Letters to my sons
"The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature."― Abbé Prévost
My sons,
I have had the unnatural privilege of working closely with several great orators of my time. Powerhouse communicators who could not only take complex concepts and ideas and distill them down to their essence but inspire you to run hard after them. Leaders who could not only move organizations but could shape the industry simply by speaking. Being in the presence of leaders like Anders Hjelsberg, Elissa Murphy, and Blake Irving has given me the distinct experience not only of being inspired by the best, but of being able to witness the life changing power of great communication.
We’ve discussed the need to understand yourself first and foremost as a primary participant in communication. We’ll now move on to the second party in any communication: your audience.
Early on in my career I was lucky enough to be on a team that allowed me the opportunity to speak and present to our customers. As a part of the deal, I got to spend a bit of time with a speaking coach that helped me refine my presentation skills, and something she said to me very early on has stuck with me. She informed me that whenever you are communicating anything,
your audience will have a predetermined set of thoughts, questions, concerns, and worries that will prevent them from truly hearing you until addressed.
Whether we’re talking about a presentation to my execs, trying to convince my partner of a particular vacation spot, or advocating for my children to try something new, each of them will have a set of concerns that need to be addressed before they can hear me. So how do I figure out what those are, and by doing so address them and give myself the best chance of being truly heard?
The art of seeing people
I’ve been on a journey to build better relationships. With my children, with my partner, with my aging parents, with my brother and his wonderful family, with close friends, and with my team, I’ve been on a mission to figure out how to build deeper and stronger connections across the gamut of these relationships. I read a wonderful book last fall by David Brooks called How to know a person that discussed in depth not only how to know people well, but various character traits that prevent us from knowing others and from achieving that level of vulnerability and trust that breathe life into relationships.
So before we get into how to see people and understand them, I thought it would be fun to take a quick antagonist view at how not to see people well, and for us to honestly evaluate how many of these traps we fall into. So without further ado, the list!
- Egotism. This is the trait that makes us simply not interested in other people. We are self-absorbed, self-interested, dare I say self-obsessed. Instagram culture (or TikTok or whatever the latest craze of the day happens to be) further exacerbates this problem, but make no mistake: this is a huge problem with our world!
- Anxiety. Have you ever taken time to listen to what’s going on inside your head? There are many studies that show that there is so much noise going on in our own heads that we are unable to even think about other people with all that racket going on! There’s a really great book I read recently called The Anxious Generation that talks about the increase in anxiety if you’re curious to learn more.
- Naive realism. This is the quality that believes that our own point of view is the objective truth. Youthful zeal often falls into this trap, but the reality is that we all interpret the world with our filters; we do not see the world as it is.
- Lesser minds problem. This is a funny one. This is simply the act of thinking everyone else is dumber than we are. Sadly, this happens much more often than we’d like to admit.
- Objectivism. Instead of seeing others as people, we see them in the groups that they belong to and detach emotion from the situation altogether. We do this at work a lot - instead of saying “so and so’s team is failing”, we say “team x is failing”, removing the human element from the interaction.
- Essentialism. This is effectively stereotyping, boiling people down to their essential common traits instead of seeing them as complex beings with much depth and unique experience.
- Static mindset. Also known as a fixed mindset, this is the belief that people don’t change. Once we’ve made up our minds about someone, we hold onto that frame and do not give any consideration to the changes that they undergo.
Ever fall into any of those traps? I certainly have, and it has undoubtedly prevented me from understanding others, from developing better bonds, and from being more effective in my communication with them.
The good news is that these are not insurmountable. With a little bit of awareness and a lot of hard work, we can indeed change these traits and begin to see people as they are, not as we imagine them to be, and in doing so understand how to better communicate with them.
So how do we learn to see people, to understand what makes them tick, and to figure out how to be most effective in our relationships and communications with them?
1. Be aware of your attention
We live in an attention economy. Companies and products no longer vie for our money as a primary; no, they vie for our attention. Attention is money. Monthly active users. Daily active users. Hours spent per session. All of these are metrics that any company worth their salt tracks and tries to maximize.
