Archives for January 2021

Inspirational Quotations #878

January 31, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi

Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

What is conceived well is expressed clearly.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (French Literary Critic)

An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
—Augustine Birrell (English Politician, Essayist)

Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.
—George Matheson (Scottish Theologian)

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don’t swallow it.
—Hank Ketcham (American Cartoonist)

The most worthwhile form of education is the kind that puts the educator inside you, as it were, so that the appetite for learning persists long after the external pressure for grades and degrees has vanished. Otherwise you are not educated; you are merely trained.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

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

A specialist is someone who does everything else worse.
—Ruggiero Ricci (American Violinist)

Three outstanding qualities make for success: judgement, industry, health. And the greatest of these is judgement.
—Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (British Politician, Journalist)

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
—Saul Steinberg (American Cartoonist)

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

The superior man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

To insist on purity is to baptize instinct, to humanize art, and to deify personality.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
—E. B. White (American Essayist, Humorist)

It’s the willing horse they saddle the most.
—Jamaican Proverb

As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.
—Hermann Hesse (Swiss Novelist, Poet)

The #1 Clue to Disruptive Business Opportunity

January 28, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When most folks encounter a problem, an inconvenience, or an unpleasant situation, they’ll assume these problems are “facts of life” and go on with their lives. At the most, they may even lament about it to others.

Not attentive entrepreneurs. They tend to identify problems and construe them as opportunities.

Serial entrepreneur Miki Agrawal tells the story of how she started WILD, New York City’s first gluten-free pizzeria, after becoming increasingly intolerant to processed foods:

It all started in 2005 when I started having recurring stomachaches. I realized I was intolerant to all of the additives, hormones, and pesticides that were being put in American mass-produced food. At the time, I had given up my favorite comfort food, pizza. In 2006, I opened WILD in New York City to offer people the best version of a pizza: made with organic, gluten-free flours & tomato sauces, and hormone-free cheeses & meats.

During that time, everyone thought “gluten-free,” “farm-to-table,” and “organic” meant “must taste like cardboard,” so it took a lot of education to get people to “get” it.

Embedded in Agrawal’s narrative is a great entrepreneurial thought lesson: You, too, can become better at recognizing unrevealed opportunities by learning to spot the subtle clues all around. The key question to ask is, “This product should already exist, why doesn’t it?”

Learn to Spot Hidden Business Opportunities

Besides WILD, Agrawal has applied the same ingenuity to found two other successsful businesses called THINX underwear and TUSHY bidet accessories.

Answer the following questions to check if some problem you’re aware of serves as a business idea worth exploring:

What’s appalling in your personal or professional world?
Is this thing so terrible that you want to do something about it?
Does this bother any person but you just as much?
Your proposed solution should already exist, but why doesn’t it?
Could this solution be worth something for others who are dealing with similar problems?

Idea for Impact: “Fix-What-Sucks” Business Opportunities are Everywhere

All you have to do is look around your own life and find something that has been broken, and then fix it. Extend and expand. The world is always seeking better, faster, cheaper, and smarter ways to solve its problems.

How Can You Contribute?

January 25, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The celebrated management guru Peter Drucker urged folks to replace the pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution. To him, the existential question was not, “How can I achieve what’s been asked of me?” but “What can I contribute?”

Drucker wrote in his bestselling The Effective Executive (1967; my summary,)

The great majority of executives tend to focus downward. They are occupied with efforts rather than with results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors “owe” them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they “should have.” As a result, they render themselves ineffectual. The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.

The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness: in a person’s own work—its content, its level, its standards, and its impacts; in his relations with others—his superiors, his associates, his subordinates; in his use of the tools of the executive such as meetings or reports. The focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results.

Peter Drucker: Focus on Contribution - How Can You Contribute? Focusing on contribution versus (or as well as) typical metrics of success pivots you away from self-focus and helps engage in meaningful relationships with your employees, peers, and managers.

In his celebrated article on “Managing Oneself” in the January 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review, Drucker clarified,

Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, What should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself—as it was for the peasant or artisan—or by a master or a mistress—as it was for domestic servants.

There is no return to the old answer of doing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowledge workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should my contribution be? To answer it, they must address three distinct elements: What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Idea for Impact: Take Responsibility for Your Contribution

Focusing on contribution instead of efforts is empowering because it compels you to think through the results you need to deliver to make a difference and identify new skills to develop. “People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves,” as Drucker remarked in The Effective Executive.

