Planning the New Year

When was the last time you felt truly fulfilled? When your life felt meaningful and rewarding or aligned with some deeper purpose or motivation?

According to Cortland Dah, few things are as central to our physical health or psychological well-being as a sense of purpose. He said that our sense of purpose shapes how we feel about ourselves and our lives.

Creating a compelling vision of the life you want is actually one of the most effective strategies for achieving the life you want to pursue. It is like a compass that will guide you to ensure that your actions and choices are aligned. It gives us the strength to persevere when we start to lose hope and to find meaning in the meaningless details of our daily routines.

For every new year, one of my favorite planning sources that I use is the one shared by Taylor Pearson, an Antifragile Planning: Optimizing for Optionality. Planning timelines continue to be shorter and shorter. More than ever, we need to adapt faster, in an agile way, and show flexibility in a constant change environment. For these cases, optionality, a concept explained by Nassim N. Taleb in his book Antifragile, gives us an open door to embrace these opportunities.

If you “have optionality,” you don’t have much need for what is commonly called intelligence, knowledge, insight, skills, and these complicated things that take place in our brain cells. Because you don’t have to be right that often. All you need is the wisdom not to do unintelligent things to hurt yourself (some acts of omission) and recognize favorable outcomes when they occur.
— Nassim N. Taleb

Asking yourself the right questions can give you clarity for your long-term goals and what you really want to accomplish.

Understand that anything worthwhile can take a long time. In a world where we have more and more distractions, focusing is increasingly essential.

What are your goals for this new year? Asking yourself the right questions is a good start.

The courage to show up

The courage to show up when you don't need anything but because you know you can contribute. The courage to show up knowing that you could be criticized, but not by those whose opinion matters to you. Any fool can criticize, complain, and judge, and as Dale Carnegie says, most fools do. But it takes courage and character to show up for work that matters, even when you can't control the outcome.

On the other hand, if your work has never been criticized, it will be very hard to perform at your best. So you have to discern between useful criticism—that is a gift for those who care—and everything else you should pass over.

Every day is unique. Every day is an opportunity. You decide how you want to live it.

 “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

What we call progress

Over the last 500 years, there has been an incremental improvement over time. However, most of the progress is about what does not happen. It’s about all the things that could have happened that didn’t happen today. It’s about a two-year-old child who did not die of smallpox. However, these stories don't make the headlines.

Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author of upbeat books about human progress, shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide. According to Pinker, “People tend to approach challenges in one of two ways—as problem-solving or as conflict.”

So, Why are so many people pessimistic?

Bad things happen faster than good things. Good things take time.

The causes of progress, Pinker posted, are reason, science, and humanism. “When people deploy their brainpower to try to make their fellows better off … then you can see increased human well-being. And that’s what we call progress.”

Dear Prudence

Virtue is a Greek term meaning “character excellence” or “excellence in being.” When translated into Latin, the word is “virtus,” meaning “effectiveness in action.” Virtue is how we can cultivate good character because it provides us with a moral compass and is the key to unlocking human flourishing and fulfillment.

Prudence is the first of the cardinal virtues (the others are justice, fortitude, and temperance).  It guides the other virtues and guides the judgment of conscience.

Prudence enables us to choose good means to a good end. It guides our practical decision-making in individual, concrete circumstances and provides for effective execution once a decision is reached. With the help of prudence, we learn from our experiences and correctly apply moral principles to real-life situations (Catechism, no. 1806).

Some notes I found about prudence that I like:

• St. Augustine says: "Prudence is the knowledge of what to seek and what to avoid."

• "The virtue of prudence is the mold and “mother” of all the other cardinal virtues, justice, fortitude, and temperance. In other words, none but the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate, and the good man is good in so far as he is prudent." — Pieper, Josef. Four Cardinal Virtues, The (p. 10). University of Notre Dame Press. Kindle Edition.

• The three stages of prudence for acting properly are deliberation, judgment, and decision.

• Errors in judgment can creep in through defects of prudence or through “false prudence.” Defects include thoughtlessness, rashness, negligence, indecisiveness, and inconstancy in execution.

• True prudence isn’t only concerned with a good end but also good means to that end.

Prudence is something we develop with practice; it builds on what we have learned through earlier experience. Aristotle taught that "...virtue is both originated and fostered by teaching; it, therefore, demands experience and time." Although it may be difficult at first, Prudence becomes easier as we incorporate what we have learned into the mental processes by which we make our choices. Any act—good or bad—becomes habitual, or "second nature," through repeated practice. The value of the good habits we call virtues is that they make self-mastery and the joy of leading a morally good life easier. 

