Long-Term Goals – Page 2

Alain de Botton on success

I always enjoy Alain de Botton’s work. He’s insightful, he’s prolific, and among the writers I follow, he cares the most about helping us become better people, to reach for our better angels.

Some people may call his work “pop philosophy”, but what’s wrong with that? Those very same people might benefit most from engaging with his questions and observations.

I recently watched his below TED talk on how to think about success, and wanted to share my notes with y’all. For more on Alain, here’s my initial post. In the timelines of our lives, mine would have an arrow pointing to early 2012 with the label “started reading Alain de Botton.”

Notes

snobbery is when you only know a little bit about someone but draw much larger conclusions about them
iconic question: “what do you do?”
if we could all be like our mothers, who don’t care if we’re successful and accept us unconditionally
we’re not by nature materialistic, we simply live in a society where emotional rewards are pegged to material goods; when you see a Ferrari driver, don’t criticize them for being greedy, because they’re actually communicating that they’re incredibly vulnerable and in need of love
we’ve done away with the caste system and we’re told that anyone can achieve anything, which generates envy
envy: when you can’t relate to them, you can’t envy them (which is why you don’t even the Queen of England, and why de Botton believes you should never go to a school reunion :)
any vision of success needs to admit what you’ll lose out on
why we love nature: in part, an escape from the human anthill
in the Middle Ages, the word for someone at the bottom of society was an “unfortunate”, which describes the lack of control in their life station
make sure your ideas of success are yours: “it’s bad enough to not get what you want…it’s even worse to get what you want, after all this hard work, only to realize it may not be what you wanted all along”
think of your ideal dad – someone who’s tough but gentle – tough line to straddle

1-Page Summary: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

This is probably the best book I’ve read on how 20-somethings can build a meaningful career. Cal put his brilliant insights on the topic into a simple, useful framework. I’ve enjoyed his blog for many years and often bloggers-turned-authors disappoint (because good bloggers have lots of quick insights, while authors build on one very deep insight, kinda like the old adage “The fox knows many little things but the hedgehog knows one big thing”), but Cal delivers here. It’s clear that he cares and has been thinking deeply on this for many years. Books like these remind me why I love books.

Anything in blue is a direct quote from the book.

DON’T FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

“Follow your passion” is flawed, and can be harmful – leading to frequent job/career changes and anxiety/angst.

Career passions are rare – most “passions” are really hobbies (eg, sports)

The better you get at something, the more it becomes a “passion”

The passion movement started in the 1970s. The core illusion: that there is a magic job out there that’s right for you, and will solve all your problems. This illusion applies to relationships too :)

“found that only 45 percent of Americans describe themselves as satisfied with their jobs. This number has been steadily decreasing from the mark of 61 percent recorded in 1987, the first year of the survey.”

BUILD RARE AND VALUABLE SKILLS

“She surveyed the assistants to figure out why they saw their work so differently, and discovered that the strongest predictor of an assistant seeing her work as a calling was the number of years spent on the job. In other words, the more experience an assistant had, the more likely she was to love her work.”

“It took Martin, by his own estimation, ten years for his new act to cohere, but when it did, he became a monster success. It’s clear in his telling that there was no real shortcut to his eventual fame. “[Eventually] you are so experienced [that] there’s a confidence that comes out,” Martin explained. “I think it’s something the audience smells.””

BECOME A CRAFTSMAN

Craftsman careers allow you to:
1. Develop skills that are rare and valuable
2. Do something useful and good for the world
3. Work with people you like

Cal is dismissive of the courage culture – the belief that the only thing stopping you from pursuing your dream job or career is a lack of courage (I couldn’t agree more)

“Hours spent in serious study of the game was not just the most important factor in predicting chess skill, it dominated the other factors. The researchers discovered that the players who became grand masters spent five times more hours dedicated to serious study than those who plateaued at an intermediate level. The grand masters, on average, dedicated around 5,000 hours out of their 10,000 to serious study. The intermediate players, by contrast, dedicated only around 1,000 to this activity.”

WHAT DO JOBS THAT PEOPLE LOVE HAVE IN COMMON?

1. Lots of control – but first, you need rare and valuable skills to increase your degree of control

“In one such study, mentioned in Pink’s book, researchers at Cornell followed over three hundred small businesses, half of which focused on giving control to their employees and half of which did not. The control-centric businesses grew at four times the rate of their counterparts.”

