Inspirational Quotations #698

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What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.
—Hugh Blair

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.
—James Agee

Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.
—Terence

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
—Felix Frankfurter

Who will not mercy unto others show, how can he mercy ever hope to have?
—Edmund Spenser

No one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what everyone means by friendship.
—Francis Marion Crawford

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.
—Vince Lombardi

New ideas are one of the most overrated concepts of our time. Most of the important ideas that we live with aren’t new at all.
—Andy Rooney

Often you just have to rely on your intuition.
—Bill Gates

Humans seek happiness as an end in itself, not as a means to something else.
—Aristotle

Every one has a gift for something, even if it is the gift of being a good friend.
—Marian Anderson

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.
—Denis Waitley

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but hes not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.
—Georges Clemenceau

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
—Florence Nightingale

Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others.
—Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Occasionally, a man must rise above principles.
—Warren Buffett

All you have shall some day be given; therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.
—Khalil Gibran

The fool knows after he’s suffered.
—Hesiod

You are remembered for the rules you break.
—Douglas MacArthur

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  1. Competition Can Push You to Achieve Greater Results

Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

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Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue

The Lekha Sutta, an aphorism of the historical Buddha that has been preserved orally by his followers, identifies three distinct ways that anger manifests in individuals:

  • Firstly, the Buddha refers to the individual who is like an inscription on a rock. His anger stays with him for a long time; it does not war away by wind or water.
  • Secondly, the Buddha relates an individual who is habitually angered, but whose anger does not stay with him for a elongated time, to an inscription in soil that rubs away by wind or water.
  • Finally, the Buddha identifies an individual who is like water. When he is spoken to or treated rudely, he stays impervious, pleasant, and courteous—in the vein of an inscription in water that disappears right away.

Here’s a translation of the Lekha Sutta from the Pali by the eminent American Buddhist monk and prolific author Thanissaro Bhikkhu:

Monks, there are these three types of individuals to be found existing in the world. Which three? An individual like an inscription in rock, an individual like an inscription in soil, and an individual like an inscription in water.

And how is an individual like an inscription in rock? There is the case where a certain individual is often angered, and his anger stays with him a long time. Just as an inscription in rock is not quickly effaced by wind or water and lasts a long time, in the same way a certain individual is often angered, and his anger stays with him a long time. This is called an individual like an inscription in rock.

'Dhammapada: A Translation' by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (ISBN B000K6C8NG) And how is an individual like an inscription in soil? There is the case where a certain individual is often angered, but his anger doesn’t stay with him a long time. Just as an inscription in soil is quickly effaced by wind or water and doesn’t last a long time, in the same way a certain individual is often angered, but his anger doesn’t stay with him a long time. This is called an individual like an inscription in soil.

And how is an individual like an inscription in water? There is the case where a certain individual—when spoken to roughly, spoken to harshly, spoken to in an unpleasing way—is nevertheless congenial, companionable, & courteous. Just as an inscription in water immediately disappears and doesn’t last a long time, in the same way a certain individual—when spoken to roughly, spoken to harshly, spoken to in an unpleasing way—is nevertheless congenial, companionable, & courteous. This is called an individual like an inscription in water.

These are the three types of individuals to be found existing in the world.

Idea for Impact: Learn to Corral Your Anger and Manage Your Emotions

Like everything else in the world, anger surfaces and passes away, restoring your previous sense of calm and stillness. Not identifying the nature of anger and allowing it to take over your state of being can lead to disastrous outcomes. Verse 222 of the Dhammapada (tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu) states,

When anger arises,
whoever keeps firm control
as if with a racing chariot:
him
I call a master charioteer.
    Anyone else,
    a rein-holder—
    that’s all.

Anger destroys careers. It destroys relationships. As long as you lack the capacity to withstand negative emotions such as anger, you will be at a marked disadvantage in life.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  2. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  3. How to Guard Against Anger Erupting
  4. Anger Is Often Pointless / How to Free Yourself from Anger
  5. The Nature of Worry

Group Polarization: Why Like-Mindedness is Dangerous

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Group Polarization Strengthens of the Opinions of Each Person in the Group

Group Polarization: Why Like-Mindedness Is Dangerous When people who share opinions and beliefs get together in groups, they tend to be even more persuaded in their beliefs—they become extreme in their views. In other words, a group of likeminded people will reinforce one another’s viewpoints. This phenomenon is called group polarization.

