amazon review: Production Planning & Control / Ramachandran, S / 2017

1.0 out of 5 stars

Just for students

Format: Kindle Edition

Course book, theoritical, no practical implication
Good for industrial engineering students
Not mentioned lean setup in production
Not mentioned TOC at all

amazon highlights: Essential Zen Habits / Leo Babauta / 2015

This Childish Mind is playing a Mind Movie all the time, about how our lives should be so comfortable and pleasurable and orderly. 

Unfortunately, creating a new habit or dropping an old habit can’t be done without discomfort. 

The Mind Movie tells us that changing a habit should be easy and fun, but the reality is that we must wander outside our comfort zone. 

And so the Childish Mind rebels. 

It throws a tantrum.

PART I: CREATING A HABIT

WEEK 1 FOCUS: A SLOW START

Day 1: Pick one change

Day 2: Create a vow

Day 3: Make it small

Day 4: Create a space

Day 5: Set a trigger & reminder

Day 6: Start easy

WEEK 2 FOCUS: MINDFUL ENJOYMENTS

Day 1: Enjoy the habit

Day 2: Be mindful of your movie

Day 3: Focus on gratitude

Day 4: Practice mindfully

Day 5: Reflect and (optionally) journal

Day 6: Adjust to a 2-minute habit

WEEK 3 FOCUS: OVERCOMING "THE DIP"

Day 1: Notice Your Resistance

Day 2: Flow around missing a day

Day 3: Overcome a motivation slump

Day 4:  Practice self-compassion

Day 5: Reflect again, adjust

Day 6: Stay with groundlessness

WEEK 4 FOCUS: RECONNECTING

Day 1: Quit the third time

Day 2: Reconnect with your why

Day 3: Reconnect with the moment

Day 4: Reconnect with gratitude

Day 5: On struggles

Day 6: Don’t waste life

WEEK 5 FOCUS: EMBRACING GROUNDLESSNESS

Day 1: Be curious about groundlessness

Day 2: Practice being with uncertainty

Day 3: Practice being with discomfort

Day 4: See that this is enough

Day 5: Practice letting go & accepting

Day 6: Go through to love

WEEK 6 FOCUS: GRADUALLY CHANGING YOUR LIFE

Day 1: Consider a second habit

Day 2: Gradually change your life

Day 3: Let go of unhelpful changes

Day 4: Adjust & refocus

Day 5: Go into habit maintenance mode

Day 6: Embrace the uncertain path of change

PART II: HABIT TROUBLESHOOTING

MISSED A FEW DAYS & STRUGGLING

Gauge your bandwidth. Assess your focus & commitment. Make a commitment to others. Make a rule: Don’t miss two days in a row. Create accountability. Create a consequence. Make it social.

CAN'T FIND THE TIME

When people say they haven’t had the time to focus on the habit change, what they really mean is they either 1) don’t have the bandwidth, or 2) haven’t made it a priority.

OTHERS AREN'T SUPPORTING ME

Get others on board. Accept others as they are. Set the example. Make changes on your own. Educate with patience. Group challenges.

NOT DOING AS WELL AS I'D HOPED

As you do the habit, be mindful of your attachment to outcomes of this habit, and see if you can focus instead on the intention, on the effort, on enjoying the process.

ACCOUNTABILITY ISN'T WORKING

By creating accountability, we’re creating an environment that helps to keep us on the habit path when our minds begin resisting the path.

FEELING TIRED, STRESSED, OVERWHELMED

First, be aware of the problem. If you’re tired, can you get more rest? Take breaks. Exercise. Get the overwhelm under control. Reduce the inflow. Breathe. Make your task your meditation.

MAKING MISTAKES, GUILT FROM FAILING

See every mistake as an opportunity to learn, a thing that you can get better at, the feedback that’s so crucial for improvement. And smile as you open yourself up to this improvement.

PART III: QUITTING A BAD HABIT

The biggest recommendation is not to take on a quit if you’re still struggling with forming habits. So the first thing you need to do, before you attempt to quit a habit, is track it for three days and try to write down every trigger for the habit.

COME UP WITH REPLACEMENT HABITS

For each trigger and need, write down a positive replacement habit that will meet the same need. Forming these new habits is doable, if as with your previous habits, you take it slowly, take it seriously, and give it your full focus.

GRADUAL CHANGE VS. COLD TURKEY

Gradual method: One version of this method is to gradually cut back on how much you do your old habit — smoke fewer and fewer cigarettes each day, have fewer drinks of alcohol, go on social media fewer times each day.

Cold turkey: This is just stopping completely with the bad habit, with all triggers at once. The benefit is that this can yield faster results, if you are able to fully focus on this and overcoming cravings and urges.

STRUGGLING WITH URGES

Tell yourself you can do this, you’re strong, you got this. And be realistic in that things won’t go as planned, but those are learning opportunities. In the long run, you’re going to make it, because you’re worth it.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FAIL

You will get better and better as you learn from mistakes. In this way, mistakes are helping you improve your habit skills.

PART IV: LIFE STRUGGLES

THE HEART OF OUR STRUGGLES

We struggle with our Mind Movies. We struggle with our feelings. These are both ways of looking at the same thing: we don’t like the actuality of what’s going on, and so we struggle with it. We are causing our own struggle. The good news is that we can let go of the struggle, with practice, and relax into the nature of reality in front of us. This is the beauty of working with our struggles, rather than avoiding them. We can see deeper into reality and uncover the love that’s already there.

RELAXING OUR STRUGGLING

Develop awareness. Set an intention. Invite it to tea. Use gentle curiosity. Relax your struggles. Look without ideals. Merge into the feeling.

SEEING AND WORKING WITH TRUE NATURE

Buddhists say that all of our struggles stem from being confused about the nature of reality. Some things to reflect on about reality: It’s impermanent. We’re not separate. We’re not at the center. It has a basic goodness. It’s beautiful, to be appreciated. We can aspire to love.

COPING WITH LOSS

First, let yourself grieve. Next, turn mindfully toward your grief. Instead of resisting the impermanence, if we can accept and embrace it, let go of our ideal of what we want life to be, perhaps we’ll struggle less.

COPING WITH LIFE CHANGES

See the groundlessness, invite it to tea. Explore with curiosity. Relax your struggles. Merge into the feeling. Embrace the impermanence. See the basic goodness.

