All in Life
At the end of the day, I think the most important type of wealth we’re after is time. In particular, the freedom to do what we want with it.
I know the conventional thinking is that we’re after financial freedom, but the reason we’re after that is to be able to do whatever we want i.e. to use our time as we please.
Confidence and volume are two separate ideas, but often, when it comes to our communications, we tend to conflate the two.
There is a material difference and, as I discuss in today's episode, it's important we work to understand that distinction.
David Lee Roth once said (and I’m liberally paraphrasing) that he’d taken the time to distill his vices down to a select few and that he was determined to spend his time getting the most out of the handful that remained.
I’ve always held to the view that the root cause of poor behavior (towards others) is low self-esteem. That’s always made sense to me: if we don’t have enough self-confidence or belief in ourselves, how can we expect to accept others’ (differing) perspectives - and not react in some way?
Well, Adam Grant posited a somewhat different - perhaps a more nuanced - point of view, based on research published in journals such as Psychological Review.
How we spend our time on a day to day basis is materially influenced by the extent to which we're responding to signals or to noise.
In today's episode, I speak to the need to think about which cues we pick up and what we react to - the signals versus the noise.
Is it an investment or a cost?
That seems like semantics but I think there’s a bit more to the question.
I feel like I’ve been writing a lot about “forcing mechanisms” recently - ideas and beliefs that translate into behaviors and actions that force specific outcomes, in ourselves or in others.
Forcing mechanisms serve a purpose if we’re conscious about them, leading us towards or away from the kinds of results we’re looking for.
Expectations management is everything in business. We understand and buy that when it comes to big picture issues - such as a client delverable.
But, as I discuss in today's podcast, it matters just as much in our more common day to day activities.
Ideologies are a useful mobilizing force. They rally our communities and allow resources to be effectively deployed towards a common goal.
Everyone involved knows exactly what they need to do and the ends towards which they’re working.
When markets are at an all time low and everyone else is selling, there are the brave few who wade right into the thick of things and start buying.
They do this despite the ‘evidence’ to the contrary, because they’ve done their homework, formed an educated point of view and are willing to bet on their own logic (versus the consensus view).
We tend to think of competitions as absolutes, that there are always clear winner and losers.
But other than in sports, that’s just not the case. (And even in sports, depending on your timelines, it’s absolutely the case.)
Is it still breaking the rules if everyone knows you’re doing it?
My kids’ High School has this tradition near the end of Senior Year called “Senior Ditch Day”, where kids skip school and just hang out. Now, this was never a thing when I was growing up (I didn’t grow up in the US) but it seems to be here.
I don’t know how much is actually within our control.
I know many of us like to think everything is, even as there are others who think nothing is, that we’re all simply subjects (victims?) of fate.
If I had to choose, I’d put myself more in the former camp - that we can indeed make of ourselves and our situations what we will.
Momentum, in a psychological sense, is a funny thing.
It’s a mindset that wields so much influence, dominating our focus, often despite the facts. And while momentum tends to build over time, the reality is that it can also turn on a dime.
You can be in the midst of a string of strong results but one bad event, particularly one that you’d banked on, or considered ‘symbolic’ and your confidence is gone.
Trevor Noah once referred to our culture as our operating system, one that we're rarely even aware of.
That's an apt explanation of the role and value of culture. It's something that can make us - but just as equally, it can break us.
I’ve been mulling over this tweet ever since it was posted about a week ago:
“Every time I have a programming question and I rly need help, I post it on Reddit and then log into another account and reply to it with an obscenely incorrect answer. Ppl don’t care about helping others but they LOVE correcting others. Works 100% of the time”
So, I realize I’ve come this late (it was a big thing during the pandemic) but recently, I’ve started making my own sourdough bread.
It’s a fascinating activity to take on - a much longer and much more involved process than I originally expected. From start to finish (i.e. from levain preparation to actual baked bread), it takes about 36 hours, because there are a number of steps to be followed, each with specific time requirements, particular results to be achieved at each step, and plenty of waiting in between.
There’s a golden rule that applies in all aspects of our professional lives:
Look for agnostics, not atheists.*
An atheist is someone who is convinced that there is no God, while an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves that God exists.
That’s a meaningful difference in perspective.
Stability is a pipe dream. We long for it and yearn for things to be normal, for things not to change.
The reality is that life doesn't quite work that way. The fact of the matter is, as I discuss in today's episode, that we're always in transition. Accept that idea and we're liberated.
I've found that when I focus on the idea of the work I'm doing - as opposed to the work itself - I don't quite deliver as well as I could.
I get too caught up in the external, on the trappings than on the content. The key, as I discuss in today's episode, is to let that go and focus instead on the content itself. That's what matters.