Social psychologists reason that people use the choices and persuasions of others as heuristics to steer their lives in this complex world. As the English philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead once said, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.”

Social Media and Group Polarization

As people converge to likeminded people in virtual neighborhoods, they tend to operate in intellectual bubbles. Given that social media allows participants to curate their sources of information, it is easier than ever before for people to cruise through their day-to-day lives without meeting anyone who disagrees with them. Studies have shown that hanging around a group of likeminded folks makes people more scornful of differing viewpoints, than they are as individuals.

Group polarization explains partly the proliferation of fake news on social media—people accept dubious claims that support their own viewpoint while disregarding facts that conflict with their views. In the confusing times we live in, people get lost in the unstructured, unattributed noise of headlines and repeat the loudest declarations as facts without checking their soundness.

The Persuasive Ability of Social Proof in Consumer Behavior

'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion' by Robert Cialdini (ISBN 006124189X) In the bestselling Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, psychologist Robert Cialdini observes that advertisers tend to describe their products as “fastest-growing,” “#1 in the market,” or “best-selling.” Advertisers believe that consumers need to hear not only that a product is good, but also that others think so.

As per group polarization, when people are considering what to do or buy, they often look to what others are doing or have done, and take their cue from others. When a product, service, or an idea strikes out as particularly admired or prevailing, consumers intuitively take social proof that this is the right—and acceptable—choice.

Idea for Impact: Hanging Around with Like-Minded People is a Dangerous Intellectual Trap

The French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre once wrote, “Seek those who find your road agreeable, your personality and mind stimulating, your philosophy acceptable, and your experiences helpful. Let those who do not, seek their own kind.”

Look for people who respect your worldview—even if drastically different from theirs—but can present alternative perspectives.

Regular exposure to differing views serves to sharpen your thinking and reasoning abilities—and may perhaps even reexamine your positions. As I’ve said before, wisdom comes from facing counter-arguments. The only test of a well-constructed opinion is that it can defend itself.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Stimulate Group Creativity / Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”
  2. Ever Wonder If The Other Side May Be Right?
  3. You Can’t Know Everything
  4. Does the Consensus Speak For You?
  5. Nothing Deserves Certainty

Inspirational Quotations #697

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It matters not what a person is born, but who they choose to be.
—J. K. Rowling

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.
—Baruch Spinoza

Anger itself does more harm than the condition which aroused anger.
—David O. McKay

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
—Margaret Drabble

Better to stumble with the toe than with the tongue.
—African Proverb

So much of writing is not writing the sentences themselves but organizing the sentences and paragraphs in a way that makes sense.
—Ben Casnocha

A statesman should follow public opinion as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins, and guiding them.
—Julius Charles Hare

Those wearing tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.
—Phyllis McGinley

What has once happened, will invariably happen again, when the same circumstances which combined to produce it, shall again combine in the same way.
—Abraham Lincoln

Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world.
—Ramana Maharshi

The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.
—Reinhold Niebuhr

Life is brief–a flash of lightning, a snap of eternity’s fingers.
—Dan Millman

You can never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
—Buckminster Fuller

There is no man in any rank who is always at liberty to act as he would incline. In some quarter or other he is limited by circumstances.
—Hugh Blair

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  1. Identify and Eliminate Passive Voice in Microsoft Word
  2. Use Active Voice for Persuasive Communication
  3. What Everybody Ought to Know about Writing Better Emails

This is Yoga for the Brain: Multidisciplinary Learning

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In Praise of Multidisciplinary Frameworks for Better Thinking You need a broad-based understanding to succeed in today’s increasingly complex world.

Modern scientific and technological advances are increasingly born at the frontiers of more than one science disciplines.

It’s impossible to know everything. However, if you work to understand the basics of the biggest, most important paradigms in the fields of science, humanities, and social sciences, you can progressively expand your decision-making process.

A multidisciplinary methodology entails drawing suitably from multiple disciplines to examine problems outside of their normal boundaries and reach solutions based on an understanding of complex situations.

Multidisciplinarity Leads to Better Internalization of Knowledge

Multidisciplinarity allows you can transform a perspective in one discipline to expand your thought-frameworks in other disciplines. The renowned venture capitalist Paul Graham, author of the bestselling Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, said this best when he once wrote,

Studying things from unrelated subjects (multidisciplinary learning) is a lot like yoga for brain. You don’t actually get anywhere when you do yoga. You stand in one place and bend yourself in various shapes. But it makes you more flexible, so when you go out and do walk around, you can walk better.

