Month: July 2021

In his book Principles, Ray Dalio suggests making one big decision to prevent yourself getting lost in hundred little ones. E.g. Decide that you will always go for that run at 7am. Then when you are asking yourself at 11pm, if that 5th beer is a good idea, you have your answer. Ok that is expert level, but you get the idea.

This works just as well in the work place. Big decision. When possible, I will prioritise skin in the game, and driving value for my customers. Little decision, what am I going to do today?

In the same book Dalio provides the definition of a principle that I love. “Principles are what you do when nobody is watching”. My learning is this also applies to yourself. When you are operating on your monkey brain, and you are not watching yourself, you revert to baseline. Principles allows you to abstract up your values and build a better baseline.

Be purposeful with your work calendar. Some things that work; front load your meetings in the morning if intermittent fasting, when you are heads down in interesting work, you are not thinking about eating. Recognise when you are most productive, I have a personal heuristic, “if it ain’t done by 1pm, is probably ain’t getting done“. I just run out of stream in the afternoons, probably linked to circadian rhythm and food schedule.

It never goes away, you just get better at observing it. With repeated exposure we learn that its pot odds to say yes to that presentation, yes to that new responsibility, yes to the snake in the grass.

Thank you to the monkey brain, but I’ve been here before, I will proceed.

In the same way that humans are poor with large numbers, we undervalue the expected ROI when deciding to share information.

Write that blog post, update that wiki, schedule that internal training session.

There is someone out there, present or future, who will find themselves on your path, it just seems improbable in this moment. It only needs one person to get value, to have made it worthwhile.