Category: culture

Multimessing

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You can do different things at the same time, yet chances are none of them will turn out to be done particularly well.

Sure you can do the dishes while talking to the kids, or prepare food while talking on the phone, or drive while listening to a podcast. You’ll be a lot more tired in the end, but for basic and repetive actions, stuff our body does basically automatically, it is possible to add something else on top.

Try though doing the dishes while your son is talking to you about a deep matter that bothers him; or impress your family with a totally new recipe while your mother is guiding you through the schedule for her next visit; or navigate the streets of a neighborhood you have never been to before while the music is on.

In those cases you’ll have to tune something down, possibly stop doing it completely. It’s exactly when you are doing important work that multitasking becomes a myth.

If you are working on a report to present during the next board meeting, and you also answer a bunch of e-mails you’ve received in the meantime, send a text to your wife to say you’ll be late, and get back to your colleague on Slack, most likely some of that greatly suffered in quality (I bet it was the report).

Work as if you are not the 2%, and allocate enough time for things that deserve your full attention. Do not get distracted, be brutal when needed, and you’ll finish faster and have time for the rest.

You lead the way

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If you set goals early on in life, you are more likely to be successful. A famous study at Yale University showed that out of the class of 1953, the 3% of students that had their ideas clear at graduation collected 97% of the wealth of the whole class two decades later. Actually, they did not.

Bias is almost impossible to avoid, but there are ways around it. For examples, few decades ago, orchestras started doing “blind auditions”. That is to say musicians who are under scrutiny are asked to perform behind a screen, so that examiners would not be influenced by their gender. The chance for women to pass the first stages of the audition has increased by 50% thanks to this simple trick to keep bias in check. In fact, it did not.

To become an expert at anything, you need to practice for 10,000 hours. Not really, to be fully honest.

What do we do when something we strongly believe in, something that is motivating us, that is driving our work, a practice that is making us feel better, a recommendation that has given us the strength to leap, is proven wrong?

We keep on going, doing our work day after day, because in the end there is only one way that is going to help you achieve what you want to achieve. Yours.

Amateurs and professionals

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“Amateur” is from latin “amator”, that means “lover”, “the one who loves”.

“Professional”, which has the same root of “profession”, is from latin “profiteri”, that means “declare publicly”, and it has for a long time denoted the vow made on entering a religious order.

The difference between amateur and professional is in their roots.

An amateur is somebody who loves something and likes to practice it.

A professional, on the other hand, is somebody who is deeply passionate about something, so much so they devote their life to it.

You can do things as an amateur (many things, possibly) or as a professional (few things, probably). The difference is in the amount of effort and work you put into it.

Near-enemies

Fabrizio1 Comment

I love the concept of near-enemies.

In Buddhism, near-enemies are manifestations that are quite close to a desired state, yet are actually a whole lot different. So different, they are actually dangerous.

A desired state of Buddhists, for example, is equanimity. That is to say, a way of being calm and focused no matter what happens around you. It is “stability in the face of the fluctuations of worldly fortune“.

Equanimity has a clear enemy, a “far-enemy”. That is restlesness, anxiety, the desire to have things the way we want them to be. The near-enemy, though, is indifference.

From the outside, equanimity and indifference look perhaps the same. Yet they are substantially different: equanimity is not desiring things to be one way or the other; indifference is not caring whether things are one way or the other. With equanimity, we feel everything: the good, the bad, the ugly, the despair, the difficulties, the joy, the sorrow. We are simply not stuck there. With indifference, we feel nothing.

This makes me think of how much we are nowadays focused on near-enemies.

Activity, for example, that is an active force, a state in which things happen and are being done, is often mistaken for its near-enemy busyness, that rarely leads to any progress.

In the same way, our popularity (definitely not a Buddhist concept), that is the condition in which we are liked, admired, supported by others, is often mistaken for its modern near-enemies likes, fans, followers, visits, clicks or any other vanity metric of your choice.

If we expand the concept a little, we can also see how easily we are distracted by near-enemies in our pursue of something we deem important. We do not want our community to be racist or bigot or closed, we want to pursue an ideal of openness. And to do that, we aim at a target, we attack, we label and brand, we separate. Ending up in a community that is even more close than it was before.

Near-enemies are an incredibly powerful concept. If we manage to go behind their seduction, if we do not fall for their attractiveness and easiness of reach, if we force ourselves to open to the real objective of our journey. That is when the highest states that we want to achieve – for us, our families, companies, communities – become not only attainable, but also natural.

Meetings

Fabrizio2 Comments

Few rules to get the most out of meetings.

Come prepared. A meeting should have a clear agenda, make sure you know what it is about and you have an important contribution to give. If you don’t, you can sit this out and be updated later. For 1-1 meetings, be sure you have reviewed previous history and have at least a couple of points that move the relationship forward.

Come on time. Should go without saying, yet it still happens most of the times that people are late. Actually, do not come on time. Be a few minutes early. Feel the room, exchange a word with others, make sure you are all set for the starting time.

Let the talking flow. Your turn will come, no need to rush it. Make sure you listen carefully to what is being said and are ready to speak when the time is right. Avoid interrupting, or jumping in. And if something is absolutely, incredibly urgent and needs to be said right now, get the attention of who’s speaking with body language (e.g. raise your hand) rather than by talking a higher tone.

Be polite and behave. Most likely, jokes are not welcomed. Rants aren’t as well. Stay on topic. Speak in a normal tone of voice, avoid bursting out in laugh or random hysteria. If you are leading the meeting, make sure everybody gets a fair chance to voice their opinion, yet avoid going around the room. Again, flow is important.

Keep technology to a minimum. Can’t think of a reason why phones should be allowed. If you or somebody is waiting for an important phone call, postpone the meeting. As per notebooks, if somebody has anything to present ok. Otherwise, notebooks are not necessary. In the best case scenario, they are a distraction waiting to happen (and no, your mind will to refocus on the topic discussed right after you have noticed the notification). In the worst case scenario, they create a lot of personal barriers behind which to take cover and avoid meaningful conversations. You got to take notes, you probably know how to write: take a notepad and a pen with you. And while you take notes, particularly in 1-1s, say it out loud: “I am writing this down as I feel it’s important”.

Keep it short. I am not sure what the right length of a meeting is. I can tell you, it is never more than 60 minutes. Nobody, nowadays, can be focused on one single topic, or on one single speaker, for 60 minutes. If you have multiple things to discuss, schedule multiple shorter meetings, only with the people that needs to be there. If you have to go through a lengthy document, there are probably better ways than to lock yourself in a room together. Well-prepared workshops are a great alternative. Make sure attention is high, and for this reason, keep it short. And then, make it shorter.