A Learning a Day

As humans, we only understand the value or magnitude of things when they are put into context. A fact like “Michael Phelps has won 22 gold medals” would mean nothing until it is put into perspective. However, when we realize that Michael Phelps alone won more gold medals in each Olympics he participated than 80% of countries and that he has won more medals in 3 Olympics than many countries ever will, we realize that Michael Phelps is a colossus who might never be surpassed.

Sir Alex Ferguson retired after 26 years at the helm of Manchester United yesterday with 13 English Premier League titles, 2 European Cups, 5 FA Cups, and a whole host of other silverware. He has won more Premier League trophies than all English football clubs except Manchester United and Liverpool. As a fan of the club and the man, my only wish was that he had waited for another European Cup before retiring because he would have put the debate around “Who is the greatest football manager of them all?” to rest forever. Now, there still is room for a bit of debate. But, debate or not, we will likely never see the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson again and the world of football will be lesser for it.

There is fervent debate about who would be the next Manchester United manager. The article that describes the difficulty of the job best is here (please excuse the occasional profanity)

Manchester United have had an aura about them for the past 20 years. As John Nicholson in the article observes, “United were always a huge club with huge support going back to the war. Ferguson didn’t make them huge, his achievement was to deliver a level of success commensurate with their status in football.” In his time as Manchester United manager, he has seen more than a 1000 managers come and go. This stability has undoubtedly been a source of the extraordinary success.

A lot hangs on the next managerial appointment. It remains to be seen whether Manchester United will remain a footballing behemoth or whether it will descend to being another football club with supporters’ ceaseless talk about the “glory years.”

Whatever happens, I guess all that matters is that Sir Alex Ferguson will not be in the famous dugout next season. It’s hard to explain the emotions that accompany that… so I will choose to just finish what he might say.. “Bloody hell.”

When a friend first pitches the idea of going on ‘nature walks’ on weekends, “oohs” and “aahs” follow. Everyone is interested. Everyone wants to do it. “Such a romantic idea,” “an opportunity to smell the roses” are the sorts of comments that follow.

Then he follows up with next steps/the reality. Wake up at 6am on a Saturday morning and then walk for 4 hours. Suddenly, everyone has an excuse. The romance seems to wear out pretty darn quick.

Everyone stumbles onto the truth – it’s all romance only in theory. In reality, romance is hard work and we have to explicitly choose to do it. Why take that detour to buy flowers for your wife/girlfriend when you can just show up? Why spend all those months learning the piano when you can laze around watch TV? Why go out of the way to treat a customer/client extra special when you can lean back on the default option?

The beauty of this is that once you put in the hard work, the results are..well..romantic.

Try asking the lady who unexpectedly received flowers..

You’ve probably heard of this famous parable..

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A farmer’s only horse ran away. The neighbors, trying to console him, said, “What terrible news about your horse. What will you do?” But the farmer said, “Bad news, good news… who knows?”

A few days later, the horse returned, leading an entire herd of wild horses. The neighbors exclaimed, “How wonderful!” The farmer replied, “Good news, bad news… who knows?”

The next day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the new horses. The horse threw the son, who broke both legs. The neighbors said, “What a misfortune! Your son won’t be able to work on the farm.” The farmer stood still and said, “Bad news, good news… who knows?”

Within the week, news of a war had broken out. Soldiers arrived in the village, taking new recruits. All the young men were drafted to fight, except for the farmer’s son.

Good news? Bad news? Who knows?

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I received some sage advice as I was deliberating on a decision the other day.

“Is what you are going to do going to be right?” I was asked. “Probably not. Is it going to be bad? We don’t know. Is what you’ve done so far good or bad? We don’t know. It just is.”

“Just keep learning, keep forming opinions, keep testing them out. We have an urge to label things as good or bad. A things isn’t generally good or bad – it just is. We choose what we do about it.”

Sage advice, I thought.

This week’s book learning is part 2 of a 2 part series comprising of 4 of my favorite insights from ‘Free’ by Chris Anderson. (Part 1)

Atoms to Bits:

– Encyclopaedia disruption. The encyclopedia business used to be worth more than a billion dollars with Britannica in the lead. Encarta from Microsoft (CD based) first disrupted it before Wikipedia turned the market upside down.

“Free” often turns billion dollar markets into million dollar markets. Of course, while theoretically billions of dollars is lost in terms of market cap thanks to this disruption, the money moves elsewhere/results in other kinds of gain that can’t be measured e.g. productivity gains in case of Wikipedia.

