Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for January 2022

Don’t Be A Founder Who Won’t Let Go

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You’ll never get a potential successor to take your job if you’re going to be peering over her shoulder constantly and talking to employees directly about what they’re doing.

When you have a case of the founder’s syndrome, you’re addicted to running the show, and you’ll have a hard time separating yourself from the company you’ve built. When there are conflicts, you’re often at the center of it and hold your vision and experience over the leadership’s heads.

In the long run, your compulsion to have a say in all the nitty-gritty of your company will undermine the future of the very company that you’ve devoted your life to. The best thing you can do for its future is to back off and give your successor real control.

Establish a timetable to disengage yourself from the operating decisions and set some firm rules about this transition. Spend increasingly more time away from the business and pursue other interests. Start to envision a world in which your next ventures or leisure activities will become the principal focus of your life.

Idea for Impact: Know when your work is over and when it’s time for you to move on to other things. Grooming exceptional talent to take over the business you’ve built and gradually letting go of control is one of the most challenging things a founder will ever do. If done well, it’s the most transformative you can do for your business.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Book Summary of Nicholas Carlson’s ‘Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!’
  2. Two Leadership Lessons from United Airlines’ CEO, Oscar Munoz
  3. Starbucks’ Oily Brew: Lessons on Innovation Missing the Mark
  4. Beware of Key-Person Dependency Risk
  5. Starbucks’s Comeback // Book Summary of Howard Schultz’s ‘Onward’

Inspirational Quotations #928

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The tolerance of the skeptic … accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”
—Jean Guitton (French Catholic Philosopher)

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.
—George Sewell (English Physician, Poet)

History is a story. If history forgets or neglects to tell a story, it will inevitably forfeit much of its appeal and much of its authority as well.
—Henry Steele Commager (American Historian)

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson (American Theatremaker)

Prune these alleged friends ruthlessly from your life. You need all the positive reinforcement you can get. You need friends who think you’re fabulous, an angel in human shape, and a breath of springtime.
—Cynthia Heimel (American Humor Columnist)

When a peasant gives me his bit of cheese he’s making me a bigger present than the Prince of Làscari when he invites me to dinner. That’s obvious. The difficulty is that the cheese is nauseating. So all that remains is the heart’s gratitude which can’t be seen and the nose wrinkled in disgust which can be seen only too well.
—Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian Author)

No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.
—Olive Schreiner (South African Novelist, Feminist)

If Nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternately, there would never be more than three in a family.
—Laurence Housman (English Novelist, Dramatist)

There isn’t a plant or a business on earth that couldn’t stand a few improvements—and be better for them. Someone is going to think of them. Why not beat the other fellow to it?
—Roger Babson (American Economist)

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
—Anthony Hope (English Author)

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
—Robert South (English Theologian)

Nothing recedes like success.
—Bryan Forbes (English Actor, Film Director)

A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset

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It’s okay to have some clutter and untidiness occasionally.

Sometimes, look away when the kids scatter crumbs or toys are strewn all over the house. Instead of spending an afternoon swiffering, vacuuming, scrubbing, and polishing, just play with your kids.

Let yourself off for not getting all the chores done or keeping a flawlessly curated, Instagramable home. If you have guests coming over, stop agonizing and embrace a tidy-enough household. No need to live for your dinner guests—your home doesn’t always have to look the way you want.

Idea for Impact: Train yourself to care less. Yeah, really.

Perfectionism is a wicked way to live life. Look for ways to reach your goals without being perfect.

Setting unrealistic expectations only makes you vulnerable to emotional difficulties. That’s what perfectionism does. Perfection is holding yourself to a paradigm wherein anything less than “perfect” is, in one way or another, failure.

Think about how much more productive you could be if you stop carrying the weight of excessive expectations on your shoulders.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. In Imperfection, the True Magic of the Holidays Shines
  2. The Liberating Power of Embracing a Cluttered Space
  3. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  4. Dear Hoarder, Learn to Let Go
  5. Change Your Perfectionist Mindset (And Be Happier!) This Holiday Season

Why is Task-Planning so Time-Consuming?

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Planning, which saves time, itself can take quite a bit of time. It’s an interesting quasi-paradox that I’m sure you’ve run into.

That planning is long-drawn-out is one of the main criticisms of even the supposedly solid task-management systems out there. Take David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach, for example. Achieving the system’s potential fully is simply overwhelming. Allen’s method focuses more on the capturing, reviewing, and planning of tasks than it does on the actual doing them.

The key to time management is awareness. Think realistically about your time by recognizing it is a limited resource. Always ask yourself, even when you’re planning your time out, “Is this time-effective?”

Don’t over-organize your list. Don’t spend too much time making it look nice. Don’t feel like you need to do everything on your list. Don’t put anything on your list when you’d be wiser to just do the task now and save the time it takes to put it on your list and think about it again later.