It is that technological and social environment that we find ourselves in, and it therefore behooves us to understand why our attention matters, and what forces we fight against when we try to control that attention.
First of all, know that there are two types of attention: spotlight and starlight. Spotlight attention is our ability to focus actively on a single task or conversation intently and intentionally, whereas starlight attention is our ability to have a longer term sustained focus on goals and objectives.
In order to really see a person, we must be able to start by applying our spotlight focus to them in our interactions, which in turn allows us to eventually apply our starlight focus. We’ve got to take a few intentional steps:
- Be present. This is becoming so hard for people that every training or offsite I’ve attended in the last 5 years has started with a strong reminder to be present.
- Remove distractions. In other words, don’t take out your phone. Not only does it not allow you to focus your spotlight attention on someone, it also makes them feel less important and not seen.
- Treat attention as all or nothing. Sit up, lean forward/lean in, ask questions, and show positive signs of understanding. This may mean nodding when appropriate, or adding +1s or whatever is culturally accepted for you to do.
Our attention matters. A lot. It conveys respect, care, and consideration. It tells the other person we want to know them.
2. Be an active listener
Most of us believe that we’re decent listeners - 96% of us according to a recent HBR study, but 34% of adults in America feel misunderstood “often” or “very often”. What gives?
First, we need to understand that there are different levels of listening:
- Self-focused listening. This is where the listener is really thinking about how they will respond more than they are listening.
- Person-focused listening. This is where the listener is solely focused on what the speaker is saying.
- Environment-aware listening. This is where the listener is not only focused on what the speaker is saying but on what the context, environment, other people in the room etc are doing as well.
That same HBR study showed that the vast majority of us are self-focused when we listen. We are thinking about how to respond. We need to graduate beyond that! The more we are able to actively engage in listening, the more we are able to draw the other party/parties of our communication into an active partnership of give and take, of dialogue, and of common understanding.
Knowing your audience
Regardless of whether we’re chatting 1-1 with someone, hanging out in a group of friends, in a meeting at work, or speaking in front of thousands, it is on us as the speaker to understand the receiver so that we frame our words in a way that the other person can hear.
A face to face interaction requires focused attention with good back and forth. The more we actively listen to them, the more they will feel heard and will be willing to connect and further the conversation.
A group conversation requires environment awareness and perceptiveness as to each person’s state. The more we understand each member of the group’s feelings, inclinations, and worries, the more we can ensure they are engaged.
A large presentation requires understanding where your audience is coming from, what their cares and concerns are. The more we do our research and learn about the cares and perspectives of those sitting in the audience, the more relatable we can be to them.
The most effective communicators are able to understand their audience, are in tune with their cares and worries, and are able to adjust not only what they say, but how they say it to give their listeners the greatest chance of hearing deeply what the speaker is trying to communicate.
My sons,
It has been said that the most important thing one can do in one’s life is to communicate. We are a social species, a communal people. We were made for community and for communion. From the moment of birth we reach for connection with those around us. From our first breath we spend an inordinate amount of energy learning to relate, to connect, to be understood, and to understand.
If that’s true, why is it that so many of us communicate poorly? Why do we go through life feeling unheard and misunderstood? And why, oh why, do our best attempts at expressing ourselves often have disastrous results? Whether personal or professional, with friends or with colleagues, communicating about our personal hopes or our career goals, we often fail to convey our thoughts and feelings in a way that produces more understanding and connection.
Why is that?
It turns out that communicating is a skill. Not only that, but it is a difficult skill to master! It, like every other skill, requires practice, instruction, correction, dedication, and effort. And like every other learned skill, it can come with failures that are often painful, personal, and potentially very public.
But it is a skill that, with the right attention and instruction, can be mastered like every other.
