Category: #MentalNote

#MentalNote · Learning

Ideas That Changed My Life

6 years ago Author By cumeadi

A couple of months ago, I read Ideas That Changed My Life by Morgan Housel, a Partner at the Collaborative Fund. I thought I’d make my own list as a reflection exercise.

Life is suffering

Rough one to start off a list with. Buddha once said that “Life is suffering”. A more pessimistic and often times wrong way of looking at this that life is nothing but suffering. What Buddha means, or at least what I think he means is if you have to accept suffering as much as you accept the happiness in your life. The more you accept that you’ll suffer, the less likely you won’t feel as entrenched in the situations that cause suffering. A great practical example is working out. I work out and I feel sore after I’m done. Underneath it all, my muscle fibers are breaking themselves apart to become stronger in the long run. If I want to enjoy my gains in strength, I have to accept the soreness and discomfort that comes with it.

Understanding life is suffering opens life up to a bunch of new opportunities. It decreases fear of the unknown and allows people to take more risks. It also allows you to maintain a stoic outlook on things that happen to you in life.

You can’t change things outside of your control, but you can change your attitude.

This saying takes from the stoic practice of being a micromanager of your thoughts and feelings like the only thing you can really control. Honestly, by following this practice, I’m always surprised by what happens but always enter a situation with the knowledge I can manage my thought and emotions more than I can dictate the outcome.

Real happiness comes from trying to be the best version of yourself

The real happiness is in growth. Imagine all times you’ve struggled through something or learned a new skill and then seen growth in that activity. Challenging yourself to continuously grow to the best version of yourself is one of the few areas where you can achieve true happiness.

Innovation happens at the intersection of traditionally unassociated areas.

The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures is a book written by Swedish-American entrepreneur Frans Johansson in 2004. In this book, Johansson describes that disruptive innovation often comes from people who are not in that specific industry and the biggest innovations happen at the intersection of unrelated areas.

This idea provides a process/map where people can find brilliant ideas…Most of the time it’s in a totally random place where most wouldn’t think to look.

You’re a walking miracle

The probability of human birth alone is close enough to zero. The idea that your body didn’t give up on you as many ways as it could, or the fact you survived the day to read this is a testament to miracles. Your existence continues to compound in improbability until you grow old and pass on.

Remember how special you are is super important but it also helps you realize how special those around you are and how lucky they are to have you in their life and for you to be in theirs.

Belief is one of the most powerful tools we have as humans

The power of belief is a testament to the power of the brain and mindset. We can trick our brains into doing things just by believing a couple of fundamental truths, for better or worse.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Perfect is an unattainable, ever fleeting benchmark that really doesn’t exist. Good, most of the time, is enough and perfection gets in the way. This resonates as a product person. They’ll never be the perfect time to launch or the perfect time to refactor, or the perfect set of features. At the end of the day, just get out there. You’ll be better with an executed good rather than waiting on an ideal perfect.

80/20 Rule

I didn’t believe the 80/20 rule but it just proves to be a universal truth. For those who are unaware, 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. This has wide crossing implications but it comes into play when you focus on where to allocate time and resources. Think of businesses, for example. Let’s take Google. Search and Ad business accounts for about 20% of the company and accounts for around 80% of Alphabet/Google revenue. Even personally, when you work out, the last set when you’re tired account for a majority of your gains. I’ve found this to apply in nature, society, life, etc.

Visualize The Worst-Case Scenario

Sometimes we fear the unknown and it festers in our brain which leads to uncertainty, doubt and a lack of confidence. Something I learned from a professional speaking class that made a lot of sense is imagining the total failure of speech/situation. What are the steps you take or don’t take to get to that situation? How do you feel? What happens as a result of the worst-case scenario coming to bare? Visualizing the worst that can happen reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Littlefinger:

“Don’t fight in the North or the South. Fight every battle everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before.”

Littlefinger – Game of Thrones

I’ll write a follow up next year…….

#MentalNote · Education

New Hobby Alert

6 years ago Author By cumeadi
Shot with a One Plus 5. I was visiting my brother’s apartment in Jersey City overlooking New York City and Hudson River.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been interested in tapping into my inner creative. I’ve been looking for areas to explore where I can capture moments and share my perspective and thought photography would be a great place to start. So, I got a phone with an excellent camera and got a Nikon DSLR starter kit and now I’m ready to start sharing my journey to explore the world of photography.

I’ll continue to post pics on my Instagram account here , but I’ll use my blog to explain some of the shots in more detail.

