Mike Sturm

credit: Oleg Laptev on Unsplash

And 5 Ways to be more influential

In some way shape or form, we all want to be influential. Whether our desired sphere of influence is merely our family and friends, or an entire market — to be able to influence is a valuable skill. But for as valuable as it is, it’s also highly misunderstood.

You see, our idea of influence is out of whack. We have too narrow a definition of what influence is, and of how it works. Because of that, we have no way to get better at becoming more influential. As a result, we often find ourselves at a loss as to how to improve our ability to influence.

My mission in this piece of writing is twofold:

• To correct the way that we think about influence, revealing a more nuanced and useful concept of it.
• To provide a few sensible and effective habits to help in becoming more influential.

How to Think Differently About Influence

Most of us operate with a much too narrow idea of what influence is, and how to exercise it. We tend to think of influence as the power to get others to think or act in the way we would like them to. This is only a small part of what real influence is. But because we have this narrow view of the concept, we often fail to recognize influence when it’s happening.

Part of the problem is a failure to think about influence as either an indirect and long-term phenomenon. Influence does not have to be direct — that is, it does not have to, and often isn’t directly traceable to one person. That is, after all, the power of compounding interest; a few small, nondescript actions now snowball naturally into a big impact down the road. In many cases, those initial small actions are barely noticeable from the viewpoint of large change over time.

Also, it is entirely possible that you can get someone to believe something once or twice based on your particular dynamic with them. But if at any point you give them reason not to trust you, the power of influence is severely diminished. So while there was once influence in the short term, it becomes unsustainable for any significant period of time. And in many cases, the more someone is aware of influence, the power of said influence becomes weaker.

Another problem with our view of influence is our tendency to think about it as asymmetric. We tend to think that influence is an act of one person asserting their will over another. I believe X and you get me to believe Y, or I’m not sure what I believe, and you convince me of Y. You’ve influenced me. But that’s much too simple a way to think about influence.

The martial art of Aikido is practiced by millions of people around the world, including those in law enforcement and the military. What makes Aikido a go-to martial art is its counter intuitive approach to conflicts. Aikido is all about using your opponent’s force against them. Rather than trying to counter their roundhouse kick with an equally forceful block or counter-attack, Aikido encourages you to allow your opponent to forcefully attack, but then use that force against them.

In a way, Aikido is actually more about allowing your opponent and their momentum to mold you, until you are molded into a shape that allows them to defeat themselves. When you realize that force can be met with flexibility, and that momentum can be leveraged, you gain a great deal of power. I think the problem is that we don’t recognize power when it doesn’t fit into our standard model. The same is true for influence.

Influence can be very similar to fighting in martial arts. There is force behind what people already think or feel. To attempt to counter that force with your own often results in the other party becoming rigid and on guard. It also results in you having wasted your energy, and losing most — if not all — of the other party’s willingness to listen.

How to Be More Influential

Okay, so influence is not asymmetrical, and it’s not a direct or short-term phenomenon. But how does that affect how we should work to become more influential? Quite simply, it should make influence a hell of a lot easier. Since influence is not asymmetrical, you can leverage that to change your approach to influencing.

Here, it helps to think like the Aikido practitioner; go with the momentum, and use it.

The simplest way to be more influential is to be more influence-able. You read that right. If you want to have more influence over more people, you need to be willing to be influenced more yourself, and make it clear to others.

Influence isn’t about making others think and act as you’d like them to. Rather, influence is the ability to align thoughts and realities — whether that happens by changing your thoughts or others’, or by changing the realities.

Your Influence = how influence-able you are X the extent of your network

So how do you do that? Here are a few suggestions to help.

1. Listen with the intent to understand.
   Often times, those who are trying to influence listen only in order to talk more, or barely listen at all. But that kind of listening doesn’t allow you to be influenced at all. Any kind of receptivity that others have to you will be short-lived or quite small. If you can listen with an intent to draw a vivid picture of where the other person is coming from — how they see the world — you can establish a point at which to use their thoughts and feelings, their momentum, in order to have greater influence.
2. Give without expectation.
   There is a phenomenon in the psychological literature called the principle of reciprocity. It basically says that (all other things being equal) when you do something for someone, they tend to feel an obligation to do something for you. It’s not a law of nature, mind you, but it points to a somewhat reliable force that underlies social interactions. You give some, and generally people feel the need to give back. If you give and it’s clear that you don’t expect anything in return, people tend to take notice. It builds the kind of reputation that people give more credence to.
3. Be sincere and understated.
   The concept of authenticity is thrown around quite a bit these days, and I can see why: people respond well to people who are authentic. But I have had a lot of negative experience with people claiming to be “authentic”. Such people have gone through great pains to project a more idealized and flamboyant version of themselves (usually as they’d like to be, but not as they are). So I am not quite sure what authentic means anymore.
    
   I prefer to use the term “sincere” instead. Sincerity is simply presenting yourself in a humble, respectful, and truthful way. It is to present your beliefs, habits, and accomplishments in a way that could never come off as bragging, and which indicates true humility. We’ve almost all met someone like this, and if we’re not extremely self-absorbed, we’ve likely been moved by such sincerity. Sincere people are influential; maybe not in the short-run, but most definitely in the long-run.
    
   And here’s a hint: if someone is actually being sincere, they won’t have to tell you they’re sincere.
4. Be ready, willing, and able to change your mind.
   There is nothing more aggravating than someone who simply won’t change their mind. At best, they come off as ignorant, and at worst, they come off as disrespectful. Neither trait allows for any sustained influence. If you are ready, willing, and able to change your mind when presented with new information that conflicts with your ideas, people will listen when you present your ideas. They will know that said ideas are well thought-out, and have stood the test of scrutiny.
5. Don’t get attached to desired outcomes.
   Here’s a news flash: plan as you might, things rarely turn out as you either planned or hoped. That being the case, it will always serve you well to have less of an emotional investment in particular outcomes. There are times where we become so attached to a goal — and stay so focused on steering things toward it — that we fail to see the opportunities that present themselves when things go off the rails a bit. When the planned path diverges a bit, it can be a chance to re-evaluate, and realize new potential gains. That spirit is contagious, and can get a lot of people wanting to work with you. The opposite — tunnel vision and exclusion of spontaneity — can push many people away.

The Short Principle of Influence

Influence is more nuanced than we think. It’s not about power in any conventional sense of that word. It’s not about having an audience per se. It’s also not about persuasion — at least not as much as we tend to think.

You can be influential without even telling others what to do. In fact, it’s more likely that you will be if you don’t. Simply being the type of person that others enjoy working with, and that people respect intensely makes it easier to get things done.

There really is no shortcut to this. It needs to be cultivated over time. But the good news is, you can start right now, and it doesn’t matter how many people follow you on Instagram.

photo credit: Alejandro Alvarez on Unsplash

On the project of “personal growth” — what are we trying grow, how do we measure, and what do we do?

I once worked with a guy who was in charge of a large amount of people in my organization. I pitched a project to him that had a lot of moving parts, and a heck of a lot of uncertainty. His first question was “what do you measure to know how much progress you’re making?”.

At the time, I didn’t have a ready answer. I think I came up with one eventually (or the project died; I can’t remember which). But that conversation left a mark on me. When you are going to devote time and energy (and probably money) to some undertaking, you should have an idea of how to measure progress.

So for those of us who have undertaken the lifelong project of “personal growth”: what is it that we’re trying to grow?

Don’t laugh, the answer will not come as easily as you think. And any answer you come up with quickly will yield at least two more questions.

What Are We Measuring?

As best as I can tell, there are a few candidates that most of us have in mind when we talk about “personal growth”. These include, but aren’t limited to:

• The Goodness of our Life (however broad that may be)
• Happiness (but not pleasure?)
• Emotional Strength (as in how much we can endure?)
• Productivity (simply as output?)
• Relationships (quality, not quantity?)

Until I started seriously thinking about this question — what we’re measuring — I fell into the same trap as so many others. I assumed I knew what it is I was looking to “grow”. But now that I am thinking about it, it isn’t quite clear.

Why Is This A Problem?

There may be a few of you reading this who don’t understand what the problem is. After all, if you’re meditating, working out, gaining muscle, losing fat, getting promotions, traveling, and having children (or whatever) — what’s the problem?

Well the problem is this: we humans tend to find ourselves quite often chasing the wrong things — both in the short and long term. We are really good at misidentifying what we think will make our life a good one. I have heard enough stories about very accomplished people feeling empty, insecure, and regretful to know that we are often mistaken about what we ought to be growing in our lives — even if we passionately pursued something for years.

Suffice it to say: there are many types of growth you can achieve. But unless you’re growing the right things, and you know how to measure changes in those things, you’re just groping faithfully in the dark until (perhaps) you find something that feels good.

The Cost of Growth is Growth

I’ve been alive for just over 35 years, and one thing that has become abundantly clear to me is this: the cost of growth is growth. Which is to say, the cost of growth in one area is growth in some other area. This is nothing new, really. It’s simply opportunity cost; a basic principle of business, but applied to your personal life.

So the trick to personal growth is to choose the right thing to grow — because the cost of that growth is giving up growth in some other area. And if you choose wisely, you will have given up the opportunity to grow one thing that doesn’t matter to you, and thus pursued growth in something that does.

The basic activity of life is trade-offs. You are continuously trading one thing for another. Every one “yes” is a “no” to infinitely many other possible opportunities. We often act like that’s not true, and it might be the source of a lot of our anxiety and frustration. But our refusal to act in accordance with reality does not change it.

Every “yes” is a million “no”s. We are destroying more opportunities than we ever create. But we must make peace with that fact. When you can know that life is a series of trade-offs, and arm yourself with a way to happily make those trade-offs, that’s a huge step toward a good life.

You’re the Measurer and the Measured

The unique thing about personal growth is that you are both the person measuring and the thing being measured. That makes assessing growth particularly challenging. But it also means that you’re in the unique position to be an expert on how you’re doing.

But just because you have the opportunity to be the expert on your own life doesn’t mean you actually fill that role. To truly assess your own growth requires the ability to step back from yourself — from the activity of your mind, and your ego — and honestly look at how you’re doing. It should be no surprise then that mindfulness may just be the most useful tool for personal growth.

Mindfulness is simply the ability to view your own mind objectively. It’s the ability to step back and see what is going on in your mind and in your life — without immediate judgment and emotion. It’s a dispassionate examination of your emotions, desires, and thoughts. If ever there was a better way to hold a ruler up to one’s life, I have yet to find it.

No matter what it is you’re measuring in your life — whether you’re looking to eliminate or enrich something in it — you need to be able to measure how you’re doing. You simply cannot do that reliably without mindfulness.

As my old colleague said so long ago: we have to know what we’re measuring and what measurements are important, before we can grow in any meaningful way. When it comes to personal growth, those measurements need not be quantifiable (i.e., numbers); rather, they can be qualifiable (i.e. “I feel less anxious than yesterday”). The only requirement is that measurement be mindful, and that we treat ourselves with respect as we measure how we’re doing.

Photo credit: Samuel Austin on Unsplash

On the Humble Purpose and Understated Benefits of Meditation, and How to Do a Minimal Viable Practice

Humans have been doing some form of meditation for thousands of years. But it seems like only recently that we’ve started to warm up to the idea that it’s a form of beneficial exercise for the mind — much like running or push-ups are for the body. To a certain extent, I can understand why we held out. We wanted data, we wanted peer-reviewed, double-blind, university-published analysis. We wanted the science!

Well, the science is in, and it shows a whole bunch of data to support the idea that meditation is beneficial. But I’m not necessarily interested in that science. Because at the end of the day, there is only one person whose data on meditation matters: you. And that data is easy to collect. You need only sit down and relax for a few minutes.

But here’s the thing. The data that represent the benefits of meditation are subtle. After meditating, you may feel just about the same as before you sat down. In some cases, you can meditate for a week or two, and still feel pretty much the same as you did before you started. But somewhere along the line — if you keep doing it — you pick up on something subtle: the space. And that space is the wellspring from which all the other benefits of meditation flow.

The Space is the Point

The main benefit of meditating is not enlightenment (whatever that actually means). In fact, any expectations beyond simply being present during this meditation session are actually antithetical to the practice of meditation itself.

The point of meditating — regardless of the type — is to to carve out a bit of space between stimulus and response — between thought and action. A little bit of space there can be the difference between regret and contentment. It can be the difference between achieving your goals and derailing your plans. It can be the difference between an open and caring relationship, and a toxic rivalry.

Even further down the rabbit-hole, meditation is about creating another kind of space: space between your thoughts and your concept of self. We each have thousands of thoughts and emotions per day, which means there are thousands of opportunities each day to make the mistake of identifying who we are with some thought in our head. But doing so is ludicrous. We each have so many conflicting thoughts each day that identifying with any two can put us at odds with ourselves numerous times each day.

But when you meditate, you carve out space between your concept of who you are, and whatever happens to be in your head at the time. You come to see thoughts for what they are — passing things that rise and fall away. They are things that just happen to fall into your mind — the way a feather happens to fall into a pond. But we would never think that the feather is an important part of the pond’s identity, so why think that random thought are part of ours?