I’ve been a snowboarder much of my adult life, but recently I’ve decided to try my hand at skiing. Call it a mid-life crisis desire to connect more with my children (skiing feels more multi-generational), call it a desire to be lazier (skiing also feels less effortful), or even call it vanity (skiing seems to be on the rise again, and snowboarding seems to have petered out after the Shawn White years); whatever the reason, I’ve taken up skiing. And man does it hurt. It feels like three steps forward, one major yard sale backwards.
But I know I’m learning. I know I’m making forward progress. Painful as it is, I can tangibly feel the improvement after each outing. My muscles are a little less sore, my instincts a little less fried, my attention span a little less taxed. These are all signs that my body is building a new skillset and incorporating and assimilating it into its ethos. I am a skier. Or dammit, at least I will be a skier. Someday.
The same is true of communicating. Many of us tell ourselves that we’re not that good at communicating, that we’re private people, that we leave the flu-flu stuff to the artsy types. But deep down, we long to be understood. Deep down, in places where we’re not ready to admit even to ourselves, we yearn for connection, to know, and to be known, to love, and to be loved as we are.
So how do we get better at communicating? How can we develop these skills so that we too can find our identities as communicators?
We’ll talk about this in three parts: 1. knowing yourself, 2. knowing who you’re communicating with, and 3. building and practicing your personal communication style.
Know thyself
First and foremost, we need to know ourselves. We need to know our proclivities, our preferences, and our blind spots. Communication is a two-way street, and if we want to successfully navigate those streets, we’ve got to understand the role that we play in the communication process. This begins with knowing our values, our triggers, and our style.
There’s a lovely quote I read once that speaks volumes here:
”We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are” - Anais Nin
In order to understand ourselves, our biases, and our points of view as we communicate, we need to be aware of the fact that the world is not as we see it! We see things through our own perspectives, through our experiences, through how we respond to those experiences. It therefore behooves us to understand how these perspectives are formed!
Some of this is work for the therapist’s office, and I won’t pretend to know enough to walk through that. But let me share a few things that have helped me along the way.
1. Understand how our experiences shape us
We all see the world with our own unique perspectives. These perspectives are influenced by two major factors: our mood, and our experiences.
The preeminent filter is our mood - when we are not in a calm and collected mood, every input that we receive gets strongly tainted with it. When we are sad, every input is dampened. When we are excited, every input is amplified.
Recently, my little guy has been using the phrase “me no happy” a bunch - partly as a cutesy way to express himself, but also partly as a way to communicate something that he’s unhappy about. Our bedtime routine has us each sharing three things that we’re thankful for that day, but his unhappy mood made each thing he said tainted with sadness. He had nothing to be thankful for that day, and declared that he didn’t enjoy any of it. After a good night’s sleep (of ~10 hours), he completely changed his tune and happily proclaimed that yesterday was an awesome day because of the 15 things that we had done together as a family.
This is the impact of our mood - it is the lens by which we interpret our inputs from the world. While not entirely controllable, our mood is certainly steerable. The factors immediately in our control are things such as the length and quality of our sleep, our diet and nutrition, and the amount and regularity of our physical exercise. Do we get the requisite 8 hours a night of sleep? Are we eating healthy and with moderation? Are we regularly engaging in physical activity that raises our heart rate and releases endorphins?
Then there are the factors that, while still in our control, aren’t as immediate. Things like the amount of stress we have in our lives, the environments that we place ourselves in, and the quality and security of our social connections are all factors that strongly influence our mood.
Next, our experiences. In his essay “Texts and Pretexts”, Aldous Huxley wrote that
“Experience is not what happens to you, but rather what you do with what happens to you”.
Each event that happens to us is a neutral event in and of itself, but take that event, filter it through our mood, and add a response to it and you’ve got an experience. This is why two people can be present for the same event and experience it so differently! One person may be in a pensive mood and, combined with their predisposition may choose to respond positively to an event while another may have a very different response. These responses create an experience that our minds store up and accumulate. Over time, these experiences shape our perspective and become a critical part of our decision making process, and by extension our communication process.
2. Know what we gravitate towards
We all have biases. Some of these are natural, evolutionary biases engrained in our species over centuries. Some of these are cultural biases reinforced by our experiences and our environment. Some of these are personal biases shaped by the inputs and our responses to those inputs over the years that have elevated to the realm of character.