#MentalNote · Idea!!! · Leadership

Getting Past No: A Non-Sales Person Guide To Objection Handling

7 years ago Author By cumeadi

If you’re doing life right, you hear no or get objections frequently. I had one of those days last week. I heard no/ objections to a lot of different projects, clients, and opportunities. Objections is easy to handle on a one off basis, but when you get an overload in a day, you’ve got to have a system or framework to help navigate objections in an effective and positive way.

I thought back to my early start-up days when I got a chance to work intimately with the sales team. I had the privilege to train under a sales genius who imparted a lot of sales wisdom and business experience on to me and the team. We didn’t have a pure sales training regiment, but I felt like everyday was an opportunity to learn from a well seasoned sales executive.

One of the lessons he taught our team early was on how to handle objections from prospects. Potential clients often say no for several reasons and a good sales professional has tools to identify their reasons for saying no and help the prospect get to yes. But most importantly, great sales professionals re-frame objection as an opportunity to learn more about the client and their needs.

We learned the L.A.E.R framework to manage our responses to objections. When we hear an objection from a prospect, we :

  • Listen– Take a step back and just listen to the prospect. Let them discuss their main concerns uninterrupted.
  • Acknowledge– Repeat back to them their concerns as you hear it. This helps to make sure you understand what they are saying but also they understand what they said during your conversation. Re stating a prospects objections also demonstrates you’re really listening to them and looking to seek a solution.
  • Explore– Most no’s or objections need to be unpacked. A great sales professional uses an objection to get to know more about the prospects needs and values. For example, a prospect might say your product offering is too expensive. What does that really mean? Is there a budget issue? Did you demonstrate and communicate the value your product/service provides? Asking more questions to understand their objections helps get past no’s and find new opportunities to help the prospect see the value in your product or service.
  • Respond– After identifying the objections, acknowledging their concerns, explored and unpacked the reasons for the objection, now you can finally respond with some recommendations. This may not always go in your favor. The main goal is help your prospect understand if the concerns you’ve discussed still exist and if so, what are the next step.

Overall, the L.A.E.R framework really helps to guide conversations with prospects during the sales cycle. It’s definitely applicable to any type of objection handling moments you’ll have personally and professionally. At the core of the L.A.E.R framework is need and a goal to understand and empathize with the prospect. Using L.A.E.R will help you get past objection and hopefully closer to yes.

#MentalNote · Education · Random

Using the Fermi Method To Improve Estimations Skills

7 years ago Author By cumeadi

Physicist Enrico Fermi was one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. He won the Nobel prize in physics, held several patents and was best known for developing the first nuclear reactor. During career, he became well known for his ability to make fast, excellent approximate calculations with little or no concrete data. In one well-known example, when the first atomic bomb was detonated during the Manhattan Project, Fermi dropped a few scraps of paper as the shock wave from the detonation passed. After some coarse calculation, Fermi estimated the power of the blast from the motion of the scraps as they fell.

His estimation strategy spawned what we now call Fermi problems or estimates. These problems normally involve making justified estimations about an amount and their variance or minimum or maximum. These problems have been used in employee interviews (how effective they are is question for another day) to better identify a candidate’s ability to break down seemingly large unknown problems and create a reasonable estimate. Here’s an example of some common Fermi problems:

  1. How many plastic flamingos still exist in the United States?
  2. What is the total number of shots taken in one NBA season?
  3. How many hot dogs are bought at all the Major League Baseball games for one season?
  4. What is the average lifetime of a pencil?
  5. How many musical notes are played on your favorite radio station in a given year?
  6. How much popcorn is popped at the movie theater on an average Saturday?
  7. What is the probability that you have a doppelganger?
  8. How many hours of tv will you watch in your lifetime?
  9. How much gasoline does a typical automobile use during its lifetime?
  10. If everyone in our city donated one day’s wages to a good cause, how much money could be raised?

As you can see, most of these questions are abstract and unknowable but Fermi type problems rely on estimation, dimensional analysis, approximation, but most importantly, approaching the unknown from a knowable place. For example, taking a look at a question like how many hours will you watch tv in your lifetime, might look like a daunting and unknowable number. But we can approach it from a knowable place and come up with an estimate by asking a couple of key “knowable questions. For example, if I’m trying to figure out, “How many hours of tv will you watch in your life?”. Here are a couple of the questions you might ask to get you to a solid estimate;

