Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Nagesh Belludi

How to … Make a Dreaded Chore More Fun

By Leave a Comment

If everyday chores feel like a drag and you don’t have the motivation to do anything but be on your phone and laze around, consider the following actions that have most benefited my clients:

  • Find a friend you can talk to long-distance while you both tackle household chores. You can keep each other accountable.
  • Challenge yourself to beat the clock. Set a time to complete the task, and see how much ahead you can get it done.
  • Do “three-minute tidy” routines throughout the day. Choose a room or clutter magnet and go at it for three minutes. Sprucing up as-you-go throughout the day is more agreeable than a long list of must-dos that must be tackled at once.
  • Begin a dreaded chore in the morning or at the earliest you can. So the rest of the day is free for having some fun. The sooner you check off your to-do list, the more motivated you tend to feel.
  • Embrace the mess. It’s okay is good enough. Tolerate some clutter from time to time and excuse yourself for not getting all the chores done or having a perfect home. Think about it as a form of prioritization.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Five Ways … You Could Prevent Clutter in the First Place
  2. Get Unstuck and Take Action Now
  3. A Guaranteed Formula for Success: Identify Your #1 Priority and Finish It First
  4. The Mental Junkyard Hour
  5. How to … Overcome Impact Blindness and Make Decisions with Long-Term Clarity

What if Something Can’t Be Measured

By Leave a Comment

During a September-2021 Airlines Confidential podcast (via Gary Leff’s View from the Wing,) former Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza told an exciting story about the airline industry’s systematic approach to reckon if potential new routes are economically feasible:

For the most part, airlines rely on data—required and reported by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics—on ticket purchases that show the number of people flying a given route and what price. For example, New Orleans, which is home to one of the largest Honduran populations in the U.S., has not had direct service to Honduras. Spirit Airlines will therefore analyze data from Sabre Market Intelligence for 2019 showing O&D (Origin and Destination) traffic between New Orleans and Honduras.

Sometimes, though, there’s no data on historical demand on a route, such as when Spirit Airlines was considering service to Armenia, Colombia. There hadn’t ever been a U.S. carrier flying into the airport, so there wasn’t available traffic data Spirit could access. Instead, Spirit looked at telephone data and migrant remittance statistics to get a sense of ties between the U.S. and the Latin American city. Spirit studied the frequency with which people were calling friends and relatives and how much money and how frequently money was being remitted as a reliable metric to determine if the new route was viable.

Spirit Airlines relies heavily on leisure bookings, especially visiting friends and relatives (VFR) traffic. In the absence of historical yield data for a route being considered, Spirit used fund transfers to Latin America as a stand-in variable.

A surrogate metric or proxy metric is exactly that—a substitute used in place of a variable of interest when that variable can’t be measured directly or is difficult to measure. For example, per-capita GDP is often a proxy for the standard of living, and the value of a house is a stand-in for the household’s wealth. Freight tonnage is often a proxy for economic activity.

Idea for Impact: Relying on intuition for sound decision-making isn’t sustainable, so folks need a systematic approach to making those decisions. Use meaningful proxy and surrogate metrics in your decisions to help overcome inherent biases with what can’t be measured.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Data Never “Says”
  2. Question the Now, Imagine the Next
  3. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  4. Be Smart by Not Being Stupid
  5. The “Ashtray in the Sky” Mental Model: Idiot-Proofing by Design

Inspirational Quotations #952

By

Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.
—Vanessa Redgrave (British Actress)

Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to what they want to do.
—Kathleen Winsor (American Novelist)

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
—Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

Good has but one enemy, the evil; but the evil has two enemies, the good and itself.
—Johannes von Muller (Swiss Historian)

Facts that challenge basic assumptions—and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem—are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
—Willie Nelson (American Country Musician)

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and intruded depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.
—John Hope Franklin (American Historian)

The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
—Bruce Lee (American Martial Artist)

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic he isn’t.
—Bert Williams (American Entertainer)

We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live.
—George F. Kennan (American Diplomat, Historian)

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.
—Francois Mauriac (French Novelist)

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.
—Queen Elizabeth II (Queen of United Kingdom)

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what’s said and what’s done.
—Seamus Heaney (Irish Poet, Playwright)

The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

Why Groups Cheat: Complicity and Collusion

By Leave a Comment

News broke out that Ernst & Young revealed this week that its employees cheated on ethics exams. The accounting behemoth is being fined $100 million. That’s one of the biggest fines ever levied against an audit firm.