“Cross-Training for the Mind” à la Charlie Munger

'Poor Charlie's Almanack' by Charlie Munger (ISBN 1578645018) The great investor Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is a big proponent of multidisciplinary thinking. This distinguished beacon of rationality and wisdom coined the term “latticework of mental models” to enable the “cross-training for the mind.” Rather than silo your mind just in the narrow areas you tend to concentrate on at college and work, Munger advocates developing a broad, functional set of interdisciplinary knowledge about the world, which can serve you in all parts of life. According to the anthology Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Munger said at a 1998 talk at the Harvard Law School,

If A is a narrow professional, B consists of the big, extra-useful concepts from other disciplines, then, clearly, the professional possessing A plus B will usually be better off than the poor possessor of A alone. How could it be otherwise? And thus, the only rational excuse for not acquiring B is that it is not practical to do so, given the man’s need to A and the other urgent demands in his life. I will later try to demonstrate that this excuse for unidisciplinarity, at least for our most gifted people, is usually unsound.

Many of the world’s leading companies in science and technology are employing multidisciplinary people for managerial positions. These people understand a range of science principles and methods and can synthesize the works of domain-specific experts to invent creative solutions to problems.

Idea for Impact: Pursue Multidisciplinary Thinking

People who think very broadly and comprehend many different models from many different disciplines make better decisions.

Pursue multidisciplinary thinking. Open your mind to new ideas and new experiences. Make new friends, travel afar, read more, and discover new stories.

Interact with people who work in different disciplines and dabble with the arts and the media. Let the new sights, sounds, smells, languages, tastes, sensations, stories, and perspectives spark your creativity.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Good Questions Encourage Creative Thinking
  2. Systems-Thinking as a Trait for Career Success
  3. How to Stimulate Group Creativity / Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”
  4. You Can’t Develop Solutions Unless You Realize You Got Problems: Problem Finding is an Undervalued Skill
  5. Finding Potential Problems & Risk Analysis: A Case Study on ‘The Three Faces of Eve’

Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost

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“Opportunity cost is a huge filter in life. If you’ve got two suitors who are really eager to have you and one is way the hell better than the other, you do not have to spend much time with the other. And that’s the way we filter out buying opportunities.”
— Charlie Munger, Investor

Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost

Doing One Thing Makes You Sacrifice the Opportunity to Do Something Else of Value

In economics, opportunity cost is the cost of not choosing the next best alternative for your money, time, or some other resource.

One of the foundational principles in economics is affirmed by the popular American aphorism, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Resources are scarce. When resources (time, money, mindshare, autonomy, and all that) are scarce, selecting one opportunity necessitates forgoing other opportunities.

Life is all about values and priorities. You face trade-offs. Life requires of you to make choices among mutually exclusive alternatives. Every time you select something, you forfeit other alternatives and the concomitant benefits. The cost of something is what you will give up to get it. This is opportunity cost.

You Can Do Anything but Not Everything … What Will You Sacrifice When You Choose One Option Over the Others?

When mulling over multiple choices, the quality of any option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. The price you pay (or the sacrifice you make, or the benefits you give up) for doing what you’ve chosen to do instead of doing something else is the opportunity cost.

In sum, an opportunity cost is the cost of passing up the opportunities that a different option would have afforded.

Many costs are calculated in terms of money. However, just because you don’t have to spend money to do something does not imply that the options you face are without their costs. For example, you don’t have to spend money to go for a hike or watch a sunset, but there is an opportunity cost there too. You could have used that time to do something else you value—visiting a friend or reading a book, perhaps.

  • If you decide to invest two years and some $100,000 getting an MBA at a brand-name business school, there’s an opportunity cost; it costs you lost wages and all the things you could have pursued during that time and with that money. But you anticipate that getting your MBA will pay off by way of a better job in a better company with a better salary.
  • If you spend your weeklong vacation taking your parents to a beach destination in Florida, there’s the opportunity cost of not going to Paris with your spouse.
  • Opportunity Costs Apply to All Your Choices If you decide to wake up twenty minutes earlier in the mornings to leave home sooner to work and beat the horrendous traffic, there’s the opportunity cost of twenty minutes of extra snoozing.
  • When the refrigerator at home breaks down and needs replacement, you will have to give up buying that latest big-screen TV you’ve been coveting.
  • There’s an opportunity cost to even reading this article at this moment. You could have been watching TV, taking a nap, calling up a friend, or moving on to another article in the time you’re devoting to reading this article.

