A Learning a Day

I had written last week about featuring work lessons on Wednesdays and was struggling with suggestions for a name. Thanks to some great comments, I’ve decided to go with ‘Work Hacks Wednesdays.’

As a first post, I thought I’d write about something very easy to implement that has saved me a LOT of heartache.

It is probably fitting that the first work post is email related as email is a big chunk of what we call ‘work’ in today’s information age. We communicate with clients and colleagues via email and yet, we hardly ever undergo any formal training to make sure we know how to deal with it.

My biggest issue with email is that it can often be a bit like text messaging. Instant. Feverish. Uncontrolled. You share an idea. Someone expresses disagreement. You shoot back a reply. Or maybe you are just feeling emotional and write a passionate response to a colleague’s idea which does not go down well on the other side. It’s all too risky since written communication is ALWAYS open to misinterpretation.

And yet, sometimes, we just make mistakes. We hit the send button too fast. The email either has too many typos or is badly structured or is just plain offensive. These mistakes happen from time to time. It’s hard to be at our best as often as we email.

No wonder these errors are called BSAK errors i.e. Between Seat and Keyboard Errors.

The Hack: Set a 2 minute delay timer on all sent emails on your Outlook/emailing software. (If you are using outlook, here’s how you do it)

I started with a 3 minute delay timer 3 years or so ago. Thanks to this wonderful little hack, I stopped myself from sending many emails I would have regretted, edited many emails that would not have gone well and even just quit writing an email and picked up the phone. Over time, I brought this down to 2 minutes and as of the last few months, I feel I am disciplined enough to do just fine with a 1 minute timer. I don’t think I will ever remove it simply because the potential risk is very high.

(Of course, sometimes I do have to turn off the rule to make sure emails get across immediately but it’s temporary.)

I am not going to over sell the point. It’s a very simple hack and one that has added immense value. I hope you find it useful too.

If you have ever checked out this blog’s Facebook page, you might have noticed the ‘Good Morning’ quotes series i.e. one quote every morning on week days.

Sending quotes out every morning has been a truly uplifting experience. I pick the quote of the day myself every morning and they are often a reflection of my mood or what I need the most that morning. Some of these I manage to remember, apply in my life and make habits of, some others inspire me to no end and there are a few that I strive to apply but haven’t succeeded in doing so as yet.

One of them is – ‘The essence of Zen is doing one thing at a time.’

If you were working on something with me, I would tell you up front that I cannot multi task. Well, I can.. with bad results. Yet, despite this knowledge, I struggle with this idea of doing one thing at a time.

The good news is that I am more aware of this these days. Every time I attempt to multi task (which is often), a voice in my head reminds me of this quote. Once in a while, I actually stop doing two things at once and focus wholly on one thing alone. It just doesn’t happen often enough.

Gotta keep ‘do’ing.

‘Do or do not. There is no try.’

This week’s book learning is from ‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely.

Dan was on the website of The Economist and it offered him 3 subscription options.

Internet only – $59

Print only – $125

Print + Internet – $125

He was fascinated by the options. So, he went back to Sloan and asked 100 students what they would choose. The results were 16% for ‘Internet’ only, 0% for ‘Print Only’ and 84% for the ‘Print + Internet’ option.

Now, he decided to remove the ‘Print only’ option that nobody had chosen and conducted the same poll again. And this time, the results were 68% for the internet option and 32% for the print + internet option! So, 64% had decided that the ‘Print + Internet’ option was no longer good enough!

What changed?

Nothing rational, of course. The mere presence of the ‘decoy’ and the fact that we like to make decisions based on comparisons changed everything!

So, when our real estate agent shows us 3 homes – a colonial style home with a good roof, a colonial style home with a bad roof and a contemporary, we are being nudged to choose the colonial style home with a good roof.

Similarly, high price entrées on the restaurant boost revenues for the restaurant even if nobody buys them because the second highest priced entrée sells!

Fascinating.. Do you have any examples for when this happened to you?

Here’s to keeping a watch out for ‘decoys’ when we are out buying this week!

While it’s still Saturday in Hawaii, I thought I’d get to writing a short post before I get started on my Sunday here in Singapore.

Yesterday was ‘one of those’ days that capped ‘one of those’ weeks. And I don’t mean ‘one of those’ in a bad way. It’s just been manic and I’ve barely felt like I’ve had a moment to breathe.

It’s always nice being back here in Singapore and yesterday was my own version of ‘Baby’s day out’ in Singapore meeting old friends, re-connecting with some others and also meeting some new ones over lunch, dinner and a spot of bowling. It ended with a night of Charades and Pictionary that went on till the sun rose. Now I’m looking forward to catching up on sleep the next few days. ;-)

Such days don’t come often and are a real treat when they do.

And that’s that Windows Live Writer would be the post of the day.

I’ve been using this wonderful software for a few months now. It makes writing blog posts an absolute pleasure thanks to a very simple user interface, a wonderful choice of fonts and an ability to customize your posts with ease.

The biggest benefit of WLW is the ability to schedule blog posts for the future. I have been testing the feature over the course of the week and it works very well. (The posts on Tuesday and Wednesday were pre-scheduled). I had been doing it to figure out if I could still keep up with one post a day while being off the grid on a trek in the mountains in June. And now I have no excuses..

