We need margin for thought

Our minds need space to think.

Research on naps, meditation, nature walks, and the habits of exceptional artists and athletes reveals how mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity.

Paradoxically, when we get to rest, when making time for mental downtime and space for inaction, that space gives the right conditions that strike inspiration, connect some dots, and even get things done later.

According to Scientific American, downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieving our highest levels of performance and simply forming long-lasting memories in everyday life.

Keeping daily routines that give our mind some clean space for thought gives us margin for all the rest of life’s messiness that we cannot control. It also could remove future obstacles so we can do our best creative work when we next sit down to create.

What practices do you have to put your mind at rest?

The world needs us as we are

"your son may have down syndrome,” the doctor told us, but we would never have imagined what happened next.

Massimo was born on December 2017. At that moment, we already had two children, so we felt really confident, and we assumed that we were prepared for the third one, but we definitely were not prepared for that notice.

The following days were full of tension when we went through the medical exams. Because of his condition, he potentially had severe complications, including heart defects, immune system problems, hearing loss, etc.

As soon as we confirmed that Massimo was born healthy, we decided to move forward.

I remember that I was worried about how little I knew about having a child with down syndrome (honestly, I didn't know anything).

What I couldn't imagine at that moment was that Massimo would come to teach us.

Massimo changed our family life, only for the better. He's the real master at our home of what it really means to be resilient, perseverant, brave, and funny! Yes, he makes our day full of joy!

He teaches us how many things we take for granted, like learning, walking, jumping, speaking, or reading. He teaches his brother and sister what deep empathy really means. When we are running trying to get everyone ready for school, he shows us that we need to make a stop to really see them. Or when I am working late, and he closes the lid of my laptop, so I can go to play with them. (And he always understands when is a really good moment to stop).

In the beginning, it was not easy. And every day is a challenge, a challenge that is really worth going through. Since he was born, I took the decision to raise my voice to transmit that having a baby with Down syndrome is not a tragedy. This is not a sentence for his life, and yes, he will probably face challenges, but he also has gifts and the potential of great talents such as great empathy, creativity, and deep caring.

People have a habit of setting limits, and we really need to figure out how far children can go.

Have you ever wondered what is normal?
Imagine if the best compliment you could receive: "Wow, how normal you are!" Compliments are "you are extraordinary," "you are outstanding," or "you are exceptional." If people want to be these things, why are so many people striving to be normal? Why are people looking to fit in...

People are afraid of diversity and unconsciously try to force everyone, even those who don't want to be carved, to become normal.

Diversity enriches our humanity and makes us better. Our sensitivity, our humanity, and our compassion make this world better.  Let us respect life, nature, and its diversity.

The world needs us.

Simplify the way you do things

Simplifying is a mindset. Simplifying is a skill. There is a Spanish idiom that says "drowning in a glass of water" to refer to people that get overwhelmed by ordinary circumstances. We often find people trying to get as much information as possible before making a decision. Or also that focus on irrelevant details or overlook the obvious. They have analysis paralysis. Too much information includes misinformation or information that it's not doing to predict or explain the future.

Also, some people have the ability to deconstruct, break down problems into its components, and make things easier and simpler—people who know that not deciding has a cost.

We are living in an increasingly complex world. If you want to thrive, you need to keep things simple. More information doesn't equal more knowledge or better decisions.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has a particular approach to making tough decisions. He called it the 40/70 rule. He says that every time you face a tough decision, you should have at least forty percent and at most seventy percent of the information you need to make the decision.

In Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin, in one of his Guidelines to Better Thinking, he discusses Simplification as one of the twelve tools that provide the foundation for rational thinking and help us make better decisions.

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch said: "You can't believe how hard it is for people to be simple, how much they fear being simple. They worry that if they're simple, people will think they're simple-minded. In reality, of course, it's just the reverse. Clear tough-minded people are the most simple."

Warren Buffett agrees: "We haven't succeeded because we have some great, complicated systems of magic formulas we apply or anything of the sort. What we have is just simplicity itself." Charles Mungers adds: "If something is too hard, we move on to something else. What could be more simple than that?"

Simplifying is a skill, and you decide to work on it.

How to run better meetings

Meetings occupy most of the time in our daily agenda. According to The Economist, before the pandemic, managers were spending an average of 23 hours a week in meetings, and now that the barriers to calling people have come down, it's even higher. The 2022 Microsoft Workplace Trends Report found that weekly time spent in meetings had increased by 252 percent for the average Teams user since February 2020.

Meetings are important for connection and collaboration. However, long and large meetings are costly and, most of the time, are considered a waste of time for the participants. Bad practices in meetings impact the engagement and productivity of the organization. But it doesn't have to be that way.

There are many resources on how to make meetings better. Here are some suggestions that will help you make the most of the time spent in meetings:

1. EVALUATE FIRST

First, even before scheduling the meeting, evaluate if this is the best way to get what you need:

• Do you need a question answered? Pick up the phone and close the topic.

• Are there difficult or sensitive issues? Resolve it in a one-on-one meeting

• Is it a recurring meeting with no news or updates? Cancel the meeting. Please don't hold a meeting only to bring people up to date. (Send it by email.)

• Ask yourself: Do we really need this meeting? Would something happen if we skipped it?

2. BEFORE THE MEETING

A. Planing

• Have a clear purpose for the meeting

• Evaluate what is the most productive way to share this information

• What will be your role in the meeting? Are you there to push a group to a decision? Are you responsible for making a decision? Are you seeking information? Etc.

B. Prepare

• Who needs to attend? Keep the audience as small as possible.

• How much time is needed? Keep it as short as possible and no longer than one hour. Consider blocks of 25 or 45 minutes so people can have a space between appointments.

• What preparation would help? Is the meeting going to be in-person, virtual, or hybrid?

C. Communicate in advance

• Develop an agenda, assign owners and time to each topic

• Communicate the purpose of the meeting and be clear about the expectations

• Send the agenda and supporting material in advance

3. DURING THE MEETING

• Start and finish on time. End early when possible.

• Assign a note-taker and timekeeper

• Recap the meeting's purpose.  Ensure participants know the agenda and goal of the meeting.

• Stay on the topic.

• Avoid distraction. Invite people to be fully present. If it's possible, ban devices.

• Wrap up. Conclude with a summary, clear the next steps, and establish accountability.

4. AFTER THE MEETING

• Send brief notes to meeting attendees and people who were absent, focusing on the following: Decisions made; and actions, items, and owners.

• Review what worked and what didn't. Take note for next time. Ask for feedback.

You don't need research to prove how much time we are wasting in meetings because they need to be more effective, although there is plenty of data about it. We can make better use of everyone's time by taking some actions. Time is one of our most scarce resources. Start by challenging the next meeting you organize.

Download this chart in pdf.

How are you preparing to anticipate change?

Change is a constant in life. Are you preparing to anticipate it for your business or your life? Take a moment to reflect on it: What are you reading? What questions are you asking? Who are the people that you are talking to? Are you aware of new trends?

If you are not prepared, you will be a creature of circumstances. If you are not prepared, it may be too late to get ready, respond to the market requirements, and acquire the skills needed. As a business, you could disappear. If you don’t take responsibility for your world, someone else will. 

How are you looking to anticipate change?
The answer is in your calendar.

You can create your future.

Marcus Aurelius on Each of Us lives Only Now

Marcus Aurelius, nicknamed The Wise (April 26, 121–March 17, 180), is considered the last of Ancient Rome’s Five Good Emperors and one of the most influential Stoic philosophers.

Meditations is widely considered to be one of the most influential books ever written. It's a timeless collection of his personal writings and is considered a portal to his inner life. Meditations has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers, and readers throughout the centuries.

The questions he tried to answer in Meditations are timeless. Still today, we ask ourselves: Why are we here? How can I cope with the stresses and pressures of daily life? How can I do what is right? How can I cope with loss and pain? How can I handle misfortune? How do we live when we know that one day we won’t?