Inspirational Quotations #877

January 24, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi

I would like to see a state of society in which every man and woman preferred the old Scottish Sunday to the modern French one. We should then find solid and eternal foundations of character and self-command.
—Ramsay MacDonald (British Head of State)

The advantage of taking an instant dislike to somebody is that it saves time.
—Spike Milligan (Irish Humorist)

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud (Austrian-British Psychoanalyst)

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
—Anthony Burgess (English Novelist, Critic)

If you have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together, leaving you with only one definite piece of information: french-fried potatoes are out.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
—Bharati Mukherjee (Indian-American Novelist)

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh (British Novelist, Satirist)

The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
—Kate Chopin (American Novelist, Short-Story Writer)

My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.
—Dashiell Hammett (American Crime Writer)

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
—Joseph Schumpeter (Austrian-American Economist)

All beings desire happiness; therefore to all extend your benevolence.
—Mahavamsa (Sri Lankan Narrative History)

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
—Max Beerbohm (British Humorist)

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
—William McIlvanney (Scottish Novelist, Poet)

The very essence of leadership is [that] you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
—Theodore Hesburgh (American Catholic Educator)

Anyone who moved through those years [of the Second World War] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
—William Golding (English Novelist)

Why People Get Happier as They Age

January 23, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Studies have pointed out that most people get happier as they grow older. In fact, across any cultural, economic, and social spectrum, the most content cohort tends to be seniors.

Older people find happiness in “ordinary” things.

Older people start taking stock of their blessings. They’ve concluded that life is short. Amid the anxieties about ill health, income and savings, changes in social status, and bereavements, they tend to make the best of the time they have left.

People in later life learn to avoid situations that make them feel sad or stressed. They have relationships that are more meaningful. They’ve also had more time to learn and read others’ intentions, which helps them avoid stressful situations and develop better solutions to conflict. They’re less likely to experience persistent negative moods.

In short, older people have a better sense of perspective on life, and they take things in stride. Moreover, they’re better able to control their emotions.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait until later life for a positive experience.

If there’s one thing the older folks can show us best, happiness is a function of expectations. Older people adjust their expectations of life. They have lower aspirations, and they learn to find satisfaction in tiny triumphs.

What elements of that mindset could you integrate into your life now? Could you live more in the present tense, not grasping at some future happiness jackpot?

Five Rules for Leadership Success // Summary of Dave Ulrich’s ‘The Leadership Code’

January 22, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The key to success in any discipline is to figure out the few things that must be done really well and to get those basics right. But so many leaders fail on the fundamentals—and don’t even realize it.

The real implication of leadership has been buried deep over the years: leadership isn’t about the position but about who you are and the responsibility you can undertake. Leadership consultants Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman’s The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By (2009) argues that everything you ever need to know about leadership comes down to five straightforward rules.

If you understand these rules and put them into practice, you can’t fail to spur others and enrich teams, organizations, or communities.

Rule 1: Be A Strategist. Deliberate leaders answer the question “Where are we going?” and mull over multiple time frames. They institute a great enough sense of urgency and remove impediments to the new vision. They anticipate the future and work with others to determine how to advance from the present to the desired future. Shape the future.

Rule 2: Be an Executor. The “executor” aspect of leadership focuses on the question, “How will we make sure we get to where we are going?” Effective leaders understand how to make change happen, assign accountability, assess plans, coordinate efforts, and share information that should be incorporated into strategies. Make things happen.

Rule 3: Be a Talent Manager. Leaders who engage talent now answer the question, “Who goes with us on our business journey?” They select the right people for the right job and ensure that people have the right tools and autonomy to succeed. Leaders foster an inviting organization, create a high level of performance and passion, and continuously monitor problems that need to be fixed. Engage today’s talent.

Rule 4: Be a Human Capital Developer. Leaders who are talent developers answer the question, “Who stays and sustains the organization for the next generation?” Leaders take the time to become aware of how future trends could affect their organizations. They position their teams to win by bearing in mind the longer-term competencies required for future strategic success. Build the next generation.

Rule 5: Be Proficient. Leadership demands are more daunting than ever, and the pressure to perform is relentless. Create regular timeouts to review where you invest your time and energy to ensure that you remain capable of self-managing your personal strengths and weaknesses and generating new behaviors to deal with new challenges. Invest in yourself.

As with most “rules-for-success” books, the authors tout their assessment of “hundreds of studies, frameworks, and tools.” But their work is no more than a distillation of notable leadership thinkers’ experiences. Nonetheless, the rules sound right. The five rules are simple, but they aren’t easy. They are sensible and practicable. They’re what you can focus your effort on for maximum return.

Recommendation: Quick read The Leadership Code. It makes a great early book choice for new leaders. It provides a grounded approach to the fundamentals.

Never underestimate the power of key leadership principles that can be well executed. Complement The Leadership Code with Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954; my summary) and Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager (2019; my summary.)

How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist

January 21, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

You have an enemy: a feisty, malign force working against you. It’s the internalized perfectionist. It’s the stream of subversive self-talk urging indecision, doubt, and fear.

The #1 hack to overcoming you perfectionist tendency is to accept that whatever you need to work on just needs to be an outline, first attempt, rough copy, version 0. It needn’t be perfect. You just need to get it to a little bit better shape than before. You can then consider the next baby step.

Idea for Impact: Many things in your life need not be done perfectly. They’re to be done … just done … done to spur more done … not to dwell to perfection.