DEALING WITH FRUSTRATIONS WITH OTHERS

 “The other person is never the problem.” However, while we can’t control the other person’s actions … we can change our own reaction. This doesn’t mean we ignore the other person’s behavior or don’t address the situation in front of us. It just means that we respond appropriately, out of a desire to make things better rather than out of anger or frustration, or from a desire to teach the other person a lesson or show that we’re right. We always respond better when we remove the anger, and respond calmly.

COPING WITH RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS

You invite the frustration/groundlessness to tea, be curious with it, get intimate with it, relax your struggle.

DEALING WITH UNHAPPINESS WITH OURSELVES

radical acceptance is "... accepting our human existence and all of life as it is. Imperfection is not our personal problem — it is a natural part of existing."

UNCERTAINTY ABOUT LIFE'S PATH

Recognize that you’re trying to find certainty. See the basic goodness. Find your basic intention to do good. Take a step toward that intention. Be curious. Embrace the change. Practice in small doses. Reflect, and develop trust.

SIMPLE PLAN TO CREATE NEW HABITS

To create a new habit, follow these steps for about six weeks: Pick one new, easy habit that you can do once a day: Don’t start right away: Create a vow: Create a space: Set a trigger & reminder: Start with a Minimum Viable Habit: Focus on enjoying the habit: Practice mindfulness: Watch your Mind Movie: Reflect and journal: A daily practice: Increase gradually:

PRACTICE WITH RESISTANCE & GROUNDLESSNESS

Notice your resistance: Quit the third time: Be curious: Relax the struggle: Reconnect with your why: Practice being OK in groundlessness:

CREATE GRADUAL LIFE CHANGE

Consider a second habit: The Slow Change method: Let go of unhelpful changes: Reflect & adjust: Go into habit maintenance mode: Start your second habit with an adjusted method: Embrace the uncertain path of change:

QUITTING A BAD HABIT

Don’t attempt a quit until several successful new habit changes: Track your habit: List your triggers: List your needs: Come up with replacement habits: Use techniques you’ve learned: Gradual change vs. cold turkey: Struggling with urges: Form the right mindset: When you fail:

DEAL WITH LIFE'S DIFFICULTIES

We all struggle: We struggle with our Mind Movies. We struggle with our feelings. See the groundlessness, invite it to tea. Use gentle curiosity. Relax your struggles. Look without ideals. Merge into the feeling. Embrace the impermanence. See the basic goodness.

amazon highlights: Do More Great Work / Michael B.Steiner / 2010

Here’s the Challenge:
You spend more than half your life at work. And you want your work to make an impact and have a purpose, to be more than just a salary. You want to make it count.

Before You Get Going . . . If you don’t know where you’re starting from, it can be tough to get to where you want to go.

Everyone can do more Great Work. Everything we do falls into three basic categories:  • Bad Work • Good Work • Great Work.

·         Bad Work is a waste of time, energy, and life.

·         Good Work is the familiar, useful, productive work you do—and you likely do it well.

·         Great Work is what we all want more of. This is the work that is meaningful to you, that has an impact and makes a difference. It inspires, stretches, and provokes. Great Work is the work that matters.

The truth is there is no perfect mix. Finding the right mix between your Good Work and Great Work (with no Bad Work) is the practice of a lifetime.

1. Great Work decays. Over time, Great Work decays into Good Work. As Great Work becomes comfortable and familiar as you master it, it no longer provides the challenge, stretch, or rewards it once did.

2. Good Work has its attractions. Even as we hunger for more Great Work, we’re always drawn back to the comfort of Good Work. It’s a perpetual tension—the challenge, risk, and reward of the Great against the familiarity, efficiency, and safety of the Good.

3. Different years demand different responses. Some years are “stretch” years when you go for it; others are years to conserve your strength, gathering ideas and laying the groundwork for your next initiative.

Maps help you ask and answer questions. Maps help you take action.

1. Make the maps yours.

2. Find five minutes in your day.

3. Use the maps in the order that makes sense to you.

4. Don’t worry about getting it perfect.

In fact, there’s no such thing as a correct map. “The map,” philosopher Alfred Korzybski once said, “is not the territory.” Your map isn’t reality; it’s only your best guess at describing it.

Six Great Work Paradoxes

1. YOU DON’T NEED TO SAVE THE WORLD. YOU DO NEED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

But it is a call to do more meaningful work. What can you do more of that makes a difference, shifts the balance, has an impact, adds beauty, changes the status quo, creates something worth being created, improves life, moves things forward, reduces waste, engages people, or allows love? (You don’t have to do all of those. Just one will be fine.)

2. GREAT WORK IS PRIVATE. GREAT WORK CAN BE PUBLIC.

3. GREAT WORK IS NEEDED. GREAT WORK ISN’T WANTED.

Great Work shows up at the intersection where what needs to change in your world meets what’s important to you.

4. GREAT WORK IS EASY. GREAT WORK IS DIFFICULT.

5. GREAT WORK IS ABOUT DOING WHAT’S MEANINGFUL. GREAT WORK ISN’T ABOUT DOING IT WELL.

When I say “Great Work,” I’m not talking about a standard of delivery. I’m talking about a standard of impact and meaning.

6. GREAT WORK CAN TAKE A MOMENT. GREAT WORK CAN TAKE A LIFETIME.

These definitions are all true. They’re all equally important.

MAP 1 Where Are You Now? To get to a destination, you need to know your starting point

Great Work Wisdom TOWARD ABUNDANCE

1. WHAT AM I KNOWN FOR? (IDENTITY)

Abundant organizations build on strengths and abilities that strengthen others.

2. WHERE AM I GOING? (PURPOSE AND DIRECTION)

Abundant organizations sustain both fiscal and social responsibility.

3. WHOM DO I TRAVEL WITH? (TEAMWORK)

Abundant organizations take work relationships beyond high-performing teams to high-relating teams.

4. WHAT CHALLENGES INTEREST ME? (ENGAGEMENT)

Abundance occurs when companies can engage not only employees’ skills (competence) and loyalty (commitment), but also their values (contribution).

5. HOW DO I BUILD A POSITIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT? (EFFECTIVE CONNECTION)

Abundant organizations create positive work environments that affirm and connect people throughout the organization.

HOW DO I RESPOND TO SETBACKS? (RESILIENCE AND LEARNING)

Abundant organizations use principles of resilience and learning to persevere with both people and products.

7. WHAT DELIGHTS ME? (CIVILITY AND DELIGHT)

Abundant organizations not only attend to outward demographic diversity but also to the diversity of what makes individuals feel happy, cared for, and excited about life.

