As I write this, I'm sitting on the platform at the Back Bay Amtrak station in Boston, waiting for the train to New York. At 9am (6 minutes ago), I got a text message prompting me to write a blog post today. It said "Get your blog on! It's a good thing". The text message, of course, was sent to my by myself. I've got a little robot in the cloud whose job it is to help me be a better person. In this case, it's helping me be more consistent and less stressed about writing here, on this blog. The service I'm using is called IFTTT (If this, then that), and it's a very simple way of wiring together events from across various web services ("channels" in their parlance). In this case, I have the SMS channel triggered to send me a text every day at 9am. I also have a 10pm text which prompts me to write to my journal (that one says: "Take a 5 min break and post to brain [the name of my journal blog]. You'll thank me later." Last night when I got that text, I said to myself: "Self, you're right -- I will thank you later". And I wrote the post. And here I am this morning. I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between being organized vs. being disciplined, and I've been putting a lot of energy into increasing my discipline factor. Who knows if this will end up sticking, but I hope it will. At this point, it surely sounds like another exercise in
As I write this, I'm sitting on the platform at the Back Bay Amtrak station in Boston, waiting for the train to New York. At 9am (6 minutes ago), I got a text message prompting me to write a blog post today. It said "Get your blog on! It's a good thing". The text message, of course, was sent to my by myself. I've got a little robot in the cloud whose job it is to help me be a better person. In this case, it's helping me be more consistent and less stressed about writing here, on this blog. The service I'm using is called IFTTT (If this, then that), and it's a very simple way of wiring together events from across various web services ("channels" in their parlance). In this case, I have the SMS channel triggered to send me a text every day at 9am. I also have a 10pm text which prompts me to write to my journal (that one says: "Take a 5 min break and post to brain [the name of my journal blog]. You'll thank me later." Last night when I got that text, I said to myself: "Self, you're right -- I will thank you later". And I wrote the post. And here I am this morning. I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between being organized vs. being disciplined, and I've been putting a lot of energy into increasing my discipline factor. Who knows if this will end up sticking, but I hope it will. At this point, it surely sounds like another exercise in
yak-shaving
, and knowing myself I'll let that stand as a possibility. But I really do like the idea that it's possible to get more effective by doing less yourself and recruiting more help from others (in this case, from robots). And in this particular case, there's something particularly nice about being able to make up the wording yourself, knowing exactly what will push your own buttons and get you motivated. I really like IFTTT and will surely find more ways to use it. There are other services out there too, like
and I'm sure many more. At this point, I prefer the flexibility and straightforwardness over IFTTT to the slickness of Happiness Engines, but I'm looking forward to seeing where both go, and to experimenting w/ other ways to recruit robots to the cause.
I've been thinking a lot about what it means to invest lately. I'm not just talking about investing money, in savings or stocks or whatever; I mean investing in a broader sense, in yourself and in everything you do. I am without question an urgency addict -- as a general rule, I procrastinate, let things build up, and then power through with a burst of adrenaline when it gets down to the wire. This also means, generally, that I'm bad at medium-term planning. I often rely on my ability to "just figure things out" when I need to, and most of the time it works out. Lucky for me, I haven't yet had a total blow up disaster, but I definitely flirt with it. More and more, I've been thinking about this approach as a kind of personal debt. Every time I do something at the last minute, whether it's a presentation, a document, or plans for a trip, I'm burning reserves (cash, time, sleep, social capital) and often going into the red. While it may work most or all of the time, it's not sustainable and it's not a good way of using resources. Credit cards bail you out when you're over extended and need to get by at the last minute. Personal and planning debt is the same way. Conversely, investing in yourself, your plans, your friends & relationships, and your health is a longer-term proposition. It takes planning and discipline, and it doesn't pay off right away. But investing is about building a strong base. And it's about dedicating resources (time, thought, money) in things that are important, matter in the long run, and will grow into something even more valuable -- to yourself, to your friends, business associates and family. There are all kinds of good reasons for going into debt -- financial or personal -- whether its borrowing against a house or an education, using loans & credit cards to get through a tough time, or getting way backlogged on your work, your email, your exercise, or your family time. What I'm talking about is a general mindset of: "what am I spending my time doing -- am I making an investment right now, or am I burning capital right now -- and if I'm burning capital, am I beyond my reserves?" With that in mind, my new mantra is "Always Be Investing" (imagining Alec Baldwin coaching me at it).
