A Learning a Day

This week’s book learning is from Willpower by Roy Baumeister.

A study in the year 2000 found that a religious person was 26% more likely to be alive. This finding that non-religious people die sooner has been confirmed in multiple studies since.

The answer does not lie in divine intervention. Consider the following –

– Religious people were found to be less likely to be alcoholics or smokers, less likely to engage in risky sex, most likely to wear seatbelts, and more likely to go for regular health check ups
– They were found to have better social support. Their faith helped them deal better with misfortune
– Religion helps give provide believers with clear priorities – a key requisite for self control
– Religion fosters habits that build self control. Going to Sunday school is similar to “sit straight” – religious exercises are typical willpower building exercises (think: chanting hymns, mantras or fasting)
– Religious people feel answerable to a god who can’t be easily fooled. They are also conscious of being monitored by human eyes i.e. by other members of their community

In short, it takes great discipline to follow a religion!

Sketch by EB

A lot of simple “ancient” wisdom – sit straight, eat regularly, sleep on time, etc., is rooted in willpower. More willpower results in better habits and better lives. Religion is no different – it helps develop a communal habit whose pros often outweigh the cons.

Maya used to work at home as Mom’s help. She was in her early 20s and was a real workhorse. She had a long commute from her village outside her city but loved the whole idea of working in the city with a friendly boss. All was well.

A couple of years in, her family forced her into marriage. Her husband turned out to be an abusive alcoholic. There’s a fine line between sanity and insanity and a year into her marriage, Maya became depressed and began losing her sanity. Her condition only worsened over time as her family didn’t know how to deal with an occasionally insane person. So, they beat her and tied her up as the usually docile girl could now be violent. She used to still come home once a year to meet Mom and seemed to be on the mend but the stories we heard through people who knew her only got worse. Mom was hoping to put her in a mental home in the city the next time she came..

We came to know Maya passed away a few days ago. She is thought to have committed suicide. Foul play might have been involved but since it involves a mentally handicapped person, the matter has not gone to the police. There’s too much taboo involved. In a way, Mom and I are glad it happened – life as a mentally challenged woman in an Indian village is hellish thanks to taboos and ignorance. Mom is upset as we both knew her as a healthy, happy 20 year old.

I have 2 reactions when I hear a story like this. First, woman and mentally challenged folk have it very hard in rural areas of most developing cultures and we have a duty to make life better for them.

The second reaction is a reminder of the sort of privilege I was born into. You and I may not be the richest people around but we were born into families that gave us everything we needed. Most importantly, we were given opportunities to make something of this life. There’s barely any difference between Maya and us.. we just got lucky and were born into households where a good life was a possibility.

Let’s live, laugh, learn, and give back. Most importantly, let us not forget the likes of Maya who would have loved to have the sort of circumstances we have been blessed with. Let us not forget the responsibility we have to make this world a better place..

Let us not forget..

A few friends and I did a small 4 song performance at our pre-wedding get together. Each song was a dedication and as the first one was a dedication to my to-be wife, I was to sing it. Having never taken any vocal lessons, I was all sorts of afraid and went on to sign up for a 4 hour vocals crash course. It turned out to be a great learning experience and I thought I’d share the lessons I learnt.

1. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t do it. Vocals is an exercise in imagination. If you don’t believe you can make the pitch, you just can’t. And I had great difficulties with the mental aspect in my first lesson as I tended to panic as soon as I hit what I thought was a high note.
My teacher then asked me to close my eyes while he had me follow the piano’s key. He pointed out that while my vocal range was fairly high for a male (a “G”), I used to panic by the time I hit an E flat i.e. 4 notes lower. I had to learn to open my mind..

2. Don’t take casual feedback too seriously. Tony Buzan famously asserted that every kid is a born artist who stops drawing because some harsh teacher or parent criticizes an early work. I’ve found Buzan’s assertion true – with a bit of practice, all of us can become pretty good at many a hobby but we let casual feedback get to us.
I clearly took casual feedback on my singing too seriously and it got in the way of what I could actually do.

