Personal Choice | The Fourth Revolution Blog

How Sensor Devices Add Another Dimension to the Personal Data Sharing Conundrum

Since the start of the Collaborative Age most of us have been giving out personal data in exchange for free services (like Gmail or Facebook where it serves to generate “targeted” advertisement). It’s already a lot of personal data, but it might become much more soon: we are increasingly wearing personal sensors that generate a lot more intimate data (location, movement, biological data etc.) and the Internet of Things will generate still more data about our personal environment. Should we continue to share it in exchange for more and more (annoying) targeted advertisement with the risk to really see our intimacy compromised or should we put a stop to this trend? Or are we happy to continue to fund free services with our personal data?

It is a real debate that is unfolding under our eyes at the moment. Cory Doctorow who is clearly on the side of the defense of personal data, proposes in a recent column ‘What If People Were Sensors, Not Things to be Sensed?‘ to change the logic: let the world produce offers and let us choose and filter without giving out our data. Large internet conglomerates on the other hand, defend their interest to have our data (while pledging for confidentiality and anonymity). And when Microsoft when installing Windows 10 asks a lot of questions of what we accept about data sharing, it seems scary but well, at least they are asking for authorization… while others don’t!

It is a narrow edge that the internet giants are treading at the moment. Their business model is at stake. Give the consumer the impression that they know too much about their intimacy and they risk a backslash; allow too strict personal data laws to pass and their revenues will disappear. And at the end of this conundrum, the choice is ours, as it will shape the Collaborative Age to come.

Why You Need to Beware of Second-Hand Stress

Second-hand stress has become a commonly recognized issue in the workplace and life in general (with an interesting parallel with second-hand smoke). Many papers are written on the subject even in the Harvard Business Review (‘Make Yourself Immune to Secondhand Stress‘).

Emotional contagion in the workplace results in the dissemination of stress in the office: “if someone in your visual field is anxious and highly expressive — either verbally or non-verbally — there’s a high likelihood you’ll experience those emotions as well, negatively impacting your brain’s performance“. The HBR paper even goes as far that one can be influenced by sight, sounds and even smell!

The recommendation to fight second-hand stress is simple. It involves quite some self-awareness, and building defenses (counter-acting stress episodes with compensating thoughts and situations, and defending oneself against the spread by resolutely taking some distance from the events at hand).

Be aware about the negative effects of second-hand stress! Build your defense system and minimize the impact of any residual second-hand stress on yourself. Remember, in most cases it’s not worth it!

How We Can’t Escape Being Tracked and Photographed

With the Fourth Revolution, we can’t escape being photographed, recognized and tagged. Lately I was waiting to cross a street in Singapore when a Google Car passed by – and there am I on Google Streetview. My face is blurred but I remain quite recognizable!

Me waiting to cross a street in Singapore - on Google Streetview! — Me waiting to cross a street in Singapore – on Google Streetview!

Often on the streets we meet people taking pictures with their phones and it is quite certain that we must be in the background of numerous shots. Face recognition algorithms (such as Facebook’s) have certainly identified us in many situations, not to mention the public video surveillance systems.

Public space is more public than ever, and broadcast worldwide. Even private space is not so safe (I am surprised by the number of people in Asia who constantly cover the video camera of their laptop for fear of pirates shooting videos!). Many videos and sound tracks leak that are taken in otherwise supposedly private meetings.

That’s definitely a trend we can’t escape. I understand people are anxious with this change in particular if they’re caught in an unsuitable situation. Personally it makes me sometimes uneasy to think that in theory, someone could certainly track in detail my whereabouts (not to mention the GPS on the phone I carry). On the other hand, it can also be enhanced safety compared to the situation years ago.

As with everything, we will need to learn how to put safeguards and take advantage of the phenomenal advantages of modern technology. This one might be tougher as it visibly enters our private life.

How Creativity and Productivity Are Seasonal

“Remember that creativity and peak productivity are seasonal: there’s a time to plant and a time to harvest” writes Robin Sharma.

I think it is true that it is quite impossible to stay hyper creative and productive all time; we need downtime and resourcing. We also need to consciously take time for reflection and refocus.

Contrary to natural seasons, the seasons hinted at by Robin Sharma develop along different timeframes – and intermingle. The most important timeframes are:

intra-day,
in our weekly rhythm, between week-days and week-end,
and finally over months or years.