Your goal now is not to be like a Picasso, Mozart, Steven King, Lebron James, Warren Buffett, or some superstar. All you have to do now is create, edit, fix, or process and get whatever it is you’re working on to the next milestone. Make this a rule.

Tribalism Needs to Self-Destruct

January 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Big Tech’s recent rush to repress provocative content has expanded the debate on free speech and the social-media algorithms’raw power to preside over how people see the world.

Democracy and free markets aren’t supposed to function this way. Overall, capitalism works because it typically rewards players for being right and penalizes players for being wrong. If you’re an investor and you’re wide of the mark about something, the market will penalize you.

That used to be valid with journalism too. Traditionally, if a mainstream news outlet got something wrong, it’d face disapproval, retractions, and embarrassment. If the outlet was wrong often enough, its circulation would shrink, and advertisers would drop.

Sadly, this feedback loop has gone. Our media consumption has become so segmented and tribal. For instance, Fox News could assert whatever it wants its audience to believe, and the market won’t punish it. Indeed, Fox News could even be rewarded with more significant viewership.

Tribal media consumption is especially manifest with social media because the platforms’business model is driven by tribe-segmentation, engagement, and clicks. Social media reward fanaticism, emotionalism, and hyperbole. There’s no natural self-regulating market apparatus any longer.

All told, tribalism and hyperpolarized filter bubbles have taken their toll. They’re contributing to society’s intellectual decay.

Idea for Impact: This isn’t as much a freedom-of-speech issue as it is a distribution issue. Yes, everyone should be free to express themselves without the interference of editors or other filters. But what does—and doesn’t—surface for consumption needs to be moderated. Gate-keeping must be done in a way that doesn’t devalue truth and ignore the counterevidence. Technology needs to pivot to help society break through the mental barriers of tribes.

Don’t Be as Sad as Saddam // Summary of William McRaven’s ‘Make Your Bed’

January 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Admiral William McRaven’s best-selling Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life … And Maybe the World (2017) is one of those enormously successful inspirational books derived from the author’s one famous speech, in this case his 2014 commencement address at the University of Texas-Austin.

McRaven is a retired Navy SEAL. He was the head of the special ops team that killed Osama bin Laden. His book’s central message is exactly what the title proposes—it’s easy to find excuses in our lives. Simple habits, self-discipline, and a large dose of effort can be a framework for personal success and lay the foundations for changing others’ lives.

You need an anchor point for your day, and sometimes that anchor is as a simple as making your bed … If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.

Once you start your day with a completed task, you feel accomplished, and you feel motivated to keep performing things. Making your bed is thus a reflection of your discipline, your pride, and your habits. And if you’ve had a bad day, you can come at least home to a made bed and put your feet up.

If, instead, you succumb to indifference, you’ll likely carry around the same state of mind for the rest of the day. Making your bed and tidying up sets up the intention and the tone for the rest of the day.

The rest of Make Your Bed is the staple of graduation speeches—personal anecdotes that abruptly end with lessons on initiative, risk-taking, perseverance, hardship, courage. For instance, there’s a chapter on hostage negotiation that tersely ends with, “Life is a struggle … without pushing your limits… you will never know what is truly possible in your life.”

Recommendation: Quick-read Make Your Bed, especially the first chapter. And listen to the University of Texas-Austin commencement address—McRaven’s spoken voice is more uplifting.

With all due respect, beyond the intrigue of McRaven’s rigorous training and stellar experience in the armed forces, Make Your Bed makes a recurring assertion that failure to make one’s bed suggests not mere apathy but some terminal moral decay. For instance, “[Saddam Hussein did not make his bed.] … The road to hell may or may not be paved with good intentions, but the one that leads invariably to illegally annexing Kuwaiti oil fields and gassing thousands of your own people begins with a messy bed.” McRaven’s underlying message might as well be “don’t be as bad and sad as Saddam, just make your bed.”

Choose Pronoia, Not Paranoia

January 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Pronoia is a weird, incredible feeling that everyone out there is helping you and cheering you on. The world is showering you with blessings.

Yes, that’s the antithesis of paranoia.

Pronoia is the delusional sentiment that people are conspiring in favor of your well-being, speaking nice things behind your back, and rooting for your benefit. The American astrologer Rob Brezsny has written, “Pronoia is the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect, so you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.”

Pronoia is a convivial orientation—one exemplified by feelings of hope, trust, confidence, and affection. Choosing to cultivate optimism thus opens up a new identity. You no longer harbor bitterness and misgivings towards others.

Idea for Impact: Embrace the mindset that life is happening for you instead of against you. It’s a fantastic way to experience life!

Archives for January 2021

Learn to Spot Hidden Business Opportunities

Idea for Impact: “Fix-What-Sucks” Business Opportunities are Everywhere

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Take Responsibility for Your Contribution

Wondering what to read next?

Older people find happiness in “ordinary” things.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait until later life for a positive experience.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?