Here are some lessons from Marcus Aurelius's considerations on the topic of our impermanence and how to live a good life:

• "Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already or is impossible to see."

• "Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable."

• "Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work."

• "Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?"

• "Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see."

How to lead in tough times

We are living in a moment of multiple disruptions, like the global pandemic, supply chain challenges, market uncertainty, and restructuring of companies. At the same time, people bear the weight of what is happening in their personal life. Also, In many cases, personal things are affecting their families, their lives, and those they love.

The question at these moments is how to stay positive, and sometimes, the right answer is not to be.

Sometimes, expressing positive sentiment is the most tone-deaf and ineffective thing we can do. It could create a gap between the leader and their teams. It could lead to a crisis of confidence and trust.

Recognize that there are times when things are clearly not okay.  Instead of trying to be happy and positive when things are tough, we must focus on what's possible. Focus on what we can control and ask people for their perspectives.

As leaders, we are humans first. We must remember to act with humanity, kindness, and empathy and feel comfortable letting people see that we acknowledge that things may not be okay but that there are opportunities to move forward.

Leading with Empathy

If there’s one common skill required to achieve success, it’s empathy. Empathy is the critical skill for taking the lead, connecting, and opening our minds to the opinions and perspectives of others.

A recent study from Catalyst shows that employees with highly empathic senior leaders report higher levels of creativity (61%) and engagement (76%) than those with less empathic senior leaders (13% and 32%, respectively).

What is Empathy?

Empathy is the skill of connecting with others to identify and understand their thoughts, perspectives, and emotions; and demonstrating that understanding with intention, care, and concern.

An empathic leader is a leader who demonstrates care, concern, and understanding for employees’ life circumstances. Empathy helps bond colleagues together and forms the foundation of a resilient and inclusive workplace.

Researchers Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have identified three types of empathy:

• Cognitive Empathy (understanding)

• Emotional Empathy (heart/feeling), and

• Compassionate Empathy (action/doing).

The Impact of Empathy

It is hard for employees to feel a sense of belonging at work and bring their authentic selves to work if they don’t feel that their life circumstances are valued and respected by their company.

Demonstrating empathy signals to employees that their perspectives and experiences matter. Empathy is a skill that allows managers and leaders to understand better and provide support for employees.

According to Catalyst's survey:

• 61% of people with highly empathic senior leaders often report or always being innovative at work, compared to only 13% of people with less empathic senior leaders.

• 76% of people with highly empathic senior leaders often report or always being engaged, compared to only 32% of people with less empathic senior leaders.

How to put Empathy into practice:

• Have check-in meetings regularly

• Start your meetings expressing gratitude

• Celebrate milestones and recognize progress

• Show genuine interest and caring

• Express concern for the well-being of people

• Practice active listening

• Ask: how are you doing?

• Ask your team about loved ones and try to know your team as persons with a life outside of work.

• Ask what's one thing you could do differently to be a better leader for them.

• Invite others to share their perspective

Keep these in mind

Leading with empathy is a feature, not a bug. 
Leading with empathy is the contemporary way to lead, and
Leading with empathy is a courageous decision.

When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.
— Daniel Goleman

What you measure is what you get

“To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
— Proverb

The dark side of metrics is when you achieve the target but not the ultimate goal.

Have you thought about how to avoid the Man with Hammer Syndrome? “Man with a Hammer” syndrome is the idea that if you only have one or two mental models in your head, you’ll try to solve all problems with the same approach.

Usually, in projects, we start by defining what success looks like. However, we must be careful about what we measure because it will be what we get.  When I design a plan or a new project, I like to have in mind Charlie Munger's words:  

A special version of this man-with-a-hammer syndrome is terrible, not only in economics but practically everywhere else, including business. It's really terrible in business. You've got a complex system, and it spews out a lot of wonderful numbers that enable you to measure some factors. But there are other factors that are terribly important, [yet] there's no precise numbering you can put to these factors. You know they're important, but you don't have the numbers. Well, practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered because it yields to the statistical techniques they're taught in academia, and (2) doesn't mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I've tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.