And as Robin Sharma reminds us, we also need to be able to plant today to hope for reaping later. Investment in creativity and production is sometimes tough and costly, and remains necessary.

Do you give yourself time for downtime, reflection, and planting seeds that could eventually grow into full fledged harvest?

How to Avoid the Comfort Zone Fallacy

Continuing on the previous post ‘Why Avoid the Organizational Comfort Zone Retreat Fallacy‘, let us now consider stress and the tendency to retreat to our comfort zone on a personal level, in particular when we stretch out and we happen to encounter a storm.

Freaking out? Beware of the comfort zone fallacy!

Our comfort zone is a zone where we have been successful, possibly recognized. It is a zone where we think we are protected. Hence our tendency to try to revert to it when things go bad.

A common, personal example: I have been raised to think that salaried employment is a safe zone, whereas being on one’s own is a dangerous adventure. Thus when things go stormy I tend to think I should revert to salaried employment as soon as possible. I know that it is an obsolete concept, I observe around me that employees are no safer, but I still can’t help to have these thoughts – so much I was conditioned into this idea of the Industrial Age about being an employee.

We all need to have safe havens, where we feel supported. It is typically our family circle. It is not the same as our comfort zone; actually part of our families might not be overly supportive of some efforts we make to stretch out. Yet we can count on our safe haven. This should be the support we need to overcome the natural tendency to run back to our ‘comfort zone’ when things go bad.

The more I think about it, I think that if you’ve stretched sufficiently outside of your comfort zone, you should rather try to go even further. Because:

that is what will make a significant difference with 99% of the people who freak out and flee back to comfort,
that’s the moment to maintain the maximum flexibility and adaptability – not to enclose oneself in a closed, defensive location.

When the storm comes, create the difference. Leverage on your safe haven to stretch even more out of your comfort zone. Remain flexible, and find your way in the storm.

What Our Quests are Really About

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves” – Edmund Hillary. In every of our quests, external visible rewards or goals are not what is important. What we learn and how we grow is what is essential.

I remember being in a conference with a famous polar explorer just returning from several months isolated is the cold of Arctic in the context of an important scientific expedition. The question from the floor was: “what were you looking for, what were your objectives?“. The answer came with something like: “myself“. I was blown out!

We don’t need to be Edmund Hillary or this polar explorer to have real quests in our lives. And like them, we need to realize that we are looking for ourselves when we start such quests – and not so much for the achievements and the rewards. This gives quite a different perspective on things!

Search for yourself, and start your quest!

Why You Need to Kindle Your Internal Light

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within” – Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.

I find this is a great quote that triggers a lot of thoughts and helps us put in perspective what happens in our lives. It is relatively easy to sparkle in society when we are recognized by our peers, through our social status and other external ways of being recognized.

But what about that little light within us? Will it shine in the shadows beyond our fears? When the everything that makes us sparkle in broad daylight is gone?

It is difficult to foster that small light and make it large. Only a few people manage to grow it so that it illuminates others. It requires a lot of work on ourselves and to create a real difference in the world.

Still at the end it is what matters.

Go right now to kindle your internal light!

How Mindfulness Is Becoming Mainstream in Organizations

Mindfulness has been in the air for some years, in particular in California start-ups. It even seems that having a meditating practice is kind of a social obligation in the Silicon Valley these days. It has now become mainstream and has noticeably been part of the Davos summit this year, whereas it would have been quite out of question a few years ago.

A number of interesting papers have been written on the matter, such as ‘At Davos, Rising Stress Spurs Goldie Hawn Meditation Talk’ on Bloomberg, ‘Amid the Chattering of the Global Elite, a Silent Interlude’ in the NY Times. Why them such popularity?

Of course the boilerplate explanations include: an increasingly stressful world, compounded by smartphone addiction which really does not help putting the mind at rest. People seek a way to unplug even for a few minutes, and some recipe to manage their stress. Some others squarely seek in meditation and mindfulness a competitive advantage.

All these explanations are valid, in particular the need to learn to deal with the much increased amount of solicitations we are subjected to. Deeply I believe it also responds to the need for the individual to increasingly own its actions, and respond rather than react, even inside Industrial Age organizations that were initially designed for individuals to act like cogs in a large machine.