Last week, I mentioned an article called The Making of the Corporate Athlete (originally published in 2001 in the Harvard Business Review). If you haven't read it, you should -- it's a short read. Long story short: successful athletes take a "whole body" approach to optimizing their performance, and other kinds of professionals could benefit from doing the same -- in other words, willpower and brainpower alone are not enough. One idea that stuck with me is the importance of rituals as a training activity. In each case study, the authors, who are acting as consultants (or therapists) for corporate clients, make a point of establishing "positive rituals" to help train their clients out of old, unhealthy habits, and turn them into corporate (and personal) superstars. According to the diagram below, rituals are the hand-holds for ascending the "High Performance Pyramid".
yak-shaving
, and knowing myself I'll let that stand as a possibility. But I really do like the idea that it's possible to get more effective by doing less yourself and recruiting more help from others (in this case, from robots). And in this particular case, there's something particularly nice about being able to make up the wording yourself, knowing exactly what will push your own buttons and get you motivated. I really like IFTTT and will surely find more ways to use it. There are other services out there too, like
and I'm sure many more. At this point, I prefer the flexibility and straightforwardness over IFTTT to the slickness of Happiness Engines, but I'm looking forward to seeing where both go, and to experimenting w/ other ways to recruit robots to the cause.
I've been thinking a lot about what it means to invest lately. I'm not just talking about investing money, in savings or stocks or whatever; I mean investing in a broader sense, in yourself and in everything you do. I am without question an urgency addict -- as a general rule, I procrastinate, let things build up, and then power through with a burst of adrenaline when it gets down to the wire. This also means, generally, that I'm bad at medium-term planning. I often rely on my ability to "just figure things out" when I need to, and most of the time it works out. Lucky for me, I haven't yet had a total blow up disaster, but I definitely flirt with it. More and more, I've been thinking about this approach as a kind of personal debt. Every time I do something at the last minute, whether it's a presentation, a document, or plans for a trip, I'm burning reserves (cash, time, sleep, social capital) and often going into the red. While it may work most or all of the time, it's not sustainable and it's not a good way of using resources. Credit cards bail you out when you're over extended and need to get by at the last minute. Personal and planning debt is the same way. Conversely, investing in yourself, your plans, your friends & relationships, and your health is a longer-term proposition. It takes planning and discipline, and it doesn't pay off right away. But investing is about building a strong base. And it's about dedicating resources (time, thought, money) in things that are important, matter in the long run, and will grow into something even more valuable -- to yourself, to your friends, business associates and family. There are all kinds of good reasons for going into debt -- financial or personal -- whether its borrowing against a house or an education, using loans & credit cards to get through a tough time, or getting way backlogged on your work, your email, your exercise, or your family time. What I'm talking about is a general mindset of: "what am I spending my time doing -- am I making an investment right now, or am I burning capital right now -- and if I'm burning capital, am I beyond my reserves?" With that in mind, my new mantra is "Always Be Investing" (imagining Alec Baldwin coaching me at it).
Last week, I mentioned an article called The Making of the Corporate Athlete (originally published in 2001 in the Harvard Business Review). If you haven't read it, you should -- it's a short read. Long story short: successful athletes take a "whole body" approach to optimizing their performance, and other kinds of professionals could benefit from doing the same -- in other words, willpower and brainpower alone are not enough. One idea that stuck with me is the importance of rituals as a training activity. In each case study, the authors, who are acting as consultants (or therapists) for corporate clients, make a point of establishing "positive rituals" to help train their clients out of old, unhealthy habits, and turn them into corporate (and personal) superstars. According to the diagram below, rituals are the hand-holds for ascending the "High Performance Pyramid".
I particularly like the idea that rituals create an explicit opportunity for recharging:
Our own work has demonstrated that effective energy management has two key components. The first is the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery), which we term “oscillation.” In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth. Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance. Rituals that promote oscillation – rhythmic stress and recovery – are the second component of high performance. Repeated regularly, these highly precise, consciously developed routines become automatic over time.
and that they are an important technique for stepping off the daily grind treadmill:
The inclination for busy executives is to live in a perpetual state of triage, doing whatever seems most immediately pressing while losing sight of any bigger picture. Rituals that give people the opportunity to pause and look inside include meditation, journal writing, prayer, and service to others. Each of these activities can also serve as a source of recovery - a way to break the linearity of relentless goal-oriented activity.