2. It’s financially viable – people will pay you for those rare and valuable skills

“Instead, as he explained: “Money is a neutral indicator of value. By aiming to make money, you’re aiming to be valuable.” He also emphasized that hobbies are clearly exempt from this rule. “If I want to learn to scuba dive, for example, because I think it’s fun, and people won’t pay me to do that, I don’t care, I’m going to do it anyway,” he said.”

3. There’s a sense of mission, purpose

Usually, this involves mastering a field and getting to the edge of it

“Advancing to the cutting edge in a field is an act of “small” thinking, requiring you to focus on a narrow collection of subjects for a potentially long time. Once you get to the cutting edge, however, and discover a mission in the adjacent possible, you must go after it with zeal: a “big” action.”

MISCELLANY

“The Law of Remarkability – For a mission-driven project to succeed, it should be remarkable in two different ways. First, it must compel people who encounter it to remark about it to others. Second, it must be launched in a venue that supports such remarking.”

“Pausch captured this reality well when he quipped, “Junior faculty members used to come up to me and say, ‘Wow, you got tenure early; what’s your secret?’ I said, ‘It’s pretty simple, call me any Friday night in my office at ten o’clock and I’ll tell you.’ “”

Take little bets – projects that create new value, can be done in a short time (eg, one month), and produce concrete results for feedback and learning

That’s it, folks. Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy Cal’s book! And, if you’re so inclined, you can purchase it through this Amazon link and I’ll get a little taste :)

Here’s a list of all 1-page cheatsheets, and a list of all books.

33 Insights From Deepak Malhotra’s “How To Negotiate Your Job Offer” Lecture on YouTube

One of the best intro videos I’ve watched on the subject of negotiating. The advice is both strategic and practical, and it’s from a guy who literally wrote the (business school) book on negotiating.

Below are my notes; I’ve taken a lot of liberty in rewriting, but the insights are all Deepak’s.

P.S. I’ve been helping people negotiate their job offers recently, hence the somewhat new topic here on the blog. If this topic interests you (especially if you work in tech), email me.

General negotiating concepts:

1. Do your homework. He who is most prepared usually wins. I think Sun Tzu said something similar about war
2. People think it’s about convincing the other party, but nothing is more important than understanding the other party
3. What’s not negotiable today may be negotiable tomorrow
4. When someone says no in a negotiation, it often means “not right now”; for example if there’s an offer deadline two months from now, and they say they can’t extend it, they may be able to when you ask them 4 or 5 weeks later
6a. Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face”, in response to: “How do you fight someone when you know they’ve prepared specifically to fight you?”
6b. Prepare for the tough questions; sometimes the other party will throw something at you that you don’t want brought up; they might ask “do you have other job offers?” or “did your summer internship turn into a full-time offer?”
7. If something is ambiguous, strange or unexpected, your goal is to investigate by asking good questions
8. Don’t forget: They’re not out to get you…they like you and want to continue liking you…but you’re not the only concern they have
9. Companies don’t negotiate, people negotiate; it depends heavily on their role; negotiating with the boss is different from with HR; the boss may be willing to go to bat for you, but annoying them is more dangerous than annoying HR
10. Don’t be in a mad rush to get the offer; it can backfire (for example, you might get less time to decide)
11. If you think about life happiness, job negotiation success is unimportant; what job you take, what career path, is MUCH more important
12. If they’re repeating themselves, it’s a bad sign
13. In small companies or with close relationships, the range of outcomes is higher – you could either get a lot less or a lot more; everything is more important – them liking you, you being more honest, you learning more about what they can or can’t do
14. It can be easier to ask for something in the future, like working from a different city, but you need to stay at the table to make sure they don’t forget it

Goals you should always try to achieve:

1. They need to like you and want to do it for you
2. They need to believe you deserve it
3. They need to be able to justify your requests within their company
4. They need to believe that they can get you; no one will go to bat for you if they think you’re gonna eventually turn them down
5. Shoot for an 11 out of 10; imagine that they’re going to leave the negotiation and they’re either going to give you what you ask for or not, and they’re also going to rate you 1 to 10 on how much they’re looking forward to working with you; you don’t want a 9, or even a 10, you want an 11
6. Understand where they have room to give – for example, startups may offer lower salaries but provide more equity and flexibility in your role
7. Always tell the truth; don’t get into habit of just saying and doing what you need to achieve your goal
8. Sometimes people undervalue you because they don’t know the value you bring; educate them on what you can do