Compete with the future version of yourself

We live in a world of continuous comparison to others, measuring our self-worth by someone else's standards.

In an interesting interview by Oz with Jordan Peterson, Peterson says that it's not a fair race to compare yourself to someone else because you don't know anything about the people to whom you're comparing yourself. You only can scratch the surface, but you really don't know anything about what these people are dealing with, and almost everyone is dealing with some serious problem. You create a relative status and a not helpful illusion.

How can we cultivate acting better today for a more successful tomorrow?

First, you need to start with humility. You have to be humble enough to ask yourself who you are and where your flaws are. What small things could you do to improve it? Second, humility to recognize that you need to start small.  Above your level of competence, something that challenges you, but you have a reasonable probability of succeeding so that you can continue with the small improvement process.

 The best person to compare yourself to is your yesterday self and not someone else today. You could be better than you are and make incremental improvements. Small improvements compound, and you can start moving ahead with the consistency of small improvements.

Everybody is a volunteer

In a recent interview with Seth Godin by Rohan Rajiv from LinkedIn Series Speaker, Seth came up with the concept that at work, "everybody is a volunteer."

Now a day, organizations that want to make a real impact, that want to create a positive change, are the ones that are treating their employees like trusted, respected volunteers. These organizations decided to lead and not manage. This is a path for those who want to make things better.

The important and real work doesn’t come with a recipe. If you want someone committed, accountable, willing to go beyond their job description, and who wants to solve interesting problems, you need to show trust. If you want people to lead, make a creative contribution, to produce something that might not work, but that might be worth pursuing, you need to trust them. 

I love this concept. In the end, everyone has to make a choice. We can choose to volunteer to go further if we really care and want to make a meaningful contribution.

Make your growth a priority

Increasing your effectiveness is critical to overcoming the challenges we face today.

That's why you need to be in the driver's seat when we talk about development and guide your growth. You don't need to wait for someone else to provide you with resources, tools, or opportunities. You have to take responsibility for it. Nobody is going to be as interested as you in your own development. This is a personal commitment. You can decide when, how, and why you want to grow. You'll need to be proactive.  

Building your personal effectiveness is a complex process that requires a thoughtful development plan that you need to put into action. It involves reflection on the process, evaluating successes and learnings, and the impact of our decisions. Jerry Colonna, a personal coach, says that growth is painful; that is why so few choose to do it. Growth and comfort rarely co-exist.

A study of highly successful managers showed that 70 percent of what they learned about how to be good managers they did from experience. So, learning by doing, when these assignments are high-challenge experiences, is the one that would promote maximal learning.

In her book The Power of Flexing, Susan Ashford shared some ideas on how the experience could be your best teacher:

1. Taking on unfamiliar responsibilities. An experience that involves unfamiliar responsibilities usually offers significant potential for personal challenge and growth.

2. Leading change. It has long been said that if you want to understand something truly, try to change it. Taking steps to create that change will require you to dive deeply into the nature of the status quo and its reasons. It will also require you to understand and deal with the psychological and emotional reasons why some team members will support the change while others resist it and to explore how you can be most influential with them.

3. Addressing a high-stakes challenge.  Not all job assignments are equally important. Some involve levels of risk and reward that are unusually high, with potentially significant implications for the future of the entire organization.

4. Crossing Boundaries. Work across organizational or professional boundaries. Leading an initiative requires both support from top management and cooperation from colleagues in other departments of the organization. To succeed, you’ll need to learn how to influence people and groups over whom you have no direct authority and who may even have strong reasons to oppose your plans.

5. Working with Diversity. Anytime you have to work with people who differ from you and each other in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, culture, background, values, and perspectives, the potential for misunderstanding and conflict increases —while at the same time, the potential for creative exchange and fruitful discovery also increases.

6. Facing Adversity. Usually, the most important lessons learned came from career lows, not the highs. It’s ironic since we spend most of our lives trying to avoid those lows. Of course, we often discover the lessons from adversity only later, after the adversity has been overcome, reframed, or resolved.

An important conclusion about how experience could be a good teacher is that experiences themselves don’t teach. Growth and learning don’t “just happen” automatically. People need to want to learn. That means that people need the right mindset and the motivation to learn.

But from another perspective, it’s profoundly empowering. You don’t need to wait around for others to choose you. You don't need to wait to be selected for a corporate program or special initiative, or assignment. Instead, you can use your current experiences, whatever they are, to begin growing yourself. You only need the commitment to learn.

You cannot lose another life than the one you're living now

From Meditations book 2, by Marcus Aurelius:

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?

Remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.