Creating this space helps you get to better know your thoughts and thought patterns. Unless you have meditated for any period of time, you will be surprised by how often you think of things without even being aware of what you’re thinking of, or that you’re even thinking at all. And even thought you don’t often realize what’s going on in your mind throughout the day, your body does, and your subconscious mind does. And those two get exhausted — many times well before you’ve even put down your cup of coffee in the morning.

Even a Little is Quite Good

Just like with exercise, simply doing a little bit of meditating is still very beneficial. So however hectic your schedule is, you can fit in 5 minutes, or even 1 minute of just sitting, watching what is going on in your mind, and letting it settle down.

In the same vein of a little going a long way, there’s also this: mindfulness is not a competition. The point is not to get a good time, or lift a certain amount. There is no keeping track, no measurement of progress in any formal way. There is only sitting, observing, and creating space. You then carry that space with you during the day, and eventually, it keeps you from reacting so quickly and so thoughtlessly to things. It keeps you from treating people poorly. It keeps you from getting swept up in negative thought patterns and going down an anxiety rabbit-hole.

Meditation will never keep you from doing those negative things completely. In fact, it may only make a small dent in those negative habits. But a small dent — multiplied by each day — makes a big impact. I’m willing to put up a few minutes per day to realize that compounding benefit. How about you?

The Minimal Viable Meditation

Meditation is simple. You can do it now, and do it in the same way that old pros do it. You can receive the benefits as soon as you are ready to. Here’s a quick mindfulness meditation instruction set.

1. Sit down anywhere where you are comfortable, but not so comfortable that you’ll fall asleep.
   This can be literally anywhere — a plane, a bus, your chair at home, etc.
2. With either eyes closed or not, take a breath in, and exhale, while focusing on what it feels like as the breath is happening.
3. For however many minutes you decide to meditate, do the following:
   – let your breath simply happen on its own (as much as you can)
   – fully concentrate on your breathing as an observer, but not controller of it
   – when your mind wanders (which it will, very quickly) simply note what it’s doing, and simply guide it back to focusing on the breath going in and out.

That’s it — 3 steps. It’s just about sitting quietly, trying to focus on your breath, and when your mind inevitably departs from that focus to some random thought, gently (and without judgment) guide it back to the breath. That’s the practice. It is simple, but not easy. Your mind will wander — every time. But every once in a while, it won’t. When that happens, the feeling is truly outstanding — and it helps your mind and body become better conditioned to just be at peace.

But here’s the sneaky benefit of meditation. That stillness and the joy that comes with it is good, but fleeting. You can’t expect it or try to hold onto it, because then you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. The sneaky benefit is that you’re gathering data on your mind. That data is helping you to draw a conclusion about the relationship you have with your thoughts, and the conclusion is this: you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts are turbulent, contradictory, fleeting, and uncontrollable. You are just their vehicle, and you don’t have to follow where they lead. That knowledge alone — when truly believed and acted upon — is the real benefit of meditation, and it is worth any amount of minutes sitting.

image c/o the author

Fear, Failure, Falling, and How We Should Think About Achievement

My son recently turned 1 year old, and like many who reach that age, he has learned to walk. I vaguely remember watching my daughter (who is now 4) do the same thing a few years ago, but this time around I made it a point to pay particular attention to the process — because it fascinates me.

What fascinates me is that it’s crazy that a child can learn to walk at that young of an age. I mean, think about it: a 1 year-old can’t really communicate — so talking them through the process is mostly out of the question. And even if we could communicate with them — try to tell the child how to walk — what would we even say? By the time we’re parents, we’ve been walking for so long, we do it mostly without thinking. So there’s not much we could give in the way of guidance. Basically, the child is on their own to figure it out, with adults standing by to help the child up when he or she falls. And yet, they try, fail, and eventually, succeed.

When the child first learns to walk, they do it poorly at first, like my son did. They take a few steps (at best) and then fall clumsily. But they get up and keep doing it. They aren’t daunted by immediate, consistent, and sometimes painful failure. And because of that — eventually — they succeed. They walk, and then after a while, walking becomes second nature.

Frustration and Falling

That process of watching my son learn to walk — watching him literally fall on his ass again and again gave me pause. I watched as he tried to get up on two feet for the first time, and fell. I watched that happen over and over, until he gave up and decided to simply crawl to where he was trying to go.

But as he continued to try walking, there came a time when it seems like he crossed a line. Whereas he had been thus far preferring to crawl — but would walk at times when he felt ambitious — over time he began to walk by default, and crawling only after he got frustrated with falling. All it took was repetition — repeating the unsteady novice walking mechanics he was just now trying out. It looked terrible, he fell constantly, and would get visibly frustrated. But he kept repeating the process regardless. Each time, he would get slightly better. The repetition gave him confidence, and the confidence made him simply do this new thing more and more.

And within the space of a month, the little guy is walking nearly all the time. He gets noticeably better every day. And he’s clearly pleased with himself. It’s the very picture of steady and gradual success through hard work.

I’ve watched my young son learn to walk, and his approach to doing it has given me insight into the mistaken way that I’ve come to view success — and how it has made me procrastinate even more than I used to.

Procrastination Is Fear, All the Way Down

My son’s progress was so gradual and so slight, that each time he tried to walk, I would think of how far he had to go — how many more consecutive steps he would have to take before he was doing what I do on a daily basis. But that is not the view that he took. His view was simple: get up, try walking, fall, get up and try again — repeat until exhausted.

I noticed during this process that adulthood and the modern celebration of overnight startup success has badly disfigured my concept of achievement into one that barely corresponds with reality. Some successes are quick and exhilarating, sure. But most success is neither of those things. Most success is slow, difficult, and punctuated with frustration and determination. The elation — by comparison — is short-lived, a blip on the radar.

That view of success as quick and exhilarating has a continued effect on how much I procrastinate. I expect quick success, and so I don’t even factor in the expectation of messy failures in the beginning. Instead, I envision that for whatever task I take on, I’ll be some sort of immediate savant — managing to do things near-perfectly as I stumble my way into a perfect dance of genius and creativity. How utterly delusional. But can you blame me? It is literally all I see around me on social media.

It’s become clear to me that much of the procrastination I do is because of two things: 1) I expect quick and elegant success at whatever I attempt, and 2) I simply don’t know how to approach the task at hand. It’s daunting because I don’t really know the terrain, and thus I don’t know how to navigate it. Because of that, I lack confidence. My lack of confidence translates into a lack of action. And I put all the hard and messy work off.

The Lesson

As I watched my son progress from crawling, to standing up, to stumbling about, something became incredibly clear to me about my own inadequate approach to doing things: I am not willing to stumble, and so I procrastinate. I acted out of fear. Actually, to be more accurate, I failed to act because of fear. And that’s part of what makes procrastination so insidious: procrastination makes you fail to act out of fear, until there is no time left, and then you must act out of fear — fear of the penalties for not doing the thing. It’s fear all the way down.

But my son wasn’t afraid. He fell down, again and again. He banged his head, his arm, his leg, and every other body part, but that didn’t faze him. He kept going, and eventually he got much better. Now, he’s walking — still unsteadily — but the progress is clear. In a few more months, walking will be close to a second nature to him. He will have succeeded.

His job will be to keep walking, and leverage that momentum to learn other things that will help him grow. My job will be to remember that even the simplest thing we as humans learn — walking — took a long time and a lot of pain and frustration to master. It involved starting with little knowledge and confidence, and building both of them slowly. If I can take that same approach into everything else I do, it should make for a much better road toward being productive.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Thoughts About Building Character in the Modern Era

When you die, who will attend the funeral? And what — if anything, will they have to say during your eulogy?

In his best-selling book The Road to Character, David Brooks discusses two kinds of things that we self-help consumers are trying to improve upon:

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.

Brooks’s point is not to be overlooked. In this world of fast-paced innovation, disruption, and self-improvement crazes, we often end up merely paying lip service to character, rather than focusing on it. Self-improvement tends to be thought of in terms of productivity, resilience, and the classic résumé virtues. Even when we talk about something almost in the realm of the eulogy virtues — like emotional intelligence — it tends to be in the context of beefing up our résumé virtues. It’s not that we don’t mean well, we just get distracted by the constant call to be better workers in the marketplace.

So here’s a suggestion to help ensure that you stay focused on your eulogy virtues — on building and maintaining the kind of character that you can be proud of: focus on the small moments.

The Big Power of Small Things

The things that have the biggest impact on our lives are often very small. The human mind doesn’t remember — can’t remember — a whole year, week, day, or month at once. And that makes sense, because we don’t experience those things all at once.

Though we may talk about people we love and admire in terms of their abstract character traits, the most powerful and moving memories we have about people are specific and concrete. Though we may aim for the grand and grandiose trips and destinations, it is the small memory of having coffee on the balcony of somewhere as the sun rises — with someone close — that we recall with the most fondness.

All we have are moments, because that’s all we live — moments. A life is made up of moments.

A person’s character, then, is also made up of moments. How they acted at some moment, what they did for others at some moment, how they made others feel at some moment.

Our emotions about people are wrapped up not in abstract traits, but in specific emotions — felt at specific times. When we talk about those we admire, or those who we really miss, we talk about specific memories, specific moments and the emotions that we felt — and still feel. A legacy is built in moments.

So while it is helpful to think about your eulogy virtues, and to try to develop traits like compassion and mindfulness — it’s more helpful to focus on the power of small moments. The great thing is that the next moment — your next chance to have a great impact on someone— is right around the corner. Even if you haven’t been working on bettering yourself for the past year, you can do something small in the moment — not too long from now! It’s not a lofty goal where you have to plan and enact steps and discipline.

Two Traits

Of course, that sounds poetic and motivating, but how do you make it happen? How do you get more of those small moments? First of all, there’s no need for more of those moments; it’s not about quantity. Secondly, you can’t really create those moments.

Think about some of the most impactful moments that you had with someone else — where you felt a deep sense of connection to them, and felt like they were showing you genuine goodness. Were any of those moments meticulously planned and choreographed? I doubt it. What most likely happened was that you and that person found yourselves in a candid moment — when there was no plan or script — when hearts were bared to one another, and vulnerability and humanity was revealed. That’s when the most genuine of smiles and laughs, and the most cathartic of tears come out. And those times cannot be prepared and practiced.

If there’s any trick to having more of those small impactful moments, it would probably be this: be open and be present. 
Be open to whatever comes along, and be open to whoever comes along. And whatever or whoever does come along, be present for it.

It is really those two attitudes, or ways of operating, that make it possible to cultivate the whole range of eulogy virtues. If you live with an open mind and open heart, and you are truly and fully present for the moments that come along in life, you create fertile ground for all sorts of great memories and connections to grow.

“He lived with an open heart and kept an open mind, and offered them both up as present for others in the moment” — that’s not a bad start to a damned good eulogy.

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Simplifying Goal-Setting and Decision-making for a More Effective Motivation

Simply changing the way that you look at a problem can drastically change how effective you are at solving it. As Steven Covey reminds us in his 7 Habits: the map is not the territory. When you change the way you look at something, an entirely new set of possible actions opens up to you — a new approach — that you didn’t have before. Often, a change in view — a new map — is the first and most effective step in effectively navigating the territory.

So here’s a new map for the way you approach the territory of managing your goals and working toward them day to day. For lack of a better way to describe it, I call it the “Servant and Master” approach.

Two Kinds of Work, Two Kinds of People

One of the most useful things you can do when it comes to productivity is to set aside different kinds of time for different kinds of work. During the industrial revolution, we made huge gains by doing this in factories. It’s fairly easy to do when work is physical in nature.

But with the advent of knowledge work, all of our work has washed together into general “stuff to do”. It all looks the same on our giant to-do lists, so we just start working and plug along until we stop, and whatever is done is done. But the truth is, some work can’t be done effectively alongside other kinds of work.

The state of mind for doing strategic planning is different than the state of mind required to comb through data for details and patterns. The state of mind for responding to a difficult email is different than the one for pulling together reports for a presentation.

As knowledge workers, we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having to be both masters and servants. We can’t simply come in to work each day with a prepared list of things to do, and simply get to work. We have to first plan what we should be doing — which means looking at values, priorities, goals, and deadlines — then we have to actually do the work.

Essentially, we’re in the position of having to do two different types of work. David Marquet (author of Turn This Ship Around!) lays out these two kinds of work — Red Work and Blue Work:

Red work is work that is fundamentally about reducing variability. Red work is the kind of work we are very familiar with. It is a result of the industrial revolution. Red work is about doing. It is about avoiding errors. It is about execution. When we say, “We come to work to do our jobs,” that is a legacy of this long history of red work.

Blue work is fundamentally about embracing variability. Blue work is thinking work, not just doing. Blue work is about achieving excellence, not just avoiding errors. Blue work is about decision making, not just executing our tasks. It’s almost as if we’re being asked to be two different people. That’s why — though it may sound crazy — we need to approach our work as if we were two different people.

Two types of work, two types of people. It sounds odd, but makes sense. So what if you actually approached your time and work as if you were two different people?

The Two Kinds of Time

As weird as it may sound, it can be quite effective to treat yourself as (at least) two different people — based on the kind of work you need to do.

