Posts Categorized: Self-improvement

90-Day Productivity Challenge

So one of my favourite bloggers, Sebastian Marshall, has recently set himself the challenge to make the next 90 days his most productive ever, and track his progress publicly (to make use of the commitment effect). A bunch of his readers posted that they were interested in setting a similar challenge for themselves.

When I read it, I was also very fired up to make progress on a few fronts. I actually spent the next two hours planning out the key areas I’m working on over the next few months, and what high success would look like in each of them. But Sebastian’s approach, of trying to make every hour maximally productive, wouldn’t work for me, I feel. Two reasons:

This Tim Ferris video (which coincidentally I came across the day after Sebastian’s post) where he says that day-to-day, he wastes a lot of time like everyone else; he just makes sure his productive time is devoted to the truly important things.
Some of the stuff I’m working on is not “crank-and-widget” work. Crank and widget work is stuff like sales, where you can say “I’ll make 20 cold calls today”, and it’s easy to measure. Some of my key goals depend more on an open-ended search approach, where that won’t work.

Anyway, enough yacking. I narrowed down my areas of focus to 3: getting short-term cash (most likely via freelancing), preparing for building a startup in autumn, and general life/habits stuff.

<snip>I wrote several paragraphs outlining my goals but figured that I didn’t want to reveal that much detail publicly. So nyah.

Incidentally, having a flexible approach to productivity, rather than aiming for maximum work every hour, has proved beneficial. Eg: yesterday I want to a “networking event”, which beforehand I felt might be a waste of time. However I got talking to two guys – one who’s an independent business consultant, one who runs a design agency – and got a ton of actionable advice from them both, regarding freelance work.

Tim Ferris on combating procrastination

The video is worth watching, but if you want the Cliff Notes version, Tim makes three main points.

On a day-to-day basis, he isn’t that productive, wastes time like a lot of us, and says he only manages 4 hours of creative work a day. He says the key is just picking his battles carefully; making sure those 4 hours are well spent.
Big hairy audacious goals are more effective; small, realistic goals are uninspiring and tend to be put off.
Your daily goals, however, should be small, to ensure you actually make consistent progress every day.

Two Paths to Greatness

I tried to brainstorm career paths that had potential for greatness. If you want to get into the history books, there’s a few occupations that give you a shot, and plenty of occupations that don’t. No-one erects statues to great farmers, labourers, or housewives (though one school of thought says maybe they should). Anyway, I eventually managed to narrow it down to 6 fields, each of which covers multiple occupations.

Politics: ruler, politician (example: Churchill, Lee Kuan Yew, Elizabeth I)
War: general, conqueror, military thinker (Hannibal, Napoleon, Sun Tzu)
Art: painter, writer, poet, sculptor, musician (Da Vinci, Beethoven, Michaelangelo)
“Consciousness” (for lack of a better term): philosopher, religious leader, activist (Plato, Muhammed, Gandhi)
Science: scientist, mathematician, inventor, engineer (Newton, Tesla, Brunel)
Commerce: businessperson, company founder (Edison, the Medicis, Jobs)

After thinking more, I decided that maybe just two categories are needed.

The first would be “great workers”; those who achieve greatness mostly working alone. Artists, scientists, philosophers, and others all fall under this label. The greatest coal miner or farmer in history was probably, what, two or three times more productive than average? They produced the same thing as their co-workers, just more of it. But the output of the best artists or scientists would likely never be produced by their average colleagues.

Interestingly, I think you can be a great worker in all six fields above, even in “team sports” like war or politics. Great thinkers can be found in any field. Plato never held political office, but he’s better remembered than any Greek kings or rulers from his own time.

The second would be “great leaders”. These are people whose success relies upon other people’s efforts, such as statesmen or generals. They might be criticised for just that reason. I’m thinking of Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs, whose legacies have been questioned by some on the grounds they merely took credit for other peoples work. Is that fair? I’m not sure, I think building organisations and institutions that let people do great work is worthy of acclaim.

Another interesting point is that great leaders are often great founders; founders of nations, founders of companies, founders of religions, whatever.

There’s a lot of criticisms you can level at the whole idea of greatness. The Victorian idea that history is just the story of a few heroic individuals is clearly false. Still, I do believe that individuals in the right place can change the course of history, and it’s not just a matter of being born in the right place: Joan of Arc and Abraham Lincoln never let that stop them. It’s also a fact that most lists of great people, including my own list above, are largely dead, white and male. I personally think that’s only a problem with the lists; I’m confident there’s plenty of remarkable non-white and/or female great persons in the history books. Since I know that the readers of this blog are a pretty diverse group, feel free to suggest your own unappreciated candidates for greatness in the comments.

What do you think? Do great people exist, and is the idea of greatness something worth striving for?

Peter Thiel’s new “20-under-20″ class? I’m not jealous. Honest.

So Peter Thiel has revealed the next batch of students for his 20-under-20 program: http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/12/thiel-fellowship-2012/ For some background, Thiel has started annually giving 20 students (all aged unded 20) $100,000 to drop out of college and build companies, mostly ambitious proposals based around science and engineering.