3. Difficult -> Natural -> Easy -> Beautiful. Focus your practice on moving across these stages. Move it from difficult to natural. Once it sounds or feels natural, try to make it easy and only then should you try the flourishes and add ons that make it beautiful. It’s a lovely 4 step framework.

4. We all have 2 voices. This was a big learning for me – we all have a “chest” voice (deeper) and a “throat” voice (higher pitched). Switching between these voices is a mental thing. We have to understand which voice would work better for a song and then imagine it before we do it!

5. Physical comfort results in mental and emotional comfort. The first step to a great vocal performance is physical comfort – we need to understand what makes our voices and bodies comfortable. Some singers drink cold water before a performance while others prefer hot water to keep their vocal cords in shape. Know your body.

6. Find your style. Vocals are all about finding your style. As a singer, you mix natural talent with style. There are many singers with tremendous natural talent (Frank Sinatra) who don’t need to worry about style since “showing up” is all they need to do. And yet, there are others with less talent (Rod Stewart) who really understand their limitations and work within them to create great music.

Needless to say, I’ve added vocals on my always expanding “skills to learn” list.

We are all pressed for time..always. Our requests and needs are generally urgent. Large corporations’ customer service departments don’t help us. They are all broken thanks to flawed policy and bad procedure manuals.

We have every right to be angry – why the hell can’t these big behemoths get it right? (“big behemoths” – the answer lies in the question of course)

It’s easy to forget that the customer service rep at the receiving end of this anger and frustration is just another human being, like you and me. He has his own problems, worries, and concerns. She comes to work seeking fulfilment and happiness and it must be hard to be at the receiving end of one outburst after another for no fault of hers. Sure, many of them don’t help themselves with poor knowledge of their own products or an unhelpful attitude.

But, this post isn’t about them. It’s about us. It’s easy to unload all the frustration on the person at the other end. The other day, I found myself annoyed at service I received from a rep at American Express. It was tempting to just put the phone down mid sentence. It was only then I realized that it wasn’t his fault – he was just trying to do his job and follow the rules. It’s not personal. I was allowing myself to throw a hissy fit.. just because I could.

It’s one thing to be human. It’s quite another to be consistently humane.

The only tuition you need to pay at experience university is to exhibit bad judgment and make mistakes.

It’s simple, really. Go out, do something, and make a mistake – ideally a big one. Voila! Your education at the best university in the world has just begun. No essays or statements of purpose required. The only expectation is that you will take action and make mistakes. Ideally, you try to make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes but hey, no one is perfect.

You only look silly here if you don’t do anything.

After all, attempting to not make any mistakes could be the greatest mistake of them all.

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PS: On a different note – If you are wondering about what’s happened to the “Rockstar Anayst” series, I plan to get back to it in 2 weeks. I’m sorry but I have no appetite to open up an excel sheet while on honeymoon. :-)

‘Real change is cultural change, and you must go about it with the intent to change the culture, not to merely make the easy change, the easy sale.’ – Seth’s post of the day

I’ve been thinking about culture a bit lately – specifically about culture within families and friends – the atomic unit equivalent of culture. There’s a lot of talk about corporate culture but corporate culture is defined and set by the small group of founders – an atomic unit similar to that of a family or group of friends.

Culture, in my limited experience, is one of those things that simply exists whether you attempt to define one or not. If you do actively attempt to define one, you give yourself a shot at creating one that you will be proud of. If you don’t, well, you might be surprised at the end result.

95% of families and friends groups make no attempt whatsoever to actively define a culture. They assume you can just show up and let it happen. In many cases, it works out pretty well thanks to a strong character who inadvertently sets a few “norms” and then again, in many cases, it just doesn’t work out in long run.

But, as Seth points out, real change is cultural change; and I find myself on a bit of a mission to attempt to define cultures for two important parts of my life – my new family and my group of friends. With the family, my wife and I intend to talk through what our “family” would stand for. I expect lots of great learnings from this process.