  • What is the average lifespan of your gender based on where you live? (We know the average life expectancy of a male in the US is 78.4…based on US census data)
  • What tv shows do you watch frequently on a weekly basis – Daily Show (4*30 minutes), Dragon ball Super ( 1*30 minutes), GPS (1*1 hour) = 3.5 hours a week.
  • How does this extrapolate to other parts of my life?  (I probably watched 3.5 hours of tv now, including netflix, amazon prime, etc but I probably have decreased my tv watching as I’ve gotten older. I probably watched 15-20 hours a week when I was a child (4-17- thinking of my favorite tv shows and daily schedule) and 10-15 when I was a young adult. (18-29)
  • Do I think my time watching tv will increase or decrease? – Most likely increase. I’m pretty busy now so I’ll probably get to the point where its back to 6-8 hours per week. In the long term, I think i’ll have more free time and also will have kids that will want to watch tv with me.  

Once we’ve got a majority of the inputs, (duration of life, baseline on tv show hours) now we can start estimating amount of time per year and then develop an estimate.

  • 0-3 ( Not really sure but let’s just say I spent 30 hours a week watching television) – 4 years * 52 weeks * 30 hours = 6,240 hours
  • 4-17 (20 hours a week) – 14 years * 52 weeks * 20 hours = 14,560 hours
  • 18-29 (15 hours a week) – 12 years * 52 weeks * 15 hours = 9,360 hours
  • 30-40 (8 hours a week) – 11 years * 52 weeks * 8 hours = 8,580 hours
  • 41-50 (6 hours a week) – 10 years * 52 weeks * 6 hours=  3,120 hours
  • 51-60 (15 hours a week)  – 10 years * 52 weeks * 15 hours = 7,800 hours
  • 61- 78 (10 hours a week) – 18 years * 52 weeks * 10 hours = 9,360 hours

I will spend an estimated 59,020 hours, or about 7 years watching television during my lifetime.

With Fermi problems, it’s less about the primary questions and more about the questions you can ask to identify certainty and fundamental assumptions that  affect estimations. For example, three major assumptions I made to come up with 59,020 hours are:

  1. The rate of tv watching is consistent on a day to day.
  2. Tv watching is connected to the amount of free time I think I’ll have in a given week.
  3. I’ll live to be the average age (78.4 years)

There are other ways to go about approaching this question. You could take a subtractive approach and identify the minimum and maximum time you can have to watch tv. IE, if a sleep 6-8 hours for the rest of my life, spend 8 hours working, 1 hour exercising, 1 hour eating, how much time do I have to watch tv a day? What are some other pressures that can affect how much tv time I have? To get more granular, what does my weekend look like? What do I normally do on vacation. There are questions that could bring you to a more approximate estimate, but the time spent on the estimate should be proportional to the need for accuracy.

The Fermi method has practical applications, it can be helpful in day to day estimating in work and play. From a project management perspective, the Fermi method can be really helpful when developing out approximate hours for  for client / internal estimates on upcoming features or projects. Most importantly, start with what you know. How many people will interface with the project? Based on previous projects, how long do your processes like discovery, check-ins, QA, and etc. normally take? While each project is different in its own way, asking these questions help expose what you know and areas where you’re making assumptions. Over time, you can evaluate how well your assumptions play out after each project.

I challenge you to find ways you can estimate better buy identifying your assumptions and approaching unknown questions from a knowable place

#MentalNote · Self-Revelation

Life Debt

7 years ago Author By cumeadi

I enjoy watching movies during short flights. It helps me pass the time. This most recent trip back to Chicago was a little different. I had just concluded a successful week in Washington DC  and running a program for tiphub . We met a lot of great companies, and other stakeholders and a bunch of folks had a great time. Overall solid experience.

I found myself reflecting on my time in Washington DC and a couple of quote from Seneca hit me.

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” Seneca

As I started to meditate on this quote, I realized I frequently forget to balance life’s book. So much, I’ve accumulated life debt. This debt operates similar to financial debt in a sense. It weighs you down, if you have too much, you lose out on opportunities you’d normally get, and you have less freedom.

I realized I procrastinated/ half stepped myself straight into an existence that is okay by most standards but only a small example of what I’m supposed to be.

I’ll most likely look at that moment as a turning point in my life. I realized what it really meant to live on purpose. I saw the past, present, and future all in one moment and saw what it meant to be fully committed…. All in…regardless of the probability of failure and more focused on the idea that the opportunity that passes may never come around again.

At this point I’m rambling but it’s like a light has gone on and life makes sense. Everything’s changed (except for my inability to write coherently.) for the better and I’m excited to see where this epiphany takes me.

Travel more…. you’ll start having these come to Jesus moments more and more.