Category: K.E.E.N. skills

How We Need to Be Able to End Things Gracefully

In this post ‘Ending it gracefully‘, Seth Godin reminds us how it is important to anticipate that most initiatives will end and probably “fail” at some stage. And it is typically at those moments that we need to be able to remain graceful.

“You can pull out every stop, fight every step of the way, mortgage your house and your reputation–and still fail. Or, perhaps, you can quit in a huff at the first feeling of frustration. The best path is clearly somewhere between the two. And yet, too often, we leave this choice unexamined. Deciding how and when to quit before you begin is far easier and more effective than making ad hoc decisions under pressure.” 

However, more importantly I believe is the capacity to be grateful to what happened before the end, and be graceful to all of those that have supported and participated to the adventure. The worst is when the end is the start of a long-winded drama.

Most initiatives we take will end eventually, and not always in the best of situations. Let’s learn the skill of ending gracefully and moving on.

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How Silent and Listen Go Hand in Hand

I just realized by reading the post ‘Listening Skills Need Exercise‘ that ‘Silent’ is the anagram of ‘Listen’ in English. This is actually quite a powerful statement.

I am a great believer in the power of active listening. And this requires an absolute openness.

“Only when we’re able to quiet what is going on in our head we can truly listen.” Active listening is powerful as a change agent, and it requires a discipline and a practice from the listener.

Silence can be more full and powerful than noise, in particular obviously than random noise.

Inner and outer silence is the key to real listening and change.

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How Languishing is the Dominating Emotion of the Covid Times

In this excellent New York Times column ‘There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing‘ the author makes the point that languishing may be the dominating emotion of the Covid times.

As we increasingly don’t get excited by anything as we are confined in our homes, “it wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.”

And indeed personally I have been caught by languishing in particular during the toughest periods of confinement, not coming out of my home offices weeks at a time.

Languishing seems to be a precursor of more serious disorders in the future according to some studies, hence the need to overcome this state. The article proposes that “flow” could be the antidote. “People who became more immersed in their projects managed to avoid languishing and maintained their prepandemic happiness.” This, of course, requires that one has a project that keeps occupied. Another approach is to ensure to keep uninterrupted time to oneself, which allows to concentrate on something of interest.

Languishing seems to be quite the descriptor of the mood of many people at this moment. As vaccination increases and we are able to have more and more social relationships, we need to be able to escape this mind state. What are you doing against languishing?

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How Education and Learning are Different

Seth Godin in his post ‘The revolution in online learning‘ makes the point that education and learning are quite different. Experiencing makes learning; education being increasingly recognized as a formal process which may not lead to actual learning.

“Education is a model based on scarcity, compliance and accreditation. It trades time, attention and money for a piece of paper that promises value.” On the contrary, “we learn in ways that have little to do with how mass education is structured […] If you know how to walk, write, read, type, have a conversation, perform surgery or cook an egg, it’s probably because you practiced and explored and experienced, not because it was on a test.”

Although higher education as we know it today is clearly an institution of the industrial-age, it still provides some benefits which are more on the social side. This includes an important component of networking and knowing peers, being part of a group of students that have attended the same university in the same year or close.

However increasingly learning is understood to happen outside the formal framework of education, and this probably needs to be better recognized. The experiential part of learning cannot be dismissed, as it is really the foundation of true learning (as much as failure).

I believe education is still there to stay for a while because of its social role, but that actual learning experiences will be increasingly sought and recognized, even highlighted. In any case, be sure to have much learning in addition to education!

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How to Overcome the Fear of Publishing

Leo Babauta in his post ‘The Fear of Putting Our Work Out There‘ expands on the fear of publishing which seems to concern most of us, and how to overcome it.

I must say first that this concerns only publishing things like art of a written text – anything which is an emotional investment – because it seems we don’t have much fear publishing (sometimes stupid) pictures ourselves on social networks, maybe because we believe that they will only be available to connections.

Anyway it is true that fear is present when we push publish to the world and I still vividly remember the first time I published a post back in October 2010!

