On using systems, getting unstuck & having skin in the game
Edition #055
Hey friends,
I hope you're having a great Sunday. This week I turned 22 and spent the day exploring Lisbon.
Every birthday I like to look back and take stock of the last year. What fascinates me about this process is how much I change in the space of 12 months.
In the day to day it never feels like much is happening, but over 12 months learning compounds and leaves you looking back at who you were a year ago and cringing a little.
Comparing me at 21 to 22 almost feels like comparing two different people, which made me wonder what causes this feeling?
Is it just that I'm young and have less experience to draw on or is it controlled by our actions?
I have a feeling that this is mainly driven by learning and growing as a person which causes you to challenge past ideas and beliefs you previously held. If you stop learning (which typically correlates with getting older) you become more set in your ways, hence not feeling like you change that much.
But I'm fascinated to know what you think? (Just reply to this email )
Ideas from me
I.
Often the best way to increase productivity is to improve the system you're working in, not to expect superhuman effort from yourself (or your team).
Effective systems eliminate the inessential and focus on finding better ways to do things.
II.
Whenever you're feeling stuck remember these two things:
- Most limitations are self-imposed.
- Everything is made up, and there are no 'rules'.
III.
Feel like you never have enough time?
Try the zero-based approach to time management.
- List out everything you want to do in an ideal day and assign how long you want to dedicate to them.
- Rework that until you hit 24 hours (including sleep, travel time, food etc).
- Now create a rough schedule for your ideal day.
You don't need to follow it religiously but carving out the time to do the important things will mean your default day aligns with who you want to be.
My Favourite Finds
Getting sleep right: The HubermanLab podcast is an absolute gold mine on biology and human performance, these three episodes [1, 2, 3] on how to get better sleep offer a comprehensive guide to everything you need
Skin in the game: I started reading this book by Nassim Taleb which makes a compelling case for using the power of having skin in the game to improve learning, ensure you're working on the right things, and that you don't fall into the trap of dealing with people who have no skin in the game.
'The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.' — Nassim Taleb
The frustration with productivity culture: Cal Newport's frustrations with productivity in this article really resonated with me, he talks about how the burden of productivity has been shifted onto individuals which creates unrealistic expectations of how much one person should get done.
"Instead of demanding that employees individually produce more, we should instead seek systems that produce more given the same number of employees."
End note
If you enjoyed this edition of the Sunday Filter then I’d love it if you could share it with a few friends. You can send them over here to sign up or share it on Twitter.
Have a great week!
- Stephen