Category Archives: Wisdom

The Key to Making Good Decisions

vladislav-babienko-KTpSVEcU0XU-unsplashSorry for the clickbait-y post title. To be honest, I toyed with the idea of having a 15-20 word headline and then decided against it. Of course, there are lots of important factors that go into making good decisions and there’s been plenty of that written about online (including here on this very website). There is one thing, there is one piece of advice, though, that I don’t often come across when it comes to how to make good decisions. In a word — Fermi-ize. Huh? Yeah — Fermi-ize.

A few weeks ago, the superforecasters on the Nonprophets podcast were talking about the possibility that the current POTUS will be impeached. Part of this is because it’s “in the news” and partly because this is one of the forecasting questions that’s currently up on the platform. The framing of the question is important (as is the case with any decision!). The question asks when will POTUS cease to be POTUS (before inauguration day 2021, on inauguration day 2021, or after inauguration day 2021). We’ve got all the important components of a good forecasting question (i.e. falsifiability, etc.).

If you think about the different buckets to that question, you’ll notice that different things would have to happen for the question to resolve in a different bucket. For instance, some sort of untimely death would mean the answer is before inauguration day. So, would impeachment/removal. On inauguration day could mean that POTUS loses his bid for re-election. After inauguration day could mean he’s re-elected. It could also mean that there’s some sort of power struggle with the 2020 election whereby the vote is so close, that we find ourselves with some sort redux on Bush v. Gore (2000).

Circling back to the superforecasters podcast, listening to them (disclosure: I’m a superforecaster) discuss the prospect for impeachment was fascinating. And the main reason is because of how they were fermi-izing the problem. Right, I didn’t explain that earlier. Fermi is one of the scientists responsible for bringing us the nuclear reactor. You may have come across a question like, “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” This kind of a question is sometimes referred to as a Fermi problem, whereby you’ll need to breakdown the question into component parts. What’s the population of Chicago. How many people live in each house (on average). How many households have a piano (on average). How often is a piano tuned (on average). Etc. Etc. That’s Fermi-izing.

So, on the episode, listening the superforecasters Fermi-ize the prospect of impeachment — it reminded me of how decisions in the C-Suite unfold. Often times, there are a lot if inbuilt assumptions in a question that might be unbeknownst to all the people sitting around the table. In fact, it’s possible that the question might even be completely wrong. Maybe the question (if we put it back in the political terms of POTUS above) being asked is, will the House vote to impeach POTUS. Many folks think that this is a “slam dunk” that the House will do that. But, what if you’re interested in whether or not POTUS will remain as POTUS. Well, then, you’re probably more interested in whether the Senate will vote to remove POTUS from office. However, even that question might be wrong. For instance, what if the House votes to impeach, and before the trial can be had in the Senate, what if POTUS resigns (!). If you’re focused on the prospects of a Senate trial, you’ll miss the possibility of a resignation. If you’re focused on the trees, you’ll miss the forest.

~

The key to making good decisions is asking good questions. And when it comes to answering good questions, you’ve got to breakdown the question into its component parts.

Quick Thoughts: Making a Difference and Honouring Future Ancestors

luis-alvoeiro-quaresma-VOaIhSvoCXU-unsplash.jpgIt’s kind of amazing how quickly things start to pile up and one’s good intentions, the proverbial “best laid plans,” are thrown to the wayside. When I first came back to writing here, my intention, my plan, was to write every workday. Slowly, I relaxed my goal to three days a week (as a way of going easier on myself with the fall returning — which meant things were picking up in my role as a public servant and as a professor). Then, things became so hectic that I was having a hard time carving out any time to write. Before I knew it, almost a month has passed since the last time I hit publish. Sigh.

As I said when I returned a couple of months ago, one of the reasons for writing is to get the thoughts out of my head and onto the page to make room for new thoughts. Even though it’s been about a month, that doesn’t mean the ideas haven’t stopped flowing. I’ve got a number of drafts in progress, so I thought that I’d go ahead and flush them out into a “Quick Thoughts” post.