All of the kids selected have some impressive achievements, for example:

Taylor Wilson (18, Texarkana, AR) became the youngest person in history to create nuclear fusion. Since then, he has produced the lowest-cost and lowest-dose active interrogation system for the detection of enriched uranium ever developed. As a Thiel Fellow, Taylor will focus on both counter-terrorism and the production of medical isotopes for use in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Kettner Griswold (19, Bethesda, MD) and Paul Sebexen (19, Staten Island, NY) are stopping out of school to work on a benchtop genome synthesis device, which will allow individual laboratories and medical practices to synthesize large genetic constructs in-house for an unprecedented low recurring cost. This product would massively disrupt the fields of biotechnology and health care, fueling innovation and stimulating interest and research sector-wide.

I’m going to ignore the debate on whether encouraging people to drop out of university is worthwhile or not. I’m going to focus on another topic. Look at quotes like this, from the Hacker News comment thread on the topic:

I don’t want to crush dreams.

But these kids are being set up to fail. They cannot, and will not, live up to these expectations.

Often when someone has a strong gut reaction to something, they’ll try and find arguments to it based on “rationality” or “altruism”. Another example here. Funny thing is they’ll often be completely unaware of the emotions driving their logic. That’s what I think is happening here. I think a lot of the comments are based on jealousy.

I understand that reaction, I think anyone smart and ambitious gets a slightly queasy feeling when they see someone younger than they are achieving more than they did at that age. That was definitely my first reaction. But now I think: good for them. This game is non-zero-sum. It’s not about who wins or loses. If more people are making more inventions at a younger age, that means everybody wins.

Tired

After a hectic, busy, and productive week, my weekend has been relaxed, pleasant and unfocused. I do have a few things to get done, but my brain feels incapable of concentrating at the moment.

This seems to happen a lot — a few days where lots gets done is followed by a few days of slack. Which isn’t bad if you want to relax (as with me for the last few days), but it’s tough when you still have lots of work to do.

You either pace yourself or tiredness paces you. That is, the gains you get from “pushing yourself” are lost by burn out. Long-term, I think things like diet, excercise, good sleep, meditation, and so on are what really make you more productive.

Do you work slow-and-steady, or in intense sprints followed by crashes, or do you just keep going like the Energizer bunny?

Are You Investing Your Time in Junk Bonds?

Recently I’ve started tracking my time. The motivation is the same as tracking your spending – you notice the small-but-frequent expenditures that quickly add up.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of my time is spent online. Notice I said “spent” and not “wasted”. Imagine you get 24 time coins a day. I used to throw away a lot of my coins on no-value, mindless entertainment websites like Reddit. That time was completely wasted. These days, I’ve cut down on sites like that, and instead procrastinate either via social networks or reading blogs and technology news.

Now, there is some value in these activities. I wouldn’t get far if I never stayed in touch with anyone or kept up-to-date with current trends. I’m not completely wasting my time coins on these sites, I do get some value from my investment. Very limited value, though. When “investing” in these activities, you hit diminishing returns very quickly.

They’re like junk bonds. The immediate returns seem high – “I need to reply to this comment! I need to read this article!” – but the long-term value is low.

I probably spend three or four hours a day replying to people on Facebook and Twitter, or checking the news via Hacker News or Google Reader. Looking at this blog’s stats has become an obsession as well. If instead I spent, say, one hour every morning on those activities, and then forgot them for the rest of the day, would I get any less value from them? No. In fact, I think I’d get more value, since I could focus on interesting conversations over drive-by Facebook comments, or insightful articles over some blogger’s inconsequential brain-farts.

Assuming you’re a reasonably productive member of society, you likely don’t have any really destructive habits. Spending too much time on Facebook is not exactly heroin addiction. Still, are you investing your time as wisely as you could? How much better off would you be if you cut down low-value activities and replaced them with high-value equivalents? Reading books over skimreading blog posts; corresponding with interesting people over social networking; self-improvement over vanity Googling; focused, creative work over mindless busywork?

It’s been an exciting week. In the last 7 days or so I’ve entered 3 entreprenurial-pitching-competition-type things, and failed at 2.

Failure #1 was entering the Shell LiveWire pitching contest at the NSEC conference. I didn’t make it through the first round. Failure #2 was Warwick’s Be Your Own Boss contest. I got to the final round, and gave what I thought was a pretty polished pitch. But the competition was really strong (seriously, the standard of student startups has gone way up recently), and lost again. The success was making it onto Entrepreneur First (which is not a business competition, but the application process was similar).

The fact I failed is good. If I was getting a 100% success rate, it would mean I wasn’t trying stuff outside my comfort zone. I really mean that – I’m not saying “oh well, taking part is what counts” just to make myself feel better. I want to win, and long-term I want to improve both my business idea and my pitching skills, so I’m going to enter more of these business idea contests*. But, I can accept losing with equanimity. And if and when I start winning, I won’t sit around and bask in my success, but aim to begin failing at bigger and harder things.