At the very least, separate your schedule in to master time, and servant time.

Master time is the time where you make decisions — big ones. It’s the kind of time that requires thinking and reflection. It’s the time where you think about things like:

• how you’ll spend your time
• what your goals and values are
• what habits you should develop and get rid of
• your operating principles

Master time is usually in long blocks, so that you have the necessary space to think things through thoroughly — without much interruption or pull from other things.

Servant time is the time when you do that stuff that we’re most comfortable calling work. It’s the time where you just move down the task list and check them off as done. You send the quick emails, make the quick calls, pull the reports, analyze some data, and so on. It may require thought, yes, but it’s not the kind of wide-open, second-order thought that master time uses.

Servant work is the kind of work that you can end up getting lost in — getting in the zone. It’s easier to get into what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls a “flow state”. It happens when the task at hand is undoubtedly aligned with your goals and — as he puts it — you find yourself “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Flow time is servant time. You’re serving your goals, you’re fully vested and fully trusting. You lose yourself in the work, and do it not for your own motives, but for its own sake. That’s servant time.

A few notes on the differences between the roles and times:

• The servant only makes decisions by referring to the rules the master has set out.
  This may sound like an unnecessary constraint at first, but if you look back on the worst cases of procrastination you’ve battled, they are likely due to a lack of trust in your plan or commitment. You have to trust the plans and goals you set as your own master, or you will be paralyzed by second-guessing. Just trusting yourself and doing what you laid out for yourself is actually very liberating — so long as you actually do it!
• The servant shouldn’t disobey or question the master during servant time, but can record questions for future master time. 
  During servant time, your job is to work the plan that you made during master time, and just trust it. But you didn’t always plan things perfectly, of course, so there’s a check and balance. During master time, the servant can bring concerns to the master, and perhaps revise principles, goals, and time allocations for the next period of servant time.

To use another analogy, master time is when you chart the course. Servant time is when you steer the ship. Of course, some quick adjustments will have to be made from time to time, but those should be exceptions, not the rule. Chart a course each few days or week, and stick to it.

Working the System

So how do you work these two selves, and work the two kinds of times into your life? If nothing else, you need separation. Master time needs to be separate from servant time. It is a different mindset, and it requires you to switch into a different mode.

Master time is also more expansive. You need at least 30 minute blocks to do the kind of thinking and strategy that master time requires. However you need to do that, do it, but really do it. And it should be done 1 to 2 times per week (usually). An hour to two hour bookend at the beginning and end of the week should help you to guide yourself by your principles and values and toward your goals. You may need more, you may need less. But that’s a good place to start.

A Note on Grading Yourself

To judge how you’re doing, you can give yourself 2 grades:
1. Grade your servant self on how effective you were at following the mission and principles the master set out.
2. Grade your master self on how effective you were at providing a clear mission and principles — and how easy it was for the servant you to make decisions based on them.

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

On the Unrecognized Virtue of Changing One’s Mind

I don’t tend to write about politics — especially not elections. But there are some things that take place in politics that represent a more general phenomenon in the human condition. This is a piece of writing about one such instance.

Specifically, there is a lurking fear in our society of being caught contradicting yourself. In an age where more and more of our words are captured on the public record, that fear has much more ammunition on which to feed. But this fear is misplaced. We shouldn’t be afraid to contradict ourselves. In fact, we should embrace contradiction, because (a) almost all of us do it at some point and (b) in many cases, contradicting yourself is a sign of intellectual development and humility.

The Fear of Flip-Flopping

In the debates leading up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Democratic candidate John Kerry faced a strand of criticism that was as relentless as it was insipid: he was a “flip-flopper”. The implication was that because of the different stances Kerry had taken on issues at different times, he was either (a) a slick, two-faced, sycophantic politician or (b) an indecisive, confused man, incapable of strong leadership. Neither was a flattering picture, and in part because of that, Kerry’s opponent, George W. Bush won a second term as president.

I remember hearing criticisms about Kerry’s “flip-flopping” in the weeks leading up the election. Talk show hosts made jokes. Pundits lobbed grenades of criticism. I remember feeling a sense of disbelief as I prepared to vote in my first presidential election. I found it disturbing how a large swath of American voters were willing to allow nuance and intellectual honesty to be whitewashed away by the broad brush of oversimplified rhetoric.

But it’s something that happens in more than just politics, and in more places than just America. We tend to punish people for changing their minds — for something that any intellectually honest person should do — and the more public our beliefs are, the worse it’s going to get.

Changing Our Minds is Progress

One of my favorite books is The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. I love it because it’s the story of a complex historical figure — one who took a long and winding intellectual journey. It went from youthful hedonism, to close-minded fundamentalism, and then to open-hearted brotherly love.

Malcolm Little began as hooligan, chasing girls, basically living in clubs, and with little to no direction in life. He went to prison, found religion, and became (for all intents and purposes) a religious extremist. After living and leading in that world for years, he changed his mind, and broke away from the Nation of Islam — which put his life in danger. Near the end of his short life, he changed his views on racial integration — ones that had so defined his point of view early on as a black nationalist.

In 1964, Malcolm X went on the Haaj — a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca — and wrote a letter back to the U.S. In it, he talks about a reversal of his previously negative attitudes toward racial integration — based on his experiences with muslims of all colors on the Hajj. He writes:

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

Two things stand out in Malcolm’s words: an open mind, and the facing of facts in the intelligent search for truth. When you arrange your life around these two things, you are bound — like Malcolm X — to contradict even your most strongly-held beliefs.

Consistency ≠ Constancy

If you think, write, and talk for long enough about something, you will eventually contradict something you said earlier. To the underdeveloped, superficial thinker, this will appear inconsistent or contradictory — but it is not. Many people believe that consistency must yield constancy — that a consistent approach or method must yield results that remain constantly the same. But this is a mistake — especially in the “intelligent search for truth”. The scientific method is consistent, but yields all sorts of crazy and contradictory results. It is in that way that new theories debunk old and long-held ones, and progress is made.

So what does this mean for the average person living in this day and age? It means that intellectual and even emotional progress involves some element of contradicting oneself. It means that there is really no currency in holding the same belief for long periods of time. It means that there are no points deducted for changing one’s mind. In fact, changing one’s mind is an outright symbol of open-mindedness (granted that it is authentic, and not simply to gain popularity).

To be willing to change your mind is an overt act of respect for truth — you revere what the facts say over and above the thrill of being right. You value logic and reason over how your shallow public reputation. And in that sense, we should sing the praises of the person who contradicts their earlier statements — for they have sacrificed their intellectual comfort for the sake of the search for truth. And that is a laudable thing indeed.

Don’t be afraid to change your mind. Do it openly and eagerly. Encourage others to do it, and congratulate them when they do. In the long run, it will serve you well in finding wisdom, and finding good companions in the search for it.

Credit: Ashim D’Silva

A deceptively simple, game-changing practice that I discovered in a most unlikely place.

There is no shortage (especially here on Medium) of writing about daily habits, routines, and practices that promise to change your life. Journaling, meditation, exercise, doodling, and so on. So far be it from me to add more to the already towering stack of things that everyone should supposedly be doing in order to live their best lives.

But I can’t help but share this simple daily practice that I recently stumbled upon. It’s simple but dense with meaningful stuff. It is easy enough to start doing today — even if you’re driving to work, on a plane, or lying in bed. And if my first day doing it is any indication of how effective it is, I would call it a game-changing habit. So here goes.

I recently found myself on the website of the Center for Non-violent Communication. There is treasure-trove of helpful stuff on there — feelings inventory, and a list of needs, to aid in more effectively understanding and communicating your emotions. Of particular interest to me was a page called 10 Steps to Peace. The page lists 10 principles to serve as the foundation for better communication and cooperation between people. The very first one is this:

Spend some time each day quietly reflecting on how we would like to relate to ourselves and others.

That’s it. It’s that simple. I should spend some time — each day — quietly reflecting on how I would like to relate to both myself and to others.

Why It Works

For every one of us — except for hermits, infants, or the deceased — relating to others is a necessary part of life. And we continue to hear more and more about how integral relationships are in a good life and professional success.

Think of it: families, friends, community members, professional teams, clients, or suppliers (which is to say — all of us who are not ) — a lot of the important things in your day revolve around how you interact with others. So wouldn’t it be wildly beneficial for you to interact with them in such a way that you built and sustained better relationships with them?

Even if you don’t think you really interact in meaningful ways with others (which you are probably in denial about), you definitely interact with yourself. In fact, at the root of a great deal of our problems is our relationship with ourselves. We lie to ourselves, we break commitments to ourselves, we’re unreasonably hard on ourselves (over 70% of our self-talk is negative).

To top it all off, we actually don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. We may weave grand narratives about our intentions, our emotions, our needs, and our knowledge — but when push comes to shove, we often end up being surprised by what is actually going on in our minds. Just ask anyone who has meditated for any significant length of time.

In fact, part of what makes meditation and mindfulness so beneficial is that if you do them right, you begin to relate to yourself differently. You stop identifying with your momentary thoughts and feelings. You come to accept certain felt needs and emotions. You put space in between stimulus and response. That’s exactly what this practice is: a practice of becoming intentional about how you relate to yourself — and to others.

How to Do it

The great thing about this practice is that it is format and tool agnostic — meaning you can just think about it, or you can write, or talk to yourself. Do whatever works, as long as it actually works. And by “works” I mean “achieves the goal of forming an intention of how you would like to relate to yourself and others today.

I’ll just relate how I like to do it. It’s not glamorous, and it would not be a great article for some online business magazine about morning routines — but it seems to have done the trick.

The week I first chose to do this, I had (perhaps unwisely) chosen to buy whole-bean coffee. That mean that when I woke up at 5am — groggy from a short night of sleep and having to do a bunch of stuff before 8 am — I would have to use my hand-grinder to make coffee grounds for my auto-drip machine to work. Normally, I would zone out while measuring out the beans and turning the crank for 5 minutes or so. But the day after reading about this new habit, I remembered to given it a try.

Here’s the simple bullet-point rundown of how I implemented the practice my first day:

• I took a series of 3 deep breaths, with my eyes closed, and tried to just clear my head for a bit.
• I pictured myself as a powerful CEO, in an intimidating-looking office, and also pictured myself as the newest entry-level employee in that same office — facing the powerful CEO.
• I asked the entry-level employee version of myself: how would you like the CEO to treat you today?
• I turned to the CEO and said: if you treat this employee the way he wants to be treated, you’ll get way more out of him, and he’ll work his ass off for you.
• I pictured a few of the people in my life I interact with regularly, and imagined myself as the CEO again, and them as the new, scared employees. I ran the same scenario as above.
• At the end of it, I came up with this:
  I will give myself and everyone else the benefit of the doubt. I will relate to them (and me) in a way that seeks to understand and validate their feelings, their needs, and their felt purposes first without judgment. Then, if I desire something from them, I should make the request in the most respectful way possible.

I wrote down my intention the first day, but that’s not necessary. You don’t even have to do the visualization exercise that I did (I tend to go crazy at first with new habits). The purpose of this habit is to be intentional about how you interact with both yourself and others. Rather than simply react — as most of us do to ourselves and others — this habit helps you to act with a purpose.

The Results

This practice won’t be magically transformative on the first day. It wasn’t for me. In fact, I still had many reactive and thoughtless reactions — especially to myself (which is how it goes for most people). But I was more aware of when that was happening, because I had firmly set an intention to focus more on how I was relating to others, and awareness is the first step of change.

I’ve been doing this for a week now, and I am finding myself with a little more space between stimulus and response. I’m finding myself approaching interactions with people differently. I am doing more observation of my feelings and thoughts, and here’s the strangest (or coolest) thing. Instead of the largely judgmental and negative self-talk that hurl at myself during the day, I’ve become more of a benevolent observer of my mind.

I still have negative emotions, but I don’t let those turn into full-on moods. I am able to observe “I’m feeling anxiety” and rather than beating myself up for it, and trying to brute-force happiness, I acknowledge it, label it, and tell myself it’s okay that I’m feeling that way. Does it magically cure me? No — not even close. But it does dull the always-sharp edges of negative emotions. These days, I feel what I feel, I do what I can to find out why I might feel that way, and allow it to pass — while I focus on treating myself with compassion.

Unlike meditation, this practice doesn’t require a lot of time, a certain physical position, or tools. You can do this while you make your coffee in the morning, brush your teeth, while in the shower, and so on. And though it might feel weird at first, it is the most natural thing in the world to think about. You relate to yourself and others every day. This practice just helps you become more intentional about how you do it.

Photo Credit: Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash

A Practice for Quieting the Noise of Life and Gaining Focus on What Really Matters

For the past few weeks, I’ve found myself in a bit of a personal and professional crisis. You see, over the past 6 to 7 years, I’ve become quite good at recording and tracking my projects and actions. I’ve done it in various programs and notebooks. I practice ubiquitous capture — making sure I don’t lose what could be the next great idea, or the next thing I need to get done.