Make a difference where you can. On Duhigg’s podcast a couple of months ago, there was a guest that had gone through severe trauma. All he can really do is focus on what’s in front of him. Listening, it made me wonder if it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to make a difference in bigger ways. I’m worried that I’m not expressing myself clearly here and part of me really wants to flesh this out into a longer article to nuance what I’m saying (i.e. anyone can make a big impact no matter their station in life), but I’m thinking about those among us who might be relatively lucky to be where they are. Are we obliged — should we feel obliged — to try to make the biggest impact we can?

Visualize and make it so. The “Meditative Story” from a few weeks back was also a good one. I struggle with stuff like this because it’s native to me. I grew up with influences like this (i.e. visualization, see it and believe it, etc.), but I recognize that it’s often written off as self-help hokum. Does that mean we should all dismiss it out of hand? Were all methods used today seen as the pantheon when they began? Am I using false equivalence? [Maybe.]

Oprah and Eckhart Tollle. Another good podcast episode (surprise!). This one is with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle. It really reminded me of that Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert interview from a few weeks ago. In the Oprah/Eckhart interview, Eckhart is talking about bumper stickers and how some folks will have something like, “I’d rather be fishin’,” or something like that. Then, he mentions how Ram Dass has a bumper sticker, too, that says, “I’d rather be here now.” For those unfamiliar, Dass wrote a book called Be Here Now almost 50 years ago.

Honour one’s future ancestors. I don’t remember exactly where I heard this, but I believe the context had to do with our responsibility to take care of the planet (which I’ll quibble with monetarily). The idea of us doing well by our planet as a way of honouring our future ancestors sounds lovely. Now, to quibble — there’s something about the messaging for climate change, environmentalism, etc. that just doesn’t resonate with some segments of the population. I’m not an expert here, but that part seems clear. I know that some folks try to personalize it as a way of hoping that it gets more people involved, but I don’t know that it does. Greta has certainly inspired quite a few people. I really hope that this momentum carries forward and we — as a species — are able to honour our future ancestors.

Dumb Luck, Predestined Fate, or Neither

austin-chan-ukzHlkoz1IE-unsplash.jpgThere’s lots that could be said on today’s anniversary, but the one piece that stood out to me is in The Atlantic — On 9/11, Luck Meant Everything: When the terrorist attacks happened, trivial decisions spared people’s lives—or sealed their fate. I don’t want to copy/paste the whole article here, so I’ll just include the paragraphs that hammer the point home:

In researching my new book, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, I’ve spent the past three years reading and listening to thousands of personal stories from that Tuesday—stories from Americans all across the country and people far beyond our shores. In all those published accounts and audio clips, and in the interviews I conducted, one theme never ceases to amaze me: the sheer randomness of how the day unfolded, who lived, who died, who was touched, and who escaped. One thousand times a day, we all make arbitrary decisions—which flight to book, which elevator to board, whether to run an errand or stop for coffee before work—never realizing the possibilities that an alternate choice might have meant. In the 18 years since 9/11, each of us must have made literally 1 million such decisions, creating a multitude of alternate outcomes we’ll never know.

Randomness giveth and randomness taketh away. Some folks have a hard time believing in fate, believing that life is predestined. And to their credit, what fun would that be, if every decision you were going to make were already made for you. That you were just following some preordained plan. To others, this brings comfort. They like the idea that there’s someone or something watching over them and the rest of the world. I remember being asked the question many years ago, “Do you believe in free will or fate?” With a wry grin, I responded something to the effect of, “Hmmm, I believe that we have free will to choose to believe in fate.”

In both the Pentagon and New York, fate played a key role in the escapes. Army Lieutenant Colonel Rob Grunewald was sitting in a conference room with his colleagues when American Airlines Flight 77 hit. “The plane came into the building and went underneath our feet, literally, by a floor,” he said later. “Where everybody went and how they get out of the room is very unique, because those are where decisions are made that are fatal, or cause injury, or cause mental fatigue, or great consternation. A bunch of my officemates that were in that meeting went in one direction and unfortunately didn’t make it. The person that sat to my right, the person that sat to my left apparently went out the door and took a right, and they went into the E-Ring, where they apparently perished. A decision to go in one direction or another was very important.” For his part, Grunewald paused for a minute to rescue a colleague, Martha Cardin, and thus was just a few steps behind the others leaving the damaged conference room. In the smoke, he and Cardin turned left instead of right—a decision that saved their lives.

