I've always admired courage -- speaking out against injustice, challenging the status quo, doing what's right in the face of everyone telling you you're wrong. That's what makes a hero. Heroes have the courage of their convictions. I've been reading about these heroes since I was a kid.
By definition, courage can only be exhibited outside the comfort zone. Trying to be courageous while staying in your comfort zone is about as meaningful as trying to swim on dry land. Just as swimming only exists in the presence of water, courage only exists in the presence of fear or uncertainty.
My good friend Nazima reminded me of this today. Because they are frightening and uncomfortable, it is in those times when the odds seem stacked against us and we don't know how it's going to turn out -- that's when we have the chance to display courage.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Freedom and responsibility
I've been taking time off lately. After finishing my PhD I wanted to spend some time thinking and looking around before jumping into my next big project or job or time commitment. So, for the past few months, I've been pretty much doing whatever I want, whenever I want. It's pretty awesome.
Today, it hit me that with this freedom comes responsibility. It's great to be able to choose what to do each day but that means that I have to choose what to do each day. There's no boss telling me what to do. The responsibility of using my time wisely lies squarely on my shoulders. I can't delegate it to someone else.
It's very easy to take the easy road and lose hours and hours to reading news commentary or watching YouTube. But like that standing-on-a-hill analogy, although it's fun to run down the hill, it's not much fun afterwards, when you find yourself at the bottom. I need to keep that empty, at-the-bottom-of-the-hill feeling in mind before I start down the slippery slope of YouTube or Huffington Post.
Freedom is wonderful. But in and of itself, it's no key to happiness. That key lies in the choices I make with the freedom I've been given
Today, it hit me that with this freedom comes responsibility. It's great to be able to choose what to do each day but that means that I have to choose what to do each day. There's no boss telling me what to do. The responsibility of using my time wisely lies squarely on my shoulders. I can't delegate it to someone else.
It's very easy to take the easy road and lose hours and hours to reading news commentary or watching YouTube. But like that standing-on-a-hill analogy, although it's fun to run down the hill, it's not much fun afterwards, when you find yourself at the bottom. I need to keep that empty, at-the-bottom-of-the-hill feeling in mind before I start down the slippery slope of YouTube or Huffington Post.
Freedom is wonderful. But in and of itself, it's no key to happiness. That key lies in the choices I make with the freedom I've been given
Rethinking our habits
How many of the things we do, do we do out of habit? Lots of them, probably. It's not practical to thoroughly weigh the pros and cons of the hundreds of miniscule actions and choices we make every day. What time should I wake up? What should I eat for breakfast? Which toothpaste do I use? What should I wear? How do I get to work? For most of these things, we find something that works and we stick with it. Out of habit.
For many of the things we do every day, our habits suit us and everyone else just fine. But there are some habits that aren't benign. Some habits cause us to waste money. Some waste our time. Some, such as getting a morning coffee in a disposable cup or driving long distances to work every day in a single passenger vehicle, damage the environment that we depend on to live. Looked at in isolation, these appear to be miniscule actions with miniscule impact. But multiplied over time amongst millions of people, they add up. They add up to landfills and floating islands of garbage in the ocean and smog and climate change.
These problems can be depressing to think about. What can we do to clean up our oceans or mitigate climate change?
Such questions are overwhelming if you're trying to address these problems single-handedly. But these problems weren't created single-handedly. They're the sum of seemingly miniscule actions with seemingly miniscule impacts done by millions of people over time. The existence of these problems shows the tremendous power of our daily habits and the enormous impact they can make on the world.
Now what would happen if we changed them?
For many of the things we do every day, our habits suit us and everyone else just fine. But there are some habits that aren't benign. Some habits cause us to waste money. Some waste our time. Some, such as getting a morning coffee in a disposable cup or driving long distances to work every day in a single passenger vehicle, damage the environment that we depend on to live. Looked at in isolation, these appear to be miniscule actions with miniscule impact. But multiplied over time amongst millions of people, they add up. They add up to landfills and floating islands of garbage in the ocean and smog and climate change.
These problems can be depressing to think about. What can we do to clean up our oceans or mitigate climate change?
Such questions are overwhelming if you're trying to address these problems single-handedly. But these problems weren't created single-handedly. They're the sum of seemingly miniscule actions with seemingly miniscule impacts done by millions of people over time. The existence of these problems shows the tremendous power of our daily habits and the enormous impact they can make on the world.
