A Learning a Day

Most new year resolutions fail for 2 reasons –

1. We don’t build in room for misses – for example, we resolve to exercise 5 times a week every week of the year.
2. We hit ourselves so hard when we miss for the first time that we don’t allow ourselves to recover.

1 is not smart. However, that habit can be unlearned over time.

Hitting ourselves so hard when we miss is much harder to unlearn. The next time you do it, remember to tell yourself that it is not the right thing to do. It isn’t going to help you now or ever – you’re only being a coward indulging in sabotage. You’re allowing the resistance an easy victory.

The next time you miss a goal or target you wanted to hit, be nice to yourself. Allowing yourself to recover from a miss is not just the kind thing to do.. in the long run, it’s the clever thing to do.

A man went to his rabbi and asked him what he should do when bad things happened.

The rabbi said – “When things are good, thank the Lord and when things are bad, praise The Lord.

The man asked -“But rabbi, how do I know which is which?”

The rabbi replied – “You are a wise man. Just to be safe, always thank the Lord.”

—

Hat tip to Ben and Roz Zander for this great story in their excellent book – The Art of Possibility.

You dreamed about growing up and living on your own income once. You dreamed about living in your own apartment and calling close friends over for a night out whenever you liked. Perhaps you dreamed about seeing your kid go to a great school, receiving a gift from your kid’s first income and having a great time at your kid’s wedding. Or perhaps you dreamed you’d one day travel to a new country or attend a great university.

Look at where you are now.

Sure, some of those dreams haven’t worked out exactly how you pictured them as a kid. Thank god for that. Many of them worked out much better than you could have imagined.

If you believe the media, the world is going down the drain. There’s too much war, too much politics, too much money in football, and too much unemployment. It doesn’t seem like the kind of world where dreams come true.

But, they do. You are evidence of that. They work out much better than you even imagine. So, before you get all cynical today as you dream about yourself 15 years from now, remind yourself that this life, today, was once your dream too. And what a great life it’s turned out to be..

Sure, we have had to work hard for them but let it not be said that dreams don’t come true.. life is the stuff of dreams. Smile, enjoy living the dream, and just for today, actively reach out to someone else to help make their dream come true. If we aren’t helping each other realize our dreams, what the hell are we living for?

If you expect to win or expect things to go well, there’s a good chance you’ll be disappointed. Disappointment often leads to fear which in turn leads to paralysis the next time you play. You don’t want to take risks for fear of disappointment and you prefer inaction to action. The dark side has won.

So, how do you avoid this? Stop pegging expectations to results. Never ever expect to win or lose. Just expect to play. Take it a step forward and perhaps even expect to give it your best shot when you play.

Pegging expectations to the process means you keep focus on things you influence – your preparation, your attitude, and your effort. If the result is good, incorporate the positives into the next game. If the result is bad, figure out what you can do differently. The best outcome of the infinite game is you learning from experiences to become the person you want to be.

Expect to give what you do your best shot.. and enjoy the game. The rest is just noise.

This week’s book learning is from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen.

When DVR rental giant Blockbuster looked at fledgling internet start-up Netflix in 2001, they dismissed it as a threat. They had billions of dollars of earnings thanks to their DVR renting and lucrative business model that made money off high late fees. The late fees made sense because every check out of a popular movie was how they made money.

Netflix turned it around by charging people per month and mailing DVRs. Netflix made money when people didn’t rent DVRs! But, in 2001, it was making only $150 million in profits in comparison to >1.5 Billion that Blockbuster was making.

The problem was that Blockbuster calculated “marginal increase” of pursuing Netflix. It meant a very small marginal increase on top of Blockbusters existing revenue but what Blockbuster didn’t realize is that this new product would redefine the industry’s future. They went bankrupt in 2011.

It’s not that different in our personal lives. We start on the path of wrong doing by calculating marginal cost or cost of doing something wrong ‘just this once.’ That’s how Nick Leeson started out trying to wipe out a trading loss. The path led him to lose $1.3Bn, bankrupting 230 year old Bearings bank, costing 1200 employees to be laid off, losing his marriage, and being imprisoned for 6 years.

Sketch by EB

No athlete or Enron senior executive started out saying they’d cheat. One small compromise led them down a slippery slope. As Clay wisely puts it, it might seem like one extenuating circumstance but life is just a series of extenuating circumstances…

Clay’s advice is to figure out what your values are and never deviate. You can’t follow 99% of an ideal. It’s 100% or nothing.

It was this insight that made me realize that my laissez faire attitude towards online piracy media content was not in congruence with my values – I’ve been a very happy iTunes customer since!

(“Aage ya peeche” in Hindi stands for “Front or back?”)

I was at a Saturday league football (read soccer) game a couple of hours ago. This was only my second game with the team and I was taking corners. I put 3 hopeful corners in but we didn’t have much luck – no goals. The team weren’t really sure where the ball would land and I wasn’t really sure where they’d be standing as well.

As I walked out for the 4th, a teammate screamed – “Rohan. Aage ya peeche?”