It is darn near impossible to know when things like this will happen and more importantly, to know when a seemingly innocuous decision to return to your hotel room to change your shirt can save your life (and change the course of your fated history or keep you on the path of your fated history). So, how can we live in a world like this? How do we reconcile? How do we make peace with making decisions in our day-to-day? How do we know when to go left and when to go right?

There are any number of ways to answer that question. The answer that’s most congruent for me — and the answer that I wish more of us chose — requires an internal alignment with ourselves. It requires knowing ourselves and trusting ourselves.

~

There’s a new podcast that’s come out recently called, “Meditative Story.” It shares compelling first-person stories from people talking about a time in their life when everything changed for them. There’s one episode in particular I want to highlight here and it comes from Arianna Huffington (yes, that Arianna Huffington).

In it, she’s talking about growing up in Greece. She was thumbing through a magazine and she saw a picture of Cambridge. The moment she saw it, she knew — that was where she was meant to go. There was something inside of her, something that knew, that’s where she was supposed to be next. This, from a young woman who didn’t speak a lick of English, knowing that she’s supposed to go to a university on the other side of Europe. Details, small details.

Of course, she would go on to do the work to get herself there, but the part I want to focus on here is the alignment. When she saw the picture, something inside of her recognized a part of what her future could be — Cambridge. There was something about seeing that picture that sparked something inside of her. While it’s probably a bit much to ask for us to operate on this level on a day-to-day basis all the time (but maybe not?), part of me wishes that we could, at a minimum, increase the frequency with which we all tap into this part of ourselves to make decisions.

Life is a Gift — and so is Suffering

lina-trochez-ktPKyUs3Qjs-unsplash.jpgA few weeks ago, there was a rather poignant interview that aired between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper. I didn’t see or read much of the coverage of it, but the thing that kept coming across my feed was the first thirty seconds of the clip below. And, in seeing the views on this video, it looks like a lot of people were touched by the moment:

 

Here’s the first thirty seconds:

Cooper: You told an interviewer that you have learned to, in your words, ‘love the thing that I most wish had not happened.’ You went on to say, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ Do you really believe that?

Colbert: Yes… it’s a gift to exist and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that.

Lots of folks are keying in on these thirty seconds and, naturally, there’s a lot in there to chew on. Colbert’s sadness is evident and Cooper’s empathy is very apparent as he asks the question, while choking back tears. To my eyes, it’s the 120 seconds that follows.

I don’t have the time to transcribe that bit at the moment, so I’ll just briefly summarize — Colbert talks about how important gratitude is for the things that have happened in your life, whether they are positive or negative. He’s focusing on the negative here because of the question from Cooper. He talks about how he realized the lesson of having gratitude for things that have caused him suffering, rather than learning the lesson. This is important to him and in watching it, you can feel that this is something that he feels deep in his bones. It’s not some intellectual exercise that he’s worked through to come to the conclusion that he must accept the bad with the good — it’s part of him.

With human existence, comes suffering, and Colbert believes that this suffering has allowed him to have deeper relationships with the people in his life who have also suffered. He feels like he can better understand where they’re coming from because he has had this very traumatic experience early on in his life.

The best part is his philosophy on life — wanting to be the most human — not the best human, but the most human. And since suffering is part of the human experience, he welcomes (maybe not welcomes), but he’s grateful for those experiences, too.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same… Wait What?

Change management is the cornerstone of shepherding an organization through and to change. And since change is the only constant in life [side note: how many articles are there out there about change management where you think Heraclitus is not mentioned?], it seems pretty important that we understand the best ways to go about doing that.

When I think about the times that I’ve aided in an organization undergoing large-scale change, I think about the principles used to help bring that to fruition. Some lean on approaches like Kotter’s 8-step change model while others lean on approaches like ADKAR. For as long as I’ve been part of making change happen more smoothly (or teaching it to university students!), I don’t remember coming across this approach –

Emphasize What Will Stay the Same

Wait, what? We’re changing things here, why do we want to talk about what’s staying the same? We need to sell our people on this new vision and way of doing things. Won’t this torpedo our efforts?