With friends, we were helped along by Lifehacker’s fantastic article on “Mastermind” groups. Go read it. The idea here is to form a “mastermind” group with friends who want to make a difference. The inspiration is a mastermind group of friends from  Oxford who went on to write some of the greatest fictional works of our age – Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, etc. In our case, we aren’t united by the “what” i.e. write fictional works, but by the “why” i.e. to be the best we can be. We are looking forward to seeing how this works out.

Ultimately, the true test of both these experiments in culture will be the strength and longevity of these relationships along with our collective impact on the world. We haven’t done too bad on strength and longevity so far but there’s always room for improvement. I guess it all begins with the shared belief that since we are all here on this journey, we might as well fill it with love, laughter, and learning and make it meaningful, make it count.

Many more learnings on these culture experiments to follow. Exciting times!

This week’s book learning is from Willpower by Roy Baumeister.

3 groups were asked to do the following in a 2 week period –

1. Regulate emotions: Hold emotions back every time they felt a strong surge
2. Regulate posture: Remind themselves to sit straight every once in a while
3. Regulate food: Regulate what they ate

2 weeks later, the 3 groups were tested on their willpower by squeezing a hand grip as hard as possible for as long as possible. The “sit straight” group did markedly better.

But, when the participants were asked to retake their test after their mental energy was depleted, the 3 groups performed equally poorly.

It turns out that their willpower muscles hadn’t gotten powerful in the past 2 weeks but thanks to reminders to regulate posture, their stamina had increased! So, willpower depletion was a slower process.

Those who followed it up by regularly exercising self control by sitting straight got progressively better in the 2nd test too. Not surprisingly, they did better at other goals too. These students reported more physical activity, less alcohol and cigarettes, cleaner rooms, and healthier food – signs of improving self control.

“Willpower is like a muscle.”
Sketch by EB

So, how do we increase our willpower stamina? Concentrate on changing a habitual behavior –

– Remind ourselves to sit straight every once a while (e,g, set an alarm 3 times a day)
– Use a different hand for routine tasks like using the mouse with your left/weaker hand
– Change speech habits e.g. avoid “like,” “uhm” etc.
– Always keep your room clean and never leave dishes in the sink
– Avoid curses, taboo words and expressions of anger as they take willpower too

Perhaps it’s a skill that is honed or perhaps I unconsciously trained out that feeling in my stomach for many years. 3 times this year, my gut told me I was doing the wrong thing. 3 times this year, it’s intuition proved right and I’ve paid the price.

I’ve learnt to listen to my gut on many a small decision. Over the past couple of years, I’ve learnt that my gut gives me a signal if it feels the food on the plate isn’t right. It’s also serves as a lovely early warning system for an experience or person. Again, unerringly right.

But, when it comes to bigger or longer term decisions, I’ve been consciously overriding it with thought. Most times my thoughts agree with my gut and perhaps I’m faced with a recency bias as I write this; but I can’t recall a single big decision in the past year where my gut has been wrong in making a decision.

In one instance, it’s been repeatedly telling me an engagement doesn’t feel right. It’s high time I learnt to listen to it.

Male and female restroom signs at a hotel I visited recently.

I stopped and looked twice to make sure I was entering the right door. Why make it so darn complex? There are times when innovation is simply unwelcome. Let’s go back to why they were created and make sure we don’t let some artsy design get in the way of it’s original purpose.

Another such example was an attempt at innovation on a restaurant’s lunch menu. It had all sorts of interesting names for it’s savoury crepes and one of them was called “Calamari.” I promptly ordered Calamari and was looking forward to my dose of seafood. Calamari turned out to be a ham and cheese crepe.

And, finally, a positive shout out to Auckland airport. This is brilliant emotionally intelligent signage – we don’t really want to know if a flight is “scheduled,” we just want to know what we must do. “Relax,” “New Time,” etc., fixes that.

Well done Kiwis!