“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n ~Fred Rogers<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In the last blog post, I wrote about the personal side of I’ve learned from the peaks and troughs of 2018<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n Today, I’d share with you 14 embedded ideas I’ve extracted from these experiences from looking back on 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I can’t trust myself anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n A week ago, I\u2019ve pre-decided to ban myself from opening my emailing application. Even though for several months now, I\u2019ve instituted a \u201cno checking inbox\u201d policy in the mornings, I\u2019ve almost every other day, broke my own rule. Heck, they were even justifiable (\u201cWhat if a client emailed me about my skype id before we connect, or what if there’s a change of schedule?\u201d, etc.). The problem with email is that, as soon as I look for what I\u2019m looking for, I end up being sucked into a vortex of other messages, requests, tasks-yet-to-be-do. It\u2019s a mental drain.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead of relying on willpower, I\u2019ve now padlocked myself out of accessing my inbox. I\u2019m using an app called Freedom<\/a><\/span>. I\u2019ve programmed it such that between 11pm to 12pm the next day, I\u2019m unable to open my email application (syncs with my mobile device too).<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know about you, but digital technology has not only sucked away my attention and caused me to have a diffused sense of focus, but it has also robbed me from my intentions. I end up feeling depleted without being as productive as I intended to be. (see points #5 and #11 on how I return to the analog world of writing and drawing in notebooks).<\/span><\/p>\n In the past, I see a new application or digital tool, and I think \u201cAh, that\u2019s going to be useful.\u201d And I end up using it for a little while, and then it just becomes an icon on my desktop or mobile device. Instead, I\u2019m now weeding out stuff, as I try to think less in terms of usefulness of a particular tool (i.e., maximising), but more in terms of autonomy<\/em>. (i.e, minimising). \u201cIs this tool going to give me more control of my attention? Does this fit with my values and intentions?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n There are its downsides. Just a few days ago, a therapist I was coaching sent me something over email. I couldn’t open the stuff she sent. Our consult was in the morning. I had to explain how my inbox is inaccessible in the mornings. Thank goodness we found a workaround, and she was forgiving of my bizarre behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n (Side note: I\u2019m looking forward to Cal Newport\u2019s upcoming book, Digital Minimalism on this topic. I loved his previous book, Deep Work. It\u2019s going to be one of the Top 10 book recommendations that I\u2019m going to share on this blog at a later stage.)<\/span><\/p>\n The beginning of 2018 was the first time I took a deep dive to work 100% on my own. I learned to do almost everything<\/em>\u00a0from web design, video\/audio recordings, manage my own accounts, etc, but I was confronted with this reality: \u201cDo I really want to trade time for money?\u201d<\/span> What about stuff I can\u2019t do by myself, like copyediting the last book<\/a><\/span> and designing the cover? I ended up outsourcing them to the pros.<\/span><\/p>\n Last year was all about adding projects and stuff that I could be doing. But it only recently hit me that instead of adding, I need to be subtracting. Even though I had plans of reverse scaling my business (I described more about this in part I<\/a><\/span>), so that I can make what I do more personal with the individuals and teams that I work with, I was taking on and adding more stuff to my Trello management board; I felt like I was becoming a hoarder of to-do lists.<\/span><\/p>\n I did not know where to begin. I shared this with Eng Chuan, a dear friend that I connect with on a monthly basis as a form of a mastermind group. And he pointed out something so glaring. “How do you recharge?” I said, “I know I need time on my own to think, contemplate, pray, mull, blah blah blah…”<\/span><\/p>\n He said, “And when was the last time you had that kind of solitude?”<\/span><\/p>\n “Erm, on my last birthday.” (This was more than 3 months ago).<\/span><\/p>\n Eng Chuan’s point hit home. It wasn’t about adding another activity in my to-do list. To me, this was about what Friar Richard Rohr calls the spirituality of subtraction. More concretely, I had to remove this “overwrite” that seems to happen every week. Even though I had scheduled Monday mornings for solitude, For an entire year, there was rarely a week that this didn’t get overwritten.<\/span><\/p>\n While I continue to contemplate other ways to “minus” stuff out of my life, I think it’s time to remove the “overwrite” button on my days of quiet.<\/span><\/p>\n Austin Kleon’s blog post sparked this idea. As we are in the thick of a writing project, I broke the bad news with my co-authors that I can no longer connect in my night time. It was taking a toll on me. Thankfully, we found a workaround where we connect in my early mornings, which is their afternoons in the US. (Thanks for your understanding Scott Miller!)<\/span><\/p>\n But more generally, attempting to be more in sync and respecting the circadian rhythms makes so much sense. When it gets dark, I now make a conscious attempt to think less about my endless quandaries, stuff like how bad a parent I have been or the size of my bank account.<\/span><\/p>\n This surprised me. I used to keep reams of journals when I was younger. I moved to digital formats in my note taking with no issues. But when I made the conscious choice to return to using a notebook and a pen more than a year ago, I felt back in love with the medium.<\/span><\/p>\n I find that at the initial stages of thrashing out ideas, writing on paper is richly rewarding. And I don’t think this is simply a nostalgic throw-back to the good old days of doing things, but I find the process of writing slows me down and allows me to think clearer. Unlike the digital platform where we can muck around with the fonts, format and other fluffs, using a pen and paper helps me to circumvent trying to “get it right.”