Well, as it happens, no, it won’t. An excerpt [Emphasis Added]:

A root cause of resistance to change is that employees identify with and care for their organizations. People fear that after the change, the organization will no longer be the organization they value and identify with — and the higher the uncertainty surrounding the change, the more they anticipate such threats to the organizational identity they hold dear. Change leadership that emphasizes what is good about the envisioned change and bad about the current state of affairs typically fuels these fears because it signals that changes will be fundamental and far-reaching.

We announce that a change is coming and then people begin to fear the ramifications of losing what it is that they know. We then think that by emphasizing how things are going to be better (read: different) that this will then onboard people to this new vision, when instead, we’re giving them even more reason to dig in their heels against the change. Wow. It reminds me of those times in parenting when, as the parent, you want things not to go a certain way and by espousing that wish, you unintentionally expedite its occurrence.

What should we do, then? Well, how about:

In overcoming resistance to change and building support for change, leaders need to communicate an appealing vision of change in combination with a vision of continuity.

Let’s see if we can apply this knowledge:

  • We’re going to centralize all IT within the federal government. While this change will help us realize efficiencies upon efficiencies, our main goal is – and always will be – to continue to deliver exemplary service to Canadians.
  • We’re going to fundamentally improve the way that public servants apply for positions within the federal government. This change will allow us to better track the knowledge and experience of public servants and of the kinds of skills required of hiring managers across the government. While the interface for jobs.gc.ca will appear different, you’ll still be able to offer hiring managers the same information you did previously (more efficiently to boot!).
  • We’re going to Make America Kind Again increase the level of respect within the federal public service. You’ll still come to work and work on all the same cool things that you get to work today, but now we want to emphasize actions and behaviours that end harassment, curb negative behaviours, and multiply positive behaviours.

Can you think of other examples where you can apply this approach in your upcoming (ongoing) change management efforts?

This was cross-posted to GCconnex/GCcollab.

The Inevitability of Change Forces Faith in the Flexibility of the Flow

You awake on Monday morning ready to meet the day. You’re excited about work today because your new manager is finally ready to join the team. You feel pretty happy to prepare to change your signature from A/Manager back to Senior Analyst/Officer/etc. You get yourself ready to go and make your favourite breakfast because – why not – today’s a great day!

You catch the earlier bus into town because you wanted to make sure that you’ve crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s before the new manager arrives. The clock strikes 9 and it’s time for the weekly management meeting. You grab your notebook and head for the elevators – happy that this will be the last time you attend one of these meetings as the manager.

You exit the elevator and head to the boardroom. The DG and the Directors are already there. You take your seat as the remaining managers file into the room. The DG begins the meeting and you can hardly contain yourself. You’re already looking forward to this afternoon when you can begin working on that side-of-the-desk project you’ve been eyeing for weeks. Your reverie is cut short because you notice your Director is now speaking and they start talking about one of the files from your team. (Ha! Soon to be something that your new manager will be concerned with, not you, you think to yourself.) Your Director takes a beat and looks at you, so you add a bit more colour to what they were saying before the conversation changes gears.
The Director begins to speak again and you hear something, or at least you thought you heard something. The Director begins speaking about the new manager status except they’re not doing it in a jovial tone. And then you can feel the blood draining from your face as you quickly realize what the Director has just said. “The new manager we’d hired to fill the vacancy won’t be able to join us. So, you’re going to be filling in as the A/Manager… indefinitely.”

How could this happen?! The Director told me that it would be for just a short period of time. Just a stop-gap to fill-in, until they could bring in someone more permanent. I just want to be the person who does the stuff, I don’t want to be the person who manages the stuff. How could my Director do this to me?!

All kinds of thoughts rush through your head, all sorts of scenarios cascade in your head from the potential avenues you could take. Instead, you steel yourself in your chair, feign a smile and say, “Happy to help the team however I can.” The Director gives you a nod and moves onto other business.

————–

There’s a lot to unpack in the above narrative, but I want to draw your attention to the change management aspects (naturally).

Clearly, the “you” in this have lots of feelings about what’s happening (and not happening) in your work environment. You probably feel rather miffed to find out you’ll be continuing on in the manager’s role at the management meeting. Why didn’t the Director tell you before – that seems pretty disrespectful, doesn’t it?