It’s absurd that specialists responsible for keeping things straight and steering moral enterprise cheated on ethics exams! Ernst & Young’s leadership evidently disregarded the internal reports about the cheating. Perhaps because when people identify so strongly with a group, they’re much more swayed to view the group’s actions positively and accept that group’s norms.

Research by Vanderbilt University’s Jessica Kennedy and colleagues suggests that high-flying people are sometimes more inclined than low-ranking people to adopt what their group recommends, even when it represents an ethics breach. Power sometimes provokes people to so strongly want to identify with their group that they’re willing to overlook when the group’s collective actions cross an ethical line. This affinity is, therefore, urged to sustain transgression instead of stopping its spread, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible
  2. The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!
  3. Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals
  4. The Enron Scandal: A Lesson on Motivated Blindness
  5. Power Inspires Hypocrisy

Stop Trying to Fix Things, Just Listen!

By Leave a Comment

In these distraction-packed times, it’s harder than ever to create the mental and physical space necessary to really listen—actively listen—to another person.

A common listening pitfall is trying to have all the answers. Instead of fully hearing out a friend, you’re scrolling through your brain, being all frustrated that this problem has an obvious solution and concocting a hasty fix.

As a listener, your most important job is to listen with curiosity and immerse yourself in the person’s message. Just try to understand the person and listen to their feelings. Validate their suffering, take their perspective, and let them know you understand. That’s often what people want most.

Idea for Impact: To be a better listener, talk with each other about the ways they’d like you to give support. People have different ways in which they prefer to seek and provide support.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Signs Your Helpful Hand Might Stray to Sass
  2. How to … Address Over-Apologizing
  3. Avoid Trigger Words: Own Your Words with Grace and Care
  4. “Are We Fixing, Whinging, or Distracting?”
  5. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!

When Your Team is Shorthanded

By Leave a Comment

When your team is understaffed and/or overwhelmed, remind your supervisors about the pressures you’re dealing with. Ask for more resources without being perceived as a whiny opportunist.

  • Prioritize and focus. Decide what goals are truly significant—to you, your team, your company, and your customers. Comb out anything that doesn’t have a justifiable economic impact or isn’t aligned with the company strategy. Meet with your boss and team to ensure everyone’s aligned with your tailored priorities.
  • Align expectations and manage up. Engage your team on what you could collectively do differently to provide better results with greater efficiency. Have daily and weekly priorities. Use short, frequent meetings to increase your team’s work momentum. Let small successes be a motivational tool.
  • Get credit for your good work. Make the most of the understaffing by recasting yourself as an asset to your company amidst this apparent upheaval. With the buoyant jobs market and a heavier workload for those left behind, you may never be in a better-negotiating position.

Idea for Impact: If your team is understaffed and overworked, you don’t need to suck it up and try to do it all. Don’t keep your head down, and don’t let the burden of responsibilities stymie your personal and team goals.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Book Summary of Leigh Branham’s ‘The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave’
  2. How to Stop “Standing” Meetings from Clogging Up Your Time
  3. From the Inside Out: How Empowering Your Employees Builds Customer Loyalty
  4. You Can’t Serve Two Masters
  5. People Work Best When They Feel Good About Themselves: The Southwest Airlines Doctrine

You Need a Personal Cheerleader

By Leave a Comment

Many people credit some of their success to others who believed in them and urged them on when their confidence waned.

A personal cheerleader could be a companion, friend, or family member who believes in you, takes an eager interest and encourages you, and helps lift your self-confidence, even if they raise some practical questions.

This cheerleader could indeed be a mirror through which you can see yourself. Somebody who encourages you to process and think through your experiences and reframe mistakes as opportunities to learn. Somebody who can help you notice things you do well, however small.