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I've started to apply it to my own life. For instance, blogging here helps me clear my head and recharge, but it's hard for me to find time or space to do it during the regular day-to-day (plus, that's what Tumblr is for). But I've found that firing up ScribeFire first thing on the mornings when I Amtrak it from Boston to NYC works - so that's what I'm trying to do now each week. Another example: Theo and I have been doing swim lessons together every Saturday morning for the past few months, and that time has quickly become my favorite part of the week. Thinking about it a bit, I realized that, besides the fact that he and I are spending dedicated time together, there's something particularly comforting and recharging about that time being blocked off from the rest of the week -- no email, no phones, etc -- and the fact that it is the same time and day somehow adds to that recharging ability. And then of course there is my hero-blogger Fred Wilson, whose pattern of writing is entirely ritual-oriented (1 blog post per day, ~3 tumbls a day, weekly series, etc.). I am clearly inspired by the way Fred writes and you can see that reflected in how my ownonlinepresence is set up (and probably even in how I write). At a certain point, rituals can become traditions, which take on a different kind of long-term social value. For example, my father in law has been having lunch with his friend Bob every Saturday for the last 40 years (maybe longer). As long as my wife can remember, her dad slipped out for an hour every Saturday. He also recently told me that his father took him out for breakfast every Sunday when he was a kid. There is something really powerful about the connections that these ritual/traditions create. It can be hard to keep them in place, but I suppose that's what makes them so meaningful if you can. So, at risk of caving to my own OCD tendencies and immediately hyper ritualizing my entire life, I will say that I see the value in integrating these ideas. On a personal level, and also on a company / team level. For instance, at OpenPlans, for the past year or so I have been super focused on external issues -- raising money, developing business, making partnerships, etc. -- to the point where now that those investments are paying off, I really want to refocus on making sure our internal operations are healthy. To some extent, I think that means working to institute some positive rituals into our work week (without digressing into toxic meetings). So, there you have it: this week's personal self-help installment, brought to you by a nice window seat on the Amtrak Acela, somewhere in eastern Connecticut. See you next week.
I particularly like the idea that rituals create an explicit opportunity for recharging:
Our own work has demonstrated that effective energy management has two key components. The first is the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery), which we term “oscillation.” In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth. Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance. Rituals that promote oscillation – rhythmic stress and recovery – are the second component of high performance. Repeated regularly, these highly precise, consciously developed routines become automatic over time.
and that they are an important technique for stepping off the daily grind treadmill:
The inclination for busy executives is to live in a perpetual state of triage, doing whatever seems most immediately pressing while losing sight of any bigger picture. Rituals that give people the opportunity to pause and look inside include meditation, journal writing, prayer, and service to others. Each of these activities can also serve as a source of recovery - a way to break the linearity of relentless goal-oriented activity.
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I've started to apply it to my own life. For instance, blogging here helps me clear my head and recharge, but it's hard for me to find time or space to do it during the regular day-to-day (plus, that's what Tumblr is for). But I've found that firing up ScribeFire first thing on the mornings when I Amtrak it from Boston to NYC works - so that's what I'm trying to do now each week. Another example: Theo and I have been doing swim lessons together every Saturday morning for the past few months, and that time has quickly become my favorite part of the week. Thinking about it a bit, I realized that, besides the fact that he and I are spending dedicated time together, there's something particularly comforting and recharging about that time being blocked off from the rest of the week -- no email, no phones, etc -- and the fact that it is the same time and day somehow adds to that recharging ability. And then of course there is my hero-blogger Fred Wilson, whose pattern of writing is entirely ritual-oriented (1 blog post per day, ~3 tumbls a day, weekly series, etc.). I am clearly inspired by the way Fred writes and you can see that reflected in how my ownonlinepresence is set up (and probably even in how I write). At a certain point, rituals can become traditions, which take on a different kind of long-term social value. For example, my father in law has been having lunch with his friend Bob every Saturday for the last 40 years (maybe longer). As long as my wife can remember, her dad slipped out for an hour every Saturday. He also recently told me that his father took him out for breakfast every Sunday when he was a kid. There is something really powerful about the connections that these ritual/traditions create. It can be hard to keep them in place, but I suppose that's what makes them so meaningful if you can. So, at risk of caving to my own OCD tendencies and immediately hyper ritualizing my entire life, I will say that I see the value in integrating these ideas. On a personal level, and also on a company / team level. For instance, at OpenPlans, for the past year or so I have been super focused on external issues -- raising money, developing business, making partnerships, etc. -- to the point where now that those investments are paying off, I really want to refocus on making sure our internal operations are healthy. To some extent, I think that means working to institute some positive rituals into our work week (without digressing into toxic meetings). So, there you have it: this week's personal self-help installment, brought to you by a nice window seat on the Amtrak Acela, somewhere in eastern Connecticut. See you next week.