In a nutshell, even decisions that appear to be no-brainers carry the hidden costs of the options you will decline. Thinking about opportunity costs may not change the decision you make, but it will give you a more rational assessment of the full implications of your decision.

Opportunity Costs Apply to All Your Choices—Big and Small

Opportunity cost is a concept of great magnitude. It is one of those apparently simple concepts in social sciences that are difficult to master and tough to put into consistent practice. Tim Harford, the British author of The Undercover Economist offers a particularly instructive example of appreciating opportunity costs in his Financial Times column:

Consider the following puzzle, a variant of which was set by Paul J Ferraro and Laura O Taylor to economists at a major academic conference back in 2005. Imagine that you have a free ticket (which you cannot resell) to see Radiohead performing. But, by a staggering coincidence, you could also go to see Lady Gaga—there are tickets on sale for £40. You’d be willing to pay £50 to see Lady Gaga on any given night, and her concert is the best alternative to seeing Radiohead. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either gig. What is the opportunity cost of seeing Radiohead? (a) £0, (b) £10, (c) £40 or (d) £50.

…

Answer: Going to see Lady Gaga would cost £40 but you’re willing to pay £50 any time to see her; therefore the net benefit of seeing Gaga is £10. If you use your free Radiohead ticket instead, you’re giving up that benefit, so the opportunity cost of seeing Radiohead is £10.

Learn to Evaluate Life Choices Via the Lens of Opportunity Costs—The Stakes Become Clearer

Evaluate Life Choices Via the Lens of Opportunity Costs You live in a world of scarcity and must therefore make choices. You cannot avoid regret since there are opportunity costs for every choice you will make.

Everything in life is about opportunity costs. Every time you say “yes” to a choice, you are also saying “no” to everything else you may have accomplished with your time, money, and resources.

Opportunity cost is a commanding tool that you should be wise to apply to all decision-making. If you integrate this concept into your thought process, you will not only make judicious choices, but also better understand the world in which you live.

Idea for Impact: Whether you’re choosing graduate school, mulling over switching careers, starting a business, investing your money, buying a car, or frittering away your evening watching TV, considering the value of forgone alternatives will help you make better choices. Make the lens of opportunity costs the underpinning of your decision-making processes.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. When Getting a Great Deal Might Not Be Worth Your Time
  2. Zeigarnik Effect: How Incomplete Tasks Trigger Stress [Mental Models]
  3. Everything Takes Longer Than Anticipated: Hofstadter’s Law [Mental Models]
  4. Let Go of Sunk Costs
  5. Hoarding and Learning to Let Go

Inspirational Quotations #696

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Irrigators guide the water. Fletchers shape the arrow shaft. Carpenters shape the wood. The wise control themselves.
—The Dhammapada

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.
—Meryl Streep

Those who are formed to win general admiration are seldom calculated to bestow individual happiness.
—Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

It is much easier to ride a horse in the direction it’s going.
—Abraham Lincoln

We must dare to think ‘unthinkable’ thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about ‘unthinkable things’ because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
—J. William Fulbright

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.
—E. E. Cummings

The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.
—Margaret J. Wheatley

People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes travel the around the world looking for it. … Once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
—Elizabeth Gilbert

Let no man ever look for what is pleasant, or what is unpleasant. Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is unpleasant.
—The Dhammapada

An insult is either sustained or destroyed, not by the disposition of those who insult, but by the disposition of those who bear it.
—John Chrysostom

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  1. Addiction to Pleasure is a Symptom of Fear
  2. Control Your Efforts, Not the Outcomes
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The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave [Book Summary]

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Employee engagement and retention of top talent is a holy grail of people management—and nearly as hard to pin down.

Employees expect managers to be fair, pay fairly, listen, value opinions, relate, develop, challenge, demonstrate care, advance, and so on. But many employees don’t know when and how to voice their concerns, or negotiate for what they want.

All managers know that engaged employees are happier and more productive. Yet, managers and HR managers cannot simply make employee engagement “happen.”

'The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave' by Leigh Branham (ISBN 0814408516) In The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, employee-retention expert Leigh Branham discusses how companies can tackle employee disengagement and retain their best and brightest people.

Using a copious amount of facts and figures from interviews and surveys, Branham explores seven reasons for employee disengagement. For each reason, Branham lists signs that managers need to keep their eyes open for, and shows how employers and employees could communicate and understand their mutual needs and desires.

