Food for thought for the Weekend (31-Aug-19)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

Why you might be on Mount Stupid: In this article the author explores two interesting concepts in psychology, which often gets played out in the workplace. To an extent, one could be seen as the inverse of the other.

• Dunning-Kruger effect: A cognitive bias of illusory superiority in people of lower ability.
• Impostor syndrome: A concept where high-achieving individuals are unable to internalize their achievements and fear being exposed as a fake or fraud.

The article looks at both of these and identify situations where they can occur.

Making learning part of everyday's work: Research now shows that opportunities for development have become the second most important factor in workplace happiness (after the nature of the work itself).  It makes sense that at work we are constantly looking for ways to do things better; indeed, the growth-mindset movement is based on this human need. Yet the urgency of work invariably trumps the luxury of learning. So, the question becomes: How can we make learning part of the powerful current of the daily workflow? We believe there is a way, a new paradigm, which Josh coined “learning in the flow of work”.

Excerpt from the book Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers.

Career Goals vs Life Goals

Two weeks ago, I had a very intense discussion with a friend who sought my advice on a career move he was contemplating. His, lets call him Sri, dilemma is this - he is working in a very good role in an MNC that is very well known, but on a technology that is not cutting edge. He is well recognised for his technical contributions, respected by juniors and the company pays him well. There really isn't any reason for him to move. However, he was drawn into a new opportunity in a company not as reputed as his current one, will in probability struggle to match his current salary. But the opportunity is unique and in a cutting edge technology and seem to provide a faster path to become a CTO. However, he understands he has to give his everything over the next few years.

I regularly get requests to advice on such or variant of such things and I've personally "been there and done that". I usually have only two questions:

1. How badly do you want the prize whatever it is (being a CTO in Sri's case)?
2. What is the impact of it on your other/life goals?

I've read things like only 3% of the people have written goals. But my experience is that even in those 3%, only a small set will have goals that cover all aspects of life. I've been pretty big on having written goals for myself, but it is only in the last 1-2 years I've come to realise the need to look everything from the prism of "life goals" and not just from a single perspective (usually, career goals for achievement oriented people).

Sri immediately got it and said he'd work on writing down his "life goals" before taking a call on his career move and then talk to me again. My guess is that the moment he sets his "life goals", answers would be very clear to him and that the said meeting will not happen and even if it happens, it will not be for further advice - he will probably be telling his decision and how we arrived at it. And I'd be patting my own back for a job well done!

This is perhaps what Stephen Covey asks "Is your ladder leaning against the right wall?". He asks us to make sure that we say an emphatic yes to the above question, before we start climbing the steps.

Now, are you in the 3% that have written goals or in the majority? Does these goals cover all aspects of life? If not, why not? If not now, then when?

Excerpts from the book: Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Excerpts from the book: Is my series where I share some highlights and notes I made while reading some book that I think is good, thought provoking and worth sharing.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
The struggle to perform well is universal, but nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine. In his new book, Atul Gawande explores how doctors strive to close the gap between best intentions and best performance in the face of obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable.