“What’s so scary? […] They might judge us, dismiss it as having no value, think we’re stupid. We’ll feel embarrassed or rejected. This uncertainty is too much to bear for many people.” We need to face our fear, and the avoidance of this possibility that is prompted by our reasonable mind. However this clearly leads to procrastination. This also means you can’t develop your ability to improve over time the quality of your interaction with the world.

Let’s face it: not many people are going to read what you wrote, or look at what you produced. At least at the start it is probably going to be family and friends so don’t worry too much about it.

There will be negative feedback, jealousy and all sorts of negative crap. Don’t let it discourage you – the more you get, the more you are on the right way and you are touching a hot button. And you’ll also get those great encouragements and some day, someone will tell you that you changed their life.

Overcoming that fear of putting your art out in the world is if course a practice. I don’t think about it too much nowadays – I don’t really care, in fact, what people may think. The first time is the hardest time. Practice makes us better, and let’s not get deterred from publishing and getting feedback.

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How Being an Angel Investor Requires Developing Some Personal Rules

I am a modest angel investor, still with more than a dozen investments in the past 5 years, and also an active member of a business angel association. Therefore I am always keen to read about the practice and possible alternative paths. In this excellent post ‘A Weird and Wacky Approach To Angel Investing‘, Darmesh Shah reveals an interesting approach with some useful learning points.

Of course Dharmesh Shah is a very rich entrepreneur and therefore Angel Investor, (and write checks much bigger than the ones I can afford), still I find that his approach has got nice points to it. Basically he seeks to minimize time spent, and therefore:

  • He performs absolutely no due diligence but relies on a judgment on the team
  • He does not negotiate deal terms or gets involved in negotiations
  • He does not invest in later rounds as a matter of principle
  • He always sides on the side of the founders
  • He keeps his investments separate from his main company and role

And this seems to have worked for him in his specific conditions, including in terms of returns on investment.

On some aspects I believe he is quite right – there is no way you can do due diligence on an early stage startup apart from judging the team, and it is always better to stick to the side of the founders and the general objectives of the company. However I tend to personally get more involved in a handful of investments, out of interest or friendship, and I do sometimes participate to bridge rounds (however, never to later rounds as the interest as a business angel then gets quite diluted in terms of possible returns).

In general, I observe that becoming a more frequent business angel one has to develop some rules to minimise time spent and I am currently in this process too.

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How We Should Stay More Often and Longer at the Edge of Uncertainty

In this inspiring post ‘Staying at the Edge of Uncertainty‘, Leo Babauta makes that point that we should learn to stay more often and longer at the edge of uncertainty. By moving close to the limite of our safe zone, on the brink of the uncertain, is where we learn and evolve most.

“All of us do this in most areas of our lives. Sometimes, we are able to voluntarily stay in uncertainty, but those times are relatively rare, and usually we don’t like it so much. Here’s the thing: the edge of uncertainty and chaos is where we learn, grow, create, lead, make incredible art and new inventions.”

And Leo Babauta insists that generally we tend to avoid this situation and rather come back to the well-known and familiar. To achieve this goal of being more closer to the edge and more often he recommends a deliberate practice:

  1. Set aside a time
  2. Pick something you are avoiding
  3. Do it for a short time (10-15 mins)
  4. Learn to embrace uncertainty
  5. Be kind to yourself

I have to be more self conscious about being more at this edge of uncertainty.

Being at the edge of our uncertainty and learning how to stay more often there is certainly a great advice. Have you tried to do it deliberately?

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How the Unknown is Different from the Uncertain

In this very interesting article (in French) ‘L’expert et le politique face à l’inconnu‘ the authors express how there is a substantial difference between the “unknown” and the “uncertain”. In uncertainty, the context of decision-making remains somewhat stable allowing some sort of objective, analytical approach; when in a crisis, the unknown prevails: the rate at which the environment changes is faster and thus decision-making has to be done according to other criteria.

A crisis such as the covid crisis will be ranked in the ‘uncertain’ category: the knowledge and the environment changes faster than the usual environment for rational decision-making, and this is why expert groups have not always been relevant, and why political decision-making has become so important. Readability of the expertise becomes difficult, as it may change significantly in the course of time due to the fact that knowledge has changed significantly.

The most important point of the paper is that in the ‘unknown’ situation, our usual decision-making approaches are not quite relevant, but we often fail to identify that, or at least we identify it too late to be quite useful. Our organisations, reporting and decision-making processes are not fit for the ‘unknown’.

It is essential to get better at identifying those few situations that evolve so fast that they are in the ‘unknown’ category and make sure we understand that decision-making needs to be different.

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How Our Personal Brand Is Not What We Are Showing Off

In this excellent post ‘Personal Brand 2020 – Document The World (Not Yourself)‘, Mitch Joel makes the point that there is much confusion between personal brand and what we show on social media.

“Your personal brand is the quality of your work, your professional output, and how it has helped another organization (or individual) improve their current business situation (or how they think/operate).” And that’s not quite the same as what we show off or share on social media.

Mitch Joel then makes sure we understand the difference between personal brand and vanity: “Your personal brand is not vanity. It’s your thinking.”

Those that define well their personal brand and communicate accordingly will have clearer way of presenting themselves to the world. Let’s be strategic on this and not share whatever pleases. In the new world as in the previous one, building a personal brand requires thought and discipline.

Your personal brand is not your presence on social media. It is rather what value to bring forth to the world. There is a huge difference, and we all need to understand it.

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How the Habit Dip Is an Incredible Learning Opportunity

In this excellent post ‘The Habit Dip‘, Leo Babauta goes deeper at what happens in this unavoidable dip when one tries to learn a new skill or habit. And how this moment of despair is also an incredible opportunity to learn about oneself.

All changes are hard and most go through a dip: after the initial excitement of discovering a new skill or habit, there is some sort of valley of death where progress is extremely difficult and disappointment can set in. It is the moment one should not abandon the change, and we all have to cross it.

Leo Babauta makes the point that “the dip is an incredible place of learning. It’s the place where we learn and grow, and get better at facing difficulty. When things are going well, everything seems easy, and you just have to keep doing the same thing. There isn’t a lot of learning there. But when things are hard, you have to face the difficulty if you want to keep going, if you want to avoid going to your usual pattern of discouraging yourself or quitting.“

Therefore when we are faced with this unavoidable moment, it is a good thing to become introspective and to analyze what happens to oneself. Being curious and in the learning mode will teach you much about yourself.

We all go through the dip when we try to change. It can be a struggle, but also a great learning moment about oneself. Let’s exploit it that way!

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How Security is Mostly a Superstition

I like this quote by Helen Keller: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing“.

This quote brings forth several aspects. The first is that security is a superstition, and although we strive for it and try to get it in modern society, we need to be aware that this is not a natural situation and should be careful not to become too naive.

This immediately brings logically the fact that it is not good to constantly avoid danger. While one can be prudent, it is quite useful to be adventurous.

And in any case, being adventurous brings us new discoveries and enlightens our lives.

Definitively, security is a not a natural state and we should not let ourselves become complacent. Life needs to be an adventure.

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How We Should Have a Diversified Portfolio of Gigs

In the interesting book ‘The Gig Economy‘ by  Diane Mulcahy, she describes how we all should develop a diversified portfolio of gigs to succeed in this new economy.

“Diversifying our work reduces our risk, opens up new opportunities, expands our networks, and develops our skills. Diversifying our interests brings balance and variety to our lives and gives us a way to explore our passions, nurture new interests, and satisfy our curiosities.“

Her point is that in this portfolio, we should have profitable gigs and also gigs we don’t do for money – at least for now – and serve as exploration. “They could accomplish personal and professional goals and achieve a balance between money and love, play and work, passion and pragmatism“.

Some of those gigs should be pilots gigs we use as test benches: “Having a portfolio of gigs allows us to create low – risk opportunities to experiment with new ideas and new opportunities. An experimental gig lets us test an opportunity and if we find we don’t like it, we can drop it and try something else. By using gigs to create small pilot tests of opportunities, we create the option to either continue and invest more if it’s successful or stop and move onto something else if it’s not.”

Having a diversified set of interests and activities (gigs) appears to be a key to risk management and success in the new gig economy. What about you? Do you have such a portfolio including some pilot or emerging activities?

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