8. HOW DO I MANAGE THE TRANSITIONS NECESSITATED BY CHANGE? (ENABLING TRANSITION)

Abundant organizations help individuals internalize the behavioral, cognitive, and affective transitions necessitated by change.

MAP 2 What’s Great? Your past holds clues to your future Great Work

A peak moment is a time when you could see and feel yourself doing something more than what you typically do, when you stepped beyond where you normally stay and did something new, tried something different, and made an impact. How our peak moments look and feel is unique to each of us. That’s one of the paradoxes and complexities of Great Work. You do not need to get paid to do Great Work. We can never know that for sure. You’ll never know everything about who you are, and you’ll never be able to completely describe what you want. But we can’t wait forever. So we have to guess and take the plunge.

MAP 3 What Are You Like at Your Best? What Great and Not So Great look like

MAP 4 Who’s Great? Tap the power of role models

Focusing on the being rather than the doing also prevents us from giving up, knowing we could never equal the performance. Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey speak of our “immunity to change” in their book of the same title. Their powerful insight is that while we might want to behave differently (for example, be more assertive in meetings) in order to achieve a new goal (be more influential in the team), the way we’re behaving right now (being quiet and passive in meetings) serves another, deeper, and often unspoken goal or commitment (for instance, being seen as a team player, being liked, or building a reputation as a noncomplainer). Toward or away from—each of us has a different driver of intrinsic motivation. Some of us are motivated primarily by what we might gain from a situation. We’re goal driven, pulled toward opportunities and an outcome. This “toward” motivation is often about external rewards—money, success, fame, material possessions. But it can also be about internal rewards, such as honoring your values, having the impact you want in the world, rising to a challenge, or gaining control over a situation. Some of us, on the other hand, are motivated by what we will avoid if we achieve our goals. Again, that can be externally driven (not being told off by your boss, not disappointing the team) or it can be internally driven (not stepping on your values, not breaking a promise).  It doesn’t really matter which type you are. What can be useful is knowing where you get your drive to do more Great Work. If you’re a “toward” sort of person, then you can use that knowledge to actively define goals that will pull you toward Great Work. If you know you’re an “away from” type, then you can figure out exactly what you need to manage and avoid in your quest for Great Work.

MAP 5 What’s Calling You? Scan your life for Great Work opportunities

MAP 6 What’s Broken? What pains you can also inspire you

MAP 7 What’s Required? Balance the competing demands of your life

not to focus on saying no but rather on saying yes more slowly. Yogi Berra, always a font of wisdom, is alleged to have said, “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

MAP 8 What’s the Best Choice? This, that, or the other?

There’s a basic pattern, a rhythm, to the creative process, a backbeat driving the emergence of ideas: Out. In. Expand. Contract. Diverge. Converge. Create. Select. You open up, expand possibilities, and have ideas (out, expand, diverge, create). Then you narrow your focus, close down options, and make a choice (in, contract, converge, select). And repeat.

MAP 9 What’s Possible? Find the idea-generator within you

MAP 10 What’s the Right Ending? Explore different ways forward

As the saying goes, “It’s not that you’ll believe it when you see it, it’s that you’ll see it when you believe it.”

MAP 11 How Courageous Are You? Take it to 11

In every case, however, making a choice is an act of independence in which you take, as author Peter Block puts it, “responsibility for your own freedom.”

MAP 12 What Will You Do? Inspiration without action is just hot air

MAP 13 What Support DO You Need? Doing Great Work by yourself means it’s not Great Work

MAP 14 What’s the Next Step? Put the Do into Do More Great Work

 “You can’t do a project. You can only do the next step.” If you really don’t want to find a real-live person to support you, consider using stickK.com (yes, it’s got a double K), a wonderful accountability tool. You’ll register your commitment and set yourself regular periods to check in and report on progress. You can build a support team to monitor how you’re doing. And you can put your money where you mouth is by putting cash on the line. If you reach your self-designated milestones, your money’s safe. If you don’t, it goes to a charity you’ve chosen. I’ve included resources you can find at the www.DoMoreGreatWork.com website, as well as a list of the very best books and Web resources I know to expand your knowledge and your ability to do more Great Work.

MAP 15 Lost Your Great Work Mojo? When you wander off the path

GREAT WORK TRUTH 1: Things only get interesting when you take full responsibility for the choices you make.

GREAT WORK TRUTH 2: To do more Great Work you must both narrow and broaden your gaze.

GREAT WORK TRUTH 3: Decide what to say no to.

GREAT WORK TRUTH 4: Stop making everyone happy.

GREAT WORK TRUTH 5: Ask for help.

You can see these Great Work truths played out in living color at www.GreatWorkMovie.com.

The Language of Leaders / Kevin Murray / 2013 / kitap özeti

Liderin işi değişimi yönetmektir, bunun için de iletişim kurmalıdır.
Niyet açıklıkla belli edilmeli, değişimin gerçekleşmesi için sürekli yeni liderler yetiştirilmelidir.
Ne yapılacağı değil, niçin yapılacağı ve hedefin neresi olduğu söylenmelidir, böylece esinlenme sağlanır, ekibin yaratıcı doğaçlamasına fırsat verilmiş olur.







12 bileşenden oluşan bir program öneriliyor:

