Love Your TEAM

Usually I write about team dynamics and productivity but today it is not about the “external team” you work with – It’s about the team WITHIN you.
Please join me in welcoming your TEAM (Time, Energy, Attention, Mindset)

Time

Whether you think Life is fair and unfair, we each have 24 hours in a day. At birth, most of us are born Billionaires (in minutes) and Millionaires (in days). Some are luckier than others in ways we don’t normally think about, but we can all agree it is non-renewable.
We play this game every day – start with 24 and take out the non-negotiables. Sleep, work, family, social, entertainment etc. How much time do we actually have (left) for the important things, people and relationships?
The most common response to “How have you been?” is probably “I am Busy”. Somehow busyness is perceived as a measure of success. Important person => Responsibilities => Busy. However, the opposite of busyness is not necessarily laziness.
How about Deliberate, Choiceful, or Creative?
Start by looking here:

Instead of checking 3 apps for to shave minutes off your route home, how about work from home to save the 1-hour+ commute?
If there is a repetitive, manual task, why not make a tool to simplify or automate it?
But are we spending more time searching for the best tool than doing the work itself?

If you have not heard about the Big Rocks analogy:

You have a jar that represents your life, or a period in your life. Imagine the important goals and people as big rocks, smaller, or other people’s goals as small rocks and sands as the everyday things.
The only way to fit the big rocks in your (life) jar is to put them in first, then the small rocks, and the sands will fill the void before you know it.
If you don’t put in the big rocks first yourself, you life will be full of small rocks and sand.

And if you haven’t had your “I had a dream” moment yet:

What will be the impact of what you do now – 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 years from now?
Where can you invest to get 10X Return on Time today?
Where can you find help and specialize so everyone benefits?

What we do with our time is “partly” up to us. That “part” varies depending on our individual circumstances, but we actually have more latitude than we think. In the short term and early in our career, it’s where we spend the 9-5 (or 9-7… whatever) that makes the biggest difference Longer-term in life, however, it’s probably were we spend the 5-9 that matter more over time.
How do you value our most non-renewable currency?

Energy

My dad often quote me as a machine, but to remind me that even machines need proper maintenance to perform well and last long. Down Time is important. Relaxation and Enjoyment are important.

Are you getting enough and quality sleep?
Are you fueling yourself with nutrition or just calories?
Are you feeding your brain with inspirations and ideas?
If you aren’t charging your battery full everyday, how do you intend to perform your best and make a dent in the universe?

We are not machines – we do not perform consistently all the time. There are factors (e.g. physical, emotional) that drive our energy level which varies throughout the day. While I generally disagree labeling ourselves (in this context “a Morning Person” or a “Night Owl”), let’s agree that we are better at certain tasks at different times of the day.
One of the ways to improve our productivity and satisfaction is to match the things we do with our energy level of the day. For example:

Generate new ideas and make important decisions in the morning
Get through administrative tasks before lunch
Have 1:1 or build / maintain relationships after lunch
Follow up either asking or answering questions by end of day.

The idea here is not to prescribe the “one best way” that universally works for everyone, but try to listen to your body, experiment and manage your day based on what works best for you.
How do you get the most out of your unique pattern of energy?

Attention

Like “sleep is for the weak”, Multitasking is widely celebrated as a badge of honor.
Sure we CAN do x things at the same time, but SHOULD we?
Scientific studies have proven time and time again that every time we switch task, we lose focus and need time to returning to the same level of focus and performance prior to the interruption. In the end, we easily get sucked into an endless loop of starting with one task (say searching for one piece of information) and next thing you know, 2 hours later, we collected a lot of “just in case” information, just not we were originally looking for.
How many notifications do you get each day? How many decisions do you make each day?
The latter grows in multiples of the former. Each time you get pinged, you have to make a decision. Each screen or picture that shows up, you make a decision. Swipe? Read? Ignore?
Why subject ourselves to that?
Most of our work today are less about completing physical tasks but more making decisions and we all have a limited amount of cognitive capacity – to process information, form opinion, evaluate options, and decide actions. Sure, we form snap judgement (System 1) that uses minimal workload, but we can still be overwhelmed if we let our mental capacity be drained by our inbox, notifications, and the endless channels of distraction.
As a dad now, I worry about impact of the screens in our lives on our next generation. Our wiring makes us vulnerable to the advertising/entertainment industrial complex – the trifecta of games, social and streaming media. The notifications that wouldn’t stop until and even after you respond, the media that keeps trying to take attention away from you to sell more ads, make you happy / angry so you engage, all for their KPIs.
Say you play this harmless game to “kill” 5 minutes. Sure, say you don’t actually care about the scores and therefore not addicted to it. But each time you click this, tap that, collect something, you made a decision. And how many 5-minute games have you played? Between the notifications, likes, comments, follows, taps, collects, messages – how much juice do our brains have left to plan, learn, create?
Our lives are defined by a collection of moments that we choose to pay attention to.
What do you want to remember? What do you want to be remembered by?

Mindset

In a “weird but true” way, we naturally fall for the victim narrative. Something was done to us: the economy, company, manager, team. I can’t realize my full potential because this barrier or that person. We (all) deserve more and better.
That is also precisely the point. We only grow and leap through stretches and challenges in life. If the wind only blows in one direction, how do we learn to sail?
Hardship is not mandatory for our growth but provides us with perspectives. Anyone with expertise in any domain (work, sports, music, hobby) will know that there are good days and bad days. Even if we cannot change the outcomes, we can decide how we react and the actions we take.
The professional will get to work/train everyday rain or shine and continue to improve. He/she will accept no excuses but ownership on what can be done to be better.
Choose a Growth Mindset (and not a Fixed one).
The superpower of humans is Collaboration.
In business, we can out-collaborate competition. If we focus on adding value to customers that results in category creation / expansion, market share will take care of itself.
There are enough challenges and sufferings we can dedicate our talents to, choose to solve the problems that make the world a better place, not just to “beat” someone else.

Quotes

In Closing, let me leave you with these quotes I pondered on regularly:

Easy Choices, Hard Life. Hard Choices, Easy Life (Jerzy Gregorek)
What is the 1 decision you make today that can eliminate 1,000 decisions later? (Tim Ferriss)
There are limits to how much we can Save, but no limits to how much we can Earn. (Ramit Sethi)
We can’t multiply our Capacity (not machines), but we can multiply our Capability (skills and experience)
The French can learn French, I can learn French too. (from the TV-series “The Unit”)
Either I succeed or I learn

Time

Energy

Attention

Mindset

Quotes

Further Reading: