Sharpening Your Skills

Why You Can’t Relax on Your Next Vacation

April 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Some managers can’t slow down even on vacation. They keep worrying about their work and won’t come back feeling rested and rejuvenated.

If you feel the added guilt of being away, it may be time for you to look inward and reflect upon your ability to delegate. Don’t bring fear of inadequacy with you on vacation.

Sure, most people responsible for delivering big things find it difficult to be away. Feeling out of control is always stressful. Here’s how to make time off as restful as possible:

Schedule 1-hour check-ins every day.
Manage your team’s expectations and make sure everyone knows what matters you want to be bothered about.
Build-in buffers at both ends. Don’t work right until you leave for the airport and don’t get back to work right off the plane. Schedule an extra day off before you depart and another when you return. Dive back in slowly.

Idea for Impact: Time off should be time off. Get the most out of your time off by unplugging completely.

How to Keep Your Brain Fresh and Creative

April 22, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you need to make much progress on a project, you may feel constrained to work on it in one sitting-down.

Don’t.

No one can concentrate on a single task all the time.

Break up your day—and your thought patterns—by regularly engaging in activities that aren’t intellectually taxing.

Plan your distraction. Have a little something to look forward to—a 15-minute break to watch the highlights of last night’s match, for example. Stretch, dance, or get a glass of water. Go for a short walk around your neighborhood.

According to neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Larry Rosen’s The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World (2016,) regular breaks can lower mental fatigue, boost brain function, and keep you on-task for more extended periods. Creativity can flow when your mind wanders, allowing you to synthesize information uniquely.

When you sit back down to resume working, you’ll be emotionally regulated and have your mental resources replenished. This helps you be more creative and get more done.

Idea for Impact: Work in spurts. Set specific times to take recesses and stick to them. Your mind needs a break—a “state change,” in fact—at least every 30-45 minutes to work more effectively.

Deep Work Mode: How to Achieve Profound Focus

April 21, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Venture capitalist Paul Graham’s influential essay “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” (2009) underscores the need for compartmentalizing time.

A specific frame of mind is required to excel in ‘making’ things versus ‘managing’ things. The constant context switching impedes what you’re focusing on.

Graham recommends dividing work into two timetables of time blocks: “Maker Time” necessitates large blocks of dedicated, interruption-free time to work intensely—developing ideas, writing code, generating leads, producing products, or accomplishing projects. “Manager Time” requires shifting from one interaction to another, allowing for many meetings and brief-to-the-point interactions to oversee, direct, or administer.

The contrast is significant because of the different operative mindsets needed. Those engaged in maker time shouldn’t be pulled into meetings at irregular hours; that’ll debase the time blocks they need to move themselves and their teams forward.

Graham’s emphasis on the inconveniences of switching modes is right on: “For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.”

Idea for Impact: Change the way you schedule your day and get uninterrupted stretches of time to get your most important work done. A bit of variety and change of pace can be good.

Can’t Expect to Hold the Same Set of Beliefs Your Entire Life

April 7, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It’s okay to challenge your core values and change.

That’s normal and healthy.

It means you’re able to ability to transcend your current worldview and have an open mind. You’re willing to learn about new perspectives. You’re eager to search actively for evidence against your favored beliefs, discover and challenge your internal biases, and change your core values if they no longer make sense.

Having the freedom to change your core beliefs and being able to reason and reconsider your positions on something is an integral part of being human, as Aristotle writes in his Nicomachean Ethics.

Don’t be more committed to the appearance of consistency than to real growth.

Don’t inadvertently buy into the values that predominate popular culture.

When you have doubts and questions and changes of heart and mind, even on fundamental issues such as faith or political orientation, don’t consider them character defects or moral flaws. You’re just exercising your ability for rational thought.

Life should alter you. It should recondition your soul and mind and refocus your lens. Time and experience—the people you meet, the ideas you stumble upon, and how you discover meaning—should all change you. On religion, say, you won’t have the understanding of yourself and of God and the world that you had ten years ago. And you can bet that the same won’t be true ten years from now.

As a human, you grow and change. Your worldview can—and should—reflect that growth. Regardless of what you feel, think, believe, and profess today, if someday in the future you find yourself in a different place, remember: it’s okay to realign your mind—and to speak it.

Idea for Impact: Rethink everything you previously thought out. It’ll only strengthen your character.

You’ll also discover that you’re rarely offended by other people’s opinions anymore, even when they differ significantly from your own. You’ll be care far more about how people justify and rationalize those views. And you’ll get a better appreciation of the nuances—this is much more important than whether or not someone agrees with you.

A Hack to Resist Temptation: The 15-Minute Rule

March 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When you’re faced with a temptation, e.g., when you have a sugar craving, try this 15-Minute Rule: Commit to not giving in for 15 minutes. Take yourself away from the stimulus that led to the temptation.

With any luck, the enticement will wear off. At least it’ll become more manageable to control. If at all possible, wait another 15 minutes.

Increasing your awareness of your temptations and refusing to submit to them impulsively is the key to changing behavior.

Idea for Impact: Self-control in the face of urges and cravings is tricky. Even a simple distraction can break the trance.

Let Go of Toxic Friendships

March 21, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Friendships are an integral ingredient of happiness, and they often help you feel better—but not always. Some friendships are just bad for you.

Occasionally, you can fall into the trap of hanging onto unhealthy relationships because they’re familiar—even when you’re constantly let down. Worse yet, ‘ambivalent relationships’ can cause you more anxiety than being with people you actively dislike.

It takes two to define a friendship. Relationships are grounded in social exchange, and with unbalanced friendships, the other draws more from the “friendship bank” over time than they care to put into it. If you’ve set clear expectations and boundaries, and the other isn’t consistently sticking to them, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your relationship.

What you get out of your friendships ultimately affects your physical and emotional health. It pays to focus your attention on strengthening healthy relationships and letting go of toxic friendships.

Luckily, most friendships are not too difficult to escape. Downgrade the friendship. Make yourself less accessible. If the relationship isn’t very close, merely drift apart.

How You Can Make the Most of the Great Resignation

March 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The imminent return-to-work stage of the pandemic will spark yet another surge in people reexamining what their careers look like and reprioritizing their work values. My suggestion: Only quit if you have a better work- and life-choice; don’t resign out of empowerment. It’s better to be going toward something instead of going away from something.

Now, then, if you choose not to join the trend, you’ll have to cope with the void left by your coworkers and confront the extra demands. But this situation is a great chance for you to endure the tumult and even flourish. Here’s how.

If you’re swamped with the demands of your job, do a scope creep audit. Examine your original responsibilities and how you’ve picked up more work during the pandemic. Then meet with your boss and politely address the problem you’re facing, “Here’s what I was doing, and here’s how I’ve been allotting my time now. How could we reprioritize? What could we drop or delegate? What additional resources can you give me?” If you think you deserve a salary increase or better conditions, leverage your added value and ask for it. Give your manager a chance to address your issues. Don’t over-negotiate; it’s seldom worth the ill feelings.

Idea for Impact: The Great Resignation is an excellent time to stay at your job and make the most of the void. Recast 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.

Ideas Evolve While Working on Something Unrelated

March 10, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In the ’90s, Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, through its subsidy Hitachi-Omron Terminal Solutions, introduced the Clean ATM, which cleaned the bank notes during transactions. The Baltimore Sun (11-Dec-1996) notes,

Hitachi has turned its talents to money-laundering of a literal kind, with an automated teller machine that sterilizes and irons yen notes before dispensing them.

Hitachi did not set out to sanitize the money; its engineers were trying to solve the problem of crumpled bills, which tended to jam machines, a company spokesman says. They solved the problem by running the bills through rollers heated to 392 degrees [Fahrenheit, 200 degrees Celsius]—any hotter would singe paper money—and discovered that the process also killed bacteria.

Idea for Impact: Serendipity is central to the creative process. Many ideas evolve when you’re working on something unrelated. Always be ready to discover what you’re not looking for.

It’s Not What You See; It’s How You See It

March 7, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Try to consider the sunny side of a situation rather than focusing on what’s wrong with it.

If it’s pouring rain, don’t upset yourself over plans hampered or stress about getting drenched. Instead, relish the splendor of landscape under the grey sky, delight in the pattering noise of the rain, and savor how the flowers have their heads as if to rest. Appreciate how rain is the great facilitator of life. And use this as a perfect excuse to curl up with a good book and chill out.

It’s not what you see; it’s how you see it.

Got a demanding new boss? Bring to mind all the things you can learn from her—including what not to do as a manager.

Reframing allows you an expanded view of your reality. You can move your experience from a negative frame to a more hopeful one, filled with opportunities.

How you frame something can change everything. When you change your point of view, the facts of the situation remain the same. But the shift in your emotional tone changes the meaning that you give to the situation.

Idea for Impact: Practice cognitive control. Learn how to put things in perspective.

When something or somebody annoys you, shift your attention. Ask, “What’s right about this? What’s to be appreciated about this?” Imagine the best possible outcomes.

Reframing an event or stimulus changes your emotional response to it—and it helps keep stress in check.

Changing the way you see the world is not a denial. It doesn’t imply naive optimism. Instead, it is the purging of mental pollutants such as dislike and anger—even aggression—that poison the mind and disable you from finding refuge in presence.

In Buddhism, the opposite of pleasure is not pain but delusion.

Get Unstuck and Take Action Now

March 3, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From Sharon Lebell’s interpretations of Epictetus in Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness (2007,)

Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer.

Put your principles into practice—now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you’ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better.

From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do—now.

If you’re like most people who want more from life than what they’re getting, remember that cutting through the stupor of life often starts with gaining clarity.

What do you value? What matters most?

Does your life align with your proclaimed values and priorities? If not, now’s the perfect time to lean into small actions that could set you on the right path.

Progress is within reach, but you’ll need to find clarity and restructure how you think about goals.

Stop procrastinating now. Recognize that you can be better. Without hesitation, decide to be the person that only you can be.

Idea for Impact: What’s one brave decision you can make now to get unstuck and move in the direction of your goals?

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Sharpening Your Skills

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Don’t be more committed to the appearance of consistency than to real growth.

Idea for Impact: Rethink everything you previously thought out. It’ll only strengthen your character.

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?

It’s not what you see; it’s how you see it.

Idea for Impact: Practice cognitive control. Learn how to put things in perspective.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?