Behavior

When (Daniel H. Pink)

Chapter 1

• Timing is not an art, it’s a science.
• Do not go to the hospital in the afternoon. Seriously. Don’t.

Our cognitive abilities change over the course of a day. Even if we think that “this does not apply to us”, these forces have a greater impact than we believe. We can split a day into three mood phases:

• Peak
• Through
• Recovery

The order in which we move through these phases depends on our chronotype. We distinguish between larks, third birds and owls.

• Larks and third birds: peak, trough, recovery
• Owls: recovery, trough, peak

• Analytic: You want to get rid of distractions. Do tasks that require focus and vigilance
• Administrative: Your mood drops. Do the “boring stuff”
• Insight: Your mood is recovering. You are more inclined to say yes. Do tasks that require you to be creative

To do better in the morning:

• Drink a glass of water after waking up
• Avoid coffee right after waking up
• Soak up the morning sun

Chapter 2

Effective breaks:

• Work for 52 minutes and then break for 17 minutes
• Moving beats stationary
• Take breaks in company, but do not talk about work related issues
• Go outside
• Do not use your phone to check mails or social media
• Schedule breaks just like you would schedule a meeting

Lunch is the most important meal of the day. Avoid the “sad desk lunch”.

Effective naps:

• Between 10 and 20 minutes
• Drink a cup of coffee right before taking a nap
• The Mayo clinic says that the best time for a nap is between 14:00 and 15:00
• Turn it into a habit. If you cannot do that, take a nap when you did not get enough sleep, our your day feels more stressful than usual

John Cleese on Creativity in Management

Open Mode (the creative mode)

• “The ability to play”
• Play for your own enjoyment, curiosity because of its own sake
• We are relaxed, inclined to humor and more playful

Close Mode

• The “default mode” when we are at work
• We are impatient, purposeful

We need the “open mode” to find a way and we need the “closed mode” to follow through with our plans. We are the most efficient when we switch between these two modes. The problem: We tend to get stuck in the “closed mode”.

There are conditions that make it more likely to get into the “open mode”:

• Space
  • You need an undisturbed environment
• Time
  • Have a specific time in which you are operating in your undisturbed environment
  • It takes some time before your mind starts to quiet down
  • Take about an hour and a half, not longer
  • You have to stick to a problem in order to find an original solution
• Confidence
  • “Whatever happens is ok”. While you are creative, nothing is wrong
• Humor
  • Is an essential part to be creative

Other people can help us to be more creative, but only if they make us feel good. There is no place for “No”, “I don’t like that” or “You are wrong”.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big (Scott Adams)

Happiness Formula

• Eat right
• Exercise
• Get enough sleep
• Imagine an incredible future
• Work toward a flexible schedule
• Do things you can steadily improve at
• Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself)
• Reduce daily decisions to routine

Business Writing

• No passive
• Main message in first sentence
• Who, what, when, where, why, how
• Read it twice (corrections)
• Read it twice (meaning, wait before you read it again)
• Less is more

Healthy Eating

• Gist: Whole foods, minimally processed, mostly plants, and plain water
• Emphasize on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, and plain water for thirst. That can be with or without seafood; with or without dairy; with or without eggs; with or without some meat; high or low in total fat
• All the Blue Zone diets - the diets around the world associated with longevity and vitality - contain beans. Beans are really, really, really good for us
• We should eat more fiber (regular people: 15g, recommended: 30-100g)
• Extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed canola oil > coconut oil
  • Do not use cold-pressed oil in combination with a lot of heat
• Sugar and sweetness trigger appetite, so we simply tend to eat more when sugar is added to an ingredient list. The food industry uses this all the time

The five healthy habits were defined as:

• Not smoking
• Having a body mass index between 18.5 and 25
• Taking at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day
• Having no more than one 150ml glass of wine a day for women, or two for men
• Having a diet rich in items such as fruit, vegetables and whole grains and low in red meat, saturated fats and sugar

You Are Not So Smart Podcast

The Memory Illusion (Episode #179)

• A perfect memory in a young age might mean that there is something wrong
• There is no such thing as a “perfect” memory. People might outperform others in certain areas, but they can be “normal” in other areas
• Introverts tend to not remember details. Instead they remember how they felt or what their opinion was in that situation
• We change old memories all the time. We generalize and filter. That’s what our brains do. It’s a healthy process
• Therapy focuses on interpreting past events in a different light