1. Kendin ol, kendini geliştir : Özgün ol, kendini ifade et, esinlendir, hedefini tutkuyla anlat, insan olduğunu hissettir.
2. Misyon ve değerleri netleştirin: Misyon neden burada olduğumuzdur. Değerler ana ilkelerimizdir, davranışlarımızı belirlerler. Standartlar asgari müşterekleri gösterir. Vizyon geleceğin tarifidir, sayısal ve ilişkisel bir resimdir. Hedefler, vizyona giderken doğru yolda ve tempoda olduğumuzu gösterecek kilometre taşlarıdır. Sadece sayısal hedefler insanlara ilham veremez. Herkesi vizyona ortak etmelisiniz ki ekip çalışmasından sinerji elde edilebilsin. Değerleri benimseyemeyenleri ekipten çıkarın. 
3. Geleceğe odaklanın: Gelecek hayali herkesi içersin, canlı ve ilham verici olsun. Hayal misyon ve değerlerle harmanlanınca değişimin yakıtı olur.
4. Güven verin: İlişkilerin işte başarının anahtarıdır. İlişki kurun, yaşatın. Şöhretinizi yönetin. Müşteriler, tedarikçiler, çalışanlar, ortaklar, he rkesle ilişkide kalın.
5. Harekete geçirin: Değişim zorunluluk değil bir seçimdir, bunu hissettirin. Sadece hayalinizi paylaşan çalışanlar kurumunuz için kıymetlidir, yanlış insanları sırtınızda taşımayın. Eleştirileri dinleyin, uygun şekilde cevaplayın.
6. Dinleyicilerinizi fark edin: Mesajı değil, mesajın aktarım şeklini dinleyicilerinize göre ayarlayın. Söyledikleriniz bir etki bırakmadıkça iletişimi başarmış sayılmazsınız.
7. Dinlemeyi öğrenin: Ortalama insan 150 kelime/dakika hızla konuşurken 600 kelime/dakika hızla dinleyebilir, dikkatin dağılması çok olasıdır, iyi dinlemek zordur, pratik gerektirir. Vücut diliniz söyleminizin önemli bir parçasıdır. Dinlemediğiniz çok hızlı belli olur, güveni kaybedersiniz.
8. Bakış açınızı koruyun: Desteklemeniz veya karşı çıkmanız gerektiğinde görmezden gelmeyin, sessiz kalmayın, varlığınızı hissettirin. Yaptıklarınızla söyledikleriniz uyumlu olsun.
9. Hikayeler anlatın: Ekibinizin hem beynine hem kalbine hitap edin. Hikayelerin ilham vermesi gerekir, sonucu dinleyenler çıkarmalıdır. Problem-çözüm-fayda formatına sadık kalın, repertuar oluşturun, pratik yapın. Hikayenin özü kadar sunumu da önemlidir.
10. Uyanık olun: Çevrenizde olan bitenden haberiniz olsun, sinyalleri kaçırmayın, beklediğinizden farklıysa dikkat edin. Tutarlı olun.
11. Kamuoyunu fark edin: Kamuya açık alanlarda, ortamlarda söyledikleriniz - yaptıklarınız kurumunuzun imajını, şöhretini etkiler, bundan yararlanmaya çalışın.
12. Öğrenin, prova edin, gözden geçirin, iyileştirin: Kendimizi geliştirmek tek seferlik bir çaba değil, sürekli bir yolculuktur. Ne kadar iyi olursak özgüvenimiz o kadar artar, parlayan ışığımız çevremizdekileri cezbeder.

amazon highlights: Willful Blindness / Margaret Heffernan / 2011

The legal concept of willful blindness: You are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something that instead you strove not to see. there is an opportunity for knowledge, and a responsibility to be informed, but it is shirked. The law doesn’t care why you remain ignorant, only that you do. We can’t notice and know everything: the cognitive limits of our brain simply won’t let us. That means we have to filter or edit what we take in. We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs.

That willful blindness is so pervasive does not mean that it is inevitable. We may think being blind makes us safer, when in fact it leaves us crippled, vulnerable, and powerless. But when we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change. Embedded within our self-definition, we build relationships, institutions, cities, systems, and cultures that, in reaffirming our values, blind us to alternatives. This is where our willful blindness originates: in the innate human desire for familiarity, for likeness, that is fundamental to the ways our minds work.

We may think that opposites attract, but they don’t get married. “positive assortative mating”—which really just means that we marry people like ourselves. Familiarity, it turns out, does not breed contempt. It breeds comfort. The familiar makes us feel secure and comfortable. Human beings want to feel good about themselves and to feel safe, and being surrounded by familiarity and similarity satisfies those needs very efficiently. The problem with this is that everything outside that warm, safe circle is our blind spot.

This is natural but it isn’t neutral. In what he calls the “group polarization effect,” legal scholar Cass Sunstein found that when groups of like-minded people get together, they make each other’s views more extreme. Our intellectual homes are just as self-selected and exclusive as our physical homes. In theory, the Internet was going to change all of this. Living, working, and making decisions with people like ourselves brings us comfort and efficiencies, but it also makes us far narrower in how we think and what we see. The more tightly we focus, the more we leave out. conscious, deliberate choices to be blind, but in a skein of decisions that slowly but surely restrict our view. We don’t sense our perspective closing in and most would prefer that it stay broad and rich.

But our blindness grows out of the small, daily decisions that we make, which embed us more snugly inside our affirming thoughts and values. And what’s most frightening about this process is that as we see less and less, we feel more comfort and greater certainty. We think we see more—even as the landscape shrinks. that is why physicians aren’t supposed to treat family members—because love blinds them to the realities of the case. This doesn’t, unfortunately, stop family members from asking for advice and even, on occasion, free care. And it has proved impossible for professional organizations to prevent doctors treating their own families.

The dangers are twofold: a tendency either to underplay the problem (I love you and can’t bear for you to be ill) or to overplay the problem (I couldn’t bear to lose you so will treat the tiniest symptom). This is the true cost of blindness: as long as it feels safer to do and say nothing, as long as keeping the peace feels more benign, abuse can continue. Our desire to protect our self-worth results in others paying a very high price. Nations, institutions, individuals can all be blinded by love, by the need to believe themselves good and worthy and valued. We simply could not function if we believed ourselves to be otherwise. But when we are blind to the flaws and failings of what we love, we aren’t effective either. As Colm O’Gorman said, we make ourselves powerless when we pretend we don’t know. That’s the paradox of blindness: We think it will make us safe even as it puts us in danger.

IT’S AS EASY to fall in love with an idea as with a person. Big ideas are especially alluring. They bring order to the world, give meaning to it. Our brains treat differently any information that might challenge our closely held beliefs. The brain doesn’t like conflict and works hard to resolve it. Which means that when we work hard to defend our core beliefs, we risk becoming blind to the evidence that could tell us we’re wrong. Dissonance is eliminated when we blind ourselves to contradictory propositions. And we are prepared to pay a very high price to preserve our most cherished ideas. we can stay awake for long periods of time with little sleep—but what we lose, progressively, is the ability to think. we see what we expect to see and are blind to the unexpected.

