Archive for the ‘philosophy’ Category

The cult of busy

When I was younger I thought busy people were more important than everyone else. Otherwise why would they be so busy? I had busy bosses, busy parents, and always I just thought they must have really important things to do. It seemed an easy way to see who mattered and who didn’t. The busy must matter more, and the lazy mattered less.

This is the cult of busy. That simply by always seeming to have something to do, we all assume you must be important or successful.

It explains the behavior of many people at work. By appearing busy, people bother them less, and  simultaneously believe they’re doing well at their job. It’s quite a trick.

I now believe the opposite to be true. Or the near opposite. Here’s why:

  • Time is the singular measure of life. It’s one of the few things you can not get more of. Knowing how to spend it well is possibly the most important skill you can have.
  • The person who gets a job done in one hour will seem less busy than the guy who can only do it in five.  How busy a person seems is not necessarily indicative of the quality of their results. Someone who is better at something might very well seem less busy, because they are more effective. Results matter more than the time spent to achieve them.
  • Being in demand can have good and bad causes.  Someone with a line of people waiting to talk to them outside their office door at work seems busy, and therefore seems important. But somehow the clerk running the slowest supermarket checkout line in the universe isn’t praised in the same way, it means they’re ineffective. People who are at the center of everything aren’t necessarily good at what they do (although they might be). The bar of being busy falls far well below the bar of being good.
  • The compulsion to save time may lead nowhere. If you’re always cutting corners to save time, when exactly are you using the time you’ve saved? There is this illusion some day in the future you get back all the time you’ve squirreled away in one big chunk. I don’t think time works this way. For most Americans it seems most of our time savings goes straight into watching television. That’s where all the time savings we think we get actually goes.
  • The phrase “I don’t have time for” should never be said. We all get the same amount of time every day. If you can’t do something it’s not about the quantity of time. It’s really about how important the task is to you. I’m sure if you were having a heart attack, you’d magically find time to go to the hospital. That time would come from something else you’d planned to do, but now seems less important. This is how time works all the time. What people really mean when they say “I don’t have time” is this thing is not important enough to earn my time. It’s a polite way to tell people they’re not worth your time.

This means people who are always busy are time poor. They have a time shortage. They have time debt. They are either trying to do too much, or they aren’t doing what they’re doing very well. They are failing to either a) be effective with their time b) don’t know what they’re trying to effect, so they scramble away at trying to optimize for  everything, which leads to optimizing nothing.

On the other hand, people who truly have control over time have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. They have a sense of priorities that drives their use of time and can shift away from the specific ordinary work that’s easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify. They protect their time from trivia and idiocy. These people are time rich. They provide themselves with a surplus of time. They might seem to idle, or to relax, more often then the rest, but that may be a sign of their mastery not their incompetence.

I deliberately try not to fill my calendar. I choose not to say Yes to everything. For to do so would make me too busy, and I think, less effective at what my goals are.  I always want to have some margin of my time in reserve, time I’m free to spend in any way I choose, including doing almost nothing at all. I’m free to take detours. I’m open to serendipity. Some of the best thinkers throughout history had some of their best thoughts while  going for walks, playing cards with friends, little things things that generally would not be considered the hallmarks of busy people. It’s the ability to pause, to reflect, and relax, to let the mind wander, that’s perhaps the true sign of time mastery, for when the mind returns it’s often sharper and more efficient, but most important perhaps, happier than it was before.

This post was inspired by Marrissa Bracke’s essay Why I stopped working with busy people.

Also see:

How to convince anyone of anything

In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics people submit and vote for. If you dig this idea, let me know if the comments, and submit your ideas and votes.

This topic was requested with a slightly different title:  How to make a convincing argument.

Right away it’s good to know most people do not like confrontation. The word argument itself tends to make people think of lawyers or divorce proceedings, unpleasant stressful things. It’s worth going for a more positive and less loaded word: convince. The goal is to persuade, to make them want to agree with you and feel happy, or smart, or right, when they do. This has higher odds of success than bludgeoning them with logic, or trying to pin them into a mental submission hold. If you use your brain power to wrap people’s mind into a pretzel, it’s likely once you turn your back they’ll squirm their way right back out to the shape they had before you got involved. And they’ll likely resent you for twisting them up too.

It’s good to know our species sucks at convincing others and being convinced, or acting on those new ideas. Check out the stories of Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Socrates… some of our greatest minds, perhaps our greatest people, tried to convince their followers of some pretty fucking simple ideas (e.g. do not kill, the golden rule), ideas which were often ignored or perverted by their followers in less than a generation. If this crowd couldn’t pull it off with the name of god, the threat of damnation, or the gift enlightenment behind them, the odds for the rest of us can’t be all that great. If you have ideas or a mission, no matter how persuasive you are, most people will not hear you. Most people will not change. The bet is that some will, and that’s enough reward for the effort. Or that your own thinking will sharpen through the process, and that’s valuable too.