All of these strongly influence the things that we gravitate towards; the subjects we find interesting, the ideals we are inspired by, the values we desire to emanate, and the style of communication that we prefer.
It is a fool’s errand to attempt to eliminate our biases. Rather, we should accept them, analyze them, and be acutely aware of how they influence us so that when we communicate with others we can be sensitive to their impact. A helpful exercise here is to regularly reflect on our experiences and to note (or take note of) biases and trends in our responses so that we can form a holistic picture of our biases.
3. Learn how to detect our blind spots
Lastly, we all have blind spots. Whether these are technical (ie things we don’t have the knowledge about), emotional (ie feelings we haven’t fully developed yet), mental (ie ideas we haven’t fully fleshed out, learned about, and considered), or spiritual (ie pertaining to the metaphysical, spiritual, and mystical realms), we all have many blind spots and gaps.
These blind spots end up impacting our communication in a generally negative fashion. At best they can create an awkward moment; at worst they can greatly impact our credibility and hence our ability to communicate effectively in the future.
A couple quick notes on how to detect these:
- Be careful about strong opinions. When you find yourself expressing a strong opinion, check yourself. Strong opinions tend to be emotionally based, instead of being rational and knowledge based, and as such are generally indicators of a gap.
- Check your defenses. Being defensive is another sign that there might be a gap. Especially when we’re not being attacked, things that trigger defensive responses are usually signs that we haven’t vulnerably fleshed out the topic and therefore have a gap there.
- Listen to your believable people. Believable people are people who have proven track record of being right about a specific area. When they point out things in your life, listen to them!
Good communication requires deep understanding of the topic, the context, and the parties involved. The more work we do to understand ourselves and how we show up the more impact we’ll end up being able to have on the outcome of our communicative interactions!
My sons,
I love to travel. Partly because I love the thrill of exploring a new city, of discovering a beautiful countryside, of experiencing a new culture, and of seeing the sun set over a different horizon. But also because these new experiences allow you to be surprised, to be caught off guard, to be vulnerable.
Perhaps it is the romantic in me that puts my heart and mind in a posture for inspiration, but it is in these moments of vulnerability that we find sparks of inspiration, of clarity, of perspective. These moments bring a much needed reprieve from our day to day, that allow us to see the world differently, to reflect and retrospect on life, and to wax poetic about our place in the cosmos. These moments give us glimpses into our purpose, our place, and our meaning.
For some, these moments are to be found in isolation, in quiet contemplation, and in enjoyment of their natural world surroundings. They may sneak up on you unexpectedly - a brief clearing in the middle of a hike, an opportune moment where there is not a single skier in sight as you cruise through the powder, or even a fleeting moment at a beach where you find yourself alone and reflective, gazing out into the vast ocean.
For others, these moments are found in the company of loved ones. Perhaps a warm revelation while catching a glimpse of one’s family happily chatting over a holiday meal, a quiet moment of realization as your children fall asleep before the movie has finished, or even a moment of grief shared with a loved one.
These beautiful moments, fleeting as they are, have the potential to bring clarity and focus to our lives if we let them. Their impact can be as small as a quick thought or as deeply impactful as changing our minds about something. They can be pensive and sombre or uplifting and inspiring. And the best part is, we can shape them.
Shaping your moments
Our subconscious minds are always at work. When we sleep, when we eat, when we’re engaged in active conversation, or when we’re pensive, our subconscious minds cannot be turned off. What they’re actively working on or thinking about is one thing, and whether we have the space and margin to listen to them is another. Let’s look at both of these.
It turns out our subconscious minds aren’t magical things. They’re simply (forgive the CS term here) background processes that are always running in our brain, processing and dealing with things that we encounter. Their inputs are what we give them - our experiences, our friends, our conversations, the things we read. This is our first hint as to how we can direct those moments.
We should note that our subconscious minds are slow. They take time to do their thing. And we’re usually not aware that anything is happening at all. But when they act, their impact is big.