“Some Quit and Leave … Others Quit and Stay”

According to Branham, employee disengagement—and eventual resignation—is not an event; rather, it is a plodding process of bitterness, discontent, and eventual withdrawal that can take weeks, months, or even years until the definite choice to resign happens. He lists the ten most common stimuli that trigger employee disengagement:

  1. Poor management
  2. Lack of career growth and advancement opportunity
  3. Poor communications
  4. Issues with pay and remuneration
  5. Lack of recognition
  6. Poor senior leadership
  7. Lack of training
  8. Excessive workload
  9. Lack of tools and resources
  10. Lack of teamwork

Branham claims to have synthesized some 20,700 employee-exit surveys and has identified four fundamental human needs (compare to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) that must be met by employers:

  • Employees need to feel proficient. They want to be matched to a job that aligns with their talents and their desire for a challenge.
  • Employees need to feel a sense of worth. They want to feel confident that their commitment and their efforts translate into meaningful contributions to their company’s mission. They desire to be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
  • Employees need to be trusted. They expect their employers to pay attention, and be honest and open in their communications.
  • Employees need to have hope. They want to be treated fairly, and given opportunities to grow their skills and advance their careers.

Why Employees Start Feeling Disconnected from Their Work

Why employees start feeling disconnected from their work The core of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave is a “how to” guide to address each of the seven reasons to enable a company to pursue the path to become an “employer of choice.”

Reason #1: The Job or Workplace Was Not as Expected. Many new hires join their companies with a wide range of misconceptions and unrealistic expectations. Some stay and adapt, others disengage and stay, and some others disengage and ultimately leave. Branham advocates creating realistic job descriptions, and open communications between managers and employees on achieving their mutual goals and expectations.

Reason #2: The Mismatch between Job and Person. Companies with strong reputations for selecting the right talent and keeping employees well matched with their jobs have a strong commitment to the continuous upgrading of talent. Managers can assign tasks so that employees can be more engaged through the use of their “motivated abilities.” Managers must keep an eye open opportunities to augment employees’ jobs by delegating tasks they might not have considered before.

Reason #3: Too Little Coaching and Feedback. Branham affirms that most managers do coaching and feedback merely as annual or biannual HR-required discussions that bind ambiguous targets to performance-ranking and pay scale. Managers must lead frequent, informal, on-the-job feedback conversations with employees. Branham identifies four principal themes that managers must address to make their performance management practice seem less controlling and more of a partnership:

  1. “Where are we going as a company?”
  2. “How are we going to get there?”
  3. “How does the manager expect the employee to contribute?”
  4. “How is the employee doing? What is going well? What are the key suggestions for improvement?”

Reason #4: Too Few Growth and Advancement Opportunities. Branham observes that most talented employees cannot pinpoint and articulate, and often underuse their greatest strengths. He encourages companies to provide self-assessment tools and career management training for all employees, enabling them to be the best they possibly can be. Most “employers of choice” have a strong mentoring culture. They communicate that employees must take the initiative in their own career development.

Reason #5: Feeling Devalued and Unrecognized. To Branham, many companies do not have a formal and informal culture of recognition because their managers are themselves too busy with their nominal responsibilities to pay adequate attention to employees’ performance. Or, they can’t discern between average and superior performance. He lists recommendations for competitive base- and variable-pay linked to achieving business goals. He reminds managers that employees are hungry to be listened to, and want their ideas sought and implemented.

How companies can tackle employee disengagement and retain their best and brightest people Reason #6: Stress from Overwork and Work-life Imbalance. Branham observes that the relationships employees form with other employees is a glue that binds people to their workplaces. He encourages fostering social connectedness by assigning cross-functional team projects and organizing group outings.

Reason #7: Loss of Trust and Confidence in Senior Leaders. When senior leaders don’t back up pronouncements such as “people are our most important asset” with their actions, even mid-level managers begin to question the decisions and the actions of senior leaders. The result is a manifest lack of enthusiasm in the workplace, and in the rising complaints and questions about policies and practices. Leaders must set the tone for workplace culture and must back up their words with actions to discourage employee cynicism and disengagement.

Becoming an Engaged Leader is the Embodiment of What Leadership Means

Recommendation: Fast read Leigh Branham’s The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave. This book makes a great reading for managers and leaders who will need to scratch beneath the surface to recognize unhappy employees before it’s too late, and then engage their employees better and retain their top talent.

