Archive for the ‘Advice’ category

Focus

November 28th, 2011

Some time ago, I wrote a post hypothesizing that “the cure for procrastination” is to become a busy person. With a constant stream of deadlines, the theory goes, one will not have the time to procrastinate.

I was wrong. It works, sure, but it’s the wrong thing to do. It forces you to schedule frivolous activities between the important ones. As Steve Jobs would say, if you want to do anything great, “cut the crap”. Focus on the one or two things that matter, and stop doing all the other crap that doesn’t matter. Jobs gave this advice to Larry Page, CEO of Google telling him to stop simultaneously working on hundreds of mediocre projects and instead focus on the ones that matter most. I’ve realized that this advice applies just as well to personal development. Doing hundreds of things at once will make it harder to become good at any one of them. Stop working on a hundred different projects and just work on them one at a time; Stop trying to please everyone and focus on the ones that matter most; Stop reading 6 different books at once and finish the one you’re reading before starting another one; Stop trying to learn eight different habits at once. Just focus.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Comments Off »

Posted in Advice, All, opinion

Tags:

When you negotiate with a friend, trust is the default

May 21st, 2011

And when you negotiate with anyone else, distrust is the default. That’s what I’m starting to realize.

I suck at negotiating; never had to do it. As a software engineer in training, it’s just not something I’ve ever had to do in school and rarely in life. The one place where negotiation can happen a lot in life is when you’re bargaining for a better price e.g. on your insurance or an expensive purchase, but as someone who spent the majority of their life in the bubble of school, those situations never come up.

A conversation I had with a close software engineer friend went something like this:

me: Looks like I might be doing business with ABC
him: Don't forget to negotiate
me: Yeah, I suck at negotiating though
him: Yeah me too...that's a mistake I made during XYZ
both: *sigh*

I don’t know if this applies to many other engineering types, but I tend to have a diplomatic personality where if I respect someone enough to do business with, then I tend to lead towards trusting them. Often I would try and think about how to maximize the benefit to both of us rather than just myself. This is dangerous when the other person doesn’t behave the same way. It’s very easy to get short changed on a deal. When you trust someone, you’re more likely to agree with them. When you trust someone that you want a long term relationship with, it’s easy to let your guard down and let them take an upper hand while subconsciously thinking it’ll help build trust in the relationship, but if they’re experienced in negotiating, then you’re just a sucker who can’t negotiate.

Apply this to finding a co-founder and I can see why it’s good advise to start companies with your best friends rather than someone you’ve just met. When you talk with a friend, trust is the default. There are no incentives to deceive because the person you’re going to be working with is a friend–you’re happy when they’re happy and vice versa, so you both optimize for mutual benefit. The deal you agree to will often end up being the most fair regardless of each others negotiation skills. Without an initial trust, there’s a huge incentive to negotiate to maximize your own benefit, and that’s a game where the better negotiator wins. If you know you’re not the better negotiator, then you have to get better at it. Otherwise the only winning move is not to play because if either party feels shortchanged in this critical stage of the business relationship then you’ve already lost.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Comments Off »

Posted in Advice

Tags:

Meaningful work

April 7th, 2010

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell identified three key properties of meaningful and fulfilling work:

Autonomy, complexity, and a strong connection between effort and achievement

Autonomy gives you independence–it gives you the ability to make meaningful choices and the freedom to make mistakes and learn. Complexity gives you a sense of challenge and keeps you interested. A connection between effort and achievement gives you an incentive to work harder to achieve greater.

It’s a succinct set of properties to remember that can be applied to any work you do whether it’s paid or volunteering, working for someone else or for yourself.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Comments Off »

Posted in Advice

Tags:

thought of the day: If you want to be successful, surround yourself with successful people

June 29th, 2009

If you want to be successful whether you’re working on a project or advancing your career, surround yourself with successful people. The best proof that someone can be successful is if they have been successful.

If you are surrounded by a sea of mediocrity, who is going to be your teacher? If you float to the top of this sea, what incentive is there for you to go higher and fly?