– One winner. The one other distinguishing feature is that while market share may be split in a non-free market between the top 3 companies, in free markets, the top company holds the key to the money with 90%+ share of the market. (e.g. Google in search advertising)

Insight: The moment an industry moves from transmitting atoms (e.g. boxes of encyclopaedia) to bits – free becomes inevitable. So, what can we do about free? Re-think business models……

Reversible business models:

– Denmark gym example. A gym in Denmark offers a membership program where you pay nothing if you show up once every week. If you miss a week, you pay full price for the month.

The psychology is brilliant – if you go every week, you feel great. If you get busy and miss a week (very high likelihood), you’ll blame yourself instead of blaming the business for charging you, as is normal. The instinct is not to cancel membership but to double your resolve.

Such ‘reversible business models’ are being tested all over –

Example 1: Music clubs in Los Angeles began charging bands to play in the club. They realized that bands value exposure more than cash.

Example 2: In China, some doctors are paid monthly when their patients are healthy. If they are sick, it’s the doctor’s fault.

Sketch by EB

I hope you enjoyed the short series on “Free.” For the next couple of weeks, we will be diving into the world of personal finance..

Let everything you do today take 10 seconds longer – 10 seconds to just revel in the moment.

Look outside the window 10 seconds longer. Lounge around 10 seconds longer. Walk slower, eat slower, and talk slower.

Let’s face it – “smelling the roses” isn’t easy to do every day. Life takes over, we get busy, and time flies.

But, today can be different.

Let today be the day we smell the roses. No need to accomplish anything and no need to solve the world’s problems.

No, today we pause, enjoy the moment, and have a nice day.

All of the serious stuff can be scheduled for tomorrow.

Today, we smell the roses.

To get started, listen to a groovy tune, get a solo dance party started, and enjoy being alive and well..

Assuming you have put in enough effort, here are 3 questions that will help –

1. Can I do it?
Recent research has revealed that pumping ourselves up doesn’t help. What helps is interrogative self talk, i.e., calmly asking ourselves this question and reminding ourselves of the preparation we have put in.

2. Why do I say I can do it?
Revisit your preparation.

3. What will help now?
Brush up a couple of concepts if necessary. Else, listen to music and relax.

And then it’s show time!

As I was humming away to a song I was listening with my headphones on yesterday, I realized something incredible – I was being treated to a private concert. For my ears only.

If this was 500 years ago, I would have had to be royalty to engage one of the top musicians of the day for a private concert. I would have to be amongst the top 1% of monarchs to engage this musician to be at my beck and call. And there would be absolutely no way to round up all the top musicians in the world in one place; Half of them would probably die in their attempts to make it across the oceans.

Today, all I need is a tiny gadget with a couple of headphones. A couple of finger touches later, I have every musician in the world at my beck and call for a one time fee of $0.99 (for a lifetime) – less than a cost of a coffee.

What a privilege..

Do you be a tough boss or a caring one?

Why is it ingrained in us to keep asking the “or” question?

Why can’t you hustle like a mad person when it’s your chance to act AND be patient once you’ve put in the effort?

Why can’t you be the toughest son of a gun as a boss AND still be caring?

You can. You just have to be willing to be open to the possibility.

Metrics are great. As humans, we have a visceral reaction to numbers – we always want to make them better (even at the expense of us doing what we would really like to do).

The beauty of numbers is that they make running away from facts impossible. You can rationalize your reasons for not getting preparation started for an upcoming marathon all day but it’s hard to give those excuses if you have a preparation chart with total preparatory hours marked 0.

The downside of measuring everything is that you can easily beat yourself up so hard for not keeping up with your lofty/optimistic targets and just decide against running the marathon.

The solution? Set metrics but be patient. The more you are attempting long term change, the more patient you must be. Don’t make the mistake of stopping the habit of measurement. Even if it’s 0 hours of preparation this week, that’s okay. Just don’t beat yourself up. Aim for a score of 1 hour next week.

It also helps getting an accountability-buddy/coach/boss for the activity you are working on. Send him/her an update on progress once every week with reasons for your score (good and bad) and keep working on it.

I’ve been applying both of these for my 7 exercise sessions/week new years resolution. If I hadn’t been patient, I would have given up in my first 4 or 5 weeks. But, it’s been getting better gradually (the zero on the 1-Apr week was due to being under the weather) and I’m hopeful it will continue. Looking at this chart helps. I average 4.13/week – a long way away from 7/7..

But, as per the principles – set metrics but be patient.