“For the human brain,” says Simons, “attention is a zero-sum game: If we pay more attention to one place, object, or event, we necessarily pay less attention to others.” “Resource depletion specifically disables cognitive elaboration,” Because it takes less brain power to believe than to doubt, we are, when tired or distracted, gullible.25 Because we are all biased, and biases are quick and effortless, exhaustion makes us favor the information we know and are comfortable with. We’re too tired to do the heavier lifting of examining new or contradictory information, so we fall back on our biases, the opinions and the people we already trust. When people felt overloaded, he said, they restricted their social and moral involvement. If it is hard to doubt when you’re tired, it may be even harder to care. Propagandists and brainwashers know what managers and corporate leaders choose to forget: the human mind, overloaded and starved of sleep, becomes morally blind. If you don’t eat, you starve and everyone can see there’s a problem. But when we don’t sleep, or when we work too hard, often even we can’t see there’s a problem. Sure, we don’t feel great; but what we can’t see is what we are losing: the capacity to reason, to judge, to make good and humane decisions, to see consequences and complexity.

When they apply the legal concept of willful blindness in court cases, they are said to be issuing “the ostrich instruction.” Whether the metaphor is scientifically accurate or not, we all recognize the human desire at times to prefer ignorance to knowledge, and to deal with conflict and change by imagining it out of existence. Nobody likes change because the status quo feels safer, it’s familiar, we’re used to it. Change feels like redirecting the riverbed: effortful and risky. It’s so much easier to imagine that what we don’t know won’t hurt us.

You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge. We know—intellectually—that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the one hand, and inertia on the other, the ostrich position can seem very attractive. Unconditional obedience is, in brief, the only principle on which those in service must act.” Hierarchies, and the system of behaviors that they require, proliferate in nature and in man-made organizations. Obedience is even strong enough to blind us to our own self-interest. as an admirable goal should give any executive pause. Some of the gravest mistakes in both the business and the political world have been caused by eager executives, keen to please, hungry for reward, and convinced that blind obedience was their path to success.

Military law would blame the boss. Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups. —Nietzsche Under social pressure, most of us would simply rather be wrong than alone. There is a physical reality to the pain that we feel when we are excluded. In other words, our desire to seek social connections with others comes from chemical rewards as well as social ones. Conformity is compelling because much of our sense of life’s meaning depends on other people.

Ostracism makes individuals feel they lack purpose, have less control over their lives, are less good moral beings, and lack self-worth. Those high school cliques aren’t uniquely adolescent experiences: Human beings hate being left out. We conform because to do so seems to give our life meaning. Because in choosing to stick with the crowd, we steadily blind ourselves—to alternatives, to bad news, to doubt, to the individual values that we think are steady but turn out to also be susceptible—until we find ourselves dazed and confused in the dark.

The bystander effect demonstrates the tremendous tension between our social selves and our individual selves. Left on our own, we mostly do the right thing. But in a group, our moral selves and our social selves come into conflict, which is painful. We are more likely to intervene when we are the sole witness; once there are other witnesses, we become anxious about doing the right thing (whatever that is), about being seen and being judged by the group. Bystanders do play a major part in bullying. Some student bystanders act as “reinforcers,” providing an encouraging audience, while others merely protect the bully by failing to act. This is, of course, why some leaders prefer distance; they feel that they could not do their jobs if they were immersed in the messy, human detail of the mission.

The argument for distance is that eliminating proximity clarifies the mind and facilitates more objective decision making. But it can also blind one to the details that one would prefer not to see. Structural blindness was built into the way BP did business, not because its leaders wanted to be blind but because, to be competitive, The distance imposed by geography and implicit in power is reinforced by the structures within which work gets done.

It’s challenging to recognize that outsourcing has become so embedded in Western economies, that there are no areas in which it is not considered. Why do we build institutions and corporations so large and so complex that we can’t see how they work? In part, it’s because we can. We are so delighted with our own ingenuity and intelligence and it gives us a sense of mastery and power. And we are blind to the blindness these complex structures necessarily confer. Money blinds us to our social relationships, creating a sense of self-sufficiency that discourages cooperation and mutual support. Money and willful blindness make us act in ways incompatible with what we believe our ethics to be, and often even with our own self-interest. All the other organizational forces of willful blindness—obedience, conformity, bystander effects, distance, and division of labor—combine to obscure the moral, human face of work.

Cassandra must have known she was doomed to die then, too, because that was her unique gift: to see what others did not. The savage irony of Cassandra is that, as we read her prophecies, we know that they are true, but no one else does. The world contains millions of Cassandras, in all walks of life and all of them different. Being able to draw a cognitive map requires traveling well outside of our immediate knowledge and safety. It means meeting people not like ourselves, in industries and neighborhoods far from our own, and, when we’re there, having the confidence and curiosity to keep asking questions.

Drawing our cognitive map calls on a breadth of experience, either from different disciplines or different life experiences. CASSANDRAS SHOW US that we don’t have to be blind. They are inspiring individuals because they believe in the possibility of change. Unafraid of conflict, they are more interested in exploring ideas than in defending them. Many people, admiring Cassandras from a distance, hesitate to step into their shoes. The role looks too demanding, the costs too high. We can start by recognizing the homogeneity of our lives, our institutions, neighborhoods, and friends, putting more effort into reaching out to those who don’t fit in and seeing positive value in those that prove more demanding.

The sooner we associate long hours and multitasking with incompetence and carelessness, the better. Their own people, living their own lives: That is what we should aspire to in the schools that we build and the teaching that we deliver. Not compliant, obedient conformists but individuals who insist on thinking for themselves. “The goal is to change people’s patterns of understanding, altering their thinking from ‘me’ to ‘we.’ Changing the game can require surprisingly little: A simple question—Do we mean this? Did I understand correctly?—can turn the tide. If one of the symptoms of blindness is comfort, so one of the indicators of critical thinking may be discomfort. The sheer complexity of many decisions makes blindness all the more tempting. I’ve begun to wonder whether we now have organizations that are simply too complex to manage. If they are too complex to grasp, either we need to change, or they do. we do know is that hierarchies exacerbate blindness and obedience.

“We have monuments for people who have displayed physical courage in war,” Lieutenant Colonel Krawchuk mused. “But where are the monuments to people who said no, we won’t do this because it’s a bad or wrong or unethical decision?” When we are willfully blind, it is in the presence of information that we could know, and should know, but don’t know because it makes us feel better not to know. We make ourselves powerless when we choose not to know. But we give ourselves hope when we insist on looking. The very fact that willful blindness is willed, that it is a product of a rich mix of experience, knowledge, thinking, neurons, and neuroses, is what gives us the capacity to change it.

As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? Just what am I missing here?

amazon highlights: Triggers / Marshall Goldsmith / 2015

Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be / Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter

A trigger is any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and actions. In every waking hour we are being triggered by people, events, and circumstances that have the potential to change us.

Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand. It’s the feeling of regret. It’s implied every time we ask ourselves why we haven’t become the person we want to be. Regret is the emotion we experience when we assess our present circumstances and reconsider how we got here.
We replay what we actually did against what we should have done—and find ourselves wanting in some way. Regret can hurt.

Truth #1: Meaningful behavioral change is very hard to do. We can’t admit that we need to change. We do not appreciate inertia’s power over us. We don’t know how to execute a change. We may be motivated to lose weight but we lack the nutritional understanding and cooking ability to design and stick with an effective diet.

Truth #2: No one can make us change unless we truly want to change. Everyone around you has to recognize that you’re changing. Relying on other people increases the degree of difficulty exponentially. An excuse explains why we fell short of expectations after the fact. Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens.

1. If I understand, I will do. There’s a difference between understanding and doing. Just because people understand what to do doesn’t ensure that they will actually do it. This belief triggers confusion.
2. I have willpower and won’t give in to temptation. We not only overestimate it, we chronically underestimate the power of triggers in our environment to lead us astray. This belief triggers overconfidence.
3. Today is a special day. Excusing our momentary lapses as an outlier event triggers a self-indulgent inconsistency—which is fatal for change.
4. “At least I’m better than…” This is our excuse to take it easy, lowering the bar on our motivation and discipline. Other people have to change more than we do. We’ve triggered a false sense of immunity.
5. I shouldn’t need help and structure. This is a natural response that combines three competing impulses: 1) our contempt for simplicity (only complexity is worthy of our attention); 2) our contempt for instruction and follow-up; and 3) our faith, however unfounded, that we can succeed all by ourselves. In combination these three trigger an unappealing exceptionalism in us.
6. I won’t get tired and my enthusiasm will not fade. We seldom recognize that self-control is a limited resource. The sheer effort of sticking with the plan triggers depletion.
7. I have all the time in the world. This faith in time’s infinite patience triggers procrastination. We will start getting better tomorrow. There’s no urgency to do it today.
8. I won’t get distracted and nothing unexpected will occur. Earning an undergraduate degree in mathematical economics taught me about the high probability of low-probability events. This belief triggers unrealistic expectations.
9. An epiphany will suddenly change my life. But more often than not, an epiphany experience triggers magical thinking. It might produce change in the short run, but nothing meaningful or lasting—because the process is based on impulse rather than strategy, hopes and prayers rather than structure.
10. My change will be permanent and I will never have to worry again. We set a goal and mistakenly believe that in achieving that goal we will be happy—and that we will never regress. This belief triggers a false sense of permanence. If we don’t follow up, our positive change doesn’t last. It’s the difference between, say, getting in shape and staying in shape—hitting. Even when we get there, we cannot stay there without commitment and discipline.
11. My elimination of old problems will not bring on new problems. This belief triggers a fundamental misunderstanding of our future challenges.
12. My efforts will be fairly rewarded. From childhood we are brought up to believe that life is supposed to be fair. When we are not properly rewarded we feel cheated. Our dashed expectations trigger resentment. Getting better is its own reward.
13. No one is paying attention to me. We believe that we can occasionally lapse back into bad behavior because people aren’t paying close attention. We are practically invisible, triggering a dangerous preference for isolation.
14. If I change I am “inauthentic.” If we change, we are somehow not being true to who we really are. This belief triggers stubbornness. We refuse to adapt our behavior to new situations because “it isn’t me.”
15. I have the wisdom to assess my own behavior. If we’re successful, we tend to credit ourselves for our victories and blame our situation or other people for our losses. This belief triggers an impaired sense of objectivity.

We think we are in sync with our environment, but actually it’s at war with us. It’s situational, and it’s a hyperactive shape-shifter. Every time we enter a new situation, with its mutating who-what-when-where-and-why specifics, we are surrendering ourselves to a new environment—and putting our goals, our plans, our behavioral integrity at risk. It’s a simple dynamic: a changing environment changes us.

Feedback teaches us to see our environment as a triggering mechanism. A feedback loop comprises four stages: evidence, relevance, consequence, and action. A behavioral trigger is any stimulus that impacts our behavior.
1. A behavioral trigger can be direct or indirect. Direct triggers are stimuli that immediately and obviously impact behavior, with no intermediate steps between the triggering event and your response. You see a happy baby and smile. Indirect triggers take a more circuitous route before influencing behavior. You see a family photo that initiates a series of thoughts that compel you to pick up the phone and call your sister.
2. A trigger can be internal or external. External triggers come from the environment, bombarding our five senses as well as our minds. Internal triggers come from thoughts or feelings that are not connected with any outside stimulus.
3. A trigger can be conscious or unconscious. Conscious triggers require awareness. You know why your finger recoils when you touch the hot plate. Unconscious triggers shape your behavior beyond your awareness.
4. A trigger can be anticipated or unexpected. We see anticipated triggers coming a mile away. Unanticipated triggers take us by surprise, and as a result stimulate unfamiliar behavior.
5. A trigger can be encouraging or discouraging. Encouraging triggers push us to maintain or expand what we are doing. They are reinforcing. Discouraging triggers push us to stop or reduce what we are doing.
6. A trigger can be productive or counterproductive. Productive triggers push us toward becoming the person we want to be. Counterproductive triggers pull us away. Triggers are not inherently “good” or “bad.” What matters is our response to them. They express the timeless tension between what we want and what we need. We want short-term gratification while we need long-term benefit. And we never get a break from choosing one or the other. It’s the defining conflict of adult behavioral change.
We can illustrate this conflict In the following matrix where encouraging triggers lead us toward what we want and productive triggers lead us toward what we need.
We Want It and Need It: The upper right quadrant is where we’d prefer to be all the time. They make us try harder right now and they also reinforce continuing behavior that drives us toward our goals. We want them now and need them later.
We Want It but Don’t Need It: This is where we encounter pleasurable situations that can tempt or distract us from achieving our goals.
We Need It but Don’t Want It: The lower right quadrant is a thorny grab bag of discouraging triggers that we don’t want but that we know we need. Rules push us in the right direction even when our first impulse is to go the other way.
We Don’t Need or Want It: The lower left quadrant, where our triggers are both discouraging and counterproductive, is not a good place to be.

The classic sequencing template for analyzing problem behavior in children was known as ABC, for antecedent, behavior, and consequence. The antecedent is the event that prompts the behavior. The behavior creates a consequence.
In his engaging book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg applied this ABC template to breaking and forming habits. Instead of antecedent, behavior, and consequence, he used the terms cue, routine, and reward to describe the three-part sequence known as a habit loop. Duhigg’s Golden Rule of Habit Change—keep the cue and reward, change the routine—
I’ve isolated three eye-blink moments—first the impulse, then the awareness, then a choice—that comprise the crucial intervals between the trigger and our eventual behavior. If there are no bullets in the gun, the trigger doesn’t matter.

Situational Leadership: Hersey and Blanchard believed that leaders should • keep track of the shifting levels of “readiness” among their followers, • stay highly attuned to each situation, • acknowledge that situations change constantly, and • fine-tune their leadership style to fit the follower’s readiness. This was “situational leadership.” It dissected the relationship between leaders and their followers into four distinct styles:
1. Directing is for employees requiring a lot of specific guidance to complete the task.
2. Coaching is for employees who need more than average guidance to complete the task, but with above-average amounts of two-way dialogue.
3. Supporting is for employees with the skills to complete the task but who may lack the confidence to do it on their own.
4. Delegating is for employees who score high on motivation, ability, and confidence.
The four styles are exempt from qualitative judgment. One style is not “better” than another. Each is appropriate to the situation. It’s a simple two-step: measure the need, choose the style.
We are superior planners and inferior doers. The boxer-philosopher Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” As we wander through life, what punches us in the face repeatedly is our environment.

Forecasting is what we must do after acknowledging the environment’s power over us. It comprises three interconnected stages: anticipation, avoidance, and adjustment.
1. Anticipation When our performance has clear and immediate consequences, we rise to the occasion. We create our environment. We don’t let it re-create us.
2. Avoidance Peter Drucker famously said, “Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.” This impulse to always engage rather than selectively avoid is one reason I’m called in to coach executives on their behavior.*2 It’s one of the most common behavioral issues among leaders: succumbing to the temptation to exercise power when they would be better off showing restraint. It’s a simple equation: To avoid undesirable behavior, avoid the environments where it is most likely to occur.
3. Adjustment Adjustment, if we’re lucky, is the end product of forecasting—but only after we anticipate our environment’s impact and eliminate avoidance as an option.

We’re often too distracted to hear what the environment is telling us. the Positive to Negative axis tracks the elements that either help us or hold us back. The Change to Keep axis tracks the elements that we determine to change or keep in the future. Thus, in pursuing any behavioral change we have four options: change or keep the positive elements, change or keep the negative.
• Creating represents the positive elements that we want to create in our future.
• Preserving represents the positive elements that we want to keep in the future. Preserving sounds passive and mundane, but it’s a real choice. We rarely get credit for not messing up a good thing.
• Eliminating represents the negative elements that we want to eliminate in the future. Eliminating is our most liberating, therapeutic action—but we make it reluctantly. In Peter Drucker’s words, I was “sacrificing the future on the altar of today.”
• Accepting represents the negative elements that we need to accept in the future. Instead of metrics, we rely on impressions, which are open to wide interpretation. We take in what we want to hear, but tune out the displeasing notes that we need to hear. Discovering what really matters is a gift, not a burden. Accept it and see.

Apologizing is a magic move. Apology is where behavioral change begins.
Asking for help is a magic move. Asking for help sustains the change process, keeps it moving forward.
Optimism—not only feeling it inside but showing it on the outside—is a magic move. Optimism almost makes the change process a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This chapter introduces a fourth magic move: asking active questions. Active questions are the alternative to passive questions. There’s a difference between “Do you have clear goals?” and “Did you do your best to set clear goals for yourself?” The former is trying to determine the employee’s state of mind; the latter challenges the employee to describe or defend a course of action.

Using those qualities—positive versus negative, proactive versus passive—I tracked the responses to my 11 million miles card to distinguish four levels of engagement:
Committed: The proactively positive employees would examine the card as if they’d never seen it before, and say some variation on “Hey, this is cool.” Some would call over another employee to check out the card.
Professional: Then there are the passively positive responses, best expressed by the woman behind the desk in Dallas who offered the sincere pleasantry, “We appreciate your loyalty, sir.” That’s okay.
Cynical: The most common response I get is the passively negative tone of “That’s nice, sir.” Or “That’s interesting.” Bored with their job and indifferent to customers,
Hostile: At the bottom of the engagement barrel are the proactively negative types who dislike their jobs and can barely tolerate me.

People don’t get better without follow-up. So let’s get better at following up with our people. The difference was not what the company was doing to engage the flight attendants. The difference was what the flight attendants were doing to engage themselves! While any follow-up was shown to be superior to no follow-up, a simple tweak in the language of follow-up—focusing on what the individual can control—makes a significant difference.
1. Did I do my best to set clear goals today? No clear goals, no engagement. Executives demoralized by their leaders’ fecklessness became dramatically more engaged after they started setting their own direction for the day instead of futilely waiting to receive it from someone else.
2. Did I do my best to make progress toward my goals today? We don’t just need specific targets; we need to see ourselves nearing, not receding from, the target. Progress makes any of our accomplishments more meaningful.
3. Did I do my best to find meaning today? It’s up to us, not an outside agency like our company, to provide meaning.
4. Did I do my best to be happy today? because happiness goes hand in hand with meaning, you need both. We think our source of happiness is “out there” (in our job, in more money, in a better environment) but we usually find it “in here”—when we quit waiting for someone or something else to bring us joy and take responsibility for locating it ourselves. We find happiness where we are.
5. Did I do my best to build positive relationships today? One of the best ways to “have a best friend” is to “be a best friend.”
6. Did I do my best to be fully engaged today? To increase our level of engagement, we must ask ourselves if we’re doing our best to be engaged.
Adding the words “did I do my best” added the element of trying into the equation. It injected personal ownership and responsibility into my question-and-answer process. You’re not constructing your list to impress anyone. It’s your list, your life. Injecting the phrase “Did I do my best to…” triggers trying. Trying not only changes our behavior but how we interpret and react to that behavior. Trying is more than a semantic tweak to our standard list of goals. It delivers some unexpected emotional wallops that inspire change or knock us out of the game completely. This is where Daily Questions can be a game-changer. They create a more congenial environment for us to succeed at behavioral change, in several ways.
1. They reinforce our commitment.
2. They ignite our motivation where we need it, not where we don’t. Generally speaking, we are guided by two kinds of motivation. Intrinsic motivation is wanting to do something for its own sake, because we enjoy it, for example, reading a book that isn’t assigned in class, simply because we’re curious about the subject. Extrinsic motivation is doing something for external rewards such as other people’s approval or to avoid punishment.
3. They highlight the difference between self-discipline and self-control. Self-discipline refers to achieving desirable behavior. Self-control refers to avoiding undesirable behavior.
4. They shrink our goals into manageable increments.