Although we have some numbers, like engagement in culture plans, other factors cannot be reduced to a number. For example, the energy and commitment of the leaders to the program, the self-learning habits that people are building, and the community of sharing across areas we are creating.  And even if we don't have the perfect number, we know the skills we build are critical.

Consider also the perspectives of these other leaders:

• "What gets measured gets managed – even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so."
  — Peter Drucker

• "Perhaps what you measure is what you get. More likely, what you measure is all you’ll get. What you don’t (or can’t) measure is lost."
  — H. Thomas Johnson

• "Tell me how you measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way…do not complain about illogical behavior..."
  — Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt

Measurement is a great tool, but we must be aware that we need to measure and reward what is really important.

What do you need to make a plan successful?

A committed decision is a good start, and it makes all the difference.
It doesn't mean that there are no risks or challenges. You will find a way to overcome them.
It doesn't mean that it is the correct decision. But a committed decision is more powerful.
A committed decision can transform an ordinary experience and make it remarkable.

It doesn't mean that it does predict the success of a long-term strategy. Except when it does, and you can make it happen.

Stay Conversations: A great way to improve employee retention

Turnover is one of the most crucial talent metrics. While it can be good or bad depending on the organizational context, it has high costs.  One of the best ways to get around turnover and ensure the development of the relationship between manager and employees is to start with a stay conversation.

Stay conversations are discussions between a manager and their direct reports. The main purpose is connecting and learning more about the employee, including well-being, career expectations, development goals other factors that could influence the retention drivers and willingness to stay.

Key Recommendations:

1. Frequency: Stay conversations are most effective when repeated periodically, with follow-up and next steps to build an ongoing dialogue with purpose and meaning.

2. Duration: They should take up to 15 minutes.

3. Prepare: Schedule it in advance so the meeting can focus on the employee, not day-to-day work. Indicate the purpose of the meeting to eliminate any fears and allow the person to think about the topics you want to discuss.

4. Questions: A stay conversation works better if you use a semi-structured, one-on-one conversation. Personalize this form to understand the most relevant topics according to the moment. 

5. Agreements and actions: Discuss the next steps to achieving the goal of greater job satisfaction. It's important that the employee takes ownership of their job satisfaction and that you agree on how the leader can help.

6. Follow up: Schedule the next conversation right away.  Keep track of the agreements for better accountability at the next meeting.

Question Types:

Building Rapport & Trust

• How are you? How is life outside of work?

• How do you feel your work/life balance is right now?

• What’s one thing we could change about work for you that would improve your personal life?

• What drives you? What motivates you to come to work each day?

Growth and development:

• What is most exciting about your work? Least interesting?

• What do you want to learn? What do you want to teach others?

• What are your career interests? (professional preferences, areas, or businesses)

• Do you identify any obstacles to achieving your goals?

• What are three things can I do as your manager to help your professional growth?

• What are three things you can do to advance your professional growth?

Checking on their General Happiness:

• Are you happy with your recent work? Why or why not?

• What worries you? What’s on your mind?

• What would make you leave for another job?

• Is there anything else you want to talk about that I can help with?

The best leaders don't wait for signs of trouble. They take preventive action to keep their talented people. Stay conversations provide an excellent opportunity to understand what engages people and connect them to their main priorities and motives. Most importantly, through stay conversations, we create solid foundations for a culture of trust and connection that can make all the difference between retaining the people you need and watching them walk out the door.

***

For more Stay Conversations questions, download this free template.

Gratitude can transform your days

Gratitude can transform your days from complaints to joy.
Gratitude changes your view of ordinary things into blessings.
Gratitude is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
Gratitude makes us happier, brings us closer to others, and opens the door to possibility.

It's not something we're forced into, it's something we choose. It's worth it.

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.
― Marcus Aurelius

Challenge Your Belief

If you are reading the same books, the same news, participating in the same events that everyone else, or surrounded by people who only think like you, you could be missing a significant opportunity to grow,  amplify your perspective, and increase your understanding and knowledge.