Well, what if I told you that the incoming manager’s mother just had a heart attack and so your manager-to-be had to the cancel their plans for the assignment as your new manager from another government department because all their energy is now spent either at the hospital with their mom or at home with their kids? And what if I told you that the heart attack happened early this morning, so your Director only just found out about it and only just had time to tell the DG and the other Directors, but wasn’t able to squeeze in five minutes to warn you. And, what if I told you that the Director has also been dealing with a messy divorce, so they haven’t been in their usual tip-top shape, when it comes to being on top of some of the “human” elements to managing.

————–

We’re supposed to spend 37.5 hours a week working. Some spend more, some spend less. That’s only 33% of our waking hours (assuming that we each get 8 hours of sleep, which is probably laughable, given the statistics). That leaves 67% of our waking hours for non-work things. That is a lot of time to get into other kinds of activities. Some have hobbies like playing guitar or learning how to cook. Others volunteer at the local YMCA and others still, have all sorts of things going on in their lives from sick kids to sick parents to relationships beginning and relationships ending. The varieties of experience for the 250,000+ public servants are endless. The point I’m trying to make is that when we come to work – home office or shared office – we bring our whole selves.

In a perfect world, senior management would draw up an ideal change management strategy that fits into the broader departmental strategy. In an ideal world, you’re given plenty of notice about changes to the files you’re working on and the role you’ll play for the team. In an ideal world, people wouldn’t let that angry conversation they had with their spouse or stranger that morning interfere with how they interact with their colleagues the rest of the day. In an ideal world… an ideal world wouldn’t exist. The world is chaotic. Full stop.

Now, just because the world is chaotic doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still have expectations or goals. But, when it comes to those goals, we need to be more flexible and fluid. For those that prefer metaphors – think of yourselves as Niagara Falls, rather than the pond at the end of the lane. Niagara Falls almost never freezes, whereas the pond down the way freezes whenever the temperature drops below -10°C for a few days. Flexible vs. rigid.

So, how do you know if your goal is too rigid? Well, here’s two ideas (hat tip to Jon Acuff):

  1. You become angry when someone interrupts it.
  2. You beat yourself up if you miss it.

Think back to the narrative above. You were rather upset when you found out you wouldn’t be able to go back to “doing” stuff. Was your goal too rigid? Maybe. How do you think the Director felt when they found out that the manager-to-be’s mother was preventing the manager from coming in? I’d like to think the Director was sad to hear that, but maybe the Director was beating themselves up because they weren’t able to meet the goal. Was the goal too rigid? Maybe.

————–

Change management initiatives are happening all the time and they’re happening all-around us. What if, instead of thinking, wishing, and hoping that these initiatives were 100% successful based on the plan as written on the page, what if we recognized the rigidity in that and cut each other some slack. What if we, instead, expected some degree of rockiness. What if we built into our expectations that there is going to be some many things that occur unexpectedly and what if we made it our goal to respond to those happy accidents with grace and humility. I wonder what change management in the Government of Canada would look like if we all became ambassadors for flowing with the river.

This post originally appeared on GCconnex/GCcollab.

The Alluring Aroma of Freshly Baked Pie Cooling on the Windowsill

Remember back to when you were a kid (for some of you, that’s waay back, so I’m sorry for taxing your memory like that, but I appreciate all the wisdom you bring. Too much?). In some cartoons, there was the common TV trope of a pie resting on a windowsill to cool off. Naturally, one of the characters would walk past said pie and… well, they just couldn’t resist. Hilarity ensued.

In the cartoon, it’s imperative for there to be a pie there cooling off, otherwise, no “hilarity would ensue.” But what about in real life. What about in your life? What about in your organization’s life? Are there pies sitting on the windowsill that might be better to cool off – at a minimum – on a windowsill not within arm’s reach of the sidewalk?

Motivation and incentives are the wheels that move life. I’m thirsty, so I go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My organization needs an IT expert, so we publish an open competition for an IT specialist. Even with this motivation to do things one way, often times, there’s something in the path that prevents us from getting there. Maybe on my way to the kitchen, I pass by a bottle of ‘cola’ next to an empty cup. Being as though that I’m thirsty, I decide to abort my mission to go to the kitchen for water and instead, drink the pop. (Pop is healthy, isn’t it?) Maybe as my company was looking for an IT expert, someone’s sister was an IT expert, so we just hired her instead. (Nepotism isn’t so bad, is it?)