Now what would happen if we changed them?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
The train
A few years ago, I read about how it's like we're all riding a train. As this train of progress hurtles along, we keep making improvements. We make the seats more comfortable, we dampen the noise, we improve the climate control but we never look to see that this train is heading towards an abyss.
I think we know about the abyss now. Climate change, food security, air pollution, declining fish stocks and general environmental degradation are on the radar. Now, it's a matter of changing the course of this train.
I think we know about the abyss now. Climate change, food security, air pollution, declining fish stocks and general environmental degradation are on the radar. Now, it's a matter of changing the course of this train.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Listening to the stillness
Just now, as I sat down to write a new blog post, I instinctively started clicking around my web browser, checking different sites, looking for inspiration based on what's going on today. After a few seconds, I stopped. I wasn't going to write about the headlines on the Huffington Post.
It's so easy to lose myself in the deluge of information that comes onto this little screen. Sometimes, I just need to stop. And listen to the stillness.
It's so easy to lose myself in the deluge of information that comes onto this little screen. Sometimes, I just need to stop. And listen to the stillness.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Aligned Personal Functioning
A few years ago, I attended a leadership training program given by Anima Leadership. I've attended leadership programs before. Several of them. But this one was different. This leadership program changed the way that I think of and work with people -- including the way I think of and work with myself. I would even venture to say that it's changed the course of my life -- hopefully for the better.
The program was sponsored by the university and all the participants were engineering graduate students. I don't know if Anima runs all their leadership programs this way or they were tailoring it for this particularly left-brained audience, but we spent the first half day or more of the three day program learning about emotions -- essentially, learning that they exist and that they're important. Pretty basic, I know. But to an audience of engineering graduate students, this pretty much went against everything we had learned in life up to this point.
We learned that whether we like it or not, we feel. And, consciously or subconsiously (and usually the latter), these feelings affect the way we act and interact with people. Even when we try to mask our feelings, people can often sense that something is wrong.
Having established that we have feelings, we then learned how to work with them. We learned about triggers and how the stories we tell ourselves can stir up and reinforce certain emotions. We learned about leadership in a personal context, in a team and in the community. One of the main things we learned was that we can function most effectively when what we feel, what we think, what we say and what we do are in alignment. They call this aligned personal functioning.
Suddenly, I understood why I had such trouble doing certain things. Like working on some projects or going to some meetings. Often, I did these things because I thought that's what I should be doing. I didn't want to do them. I didn't really believe in them.
Now I realized why they didn't feel right. And beyond that, my new found understanding of feelings and their importance gave me the permission I needed to not do these things anymore. And, more importantly, to choose to do other things.
The program was sponsored by the university and all the participants were engineering graduate students. I don't know if Anima runs all their leadership programs this way or they were tailoring it for this particularly left-brained audience, but we spent the first half day or more of the three day program learning about emotions -- essentially, learning that they exist and that they're important. Pretty basic, I know. But to an audience of engineering graduate students, this pretty much went against everything we had learned in life up to this point.
We learned that whether we like it or not, we feel. And, consciously or subconsiously (and usually the latter), these feelings affect the way we act and interact with people. Even when we try to mask our feelings, people can often sense that something is wrong.
Having established that we have feelings, we then learned how to work with them. We learned about triggers and how the stories we tell ourselves can stir up and reinforce certain emotions. We learned about leadership in a personal context, in a team and in the community. One of the main things we learned was that we can function most effectively when what we feel, what we think, what we say and what we do are in alignment. They call this aligned personal functioning.
Suddenly, I understood why I had such trouble doing certain things. Like working on some projects or going to some meetings. Often, I did these things because I thought that's what I should be doing. I didn't want to do them. I didn't really believe in them.
Now I realized why they didn't feel right. And beyond that, my new found understanding of feelings and their importance gave me the permission I needed to not do these things anymore. And, more importantly, to choose to do other things.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
The 'enough' point
In economics, we learn about diminishing returns. Imagine you have a plot of land a certain size. When you first start planting, you'll find that each plant you plant will give you an increase in output. As the plot gets more crowded, the increased output that you get with the addition of each new plant will decrease. For example, at first, maybe you'll find that each tomato plant gives you 20 tomatoes. When the plot gets crowded, a new plant may only get you 18, then 15, then 10. And then there comes a point that it gets so crowded that the new plants will decrease the yield of the plants that were already there.
We also see the effect of diminishing returns for possessions. If you have nothing, the first few possessions you get will bring you a great deal of joy. Once you have your basic essentials, new possessions may still bring you joy, but not as much as those first few. If you already have a lot of stuff, getting new things might actually start to be a pain. You don't have space to store them. You don't have time to use them or maintain them. It becomes just another thing to clean and put away and think about.