The Dunning-Kruger Effect (Episode #192)

• We can be so incompetent that we don’t even realize how incompetent we are
• You want a confident general leading a battle, but you want an unconfident general when planning the battle
• Naysayers can be valuable to find situations in which you are too confident
• Reflect on your previous work/thoughts 5-10 years ago. Do you like what you did? Answering “no” can be an indicator that you have learned something
• Accept that you can be wrong

So Good They Can’t Ignore you (Cal Newport)

“Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action” - (Timothy Ferriss)

• The craftmen’s mindset: focus on the value that you are offering to the world
  • Which skills can you offer that are rare and valuable?
• Deliberate practice > regular exposure
  • Stretch past where you are comfortable and get honest feedback
  • Regular routine
• Working right > finding the right work
• Two types of markets:
  • Winner Take All: Several people compete for the same set of skills (e.g. movie script writing)
  • Auction: Rare skill combinations make you stand out
• Control traps:
  • Trying to gain control without career capital creates resistance (you are not ready)
  • If you are valuable enough, your employer will try to keep you in your place
• Little bets: use small steps with fast feedback loops to gain insight into larger projects
• Mission: “What is my goal in my (working) life?”

Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy

The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing. If you walk into a music hall at a local university, you’ll hear people “playing” by running through their pieces. This is a huge mistake. Strong pianists drill the most difficult parts of their music, rarely, if ever playing through their pieces in entirety.

To Master a Skill, Master Something Harder

Strong pianists find clever ways to “complicate” the difficult parts of their music. If we have problem playing something with clarity, we complicate by playing the passage with alternating accent patterns. If we have problems with speed, we confound the rhythms.

Systematically Eliminate Weakness

Strong pianists know our weaknesses and use them to create strength. I have sharp ears, but I am not as in touch with the physical component of piano playing. So, I practice on a mute keyboard

Create Beauty, Don’t Avoid Ugliness

Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task. They start, and react to their performance, fixing problems as they go along. Strong pianists, on the other hand, have an image of what a perfect performance should be like that includes all of the relevant senses. Before we sit down, we know what the piece needs to feel, sound, and even look like in excruciating detail. In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image

Deliberate Practice

• Immediate feedback
• Training to your limits
• Technique over outcomes

Apply this through:

• Establishing a deliberate practice time
• Keep a skill journal to identify weak areas
• Use practice to break your (bad) habits using new methods and techniques

The Tao of Coaching (Max Landsberg)

Triggers (Marshall Goldsmith)

Four Stages of a Feedback Loops

• Evidence (seeing how fast you are driving)
• Relevance (you know that you are too fast)
• Consequences (you might get a ticket)
• Action (so you reduce your speed)

Two Truths

1. Meaningful behavioral change is very hard to do
2. No one can make us change unless we truly want to change

Snippets

• Our environment influences our behavior more than we might think. Example: You behave different when you are standing in traffic
• We are inaccurate in assessing ourselves
• We are great planners, but reluctant doers
• A trigger is only a problem if our reaction creates a problem
• There are areas in our life in which we think that we can “just wing it”
• We need help when we are least likely to get it. We behave against our own interest and might not even realize it.
• “We are professionals at what we do, amateurs at what we want to become.”

The Wheel of Change

• Creating: A positive element that we want to create
• Elimination: A positive element that we want to keep
• Accepting: A negative element that we need to accept
• Preserving: A negative element that we want to eliminate

Types of Triggers

• Encouraging: We want it
• Productive: We need it
• Discouraging: We don’t want it
• Counter-Productive: We don’t need it

These four categories form a rectangle which can describe several types of behavior. Example: Temptation (“We want it, but don’t need it”).

Exercise: Pick a behavior goal you are pursuing. Now list all the people and situations that influence the quality of your performance. Identify and label the triggers related to your goal.

Active Questions

• Passive questions (“Do you have clear goals?”) allow us to take a free pass, meaning that we can blame someone else for a problem (“Oh my manager just doesn’t know what he wants!”).
• Active questions (“Did I do my best today to set clear goals for myself”) put us into the driver seat. This type of question makes us accountable and asks us to defend our actions. They motivate us “to try”.
• Rate yourself on your active questions between 1 (low) and 10 (highest). Report your score regularly.
• If your scores keep sinking, decide: Do I want to drop this question, or should I try harder?
• These active questions can be used with an hourly reminder for short burst applications (e.g. working with an “annoying” colleague)