s a different matter). So, doing things because you feel it’ll positively impact others isn’t really a sustainable strategy as it negates the possibility of your ideas not working. And, that’s bound to happen too. Great things are done when we’re willing to accept that our well-laid plans may not work.

If you want to feel good in the short term, sure, start a project that exists to serve. My experience with bloggers that start blogs solely to help others is that they simply don’t last.

The approach I’d recommend is to embrace our inner selfishness and do things that have a clear benefit for us. More often than not, that approach leads to building things that last. And, more often than not, things that last have a way of impacting people around us positively. At the very least, we’ll be happier people – and that’s already a great addition to the world.

There’s no right path

Every once in a while, you face a decision that has an objectively right or wrong. Most fiction has been written around these black-and-white decisions. Yes, Harry Potter (and I love Harry Potter) had a choice to not go after Lord Voldemort. But, not really.

Most decisions in real life, however, just represent various shades of gray. George R R Martin has garnered an incredible global following by writing books that deal predominantly with the gray. In some ways, his work challenges the very basis of normal fiction – black villains vs. white heroes, as illustrated in the Lord of the Rings trilogy or in the Star Wars series.

The lack of a clear right path means we have 3 options in front of us every time we need to make a decision –

1. Do nothing. This choice can be easy or hard depending on the general speed with which you make decisions. It is easy to do if you can manage to ignore your impulse to act. If doing nothing becomes habitual, then, lethargy becomes the way.

2. Follow what someone else has done. This could be following a parent in their career choice or simply subordinating all decisions to someone else.

3. Make it up. Pretend like you have a clue and keep moving forward.

Every successful leader needs all these options at his/her disposal. There are times when doing nothing is the right thing to do. There are times when you just have to make it up and keep moving. And, then again, there are other times when it is best you follow what someone else has done and run with a “best practice.”

There is no one-size-fits all solution. There is no right strategy. And, as a result, there is no point putting undue pressure on a decision you make.

The funny thing is that simply accepting this fact can make us better decision makers.

The tripwire – The 200 words project

Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Decisive by Chip and Dean Heath

Inmet Mining Corp. was losing money fast on a mine. So, the team met in Wisconsin to decide if they ought to close the mine. However, the mine employed a 1000 people, had recently been acquired and had millions invested in it. The discussions reached an impasse as the head of the mine refused to accept closure as an option.

So, a team member issued the group a challenge – list out all options available and ask – “What would have to be true for this option to work?”

The head of the mine now laid out a bunch of conditions (e.g. we would have to get it to 90% capacity in 3 weeks and we would have to break even in 2 months) to keep the mine open. These were “tripwires.” If they tripped, they would have to close the mine. The best outcome of this move was that everyone collaborated to try and make sure the tripwires didn’t trip.

But, they did trip. By the next board meeting, the resistant head of the mine endorsed the close himself. One question and a tripwire had moved the group from adversaries to collaborators.

TripwireSource and thanks to: LeadershipTraq.com

“”What would have to be true for that option to work?” sets up tripwires. A tripwire specifies the circumstances during which you would reconsider a decision. Most people overestimate the chances of making it past an obstacle.” | Chip and Dan Heath in Decisive

The Ronaldo effect

Raúl González Blanco was considered one of the greatest club strikers in the game of football during his time as a footballer at Real Madrid. He scored an impressive 323 goals in 741 games over 16 years at Real Madrid winning every club trophy that he competed for and finished his career as the highest scorer in the European Champions league’s distinguished history.

Over the past few months, current Real Madrid striker, Cristiano Ronaldo, has been the subject of criticism in the media for a bad patch of form. There was lot of speculation as to the reasons for this bad patch and Ronaldo came into criticism for issues such as celebrating his birthday in style after a game in which he performed poorly.

Cristiano Ronaldo joined Real Madrid in 2009. In the nearly 6 years that have followed, he has scored 307 goals in 298 games. So, he is 16 goals short of Raúl’s record despite having played 443 games less. How can a striker who scores more than a goal a game on average (a feat many teams would love to be able to match) come in for criticism?

In one word, expectations. As you do better, people’s expectations of your work keep rising with it. I term this “The Ronaldo effect.” A piece of work that would have earned you plaudits a few months ago will no longer earn a clap today. It is a base level expectation now. You’re expected to do better.

But, how much better? And, to what end?

If there is one lesson to be learned from the Ronaldo effect, it is that doing work to earn appreciation is a fool’s errand. Do work because you believe it matters. Do work because it helps you make progress towards a goal (a good life, etc.). Do work because it makes you happy. And, develop a work ethic where you just focus on the process.. regardless of the outcome.