Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for November 2022

Lilies and Leeches

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Lilies and Leeches: Surround Yourself with Those Who Elevate You You may have heard of the notion of lilies and leeches. The lilies are the people—and situations—that bring out the best in you. The leeches just grind you down.

Learn to say ‘no’ to relationships or situations that don’t work for you. Life’s too short to waste time on anything that can suck your happiness and energy. Avoid those emotional leeches, productivity leeches, and financial leeches.

Idea for Impact: A little-cited key to a rewarding life: choose to surround yourself with those who elevate you. With those who are caring, supportive, and nonjudgmental, and who make you feel loved, appreciated, and respected.

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  3. On Black Friday, Buy for Good—Not to Waste
  4. Having What You Want
  5. The Case Against Minimalism: Less Stuff = Less You

Inspirational Quotations #971

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Every man has his faults. It all depends on whether he has enough good qualities to counterbalance them.
—Ferenc Santa (Hungarian Novelist)

I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.
—Tallulah Bankhead (American Actress)

Nobody motivates today’s workers. If it doesn’t come from within, it doesn’t come. Fun helps remove the barriers that allow people to motivate themselves.
—Herman Cain (American Businessman)

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. You can see that when you think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.
—Brenda Ueland (American Journalist Memoirist)

Redundancy is expensive but indispensable.
—Jane Jacobs (Canadian Urbanologist)

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank.
—Rose Macaulay (British Author)

Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.
—John Amos Comenius (Czech Educator)

Human rights are not a luxury, or something to be observed if they don’t conflict with some other priority, like peace or economic development. They are instead the key to achieving those things and anything else of urgent importance to the world.
—Robert L. Bernstein (American Publisher, Activist)

I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely with his lips, follow me.
—Giuseppe Garibaldi (Italian Revolutionary)

Success isn’t magic or hocus-pocus—its simply learning how to focus.
—Jack Canfield (American Self-Help Author)

Lessons from the Japanese Decision-Making Process

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Japanese firms traditionally use the ringi seido (“request for approval system”) to make critical decisions. A proposal is circulated to appropriate people, advancing from lower to higher ranks. As the proposal works through the management layers before landing at the top, each participant puts their stamp (the hanko) on the document.

This collective consensus process allows for a greater number of reasonable alternatives to be considered and for the risk to be spread. Although it may be slow, the implementation is faster once the decision is made. (Since the early ’90s, Toyota has followed a “three-stamp movement,” restricting the number of people needing to approve a proposal to three.)

Unlike consensus management in the west, the ringi system is often used to appease factions in an institution. Given the Japanese norms (nemawashi) of social structure and intercultural communication, everybody tends to be very diplomatic when giving an opinion. A decision isn’t made if unanimity isn’t reached.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Serve the ‘Lazy Grapefruit’
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  4. The Abilene Paradox: Just ‘Cause Everyone Agrees Doesn’t Mean They Do
  5. Why New Expatriate Managers Struggle in Asia: Confronting the ‘Top-Down’ Work Culture

Public Speaking is Traumatizing Vulnerable Students

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For decades, universities have forced presentations and class participation to be integral to students’ grades. Sure, employers are interested not only in graduates’ subject knowledge but also in their ability to communicate, work in teams, problem-solve, build consensus, and so on.

However, public speaking anxiety is too common in college students, particularly those suffering from chronic social anxiety. Some even dread the sheer prospect of raising their hands in class for fear of being judged.

Sadly, our academic institutions aren’t doing enough to support such students. College is, after all, a place to practice in a supportive environment—it’s better for students to confront their fears in a relatively low-stakes classroom setting than in the real world. One lecturer I know of accommodated a nervous student by dismissing everyone else and making her present only to the professor.

Colleges must emphasize that anxiety and fear of public speaking are entirely normal—Mark Twain famously noted, “There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” Colleges should assess individual students’ natural ability and teach public speaking as part of university learning, starting with systematic desensitization and conditioning confidence until the students feel they can tackle entire presentations.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  2. The Nature of Worry
  3. This Trick Can Relieve Your Anxiety: “What’s the worst that can happen?”
  4. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  5. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

Inspirational Quotations #970

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Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.
—Indra Devi (Russian-American Yoga Teacher)

The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past.
—Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (Japanese Novelist)

There are many problems in life where the solution is largely a brainless time investment.
—Steve Pavlina (American Motivational Speaker)

Love is a gift from God, and as we obey His laws and genuinely learn to serve others, we develop God’s love in our lives. Love of God is the means of unlocking divine powers which help us to live worthily and to overcome the world.
—David B. Haight (American Mormon Leader)

When man meets an obstacle he can’t destroy, he destroys himself.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (Polish Journalist)

Natural species are the library from which genetic engineers can work.
—Thomas Lovejoy (American Biologist)

I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn’t want all the pills I’ve recommended, that’s up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.
—Javier Perez de Cuellar (Peruvian Diplomat, Politician)

Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.
—Paul Rand (American Graphic Designer)

The best that companies can do is let a thousand flowers bloom, in the hope that one of them sprouts into a substantial growth business.
—Clayton M. Christensen (American Academic, Business Consultant)

The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.
—Samuel Richardson (English Novelist)

What we do not understand, we cannot control.
—Charles A. Reich (American Jurist, Author)

People who are smart get into Mensa. People who are really smart look around and leave.
—James Randi (Canadian-American Escapologist)

If you think of life as like a big pie, you can try to hold the whole pie and kill yourself trying to keep it, or you can slice it up and give some to the people around you, and you still have plenty left for yourself.
—Jay Leno (American Comedian)

Don’t Over-Deliver

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Many tasks in the workplace could be done with total adequacy and barely more.

Don’t get fixated on ensuring that every task is entirely done, every email edited and re-edited to get the grammar right, or every spreadsheet is flawless. This is a pointless pursuit.

Sure, you don’t want to be a careless hammerhead. But don’t waste time sweating the little stuff. There comes the point where any changes you make to whatever it is you’re working on no longer makes it better but just different. Identifying the inflection point of diminishing returns is one of the hardest skills to learn and one of the most necessary.

Don’t agonize over tiny improvements in your work and thwart yourself from achieving the actual goal of doing the work.

Idea for Impact: Most acceptable outcomes correlate with “good enough,” not “perfection.” Being consistently excellent is essentially a matter of fierce discipline—doing the essential things well.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Book Summary of ‘Yeah, No. Not Happening’: Karen Karbo on Rejecting the Pursuit of Perfection’s Snare
  2. Why Settle?
  3. The Costs of Perfectionism: A Case Study of A Two Michelin-Starred French Chef
  4. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’