Turn off notifications and alerts on your phone and control when you interact with people. This includes all text messages and social media. Take back control your schedule and don’t let other people control your day.
Imagine if people felt it was okay to bang on your door at any time of the day or night with the expectation that you answer and be present with them. That’s not sustainable. Why should it be acceptable on your phone?
As we enter the first days of Spring, there’s an urge to make big decisions about the upcoming season. It’s anything from career, family, finances and personal growth. Before we make a big decision, we get physically and mentally fit.
When we are fit we have less stress and are more present. Our muscles and brain are oxygenated and we think more clearly. Worries and fears are less magnified and we have a good sense of what is real vs. imaginary (most of it’s imaginary, by the way).
Going for a walk, meditating, taking deep diaphragm inhales and exhales…as well as toe breathing, where we feel the inhalations inflate our toes – are fun exercises we enjoy to breath more deeply.
When fit, we find decisions emerge from a more grounded and present place.
Need to think through a life event decision? Travel to a new place. Break the daily rituals and well worn paths of every day. Let the decision go, don’t mull over it. Don’t worry…it won’t go far. The newness and discovery of travel will keep your mind and body occupied with new smells, sounds, tastes, and sights. When you get back, invite the decision into your mind again. I think the answer may be waiting for you at home right where you started all along.
The iPhone now has a low power mode setting. Switch it on and you disable your phone’s most higher energy features. It switches Mail from push to fetch, turns off automatic downloads and disables background app refreshes. In low power mode you get to choose where and when you expend your phone’s battery energy. It’s an underrated feature and I use it all the time, even when my battery is fully charged. Instead of calling it Low Power Mode, I call it Low Energy Suck Mode
Do the same thing with your mind and body. Activate Low Energy Suck Mode today. In this mode, you decide where and when to spend your time and energy. It turns off those coffee meet ups you should say no to and says no to people who guilt and manipulate you into giving up precious time with family and friends. Low Energy Suck Mode preserves your energy so you can decide when you choose to direct energy at someone or something. Your energy is sacred and you need protect it. When focused and at full power it’s loving and wonderful.
Activity Low Energy Suck Mode today. You’ll have more energy at the end of the day and less drag from things you don’t need.
Rituals and healthy routines like exercise, stretching, conscious breathing, yoga and healthy eating are easy to keep when you aren’t busy. The real test kicks in when you get busy and get pulled in five directions. Maybe it’s work stuff like 10 unread emails on your phone, or rain during the morning commute or an important meeting and presentation.
The busier you get the more discipline is required to stick to your rituals and routines because they will help you manage the daily grind and stop the stress from accumulating. It’s crazy how many people sacrifice themselves and let work take precedent. What ends up happening is that both work quality and the person suffer. If you are more grounded, fit and rested then you will execute better. It’s easy to forget.
Slow down, breath, smile and look after yourself. You have more time than you think. Don’t skip the rituals.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” – Viktor E. Frankl
This advice can be applied in any every day situations like traffic, a long security line at an airport meetings, the dinner table or interacting with colleagues and customers in a high pressure meeting. Every interaction you have with something else is an opportunity to grow and ask yourself how you would like to respond.
If you haven’t already read it. I’d highly recommend reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. It’s worth revisiting every so often for guidance into the meaning of life and why a lesson and opportunity to grow is available everywhere we look.
Teddy Roosevelt said, “The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.” A Good Citizen properly fulfills his or her role as a citizen.
A mercenary takes part in a battle, but is not a national or a party to the conflict and is motivated to take part in the hostilities by the desire for private gain.
People, not product, will determine the success or failure of a company. You can have an excellent product and fail because you’ve assembled the wrong team. Building a business at scale is hard. It’s fraught with uncertainty, highs, lows, wins and losses. It’s an emotional roller coaster. Good citizens roll up their sleeves when there’s work to be done. They pitch up every day and are in service to each other. Mercenaries leave if it’s about anything but themselves.
The list of GC attributes I look for when building a team:
Compassionate
Collaborative
Curious
Comfortable with uncertainty and mystery. They feed off it and enjoy it
Cocky in a kind way
Gritty
Impatient
Kind
Loyal
Persistent
Pragmatic
Polite
Persuasive
Zen
Pointers for spotting a GC:
They use ‘we’ and “our” a lot when talking about solving problems
They laugh at themselves
Pedigree & degrees don’t matter. It’s about what you can offer now and in the future
They have a history of execution and getting things done
They listen more than they speak
They are self-aware
They are black belts in verbal judo. The best answer always wins the tussle
They ask for feedback, welcome it, and act on it
They have detractors. Probably a couple of bullies they’ve stood up to in the past
They respect the people they work with and are friends with them
They are rewarded and recognized by their peers
They offer up reference checks from peers and previous investors/partners
They treat interviews like a two-way street and ask questions about the team, motivations and product
They seek you out, vs. running away from their current role or company
They have hobbies outside of work
Ad hominem is not an option
They are comfortable making decisions with incomplete data
The understand the importance of luck, timing and preparedness
They are always learning, experimenting, tinkering & tweaking
Titles don’t matter
So what’s the opposite of a GC?