I attended Bar Camp Sydney 5 the other day and one of the presenters was an entrepreneur giving advice about whether you should partner with someone when starting a venture. One of the strongest things that he advocated was that if you’re starting a new venture, it’s always best to have a great co-founder. Not a lousy co-founder, or even a mediocre co-founder, but a great one. One who shares your vision, one who can work and lead independently, not a follower, one who is as dedicated as you are. All these criteria make a great partner. If you can’t find someone with these characteristics, then it’s easier to start your venture on your own.

Many people giving advice at this event were people who have been successful in creating a business. Some have done it many times, with a long history of success and failure. When you fail and then succeed, you learn and become wiser, when you become wise you can teach. What if these people have not gone out and tried? Then they would only be speculating. What if they have only failed and never succeeded in their ventures? Then they can only tell you what not to do. You need to have succeeded to teach how to be successful.

Update: An excellent articles on the same topic from the internet Millionare secrets – Surround yourself with winners. Unsuccessful people are negative, depressed, pessimistic. They bring you down. Successful people are enthusiastic, uplifting, passionate. The way  you behave and make decisions is largely influenced by those around you, so make sure they’re the right kind of people.

Update2: an interesting post that presents the counter argument, Why surrounding yourself with successful people is dumb. The author argues that successful people may not want your company if you have not been successful  yourself, so instead you should surround yourself with people who can potentially be successful, then  you can form mutually beneficial relationships.

http://thinklikemillionaires.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/self-made-millionaire-secrets-13/http://thinklikemillionaires.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/self-made-millionaire-secrets-13/

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Comments Off »

Posted in Advice, All

Tags:

Paralysis in the absense of deadlines and abundance of todos

January 29th, 2009

The size of my todo list is increasing linearly, yet the rate at which I’m doing those things is increasing only logarithmically. This is getting worse, not because the amount of things I have to do is accelerating, but because there are so many things to do that I am overwhelmed, so instead I do nothing. This is paralysis.

Paralysis occurs because having too many things to do has additional overhead that prevents things from being done at their normal pace. You have to make a choice about what to do next, but there are too many things to choose from. Furthermore, most of the things on the list either has no definite deadline or the deadline is too far away to provide a sense of urgency. This results in paralysis as a result of a phenomenon called the paradox of choice.

In essence, choice is normally good in moderation. Most people would assume that more choices will always make us happier, but the reality is that too much choice makes us less happy, there is so much to choose from that we don’t have the time or motivation to assess each one. As a result, we either make poor decisions by picking a random one, or we give up and don’t make the choice at all.

That’s why we need specific deadlines. Deadlines make the choice for us. If you have to finish that report tonight then it make sense to  decide to work on it rather than that boat in a bottle that you’re building for fun. There is a consequence if you don’t finish that report tonight, but no consequence of you don’t finish that model boat.

Consequences act as penalty to missing those deadlines. They are the motivators in reducing your todo list. After all, a deadline without consequences is not a deadline at all. The harsher the consequences the more motivated you will be. Missing your laundry day might only mean wearing your less fashionable, but clean cloth for a week, but missing the deadline to pay off your gambling debt might mean a broken leg thanks to a friendly visit from a goon or two from the casino. Some people might consider the former to be a harsher consequence.

Consequences have to be enforceable. A penalty that can be mitigated or avoided is only as effective a motivator as the consequence after mitigation. Consequences should be genuine, and externally enforceable. Setting your own consequences for missing a deadline doesn’t work because it’s easy to mitigate, but if you transfer the enforcement to something you can’t control, say “the man” to enforce the payment of your parking ticket, you’re much more likely to pay it off than if you had to enforce the penalty of throwing away more money all on your own.

To recap, as advice to myself and anyone else with large todo lists:

1. Make deadlines

2. Make sure those deadlines have consequences

3. Make sure that you’re not the one enforcing the consequences. In fact, make sure you have no control over the consequences at all.

If you can’t mold your todo list to have those properties, then maybe randomly chosing to do one of those tasks is the best you can do.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Comments Off »

Posted in Advice, All

Tags: