Author: Sasha

Decreasing Time on Task

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

So much talk about productivity is about how we block out our time.

Not getting distracted too easily by the constant influx of pings that tear our attention away.

Creating dedicated space for deep work.

Managing to do lists, prioritization, deadlines.

And all of this is essential.

We also have the option to create more time in the way we complete our tasks, by finding our own path to efficiency on the things we do often.

Do we type 30 or 60 or 120 words a minute?

Do we spend 15 minutes debating with ourselves before mustering the courage to share our point of view with a colleague?

Does a simple email response to a client question take us 3 minutes to write? 10? 20?

Do our standing meetings last 15 minutes, 30 or 60?

Have we learned both how to listen to the relevant points of view and also to keep meetings moving forward?

These sorts of shifts are easy to describe, but we’re often more comfortable with some than with others. It might help to think of them in four distinct categories, and use these categories to diagnose which types of changes we find easier / harder to make:

  1. Skills: typing speed is just one example. There are tons of tasks we engage in as knowledge workers, many of them repetitive (e.g. switching between applications on our computers). Do we invest the time to learn to do these well AND quickly?
  2. Indecision: ultimately, our day is full of hundreds of decisions big and small. If we hand-wring over too many of these, our day will be gone before we know it.
  3. Emotions: the primary one that gets in our way is fear, the kind that paralyzes us to inaction.
  4. Structure: how long our meetings are, what days we have them, which tasks we do first thing in the morning, how we block our time.

When seen this way, it’s clear how much space we can create in our days and in our weeks, by accelerating the time from start to finish of our important, oft-repeated tasks.

I’d estimate that each of us has at least 10 hours a week we could “find” by taking this all on.

Salesperson Order of Operations

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

We all have busy jobs and busy days.

Lots of people to talk to, fires to put out, problems to solve.

But if you are involved in sales of any kind (sales, fundraising, business development, you name it), then your must live by this rule:

I respond quickly and thoughtfully when I hear from a sales prospect.

Quickly = within 24 hours.

Thoughtfully = thoughtfully.

It doesn’t matter what else you do, who else you manage, what else is on your plate.

Sales requires attention, prioritization, and responsiveness, always.

So, when that email comes in from a prospect, replying to it is now at the top of your list.

(And a reply could be, “Thanks so much. This is really helpful. We’re on it. We will need two days to answer all these questions. I’ll send you another note then.” That counts as a quick, thoughtful response, as long as the two days really is two days, 100% of the time).

Absent this mindset, and the supporting systems to enable it, you’ll lose out on too many opportunities to be successful.

And remember it’s both mindset AND systems—not one or the other—to deliver on this consistently.

 

Less Intense, More Frequent

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I strained my right hamstring back in April playing squash. It wasn’t too bad at first, and I figured I’d be back to 100% in six to eight weeks’ time.

I spent the subsequent four months trying, unsuccessfully, to fix my hamstring myself.

My approach, as always, was to barrel straight at the problem: intense stretching or strengthening workouts focused directly on the area that hurt.

Four months later, in early August, I had to accept the obvious: my hamstring was no better; if anything, it hurt more.

Chastened, I resigned myself to stopping most of my regular activity and starting physical therapy.

Happily, two months later, I’m finally seeing good progress.  And, as I watch how PT works, it’s easy to see how different its approach is than what I’d been doing.

Everything we do in PT feels more moderate and measured than what I would do. Very little strain, absolutely no pain.

But, miraculously, real gains over time thanks, no doubt, to the consistency of the effort. Week in, week out, whether convenient or not, I’ve been putting in the time, even in the absence of obvious improvement. I’m finally getting somewhere.

It’s easy to make the mistake I made with any new thing we’re trying to learn: we get inspired, decide to “go for it,” and put in a bunch of effort for a few weeks, expecting results. When we don’t see them, or when the novelty quickly wears off, we give up. As in:

  • Vowing to get more organized, finding a new To Do list software, filling the list, and feeling super-accomplished in week 1…and then giving up when the list gets too full to manage
  • Reading a great article about setting aside quiet time in our schedule, crushing it in the first week or two but then schedule a “really important” meeting during that time, and then another, and another…
  • Going to a training about the value of professional feedback, studiously setting up three formal feedback sessions with peers per the facilitator’s instructions, and then snapping back to the old way of doing things
  • Dreaming of becoming a better writer, writing for an hour a day for a week and then being so terrified of the blank page that we close Word, convinced that we tried and we failed.