The secret behind all the skills of pitching, persuading, selling or inspiring is the individual person you are talking to. There is no magic recipe for convincing large numbers of people of something all at the same time.  That’s really hard to do. But if you are only trying to convince one person of something you can learn about them, study their interest and beliefs, and use that knowledge as a foothold for the ideas you want them to support or follow.

If you are in a meeting with 5 other people, identify the most influential people in that room. Those are the people your pitch needs to be aimed at.

The classic mistake people make is focusing on their own pitch. Their points. Their slides. Entirely forgetting who the audience is. This is shooting blind.

Work the opposite way. Understand their goals, their core beliefs, their preferred kind of thinking (data driven, story driven, principle driven, goal driven) – how do they argue for things? How do they convince others to do things? That’s the toolkit to work from. But most people find this boring. They can’t get their egos excited about studying other people, so they don’t. And then they fail. But if you can be generous of mind, and like a method actor put yourself inside their view of the world, you will understand them. And once you understand them you’ll see their perspective on you and your ideas.

I know if I can find a way to connect my idea to something they themselves argue and fight for, my chances improve dramatically. And if I can’t convince them, my studies of how they think, combined with their refutation for my ideas, will teach me something new about their view of things. At a minimum, their counterargument will give me new knowledge that will help me the next time I have to convince them, or someone else, of something. Or it might convince me they are unconvincable, and my time is best spent elsewhere.

I also know that i have to believe in the idea myself and for the right reasons. If I’m not entirely convinced, it’s very hard to naturally convey conviction. But if I can go into a conversation and state, honestly, “I believe so much in this idea I’d bet half this years salary on it” or “If I’m wrong I’ll do all your chores this month”, there is an undeniable power and sincerity whoever is listening will feel. Sometimes this can work as a bluff, but that’s a bad habit to get into.

I think the entire philosophy of user experience design works well for convincing people (Which is ironic as many user experience folks are not very good at convincing people of their ideas). If you deeply understand who you are trying to convince, how their mind works, and why they are in the room listening to you, your ability to position an idea so they understand it, consider it and support it goes way up.

Also see: How to pitch an idea

  • By Scott Berkun on February 26th, 2010
  • 3 Comments »
  • philosophy

Quote of the Month

Stephen Fry: If an alien was looking down on us and inspecting our language they would see the worst things we do on this planet is we torture, we kill, we abuse, we harm people, we’re cruel, and those are the things of which we should be ashamed.

Among the best things we do is we breed children, we raise them, we make love to each other, we adore each other, we are affectionate and fond of each other.

How odd the language for the awful things is used casually all the time, ‘oh the traffic was agony’,'it was hell’, ‘it was cruel’, ‘it was torture waiting in line’ You use words like torture? That’s the worst word.

Yet if you use the F word, which is the word for generating the species, for showing physical affection to one another, then we’re taken off the air and accused of being wicked,and irresponsible and a bad influence to children.

Now we’re part of this culture so we often don’t question it, but if you think of someone from outside… it is very strange.

Craig Ferguson: We are very weird fuckers indeed.

From the most excellent late show with Craig Ferguson (youtube).

Book smarts vs. Street smarts

In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on  whatever topics people submit and vote for.  If you dig this idea, let me know if the comments, and submit your ideas and votes.

This week’s reader’s choice post: Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts

Polarizing questions are silly since rarely in life do you have to make such exclusive choices. Often if you’re clever, you can find ways to obtain both ends of any X or Y type dilemma. But for fun, I’ll assume you’ve stolen my lunch money and refuse to give it back until I play along and pick one side.

There is no doubt in my mind street smarts kicks book smarts ass.  To be street smart means you have situational awareness. You can assess the environment you are in, who is in it, and what the available angles are. Being on the street, or in the trenches, or whatever low to the ground metaphor you prefer, requires you learn to trust your own judgment about people and what matters. This skill, regardless of where you develop it, is of great value everywhere in life regardless of how far from the streets you are.

Most important perhaps, being street smart comes from experience. It means you’ve learned how to take what has happened to you, good or bad, think about it, and learn to improve from it.  The prime distinction between street smarts and book smarts is who is at the center of the knowledge. On the street, it’s you. In a book it’s you trying to absorb someone else’s take on the world, and however amazing the writer is, you are at best one degree removed from the actual experience. Street smarts means you’ve put yourself at risk and survived. Or thrived. Or have scars. You’ve been tested and have a bank of courage to depend on when you are tested again. Being street smart can lead to book smarts as the street smart sense what works and what doesn’t, and adapt accordingly.