Something simple but worthy to have always present. We could be distracted thinking about the future or be slaves of our past. It's our choice, but remember, we can only live right now. We decide how we want to live.

Increase your well-being: The three-minute approach

Several studies have found that people who consciously count their blessings tend to have higher well-being.

A critical factor is to make the decision to actively write down two or three good things that happened to you during the day and explain why you enjoyed it. Explain what decision or action you took to make that happen.

A 2005 study published in American Psychology found that the combination — of three good things and the cause for each — leads to long-term increases in overall happiness.

One important factor of this study is the focus on the active decisions to make things happen instead of focusing on things that just happened to you. You are the person responsible for working day by day to change your perspective, your approach, and the way you interact and respond to your different circumstances. With time you can find ways to increase your well-being and be happier.

The process is simple but not easy. You need to adopt a new habit, incorporate a new strategy, and be constant. However, if you make the commitment to do it, it can completely change the way that you choose to see your life. You can define proactively how you want to act, respond and make conscious decisions on those things that you find valuable and will make you happier.

Embrace our differences: Talking about disabilities

It’s normal that we all are different. Why is it so hard to create an inclusive environment?

What is to be inclusive?
Inclusion is a human right. The meaning of inclusive is that everyone is understood, appreciated, and able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

It shouldn’t be so difficult, but it is.

Now imagine how the world is for someone with disabilities.

Do you know that, according to the World Bank, one billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, experience some form of disability? Also, the Disabled Living Foundation found that 80% of disabilities are acquired between the ages of 18 and 64, that is, the workforce age.

Other Key Facts:

• The number of people with disability is dramatically increasing. This is due to demographic trends and increases in chronic health conditions, among other causes.

• Almost everyone is likely to experience some form of disability – temporary or permanent – at some point in life.

• 1 in 2 disabled persons cannot afford treatment;

• People with disabilities have a more fragile general health;

• Disability increases dependency and limits participation in society.

These gaps are due to barriers to accessing health, education, transportation, information, and work services – things many of us take for granted. 

If we focus on children with disabilities and their access to education, the observation is quite dreadful: according to UNICEF, around 240 million children worldwide have disabilities, that is to say, one child out of ten. They are 49% more likely to have never attended school than children without disabilities.

Depending on their disabilities, situations, and country, they are more or less included in society. The inclusion that we now set up will positively impact their adult lives and our own.

Knowing all these facts, what are we doing to have a more inclusive world? Sometimes we forget to recognize the importance and impact of inclusion in our lives. What would happen if we recognized that all beings are essential?

We tend to overestimate the role that genetics plays in shaping our identities. I'm not saying it's not important, but sometimes we forget that it's only a component of the things we really value, and we assume that it really determines our destiny. Your DNA is not your destiny.

Diversity enriches our humanity and makes us better. Our sensitivity, our humanity, and our compassion make this world better. The world needs people who care.

Do We Have It Wrong about Rights?

Can we talk about rights if we don't consider the well-being of others? In human rights, the only qualification of relevance is being human. And no matter who we are, we all have the same rights as humans.

What is a right?
Understanding what a right relies on the concept of justice. Human rights are norms that aspire to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Examples of human rights are the right to freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial when charged with a crime, the right not to be tortured, and the right to education.

What happens when we claim a right to do something at the risk of harming or disadvantaging others? Human rights might be our species' most incredible invention. They are the base of our culture and represent incremental progress toward respect, opportunity, and dignity.

However, sometimes people perceive them as inconvenient. And that's why we need to stay vigilant and remind each other that it's worth defending them. Our culture, based on respect and dignity, should not have setbacks.

Status Quo and Do-Nothing Syndrome

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
— Samuel Johnson

Peter Bevelin, in his book Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger, says that we prefer to keep things the way they are. We resist change and prefer effort minimization. We favor routine behavior over innovative behavior.  According to him, the more emotional a decision is or the more choices we have, the more we prefer the status quo, even in cases where the costs of switching are very low.

He explains that we want to feel good about the choices we make so we can justify our actions for others and ourselves. We are more bothered by the harm that comes from the action than the harm that comes from inaction. We feel worse when we fail as a result of taking action than when we fail by doing nothing.

Peter Bevelin wrote these guidances to keep in mind:

• Deciding to do nothing is also a decision. And the cost of doing nothing could be greater than the cost of taking action.

• Remember what you want to achieve.

• Once we know what to do, we should do it. The 19th Century British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley says: "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early  a person's training begins, it is probably the last lesson a person learns thoroughly."