These examples might seem overly simplistic, so let’s spice it up.

Managers in the federal government perform a yeoman’s task of balancing the needs of directors (i.e. newly minted EX’s who almost certainly want to show their new superiors that they didn’t make the wrong choice in selecting them out of the pool) and the needs of all the people below them (which, depending on the department, can be as few as a handful or as many as a baseball team). The director tells the manager that they need 25 products by the end of the week (because that’s what the client has been promised), so the manager then turns to the team and says, “I need 25 products by Thursday,” even if the team is still recovering from the 25 products from last week.

No matter how good intentioned that manager is, pressure will mount and cause the manager to push the team harder to get the 25 products completed (up to and including, rewriting some or all of the products to ensure that the director thinks the products satisfactory). The scent of the pie on the windowsill is just too strong – the manager needs the products completed, welfare of the team be darned.

How many of you can relate to this example?

I’ve only been in the government a few years, but I’ve come across more people than I’d like to admit who have recounted facsimiles of that very same story. So what can we do?

Well, for starters – MOVE THE DANG PIE!

Sorry about my yelling there. Incentives are a touchy subject for me.

In the cartoon example, it’s really easy to see what’s wrong. The baker/chef should have put the pie somewhere else to cool off. Things start to get a little more complicated when we think about the incentives (intended or unintended) of bureaucracy. I’m of the mind that despite something appearing as though it’s not working, there were probably honest reasons as to why it was made that way in the first place. At the same time, those reasons may have been overtaken by events, so let’s get to work on redesigning things.

So, managers have pressures from above and from below. The pressures from above are tangible (i.e. 25 products by Friday) and the pressures from below are intangible (i.e. my team is overworked and stressed). [NOTE: you could probably argue health as a tangible pressure, but let’s just go with it as intangible for now, shall we?] If we could wave our magic wand and relieve some of the pressures for the manager, I’m sure that would be just lovely. Maybe now, the manager only needs to spit out 10 products a week and they’re able to give their team a break every 3 weeks (i.e. no products due this week – you deserve it, team!). Great. Now we’ve solved this manager’s problems. But what about that newly minted director who still needs to impress his superiors? They’re still looking for 15 more products than what they’re getting. Who’s going to step up?

Anytime you start messing around with incentives at one level of a complex system, it’s going to have a cascading effect on the rest of the system. The bureaucracy that is the Government of Canada is the very definition of a complex system. If we change the incentives for one manager under one director in one team, how will that change affect the system? What if we wanted to alleviate pressure on the director’s boss? How will that have an effect on the boss’s boss? And what about the boss’s boss’s boss? And the Minister? And the Prime Minister? And maybe more importantly, Canadians!?

I got a little carried away there, but the point still stands. We need to do a better job at noticing the pies on the windowsills before we fall prey to them. The first step in any process of change is always awareness. What are some of the ‘pies on the windowsill’ in your area?

This post originally appeared on GCconnex/GCcollab.

Have You Ever Wanted to Talk to Yourself in the Past?

harli-marten-M9jrKDXOQoU-unsplash.jpgMost of what I’ve written about in the last few months has focused on change management from a macro-perspective, which is completely natural given my inclination to try and change the “whole” of the system, rather than one piece of it. However, today I’d like to focus on the micro-perspective of change management – the individual.

In 1959, a geologist put a message in a bottle and buried it in the Arctic. The note and a companion note nearby explained that they were buried a specific distance to the edge of a nearby glacier. The note(s) then asked the person who found them to measure the current distance to the glacier and then mail that information to researchers at Ohio State University.

The notes weren’t found until… 50+ years after written. [Spoiler, but not really a spoiler: the glacier had retreated over 200 feet in that timespan.]

There have been so many technological advances since 1959, so we don’t necessarily need to look to put our memories on paper and bury them in a time capsule to be opened 60 years from now. Instead, we have tools that have reduced the legwork (to essentially zero) allowing you to use the very same device on which you’re reading this to write yourself a letter and have it sent to you on a date of your choosing. Pardon?