When I was a wee lad I was happy, and hopeful, and generally pretty positive, as most little guys are. When I went through my teenage years though, I started becoming more judgmental of the world in general. Then when I graduated from university (I’m Canadian - we call it “university”, not “college” like our friends to the south call it, or “uni” like our friends across the pond do. Just “university”) and took a job at Microsoft, I discovered that I started becoming critical not just of the world at large but at those around me; my friends, my family, my loved ones. Then I became a manager, and then the doors just flew off the hinges.
I’ve since had to do a lot of work (and a lot of therapy, reading, learning, and reflecting) to get back to being a happy, hopeful, and generally positive (but not so wee anymore) person, but it’s worth thinking through how I got there in the first place.
Turns out a large influence in my youthful years was the Toronto Chinese Christian Church community at large. Yikes. I won’t hate on that whole community too much, as I’m sure it has changed over time, and I’m sure my experiences were… somewhat unique to me, but suffice it to say that I grew up being surrounded by a whole lot of immature adults vying for power, judging one another, and generally being nasty humans without caring that the youth of the time was paying close attention.
Fast forward to Microsoft culture circa 2008 and you’ll find an incredibly critical company, one that promotes “critical thinking” as applied to any and all problems. Including human engineering problems.
And my subconscious mind picked all of this stuff as regular inputs in my life, and acted accordingly. It assimilated those behaviors and attitudes, and slowly but surely changed my view of the world, my actions within it, and my reaction to it.
We are not the sum of our experiences, as has often been said, but rather we are the sum of the way we react and respond to those experiences. If we want to react differently, if we want to be inspired in those moments of clarity, then we must be thoughtful and forceful about controlling our inputs, about cultivating the garden of our mind.
Space to listen - a moment of clarity
Once we’ve reined in our thought process and have gotten a better handle on the inputs to our subconscious, how do we allow those insights to bubble up to our conscious minds? How do we put ourselves in a position where the fruits of the garden of our minds can have their moment of impact?
The obvious one is to prioritize margin, to accommodate it, and to plan for it. Many successful executives do this. Bill Gates used to have his infamous Think Weeks where he would spend an entire week away from all distractions so that he could think and give his mind time to speak back to him. Oprah has popularized the silent retreat. John Rockefeller scheduled hours on his calendar to just sit and stare out the window.
In his book ~Stolen Focus~, Johann Hari expounds on the plethora of studies that show that the kid in the back corner staring out the window daydreaming was much more likely to be successful, learn better, and even reason better. There is much research in recent years that shows how giving ourselves space to play, margin to relax, and time to daydream is incredibly beneficial for us.
One way to orchestrate these moments is to take our vacations. Many years ago my mentor told me that if I ever worked for a company or a person that asked me not to take my vacation or asked me to work during it that I should immediately start looking for a new job. I agree. Corporate America has created a model set to squeeze every last drop of productivity from a person without realizing that leaving people as husks of their former selves is only the secondary problem. The primary is that in doing so, we deprive people of growth, of learning, and as a result get less out of them.
Make sure you prioritize taking your vacations, and for the love of God, turn off your devices and don’t check email while you’re there.
It is in these disconnected moments that life can take you by surprise. I recently took a train ride to Portland with my little dude and during that 4 hour disconnected journey, I happened to be staring out the window at a steady stream of trees rolling by when suddenly we hit a picturesque clearing. The sun was shining just right and the beautifully manicured acres of lawn sloped gently down to a turn of the century farm house painted a deep royal blue. The house stood nobly at the foot of a hill that created gorgeous backdrop, its white picket fence encircling a luscious garden on one side, and a row of 30 foot trees on the other. A lone horse stood beneath the tree, topping off that quaint, beautiful scene from a different life and a different time.
That moment, combined with my mind’s lingering thoughts from the novel I had just finished, elevated my perspective and transported me, causing me to think about the beauty of the human spirit, of the longevity and resiliency of our species, and of our ability to build noble things that can stand the test of time.