We usually reflect on what could go wrong if we try something new. What we don't often consider is the cost of the status quo. A good exercise is to ask yourself: "If I avoid this action or decision, what might my life look like in six months, twelve months, or three years? Please be sure to get detailed: emotionally, financially, physically, etc.  This deep analysis won't make all your hard choices more manageable, but it can give you clarity and make many of them easier.

Motivation is for Amateurs

Your work is too important to be left to how you feel today.
We can't always control our feelings, but we can control our actions.

We have an incredible capacity to make things work. To the question, how will the future be? Well, If you make a committed decision, it will be the way that you created it.

You can start now to increase your commitment to actively and consciously creating your future instead of waiting for the right mood or the right day.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
— Chuck Close

Aristotle: Developing a Life of Virtues

Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist who is still considered one of the greatest thinkers in politics, psychology, and ethics.

According to Aristotle’s ethical theory, the virtuous person exhibits the joint excellence of reason and character. The virtuous person not only knows what the good thing to do is but is also emotionally attached to it.

Aristotle, talking about logic and virtues, also said:

A. All people are equal. One person's life is the same as another's. The happiness of one person is equal to another.
This is Logical Truth.

B: Mine affects me more.
Example:

• If someone steps on my foot, it hurts. It hurts more when they step on my foot because if they step on yours, it doesn't hurt.

• If someone takes me some money, it affects me more than if they take it away from others.

• If someone gives me a promotion, it affects me more than if they give it to someone else.

This is Psychological Truth

C. How is it possible that what happens to me affects me more if we are all equal? What should we do?

In those cases, we must take care more about others. I have to ensure that the people around me are fine and that my team is okay. If there is a fire, let others get out first, etc.
This is an Ethical Truth

This is a quest to understand and develop a life of virtues and moral character. This character assumes that we acquire virtue through practice. By practicing being honest, brave, just, generous, and so on, a person develops an honorable and moral character. According to Aristotle, by honing virtuous habits, people will likely make the right choice when faced with ethical challenges.

Charlie Munger: The world is not driven by greed; it's driven by envy

Charlie Munger, the business partner of Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is one of the great minds of the 20th century and is famous for his quote, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

Not many 7-minutes videos change how you view the world. But this Charlie Munger interview probably will.  Munger argues envy drives the world.

It's amazing how achievements there have been in civilization in these last 200 years, and most in the last 100 years. Now the trouble will this is that the basic needs are pretty well filled. (...) With all this enormous increase in living standards, freedom, diminishment of racial inequities, and all the huge progress that has come, people are less happy about the state of affairs than they were when things were way tougher. That has a very simple explanation. The world is not driven by greed; it's driven by envy. The fact that everybody is five times better off than they used to be, they take that for granted. All they think about is somebody else having more now, and it's not fair that he should have it, and they don't. (...)

I can't change the fact that a lot of people are very unhappy and feel very abused after everything improved by about 600% because there's still somebody else who has more. I have conquered envy in my own life. I don't envy anybody. I don't give a damn what somebody else has. But other people are going crazy by it. And other people play envy in order to advance their political careers. We have whole networks now that want to pour gasoline on the flames of envy. (...)

Think of the pretentious expenditures of the rich. Who in the hell needs a Rolex watch so you get mugged for it? Yes, everybody wants to have a pretentious expenditure, and that helps drive demand in our modern capitalist society. My advice to young people is: don't go there. To hell with the pretentious expenditure. I don't think there is much happiness in it. But it does drive the civilization we actually have. And it drives dissatisfaction.

In conclusion, envy can be a powerful driving force in society, leading people to strive for material possessions and success that they don't necessarily need. This can create feelings of dissatisfaction and resentment as people compare themselves to others and may feel that they are falling short.  

With the amount of social media and messages we receive on a daily basis, it is easy to fall into the pattern of comparing ourselves to others. We should focus on personal happiness and contentment rather than trying to keep up with the perceived success of others. It can be challenging to resist the societal pressure to value material possessions and status, but it is important to focus on what truly brings happiness and contentment.

Blind spots: Challenge your assumptions

Nobel prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman studied the two different processing systems the brain uses to make decisions.

System 1 thinking, where bias comes from, is intuitive, automatic, and effortless. System 1 is critical to survival. For example, it’s what makes you swerve to avoid a car accident.

System 2 thinking is deliberate, analytical, and rational. It requires energy. For example, it allows us to navigate a new route when our usual path is blocked.

We are all susceptible to biases, especially when we’re fatigued, stressed, or multitasking. Experts tell us that our unconscious mind makes the majority of our decisions. It creates blind spots—unconscious biases that can narrow your vision and potentially influence your behaviors.

Are you letting blind spots steer your decision-making? It’s time to take control.