This also works for activities. It's nice to have a lot going on in your life. But after a certain point, it can get to be too much and each new time commitment becomes more stress than enjoyment.
The 'enough' point is the point at which new possessions/activities bring you more harm than good. This is the point where you've had enough.
We also see the effect of diminishing returns for possessions. If you have nothing, the first few possessions you get will bring you a great deal of joy. Once you have your basic essentials, new possessions may still bring you joy, but not as much as those first few. If you already have a lot of stuff, getting new things might actually start to be a pain. You don't have space to store them. You don't have time to use them or maintain them. It becomes just another thing to clean and put away and think about.
This also works for activities. It's nice to have a lot going on in your life. But after a certain point, it can get to be too much and each new time commitment becomes more stress than enjoyment.
The 'enough' point is the point at which new possessions/activities bring you more harm than good. This is the point where you've had enough.
Friday, September 23, 2011
A matter of effort
One of the biggest things I learned in graduate school is that, for all but the most trivial of projects, there is a positive correlation between results and efforts. It seems rather simple, yes, I know. The more effort you put into something, the better the results are likely to be.
But in all my years of education up until graduate school, this wasn't what I learned from experience. Maybe the assignments and projects were too easy. Or I just enjoyed the work so much that I didn't notice that I was putting a lot of effort in to get the results I got.
By the time I got to graduate school, I had made an art of putting the minimum amount of effort into something to get the maximum result. I saw it as a matter of efficiency. Since efficiency is output over input, reducing the amount of input required to produce a given output increases the efficiency. So, if the grading scheme is such that an A+ is anything between 85%-100%, I would aim for 85% and no more. I would actually submit assignments, knowing that some of the answers were wrong, calculating that the amount of effort it would take me to get those right wasn't going to impact my letter grade.
I cringe now, remembering this.
Anyways, unfortunately (or fortunately, when you think of the bigger lesson I learned), this strategy didn't work when it came to research in graduate school. Unlike school assignments, where you can't get more than an A+, there's no ceiling on the positive result of a research project. Every week, the brilliant people all around me who were putting their full effort into their research and presenting their results were putting the results of my efficiency strategy in stark relief. It became clear that holding back on the effort was a flawed strategy.
It took me some time to accept this, though. Replacing a habit acquired through nearly two decades of life experience isn't going to be instantaneous. In addition to that, this habit was grounded in a pervasive belief in my schools growing up that if you're really smart, you don't need to try that hard. Dr. Carol Dweck calls this the fixed mindset. And it's not helpful. I needed to acquire the growth mindset, that says that you can effectively make yourself smarter by trying harder. Or that effort leads to result.
Anyways, inspired by Seth Godin's blog post, I'm going to apply this hard earned lesson and start writing regularly and publicly in my effort to become a better writer.
But in all my years of education up until graduate school, this wasn't what I learned from experience. Maybe the assignments and projects were too easy. Or I just enjoyed the work so much that I didn't notice that I was putting a lot of effort in to get the results I got.
By the time I got to graduate school, I had made an art of putting the minimum amount of effort into something to get the maximum result. I saw it as a matter of efficiency. Since efficiency is output over input, reducing the amount of input required to produce a given output increases the efficiency. So, if the grading scheme is such that an A+ is anything between 85%-100%, I would aim for 85% and no more. I would actually submit assignments, knowing that some of the answers were wrong, calculating that the amount of effort it would take me to get those right wasn't going to impact my letter grade.
I cringe now, remembering this.
Anyways, unfortunately (or fortunately, when you think of the bigger lesson I learned), this strategy didn't work when it came to research in graduate school. Unlike school assignments, where you can't get more than an A+, there's no ceiling on the positive result of a research project. Every week, the brilliant people all around me who were putting their full effort into their research and presenting their results were putting the results of my efficiency strategy in stark relief. It became clear that holding back on the effort was a flawed strategy.
It took me some time to accept this, though. Replacing a habit acquired through nearly two decades of life experience isn't going to be instantaneous. In addition to that, this habit was grounded in a pervasive belief in my schools growing up that if you're really smart, you don't need to try that hard. Dr. Carol Dweck calls this the fixed mindset. And it's not helpful. I needed to acquire the growth mindset, that says that you can effectively make yourself smarter by trying harder. Or that effort leads to result.
Anyways, inspired by Seth Godin's blog post, I'm going to apply this hard earned lesson and start writing regularly and publicly in my effort to become a better writer.
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