And then the whole scene was gone, covered by the steady rows of bushes lining the tracks. But not before leaving yet another breadcrumb of clarity and perspective for me to chew on for the rest of the trip.
And so my encouragement to you is to put yourselves in places where you too can allow the thoughts marinating in your subconsciousness to surface, where you can be inspired, and where you can be taken by surprise.
My sons,
All of us have dreams. From a young age, we learned that the sky’s the limit for human ingenuity. We were told that we could be anything, do anything. But over time, those dreams start to fade, and our belief in our ability to achieve them (nay, whether we even deserve to achieve them) starts to fade. Most of us have lost sight of those adolescent dreams and have settled into the mediocrity that is adulthood. We are content in living the life that we’re supposed to live - a life that plods along slowly but surely, doing all the things that our culture tells us area part of a properly lived life.
Sounds pretty dull doesn’t it?
How do we snap out of that? How do we move back into a space where our lives are exciting, where we’re passionately running towards some big, lofty dream, and where inspiration comes and drives us to our limit and pushes us beyond where we ever thought we could go?
The answer is simple, and comes in the form of all sorts of cliches. Take your pick of them:
- Less is more
- Gotta take two steps back in order to set up three steps forward
- It’s not quantity, it’s quality
The truth of the matter is, our lives are so jam packed full of stuff, filled with noise, and overflowing with the seemingly urgent that we have no margin, no time, no mental space to allow ourselves to listen. It has been said that inspiration is very polite. She knocks softly and then goes away if we don’t answer the door. She does not force her way in, does not make a big fuss, does not cause a scene.
We cannot shove inspiration down someone’s throat. We knock softly, and if they’re not ready to answer, that’s okay, we can come back some other time. Similarly, we cannot be inspired if we are not paying attention to the knocking on our own doors. If we are too caught up in ourselves, too focused on our own worlds, or have too much noise drowning our ears, we will miss the gentle whisper that inspires and elevates.
If we want to hear the gentle whisper of inspiration we must first learn to listen, and to have the margin and mental space for her.
Learning to listen
An unfortunate reality of our modern world is that we are driven by noise. We praise great orators, admire the outspoken leaders, and aspire ourselves to have that type of impact. As a result, we focus much of our learning and our development on how to speak, how to convey an idea, and how to be heard.
But we don’t spend time learning to listen.
Active listening is a skill just like any other - it can be learned, can be practiced, and can be improved upon. It has nuances like every other skill does. It has its masters and its novices. Some are born with more of it, some with less. And like every other skill, where we start doesn’t matter. We can all learn to actively listen so that we are more attuned to what is going on around us.
Creating space
One of my most cherished habits is my nightly thinking and processing time. I use a modified version of Zettelkasten to support my growth and learning, and one of the disciplines I’ve picked up from it is creating space every night to process my thoughts from the day and to synthesize my notes into my own system. This process requires me to first sit and clear the thoughts in my head and then to pick up each thought that I’ve recorded throughout the day and to consider it, process it, and synthesize it into a long form paragraph or two.
Which system you use is less important. What matters is that you have a system, and you have a method by which you nurture and care for your thought life. The daily nurturing of your mind allows you to create space to listen, to be attuned to your surroundings, and to see where your thoughts lead you. This is gonna sound cheesy, but I’m going to say it anyway - your mind is like your sacred garden that needs to be tended to and taken care of. Cultivating a healthy and strong thought life will provide benefits to every other area of your life.
Cultivating our inputs
We must therefore be intentional about our inputs. Tending to the garden of our mind means we are thoughtful and careful about what we let into it. This should be an obvious one, and despite the fact that we’ve all definitely seen the effects of not guarding our minds well, most of us could use some improvement in the things we let in.
We’ve all done this and all have first hand experience with this. Remember that friend who was constantly negative and could (and would) complain about anything and everything under the sun? Prolonged periods hanging out with them probably made us more negative as well.