While many of the book’s themes may appear familiar, The 7 Hidden Reasons discuses many ideas and “engagement practices” in great specificity to help managers and leaders keep their antennae up for signs of bitterness and discontent, and correct before they lose their best and brightest people. This practical tome can also help employees discuss and resolve their needs and desires.

Developing a deep understanding of what causes employees to lose motivation, disengage, and leave cannot be ignored or overlooked. Managers and leaders who can resolve the divergence that employees feel between their personal values and the best interests of their businesses will gain immeasurably by having a highly engaged and productive workforce.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave
  2. Four Telltale Signs of an Unhappy Employee
  3. How to Promote Employees
  4. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around
  5. Don’t Push Employees to Change

What Type of Perfectionist Are You?

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Adaptive and Maladaptive Perfectionism

Psychologists recognize two forms of perfectionism—adaptive and maladaptive. Both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists have high personal standards—for themselves and for others. However, failing to meet those standards is more stressful for the latter than for the former.

Adaptive perfectionism is the normal, healthy form of perfectionism. Adaptive perfectionists endeavor for success—they tend to complete tasks in good time and have high standards for their work. They take into account their strengths and limitations and don’t overexert themselves unless it really matters.

Perfectionism turns out to be maladaptive when people become terribly concerned with the notion of “just the thing”—they strive for perfect performance. So nearly nothing turns out to be “good enough.”

Failing to meet high standards is more stressful for adaptive than for the maladaptive perfectionists

The #1 Pitfall: Maladaptive Perfectionism Rigidifies Behavior

Maladaptive perfectionism may cause people to dodge tasks for fear of making an error or for not being able to complete tasks to their lofty standards. They tend to want to control their environment. When events do not go as planned, they develop negative attitudes. They are inclined to striving to achieve goals in their own way; consequently, they regard their personal and professional settings as competitive and handle relationships more aggressively.

Many maladaptive perfectionists aren’t necessarily high achievers because their drive for perfection leads them to chronic procrastination and to never-ending, futile agonizing.

Even success can be imperfect to maladaptive perfectionists. Their reaction to reaching a goal is often “so what?” followed by “what’s the next big thing?” with nary a pause for “I did it! Let me celebrate.”

Idea for Impact: Prioritize Your Perfection

Perfection can boost your satisfaction too much can be paralyzing There’s nothing wrong with high standards. Soaring, impracticable standards are another matter, however.

While a reasonable dose of perfection can boost your satisfaction, too much can be paralyzing. In the real world of constraints and limited resources, perfection is hard to achieve and your quest for the ideal can suck up precious time, energy, and money that could produce superior results elsewhere.

You don’t have sufficient resources to do everything, so commit them where they can bring the greatest overall improvement. (I’ll write about the concept of opportunity cost next week.)

If you’re an obsessive perfectionist, recognize that your compulsion to “get it right” can endorse a rigidity of character and action that is limiting.

Prioritize your perfection. It’s impractical to reach perfection in all areas of your life concurrently. Rather than trying to master everything, pick some areas of life you want to excel in, and go for average in others.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. 5 Minutes to Greater Productivity [Two-Minute Mentor #11]
  2. Two-Minute Mentor #4: Is a task worth doing worth doing poorly?
  3. Your To-Do List Isn’t a Wish List: Add to It Selectively
  4. Don’t Let Perfect be the Enemy of Done
  5. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize [Two-Minute Mentor #9]

Inspirational Quotations #695

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It takes a great man to make a good listener.
—Arthur Helps

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
—Otto von Bismarck

There is no destiny beyond and above ourselves; we are ourselves the architects of our future.
—Swami Chinmayananda

Every dog has his day.
—Common Proverb

We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.
—Alfred Adler

The question is not to know the meaning of life, but what meaning I can give to my life.
—The 14th Dalai Lama

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.
—Ray Kroc

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
—Thomas Brackett Reed

Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.
—John W. Gardner

Bad salespeople talk your ear off. Good salespeople know to shut up and listen.
—Ben Casnocha

Like breeds like.
—Common Proverb

If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness.
—Helen Keller

Ignorance is a prolonged infancy, only deprived of its charm.
—Stanislas de Boufflers

There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland

Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
—Plutarch

Nothing should be prized more highly than the value of each day.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Close scrutiny will show that most “crisis situations” are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.
—Maxwell Maltz

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.
—Marilyn Ferguson