A Learning a Day

An executive I spoke with once shared a sage piece of career advice – “Don’t swing at every pitch.”

She shared a story about an ambitious colleague who was eager to do more than their current role. In time, an opportunity presented itself. Luckily, this person went to this leader and asked for her advice. She spent a bit of time understanding what he wanted and shared that she didn’t think this was the right fit.

A couple of months later, the same person got another opportunity that completely changed the course of their career.

“Don’t swing at every pitch” is fantastic advice because career transitions are expensive. There are heavy switching costs – so it makes sense that we pay them only when we feel confident that the juice will be worth the squeeze. It pays to be discerning.

Don’t swing at every pitch.

A manager of mine shared a thought once that stuck with me. Every person has a finite number of promotion events in their career. And, in most careers, these events are shared across managers.

So, as a manager, getting to celebrate a teammate’s promotion event is a very special thing.

It is a simple thought that’s stuck with me over the years. I like to go just a bit overboard with promotions. The exercise of putting together a great promotion nomination (some of which even warrant a tear), the moment we share the good news, the celebrations that follow – they’re all special.

And as is the case with many wonderful things in this life, the finite nature of the event makes it extra special.

I experienced a first mid-way through my monthly haircut. I looked down to find clumps of hair with more gray hair than black.

That got me reflecting about the passage of time – from the perspective of haircuts and barber shops over the years.

Funnily, the first thing that crossed my mind was a comment from someone who said I’d grow to experience the importance of a more expensive haircut than my erstwhile 10 pound staple.

I never have. The cheapest haircut around has worked just fine.

I thought about how I resisted haircuts through my teenage years. I also remembered my first semester of college – I refused to cut my hair for those 3 months because the thought of paying 10 Singapore Dollars for a haircut felt preposterous.

I got over all that.

Fast forward to today, I am borderline religious about my once-in-4-week haircut. It has become a family joke.

My mind then flitted to a random collection of ups and downs over the years. Of the many victories over the years, I realized that the most special ones were private victories. Eating better, exercising more, keeping my word more, responding instead of reacting more often, learning to keep my mouth shut and not needing to have the last word more than before, becoming better friends with equanimity, and so on.

These victories got me thinking about the battles I am currently fighting – attempting to reach for books instead of empty calories on my phone for example. Works in progress, we all are.

It occurred to me that I often find myself grateful for the people around me, for experiences I’ve gained, and for things that I value. But perhaps the greatest gift of them all is simply the ability to witness the passage of time.

Gray is good.

I saw a Jeff Bezos clip where he shared an anecdote from Amazon’s early days. He took us back in time to when Amazon started publishing customer reviews for books.

Book publishers didn’t like this. So they suggested that Amazon only publish positive reviews as they thought that’d help Amazon make more money.

To this, Bezos said “I don’t actually believe that [publishing only positive reviews would boost sales], because I don’t think we make money when we sell something. We make money when we help someone make a purchase decision.”

Insightful framing. It speaks to the difference between trying to make a sale to trying to get a customer to buy to helping them make the best purchase decision for them.

It resonated.

“Kung Fu lives in everything we do, Xiao Dre. It lives in how we put on the jacket, how we take off the jacket. It lives in how we treat people. Everything — is Kung Fu.” – Mr. Han, The Karate Kid (2010)

How we do anything is how we do everything…

Ambition is energy. And like all energy, it only works in our favor when it is channeled in the right direction.

The more the energy, the more the desire to let it out on every opportunity that shows up on our path. And because of the long term impact of career decisions, short-term optimizations can have significant unintended long-term consequences.

It is easy to confuse movement with progress.

I learned about a former colleague who passed away recently. It was hard to fathom the impact of his sudden passing on his partner and kids.

Such events never fail to remind me about the gift that is this life and all the privileges I’m blessed to have.

It might be shorter than we think.

So, live, love, laugh, and make it count.

Every once a while in negotiations, when the stakes aren’t all that high, it is nice to compromise a bit to give the other person the feeling they got a good deal.

“Learning is the realization of something that changes how we behave.” | Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis

This definition of learning resonated. To learn and not to do is not to learn.

It is also why, in retrospect, I think this blog should probably have been called – a reminder a day or something along those lines.

Learning – the kind that actually changes behavior – is hard. We take two steps back before we take three steps forward. And it needs us to practice patience and kindness while we stumble through the process.

Daily reminders to do that are a big step forward to making meaningful change.

It just isn’t possible to do it everyday.

Perhaps that’s what the name really does – it reminds me of how little I knew about learning when I started on this journey. :-)

Regularly scheduled spring cleanings/decluttering days are an underrated saving strategy. They accomplish two things at once. They…

(1) …help us understand what we have at home and prevent accidental (repeat) purchases.

(2) …remind us just how little we actually need. When it comes to stuff we own, more is definitely not better.