It works in the opposite too. When I was younger I had a great friend who was super passionate about technology and about the product that we were working together on at the time. We spent countless hours discussing the work we were passionate and excited about, and would even discuss some of the technical details of our work while on the chairlift at the slopes. It’s no surprise then that this period of my life was characterized by strong technical thinking and development, as well as a high amount of professional productivity.
I in turn was very much into motorcycles and would openly drool over the latest super sport bikes that were released each year. It’s also no surprise that my friend ended up getting a motorcycle as well.
Great inputs have the power to lift up a life, to change our mind, and to enrich our thought processes and passions. Bad inputs have the power to pollute our mind, to destroy our sense of self, and to turn a once-productive mind into a destructive one.
The gentle whisper of inspiration
Inspiration comes in many forms, and may sound different to different people. She may take different approaches, may speak through different people and events, and may look different each time she tries to visit us. She may speak to us through listening to a stranger’s story on the plane, or through the sight of a bird soaring high with “god rays” bursting through the clouds. She may nudge us when we’re dozing off watching the trees roll by on our commute, or may give us a glimpse of something greater as we’re playing with our kids.
One thing is certain though - she always whispers.
There is no sure fire way to guarantee that we will hear her every time. But if create space, if we spend the time to be mindful and attentive, if we learn to follow the little inklings that begin like whispers in the wind of our minds, then we may learn to distinguish her voice and pay more attention when she speaks. But we’ve got to be ready to listen to what she says! Remember that there is no confirmation bias for inspiration. She may often say things that make us think twice - that is a good thing! An inspired life is an elevated one, and we can surely use more of those in our world!
My sons,
A characteristic of the modern world that we live in is that we always seem to be short on time. We never seem to quite have enough time for all the things that we want to do, and the time we do have seems to slip through our fingers in a manner that leaves us not remembering what we’ve been up to, and wondering where all our time actually goes.
Whether we’re talking about our professional life (there never seems to be quite enough time to finish all our features, to fix all the bugs, to polish all the user experiences, or to ensure we’ve got the right metrics) or our personal life (how many of us are happy with the amount of time we spend on social engagements, with family, and with loved ones?), we never seem to quite have a handle on our time. The older we get, the busier life gets and the more problematic this becomes.
When time was a luxury
When we were younger, we had what felt like an abundance of time, especially when compared to the lack of other resources (such as money) and minimal commitments and responsibilities that demanded our time. We could therefore trade off time for other things. I distinctly remember in my college years standing at the corner of Albert and Columbia where I lived, and contemplating walking the 45 minutes to Conestoga Mall or spending the 3$ to take the bus. I walked. Yikes.
Not only were there fewer taxes on our time back then, but there were fewer things for us to do with that time. For the majority of us, the only real available options were hanging out with friends, studying, playing sports, playing video games, or eating. Or sleeping I suppose, but that’s one thing college students never feel like they need to do much of. Maybe give or take a few more things. But realistically, there were not that many options for us to balance between, and so we had plenty of time at our disposal.
Subservient to the system
Fast forward a number of years, and we find ourselves with more things to do than we can mentally keep track of. Things ranging from replacing dead lightbulbs to remembering kid birthday parties, from scheduling a follow up dental appointment to remembering to congratulate a friend on their promotion. Everywhere we look there is something we need to be doing, something we need to remember.
And that’s just the things we have to do. What about the things that we want to do?
What about finding time to have a heart to heart with a loved one, or to read that self-help book that’s been so highly recommended for you, or to try that new restaurant, or to simply sit and think? With all the taxes on our time, is it a surprise that most of our wants and desires go unfulfilled and unsatisfied?
60% of Americans feel they are too busy to enjoy their lives most of the time, while 12% feel they are too busy all of the time. That means that one in ten of us feels that we never have the time to enjoy our lives, that we are always too stressed to make forward progress in the things that we desire to do.
If this isn’t subservient to the system, I don’t know what is.
The important over the urgent
It is universally accepted that when push comes to shove and our time constraints squeeze more tightly, the things we trade off are the non-urgent but important things. This is the tyranny of the urgent, and happens in both our life and in our work.
