December 14, 2005
Focus and Lists
The last time my coach and I met, we talked about coping strategies for being effective, when facing an information overload world.
I thought about it a moment, and thought I had two really good ways of dealing with it. These are Focus and Lists.
I discovered lists many years ago. Lists on small scraps of paper, lists in my Palm memo application, lists on post-its, lists on pads of paper.
I created lists to help me remember what to do next, because I can't remember everything. The amount of things we need to do day to day is staggering. Some of it you can blow off, but a lot of things you can't. Even as I try to simplify my life, my life gets still more complex due to everything that is going on.
So I write everything down and I have gotten to LOVE crossing things off my list. It's become the new drug for me. I do something, I cross it off. WOW. What a high. I do more, I cross out more. More hits. COOL.
Lists have really become my way of not forgetting things and to get lots of things done instead of wasting time and worrying about forgetting something.
My other technique is practicing FOCUS.
How ineffective we are at attempting multi-tasking! I was in severe multi-tasking mode as an exec at Yahoo. But you know what, even though I could multi-task on some types of things, I knew that I could never be on critical path for some long term project. They'd be waiting forever for me to finish something.
But now, I have found that focusing bursts of time on something means I can get a lot done. I have done 4 hour marathon sessions at Starbucks to write a product specification. I also now just allocate time to do things in my calendar. During that time, I do NOTHING else until I get that original thing done. That's work, practicing piano, or training - it doesn't matter. I FOCUS on that one thing and get it done, and then move on.
For me, these two techniques have helped sharpen my ability to get things done and to really feel good about it!
Posted by dshen at 11:38 AM
November 20, 2005
Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings...
As part of continuation work past my 20 year plan, my coach and I are working on feelings. This may sound like some post-1990s feelings man follow up work, but I think it has a higher purpose than being some fad of a past decade.
This has to do with increasing one’s emotional sensitivity, intelligence, and skills.
In becoming a more total human being, we need to develop all four areas of our being. Those areas are the physical, emotional, intellectual, and the spiritual. In our past, I would say that the world is really dominated by creating physical and intellectual giants. The world places so much emphasis on sports and physical education in our schools. We join track, play football and baseball among other sports. We idolize Olympic and pro-sports athletes. We give them millions of dollars to play on TV for us for entertainment. Humans are also programmed to bigger and stronger than the next guy. If we dominate this way, we get the women, who, some argue, are prehistorically programmed to want the bigger, stronger mate who can provide for them and protect them.
We also place huge emphasis on education. Our parents drive us to go to school, and then college, and then get our graduate degree. Our society places more value on those with more education. The smarter you are, the more money you (could) make. We think as human beings, the reason for our dominance over other species is our intelligence. We put people through years of training on how to think, and on learning more and more facts as information is power.
After the physical and intellectual, spiritual is next. Although some would argue against me and say it should be on the first tier, I would say that society today doesn’t place as much emphasis on spirituality as it does on the other two. People are expected to go to school but not necessarily to go to church. You don’t need to go to church to get the majority of jobs. And with the controversy through the clergy on their sexual pursuits, it makes people distrust the church. So religion does help one’s spiritual growth, but also one can grow spiritually without religion. This type of spiritual growth is more rare and certainly not taught as normal curricula in schools. These are things such as philosophy and determining where one’s beliefs truly are, independent of the presence of a God.
The least developed out all four is emotional.
Our parent’s generation simply did not put any emphasis on the role that emotional skills could have an importance in life. They simply focused on getting married, raising children, working at a job, and providing for a family. They often came to America looking for the dream, and that dream was going to a good school, getting a great job, climbing the corporate ladder, making more money, buying a bigger house, make more money, and repeat.
But somewhere along the way, we have faltered. Look at today’s divorce rate. What is it about two people that can’t get along with each other for the rest of their lives? After going through one myself and examining the why it happened, I have come to the conclusion that I was severely lacking in emotional skills. The 1990s get in touch with your feelings thing was certainly one step in that direction. Certainly it is hugely important to examine your own emotional states, recognize them, apply the how/why/when/where/who questions to them to understand them better, and then ultimately be able to express them.
But it’s not the only one. You need to be able to receive and read emotion from others and be able to connect to them. You need to know what to do with other peoples’ emotional states, and it depends largely on knowing exactly what your higher goal is with those people, like is this person a loved one, or an enemy, or a business associate. Knowing what kind of relationship are you trying to build with these people is critical to shaping your emotional response. You need to also build an emotional language and vocabulary to discuss, reflect, validate, and express. Many times we never grew up with using such vocabulary, and now, like me, I need to completely learn another language to improve this area.
All of these I am finding to be hugely valuable now and as I work on this key area and bring it out of atrophy and non-use, it is making me a more complete human being instead of being deficient in one or more areas.
I wrote in another blog entry about turning 40 and not wishing I was 20 because I am better now at 40 than at 20. This one area of emotional skills was an area I was terrible in at 20, and it’s yet another reason why I think that I am much better at 40 now. As I work on emotional skills and improve upon them, I reflect yet again on how much I am stronger as human being than I was back at 20.
Posted by dshen at 02:13 PM
October 01, 2005
20 Year Plan DONE!!!
WOW.
A major milestone has been reached. I started coaching around January of this year. And by September, about 9 months later, I finally completed my next 20 year plan.
Scoff you might, as you may think, "How can Dshen have a 20 year plan when people can barely think of what they're going to be doing a month from now, let alone a week or tomorrow?"
It actually started off more like that. My last 20 year plan was more like a huge list of things to do. It had stuff like:
+ Get my Aikido black belt.
+ Manage a group of designers
+ Buy a house
+ Become an "expert" in design
+ Etc. Etc.
And then the Internet explosion came around and turned my previous 20 year plan into a 4 year plan and left me with nothing to shoot for.
But in my recent coaching experience, I think I've come around to thinking that a list of things to do isn't the best way to approach life. Yes you need to do things to get to wherever you want to go. But just creating new lists of things to do wasn't enough to evaluate whether they were the right things to do or just me wasting time....
Instead, I've developed a picture for what the "future Dave Shen" should look like. I did this by really looking inside myself, and my coach was very good at asking me questions and probing to draw out these important feelings and thoughts about what I wanted the "future Dave Shen" to be.
After I did this, I now have a way to evaluate whether or not the things I spend time on are worthwhile and add to the me becoming the "future Dave Shen". If they did not, then I should stop doing those things and do something else.
Of course, things could change so I intend to check in with my coach every 6-9 months or so and see if the "future Dave Shen" attributes need to change.
This will be an interesting exercise going forward.
But at the moment, I am ecstatic that a major milestone has been reached in my life. I look forward to the future knowing I have a great way to evaluate whatever I am doing at any time....
Posted by dshen at 11:22 AM