Additionally, it’s something I can do when I foresee a busy next day to ensure I don’t have to scramble for a post giving a different time zone (always Hawaii ;-)) as an excuse!

Have a great Sunday all!

As I was laying half awake yesterday, my mind drifted to a rag picker I’d seen a couple of days ago.

As I lay about in my comfortable bed, I thought about what he must have been doing at that time – probably laying curled up on the side walk. The next day would be another day spent searching for scraps.

On the other hand, here I was – lying down on my comfortable bed, wondering about petty problems in comparison and of course, thinking about what life might be on the other side.

The obvious question came about soon enough ‘What have I done to deserve such luxury?’

Soon enough, I realized it’s important I reframe the question a bit.

‘What can I do with this luxury to make it worth the while?’

The path forward became clearer.

There’s a lot of work to be done.

I often think of the line about goal keepers ‘A goal keeper is only as good as he is on his worst days.’

It’s a brilliant line and so very true. I am sure you’ve watched one of football, hockey or ice hockey in your life and in any of these games, the stars are typically the goal scorers or goal creators. Every player goes through ups and downs (they are humans, after all). And teams can sustain great performance even with some of their stars going through temporary droughts. But, if their goal keeper has a few bad days, it really is ‘end of story’.

The greatest goal keepers are those who are pretty good even on their worst days and inspired on their best. They may easily be overshadowed by a star striker on their best days but on their worst days, you can be sure their mistakes will make headlines.

How different is that from our lives?

We always hear talk about tests of adversity and how people would do if the world as we know it came crashing down. My observation is that we always seem to come out of those kind of crises alright. We summon enough will power, determination and generally do what it takes to make it out. We generally bounce back. We survive. That’s how we’re wired.

That doesn’t say much about a person though, in my view at least.

In my eyes, the difference makers are the ones who consistently handle the small blips incredibly well.

How do you do when you are having a blip? Probably most importantly, what do you do when you recognize you are having a blip?

Here’s an idea – I see blogs for start up CEOs, many blog posts for big company CEO’s on places like Harvard Business Review (“Have you tested your strategy lately?”), a few blogs for those amidst their careers but hardly ever see blogs or posts dedicated to juniors. Granted, there’s the occasional post about lessons from a great internship that I’ve seen go viral. But that’s about it.

And given roughly 0.000001% of us become Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg in our late 20s, that leaves a whole bunch of us still learning the ropes at work as junior resources, rising up the ranks and taking on bigger responsibilities. And I know from my own ongoing learning experience that I would have loved to have simple actionable ideas that I could take to work.

So, that’s why I’ve decided to give WLFJ Wednesdays a shot. WLFJ = Work Lessons From a Junior.

In my case, this happens to be in a niche topic. Armed with less than 2 years of full time experience, 3 years of internship experiences in university – I have committed enough acts of stupidity to feel I’m in good place to focus on one actionable learning for us to take to work as juniors. ;-) Besides, what better way for me to re-learn?

Answering a few questions that might come up.

Isn’t the blog already about learnings from a junior? Sort of. They are often more generic. A lot of these could potentially moonlight as work learnings. But, then again, maybe not. I’m excited to talk about some of the basics that are taken for granted where juniors are concerned- emailing, meetings, social interaction with superiors etc etc

Why am I doing this? Two reasons – to learn myself and to share what I’ve learnt.

What about the audience of the blog that aren’t juniors? I’m hoping we will continue to have different perspectives in the comments and I’m hoping I will be told I am wrong, and corrected from time to time.

Who is a junior? Great question. I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. Some of these learnings may apply to folks with a ton of great experience and some may not. If you can relate to it and learn from it as well, great. If you can’t, I hope you will share your point of view on how I can think about a problem/situation differently.

Those questions aside, I need your help.

Firstly, are there any specific topic requests?

Secondly, any cool name suggestions? If you have suggestions that are a tad cooler than WLFJ, I would much appreciate that.

Of late, I’m working very hard on a simple idea  – crack a joke when I’m annoyed.

These days, I’m more aware than ever before on when my buttons are most likely to be pushed and many a time, I see it coming. Yet, I still let my annoyance show.

I don’t believe in screaming and yelling when annoyed. They don’t help any situation. I end up either letting out a sarcastic comment or just resort to expressing my annoyance by repeatedly telling the other person why I’m so incredibly annoyed. Neither of these are helpful either.

This happens most often when I’m devoid of sleep or just mentally tired.

The other big source of annoyance is when I feel hurt at a soft spot i.e. an insecurity covered duly by my ego. I’m able to catch these situations easier these days and let them go. Nevertheless, there is the rare occasion when something hits a soft spot when I’m tired! (i.e. a double wham!)

I have great admiration for those who manage to shake off annoyances with wit and move on. So, of late, I’ve been working on a simple approach – crack a joke or find a funny quote when I’m annoyed. I reckon my success rate is around 10%. But it’s one of those things I’m working to get better at.

Here’s to a sense of humour, a major defence for minor troubles!

‘Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is.’