*(Yes, these contests do have limited value, in that winning them doesn’t make you an overnight success. But there is value in the money and publicity on offer.)

It’s like the game Spore. You start off as a tiny creature, being chased by bigger and scarier creatures. But you grow and evolve. Suddenly, you are the big creature, eating the creatures that once ate you. But just as soon as you’re feeling like the most badass amoeba in the pond, you get moved up to a bigger, scarier pond, where you have to start all over again. Actually, Spore is cool in that you don’t have to move up. You can stay at one level and enjoy an easy life snacking on smaller creatures for as long as you want. But playing that way gets boring fast. Alternatively, you can keep moving to ever bigger and ever scarier ponds, and eventually your creatures will be able to explore and conquer distant planets. It’s a good metaphor for life. Evolve or die; up or out.

I was reading The 50th Law recently, a book based on the life of Fifty Cent. Fifty grew up in the ghetto, and quickly realised that menial labour, petty crime or drug addiction weren’t worthwhile. The only decent option for someone in his position was drug dealing. So he became a hustler, but treated it like a 9-to-5 job. Worked hard, didn’t get distracted, kept looking for his escape route. Did well, but he noticed that even succesful drug dealers usually ended up in jail or shot, and decided rap was a better escape route. He began working on improving his hiphop skills, and trying to get noticed by the record labels. Kept failing, but eventually came to the attention of Eminem, and had his big break into the music industry.

He was in a bigger pond, and doing well. Awards, best-selling albums. He could have basked in glory and enjoyed an easy life. But he realised that although he was a wild success by his previous standards, as a musician, he was just a minnow in the music industry. The producers and label executives were the real sharks. So he decided to start his own record label.

And he did, and it was succesful. But he realised that all record labels, even the giants like Sony and EMI, were under threat from the internet. Most were either ignoring it, or trying to fight it, and losing badly. Fifty decided to step up his game once again. He embraced the internet, by setting up his own website. He also diversified, setting up a film production company, a headphone company, and more. He partnered with drinks manufacturer Glaceau to market a new brand of Vitamin Water; when the company was sold to Coca Cola, Fifty pocketed $100 million. The guy clearly has no qualms about making money.

(By the way, I recommend this article which discusses Fifty’s attitude to getting rich)

Now, I’m not really a hiphop fan. I’m more into rock/indie type stuff. And I doubt someone like, say, Thom Yorke would be willing to put Radiohead’s name on a line of soft drinks. More “artistic” musicians would think it crass. Thom Yorke, for example, uses his free time for environmental activism.

It’s pretty noble, and it’s easy to say that people like Fifty should really be using their fame for better things. But, Fifty is using his fame, and his wealth, to do good. He’s partnered with charities and non-profits to fight hunger in Africa.

And here’s the thing. Ability to do good doesn’t just depend on your motivation, but also your resources. The mere fact that Fifty Cent is richer than Thom Yorke means that Fifty has more potential to improve the world. It sounds shallow and kind of unfair that things works that way, but I think it’s true. Bill Gates can try and wipe out malaria, and I can’t. Sure, I could donate my money or time, but it wouldn’t go far.

That’s why I think there’s nothing inherently wrong with chasing money or power, since without them, your ability to do good is limited. Even the Bible doesn’t say “money is the root of all evil”, it says “love of money is the root of all evil”. It’s not a worthwhile end in itself, but as a means, it’s fine.

So: keep failing, keep evolving, keep clawing your way up the food chain. It’s worth it.

(Failure #4: I meant to do a basic writeup about the last week’s events, and ended up writing over 1000 words about Spore and 50 Cent. Oops).

New Blog

I’ve started writing blogs a few times but never really stuck with them. Had a Tumblr, before that I had a Posterous for a few years, before that I had a WordPress blog (this was back when I was about 18) and before that I had a blog on Clearblogs.com. The last one was probably the only interesting one, since I wrote it the first time I want to China and people actually read it. Trouble is that website has now vanished from the internet taking all my posts with it.

I think the main problem was that I didn’t have a clear purpose in mind, I just thought it would be good to have a blog. It manifested in a few ways: I’d update infrequently; I’d talk about random topics; I didn’t have an audience in mind; I wouldn’t try and promote it at all.

This time, I know why I’m writing this. My motivations, in order of priority:

1. Connect with interesting people.
2. Self-promotion. (Hey, no-one is else is gonna do it).
3. Practice writing.
4. Let people know what I’m working on.

I’m gonna try and post on a fairly frequent schedule, maybe shortish posts every two days and a longish one every week. I’ve got a folder of draft posts ready to put out over the next week or so. I spend a lot of time writing anyway (emails, assignments, plans) so it might not be too difficult, even though I’m busy with lots of other stuff. I’m actually hoping that writing becomes one of my main leisure activities, since I enjoy it when I’m doing it, but I’ll see if I have the willpower.

I’m gonna talk mainly about tech/startup related stuff but I’ll branch out into whatever I find interesting to write about.