In life, how many of us have traded off our personal reading and development time because we’re too busy? How many of us have told our kids to come back later when mommy or daddy isn’t working on something urgent that came up? How many of us have showed up late to a friends’ gathering and left early to rush home for that work call instead of showing up early to support and build that relationship? What about healthy eating and home cooked meals? What about daily exercise and meditation?
In work, how often do we make the short term fix instead of the right long term architecture? How many times have we swarmed to some urgent and tactical problem rather than spending the time to develop the right long term team and skill sets? How about burning a bridge with a partner team by escalating and effectively forcing them to get what you need done? How often do we focus on the transactional rather than spending the time to build ~non-transactional relationships~?
Managing the time you’ve got
It is true that much of our time is not our own. Time is a networked resource and gains value expressly because there are others that can make demands on it. As we grow in our lives and in our careers, there become more demands of our time that truly are outside of our control. How we manage the demands, and most importantly, how we manage the remaining time we have left is crucially important.
So how do we do this effectively?
1. Ruthlessly prioritize what you need to be in top shape
Perhaps the hardest one to do, it is also the most important. We need to take the time to thoughtfully determine what the daily requirements are for us to be in top shape. Have you ever shown up to a meeting fully prepared but not feeling your best self? You know your stuff, but it just doesn’t come out right. That’s because you’re not at your best self.
Take the time to figure out what that means, and be unapologetic about it.
Personally, I never leave my bedroom in the morning without having showered, groomed, dressed well, and made my bed. I spend at least 30 minutes a day reading, and spend as much if not more time than that thinking. With a few allowed exceptions, I also need to eat healthy. I need to exercise daily (this one’s been a struggle… but I’m working on it). I need to have quality sleep for at least 7 hours a night.
I am uncompromising in these, as without them for prolonged periods I am not able to be my best, and everything else suffers as a result.
2. Dedicate time to thinking
Another characterization of an overloaded life is that things are frantic, frenetic, and unorganized. We jump from urgent thing to urgent thing and run at a break neck pace for as long as we’re able. We spend all our time doing, and as a result end up decreasing our effectiveness by not thinking enough.
Most of us live reactionary lives. We react to the incoming torrent of tasks, demands, and requests made of us. We don’t spend the time to deeply think about what, and more importantly why we are doing what we’re doing.
Thinking deeply requires time. It requires dedicated, uninterrupted time. Our brains are bad at multitasking, and can easily get distracted. In order to be our best selves and to be the most effective and efficient in our endeavors, we need to spend time thinking. Whether we’re thinking about our intentions, our options, the possible alternatives, how to develop our staff, or our strategic advantages, we need the time to thoughtfully pore over our thoughts, data, and inputs.
Bill Gates used to have Think Weeks where he would go off himself to a secluded place with no interruptions and dedicate the week to reading, learning, and thinking about the business. While we may not all have the luxury of clearing out a full week like Bill could, we can certainly block off time throughout our week to think, and to remove the distractions and notifications while we’re doing it.
3. Learn
Above all things, we need to make sure we are learning. As our world evolves around us, we too must grow and evolve with it. Our thinking needs to adapt and mature. Our reactions need to consider new inputs and alternatives. Our plans have to accommodate the shifts in technological advances that are underway.
As such, we need to ensure that we are carving out time to learn. Whether it is a weekly time block, a quarterly retreat, or an annual reading goal, it is imperative that we dedicate time to our own learning and enhancement.
Putting it all together
As a manager, I need to get better about creating time and space for my teams to do these things. I can help by sharing more context, reducing meetings, and empowering more decisions to be made lower in the organization. As an employee, I need to be willing to take responsibility for the immediate outputs that I have balanced against the long term growth that we’ve been discussing. As a person I need to think about the big picture not only of what I’m accomplishing, but more importantly who I am becoming.
And above all, I have to have the patience to see this through, knowing that the tweaks I make in my life won’t produce results overnight, but will set me up for a lifetime of greater success and happiness.