“Aage” (front i.e. closer to the goalkeeper) – I screamed back.

Now I knew where to put the ball in. I did. He was there on cue and scored.

Of course, the scoring won’t happen every time but boy, did we help our chances with a simple bit of communication! Seasoned teams know and understand where their teammates put corners in and don’t need this sort of communication. But, for us, it was just perfect. So simple, so obvious, and yet.. it took us a while to do it.

I’ve taken back a big lesson here – communication is the life blood of a team. So, over communicate if you must and ask the simple question. We don’t need “out-of-the-box” thinking or piercing insights to move mountains. Simple questions that move the needle and help us understand each other is what moves mountains in the long run.

What makes a service a social network? My assumptions are –

1. Ability to connect with others
2. Ability to share photos, videos, and life events
3. Ability to communicate in real-time
4. Ability to organize offline events for more connection
5. Ability to funnel content/speak to sub groups of the overall network

While Facebook excels at 1-4 and does an okay job of 5, Facebook became a victim of it’s own success – it became too big. Path bettered the idea with a smaller and more private social network that does some of this well. LinkedIn occupies the niche of a professional social network so we won’t bring it in for the purposes of this discussion.

Over the past year, however, I’ve observed one social network climb to the top within my social group – Whatsapp. What started out as a way to send free text messages between iOS, Android, and BlackBerry platforms is now much much more than that. Whatsapp allows me to connect with folks in my phone book (i.e. my network), share photos, videos, and events in real time, and communicate better than any other. It then takes organizing offline events and sub-group communication to a whole new level.

Most folks in my social group wouldn’t even think twice to create a Whatsapp group to plan for the next weekend. In fact, they probably don’t need to do that because they’ve probably got on going groups for their football, get togethers, friends, and family. It’s a continuous stream of communication.

As far as my social group goes, Whatsapp is the undisputed leader of the social network group. It has it’s work cut out to stay that way but I thought I’d congratulate the team for iterating continuously to bring forth a fantastic and much loved product. Facebook team, I hope you’re watching..

Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom, says principle #5 of Improv is “Be average.” She says it’s important to be prepared to be average because you might never get around to doing anything if you’re waiting for the day you’ll roll out a perfect performance.

Improv requires you to be prepared to fail simply because we don’t perform our best when we put ourselves under tremendous pressure.

So, if you’re walking into an interview/client meeting/presentation today telling yourself “this is my only shot and better work,” stop. You’re putting the sort of pressure on yourself that will cripple your performance. Calm down. We get many shots at the things we really need and if this doesn’t work, it’ll work out just fine.

Be prepared to be average at first. That’s how we get better. For all his emphasis on perfection, even Steve Jobs oversaw many products at Apple that were, at best, average. That’s just life. We just need to learn to be our best and enjoy the dance.. no matter the result.

Look at all your key fulfilment factors – career, finance, health and fitness, relationships, mental and learning, and life and happiness – and you will find that all is hardly ever well. On average, you will always have 1 that is going bad, one that needs attention and the rest will be relatively smooth sailing.

Life is a careful balancing act and we learn over time that neglecting other factors to get one right is damaging in the long run. So many of us neglect our health and relationships in pursuit of success in our careers and this regularly comes back to haunt us. What’s the point of success if we are diagnosed with high blood pressure in our 30’s or have no one to celebrate our “Employee of the year” award with?

Even if you put in the right amount of effort to tend to each of these, all will hardly ever be well. Life will throw up a challenge to keep us interested. No point getting down. No point being unhappy. No point worrying. And absolutely no point not having fun. The challenges never stop. So, if you find yourself smiling a lot less than someone you know very well or worrying too much to have fun, then it’s worth stopping what you’re doing and taking stock. Everyone around you has similar sorts of challenges.. some just choose to rise above them and make the best of life.

It doesn’t matter what the situation is in your life right now – you have the power to make it better, to smile, to be happy, and to spread your happiness. Equally, you have the power to do the opposite and spread unhappiness. That’s a lot of power. Use it well.

I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi once again over the past 2 weekends. I think I should make it a point to watch this great movie every couple of months as it brings forth a new insight every time. What stood out to me was the nature of Jiro’s suppliers.

Jiro’s tuna supplier was anti-establishment in that he only bought the best tuna of the lot that came in the morning. No more, no less. It might only mean one fish a day (or sometimes none) but he wouldn’t buy any more and compromise his quality. His eel supplier comes from a family where his grandfather was called “the good of the eel.” His shrimp supplier also bought very few shrimps a day and as he sorted them out in the morning, he made it a point to pick out the ones that were “worthy of Jiro.”

His rice supplier was at a whole new level – he refused to sell his rice to the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo because he believed they wouldn’t know how to cook it. Only Jiro did it well and he might consent to selling to the big hotel chain if Jiro asked him to.

All of them undoubtedly contribute to Jiro’s greatness. It is thus unsurprising that the common theme among all of them is excellence.

We are who we surround ourselves with.