Idea for Impact: Refine your planning approach further. Remember, the benefits of any tool must exceed its costs.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset
  2. In Imperfection, the True Magic of the Holidays Shines
  3. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  4. Change Your Perfectionist Mindset (And Be Happier!) This Holiday Season
  5. Busyness is a Lack of Priorities

Inspirational Quotations #927

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A thick skin is a gift from God.
—Konrad Adenauer (German Statesman)

The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
—Sheryl Sandberg (American Executive, Author)

The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.
—Edward Thorndike (American Psychologist)

It takes a kind of shabby arrogance to survive in our time, and a fairly romantic nature to want to.
—Edgar Z. Friedenberg (American Sociologist)

There is no more interesting place in the world to meet characters than a movie set. If you have lost anybody anywhere in the World and don’t know where they are, they are in Hollywood trying to get in the Movies.
—Will Rogers (American Humorist, Actor)

Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking.
—Anita Roddick (English Businessperson)

The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome and the linkage between effect and cause is hidden from us.
—Peter L. Bernstein (American Economist, Author)

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.
—Evander Holyfield (American Boxer)

When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people’s excuse for failure.
—Robert C. Townsend (American Businessman)

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.
—J. B. Priestley (British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist)

If it’s intuitive, it’s probably wrong. The absolutely distinguishing quality of a leader is that a leader takes us elsewhere.
—Bob Galvin (American Business Executive)

This is where you will win the battle—in the playhouse of your mind.
—Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

Once you have been confronted with a life-and-death situation, trivia no longer matters. Your perspective grows and you live at a deeper level. There’s no time for pettiness.
—Happy Rockefeller (American Philanthropist)

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
—Billie Holiday (American Jazz Singer)

Real Ways to Make Habits Stick

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Want to make a new habit stick? Try piggybacking or ‘stacking’ it to an existing one.

Choose something you have no problem motivating yourself to do—say, brushing your teeth—then combine it with some habit you want to acquire. The existing pattern serves as the prompt for the new habit.

Most people have robust morning and evening routines; try stacking new habits into those practices. For example, if you want to do some mindfulness meditation every day, do it after brushing your teeth in the morning. Your wake-up routine becomes the cue to build a new meditation habit.

Better yet, associate the habit you want to achieve with a ‘temptation’ (something you love doing,) like sipping your morning cuppa joe. Your habit stacking plan may look like this: “After I meditate for ten minutes, I will have my coffee.” This way, the habit will become more attractive to you, making it more likely to stick.

Idea for Impact: Good habits build automatically when you don’t have to consciously think about doing them. Look for patterns in your day and think about how to use existing habits to create new, positive ones. Stacking habits can encourage you to remember, repeat, and, therefore, maintain a series of behaviors. Set yourself up for success.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Do You Really Need More Willpower?
  2. Use This Trick to Make Daily Habits Stick This Year
  3. What Are You So Afraid Of? // Summary of Susan Jeffers’s ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’
  4. Don’t Try to ‘Make Up’ for a Missed Workout, Here’s Why
  5. Conquer That Initial Friction

The #1 Hack to Build Healthy Habits in the New Year

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Even the more determined souls among us find that New Year’s resolutions aren’t effective.

Some of us don’t even bother making New Year’s resolutions anymore because we always break them. Mark Twain famously wrote in a letter to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in January 1863,

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual … New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions.

When we try to change everything at once, we set ourselves up for failure

We make bold resolutions to start exercising or losing weight, for example, without taking the steps needed to set ourselves up for success. Behavioral scientists who study habit formation argue that most people try to create healthy habits in the wrong way. Starting a new routine isn’t always easy.

Stanford University researcher B. J. Fogg, the author of Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything (2019,) notes that jumping cold turkey into new beginnings upon the turn of the calendar demands a high level of motivation that can’t be sustained over time. He recommends starting with tiny habits to help make the new habit as easy and achievable as possible in the beginning.

Small Measures, Large Results

Small, specific goals are amazingly effective. Making a New Year’s resolution to “run a marathon this summer” is an imposing aspiration to get started on, but committing to “run two miles in 30 minutes thrice a week in January” is a first operating objective.

Break any big challenge into simple steps and just focus on getting to the first step. Taking a daily short stroll could be the beginning of an exercise habit. Then, regroup and think about step two.

The truth is, if you invest time and have even a little bit of success in any endeavor, you’re both more likely to believe the changes will last and commit more. Success builds momentum.

Idea for Impact: Good habits happen when we set ourselves up for achievable success.

Bold promises and vague goals don’t work well. Neither does beating up on yourself for lapses.

Make New Year’s resolutions by establishing long-term targets and making many small resolutions all year round. If you want to lose weight, resolve to pass up nacho-and-cheese and soda for a month.

Take one baby step at a time. Expect some setbacks. The willpower necessary will be small. And you’ll get better results that’ll actually stick.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’
  2. Use This Trick to Make Daily Habits Stick This Year
  3. Half-Size Your Goals
  4. Don’t Try to ‘Make Up’ for a Missed Workout, Here’s Why
  5. Just Start with ONE THING

Inspirational Quotations #926

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It’s just as easy to be happy with a lot of money as with a little.
—Marvin Traub (American Businessman)

We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions.
—Delphine de Girardin (French Novelist)

Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture—a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
—Claude Debussy (French Composer)

If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter.
—Hokusai (Japanese Artist, Wood Engraver)

A fault confessed is half redressed.
—African Proverb

One ought to go too far, in order to know how far one can go.
—Heinrich Boll (German Writer)

You gotta play the hand that’s dealt you. There may be pain in that hand, but you play it.
—James Brady (American Government Official)

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
—Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand-born Physicist)

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
—Eugene Ionesco (French Dramatist)

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
—Lionel Trilling (American Critic)

Except that right side up is best, there is not much to learn about holding a baby. There are one hundred and fifty-two distinctly different ways—and all are right! At least all will do.
—Heywood Broun (American Journalist)

You will never know a man till you do business with him.
—Scottish Proverb

We find it hard to believe that other people’s thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.
—James Harvey Robinson (American Historian)

The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.
—Babe Didrikson Zaharias (American Athlete)

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
—Friedrich Engels (German Socialist Political Philosopher)