But much like a garden variety hoarder — who saves every little thing they believe they might use one day — I’ve become surrounded by projects and actions that quite simply don’t matter. And like that hoarder with a house full of collected trinkets and trash, I simply can’t bear to part with them, so they stay on my list. And the list of projects and actions keeps growing and growing.

And it’s killing me.

Productivity Hoarding and the Mind-Suck

When you have collected numerous projects and tasks in whatever system or list you use, what tends to happen is a kind of mind-suck. Every time you glance at that long list in an effort to figure out what to do next, you freeze, like a deer in headlights. You freeze, get overwhelmed by all that stuff, and you run far away from it. And then the list becomes useless — and even the important stuff in that pile of otherwise useless projects and tasks get ignored. As a result, you become unproductive and feel terrible because of it.

But there is a way out.

Greg McKeown, in an interview on The Art of Charm podcast offers a very helpful practice — one that I’ll call The Hundred Year View. Here’s how he describes it:

Every quarter, someone should hold a personal quarterly off-site. You schedule somewhere between a half a day and a day…and you’re asking all the big questions…what are my 3–5 most important life goals? Actually, I’ve gone even further than that. Sometimes I’m asking what’s my three to five hundred year vision?….What do I want my grandchildren’s life to be like? What do I want their learning to have been? And when I can think in that very, very long term perspective, it helps to distinguish between the vital few and the trivial many…A hundred-year vision really pushes one to think clearly.

There is something both simple and powerful in this practice: transcendence.

In the noise of the day-to-day, or even week-to-week action of life, we tend to narrow our focus to only the immediate or urgent things — what’s in front of us now or what needs to be taken care of very soon. It makes you become reactive (instead of proactive), and you exist as a kind of stimulus/response machine — merely taking the inputs of the world and spitting out your outputs. You lose the intentional, purposeful spirit of a person doing big things over the long term.

Thinking from the viewpoint of a longer timeline — about your grandchildren’s lives, and about your legacy — you come to adopt a different view. The things you thought were big look small — because they are small. It reminds me of a very useful metaphor to help you think from that transcendent hundred-year mindset.

Using the Hundred-Year View: A Quick Exercise

Have you ever gotten on a plane, in a mad rush to get wherever you are going — the stresses and nagging things of your life just nipping at your heels? Then the plane takes off, you can’t have your laptop open, and your devices lose connectivity. It’s just you and your thoughts.

Then, with no devices to buzz at you, you look out the window. As the plane ascends, you can see people walking on sidewalks below, cars zooming quickly on the roads, and all of the activity of daily life. But after about 20 seconds, you are several thousand feet up, and all of the activity of the world below has faded into a peaceful landscape — speckled with clouds and rays of sunlight. Suddenly, things look and feel different. For me at least, my mind goes to different place: I can take that longer view. I can ask the bigger questions — and keep from getting distracted for long enough to really try to answer them.

Since hearing McKeown’s thought about adopting the hundred-year view, I have mixed it in with my takeoff metaphor to fashion a mental exercise to get me back in the right mindset day-to-day. When I have been putting out fires, answering emails, and none of my bigger projects have been getting the attention I know they need, I take a few seconds and do the following exercise:

1. Close my eyes.
2. Take 3 deep breaths.
3. Imagine myself in the airplane, taking off, and looking out the window.
4. I ask myself: which of the things I’m stressing about now will have an impact that people still feel 100 years from now?

The answer to that last question is usually “none”. And while I never simply neglect everything that’s not a huge project, it helps me not to worry so much about the little things. It also encourages me to put just a little bit of time into the bigger things — the things that will matter 100 years from now.

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

How the First Principle of Improvisational Comedy Might Just be a Superb Principle for Living

Being an effective person requires being able to get along with many different people. But navigating the various personal and professional relationships in your life can be difficult. Luckily, there is a simple tool that can help you build better relationships, help you more effectively navigate difficult conversations, and produce more creative ideas while with a diverse group of people. It does, however, come from a pretty unconventional source: Improv Comedy.

There’s a principle at the foundation of improv called yes, and. The idea is that in order for an improv sketch to work, the actors involved need to be able to count on one another to keep the spirit of the skit going — no matter what crazy improvised line one of them has blurted out. So if the sketch starts out as being about a boy asking a stranger if he’s seen his lost dog, and the stranger suddenly informs the boythat his dog is actually a dinosaur, and being hunted by the dinosaur police — everyone has to roll with it, or the skit falls flat.

When actors are yes-anding, an improv sketch could be a hilarious and surprising mini-play that takes the audience on a journey. When the yes-ands are half-hearted — neither yeses nor ands — it can be a train wreck on the stage. The same thing is true of many conversations in life.

So many of the train-wreck conversations that break deals and damage relationships have one thing in common: we’re failing to yes, and!

Why Yes, And Works

I have been yes, anding for most of my life. For me, it was forced upon me by my environment. I grew up in a household of stubborn, argumentative, and knowledgable people. My parents, grandparents, brother, cousins, aunts and uncles would argue constantly — with seemingly a whole lot on the line if anyone was proven wrong. In order to defuse many a heated arguments, I had to use humor — specifically improvised jokes that played off what someone had said. I still do it — because it works. It wasn’t until I started looking into the principle that realized why it works so well.

When done right, a yes, and does two things:

• defuses, prevents, and de-escalates rising aggression by acknowledging what someone has said, and accepting it by adding something onto it
• forces the other party or parties to collaborate

The “Yes” portion forces you to accept — at least for a little while — the validity of what others are saying. In personal relationships this is key, because when we (even implicitly) label others’ feelings as invalid, it turns them off to any possible cooperation or compromise. Both of those things are important to functional and productive relationships.

It forces you to contribute, but in a way that helps others first.

It gets others to accept what you say — due to the Reciprocity Principle

In general, it produces better creativity — because the agreeable nature of the conversation boosts the mood of the people involved. And it has been shown that good moods are great for creativity and idea generation:

“…the most powerful way to boost your mood and feel more creative and alive is to act compassionately and kindly. Mow your neighbor’s yard. Cook a casserole for a friend in need. Do something for your spouse to make their life a little easier. Donate money to your favorite cause or simply look someone who served you in the eye and say “thank you.”
“When we connect through compassion we experience what researchers call a “helper’s high.” We feel a rush of emotion that leaves us feeling happy, more connected, and calm. Often we can experience those feelings again, even when the good deed is long done, just by reflecting on the memory.”

How to Yes, And

Implementing Yes, And in real life is a skill you have to develop, but you can get pretty far simply with the right attitude. Quite simply, you have to want to get along with the other parties; you have to want to get them to cooperate and collaborate.And you have to want to cooperate and collaborate with them. Unfortunately, that kind of attitude is not always easy to adopt — especially when the other parties are being aggressive or abrasive.

Often times — especially in the context of business — the default attitude becomes adversarial; the other party is the enemy to be defeated. However, it is often when we act aggressively to defeat our foe — rather than collaborate with them — that we end up losing anyway. We ruin what could be a win-win situation that is not as good as what we could have gotten by collaborating. It is the classic example of the prisoner’s dilemma.

As you develop the attitude of wanting cooperation, you can employ some specific yes, and tools in your interactions. An easy place to start is with casual conversation with neutral parties. You can start with the blandest of topics, and just attempt to add on some substance to a comment.

For example: you’re in the break room and someone says “boy this heat is something else!” You could just say “yeah” half-heartedly and leave it at that. But if you yes, and the conversation, you could say something like “yeah, and it seems like no matter how much I prepare myself for it as I’m walking outside, it’s like getting punched in the face”. I do this all the time (not the same line, but something in the same spirit). It ends up either getting a laugh most of the time, and nearly always continues the conversation.

Obviously, that’s harder to do in conversations that are getting heated, but if you calm your own rising emotions, there is usually some way to use the power of affirmation and addition to keep tensions from rising to a boiling point. A great tactic to use is verbal mirroring and asking for confirmation. If someone is clearly getting angry (and you weren’t the direct cause of it) you can simply affirm their anger, and recap what you believe they’re angry about in a way that is generous to them (not “I can see your angry because you think I slighted you, but I really didn’t).

In most cases, that levels out the rise of tension, and even helps it begin to subside. Then you add something that continues to affirm their point of view and anger, but then suggests something. The suggestion can’t be I suggest you calm down!, it has to be something neutral, something to lighten things a bit, or something that takes divergent path that might have been hinted at earlier in the conversation. It can be tricky, and it relies heavily on the specific context of the conversation, but again, if you have cultivated a genuine desire to get along with the other party, it will be much more natural.

The Takeaway

Using Yes, And helps you develop rapport and foster cooperation by affirming and adding on to what others say. Doing so leverages the principal of reciprocity — which inclines people to help others who have helped them. It also helps avoid or defuse difficult conversations. To effectively Yes, And requires cultivating the right attitude — a genuine desire to get along with others, and to collaborate.

Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash

Thinking Big, Acting Small, and Understanding the Limiting Tendencies of the Mind

Our minds are wonderful machines. At any given moment, they can be zooming through numerous different operations: thoughts, feelings, plans, inklings, and processing thousands of pieces of data from our senses. We can drive ourselves to work while listening intently to talk radio, and tapping an unrelated rhythm on the steering wheel — all while eating a breakfast sandwich. So much of the marvelous stuff our minds do happens automatically. It’s like magic — magic that happens every day.

But that can be kind of a problem, too. Here’s a quick riddle to illustrate that:

Q: How do you topple a tree with only two fingers?

A: When it’s still a sapling, pinch it and rip it out of the ground.

This little riddle teaches us two important lessons. One lesson is about how our mind’s greatest strength can also be a great weakness. Our ability to create stories and meaning from sparse details can end up manufacturing unnecessary constraints on our thinking that limit the breadth of our thinking. The other lesson is that we can often confuse thinking big with thinking small — and vice versa. We think that big problems require grand action on a large scale. But often, it is the small things, done deliberately and at the right time, that have the biggest impact.

Lesson 1: Manufacturing Constraints

Our minds are so good at smuggling in context and building a story that we often don’t even notice when it’s happening. In the question above, most of us hear “tree” and we immediately think of the towering things in forests with thick trunks and rough, sturdy bark. But nothing in the question mentioned how old or big the tree is — we manufactured that context and built it up in the form of a wall in our thinking. That wall kept us from thinking of the simplest, most effective answer to the question.

On many occasions, this ability to construct context and a narrative serves a purpose. It begins with our perception — where we only get bits and pieces of data from our eyes and ears, and our brains fill in any gaps, so that we seamlessly perceive the symbols and signs in the world around us. It continues when we hear incomplete or sparsely detailed stories — or when we’re trying to remember something from long ago. Our mind fills in the gaps, so that we have a story to work with. It’s not something we can (or would want to) abandon — but it’s something we need to be aware of, and ensure we keep in check in certain circumstances.

There are times that call for thinking differently, creatively, and solving big problems. When those times come, we need to understand the constraints that we automatically place on our thinking, and do what we can to remove them — so we can address big problems with the most free and creative thinking we can. That can be as simple as asking yourself what assumptions am I making about this problem? or do I even understand what the problem is, or just think I do?

Lesson 2: Thinking Big and Small

Toppling a tree sounds like a big task. If I were to ask anyone on the street about the simplest and most effective way to do it, most people would answer that it takes special tools and is moderately difficult . In other words: it’s a big project. I’m sure that before I sat down to write this article, I would have conceived of it in much the same way. And that makes sense, because we as humans suffer from two afflictions that make it difficult for us to solve big problems with small actions: we think big effects have big causes, and we are blind to how small changes build into big situations.

If we want to affect big change in our environment, we usually do need a detailed plan, actions, follow-up, and coordination in order to make that happen. But we tend to underestimate how effective simple, well-timed actions can be. In the case of the tree, our two fingers can be just as effective as a chainsaw, ropes, and a team of people — if we act at the right time.

But timing takes a different element: awareness. You have to be aware of what is going on — especially with things that might be an issue for you. But in order to be aware, you have to care about what’s going on. You can’t view the people, things, and events going on around you as obstacles, distractions, and problems. Doing that will prevent you from noticing the sapling as it sprouts, and allow it to become a big tree that now costs you money, energy, and time to remove.

In Summary

When we’re presented with a problem, we tend to immediately make assumptions that constrain our thinking. When we constrain our thinking, we constrain our actions. We also tend to think that only big actions will solve big problems, but that is not the case. Being aware of the impact of timing, and of small actions can be a huge advantage in more effective problem solving.

“A small white house surrounded by trees in the autumn” by Scott Webb on Unsplash

A few thoughts on love, life, and living

Sometimes I find myself alone in the near-dark of morning, and the thoughts that run through my head are special ones. They’re not the kind that find their way in during the hectic light and activity of the day. They seem reserved for a time exponentially more quiet and subdued.

These thoughts are about life, about experience, and about love.

I’ve been alive for almost 35 years now, and I have been fortunate enough to have learned about love during that time. But the way I learned about it was not always pleasant. I had to see many things disguised as love that were not. I had to feel things that I was told were love — but were not. I had to ache and yearn, and reject the very idea of love. I had to be on my own for a while after being a constant boyfriend since age 18. I had to be alone, and come to embrace that feeling.

