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Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Having What You Want

May 16, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Finding Contentment---Wanting is Different from Having

Wanting is different from having.

Wanting is in the future. Having is here; it’s now.

Wanting is based on what could make you happy in the next minute, next week, or next year.

When you don’t let yourself have what you already have, you’re in a trap of your own making. You’re perpetually restless and disengaged. You aren’t present—you’re pursuing a happiness that’s always somewhere else.

Idea for Impact: Don’t be so occupied wanting the next thing that you don’t allow yourself to enjoy what’s in front of you now. You’ll become more content if you look harder for things to be grateful for in the here and now.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. I’ll Be Happy When …
  2. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg Mckeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  3. That Extra Salary You Can Negotiate Ain’t Gonna Make You Happy
  4. Burt, Bees, and Simple Happiness / The Curious Case of Burt Shavitz
  5. Why I’m Frugal

Filed Under: Living the Good Life Tagged With: Balance, Happiness, Materialism, Mindfulness, Money, Simple Living, Wisdom

Inspirational Quotations #945

May 15, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi

If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself.
—Ferdinand Porsche (Austrian Car Designer)

The great thing about people with intellectual disabilities is that they’re not people who discuss philosophy… What they want is fun and laughter, to do things together and fool around, and laughter is at the heart of community.
—Jean Vanier (French-Canadian Humanitarian)

Sorrow is easy to express and so hard to tell.
—Joni Mitchell (Canadian Singer, Songwriter)

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

The origin of civilization is man’s determination to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him.
—H. C. Bailey (English Novelist)

The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport.
—Barbara Jordan (American Educator, Politician)

For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love.
—Richard Chenevix Trench (Irish Archbishop, Poet)

The only people who attain power are those who crave for it.
—Erich Kastner (German Author)

Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.
—Carol Moseley Braun (American Politician)

The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.
—Swedish Proverb

For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.
—Derek Walcott (West Indian Poet)

Enough is often too much in our material world, but seldom enough in our material world.
—Bob Woodward (American Journalist)

Some people, however long their experience or strong their intellect, are temperamentally incapable of reaching firm decisions.
—James Callaghan (British Labour Statesman)

The doctrines of grace humble man without degrading, and exalt without inflating him.
—Charles Hodge (American Theologian)

There’s small Revenge in Words, but Words may be greatly revenged.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

A fault confessed is half redressed.
—African Proverb

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Deliver The Punchline First

May 12, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Deliver The Punchline First = Get to the Point

When Sergey Brin and Larry Page set about to secure early funding for Google, they initiated a presentation at Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s premier venture capital firms, with the logline “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.”

Most busy executives don’t want to sit through a 50-slide presentation. They don’t have the patience to wait for the punchline.

Begin with the conclusion and then go through the rest of your slide deck: your proposals, theses, assumptions, your line of thinking, and the arguments, pro and con.

Meaning, Then Details

Cognitive psychologists have argued that the brain pays more attention to the core of an idea than to its details.

According to the University of Washington molecular biologist John Medina, the human brain craves meaning before details. In Brain Rules (2014,) Medina notes, “Normally, if we don’t know the gist–the meaning–of information, we are unlikely to pay attention to its details. The brain selects meaning-laden information for further processing and leaves the rest alone.”

When listeners comprehend the overarching idea of a pitch, they’ll find it easier to synthesize and digest the information.

Begin Your Next Executive Presentation with the Final Summary Slide First

Most executives have limited willpower and suffer “decision fatigue.” Don’t overload them with less-important details before asking them to decide in your favor. Your “executive summary” slide may be the only one that will get full attention. So make it perfect!

  • Practice, practice, practice. Few people, if any, have the rhetorical ability to make a persuasive 15-second speech about their significant ideas. The best speakers are the best because they rehearse and get feedback.
  • Less is more. After getting prized facetime with executives, many talented young professionals produce large slide decks to dazzle the executives with their intelligence and ingenuity. Don’t.
  • Simplify your “executive summary” message. Perceptive executives tend to be somewhat skeptical of things that ought to be simple but have become too complicated.
  • Meaning, then detail. The brain processes meaning before detail, and the brain likes hierarchy. Start with the general idea and then present information in a structured, hierarchical approach. Make sure that each detail you communicate traces back to the core concept of your presentation.

Idea for Impact: Get to the Point

Tell busy people what they need to know upfront. Communicate like a newsperson: What’s the number one thing your audience needs to know? Say that first. Then build out from there, keeping the most essential particulars up top.

There’s another smart—if devious—benefit of putting the cart before the horse: delivering your “punchline” first can hook your audience with a compelling proposal first, and then cash in on the confirmation bias to sway them to your case.

Spy thriller novelist Graeme Shimmin offers this excellent guide to writing a killer punchline, logline, or elevator speech.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Persuade Others to See Things Your Way: Use Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Timing
  2. Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster
  3. What Happens When You Talk About Too Many Goals
  4. Here’s a Tactic to Sell Change: As a Natural Progression
  5. Never Give a Boring Presentation Again

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Mental Models Tagged With: Communication, Critical Thinking, Meetings, Negotiation, Persuasion, Presentations

The Tyranny of Best Practices

May 9, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

By all means, acquaint yourself with the management practices of Dell (in supply chain management,) Toyota (quality control,) Ryanair (working capital,) or whatever company is the present-day shining exemplar of the pertinent best practices. But beware of the risks of taking their best practices out of context and applying them to your business.

