Author: Fabrizio

Gratification and impact

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When you pick up the phone while you are driving, you are choosing a short-term gratification (reading the message you just got) over a long-term impact (the attention you need to drive safely).

When you speed up to pass the car in front of you, despite the continuous line, you are choosing a short-term gratification (the impression to be able to get to your destination faster) over a long-term impact (the care and patience you need to drive safely).

When you click on the notification that pops up on your screen while working, you are choosing a short-term gratification (being on top of what is happening) over a long-term impact (delivering your work with consistence).

When you scream in the face of the person in front of you, you are choosing a short-term gratification (a rush of power, or letting go of your stress) over a long-term impact (building a relationship of trust, or training your capacity of not reacting).

When you skip your daily training, you are choosing a short-term gratification (an hour or so of available time) over a long-term impact (being in good shape and health).

You get the drill.

Most of our small, daily choices are a trade off between gratification and impact. Of course, we do not pay much attention to most of them, because that is not the way we are wired.Yet, we tend to forget that the long term is but a succession of short terms, not something magic that will spark out of nothing at some point in time.

Be intentional about what you do.

Envy

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When you stop looking at others as threats to your own success, they will automatically turn into a possibility to learn, into someone who can enable your next project, into people you can help in their own journey.

It is just a matter of perspective.

Winning machine

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When you have a new idea, it is quite difficult to avoid having all your following thoughts gravitate around it.

If a new slogan comes to you in the middle of the night, all the successive iterations will just be slight variations.

If you think at a solution for a problem you have had for a while, you will expand and stretch the solution until it gets good enough to actually cover at least a small part of the problem.

If the process you have just implemented has proven successful, you will use it until it is too late to understand it is no longer up-to-date.

A possible way around this could be to ask different people to come up with a new idea. Or to foster an environment in which it is normal that different people come up with a variety of new ideas. If you match with a process that clearly defines what gets picked, what gets postponed and what gets rejected, you have a winning machine.

Agent of change

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It is not so difficult to agree that change needs to happen. It is much more complex to agree on what change adds up to and act on it.

So, if you are an agent of change, there are two things to keep in mind.

First, small wins are wins nonetheless. You do not have to achieve everything at once, and even small changes in the right direction are something to be proud of. Building blocks that can support larger wins in the future.

Second, not giving up is part of the package. You might be tempted – you WILL be tempted – to give up once things do not look exactly how you had planned. That is precisely when you have to take a deep breath, buckle down, and reinforce the message around the need for change.

Keep going.

Difficult times

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Sometimes it feels like banging your head against a wall. And sometimes it feels like that for most of the things that make up our days.

In these times, the importance of a practice cannot be overestimated. Getting back to doing, sitting down to deliver, adding a “+1” to whatever streak matters to you, can help immensely in keeping sane.

Practices can be developed in good times, and it is in difficult times that they save you.