Book smarts, as I’ve framed it, means someone who is good at following the rules. These are people who get straight A’s, sit in the front, and perhaps enjoy crossword puzzles. They like things that have singular right answers. They like to believe the volume, and precision, of their knowledge can somehow compensate for their lack of experience applying it in the real world.  Thinking about things has value, but imagining how you will handle a tough situation is a world away from actually being in one (As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”).  Like the stereotypical ROTC idiot in war movies (e.g. The Thin Red Line, Aliens 2) who outranks the much more competent and experienced, but less well pedigreed sergeant, the book smart confuse pretense with reality, and only learn of the difference when it is too late. Or worse, even after the fact, they insist on seeking out more books and degrees rather than recognizing they are trying to improve the wrong skills: they are half blind by their own choice since they insist on looking at the world with only one eye.

I say all this as someone who has a deep love for books, and who has some degree of what might be called book smarts. But it’s that knowledge, used in service of street smarts, that best explains whatever I’ve achieved so far in life.

How to be passionate (when you open your mouth)

Vijay recently asked in the comments on a recent talk:

Thank you for a great presentation.  I noticed that your energy was explosive and  there was absolutely no point in the presentation where I could detect a lull. I am interested in learning if you have any secrets or techniques in  maintaining the focus of not just the audience, but also  yourself as I often space out even when I am working on something that I am passionate about.

Explosive energy makes me think of being a drummer in Spinal Tap. Perhaps I should tone it down.

There are four things going on.

  1. My life is at stake.  I have bet I can make a living on my ideas and my ability to express them. I have no guarantees, no salary and no pension. Every time I write a blog post, a book or a give a talk I’m basically an entrepreneur. I’m not half invested. This isn’t a side project. THIS IS IT. I need people to buy my books, hire me to speak, and to tell others about me. When you’ve invested your heart in something, it’s much easier to appear passionate about it, because you are.
  2. I believe what I say . I really hate phony people. I hate people who water things down, intentionally mislead, or pretend they care about things they don’t. How much of what is said at work do people truly believe or care about? I think very carefully, and long, about most of what I create, and so when the time comes to give a presentation, or write a book, my points are things I truly believe.  And I’ve worked hard to make them concise. I’m not holding much back because I know it’s easier to get excited about things you deeply believe, especially if they’ve been boiled down to their essence. If you asked me to talk about my favorite tax software, or which 401k forms I liked the most, passion would be hard to find.
  3. I’ve extended my range.  If you can only play one note on your guitar, you can’t do very much. Musicians, especially singers, practice to extend their range. Most speakers have a narrow range. They only know how to get from volume level 4 to 5. If you practice, and listen to other great speakers carefully, you’ll notice how wide their range is. They can whisper (volume level 2) or almost holler (volume level 7).  You also have a range of gestures, and postures, and facial expressions. The wider your range the more tools you have to express passion, or curiosity, or humor, or anything. You extend your range through practice and coaching. I never want to be too passionate, as it’s easy to sound like a preacher on cocaine or Billy Mays. Instead my goal is to be at high level of enthusiasm  without crossing over into annoying.
  4. I have great respect for anyone who voluntarily listens to me. Speaking and writing are very subjective, and I know that reasonable people might not like me, or what I have to say. But their sense of how much energy and effort I put in is something undeniable. I never want to be dismissed by people for not being sincere. They can hate me, prove me wrong, heckle me, whatever, but at the end of the day I don’t want anyone leaving the room, or finishing one of my books, feeling like I gave half an effort.  Frankly any speaker is burning way more calories per second than any listener, but that’s often forgotten by most listeners, it’s a consumer’s market when it comes to things to consume.

Hope that helps. Let me know if it doesn’t.

For reference, here’s me speaking at Ignite:

  • By Scott Berkun on January 15th, 2010
  • 8 Comments »
  • Uncategorized

Wants vs. Beliefs

A funny thing about the human mind is we tend to believe what we want to believe. We are prone to allowing what we want to have happen distort our reasoning on how likely it is to happen.

My recent post on the future of UI will be boring has disappointed some. They think I want the future to boring because I predict it will be so.

This is wrong. I’d love new and better things as much as anyone.

However, having studied the history of change and progress I know how many factors are involved for change of this kind to happen, and how many of those factors have nothing to do with how much better a particular new idea is. My prediction is based on what I think will happen, independent of whether I want it to happen or not.

If you strip away what you want or don’t want for a moment, your odds of seeing things clearly go up. I’m not saying I’m right about the future, only that there is a distinction in my mind between things I want to have happen and I things I think will happen. It’s a very useful distinction to be able to make.

It should be possible to:

  • Believe in something you hope doesn’t happen (e.g. death)
  • Want something even if it’s improbable (developing superpowers as you age)
  • Accept that things happen regardless of whether you believe in them or not
  • Work for something you want despite the odds (changing the world for the better)

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