In my experience it’s the Mercenary. The are seductive, because they get things done, but don’t be fooled – when the going gets tough and it’s time to contribute to the greater good and sacrifice something…they leave.
Attributes that pop up time and time again:
Bully
Blamer
Bitter
Charming
“Lone wolf”
Rude
Short tenures and long stories
How to spot them:
They use “I” and “they” when describing their current role and company
They describe past and present colleagues as ninkanpoops/clueless/tone deaf/opaque/idiots/blind/wrong/lazy
They hold grudges
They “get things done” through coercion and intimidation
They stereotype people and roles
They don’t believe in luck and good timing. It’s all about talent & A players
They are “Remember whens” – “remember when” is the lowest form of conversation. They dwell on the past, live in the world of what was instead of understanding that things change and you need to move forward. (The Sopranos Season 6, Ep 15)
Listen for phrases like:
They don’t listen to me
It’s them not me
I don’t have the resources
It’s not my responsibility
You need me
I inherited that problem
My team wasn’t big enough
They wouldn’t promote me
I told them, but nobody listened
Give me people a chance to change
Everyone can change, and I’ve seen it happen many times. Sometimes Mercenaries become GCs and even inspiring presidents, but if it looks like a goat and sounds like a goat it normally is a goat.
Happy hiring!
From time to time I’ll be posting a guest piece. Today’s post is by Bill Gordon. Bill is a friend, mentor and soon to be my kiteboarding coach (he doesn’t know that yet). Thanks Bill.
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Every month I meet with a small group to focus discovering for each of us what is our purpose and mission and why we are here in this world?
Being practical people we also talk about how that relates (if at all) to “being successful” and the normal financial commitments we all have for such things as monthly house payments, utility and car payments, taking care of our families, etc.
After many useful discussions, and books, and journaling, I haven’t made as much progress as I’d like. However, this week I heard a talk from a man named John Ortberg who’s insights I found useful. I wanted to share these in case they help you get any closer to clarity around your mission and purpose.
The idea that I took away from the talk was that finding our Mission or Purpose has to do with finding the intersection of 5 key things. The 5 things are:
If you’ve been keeping a list of thoughts and ideas on where you might like to focus your time and energy, run those ideas through this list of 5 items to see if there is an answer around the 5 that makes sense to you (and if you haven’t been keeping a list, I encourage you to start).
I hope this gets you closer to finding your path and purpose!
Ethical questions get really tough when you start to intellectualize them.
Here’s a mock question? Should you allow tobacco companies to advertise with your company. This means exposing their brand and messaging to your community.
Here’s the dilemma…the evidence tells us that smoking causes cancer and host of other health problems, but the tobacco industry creates jobs and it’s a free country, people can smoke if they want to, so who are we to judge? Smoking related illness cost the taxpayer millions of dollars per year in healthcare resources and burden the already strained healthcare networks. That’s not a good thing right?
What about the cash these advertisers give you? You could use that money to experiment and build life changing products.
What about the optics? How much revenue will they bring in for the company? What is if it’s only 10% of total ad revenue vs. 50%? Is there a threshold % that makes it acceptable? By allowing these brands to advertise are you indirectly enticing more kids to start smoking?
Other companies take their money, why shouldn’t you?
See what I mean…it’s starts to get really sticky when you try to answer the question within an intellectual framework. You could probably justify a yes or a no answer.
Why not try something different? Ask your gut the same question with the following context – Are you making the world a better place by [insert question]. In other words are you contributing to a better world by advertising cigarettes to your audience. Avoid the temptation to define “better” or “world”, just ask yourself the question. Your gut will give you the answer. It may not be the answer you want to hear, but my advice would be to go with it.
When I don’t go with my gut on these things, I normally fall on my face.
What a pity that Instagram removed the ability to view photos within the Twitter feed. In doing so they turned the ability to quickly review a potentially crappy photo into a full blown time waster. Not every photo is relevant to me, so in a way a photo is just like a tweet … it needs to be easy to skim like 140 characters. I can then choose to engage or move on.
I view the majority of my photos via Twitter (I use Twitter way more than I use FB) and it’s a schlepp to click through into Instagram site and I’d rather not. The new Twitter photo app is painful but I’ll learn and the UI will get better. In the interim I’m using the Flickr App and might stick with it.
Hubris may end up being Instagram’s fatal flaw. My hunch is they’ve overestimated user loyalty and underestimated the power of the Twitter platform. I for one will stick with Twitter and continue to share photos that can be quickly accessed within the feed. I’m already filtering out instagr.am pic links, in favor of Twitter pics and Flickr
I get it that FB and Twitter are competing for people’s time and that Instagram is trying to become the next Twitter, but this move has inconvenienced me and pushed me away. Instagram may have miscalculated here … it’s very slick photo sharing app that hit the market at the perfect time, but it might find out that convenience trumps fancy filters.
UPDATE: Today Instagram released a new terms of service that has alienated its loyal users. Instagram can now sell your photos to third parties for advertising without telling you. Here’s the link
markbartels.org 