Great leaders dare to be different. Great leaders understand that it is important to learn and try to understand another point of view. To be surrounded by people whose ideas are not always aligned with yours. People who challenge your opinion and help you to reflect and uncover your blind spots.

Listening

Listening is more than hearing what is said.
Listening happens when we put in the effort to understand what the person is trying to convey.
Listening implies avoiding immediate judgment, prejudice, assumptions, rebuttal, or criticism.
Listening avoids interrupting, evaluating, solving the problem, or jumping to an answer.

Listening is difficult, and it requires more than focus. It's a skill that requires practice, persistence, effort, and, most important, the intention to acknowledge what isn't said.

How do you measure success

Never before have expectations been so high about what people can achieve with their life. We're told that we can achieve anything. So, most people spend much time of their life working really hard to be successful.

Success is defined as the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status and is mainly characterized by external measures – how much money you make, your rank in the company, and your social status. Being successful seemingly always involves being measured against others.

However, when we talk about success vs. failure, we have to ask ourselves what characteristics they have in common: they are not everlasting, it doesn't depend one hundred percent on us, they are fortuitous, and it is statistical. They are circumstantial facts that have nothing to do with virtues.

As Alain de Botton said: The idea that we will make a society where literally everybody is graded, the good at the top, bad at the bottom, exactly done as it should be, is impossible. There are simply too many random factors: accidents, accidents of birth, accidents of things dropping on people's heads, illnesses, etc. We will never get to grade them, never get to grade people as they should.

Viktor Frankl proposed a wholly separate dimension, commonly not considered, but one that is critical for our well-being and the happiness of human beings. He called it the emptiness-fulfillment line.

There are plenty of people who are incredibly successful yet remain unhappy, despairing, or empty. It’s like they don’t know how to feel fulfilled at all. But life doesn’t have to stay that way.  We choose fulfillment or emptiness. We can choose success, but success does not depend on us.

Where would you like your son or your daughter to be? Would you want him/her to be good or for him/her to be a rich wretch?

It is in the fulfillment line where ethics and integrity lie. To create virtues, we have to judge the consequences of our decisions.  If we choose fulfillment, we choose virtue.

Where do you want to be in your life: success or fulfillment?

True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.
— Aristotle

What can we improve about Inclusive Education?

Inclusive Education means that all children in a community learn together, regardless of their physical, mental, social, or cultural conditions. It is normal for students to be different.

As Sir Ken Robinson presented in his incredible TED Talk about education:

There are hundreds of initiatives every year to try and improve education. The trouble is, it’s all going in the wrong direction.

There are three principles on which human life flourishes, and they are contradicted by the culture of education under which most teachers have to labor, and most students have to endure.

The first is this, that human beings are naturally different and diverse. (...) I will make you a bet, and I am confident that I will win the bet. If you’ve got two children or more, I bet you they are completely different from each other. Aren’t they? (...) Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents, not just a small range of them. (...)

The second principle that drives human life flourishing is curiosity.

If you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any further assistance very often. Children are natural learners. It’s a real achievement to put that particular ability out or to stifle it. Curiosity is the engine of achievement. (...)

And the third principle is this: that human life is inherently creative. It’s why we all have different résumés. We create our lives, and we can recreate them as we go through them. It’s the common currency of being a human being. It’s why human culture is so interesting and diverse, and dynamic. (...)

We all create our own lives through this restless process of imagining alternatives and possibilities, and one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop these powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization. Now, it doesn’t have to be that way. It really doesn’t.

It is normal for people to be different. Why are we pushing them to fit in? Inclusive education is a challenge and not a “problem.” It is not about achieving homogeneous groups (to reduce or eliminate differences); it is better to teach students with different interests, abilities, and learning rhythms together.

Inclusive education is not about offering special support for students that we consider “different.” An inclusive center does not take the student out of the classroom to give reinforcements or “therapies.”

Responding to diversity is breaking with the traditional scheme, in which everyone does the same thing, at the same time, in the same way, and with the same materials.