The Tyranny of Best Practices - Deceptively Simplistic Solutions Some advantages are unlikely to be accrued by borrowing fashionable ideas from other companies. It makes sense, for example, to study how Apple’s innovations have changed the world, but the visionary in Steve Jobs can’t be replicated.

Best practices can offer deceptively simplistic solutions. Some of them aren’t implementable—even relatable. You can try replicating Google’s policy of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on their own ideas; that initiative isn’t likely to transform a company designing gasoline engines.

Many of the basic principles of innovation are universal. But management methods succeed—or fail—in a specific context. A company’s industry, maturity, location, and leadership structures influence this context. Unless you develop a thorough understanding of all the factors that have contributed to others’ success, there’s a risk that you’re learning the wrong lessons.

Idea for Impact: You can’t truly become another company. You can only become a better version of yourself, not an inferior version of someone else. Be inspired by others’ best practices, but don’t imitate them blindly.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learning from the World’s Best Learning Organization // Book Summary of ‘The Toyota Way’
  2. The Checkered Legacy of Jack Welch, Captain of Wall Street-Oriented Capitalism
  3. Don’t Be Deceived by Others’ Success
  4. Beware of Key-Person Dependency Risk
  5. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leadership Tagged With: Creativity, General Electric, Leadership Lessons, Learning, Mental Models, Role Models, Toyota

Inspirational Quotations #944

May 8, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi

Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone.
—Russell Hoban (American Author)

Man needs more to be reminded than instructed.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

Make no judgments where you have no compassion.
—Anne Mccaffrey (American Science Fiction Author)

He who hunts two hares leaves one and loses the other.
—Japanese Proverb

Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy.
—Dag Hammarskjold (Swedish Statesman)

The future struggles against being mastered.
—Latin Proverb

There was never a great man who had not a great mother.
—Olive Schreiner (South African Novelist, Feminist)

Introspect daily, detect diligently, negate ruthlessly.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher)

If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.
—Edgar Rice Burroughs (American Novelist)

Say not that this or that thing came to thwart you; it only came to test you.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

The road to a friend’s house is never long.
—Danish Proverb

The great mass of women throughout history have been confined to the cultural level of animal life in providing the male with sexual outlet and exercising the animal functions of reproduction and care of the young.
—Kate Millet (American Feminist, Writer, Sculptor)

We go on fancying that each person is thinking of us, but they are not; they are like the rest of us—they are thinking of themselves.
—Charles Reade (British Author)

Life holds so much—so much to be happy about always. Most people ask for happiness on conditions. Happiness can be felt only if you don’t set conditions.
—Arthur Rubinstein (American Pianist)

This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

May 5, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'Choose Wonder Over Worry' by Amber Rae (ISBN 0385491743) In Choose Wonder Over Worry (2018) self-help author Amber Rae recalls novelist Elizabeth Gilbert’s interaction with a wise older lady who was helping Gilbert with her struggles as a writer:

Lady: “What are you willing to give up in order to have the life you keep saying you want?”

Gilbert: “You’re right—I need to start saying no to things I don’t want to do.”

Lady: “No, it’s much harder than that. You need to learn to start saying no to things you _do_ want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.”

This anecdote is such a powerful illustration of how saying ‘no’ is so much easier when you’re clear about your priorities.

Saying 'no' is so much easier when you're clear about your priorities That’s what focus really is—saying ‘no’ to things you’d like to do so that you can free up your time to focus on the pursuits that truly matter—even tasks you have to do, even if they don’t energize and excite you.

Idea for Impact: Setting boundaries isn’t always easy, but it’s essential to establish an overall sense of well-being. Every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ to something else.

  • Don’t find any excuse to say ‘yes’ to what shouldn’t be done.
  • Don’t find any reason to say ‘no’ to what should be done.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”
  2. Here’s a Tactic to Sell Change: As a Natural Progression
  3. This Manager’s Change Initiatives Lacked Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Case Study on Aristotle’s Persuasion Framework
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. How to Make Others Feel They Owe You One: Reciprocity and Social Influence

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Balance, Communication, Decision-Making, Likeability, Negotiation, Persuasion, Relationships, Time Management

Get Good At Things By Being Bad First

May 2, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

You Have to Be Bad at Something Before You are Good at it

Your first attempts are going to be bad

A technique used by many a brilliant inventor:

  • Make something. Get it functional. Get it adequate. It’s okay if it’s subpar.
  • Then, stumble around. Iterate until it’s good.

Now, that’s a better creative process than making something good on the first go.

Start, even if you’re bad at it

Case in point: Write bad first drafts quickly. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. Let it all pour out. Let it romp all over the place. No one’s going to see it. You can shape it up later. You can gradually polish the thought flow and enrich the choice of words.

If you aren’t willing to be bad initially, you’ll never get started on anything new.