Mindfulness will probably spread further in organizations. We must be careful not to fall in the trendy obligation or just a way to improve well-being in daily work. It must translate into a real change of the organization’s culture.

Let’s start. Just take 5 and breathe!

How We Underestimate What We Can Do in Ten Years

“People always underestimate what they can do in ten years and overestimate what they can do in a week” says Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid (great daily cartoons and inspiration!). For the ten year time-frame, the cause is easy to find: it is clearly another effect of the ‘Exponential Deception‘.

A great approach to time, from day to decades! — A great approach to time and life, from day to decades!

I can confirm personally and in my project execution experience that people do for sure overestimate what they can achieve in a day or week, and have difficulty figuring out what they can really achieve in a year.

The decade is an interesting timeframe for further contemplation. In reality, trying to look in hindsight we can probably do so much in a decade that we can change our life and our worldview completely…

Ask yourself right now: what did you think you would become ten years ago? What did you think you would do?

If you are like me, what happened is vastly different from what I could just even envisage ten years ago (from civil service in France to expat consultant-entrepreneur in Singapore!).

And the thing is, achieving a transformation in a decade (just 3653 days) does not require to work harder or to improve much more on a daily basis – the power of the exponential secures dramatic changes even for minimum daily and weekly improvements.

Come on, what will you do in ten years? What do you want to do? Don’t limit yourself, the sky is the limit!

How to Accelerate Decision-Making in a Negotiation

One of the best proven methods to accelerate decision-making in a negotiation is to set up a deadline, which can be arbitrary if needed (or, an existing deadline which importance for the issue at hand is overly exaggerated). Actually, arbitrarily-set deadlines are an excellent way to accelerate decision-making, potentially in one’s favor if quick decision is required.

Arbitrary deadlines can be a date in a calendar, but the most effective way is to link them with an event that is planned and looks difficult to move: a flight, an overseas trip, long-planned offline holidays. It can even be another deadline already given to an other party when it comes to compete for the same resources! (let’s extend the concept – we can already envisage a situation where deadlines can be created arbitrarily by informing a party of an imaginary deadline given to a second party which had set its deadline based on another arbitrary time like the birthday of the wife of the founder – imagination can be never-ending).

Deadlines are also great not only for the other party but for ourselves because it gives a maximum time-frame where we can be bothered by this particular issue.

On major issues, decision points and negotiations, do not hesitate to set arbitrary deadlines. It will put the system in tension and will lead to much more effective positioning and decision-making.

Why Would We Admire People More for Trying than for their Successes?

That’s Pixar storytelling rule #1: “You admire a character for trying more than for their successes“. Hence Pixar characters spend the entire movie trying (though they often succeed at the end). Why does it elicit such admiration?

I think that comes from the fact that we are all trying, and we know it is hard. Thus when we see others trying and eventually succeeding we know that they have had to overcome many self-imposed barriers and many other obstacles created by their environment. If characters were to succeed too easily, we would of course just take it for granted – and we would know that it is not how life really is like. We also tend to connect more easily with a person that is visibly struggling to achieve hard stuff – like us.

In our life, showing that we are struggling (and the associated vulnerability) is difficult but is probably rewarding, as many examples abound of people who have decided to share how they feel inadequate and still succeed (for more on this, refer to the books and the TED presentation (one of the top 5 most watched ever) of Brene Brown).

Personally, like many of us, I tend to try to hide my difficulties, my struggles. I tend to believe it does not fit social and professional life, as we always strive to look perfect and with everything going well. Maybe it would be worth showing a bit more how imperfect I feel sometimes – avoiding whining of course? Food for thought for the new year. You might hear more about my struggles!

HT to bitrebels.com for the illustration.

Why Accepting Yourself Will Change the World

Building up on our post ‘Why You Need to Accept Yourself First to be Able to Change‘, we can go further and state that being ourselves does not only help ourselves change, but will also change the world.

On that, let us quote extensively Carl Rogers from his famous book ‘On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy‘: “the paradoxical aspect of my experience is that the more I am simply willing to be myself, in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up.”

Why is that? As Carl Rogers continues, “It is a very paradoxical thing — that to the degree that each one of us is willing to be himself, then he finds not only himself changing; but he finds that other people to whom he relates are also changing. At least this is a very vivid part of my experience, and one of the deepest things I think I have learned in my personal and professional life.”

Did you still hesitate? Be yourself fully. Change yourself and change the world!

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