Problem-Solving with the Right Questions

Curiosity makes your mind active instead of passive. The mind is a muscle that becomes stronger through continual exercise. Curiosity makes your mind aware of new ideas. Asking questions with curiosity is a great mental exercise that strengthens your mind. Research also shows that asking questions contributes to developing emotional intelligence and better human (soft) skills and is key to building interpersonal relationships.

Good questions are the key to better insights and the right way to clarify ideas and cut assumptions. If we have the genuine intention to assess our understanding, as well as others, questions can open the door to possibility. We can have real knowledge of what people need and want and also focus on the most important things for your team and your organization.

There are different situations, and some questions are best suited to your needs. This time, I will share questions that can help you explore and discover new solutions or ideas.

1. Do we have a clear understanding of the root of the problem?

2. Has anyone else come across this?

3. What do you think? What are some potential solutions you see?

4. How would a great company solve this problem?

5. What is going well for you?

6. What three things would you change?

7. If you could change anything about the situation, what would it be?

8. If you were me, what would you do?

9. What could we try that may not work?

10. What is your vision for this project?

11. What's the quickest route?

12. What's the no-tech solution?

It is not enough to ask interesting questions. You need to think about them forwards and backward. If you take the time to talk to your team, ask and listen, you can learn a tremendous amount. When you go over problems, go deeper. Iterate, that's when you have more probability of understanding it.

The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity. 
— Albert Einstein

Rethinking Performance Reviews: What's next?

 The end year is coming, and the performance reviews are just around the corner. We live in a moment when employees have to deal with multiple disruptions, continuous challenges, and uncertainty. With the increasing cases of burnout, disengagement, and employees quitting, we now have to make a stop for the performance reviews.

Many studies found that traditional performance management is outdated and ineffective. A Gallup research shows that traditional approaches to performance management leave many goals of performance management unachieved. Some of the findings are that: only 2 in 10 employees strongly agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work. And only 14% of employees strongly agree that the performance reviews they receive inspire them to improve.

Some main reasons employees feel their performance reviews are inaccurate or unfair are infrequent feedback, lack of clarity, manager bias, adverse reactions to evaluation and feedback, and too much focus on pay incentives. Because annual reviews make employees feel disengaged and less trusting of their company, many businesses decided a few years ago to replace traditional reviews with different performance evaluation processes. Do we have the right process now? I doubt it. But the good news is that more companies are open to reviewing it, adapting it, and making changes to improve it.

Now more than ever, the world demands us to focus on team results rather than individual performance. We need to promote strong collaborations and global connections to resolve issues that it is more clear we can't do it alone. We need to create an environment where people feel safe to take risks, giving them autonomy and empowerment to respond with agility to the market. Most of the things that the economy demands are hard to measure. If we focus on the job that has to be done and declare that we will evaluate employees for those results, we could leave the most important things unconsidered.

The things we believe are important and can make a real difference are not always related to the metrics we define for the performance review. A remarkable job is often related to a personal commitment, values, integrity, daily positive interactions, caring about your customers, and willingness to go further because it is personal, because it is who you are.

The Real Reason We're All So Busy

These days, most people feel pressed for time. Dorie Clark, Duke University’s professor, presented in her TEDx important reasons why many people are so busy and what choices they can make in their life to break out of this cycle of overwhelm.

She started by sharing a recent study done by the Management Research Group of 10,000 senior leaders, where they asked them what the key to their organization’s success is. In the results, 97% said “long-term, strategic thinking.” And yet, in a separate study, 96% of leaders surveyed said they don’t have time for strategic thinking.

She invited us to reflect on why 96% of people are not doing the one thing that they say is most critical to their success.

For many people, it is a reality to get trapped in the pattern of the busyness of overwork. Some people have a life that's not really in their full control. Some people are living and dealing with so many "important" things that they don't have the time to reflect on them, so they only react.

This is a great TEDx that raised fundamental questions.

Honest feedback: the key to personal growth

If we talk about giving feedback, we need to talk about speaking transparently, clearly, and with the right examples.

If we talk about asking for feedback, we need to talk about the vulnerability of asking; humility to listen; a growth mindset to recognize that we all are works in progress; and courage to acknowledge what we hear and work on it.

Honest feedback can help you perform better tomorrow. If you take action, you can improve and shift from where you are to the person you want to become. Avoid nice people who only want to please you or be agreeable; even if what you hear is nice, it will not help you.

 We all have a safety network. Be brave to seek honest feedback from them. Find a person who knows you, wants to help, cares about you, and is willing to be clear because it will really help you grow.

With proactive feedback, you can shape your future, not just react to it.