The too-large dosage, the version of the story where we dive in with massive commitment and enthusiasm, can be part of the problem. This is because big, symbolic shifts start with fanfare but are often hard to sustain. Worse, when our “new thing” requires a lot of effort, we invariably look too soon for results and, when they don’t materialize, we take that to mean something about our ability to learn or do this new thing, and we desist.

The reality of most change is that it is much slower than we expect or hope it will be.

So, in planning to make change, we must ask not only “what is the new habit I would like to nurture” but also “what is the new practice I believe I can sustain, not for a week or two, but for a few months until it becomes ‘the way I do things?’”

Drip, drip, drip.

Changes that become part of who we are happen because we make them part of our lives over a long period of time.

Small, consistent doses make that kind of sustained change possible.

L’Shanah Tovah (Happy New Year)

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September 26th to October 5th, 2022 are the Days of Awe in the Jewish calendar, the time between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Repentance).

As happens most years, I’ve found myself scrambling a bit to remember when these holidays fall, putting them on my calendar and canceling meetings a bit too late, adjusting my schedule so I leave work early enough today so I can get home for a meal before evening services and a day of fasting.

This is all a manifestation of what it feels like, to me, to be a Jew: while I live in community with one of the highest concentration of Jews in the U.S., being Jewish is still something that I have to actively claim, something that is out of kilter with the mainstream.

I talked about this a little while ago with a longtime peer in the impact investing space. In our conversation, one of us said something that made the other realize that we both were Jewish, with similar post-Holocaust histories. From there we shared our stories.

This is a not-infrequent occurrence, because it’s not obvious who is and isn’t Jewish, and, somehow, it doesn’t come up as often or as easily as you might expect.

Indeed, while I’m not proud of it, I’ve made the conscious choice not to talk much about my Judaism on this blog. I take it as a given that the world, and the Internet in particular, is full of lots of crazy, hateful people; and I’ve assumed that anti-Semitism is lurking, just in the shadows, but not far out of sight: 2021 saw the highest level of anti-Semitism on record, a 167 percent increase in violent attacks. So, I apparently concluded, why invite that kind of attention?

I similarly haven’t worked out exactly when, or if, to bring up the fact that I’m Jewish in a professional context. In practice, that means that mostly I don’t do it, which seems normal until it doesn’t—a holiday that I take off; a family story that I share; explaining why I have a Russian first name and a German last name when neither I nor my parents / grandparents are Russian or German. These moments end up feeling like I’m revealing something a little too late, but I’ve yet to figure out a better way to navigate this.

I share all this mostly as a point of reflection: my cultural and religious identities are important to me, and they make me proud. But somehow, I don’t behave as if this is the case, and I’m not sure why.

It could be because there remains, for many Jews, the lurking fear that history could repeat itself, that any society we are part of might turn against us. So, why not take the path of least resistance and lay a little bit low?

And while that thought sounds crazy when I say it out loud, I can think of no better explanation for my paradoxical behavior.

At a minimum, this is food for thought for me tomorrow, as I reflect on the last year and think about the next one.

And, to end on a more positive note, I thought I’d share my favorite part of the Yom Kippur tradition. In our tradition, we believe that while G-d can forgive us for our sins against G-d, only people can forgive each other for sins against people.

And so, we ask for forgiveness from our friends, families, colleagues and loved ones in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

So, at the very least, for my sin of omission, I ask for your forgiveness. And, l’Shanah Tova: may you be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a sweet new year.

7 Days a Week

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This fall, we started a new stage of life, with both our daughters out of the house and on their way to school by 7:30am, and our son is in college. This early start to the day opens up a huge swath of the morning for me and my wife.

Because of our still-very-energetic dog, to make this schedule work, my wife and I have been getting up 6:30am at the latest—to allow for a 1-hour walk + helping the kids get ready for school—meaning we’re up daily between 6:00 and 6:30am.

And to make THAT work we’ve gotten pretty rigorous about getting to sleep each night.

This schedule is strict enough that it has naturally spilled over into the weekend: if I wake up 5 days in a row between 6 and 6:30, on Saturday I seem to wake up at that time as well.

And, while this can feel oppressive at that moment of pre-sunrise wakeup, the shift towards having the same sleep schedule 7 days a week, rather than 5, is making a lot of sense to me.

There’s lots of sleep science in favor of the idea of waking up the same time each and every day, and breaking the college schedule of staying up late / sleeping late on the weekends. The older I get, the more I relish a really great nights’ sleep, and this newfound consistency seems to be helping me in this regard.