Commitment. Motivation. Self-discipline. Self-control. Patience. Those are powerful allies when we try to change our ways, courtesy of Daily Questions. There’s one other ally we’ve left out of this discussion—the coach. At the highest level, a coach is a source of mediation, bridging the gap between the visionary Planner and short-sighted Doer in us. It highlights three benefits of Daily Questions.

1. If we do it, we get better.

2. We get better faster.

3. Eventually we become our own Coach.

Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic? The moral: there’s never anyone in the other boat. We are always screaming at an empty vessel. An empty boat isn’t targeting us. If there’s a person who drives you crazy, you don’t have to like, agree with, or respect him, just accept him for being who he is. It’s the same with all the people who annoy or enrage us. They’re doing it because that’s who they are, not because of who we are. “Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.” The Buddhism is inward-facing; it’s about maintaining our sanity in the presence of others. The Drucker is outward-facing; it’s about confining our contributions to the positive.

AIWATT creates a split-second delay in our prideful, cynical, judgmental, argumentative, and selfish responses to our triggering environment. Am I willing implies that we are exercising volition—taking responsibility—rather than surfing along the waves of inertia that otherwise rule our day. We are asking, “Do I really want to do this?” At this time reminds us that we’re operating in the present. Circumstances will differ later on, demanding a different response. The only issue is what we’re facing now.

To make the investment required reminds us that responding to others is work, an expenditure of time, energy, and opportunity. And, like any investment, our resources are finite. We are asking, “Is this really the best use of my time?” To make a positive difference places the emphasis on the kinder, gentler side of our nature. It’s a reminder that we can help create a better us or a better world. If we’re not accomplishing one or the other, why are we getting involved? On this topic focuses us on the matter at hand. We can’t solve every problem. The time we spend on topics where we can’t make a positive difference is stolen from topics where we can. The circumstances for deploying AIWATT are not limited to those moments when we must choose to be nice or not (although I can’t overestimate the importance of being nice).

1. When we confuse disclosure with honesty.

2. When we have an opinion.

3. When our facts collide with other people’s beliefs.

4. When decisions don’t go our way.

5. When we regret our own decisions.

have learned one key lesson, which has near-universal applicability: We do not get better without structure. Where are we going? tackled the big-picture priorities at the company. Where are you going? Robert then turned the table and asked each person to answer the same question about themselves, thus aligning their behavior and mindset with Robert’s. the third portion of every meeting required him to openly recognize recent achievements by the executive facing him. Where can we improve? This forced Robert to give his direct reports constructive suggestions for the future—something he’d rarely done and that his people didn’t expect from him. He was not only shaping the world around him, he was learning from it. When we offer our help, we are nudging people to admit they need help. We are adding needed value, not interfering or imposing. How can I become a more effective leader? Asking for help means exposing our weaknesses and vulnerabilities—not an easy thing to do. Structure not only increases our chance of success, it makes us more efficient at it.

The social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister coined the term ego depletion in the 1990s to describe this phenomenon. He contended that we possess a limited conceptual resource called ego strength, which is depleted through the day by our various efforts at self-regulation—resisting temptations, making trade-offs, inhibiting our desires, controlling our thoughts and statements, adhering to other people’s rules. Like fuel in a gas tank, our self-control is finite and runs down with steady use. By the end of the day, we’re worn down and vulnerable to foolish choices. Researchers call this decision fatigue, a state that leaves us with two courses of action: 1) we make careless choices or 2) we surrender to the status quo and do nothing. Depletion, like stress, is an invisible enemy. Under depletion’s influence we are more prone to inappropriate social interactions, such as talking too much, sharing intimate personal information, and being arrogant. Making big decisions late in the day is an obvious risk.
When we have structure, we don’t have to make as any choices; we just follow the plan. And the net result is we’re not being depleted as quickly.

we’re surrendering to our routine, and burning up less energy trying to be disciplined. Our routine has taken care of that. It’s an irresistible equation: the more structure I have, the less I have to worry about. The peace of mind more than compensates for whatever I sacrifice in autonomy. That’s the paradox: We need help when we’re least likely to get it. The simpler the structure, the more likely we’ll stick with it.

1. Pre-awareness.

2. Commitment.

3. Awareness.

4. Scoring.

5. Repetition.

Good enough isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The problem begins when this good enough attitude spills beyond our marketplace choices and into the things we say and do. If your motivation for a task or goal is in any way compromised—because you lack the skill, or don’t take the task seriously, or think what you’ve done so far is good enough—don’t take it on. Find something else to show the world how much you care, not how little. Pro bono is an adjective, not an excuse. If you think doing folks a favor justifies doing less than your best, you’re not doing anyone any favors, including yourself. People forget your promise, remember your performance. It’s like a restaurant donating food to a homeless shelter, but delivering shelf-dated leftovers and scraps that hungry people can barely swallow. The restaurant owner thinks he’s being generous, that any donation is better than nothing. Better than nothing is not even close to good enough—and good enough, after we make a promise, is never good enough.

We are professionals at what we do, amateurs at what we want to become. We need to erase this devious distinction—or at least close the gap between professional and amateur—to become the person we want to be. Being good over here does not excuse being not so good over there. When we engage in noncompliance, we’re not just being sloppy and lazy. It’s more aggressive and rude than that. We’re thumbing our noses at the world, announcing, “The rules don’t apply to us. Don’t rely on us. We don’t care.” We’re drawing a line at good enough and refusing to budge beyond it.

That’s how change begins—with a commitment to improve and notifying people of your plan. We can’t change until we know what to change. We commit a lot of unforced errors in figuring out what to change. We waste time on issues we don’t feel that strongly about. We limit ourselves with rigid binary thinking. Mostly, we suffer a failure of imagination. Any positive change is better than none at all.
The first objective is awareness—being awake to what’s going on around us.
The second is engagement. We’re not only awake in our environment, we’re actively participating in it—and the people who matter to us recognize our engagement.
When we prolong negative behavior—both the kind that hurts the people we love or the kind that hurts us in some way—we are leading a changeless life in the most hazardous manner.