We’re never alone, you know. That’s a mistake I think we all make from time to time. We’re never alone; we’re with ourselves. And there is a difference.

You have a relationship with yourself, whether you believe it or not. And if you can’t or won’t sit alone with yourself and be at peace — it can feel like there is no rest. That’s where love comes in.

Love is often pursued as a substitute for a relationship with oneself. It is pursued as a distraction, a diversion, and a saving grace. But that kind of love — like most diversions or distractions — never outlasts the thing being diverted or distracted from. Eventually, you have to be with yourself — and the din is either overwhelmingly loud, or the silence is enough to break you. And that’s okay, because it’s just the two of you; and no matter what, you can make it work…if you try.

These days, I understand that love is a positive feedback loop. It begins with me and myself, extends outward to another, and comes back to me richer and warmer — and begins all over again. I used to see love as something that never changes — something that is strong from the beginning and sustained through time. I now realize that love is the opposite. It’s something that begins small and fragile, and that grows with experience, cooperation, vulnerability, service, failure, breakdowns, trial and error, and reconciliation. Love without any of those things is merely a sapling — susceptible to any weak wind or rain that might wash over in a moment.

I look today at the woman I met almost 10 years ago, and the feeling is completely different. Back then, she was a mystery. The attraction was intrigue, curiosity, and suspense. It was intense, alluring, and motivating. But it is not what I feel today. What I feel today is so much deeper, richer, warmer, stronger, and sustaining. I look at her and see 10 years, 2 children, 2 houses, and numerous adventures — arguments, make-ups, and moments of intimate connection.

I could never — none of us could ever — feel that for a relative stranger. That is love; it isn’t something discovered fully mature and kept whole. It’s something carefully grown and cultivated — something nurtured and encouraged — something that began so rough and vulnerable, but made strong and flexible through the years.

Love is not about fanning flames — that’s a an amateur’s way of seeing it — because love is not fire. Love is a house — nay, a mansion — but it starts off as a few boards and nails. And it is only made into something more when you build it up enough to keep out the winds, rain, and cold, that it becomes a place to go for shelter — to stay warm, and to build a life.

Perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps the hot, hot fire still burns as brightly for someone, somewhere. But I was never one for fire anyway — I’ve found that there is a fine line between staying warm and being set ablaze. I’d rather build my mansion, one room at a time.

Photo by Saketh Garuda on Unsplash

The Underappreciated Depth and Meaning of a Seemingly Superficial Question

Nearly every day, when my wife and I sit down to eat dinner, I try to ask — over an endlessly chatting 4 year-old and a loudly eating 1 year-old — how was your day? It’s a question that many of us ask every day of both people we know and care about, as well as relative strangers. But do we ever stop to ponder the depth and meaning of that question? If we did, would it change how and when we ask it, and what we mean by it?

We may think that there are just 24 hours in a day, and we’re all just living that same 24 hours as the sun rises, sets, and rises again. We can fall into viewing the Earth’s rotation as one objective pre-defined period of time that is the same for everyone. But when we really think about it, nothing could be further from the truth.

There are currently somewhere around 7.6 billion people living on this planet. And each one of them wakes up every day, and begins another journey into the relative unknown of their lives. That’s 7.6 billion encounters with accomplishment, disappointment, loss, elation, love, romance, depression, isolation, fear, joy, worry, doubt, laughter, tears, hope, hard work, exhaustion, elation, and so on. That’s 7.6 billion separate, slightly different views of the sun rising and setting. It’s 7.6 billion separate and distinct sets of thoughts and perceptions.

Time — however objective we think it is — unfolds in a hopelessly subjective way. One person’s instant is another person’s eternity. One person’s moments unfolding in slow-motion is another person’s disbelief that time is already up. When we acknowledge this difference, we can begin to embrace and enjoy the richness of the variety of lived experiences we all have — even in one single 24-hour period.

When I first began dating my wife, and began asking how her day was, I was under the spell of thinking that she and I were living roughly the same day. It made the way I asked the question so superficial and empty. And that made the answer much the same. People respond more to the way you ask a question than the content of the question itself. So when you ask how was your day? — take that under consideration. My day was radically different than yours, and yours was radically different from your neighbor’s, and so on and so forth — 7.6 billion times over.

Perhaps your day was fine — whatever that means. But what does that mean? What did you feel today? What surprised you? What scared you? What has left a mark on your mind that will carry on into your next day? What is worth sharing? What do you need to mull over a bit more? These are just some of the questions that relate to a day — and the answers will be different for everyone.

One of my favorite principles to live by comes from Stephen Covey, who advised us to “seek first to understand; then to be understood.” As a gateway into better understanding someone, I can think of no better or more univerally applicable tool than the question how was your day?

“Top view of a green ridge by an ocean in D’Urville Island” by Alex Siale on Unsplash

Thoughts about our struggle to get things done, and maybe, how we can do our “best stuff”

Every day, I have a list of things to do. This list comes in various flavors, which include (but probably aren’t limited to):

• things that I have to do
• things that others expect me to do
• things I want to do
• things I don’t want to do, but that I want to have done
• things that would be nice to do, but I’m not holding my breath

You get the picture. The more days I maintain a list of projects and the corresponding to-do list, the more of these different classes of items pop up on it. But now and then, I ask myself if I’m really doing the best stuff.

What do I mean by best stuff? I think that term might mean something slightly different for everyone who has a to-do list. But most of us who have one probably know what I mean. The best stuff are those tasks that when you finally get done with them, you feel great. Though you spent a great deal of energy on them, and should probably be drained, you’re not. In fact, you’re energized! You feel like you want to take on even more stuff, and just achieve all of your goals today!

Yeah, that’s the best stuff right there. That’s the stuff you want to populate your to-do list every day.

But as any keeper of a list knows, that simply isn’t how it works. But what if, for the most part, it could?

For the past few days, I have begun asking myself a simple question as I look at the list of things that I’ve queued up for myself each day:

What will I be proud of having gotten done today?

Some things already on the list serve as answers to that question. They move to the top of the list. Some things that aren’t on the list get put on to it.

Only after that do I then ask how realistic it is that I actually get all this stuff done today. Dreaming big comes first; whittling away a practical plan comes second. It has to work that way, lest we all continue to just do okay at best.

Don’t neglect thinking big every day — just for 2 or 3 minutes, while you glance at your to-do list. Prioritize making yourself proud. You’ll gain the momentum and drive to stay engaged each day, and do the small things that are needed to get the big stuff done.

I’m not going to search for a bunch of HBR articles or studies to back up the claim that when you feel proud of yourself you are more productive. You have all felt that at one time or another, and that is a much more effective persuader than evidence from a study at Stanford.

Do one thing every day to make yourself proud of you — however small. Put that thing on your list and, come hell or high-water, do that thing. The size doesn’t matter. You gave yourself a challenge and met it. You’ve silenced the self-doubt with objective evidence. You and your inner critic can both look at the item crossed off on your to-do list and see that you did the damn thing — even if it was simply make my bed, for the first time in years.

When it comes to thinking big — “big” and “small” are relative terms, but that’s what makes them so powerful. Never adjust the pride you feel for your accomplishment based on how it compares to someone else’s — period.

No matter how objectively small my big goal may be, it moves me with an equal force to someone else’s bigger goal. My big goal is to finish this piece of writing and publish it today. Elon Musk’s big goal is to get to Mars. His big goal dwarfs mine, but it pushes me nonetheless. And your big goals — however small in comparison — should push you, as well.

Image Credit: Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

Faith’s bad rap, reason’s inflated reputation, and the nuance of human actions.

Faith gets a bad rap. It’s a shame, really. But like anything that gets its image tarnished over the years, it tends to be because of what its adherents do and say, as opposed to anything intrinsic to it. A great example of this is the Rick and Morty Szechuan sauce incident. A perfectly good television show makes a quirky reference a few times, and its fan base takes it to an unimaginable extreme. In essence, the fans ruined it.

In the case of faith, I see its use by theistic religions (the ones that believe in a single all-powerful god) as an age-old case of “the fans ruining it”. Faith is misused by fundamentalist Muslims to justify their take on jihad, which can be a beautiful concept about the spiritual struggle to which we’re all subjected. Faith is misused by fundamentalist Christians who claim that the earth was created only thousands of years ago, and that homosexuals will rot in hell. Those in the “reason” camp take the bait, and engage in a war of words where the incredible power of faith is discarded like so much wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

Once again, the fans ruined it.

But really, faith is something worth talking about — whether you believe in a god or not. And there are two things about faith that are particularly powerful:

1. Faith is an incredibly powerful, yet overlooked tool for everyday living.
2. Faith is something that we as humans naturally practice constantly.

But first, let me just talk about what faith is.

The Meaning of Faith

A simple definition of faith is a strong belief in something for which there is no prevailing proof. And by that definition, faith is neither a uniquely religious phenomenon, nor is it one confined to those familiar with the word and its meaning. Faith by this definition is also not quite a belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is simply strong belief beyond what an objective analysis of the evidence would suggest.

In that sense of the word, we use faith in many of our everyday activities. I hear stories of contaminated water and boil orders all the time, and I know almost nothing about the municipal water supply in my area, yet still I drink from it daily. I have faith that the system is working.

I regularly fly on airplanes across the country in giant commercial airliners that would certainly harm or kill me if one of the thousands of moving parts malfunctioned. Again, I know very little about how aeronautics works, or how planes are inspected, fixed, or built. And yet, I buy tickets, wait in lines, board, surrender my bags, and click my seat belt closed. I have faith that we’ll take off an land without incident.

I used to comfort myself by characterizing this as reason. There have been numerous successful flights over the years, and most people aren’t dying from drinking tap water, and I’m relying on that as evidence for my trust in the processes. And while perhaps others are thinking through the number of successful flights, clean water supplies, and other such things — that doesn’t factor into my thought process. I put my faith in these things — particularly in the people that uphold them — and it is as simple as that.

The entire structure of most people’s days is supported by a network of faith — faith in each other, faith in themselves, and faith that things will largely go on that way that they have for an extended period of time. None of us knows enough about the things we do every day to have made a purely rationalistic decision to support our actions.

I Believe I Can Fly

Let’s tease out the airplane example a bit more — take it back to the birth of aviation. Wilbur and Orville Wright — as well as the various other pioneers working on aviation — threw thousands of hours and billions of dollars chasing manned flight when the evidence available to the experts dictated that it wasn’t probable.

The Wright Brothers weren’t exactly working with a large body of evidence to motivate them to try this expedition — and in fact, the numerous failures they experienced made the evidence accumulate clearly against them in their endeavor. What they did use — at least until they started logging successful hours of flight — was faith, a faith in themselves and their mission.

I’m not saying that faith wins out over reason, of course. Reason is vital in our lives as well, but I think we tend to give reason its proper credence — even if we fail to deploy it properly all the time. All I am suggesting is that we give faith a chance. Actually, we’re already giving it a chance by using it regularly, I’m just asking that we stop acting like the faith we operate with every day is actually reason.

And here’s the funny thing. The ardent skeptics who I’ve argued this point to excercise a large amount of faith themselves when they insist that all of my examples of faith can be shown to be actually be reason. They have faith in their ability to deconstruct complex emotional and cognitive motivators in people to show them as based solely on evidence and logical thought processes.

That’s the other thing — and it’s kind of like what the Wright Brothers showed us — what ends up being pretty solid reason in later generations almost always started off as faith.

I Hear Your Objections, but…

I wholeheartedly believe in science. I believe that in building a map of reality and all of its intricate laws, we will do our best work if we proceed from hypotheses, define what data would disprove our hypotheses, and gather the data. It’s what we’ve done for centuries now, and it has done well for us intellectually speaking.

But we’re simply fooling ourselves if we believe that faith played no part in our initial efforts to make sense of and manipulate the world. The fact that we have for so long set out to try to make sense of and manipulate the world — and continue to do so — is a great example of faith in action. We act in faith that we will someday figure out what no one else has.

Faith and reason are not enemies, but friends. They work in tandem, even if one soars to great heights and leaves the other behind and often forgotten.

As with so many other things, I just can’t say it as eloquently as someone else, so I’ll simply cite them. Here’s Lisa Miller from The Washington Post:

Reason is one way of measuring the world — an excellent and crucial way, to be sure. But intuition is also part of intelligence, as are hunches and feelings. The value of these more instinctive approaches to human experience has been lost in the relentless, rationalistic efforts to prove who’s stupid and who’s smart. Thus, the ephemeral mysteries of existence are reduced to equations on a board in an AP math class….
Faith and reason can live happily together: It’s narrow-mindedness, by the faithful as well as by atheists, that leads to stupid thinking.

Miller uses the term intuition here, but her target includes my characterization of faith here. The point is that there is a great deal of debate that rests upon a supposed chasm between faith and reason. But that chasm doesn’t really exist — either between people, or within them. And even if it does exist, it’s not really chasm, but more like a small crack — one that anyone can easily and gingerly skip over.

Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash

My journey from being obsessed with my image to being able to stop bullets with my chest — sort of.

Not long ago, I read Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly, and it changed the way I thought about how I present myself to others. Specifically, the book contains a great quote in it that made me look at vulnerability — something I had never entertained as a possibility — much differently.

“Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.”

For a long time, I operated under the assumption that in order to be respected, I couldn’t be vulnerable — I had to be unassailable. I had to do work that was perfect. I had to know about everything. I had to have all the answers. My decisions had to be perfectly rational. I could not make mistakes.

And of course, this was an absurd assumption. My work was not (and still isn’t) perfect. There are plenty of things that I don’t know about. I make irrational decisions on a daily basis (as a matter of fact, we all do — and that’s actually a good thing). In short, I am not unassailable; I am not invulnerable. But why was it that I thought I had to be?

I’m No Superman

Growing up, I was infatuated with superheroes. I read the comic book adventures of Batman, Superman, Spider-man, and various others. And my infatuation with them consisted of more than just the action, the over-the-top art, and the complex supernatural stories. My infatuation was with just how these heroes were able to always come through and prove to be the best — no matter what.

Superman, among his various other super abilities, is invulnerable — meaning he can’t be hurt. There are exceptions to this, of course, with a convoluted special case involving Kryptonite — an element from his home world that negates the empowering effects of Earth’s yellow sun, thus making him basically human when exposed to it. I’ll stop the explanation there, to avoid revealing myself as even nerdier than I already have.

Batman, on the other hand, is just a human being, like me. But what made him special was a vast fortune left to him by his deceased parents (whose death when he was a child he lives the life of a vigilante in order to avenge), and a seemingly limitless mental strength. Batman, to me, was infinitely more interesting than any other superheroes because unlike them, he had no super powers, and he had to use this mental fortitude he had to overcome his lack of superpowers.

Through his mental fortitude, he was able to gain a towering intellect, push himself into peak physical condition, and outwit and outthink every villain he faced. No one got the drop on the Caped Crusader¹. And though it took me a while to realize it, that was precisely the problem.

The Subtle Art of Evasion

Little did I know, my idolization of Batman set me up for an even harder realization down the road. I had come to believe that by working hard enough and having an iron will, I could make up for any deficits I had, and thus end up becoming invulnerable.

You see, because Batman wasn’t naturally invulnerable like Superman, he had to work 10 times as hard to ensure that he still couldn’t be hurt. Instead of being invulnerable, he became evasive — no one could touch him. As I grew out of adolescence (at least in years), I found myself coming to mimic the hero of my youth; while I was also not naturally invulnerable, I too became untouchable — which is something completely different — and infinitely worse.

I had friendships, sure — and a few relationships, but they were always colored with fear that at some point, I would be called into question. And I wasn’t ever able to articulate what it was that would be called into question — it was just something, anything having to do with who I was as a person. All I knew was that when it did happen, and I was unable to prove invulnerable, I would have to feel something other than pleasure and confidence. To me, that was a fear greater than most others.

This caused me to — much like my childhood idol, Batman— act defensive and withdrawn. I practiced all kinds of social jiu jitsu in order to avoid the possibility of being open and vulnerable. I used humor, brought up random facts to switch the topic of conversation, and steered clear of one-on-one time with others. Whenever my choices or actions were questioned, I would become exaggeratedly defensive. I would use whatever weaponry I could to avoid having to come clean and admit that I might be imperfect.

My work life — at least in the beginning — followed much the same pattern. I had to be more civil about it (to avoid making things weird), but I found ways to divert any criticism, and blame mistakes on various things or people other than myself. It was always the fault of a lack of clarity, an abundance of constraints, or the classic “I actually meant to do that, and here’s a long, convoluted explanation of why though you think it’s wrong, it’s actually not”.

Quite simply, I avoided being wrong or vulnerable at all costs.

The Turning Point: I am More than All This

Coincidentally, it was when I began writing about self-improvement that I really came to grips with this albatross of invulnerability hanging around my neck. Initially, I started writing online about productivity — obsessed with trying to squeeze more out work and life, and trying to show others how to do the same. My approach was that of an expert — speaking to an audience from on high, and pretending to have much more information and insight than anyone else. But I certainly was not an expert; I was merely one practitioner and enthusiast among many.

It didn’t take long for me to begin reading the work of others in the field — writers who took a similar tone of expertise and unassailability. So many of them turned me off within the first few paragraphs of their pieces. Initially, I couldn’t figure out why, and then it hit me — like the ton of bricks that I had been trying to outmaneuver for so long: the very invulnerability that made me disconnect from the writing of others was the same kind of invulnerability that I was displaying in my writing.

From there, I came to realize that my posture of invulnerability sure kept others from criticizing me, but it wasn’t because there was nothing to criticize — it was because no one wants to confront someone obsessed with being invulnerable, so they give up. When people don’t see it as worth it to engage you with criticism, your relationship with them is (at best) half of what it could be.

Being “invulnerable” fosters a series of relationships that is barely more than superficial. And that is no way to live. When you take a posture of invulnerability, you remove the possibility that others can help you (because, after all, you’re fine on your own!). When you do that, people get turned off quickly. While they may still maintain a relationship of sorts with you, chances are, it won’t be very fulfilling for either of you.

Being Invulnerable by Being Vulnerable

So here’s where I get into a bit of semantics. I ended up finding a way to achieve my goal of being invulnerable.

It is possible to be invulnerable, but paradoxically, it can only be done when you choose to be vulnerable — to open yourself up. The definition of vulnerability is simply the inability to be hurt or harmed. Yes, choosing to be vulnerable with others leaves you open to smaller, short-term harms. But the disposition of being open and accepting — which comes with vulnerability — actually makes it much less likely that you’ll suffer severe long-term harm. Let me explain.

My journey to become more vulnerable has been guided by my willingness to simply admit that I mad a mistake — which is something I have always had a hard time doing. In order to do that, I needed to dissociate my actions and decisions from my concept of self and self-worth. Simply put, I am not my actions or decisions. They are things I do, but they do not define me or my value as a person. When I began to truly and deeply believe that, it became easier for me to be vulnerable and admit when I was wrong or didn’t quite know what I was doing (which it turns out, is a lot of the time).

The habit of disconnecting from my actions, thoughts, emotions, and decisions fostered a calmness and self-compassion that I had not experienced before. It has also allowed me to grow personally more than I ever had before I made that disconnecting a habit.

Just a note on this disconnecting. Not identifying with my thoughts and actions is not me shirking responsibility for them. If I do something that has bad consequences, I do all I can to try to correct it. And the funny thing is, it’s actually easier to do that if I don’t identify with the action. Think about it. If I identify with my actions, and someone tells me that I did something wrong, my first interpretation of that will be that I — as a person — am wrong. That’s much worse than just realizing that, though I’m a good person, I just took an action that was misguided. It becomes easier to be responsible for the action, because you’re less likely to see it as a personal indictment.

Stay Open

The surest way to stay vulnerable is to stay open. Openness means being willing to listen to others and really think about the possibility of them being right. Not only that, but consider that perhaps you are right much less of the time than you think.

At worst, you’ll find out you’re still right quite a bit, but be more humble about it. At best, people will sense that you’re a good person to talk to — and that’s never a bad thing.

¹ Yes, I know, there are various times when, technically, Batman has been defeated. In fact, my favorite story arc of all time, Knightfall, revolves around his back getting broken by super-yoked villain Bane.

Photo by Eddie Garcia on Unsplash

An Essay on the Ever-Shrinking Appreciation of Spare Time, and How to Budget it Back into Your Life

“Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

At my day job, there is an environment that I’m sure is quite familiar to most working people — whether they work in a Silicon Valley startup, a small unglamorous business, or a large conglomerate. It’s the environment of scarcity. But it’s not scarcity of money (though that is a reality for some), but rather, a scarcity of time and energy. We have a lot we’re trying to do, and even more that we want to do, but aren’t doing yet — but we don’t have enough time or energy available.

This is not exclusively a problem at work; it’s a problem in our personal lives as well. There are dishes to do, soccer practices to drive to, friends to visit, grocery lists to make — and so on. There are more things we both need and want to do than time and energy available. It creates a great deal of stress — which saps our energy even more.

This has made me think a lot lately about the concept of margin — that space between what we have and what we need. We hear about it in business, as the measurement of profit — and to that end, we value margin. However, when it comes to something even more valuable than money — namely our time and energy — we don’t tend to value margin at all. I’m not quite sure why that is.

What is a Margin, Anyway?

Craig Mod, in a wonderful essay about books and craftsmanship writes:

Text printed on the best paper with no margins or unbalanced margins is vile. Or, if we’re being empathetic, sad. (For no book begins life aspiring to bad margins.) I know that sounds harsh. But a book with poorly set margins is as useful as a hammer with a one inch handle. Sure, you can pound nails, but it ain’t fun. A book with crass margins will never make a reader comfortable. Such a book feels cramped, claustrophobic. It doesn’t draw you in, certainly doesn’t make you want to spend time with the text.

Here, Mod is using the typesetting definition of the word margin, but his conclusion can be carried over to any other similar use of the term. For instance, in project management, a margin of time is called a buffer — an amount of time over and above the estimated time that task or project should take. That buffer or margin of time is left open because in projects — as in life — things tend to just come up, and those things require your time. Because of that, you leave yourself a margin — spare time.

In finance, a margin refers to the difference between the cost of something and what its sell price is. It’s the difference between revenue and expenses. In short, it’s the money that you have which doesn’t already have somewhere it needs to be spent. Though it differs slightly, the concept is similar enough to a buffer in time management. So I will use them synonymously.

Margins have always been desirable in finance because having more money than you currently know what to do with is basically the definition of wealth. People who are rich have more money than things that need to be done with it. To carry the analogy over to time: people who are not time-crunched have more time than they have activities that need to take up that time. In either situation — all other things being equal — having that margin (of time or money) is the foundation of feeling secure and at peace.

Why We Need — But Don’t Allow Ourselves — Margins

If you don’t have a margin of time or money, you get stressed. You’re anxious about how you’re going to close that gap between what you have and what you need. If you’re lucky, you might match them up — you “make ends meet. But in most cases, the thought of having more than you need — especially when it comes to time — is a feeling more and more unfamiliar and unimaginable to people. This is a big problem.

What compounds the problem is that so often when we find ourselves with a bit of a margin, we tend to get rid of it rather quickly. We get anxious, feel weird, and we find something to do with it, so we don’t have to worry anymore.

To put it another way, we are increasingly re-investing the margins of our lives, rather than keeping them. Spare time and energy is spent on side-hustles, collecting experiences, and other things to keep us busy. But this re-investment leaves us little with which to handle the wonderful spontaneity of life — the stuff that just comes up, and makes life so very worth living.

That’s the key: we need to get comfortable having some time and energy to spare. Having that margin allows you to remain calm, present, and open to new things that you weren’t planning for. In my experience, those things can bring so much value — and yet, if we don’t allow ourselves a margin, we can’t enjoy them; we squander the opportunities to find something truly wonderful.

How Do We Reclaim the Margin?

One of the books that radically changed the way I approached working and life is Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness. He has this wonderful analysis of our current time-constrained, fatigued situation:

Like a bee in a flower bed, the human brain naturally flits from one thought to the next. In the high-speed workplace, where data and headlines come thick and fast, we are all under pressure to think quickly. Reaction, rather than reflection, is the order of the day. To make the most of our time, and to avoid boredom, we fill up every spare moment with mental stimulation…Keeping the mind active makes poor use of our most precious resource. True, the brain can work wonders in high gear. But it will do so much more if given the chance to slow down from time to time. Shifting the mind into lower gear can bring better health, inner calm, enhanced concentration and the ability to think more creatively.

I think that is the key. When we allow ourselves more time and energy to appreciate the spontaneous and seemingly mundane things of our days, life gets demonstrably better.

So how do we do that? How do we reclaim the margins we gave away —the spare time and energy that can be so beneficial and enriching?

One way is to slow down. Just like Honoré says, shifting the mind into a lower gear can help immensely. But we resist this, because we mistakenly think that if we move quickly, we’ll squeeze more out of the day. My experience is that such a thing rarely happens — we rarely do squeeze more out of the day by moving quickly and making ourselves time-crunched. What does tend to work is specific, intentional, targeted action — and that is rarely quick. In fact, that kind of deliberate and thoughtful action is slow, almost by definition — slow, but effective.

Slowing down your mind can be as simple as adopting a meditation habit. I know — you’ve read about this before, right (in numerous articles)? But there’s a reason for that. My experience is that the mind is naturally calm, but it loses that calm due to the pressure of the many inputs in our world that demand so much of it.

Think of the mind as a calm, glassy pond. When you continue to throw rocks into it, and run your speedboat around it, the water becomes choppy, unclear, and full of movement. But when left alone, it settles back into its natural state. I have found that this can be done with the mind. But it takes effort — time and effort. However, once you can calm the mind, it’s easier to start valuing the margin — the spare time, because you come to appreciate time when your mind is not occupied — when you are calm and centered.

Another way to create margin — and perhaps the most important thing to sustain it — is to do the same thing you do when you need to create margin with your money: budget it. Time and money are a lot alike — except time is even more scarce than money. You could theoretically get more money in a given month, but you cannot get more time. You’ve got 168 hours each week, and there’s no changing that. So to create that margin, you’ll probably need to budget for it.