We need to embrace a different perspective. We have to recognize that we are not talking about processes, we are talking about humans, and there are conditions under which people thrive and under which they don't.

"Only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world: who we serve, what they need, and how to successfully meet people where they are.”  — Brené Brown.

What are we doing to create an environment of possibility, a broader range of opportunities, cherishing and valuing the uniqueness of every person?

Encouraging Others

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
— William Arthur Ward

We can decide to become someone who is actively looking to encourage others. When we look for the good in others — and then express it to them — it helps us to think less often about ourselves and more often about others.

Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we apply this concept to how we see and treat people, we start to see, listen and accept people as they are. It's appreciating their differences and wanting to help them grow and become what they are capable of being.

Encouraging others is a way to give someone support, confidence, and hope. It's an act to make people notice that they have been seen and heard. It’s something you want from others, and the best way to get it is to give it. 

What better way to provide value to others than to put their needs front and center?

If not now, when?

Has there ever been a better time to learn what you don’t know? It is easier, faster, and cheaper than ever.
It takes curiosity and motivation to learn. It takes humility to unlearn. Learning requires perseverance, effort, and the right mindset.

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?
― Epictetus

What Does “Earned” Mean to You?

Every once in a while, a book comes along that becomes an instant, inexplicable necessity in the life of any leader who wants to make a positive impact. This year, it’s The Earned Life by Marshall Goldsmith.

"I’ve learned it’s never too late to reflect because as long as you’re breathing, you have more time. But it’s never too early either—and early is better. (...) Reflect on the life you’re shaping for yourself and make choices based on that reflection."
— Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith shared his key learnings for living an earned life. Some demands that this will require are:

• Live your own life, not someone else's version of it.

• Commit yourself to "earning" every day. Make it a habit.

• Attach your earning moments to something greater than mere personal ambition.

What does "Earned" mean to you?

Here are some highlights that I made from this book:

• We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and efforts we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.

• The only iteration of you that matters is the present you who has just taken a breath.

• Recapturing a sense of fulfillment cannot be accomplished by wallowing in memories of who we were and what we accomplished. It can be earned only by the person we are in the moment at hand.

• We don't feel regret because we tried and failed; we regret not trying.

• Even when we know what we want, we don't always know how to follow our dreams.

• Our default response in life is not to experience meaning or happiness. Our default response is to experience inertia.

• The most reliable predictor of what you'll be doing five minutes from now is what you're doing now. (...) This short-term principle also applies in the long term. The most reliable predictor of who you'll be five years from now is who you are now.

• As the great journalist Herbert Bayard Swope (winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1917) said, “I can’t give you a surefire formula for success. But I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time.”

• To live any life, you have to make choices. To achieve an earned life, you have to make choices with an expanded sense of scale, discipline, and sacrifice.

This is a book that is worth reading from start to end.

What Nobody Told You About Your Job Description

Here are a few things that probably nobody told you about what you should be doing at work:

• Add positive energy to every interaction

• Be authentic

• Treat customers beyond expectations

• Offer help to others before they ask

• Leave things better than you found them

• Recognize the work of others

• Lead challenging projects

• Foster curiosity

• Have fun, but never at other people's expense

• Reduce costs

• Ask why

• Change what's not working

• Ask what it's for. Ask what's the problem that you are trying to solve

• Find how you can use your platform to do the most good

• Don't tolerate gossip, criticism, judgment, or cynical asides

• Start a community. Start a tribe

• Look for opportunities, and find solutions. Ask what you can do

• Simplify processes (even if you don't work in operations)

• Advocate for others

• Help invent a new product or service that people really want

• Get more competent at your job through learning every day

• Have difficult conversations

• Take ownership of your career

• Show your work. Just working hard is not enough

• Understand what drives different people

• Never make assumptions

• Figure out interesting problems

• Smile

Now more than ever, we need people who want to lead the change. People who want to make a difference and create a positive impact. It is not about titles. It is far beyond your job description. It is never too late to reflect and define how you want to perform.
What would you add to this list?

PS. This post is inspired by Seth Godin's post Missing from your Job Description.