I am a big fan of Charlie Munger. His thoughts on building a frame-work of mental models is top notch. One of the thoughts he brings is "inversion" - ability to think backwards instead of forwards. Example: if you want to be happy, one can do that by cutting down on things which make you unhappy. Do not be around people you dislike, do not do things which give you dis-contentment, mental pain for no gain, non-stimulation, etc etc.. cut down on crap.
In many of our work and things that affect our lives, we are more mechanical in approach and fail to question why we do what we do. Ability to focus on work is critical to success. Most successful people have found that focused work is very critical to success. You can read on what I wrote here: Focus: a key tool for success.
One of my colleagues who read what I wrote on focus asked me this pertinent question: "Harsha how can you focus on something when you really do not know what to focus on! I think I can do so much better, but I have so many things to do and all needs to get done as I've agreed to do everything"
This is such an important question in our lives. We have so much potential and still end up doing mediocre work. The potential to do wonderful things exist in all of us, but we end up with sub-par results since we are unable to focus on "what we want".
From time immemorial we humans have had the same problem. We have our lives to live, the rigmarole to make ends meet and somehow in this midst of it all, fail to focus on things we want to do. There is an inherent "lack of clarity" - the inability to understand clearly what we want, what matters and the resulting issue of mediocre performance overall. There seem to be very few people who have understood the power of "clarity".
Guru Munger says: "Invert the problem. Always invert". So, looking at our issue of "no clarity" - it is very important for us to remove all those things which are clouding the judgement and not really important or are not giving us enough energy to drive on. Let's list all the items which one needs to remove in order to be left with "clarity":
1) Distraction. I think this is our no. 1 enemy of our life and times. We have so many distractions and so many pulls which are meaningless yet time consuming. Prevent yourself from becoming distracted. Read my "The do-nothing strategy".
We feel that if you keep running around in circles - you are creating something of economic value. Example - generating reports on why something is where-it-is or looking too much into history and forecasting what something needs to be or looking into set of random data and creating patterns where none exist and creating complex models around them, etc etc are running around tree patterns. Let's stop getting distracted.
2) Unorganized behavior or lack of prioritization. This is something I have observed increasingly after I started looking at things more critically. This tendency can affect any of us well meaning individuals. The main root cause for this to arise is due to our perceived inability to say "no" to things. Read my "Urgent vs Important".
We want to do everything. We like to be in every meeting. Read every email we are on cc, attend every single conference call which adds minimal value to us and do everything that ideally our boss has to do because you cannot say "no" to him / her. As a civilization, we have lost our capability to "say no". I think our society has built an army of yes men - which has resulted in loss of critical thinking. Sorry for the meandering thoughts.. but again prioritize. Say no more often. People understand - they actually take you more seriously once they understand that your "yes" means world-class work and your "no" means no.
3) Lack of physical energy. Some of you may be surprised at this third bullet. But, as I get older I have observed that ability to perform at sustained high quality levels need high levels of mental and physical fitness.
This was a constant problem for me with constant head-aches, migraines, back-aches, etc. The root-cause of all these was simply lack of physical fitness. An hour in the gym thrice a week or couple of hours playing tennis a week or an hour of yoga a day will normally be sufficient if you are not after that Greek-God body. But, this takes effort and the ability to mark-down a time to do it.
Well, there would be many more I suppose that needs to be removed. For starters - here were my top 3! I hope you will be left with more clarity and result in increased focus on things that you ought to focus on after reading this!
I hope I was able to bring a little more clarity in your thoughts. Do, let me know what things bring you clarity.
Ciao till next time...Harsha
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