Idea for Impact: A personal cheerleader is pivotal to a meaningful, resilient life. Curtailing negative self-talk is difficult when you’re trying to build your self-confidence.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. An Underappreciated Way to Improve Team Dynamic
  2. What’s the Best Way to Reconnect with a Mentor?
  3. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster
  4. The Difference between Directive and Non-Directive Coaching
  5. Witty Comebacks and Smart Responses for Nosy People

The Best Advice Tony Blair Ever Got: Finding the Time to Think Strategically

By Leave a Comment

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair reminisced, at a 2012 event at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, how easy it is to get so absorbed by the pressures of doing that you rarely ever disentangle yourself from the chock-full of activities and the clutter that can choke strategic thinking.

As the leader of the Opposition, when I went to see him in 1996 at the White House, he explained that one of the hardest things when you get into the government is finding the time to think strategically. It’s being able to create the space so that you’re focused on what you really know counts because otherwise, he said, the system will take you over. You’ll be in meetings from 8:00 in the morning till 10:00 at night, and you think you’re immensely busy, but the tactics and the strategy have all got mixed.

What happens in leadership is that things come at you the whole time. If you’re not careful, you’ll spend your time dealing with one situation after another. You lose your strategic grip on what’ll determine if you’re a successful government. Many of these crises are real, and you must deal with them. But when you judge your government in history, no one will remember any of them. You’ve got to create the space to be thinking strategically all the time to change the world.

Idea for Impact: It’s your strategic thinking, more than any other single activity, that can influence what you’ll achieve as a leader. Find ways to create more “head time” amid the busyness.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Innovation Without Borders: Shatter the ‘Not Invented Here’ Mindset
  2. Three Rules That Will Decide If You Should Automate a Task
  3. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate
  4. Better Than Brainstorming
  5. Intellectual Inspiration Often Lies in the Overlap of Disparate Ideas

How to … Nap at Work without Sleeping

By Leave a Comment

Make nap time the new coffee break. A quick snooze boosts productivity and improves memory and problem-solving.

Bill Anthony’s The Art of Napping at Work (1999) states that a shot of shut-eye was an indispensable afternoon pick-me-up for some of history’s greatest achievers, viz., Aristotle, Eleanor Roosevelt, John D Rockefeller, Leonardo da Vinci, Lyndon B Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Napoleon, Salvador Dalí, Thomas Edison, and Winston Churchill.

According to the University of California-Irvine sleep researcher Sara Mednick, you don’t want to get into a deep sleep because you need to be alert. Her Take a Nap! Change Your Life (2006) uses the term “sleep inertia” to describe the inability to shrug sleep off after a nap. This impaired state worsens as you go deeper and deeper into sleep. So the trick is to avoid getting deep sleep.

If you nap about twenty minutes, you’ll be in light sleep, which is easy to get out of. In other words, twenty minutes is long enough to reach Stage 2 sleep but short enough to ward you off from waking up groggy.

Idea for Impact: Go ahead and snooze for 20 minutes, ideally sometime between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Step into bright light or splash your face with water if you need help regaining alertness after the alarm goes off. The post-nap energy spike can last for several hours.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  2. The Mental Junkyard Hour
  3. A Guaranteed Formula for Success: Identify Your #1 Priority and Finish It First
  4. Warren Buffett’s Advice on How to Focus on Priorities and Subdue Distractions
  5. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus

Inspirational Quotations #951

By

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
—Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japanese Novelist)

There is scarcely anything more harmless than political or party malice. It is best to leave it to itself. Opposition and contradiction are the only means of giving it life or duration.
—John Witherspoon (American Clergyman)

Billions are wasted on ineffective philanthropy. Philanthropy is decades behind business in applying rigorous thinking to the use of money.
—Michael Porter (American Management Theorist)

When there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.
—Al Alvarez (English Critic, Poet, Novelist)

The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it’s a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
—Jonathan Lethem (American Novelist, Essayist)

The word career is a divisive word. It’s a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life.
—Grace Paley (American Author)

The first duty of a government is to give education to the people
—Simon Bolivar (Venezuelan Patriot)

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.
—Elizabeth Gilbert (American Novelist)

There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.
—Edwin Paxton Hood (English Nonconformist Divine)

Nothing is such an obstacle to the production of excellence as the power of producing what is good with ease and rapidity.
—John Aikin (British Educator)

The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.
—James Martineau (English Unitarian Theologian)

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.
—Sylvester Stallone (American Actor)

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
—Ivy Baker Priest (American Politician)