Budgeting Time for Margin: the 10/10/80 Rule

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a piece of budgeting advice that is attributed to billionaire John D. Rockefeller. It’s called the 10/10/80 rule, and it’s quite simple:

• give 10% of your income to charity
• save 10% of your income for the future
• allocate the remaining 80% of your income for expenses

Millions (maybe billions) of people swear by this advice. And if it works for budgeting money, why not use it for something both valuable and fixed — like time?

Here’s my proposal: create margin in your time by budgeting your weekly hours using the 10/10/80 rule. It’s simple: just make a few tweaks to the rule as it applies to money, and voila — you have some breathing room!

• use 10% of your weekly hours doing stuff for others
• save 10% of your weekly hours as a time margin (buffer)
• allocate the remaining 80% to getting all of your projects and tasks done

A word of advice. I choose to subtract sleep time first before budgeting. That is the most sunken of sunk costs, and it makes sense to not include those (but you can, if you like). Let’s assume you get 7 hours of sleep per night (or at least aim for that).

168 hours in a week - (7 days of 7 hours of sleep) = 119 hours

If you allocate the remaining 119 hours of non-sleep time each week according to the 10/10/80 rule, you end up with:

• 12 hours serving others
• 12 hours of margin time
• 95 hours for everything else

When you look at it that way, it seems very doable. You have 95 hours to work, do a side-hustle, exercise, watch movies, etc. This is your “spending money” of hours, to use as you wish.

The 12 hours of serving others is actually a kind of trick because it can actually serve you as well. Use it to call friends you haven’t spoken with in a while. Walk around the office and catch up with people. Actually volunteer in your community. If you have a spouse and children, spend some of that time doing nice things for them, as well. The key is that having that time available allows you to feel okay about doing things for others, because you have the time.

The 12 hours of margin left over are also a kind of trick because there are all sorts of places it can go — and in all sorts of increments. If it’s a crazy week at work, you can allocate some of it to unforeseen work. You can use it do unexpected repairs on things, or do creative work that you wouldn’t otherwise do. You can journal, meditate, or do any other things you haven’t done because “there’s no time”. The list goes on and on. The key is the feeling — the feeling associated with having budgeted your hours and having that 12 hours of time that hasn’t been spoken for already. It frees your mind to stop worrying about time — much like a budget (when followed) can free your mind to stop worrying about money as much.

In Conclusion

Just like having cash left over is a best practice of managing money, so is having time left over a best practice of managing your time. And as with money, investing that saved time in the right things can yield huge dividends for you. But you’ll never realize them if you don’t budget for the margin.

Follow the 10/10/80 rule, modified for time management, and you’ll have that spare time to set aside for the kind of stuff that just comes up, but can be so worthwhile.

Photo by Tim Wright on Unsplash

A way to overcome the barriers to an extremely beneficial habit, so you can begin reaping its benefits

Journaling is an enormously beneficial habit. But it can be difficult to stick with. One reason is that just opening a blank page — whether a piece of paper or a new, blank digital journal entry — can be intimidating. Where do you even begin? Without a good answer to that question, the freedom to just write anything can be overwhelming.

I am fortunate enough to have made journaling a habit, and I have come up with (or collected) a list of 6 solid methods to try, in order to keep the habit of journaling interesting — and therefore keep you engaged in it.

My suggestion is to try one of them each day, so that you end up with a week filled with a variety of entries. On the seventh day, you can simply free-write, or rest.

Journal from Others’ Perspective

If you’re like me, the busier you are, the more you can tend to get in your own head. When that happens, your relationships can suffer a bit. I’ve found it helpful to periodically journal as if from the perspective of other people in my life. I sit down and begin writing as if someone else in my life is writing in their journal about me. I write not in a contrived or presumptuous manner, but rather in a manner that gives them the benefit of the doubt, and views me as I must appear to those who don’t have a view of my thoughts and feelings.

Some key guidelines for using this journaling method:

• Give the other person’s account of what happened, ensuring to be sympathetic to them. Think of this as their first-person account in a story where they are the protagonist.
• Focus equally (if you can) on both their interactions with you and on their time during the day or week not spent with you, as it serves as a foundation for discussions you had with them, conflicts, etc. Try to form a sympathetic story around them that would (if it happened to you) explain (though not necessarily justify) their behavior.
• Write about what they may desire from you, and expect from you — and whether you’re meeting those desires and expectations. Also, talk about things they may be desiring, but not telling you.

The T.L.C Method

This might be my favorite journaling method (in fact, I’ve written an entire other piece about it). It’s the one I’ve done the most often, and it’s never failed to brighten my mood. There are 3 components to it, and the best way to use it is to start your day with it in mind, because it counts on your being able to pull 3 kinds of things about the day from your memory, and that’s where the T.L.C. acronym comes in.

• Thank
  Think of something that happened during the day or week that your’e thankful for. It has to be specific, not a generic I’m thankful for my family. An example from my journaling is that I was thankful to the guy at the rental car counter at the Baltimore airport. He endured an encounter with a really tough customer in line before me, and still asked me how my day was (which was not great — it was almost entirely spent at airports). He also recommended a place to eat that night (that was still open at almost 10pm on a Monday).
• Learn
  I’ve long thought that you should learn something new each day. More specifically, every interaction you have should teach you something. Take some time to think about what you learned during the day, and write a bit about it. Perhaps write how you’ll use it, or if perhaps you have strong feelings about it, or a good story.
• Connect
  I use “connect” here in two ways:
   
  (1) What things did you connect? In other words, what concepts did you make an analogy between or otherwise find an intellectual string tying one to the other?
  Learning is all about connecting things in your mind. Take new information, and tie it in to well-worn knowledge. Find similarities and patterns.
  (2) With whom did you connect? What conversations did you have, what were they about? What was the takeaway from each? What is that person excited about? What can you talk with them about in the future? What could you work on with them?

The 5 Whys Journal

In many ways, journaling is about getting a better understanding of yourself — past, present, and future. There’s no better way to get that understanding than to ask “why” for any feeling you’re having or issue you’re facing.

The “5 whys” is a problem-solving tool that helps to break down a problem, situation, or cause-and-effect relationship. It helps force our normally lazy minds to dig deeper by asking us to reexamine what we think are answers — but are normally incomplete answers. Many times, it takes asking “why” a few times to get to the complete answers we’re after.

Writing a 5 Whys journal is simple. You simply start by writing a problem that you’re facing at the top of the page. You then write the word “why”, and provide an answer. Repeat this until you have 5 whys answered.

Mundane things enjoyed

Gratitude Journals are all the rage, and there is good reason for that. Research continues to suggest that cultivating gratitude helps to keep you in a better mood. But once you’ve run down the list of the normal things to be grateful for (family, friends, partner, etc.), it can be difficult to come up with something to write about in a gratitude journal.

To this I say: what about that really awesome cup of coffee this morning? What about that hot shower after a long, difficult day? What about those 2 minutes where you stepped outside your house to get the mail, and the slight breeze hit you, with the sun warming your skin, and the birds chirping? It is these seemingly small moments that — when you really relish them — make for a wonderful life. But we often just let them pass without mention.

A great version of gratitude journaling is to write about a seemingly mundane moment that you enjoyed. Try to reconstruct it as best you can (you can use a little poetic license — it’s really about getting into a certain state of mind), and talk appreciatively about it. Talk about the specifics — the sensations and emotions you felt. Paint a glowing picture, and help yourself re-experience the little joy that you felt during that time. Most likely, you’ll feel a sense of peace and appreciation.

The 3 Act Journal

Most novels, plays, and movies can be divided into 3 acts: exposition, conflict, and resolution. Since the dawn of the spoken word, this structure has appealed to us as a means for transmitting and helping others understand events and their significance. Well, as it happens, journaling is a means for you to understand events that happened to you. So why not leverage the power of the story arc to understand your day or week?

credit: Celtx.com

The 3-act journal should center around something significant that happened to you.

• Act 1: The Introduction
  Think about something that was pivotal in your day, something that you were able to resolve or make significant progress on. Explain the context and importance of it, as if you were writing a story. What was the sequence of events that led up to the main event? Who were the main players? What were their possible motives? What were yours? What conversations took place? What emotions were felt, and by whom?
• Act 2: The Obstacle or Conflict
  What happened? What was the pivotal moment, or pivotal choice? How did it play out? What emotions were you feeling as the event occurred? Did it go your way, or not? Did you handle yourself well, or not?
• Act 3: The Resolution and Takeaway
  The third act is normally seen as “falling action” or “resolution,” and thus where the reflection takes place. Use the third act to wrap things up, and bring your mind from that conflict, through the aftermath, and where you are now. Talk about whether you’d have done anything differently, what you learned about yourself and about others, and how you’ll approach similar situations in the future.

The Core Values Journal

Every year, I identify 3 values that I want to focus on for the year. For example, this year’s values are service, presence, and openness. Last year’s were simplicity, patience, and compassion. In order to keep those values front of mind, and as a way to check in on how well I’m living them, I’ll periodically write a journal entry that starts with 3 headings — one for each core value — and I write about things I’ve done throughout the week (or however long since I last wrote about them) that either show that I’m exemplifying the values, or show that I need to work on following them.

What makes these different styles work for me is that they do 3 things:

1. Keep it fresh from day to day
2. Eliminate the stress of having to start a journal entry from scratch
3. Focus my daily activities on whatever it is I’ll be writing (so, I’ll be on the lookout for things to be grateful for, a little thing enjoyed, some connections I made, and so on).

That last point is important. While journaling itself can help you make sense of what already happened, a habit of journaling — especially about certain things — can alter your mindset and behavior throughout the day. If you consistently write about what you learned, or things you’re thankful for, you’ll tend to work toward having those things be parts of your day. It’s yet another great benefit of an already beneficial practice.

Did you find value in this piece? Consider subscribing to my weekly newsletter — Woolgathering. It’s one email per week, with great ideas to add value to your life and work.

Photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash

A More Meaningful and Holistic Approach to Lifelong Learning

We spend all day being bombarded by information. We take in what we can, leave what we can’t, and we keep moving. But as the sheer amount of available information grows, and most of our jobs require us to have more of it, we tend to have less and less time to process it. And when we do have time to process the mounds of information we take in, it’s increasingly unlikely that we’ll process it in any meaningful way.

What we lose is insight — which can be defined in a few ways:

1. an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing, especially through intuitive understanding
2. penetrating mental vision or discernment; faculty of seeing into inner character or underlying truth.
3. an understanding of relationships that sheds light on or helps solve a problem.

Insight is a few steps above mere knowledge. It’s more than simply knowing the what— it’s knowing the why. It’s more than grasping facts about the surface levels of topics, it’s understanding the significance and meaning of things, the forces at work inside, under, and between. When you have insight, you can see connections and relationships that others might miss. It’s the kind of thing that an algorithm can’t quite capture.

Like any other beneficial quality, insight comes through habitual practice; you have to set aside time to cultivating it. The way to do that is through a regular practice of reflection.

What is Reflection?

Reflection is a process , but it is also a mindset — a psychological disposition. But unlike critical thinking or creative thinking, it is not directed at gathering information or solving a problem. Rather, it is about establishing meaning and connections at a deeper level — often between disparate and seemingly unrelated ideas and events — which tends to more deeply embed new pieces of information in your psyche.

In the 1980s, educational theorist David Kolb published work on how reflection is an essential part of a robust learning process. Rather than just gathering facts and immediately turning them into knowledge, we need to put them through a 4-part cycle in order to make the most of the information we have.

The cycle consists of an input (experience, facts, or data of any kind), a process of reflection on the input, abstract conceptualization, followed by active experimentation, which creates an output of insight and new concrete experience — thus beginning the cycle again.

c/o simplepsychology.org

The steps in this cycle rarely happen separately from each other. Rather, they tend to happen as new information is being absorbed and processed. That means that to get better at using this cycle for learning, you have to condition your mind to go through these steps in the cycle as part of any new piece of learning. But many of us simply don’t do that.

Any time we encounter new facts or experiences, we at a minimum engage in phase 1 — that is, we gather new data. Some people tend to think that just gathering that data and experience — and perhaps a brief rehashing of it — is enough to get smarter. To an extent, just being a collector of facts and experience can serve to make you smarter — but such superficial collecting isn’t the kind of deep learning that truly makes the most of the facts and experience gathered. And it definitely doesn’t stoke the fires of curiosity that are necessary in being an effective learner. That’s where reflection comes in.

In order to make the information and experiences you have throughout your days become meaningful and part of insight, you need to make a habit of reflection. Doing that is as simple as cultivating a mindset of being receptive to all sorts of external data, and also engaging in the activities of conceptualization and experimentation as you encounter new pieces of information.

Building a Reflective Learning Process

In order to really harness the power of deeper learning, you need to engage in the deeper processes of reflection and abstract conceptualization. There are myriad ways to do this, so I would like to focus on a few best practices to help you build the foundation for a process of insightful reflection and make it a habit.