To make this all work, here are the pre- and post-wakeup elements of my routine that I do 7 days a week:

  • All family cellphones away in a drawer in the kitchen by ~9:30pm
  • Reading fiction on a Kindle (not iPad) for 15-45 minutes each night in bed
  • Same wakeup time most/all days—currently 6:30am or earlier
  • Drink a full glass of water right when I wake up, by my bedside, which I think helps stave off migraines (I also take Migralief each night but, of course, consult your physician)
  • 45-minute dog walk each morning—not listening to music, or podcasts, just walking

While the rigor of this routine doesn’t bring joy each and every morning, in practice it results in:

  • A prolonged period away from my cellphone—from ~9:30pm to 7:30am daily
  • Ease at falling asleep, thanks to following the same PM routine that ends with reading fiction, which takes me away from everything
  • Thanks to my energetic, harassing dog, an hour between wakeup and engaging with my phone
  • Exposure to sunlight within 30 minutes of waking up

This routine could break down somewhat as post-COVID life picks up again—both more travel and more socializing at night.

But having this structure in place feels like the right foundation, not just on weekdays but 7 days a week.

That Was Amazing

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How often does this happen to you?

You’re in the middle of a sentence, or are part of the way through sharing an idea and a colleague interjects, barely letting you finish,

“That was absolutely amazing! Yes! Exactly that!”

“The way you described that was so clear and compelling. You totally persuaded me. That was you at your best!”

“Of all the things you’re working on, I really think that has to be your top priority. It will change everything!”

If you’re like most people, I expect you’ll quietly be thinking, “Well, actually, that hasn’t happened to me in a while.”

And that’s the problem.

Because you are amazing, and you have amazing ideas, and there are times each day, or at minimum each week, when you are at your absolute best and someone around you is there to witness it.

Same with your colleagues, I’d expect.

So why aren’t we interrupted with unbridled enthusiasm more often? Why isn’t it obvious what thing we’ve done recently felt, to those around us, like us at our best?

“Feedback” often feels like a dirty word because it’s interpreted as code for “I’m about to share something that didn’t land quite right with me.”

Now, constructive feedback, delivered with generous intent, and focused on behaviors and impact, is essential.

AND energetic, over-the-top, ludicrous praise….it’s not only easy and fun to deliver with enthusiasm, it also promises to be attention-grabbing and unforgettable.

Plus, lest we forget, for people to feel like they’re hearing and equal quantity of positive and negative feedback, they need to hear five times (five times!) as much positive feedback as constructive feedback.

“That’s just fabulous. Please do more of that.”

It’s music to our ears.

Halfway

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

There are countless tools out there that will help us organize our lives: tips and tricks for managing a to do list; achieving Inbox Zero (aka knowledge worker nirvana); making time for deep work by not scheduling meetings one or two days a week.

There’s also plenty of quality advice about all the professional skills we might want to work on: from how to give and receive more constructive feedback; to what we need to do to become better writers (write shitty first drafts); to how to become great coaches.

But there’s a catch.

The best To Do list approach (and app) won’t work if we also keep, sort of, using our Inbox to track our tasks tasks.

Our Inbox Zero dreams will be dashed if we don’t consistently act on each and every email. Not most of them, all of them.

Our time for deep thinking will evaporate if we make exceptions for “really important” meetings on our supposedly-open day.

We won’t become skilled at giving and receiving effective feedback if we fail to walk towards that discomfort regularly, or if we’re afraid of the awkwardness of structuring our feedback using the Situation-Behavior-Impact framework that might be new to us.

And on and on to our writing, our coaching, and, yes, our, diet, sleep, and exercise.

The doorway from where we are to where we want to be isn’t knowledge or even motivation.

It’s commitment.

And in most cases, halfway is none of the way there.

I Hate the Ivy League

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I dropped my eldest son off at college on Friday, which was bittersweet.

Lucky for him, he is focused and passionate in a way I could not have imagined when I was his age.  He’s found his way to a small, specialized school that is uniquely suited to his talents, and I’m hoping that it turns out to be the perfect place for him.

On the drive there and back, my wife and I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s 9-podcast compilation, “I Hate the Ivy League.”

The thesis is that the U.S. higher ed system is failing miserably at being the great equalizer in a country that calls itself it is a meritocracy. Instead of a higher-ed system that is evolving towards more access for more students for better results, we instead have one that is driving inexorably towards exorbitantly-priced exclusivity…a hyper-capitalist version of education.

I don’t know which episode I liked the best.