<\/span><\/p>\n I do scan important ideas and notes from meetings with my phone and upload them to evernote, so that I can retrieve them easily when I need it. It seems cumbersome. Some might even say, why not just write on a tablet? True. But I know me. I’m like a squirrel, easily distracted and lured into something else lurking on in my laptop. So the very idea of removing myself away from my computer so that I can think, is strangely, very rewarding.<\/span><\/p>\n Since 2014, this is a counterintuitive point that I’ve held close to me whenever I start any project. Aim for quantity<\/em>, not quality.<\/span><\/p>\n Here’s a great story from the book \u201cArt and Fear\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the \u201cquantity\u201d group: 50 pounds of pots rated an \u201cA\u201d, 40 pounds a \u201cB\u201d, and so on.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Those being graded on \u201cquality\u201d, however, needed to produce only one pot \u2014 albeit a perfect one \u2014 to get an \u201cA\u201d.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n It seems that while the \u201cquantity\u201d group was busily churning out piles of work\u2014and learning from their mistakes \u2014 the \u201cquality\u201d group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The key for me is to depersonalise (not in a clinical sense), suspend premature judgment, and allow myself to get out of the way. This concept is especially useful in the initial stages of creation.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2017, an executive at a company I was consulting with said to me, “We need thought leadership. You are one of them.” I thought to myself, “What the heck is ‘thought leadership’?”<\/span><\/p>\n I’m still not sure what that meant, but one part of this notion of leadership that resonates for me is to be willing to put stuff out there. I was hugely inspired by reading Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work<\/span>.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n For a painful introvert like me, making myself visible in workshops, consults, online courses, and blogging regularly has been a leap. (This is what’s invisible to most people. But inside, I’m like a duck out of water). While it is intentional and essential for me, I’ve come to experience that “visibility” alone without solitude is a slippery slope to be in.<\/span><\/p>\n “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes… <\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n including you<\/strong>.” <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ~ Writer, Anne Lamott, TED talk.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In Lead Yourself First, judge Raymond Kethledge and CEO Michael Erwin define solitude as “a subjective state of mind, in which the mind, isolated from input from other minds, works through a problem on its own.” One of the biggest and most recent challenges I’m faced with is not so much as being alone, but rather, refraining from “inputs”. But as I look back, even beyond 2018, moments of prayer, contemplation\u00a0and no inputs were not only clarifying, but the experience felt like light doses of nutrients.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I’m returning to solitude on a regular basis (see point #3. Subtract, Not Add<\/strong>. Thanks Eng Chuan).<\/span><\/p>\n The more I ask people and the more I look up about this (see Philip Zimbardo’s book, The Time Paradox), as we get older, time seems to speed up.<\/span><\/p>\n I learned about creating “daily highlights” from ex-Google employees Jake Knapp and John Zebratsky’s book, Make Time. It’s pretty straightforward but easy to slip by. On a daily basis, I would schedule a period where I would do one “highlight” for the day. This could be sometime that brings joy to me personally, or it could even be sometime I want to get done (like today, my highlight is to complete writing this). Other days, it could be as simple as listening to a song in its entirety without multitasking, reading a book, or watching a movie with the Mrs. when the kids are in bed.<\/span><\/p>\n This gets to the heart of a problem I raised in Part I<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>of this blog post, which is, I have “too many planes and too little runway.”<\/span><\/p>\n I learned this idea from Jonathan Fields some years ago, and I tried as hard as hell to make this world in 2018; doing one thing at a time in series<\/em> (one at a time) rather than in parallel (<\/em>couple of things going on at once). The rule was to Let one thing take flight, before going on to the next project. However, because of my multiple roles, writing projects, clinical duties, research trials, I found this to be nearly impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n When I was looking back in 2018<\/a><\/span>\u00a0, I realised that the issue wasn’t the principle of “parallel vs serial”, it was that I over-ride whatever I stipulated to do. But digging little deeper, as I review my calendar, this was because, on an almost daily basis, I fall prey to planning fallacy<\/strong>. That is, I jammed too much in on a daily\/weekly basis, thinking I can complete a task within an optimistic think frame. (Even while writing this blog post, I thought I would take 2hrs, but it’s taken me 5!)<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/darylchow.com\/frontiers\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Evernote-Snapshot-20190123-093255-e1549444346880.png\")
<\/p>\n#1. Eliminating the Diffusion of Focus<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
#2. Money vs. Time: Time is the Higher Currency<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nThe short answer is, No, I don\u2019t want to. So I figured, if a task was systematisable, repeatable, and doesn\u2019t need my skillset to get it done, and costs less than what I earn in an hour, I\u2019d trade that by getting someone else to do it. That\u2019s how I ended up contracting a virtual assistant (Big thanks Roxanne!). I\u2019m so pleased that I’m doing that, even though the miserly Chinese in me still feels like I\u2019m wasting money by paying someone on tasks I can do by myself.<\/span><\/p>\n#3. Subtract, Not Add<\/span><\/h2>\n
#4. Reduce\/Remove Work Time When It’s Dark<\/span><\/h2>\n
#5. Keeping a Notebook (and the joys of writing on paper)<\/span><\/h2>\n
#6. Aim for Quantity, Not Quality<\/span><\/h2>\n
#7. Leadership = Visibility + Solitude<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n
#8. Focus on Daily Highlights<\/span><\/h2>\n
#9. A Serious Re-look at “Parallel vs. Serial” Approach…and Planning Fallacy.<\/span><\/h2>\n