Maximize the Breadth of Inputs

Learning begins with input, and usually, that takes the form of concrete experience. Reading a book, a discussion with someone, watching a video, listening to a podcast — all of these are avenues available to us. But there are so many more possible inputs.

Effective learning begins with widening the scope of learning inputs. Every activity you engage in is an opportunity for the concrete experience at the beginning of the learning cycle. Take your drive to work for example. If you’ve been doing it for years, you likely just let the signs and buildings zoom by you with little thought. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Each of the things going on during that drive to work are inputs via concrete experience — possible beginnings of a reflective learning process. It simply takes fixing your attention on something in a way that admits some lack of knowledge on your part. Once you do that, you can then accept the input of that experience as the beginning of learning about something new. Take for instance the brick apartment buildings snugly next to each other on the street. Is there a law as to how close they have to be to one another? Who decides that? Why? Be a little curious about that, and it could begin a fantastic journey down learning lane.

If your drive to work is particularly boring, listen to a podcast, audiobook, or something like that. Be on alert for something that piques your interest, and remember it for future review.

Set Aside Time to Reflect

As the legend goes, George Shultz — who was secretary of state under president Ronald Reagan — would take an hour each week to lock himself in the office with only a pad of paper and pen. No interruptions, no tasks at hand to work on, just thinking.

Psychologists refer to this way of operating as the task-negative mode — where the brain is not directly fulfilling a pre-determined purpose. Rather, it is left to relax and go where the connections between your thoughts take it. It’s a mode of following the strands of thought in your mind, and taking the time to see whether and how they can be tied together in meaningful ways.

What the task-negative mode is really good for, though, is the abstract conceptualization work of the learning process. It’s during those times of quiet reflection and mind-wandering where the mind tends to make all kinds of connections between various inputs you received and your existing knowledge. It’s also where you hook up facts and pieces of discrete knowledge with meaning and purpose, which only serves to amplify the satisfaction of learning.

This tends to happen because of something neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists call the default mode network, disparate areas of the brain which hook up and work together when you’re not focusing on a particular cognitive task. Essentially, it’s the reason why you come up with great ideas in the shower. Operating in task-negative mode helps to get this network working. So when you set aside time to just sit and let your mind go, you tap into this network, and can cultivate its power to help you connect the things you’ve experienced.

Decompress

If you were to just sit down and attempt to begin a process of reflection and insight, you would find yourself pretty frustrated. Unless you’re superhuman, or just don’t care about much, you’re carrying some level of stress and a heap of thoughts and feelings with you at any given time during your waking hours.

There is a name fore the nagging thoughts and feelings that cloud the mind and literally put stress on the body. They’re called unconstructive repetitive thoughts. My guess is that you know them well. They pop up randomly — especially when you’re trying to focus — and bug you. They tend to be either negative, or have negative connotations (telling you that you need to do something), and they block the road to focused work.

Recent investigations hypothesize that these URTs — both immediately and over time — sap cognitive ability. By robbing people of their attention and contributing to negative cognitive cycles, as well as contributing to physiological stress (heightened cortisol, etc.), URTs can have pronounced effects on our well-being and our ability to think creatively and constructively.

If you’re skeptical about this, try a simple exercise. Sit and attempt to not think of anything. Inevitably, thoughts, feelings, memories, or other things will pop into your mind. Record each one. My bet is that after a few minutes, you’ll have a list of negative thoughts or thoughts about how you need to do something. Those have a tremendous pull on you — both cognitively and physically.

Finding a way to alleviate the pressures of these thoughts will be game-changer for most people. Luckily, there are many ways to do this.

1. Meditate
   Consistent meditation (whether mindfulness, mantra, loving-kindness, or other) can reduce both the frequency and effect of these thoughts.
2. Journal
   Recording your thoughts in written form is effective in not only unloading these URTs, but also in allowing you to make sense of how they fit into your life. You can hash out emotions, obligations, and priorities — so you can more effectively take action in your life.
3. Play & Exercise
   Play is a great way to decompress — especially when your mind is under significant pressure. But you have to engage in the right kind of play. Competitive sports, where the stakes are high, the pressure is on, and quick-thinking under pressure is key — that won’t provide the benefits of free an exploratory play that allow your mind to relax and receive the benefits of physical activity. Physical exertion below the point of fatigue, with minimal mental demands, is the best way to leverage exercise and play for the benefit of mental decompression.

Use The Power of Analogy

One of the most effective ways to retain and better understand new information is to connect it to a more familiar piece of information you already grasp firmly. A simple way to do this is through analogical thinking — which is my personal favorite way to learn things.

When you encounter a new concept in some field of study you don’t know well, ask yourself what concept that you do understand well is like this concept. Just trying to figure this out is enough to do two things that help you learn better:

• get you more enthusiastic about the new concept
• provide you with ample questions to ask someone who knows the concept well (e.g.: hey, is this concept like this other concept that I understand well? No? Okay, hmm, let me think a little more…)

A robust form of analogical thinking is visualization. Visualizing things as you learn — and thinking of possible related visualizations of familiar pieces of knowledge — can go a long way to cement your newly learned concepts. The old mnemonic trick of thinking of funny images to match up with people’s names can also work with vocabulary in new area of study where you’re unfamiliar.

Write as If You’re Teaching

I attended graduate school for 4 years. That’s 4 years of intensive study with experts in the field — reading texts by other experts, and engaging in high-level discussions of the same topics constantly. But it wasn’t until I set out to teach that material to fresh undergraduates that I realized how much I still had to learn. When I had to write about the topics I thought I knew well for an audience that knew nothing about them — that was a deep learning experience.

As you learn a topic, take time to write about it for an audience that doesn’t know anything about it (be they real or imaginary). If you can confidently write about a topic for an audience of total novices, that should give you a firm grasp on the material. In most cases, as you set out to do this, you’ll stumble and find yourself unable to fully explain the material. You’ll end up reading more about it, taking more notes, and connecting concepts in a more dynamic manner — because you’re trying to pass along the information to others. You’ll also tend to be more enthusiastic about researching, because you know exactly what you’re looking for, and there is a purpose to your research.

The more reflective you become in your approach to learning, the better your learning will be. But reflection is a process and a mindset that needs the right background and the right habits to keep it active and effective. Maximize breadth of inputs, set aside time to reflect, decompress, use the power of analogy, and write as if you’re teaching to ensure that you cultivate a mind set up for reflective learning.

Photo by Luís Eusébio on Unsplash

Work, Meta-Work, and Why We Fail to Recognize the Most Valuable Things We Should be Managing

I would never be so bold as to say that we’ve been looking at productivity all wrong, but I’m going to come close to saying that. I’m doing that because over the past few years, I’ve begun to realize something important about being productive. I’ve come to realize that being productive is a trivial goal.

I recognize that checking items off of a list you’ve made for yourself feels great. I do it every day (or try to). But my worry is that like many things that makes us feel good, managing our tasks as we do in the productivity community can have downsides. And I think that productivity — viewed as project and task management — does have a downside: it makes us look at the wrong things, which serves to make us productive at the cost of being effective.

So first, I want to make a distinction between productivity and effectiveness. Then, I will explain what we should do instead of focusing on tasks & projects in order to become effective.

Productivity vs. Effectiveness

I still use the word productivity to describe what I write about. But ultimately, that’s just for the sake of convenience; it’s what people generally talk about when they mean what I’m really concerned with — which is effectiveness.

What’s the difference? Well, someone can be productive — in that they get a lot of things done, but they still may not be effective — insomuch as the things they get done don’t add up to created value.

A post on PlanPlusOnline lays it out quite well:

Productivity is generally regarded as a measure of outputs divided by inputs. All of the activities that you get done in a day may be considered your output and the time you put into them are your inputs.

Efficiency is a measure of how well you do those things. If you are able to get more outputs from the same inputs, you are said to have increased efficiency.

Effectiveness is a measure of doing the “right things.” Highly effective individuals and companies act in ways that move their highest priorities forward on a regular basis.

Productivity = Output / Input

Efficiency = Doing things right

Effectiveness = Doing the right things

So while productivity — getting the most output compared to input — is a worthwhile pursuit because it can lead to getting the right things done, that is not always the case. In fact, many times, periods of high productivity can be much less effective periods of time. Why is this?

Well, paradoxically, effectiveness relies heavily on meta-work — the work of coming to understand and make decisions about what work one is gong to do. For instance, if you receive 100 emails today, you must know in the back of your head that not all of it is work you need to do. However, in order to really know what is work worth doing and what is not, you will need to engage in the meta-work of thinking about that stuff.

But there’s a problem with that meta-work: it doesn’t tend to look or feel like work. It feels too slow, it lacks physical movement, and it’s not reactive. As such, many people — even executives — don’t recognize it as work. And when we think something isn’t work, we don’t tend to prioritize it over stuff that we clearly recognize as work (like feverishly typing out a reply to an email).

The 2 Components of Effectiveness

I believe that Effectiveness has 2 major components. The first one has priority over the second:

1. Understanding & managing key relationships
2. Understanding & managing work

Really, if you are good at doing part 1, part 2 tends to flow naturally. That is to say, if you understand and manage your relationships well, you will understand and manage your work well as a result. That is because almost all of your work comes from or serves a person — whether others or yourself.

While we think of work in terms of tasks and projects, we rarely address the source of that work. But if you think about it work is simply this:

work is the activity involved in meeting or managing commitments, desires, and expectations that exist between you and others.

Whatever you are doing, have done, or think you need to do — it is because there is some desire, expectation, or commitment that needs to be met or managed. That’s it.

So, if we define being effective as doing the right work, and doing little or no wrong work, we can further reduce it to simply managing relationships. Managing relationships comes down to doing two things very well:

1. Understanding what type of relationship you’re in with each person
2. Understanding and managing the 3 components of each relationship: desires, expectations, and commitments.

Notice the trend here? I’m using the word “understanding” quite a bit. That’s intentional. Understanding things is key to being effective. But again, understanding takes meta-work — it takes sitting, thinking, questioning, and consulting — all stuff that many people don’t include in their definition of work.

The 6 Relationships

There is a passage in the Sigālaka Sutta —part of the Buddhist scriptures — that talks about something called “the six directions” . They are the six different kinds of relationships that we have in our lives — whether we know it or not. Turning to face each direction — that is, realizing each relationship — is key to living well. Here’s the passage:

27. ‘And how, householder’s son, does the Ariyan disciple protect the six directions? These six things are to be regarded as the six directions. The east denotes mother and father. The south denotes teachers. The west denotes wife and children. The north denotes friends and companions. The nadir denotes servants, workers and helpers. The zenith denotes ascetics and Brahmins.

The East: Parents & Guardians: Those Who Raised You

No one in this world came up on their own. Someone older than them took them across the bridge of childhood and adolescence. Now, that crossing may have been a rough one. There may be hard feelings between you and those who were supposed to provide for you and guide you as a young person. But those relationships existed, and can’t be ignored.

Teachers and Mentors: Those Who Taught You

Keeping in touch with teachers and mentors is important — even when they no longer actively teach or mentor you. Those relationships never really go away — they just change. But the things you do with and for these people — and the things they do for you — can be some of the most valuable work you’re involved in.

Partners and Children: Those Intertwined Most Tightly With You

It should go without saying that a whole host of important work you’re doing (and neglecting) involves your partners and dependents. Making sure you understand the desires and expectations of these people, and aligning them with what you’re committed to — is key to a peaceful personal life.

Friends and Companions: Those Who Fight the Fight With You

Friends are important, but they can take work to keep from going stale. Personally, I’ve done poorly on this over the past few years, and I intend to remedy it. But I understand that it will take work, and I will need to be prepared to do it.

Those “Below” You

There are people in your professional life that many might consider “below” you. If you work at a company with a hierarchy, they would be those at levels below you in the org chart — whether they report to you or not. If you work on your own, they would be those who are just starting out, or not as well-known or accomplished as you are. They might come to you for help, advice, or just to talk. It’s important to manage these relationships because you want to make sure you help those who may have nothing to offer, but you also want to make sure that your boundaries are clear. You don’t want to sacrifice time on other valuable relationships for the benefit of others. Sometimes, that’s not as easy as it sounds.

As someone who has managed people for years, I find that in so many cases, taking time to help someone talk themselves through challenges allows them to figure out that they can do the work themselves. This has the added bonus of helping enrich those people, and help them progress in their careers. They feel more competent, are more grateful, and you get less work to do as a result. It’s the winniest of win-wins.

Those “Above” You

Whether you’ve got managers, executives, or simply more accomplished people that you interface with, it’s important to understand how you relate to those people. In a company, you’re most likely to get a lot of expectations and desires flowing from this level to you.

This may be the case for those doing freelance work, as well — because clients and customers are those “above” you. You have to make sure you show the proper deference, while also creating and enforcing boundaries, and ensuring that you are not a dumping ground for non value-add tasks and projects. That involves getting clear on expectations and commitments.

With executives, you often have to spend time teasing out the desires they have that they’ve turned into expectations of you — and then making it clear that they shouldn’t have those expectations of you, because you haven’t committed to them. It is delicate and tricky work, but if you don’t do it, you’ll be up to your eyeballs in work that — even if you complete it on time — gets you nowhere.