Have you ever wanted to send yourself an email weeks or months into the future? Well, as it happens, you now can à https://www.futureme.org/

The interface is relatively simple. You begin writing yourself a letter and then you can choose when you want it to be sent to you. They prompt the user with 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years, but you can also choose the specific date (so if you want 2 weeks, 6 months, 18 months, etc.). Then, you decide whether you want to keep your letter private or release it to the public (anonymously). Lastly, you enter your email address, press send, and reap the benefits of knowing that you ‘put something out into the universe’ that you’ll be receiving at a later date.

There’s a lot of potential uses for this kind of a service, but I’m going to focus on the micro. As a person reading this, there’s a good chance that you have (at least one) goal for yourself. These goals probably involve some degree of change, most notably, within you. Maybe you want to learn how to code in Python. Maybe you want to learn how to be better with budgets. Maybe you want to expand your network.

Beyond the surefire way to make change (cue, reward, routine), it also helps to hold yourself accountable for that change. To aid in helping you make progress in this regard, you could send yourself a letter at some of the different times into the future. Maybe at the 4-week mark, your email to yourself details some of the reasons why you’re trying to make the change (and to maybe re-motivate you?). Maybe at the 6-month mark, the email talks about all the things you think you’ll be doing with this newfound skill/ability. When you see the 6-month email, you might have fallen short of where you thought you’d be, or maybe you’ll be on a different track altogether.

This exercise can be aspirational, but it can also be semi-reflective. Meaning, maybe you want to put your thoughts down “now,” but be able to review those thoughts 10 weeks from now. For instance, have you ever made a decision and then many weeks later, wondered what it was you were thinking when you made that decision? This tool gives you that opportunity to bare your soul (to yourself) and here’s the important part – without any confirmation or hindsight bias!

So, take a chance and give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Write your (future) self a letter.

This post originally appeared on GCconnex/GCcollab.

Making Decisions Under Pressure: Return to Equanimity

cynthia-magana-GMLNhaBkCiE-unsplashI spend quite a bit of time in the car commuting to and fro. As a way of maximizing my use of time, I’m almost always listening to a podcast. These podcasts are on my phone and I prefer to have my headphones in (one headphone, if you must know). Since I use my headphones with such regularity, I always put them in the same place (so I’ll know where to find them when I want them). They’re in a central location in the house, but not in a place where one of the kids can grab them and move them. [Can you guess where this is going yet?]

In getting ready to go this morning, thing were going right on cue. I slipped on my shoes, buckled in one of the kids in the back, and was about to start the engine, until I realized… my headphones!? They’re not in the car. Assuming I must have just overlooked them from their place this morning, I doubled-back and… they weren’t there! Great Scott! OK. Don’t panic, I thought.

I used them on the weekend. Maybe I must have taken them off somewhere and forgot to put them back. I checked the closet, the laundry room, my office, my wife’s office, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find them. My wife’s car, the closet again, my wife’s office again, inside drawers, in the pantry, the kitchen counter, the living room, one of the kid’s rooms, the bookshelf… I mowed the lawn this weekend! That must be where they are, near the riding mower. Nope, not near the riding mower. Checked the laundry room again, checked the office again, checked the kitchen again…

While all of this is going on, I’ve got one of the kids buckled into a carseat in the car. In the past, they’ve not been a fan of being in the car, buckled in, by themselves, so I’m starting to feel pretty stressed throughout this process. And doubling-back to the same spot and not finding the headphones isn’t doing anything positive for my stress, either. Where are they!?

Did I mention that I was on my way to drop off one of my kids at camp and I have a thing about being punctual (not to mention, it’ll give the kid more time to play with their friends!). Have you seen my headphones, please help!?

After a few more circuits of checking all the same places, (maybe magically, they’ll be in the spot I’ve already checked!?), I acquiesce. I give up. I’m not going to find them. They’re gone to eternity. No more head phones. Dejected, I return to the car and begin the drive into town.

As you might expect, my mind wasn’t ready to give up, or at least part of it wasn’t ready to give up. What the heck was I doing yesterday with my headphones? I replayed Friday and I replayed Saturday. All the images I could already come up with when I was racing around the house. I could see where I put the headphones in those scenarios. I began replaying Sunday (mowing the lawn), yup, I knew where the headphones were and checked. Errands in town. Yup, I checked those spots, too. And then…

Of course! I remembered. Sunday afternoon was a bit anomalous in that I had run errands and then picked up one of the kids to take them home for a nap. They were overdue for a nap. So, when we get home, I didn’t empty the car like I normally would. I took in the fridge/freezer stuff and then took the kid upstairs ASAP to get them to sleep. When I came back downstairs, I hurriedly emptied the car because I wanted to use the time during the nap to begin setting up my course for the Fall semester (it starts next week — eep!).