• Here are the 3 requirements for success:
• The first is diligence, the necessity of giving sufficient attention to detail to avoid error and prevail against obstacles.
• The second challenge is to do right. Medicine is a fundamentally human profession. It is therefore forever troubled by human failings, failings like avarice, arrogance, insecurity, misunderstanding.
• The third requirement for success is ingenuity—thinking anew. Ingenuity is often misunderstood. It is not a matter of superior intelligence but of character. It demands more than anything a willingness to recognize failure, to not paper over the cracks, and to change. It arises from deliberate, even obsessive, reflection on failure and a constant searching for new solutions.
• When you make an effort, you find sometimes you are not the only one willing to do so.
• People underestimate the importance of diligence as a virtue. No doubt this has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as “the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken.” There is a flavor of simplistic relentlessness to it. And if it were an individual’s primary goal in life, that life would indeed seem narrow and unambitious.
• Beneath the ideal is the gruelingly unglamorous and uncertain work. If the eradication of polio is our monument, it is a monument to the perfection of performance—to showing what can be achieved by diligent attention to detail coupled with great ambition.
• Have tried to emulate the spirit of my father’s visits—the decorum in language and attire, the respect for modesty, the precision of examination.
• Choices must be made. No choice will always be right. There are ways, however, to make our choices better.
• There is a legal definition of negligence (“when a doctor has breached his or her duty of care”), but I wanted to know his practical definition of the term. Lang said that if he finds an error that resulted in harm and the doctor could have avoided it, then, as far as he is concerned, the doctor was negligent.
• But what if I have a good record among surgeons, with generally excellent outcomes and conscientious care? That wouldn’t matter, he said. The only thing that matters is what I did in the case in question. It’s like driving a car, he explained—I could have a perfect driving record, but if one day I run a red light and hit a child, then I am negligent, he said.
• The seemingly easiest and most sensible rule for a doctor to follow is: Always Fight. Always look for what more you could do. I am sympathetic to this rule. It gives us our best chance of avoiding the worst error of all—giving up on someone we could have helped.
• Good doctors, she finally said, understand one key thing: “This is not about them. It’s about the patient.” The good doctors didn’t always get the answers right, she said. Sometimes they still pushed too long or not long enough. But at least they stopped to wonder, to reconsider the path they were on. They asked colleagues for another perspective. They set aside their egos.
• In the end, no guidelines can tell us what we have power over and what we don’t. In the face of uncertainty, wisdom is to err on the side of pushing, to not give up. But you have to be ready to recognize when pushing is only ego, only weakness. You have to be ready to recognize when the pushing can turn to harm. In a way, our task is to “Always Fight.” But our fight is not always to do more. It is to do right by our patients, even though what is right is not always clear.
• True success in medicine is not easy. It requires will, attention to detail, and creativity. But the lesson I took from India was that it is possible anywhere and by anyone. I can imagine few places with more difficult conditions. Yet astonishing successes could be found. And each one began, I noticed, remarkably simply: with a readiness to recognize problems and a determination to remedy them. Arriving at meaningful solutions is an inevitably slow and difficult process. Nonetheless, what I saw was: better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.
• MY FIRST SUGGESTION came from a favorite essay by Paul Auster: Ask an unscripted question. Ours is a job of talking to strangers. Why not learn something about them? If you ask a question, the machine begins to feel less like a machine.
• MY SECOND SUGGESTION was: Don’t complain. But resist it. It’s boring, it doesn’t solve anything, and it will get you down. You don’t have to be sunny about everything. Just be prepared with something else to discuss: an idea you read about, an interesting problem you came across— even the weather if that’s all you’ve got. See if you can keep the conversation going.
• MY THIRD ANSWER for becoming a positive deviant: Count something.
• If you count something you find interesting, you will learn something interesting.
• MY FOURTH SUGGESTION was: Write something
• MY SUGGESTION NUMBER five, my final suggestion for a life in medicine, was: Change.
• So find something new to try, something to change. Count how often you succeed and how often you fail. Write about it. Ask people what they think. See if you can keep the conversation going.

No Hurry/No Pause

I first heard this phrase in one of Tim Ferris's blog post Testing the Impossible: 17 Questions That Changed my Life. One area of my life that I'm working hard is to do things in an "unhurried" way. I'm generally either rushing or generally lazing out wasting life. "No Hurry/No Pause" attracted me because I see an approach to life beautifully articulated in these words - No Hurry/No Pause.

I went read the source of the same as Tim mentioned, the Nine Principles of Harmony - a form of Bodywork. This concept is also touched upon nicely by Eknath Easwaran in his book Take Your Time.

Some of the things I've been doing to live "unhurriedly" are:

• Try not to pack the schedule with a ton of things. This is especially true while on vacation!
• Create more "systems" and achieve goals through the set systems as opposed to setting goals which'd lead to stress
• Identify situations where I tend to rush and become conscious (like taking too much time while reading newspapers in the morning, rushes me to office for example)
• Being more kinder to folks around and gracefully adopt to them 
• Not wasting time on junk-stuff which makes me rush to other important things.

Equally important is to not allow time to drift and not do anything and waste life. One thing that helps is having a clear idea on what needs to be accomplished in the year, month and week. 

My frequent travel is another thing that throws my routine out of gear. The fatigue, jet lag and indifferent food makes it very difficult to keep semblance of balance.

Would love to hear your thoughts and routines developed to lead an unhurried life.

What RamP's Reading: Aug'19

Cockpit Confidential: As a frequent flyer and a flight enthusiast and a regular reader/contributor to forums related to flying, this is a book that answer lot more questions on air travel, formal terms pilots and crews use and uncovers several mis-conceptions one might have about air travel.

Leading the Transformation: Learning more about Agile transformation and DevOps. This is one of the recommended reading for leaders at National Instruments.

Detox Your Ego: Just chanced upon this book while browsing Amazon for books on stoicism. Content looks good. Hope to learn something to increase my happiness!