It could be the one where Justice Antonin Scalia boasts that he only considers Supreme Court Clerk candidates from the T14 (“top 14”) U.S. law schools, and then goes on to say that the single best Clerk he ever had went to none of those schools. And he fails to see the irony in that.

I also liked the one where Gladwell takes on Stanford’s president and almost blows a gasket explaining why a $400 million gift to a college with a multi-billion dollar endowment is just plain wrong.

But probably the best of all was the one that talks about the U.S. News and World Report college ranking system. While I knew it was flawed, I never fully appreciated how each and every element that drives up college ranking is correlated with exclusion, wealth, and privilege.

I listened from the edge of my seat to Gladwell’s exposition on what it would take for Dillard, an historically black college and university (HBCU) in Louisiana, to climb the US News and World Report rankings: admit fewer students with Pell grants, fewer students who are first-time college-goers, recruit more rich white students, etc. etc. etc. (Oh, and if you’re wondering which college, Harvard or Dillard, graduated more Black physics majors last year, it’s not even close: Dillard wins in a landslide.)

This all got me thinking, again, about the power of data to shape (or mis-shape) a system. While the U.S. News rankings are not the only cause of the perversion of higher education in the U.S., they are a major catalyst that reinforces and accelerates a fundamentally flawed status quo.

I’m sure we can all think of other areas where bad or nonexistent data are either accelerating us towards a bad outcome or holding us back from facing the real, tough questions.

If you’re looking for better data, real data, data from the source, let’s talk.

Not Eating the Apples

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For a few weeks this summer, we had no air conditioning in our house. It was fine for some of the time, and then we hit that hot spell when the temperature was in the 90s all day and 80s all night, and it was…sticky.

It was harder to do everything. It all just felt like so much work.

We

just

slowed

down.

A week into this heat, we noticed that the fruit we leave out on our kitchen counter was rotting quickly, so we migrated it to the ‘fridge.

This seemed like a simple way to make sure things stopped spoiling, but it had the opposite effect.

Why? Because I see my counter every time I walk into the kitchen, but I open my refrigerator at most once for every meal.

So, two weeks later, we find ourselves throwing out a pile of refrigerated, rotten fruit, including four perfectly good, now-brown apples. Not because we don’t like fruit — for goodness sake, I love apples! Because they were ‘hidden’ on the top shelf of a refrigerator I open 2-3 times a day.

When we sell, we tell ourselves that we know that the people we are selling to aren’t “purely” rational in their decision-making.

But let’s be honest…we think they’re mostly rational.

That they’ll buy when they’re good and ready.

That they’re thoughtfully deciding about our sales pitch.

That it really is about the budget, and the approvals.

And about how closely the proposal matches their strategy and their current needs.

We think, therefore, that on some level moving the apples won’t matter. That wherever they are, no matter how often (or how not-often) we see them, that people who like apples will eat apples.

The truth is, people who like apples will eat apples that are right in front of them.

Apples that they see often.

Apples that are easier to get to than the crackers or the chocolate or the bread or the cookies.

Being the best is nice.

But showing up at the right moments in the right way, so that it’s as easy as possible to say yes to you…that’s the game changer.

Stroke Rate

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In swimming, there’s a natural relationship between cadence, speed, and fatigue.

A higher stroke rate makes you go through the water faster, and you’ll tire more quickly.

Similarly: lower stroke rate, slower pace, easier.

Except not always.

Take a moment to think about why this might be…

Because when your stroke rate is too low, because of the water’s resistance, you start to slow down between each stroke (and sink, a bit).

When this happens, each time you pull through the water you’re fighting this resistance. You’re pushing through a fast-slow-fast cycle which requires expending extra energy.

It’s much more efficient to maintain a constant speed.

Ironically, the very thing we’re doing to avoid fatigue is making us more tired. Worse, the problem can be self-reinforcing: slowing our stroke rate even more because we keep finding ourselves out of breath.

And so it goes with how we approach our throughput in other areas of life.

Task switching, of course, is the most obvious culprit: the ultimate undo-er of pace and flow.

But the point is broader. It’s about seeing that there are moments of optimal flow awaiting us at every turn, ones in which we are producing more with less effort, even though from the outside it might look like we are working harder.

In a similar vein, we can consider that our attempts to insert more breaks and distractions into a day full of an insurmountable pile of work might be helping us and might be contributing to the problem.

The outside world—distractions, worries, the chatter of in our own mind—can all be sources of resistance.

Which means that the solution to our sense of having too much to do might be the exact opposite of what it appears to be.