Tactical advice during negotiations:

1. Don’t ask for something without explaining why – just like you’d never want them to say no without a reason
2. Try to be flexible on the currency you’re paid in – you should care most about the entire offer (location, salary, benefits, stock) and not become too fixated on one component. This includes being flexible on maybe not getting something today, but a tacit agreement to reward you down the line
3. Negotiate multiple interests simultaneously, don’t negotiate piecemeal; signal what is most important, what is less important; avoid “and one more thing…and one more thing…and one more thing…” (Mark Suster says this too)
4. Stay at the table and stay engaged; what they couldn’t share before they gave the offer, they can after they give it to you; what they can’t share before you accept the offer, they can after
5. When they ask a question like “if we give you an offer tomorrow, will you say yes?”, don’t get stuck on what they’re asking; figure out why they’re asking that; what they ask is less important than why
6. Avoid, ignore, downplay ultimatums of any kind; if someone makes an ultimatum, just ignore it – pretend it was never said and move on; if they really mean it, they’ll repeat it over and over again
7. Sometimes you need more time; it’s totally fine to take it, just be nice and considerate about asking
8. Learn what their process tends to be; great question: “What is your usual process here? What does your process tend to be for this situation?”
9. You never want negotiation to end with a no; you want to end with a yes, or a why not
10. “Imagine a world where that is possible, describe that world for me” – gives you a better idea of what’s causing that constraint; or, “can you give me examples of situations where you have done that?”

Ironically as I was writing these notes, Deepak published a similar article. But I didn’t want these notes to go to waste :)

Martin Seligman’s 3 types of happy lives

I’m not a fan of the lazy belief that happiness is a worthwhile pursuit; it scares me that some people go so far as to organize their lives around it.

Dr. Drew sums it up for me:

I don’t buy into this happiness stuff…if you want to know happiness, look at a heroin addict. Now THEY’RE happy.

Or as Don so pithily sums up in Mad Men:

Happiness…is the moment before you need more happiness

Yet I found this Martin Seligman talk about happiness to be very interesting. Its insights are overlooked, or forgotten, in our happiness dialogue.

Seligman is a UPenn professor, psychology eminence grise and a key proponent of positive psychology (the academic label for happiness). His TED talk was recorded back in 2004, just as the happiness movement was finding its legs. Those legs are pretty tired, now, but you never know…

In the talk, Seligman says there are 3 types of happy lives:

1. The Pleasant Life – what most people mean when they talk about happiness; think George Clooney or that bubbly, cheerful office receptionist; it’s about creating and maintaining as much positive emotion as possible; about 50% of your baseline is inherited, and it habituates over time (you get used to it and need more)

Ok, got it. But there’s gotta be more…

2. The Good Life – think Elon Musk, Serena Williams; a life of engagement and flow, when time stops because you’re absorbed in the moment, in what you’re doing; “during flow, you can’t feel anything”; it’s about developing strengths and then applying them to every area of your life

We’re not done, yet!

3. The Meaningful Life – think Mother Teresa; using your strengths to serve something larger than you, typically a positive institution or moral issue. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt:

Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

Ahhh, much better.

In your perfect world, you probably want a combination of all 3. Probably more of 2 and 3 than of 1, although to each their own. Just don’t ask me if I’m happy…I still can’t figure it out.

Watch the talk here.

Isaac Asimov should have been a VC

Visiting New York’s 1964 World Fair, Isaac Asimov imagines what it would be like 50 years hence.

Here are some of his predictions:

Mostly right

One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better.

Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan.

Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains”*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.

Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.

Probably in my lifetime…and I can’t wait

Electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button.

Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare “automeals,” heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be “ordered” the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning.

The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes.

There will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground.

For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections.

Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which “mock-turkey” and “pseudosteak” will be served.

Asimov predicted the internet…yet he thought boredom would be mankind’s greatest disease!

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.

The most errant Asimov predictions involve human colonization (by 2014, he foresaw Moon colonies and underwater housing settlements) and unchecked population growth (still a concern, but who could have guessed that economically-developed countries would stop having babies?).

Sidebar: it seems that we humans consistently underestimate the power of exponential growth, but once we’re convinced of it, we then — with the same consistency — overestimate how long it will last.

His original article is here.