When a significant life change happens, routines stop. When routines stop, habits don’t trigger. Without longstanding routines and habits, life gets hard. Our automated decision-making ceases and we’re forced to think about everything.
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If we can slow the transmission of Coronavirus, we can spread its impact over a longer period of time. If we can spread the impact over time, we can lessen the load on our health systems. And if we can lessen the load on our health systems, we might be able to save lives. I will practice social distancing until further notice.
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I’m often asked for book recommendations from aspiring entrepreneurs. Rather than write a custom note each time, I’m listing them here. There are many other books I recommend, but these are the top five for aspiring entrepreneurs. If you think there’s another one that I should add to this list, please let me know.
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When attendees don't agree on the purpose of a meeting, bad meetings happen. Perfect conditions brew for impatience and unhealthy conflict. Attendees try to complete competing objectives and nothing gets done. If you’re having unproductive meetings, attendees may be working toward conflicting objectives. Try stepping back and getting everyone to agree on a clarified purpose for the meeting.
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People say patience is a virtue, but I find it more useful to define it as a skill. Patience is the ability to wait for something without becoming frustrated. Sometimes exercising patience is difficult. When we’re forced to wait, we become impatient. When we’re impatient, we expose our frustrations via body language, words, and actions. Our emotions take control. Why do we become impatient and what purpose does it serve?
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There are times when teamwork is easy. Teamwork is easy when all team members are aligned and share a common view of the outcome they’re trying to achieve. But much of the time, teamwork is hard.
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Regret is an awful feeling. The more we feel it, the less happy we are in the present. We feel regret when we make a decision that disappoints us. We can regret a decision to act (“action”). And we can regret a decision not to act (“inaction”). Over the last year or two, I’ve been experimenting with ways to minimize regret. It’s hard but worth it.
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When we look into the past, we recognize how much personal change we’ve experienced. But when we look into the future, we underestimate how much we’ll change. Psychologists refer to this illusion as the end of history illusion. Despite changing a lot in the past, we don't believe we'll change much in the future.
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Maybe the best way to promote is to make helping easy. Make it easy for others to help you. And make it easy for you to help others. This make helping easy approach requires honesty about what you want and what you’re willing to give. It also requires transparency that allows others to identify potential overlap.
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These equations explain the power of small (one percent) daily changes over the course of a full year (365 days). If we make something one percent better every day for a year, we make it 37 times better. And if we make something one percent worse every day for a year, we make it 97% worse.
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We play games every day. A few weeks ago, Simon Sinek introduced me to James Carse’s book, Finite and Infinite Games. Carse breaks our games into two types: finite and infinite. While we cannot win an infinite game, we can enjoy playing it. An infinite game is a journey. And the journey is the reward.
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Confucius, a Chinese philosopher during the 5th and 6th centuries BC, said: By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest. Confucius wrote this more than two thousand years ago. I read this quote almost every Sunday morning in an attempt to extract its full meaning.
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Predictions are hard to write. I’ll be wrong more often than I'll be right. And it will be embarrassing to look back at how wrong I was. But predictions are worthwhile. They force me to think about new things in different ways. Here goes my inaugural annual prediction.
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This week on the Startup to Last podcast, my co-host Tyler and I reflected on 2019 and looked forward to 2020. I’ve listed some of the questions we walked through along with my answers. Reflection is a powerful tool. I found these questions both challenging and inspiring.
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Humans are social bonding mammals. We bond as friends, lovers, communities, teams, and organizations. We bond to feel safe. We bond to procreate. And we bond to achieve great feats. We build our strongest bonds with a skill called empathy.
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Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious.” Experts say curiosity is the key to success. Yet curiosity is a human trait. We’re all born with it. We’re all curious in our own ways. So, what do these experts really mean? Psychologists break curiosity into two types: 1) perceptual curiosity; and 2) intellectual curiosity.
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Experts believe trust is the core foundation of strong interpersonal relationships, teams, and organizations. There are many loose definitions of trust. But if we are going to increase trust, we need a precise definition to work from. After reviewing hundreds of different explanations of trust, I propose we use this definition.
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I break content into two buckets: 1) timely content and 2) timeless content. Yes; I’ve over-simplified this. But it works to make this point: you should prioritize timeless content over timely content.
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