In my haste doing that (i.e. I took too much stuff in in one trip), I shoved my headphones into my pocket and when I finished putting stuff away in the kitchen, I hurriedly changed my clothes and headed for the office. Because my mind was so focused on getting a jumpstart on the course, I wasn’t thinking about emptying my pockets (as it happens, my debit card was in one of the pockets, too!).

So, why am I sharing this story that I’m sure everyone can relate to?

In that time where I was racing around the house, checking all the same locations, I had an ‘artificial’ deadline. I was meant to already be on my way driving. This time pressure was, no doubt, affecting my ability to be still for a few minutes, and properly recount my steps from the previous day. Remember, in the car on the way into town, my mind did just this. So, why didn’t I do it before?

Well, I was too focused on all the negative outcomes. I’m not gonna be able to listen to my podcasts. I’m not going to be able to insulate myself from sound at work or the coffee shop. I’m going to fall behind on my podcasts. I won’t be able to practice French. I’m going to have to buy new headphones! Negative, negative, negative. While all of those things might have been true. I didn’t give myself the space to use my faculties. I didn’t give myself the time to possibly be right. To find the positive outcome. I was so keyed in on all the bad things.

And that’s why the subtitle of today’s post is “return to equanimity.” When it’s time to make a decision, even a low-impact decision, if you don’t return to a state of balance, a state of neutrality, a state of equanimity — you run the risk of making poor decisions even if the right decision is right there under the surface!

Success Is Not Always What You See

bd1698xrbdf31Contrary to our hopes and wishes, success does not happen overnight. I repeat, success does not happen overnight. Now, when someone hits it big, when something successful happens for someone else, it might appear that they’re an “overnight” sensation. It might appear that they went to bed one day and woke up the next with fame and fortune. Disagree.

You weren’t with them in the days, weeks, months, and often times, years, that preceded that one moment where it appeared that success came for them all at once. You weren’t with them during the dozen times that they were ready to give up. Those times where it was just too hard and they wanted to pack it in. And you most certainly weren’t there when they decided, through their own will or encouragement from someone else, to remain steadfast. To keep going. To key in on their goal and maintain its course, regardless of how many times they get knocked down along the way.

No, success doesn’t happen overnight.

It happens from putting the work in everyday. It happens from persisting. It happens from dedication. How do you build a house? One brick at a time. How do you walk from Vancouver to Toronto? One step at a time. How do you write a book? One page at a time.

~

Today’s image and title really drive home this point. Success, and the act of being successful — it’s not always visible. In fact, often times, it’s not. It reminds me of a similar analogy I heard many years ago along these same lines.

Let’s say you want a beautiful organic garden. You want fruits and vegetables to flourish and give you a bounty. The idea of being able to stroll down to your garden and pick fresh raspberries or strawberries in the summer or harvest the delicious carrots or green beans in the fall — yum! For this lovely picture to come to life, you’ve got to plant the seeds when it’s time. Plant the seeds in the spring when the soil is ripe. In your excitement for the vision of fresh carrots, would you dig into the ground a week after planting to see how the carrots are doing? NO! You absolutely wouldn’t do that. You’d continue to tend to the garden in the way that you know — watering, weeding, etc. The “what” of what’s happening underneath the surface is the byproduct of the hardwork you put in at the beginning to get the garden started and all the hardwork that you’ve continued to do along the way.

Your “success” is in that initial push to start a new habit. Your success is in buying the gym membership and committing to go everyday for the next month and then following through on that commitment. Your success is the initial push to start a website and then committing to write something every workday. Your success is in downloading Duolingo and then committing to practice a new language everyday for the next month. And then committing to continue learning that same language the next month. And the next month. Until you’ve strung together 6 months and all of a sudden, you’re finding it easier and easier to come up with words in your new language.

Success only appears to happen overnight. Success truly happens in that initial burst of energy to start something — that initial burst to do something — followed by the perseverance to remain steadfast.

NOTE: Title and image courtesy of Reddit.