The way you create something good is by launching into it and then iterating gradually rather than by going into your cave and trying to create that perfect masterpiece.

Essentially, this is agile development. The best programmers write functional code to prove some concept. Along the way, they’ll get a better understanding of the business need for the software and the workflow. Bit by bit, they rework snippets of code and improve continuously.

Idea for Impact: Just start. Do a bad first job.

The bad is the precursor to the good. Bad will get you started. It’ll move you forward. Pressing on, you’ll get illuminated, enlightened, and informed.

Momentum is everything. Don’t put off any contemplated task thinking, “This is hard. I don’t know how to do this well. I’m going to have to do it perfectly. Or I need to wait till I have enough time.” The instant you stop cold and put something off, momentum starts the other way.

Motivation is often the result of an action, not its cause. Taking action—even in small, sloppy ways—naturally produces momentum. It’s a better solution than trying to do it right the first time.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist
  2. Doing Is Everything
  3. Just Start
  4. Zeigarnik Effect: How Incomplete Tasks Trigger Stress [Mental Models]
  5. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’

Filed Under: Mental Models, Project Management, The Great Innovators Tagged With: Decision-Making, Discipline, Fear, Goals, Lifehacks, Motivation, Perfectionism, Procrastination, Thought Process

Inspirational Quotations #943

May 1, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi

The art of friendship has been little cultivated in our society.
—Robert J. Havighurst (American Researcher)

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.
—Jean Piaget (Swiss Psychologist)

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
—Sid Caesar (American Comedian)

Sweat saves blood.
—Erwin Rommel (German Field Marshal)

Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.
—John Burroughs (American Naturalist, Writer)

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (Persian Poet)

I always say beauty is only sin deep.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.
—Blake Edwards (American Filmmaker)

Our yearnings for happiness were implanted in our hearts by Deity. They represent a kind of homesickness, for we have a residual memory of our premortal existence. They are also a foretaste of the fullness of Joy that is promised to the faithful.
—Jack H. Goaslind (American Mormon Leader)

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Just do your best today and tomorrow will come … tomorrow’s going to be a busy day, a happy day.
—Helen Boehm (American Entrepreneur)

Pray not for lighter burdens, but for stronger backs.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (Spanish Philosopher)

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Learning from Bad Managers

April 28, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Learning from Bad Managers It’s always nice to have great bosses who’ll teach you many things the easy way. However, you’ll have a boss who’s bad for you at some stage in your career. Bad bosses come in all forms: tyrants, abrasive, unprincipled, insensitive, indecisive, inconsistent, unfair, uncaring, arrogant, insensitive, quick-tempered, manipulative, apathetic, and so on.

If you’re perceptive, you can learn more from these bad examples than you’ll from the great bosses you’ll work for. Remember the axiom: “No one is totally worthless; you can always serve as a bad example.”

When you have a bad boss, ask yourself, what things about this boss will you commit to never doing? Make a list and refer to it occasionally. Avoiding doing these things will help you be a better boss—and be a positive role model for others.

Idea for Impact: Bad bosses can become useful teachers precisely because they provide some of the best lessons in what not to do that you’ll ever be offered. Take it upon yourself to never be like your bad boss.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument
  2. Good Boss in a Bad Company or Bad Boss in a Good Company?
  3. Five Ways … You Could Score Points with Your Boss
  4. 20 Reasons People Don’t Change
  5. No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad

Filed Under: Managing People Tagged With: Balance, Feedback, Getting Along, Learning, Managing the Boss, Relationships, Wisdom, Workplace

Why You May Be Overlooking Your Best Talent

April 25, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Affinity Bias - Overlooking Your Best Talent Many organizations have a hard time articulating their culture. They can’t explain what they mean when they evoke the phrase “culture fit.” Sometimes it’s just an excuse to engage employees better whom managers feel they can personally relate.

Affinity bias is a common tendency to evaluate people like us more positively than others. This bias often affects who gets hired, promoted, or picked for job opportunities. Employees who look like those already in leadership roles are more likely to be recognized for career development, resulting in a lack of representation in senior positions.

This affinity for people who are like ourselves is hard-wired into our brains. Outlawing bias is doomed to fail.

Idea for Impact: If you want to avoid missing your top talent, become conscious of implicit biases. Don’t overlook any preference for like-minded people.

For any role, create a profile that encompasses which combination of hard and soft skills will matter for the role and on the team. Determine what matters and focus on the traits and skills you need.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Unlikely Barrier to True Diversity
  2. The Duplicity of Corporate Diversity Initiatives
  3. Can’t Ban Political Talk at Work
  4. How to Hire People Who Are Smarter Than You Are
  5. Consensus is Dangerous

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Teams, Managing People Tagged With: Bias, Group Dynamics, Hiring & Firing, Introspection, Social Dynamics, Teams, Workplace

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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Recently,

  • Having What You Want
  • Inspirational Quotations #945
  • Deliver The Punchline First
  • The Tyranny of Best Practices
  • Inspirational Quotations #944
  • What Most People Get Wrong About Focus
  • Get Good At Things By Being Bad First

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!