Like him or hate him, Gary Vaynerchuk is a force of nature. I have never seen anyone push the idea of hard work so much. He has been consistent over the years and it is quite amazing to see how he walks the talk. I came across this 4 minute video that I watch now and then, specially when things are not necessarily moving at a pace I want.
Multitasking is a rage in Founders Land and those who don’t do it seems to be tame unambitious lot. Bragging about the 25 things we are doing simultaneously and sleeping 4 hours or less seems to get a lot of ink and attention. However it rarely works. And it is rarely true.
Alexis Conran hosted the show ‘The Real Hustle’ on BBC where he and his team ran elaborate scams on people. In this hugely entertaining TEDXBerlin talk he presents the 5 tactics used by conmen to fool us. Well the crux is that we mostly fool ourselves. Politicians, businesses and folks who want to sell their story to us routinely use these 5 tactics to get us to do what they want. People believing fake news spread by politicians or got into Bernie Madoff’s elaborate scams – eventually fall prey to the same techniques. When we are building our businesses how many times are we fooling ourselves?
Do you believe you can do better? Do you have a picture of what life could be for you? Do you know who you need to be if you a want life like that? Every day is an opportunity to learn and prepare to get where you intend to go.
Running a business while raising kids can be challenging. There are a lot of decisions, example setting etc that one needs to focus on. In this context I always remember a lecture by Desh Deshpande at a TiE Conference in California nearly two decades back. He said “In life we all have many balls in the air that we are juggling between – ambition, career, hobbies, dreams, family…all of these balls are made of rubber except one. All the ones made of rubber will bounce back up even if you drop them once in a while. But there is one that is made of glass and you better not drop it. It is the ball of Family”. I never forgot that.
We all are distracted at work. To push complex work at hand to a later time span – a digital age procrastination. Nir Eyal wrote a whole book to help manage distractions on and in this article he underlines 4 steps that could potentially reduce distractions and points to “Bricker’s work using acceptance and commitment therapy in smoking cessation programs “
Too many things to do, too little time. Most entrepreneurs feel this pressure on a daily basis. Managing time (as a person or as an organisation) is a challenge. Continuing my readings on Time, I found this post by Josh Spector making 3 great points:
Kristin Wong wrote this interesting article for Lifehacker on the big timewasters most of us indulge in and come to regret. As we grow older we seem to recognize some of these and make amends perhaps. But recognizing these and adapting to these early can make a lot of difference to ones productivity.
We all need to have these – Difficult Conversations. Most of us avoid it till the point it cannot be avoided anymore. And we all know the delay hurts the organisation and relationships. Joel Garfinkle, an executive leadership coach wrote in this piece in Harvard Business Review and it provides simple framework that will help with those otherwise dreaded moments.
“Victory awaits the one who has everything in order. People call it good luck. While defeat always follows bad preparations and people call it bad luck.”
Ronald Amundsen
Erling Kagge is the first man to complete the Three Poles Challenge. He walked to all the three poles. “- North Pole in 1990, the South Pole in 1993, and the summit of Mount Everest (the “third pole”) in 1994”.
