CLARIFY YOUR INTENTIONS

“Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It’s not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad.”

—SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND, 12.5

Law 29 of The 48 Laws of Power is: Plan All The Way To The End. Robert Greene writes, “By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.”

The second habit in The 7Habits of Highly Effective People is: begin with an end in mind.

Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it no Stoic would tolerate that assumption—but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won’t. To the Stoics, false conceptions  are responsible not just for disturbances in the soul but for chaotic and dysfunctional lives and operations. When your efforts are not directed at a cause or a purpose, how will you know what to do day in and day out? How will you know what to say no to and what to say yes to? How will you know when you’ve had enough, when you’ve reached your goal, when you’ve gotten off track, if you’ve never defined what those things are?

The answer is that you cannot. And so you are driven into failure or worse, into madness by the oblivion of directionlessness.

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Augustine’s Laws

In 1983, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics published the first edition of Augustine’s Laws by Norman R. Augustine , then president and chief operating officer of Martin Marietta Corporation . The book is a humorous, but insightful look at the problems of managing a large corporation. The book is written from the viewpoint of managing a large aerospace corporation with large government contracts but has larger implications. A very satirical read with pseudo-technical commentary and charts, written in 1983. Most of the laws are even more applicable today. 

Norman Augustine was an aerospace businessman before his retirement. He served as President and CEO of Lockheed Martin and many will remember him most for his book Augustine Laws.

Here are few famous laws  of the 52 laws described in his book:

Law Number V-  One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average output.

Law Number XV-  The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems.

Law Number XLVIII- The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less until finally, you spend all your time talking about nothing.

His most cited law would be Law Number XVI , which shows that defense contracting budgets grow linearly but the unit cost of a new military aircraft grows exponentially. This law led to his humorous conclusion about sharing planes.

Law Number XVI-  In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.

(source :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine%27s_laws#/media/File:Augustine's_law.svg)

source :

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Power of obvious Visual Cues

By comparison, creating obvious visual cues can draw your attention toward a desired habit. In the early 1990s, the cleaning  staff at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam installed a small sticker that looked like a fly near the center of each urinal. Apparently, when men stepped up to the urinals, they aimed for what they thought was a bug. The stickers improved their aim and significantly reduced “spillage” around the urinals. Further analysis determined that the stickers cut bathroom cleaning costs by 8 percent per year.

I’ve experienced the power of obvious cues in my own life. I used to buy apples from the store, put them in the crisper in the bottom of the refrigerator, and forget all about them. By the time I remembered, the apples would have gone bad. I never saw them, so I never ate them.

Eventually, I took my own advice and redesigned my environment. I bought a large display bowl and placed it in the middle of the kitchen counter. The next time I bought apples, that was where they went—out in the open where I could see them. Almost like magic, I began eating a few apples each day simply because they were obvious rather than out of sight.

Here are a few ways you can redesign your environment and make the cues for your preferred habits more obvious:

l If you want to remember to take your medication each night, put your pill bottle directly next to the faucet on the bathroom counter.

l If you want to practice guitar more frequently, place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room.

l If you want to remember to send more thank-you notes, keep a stack of stationery on your desk.

l If you want to drink more water, fill up a few water bottles each morning and place them in common locations around the house.

If you want to make a habit a big part of your life, make the cue a big part of your environment. The most persistent behaviors usually have multiple cues.

Source: “Atomic Habits” by James Clear

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The Psychology of Persuasion

Parallel form of human automatic action is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A well known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason.People simply like to have reasons for what they do. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine:  There was a queue for the copying machine. The experimenter asked if they could go in front of someone. The likelihood of being given permission to queue-jump depended on how the request was phrased:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” (a meaningful reason) –  The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: 94%  of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.

Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” (no reason) – 60% of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.

At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the first request was the additional information provided by the words “because I’m in a rush.” But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new,merely restated the obvious: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? ". The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance.

 “Just Because” 

When we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. 

Credits : “ Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini (Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University).

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The World's "Greatest Goal Achiever"

"To dare is to do ... to fear is to fail."  ~ John Goddard - The man who did it all 

John Goddard is the man who lived a life of no regrets, he is  most known for his amazing “Life List” of accomplishments. At the age of fifteen John Goddard listed 127 goals he wished to experience or achieve in his lifetime. The list is impressive and audacious, but the results have been truly incredible.

One rainy afternoon an inspired 15-year-old boy named John Goddard sat down at his kitchen table in Los Angeles and wrote three words at the top of a yellow pad: “My Life List.” Under that heading he wrote down 127 goals. Since then he has completed most of those goals. Look at the list of Goddard’s goals that appears below. These are not simple or easy goals. They include climbing the world’s major mountains, exploring vast waterways, running a mile in five minutes, reading the complete works of Shakespeare and reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. The goals completed are listed here.. ( https://www.johngoddard.info/life_list.htm) .

 "There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you do not do them."  ~Charles D. Gill

Credits:

1. https://www.chickensoup.com/book-story/36235/another-check-mark-on-the-list

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WILL I BE BROKEN, OR WILL I PREVAIL?

 Men are born soft and supple;

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.

—LAO TZU,  (Tao Te Ching, chapter 76, )

When chosen effectively, an identity can be flexible rather than  brittle. Like water flowing around an obstacle, your identity works with the changing circumstances rather than against them.  Lao Tzu talks about the cycle of life. When we were born, we were soft and supple. It is the same way with all living things. Even plants are born tender and pliant. But, then, we go through the cycle of life; we grow, we mature, we die. This is nature. Nature’s cycle of life. When you die, you become stiff and hard. When plants die, they become brittle and dry. Once again, that is the way of nature. (translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Be soft and be immortal.

Be the bully and be destroyed.
How many times must this lesson be taught?  ( translation by Jeremy M. Miller, 2013)

Credits:

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The Number 1 Golden Rule To Stay Highly Motivated : The Goldilocks Rule

“The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.” 

The above figure explains that maximum motivation occurs when facing a challenge of just manageable difficulty. In psychology research this is known as the Yerkes–Dodson law, which describes the optimal level of arousal as the midpoint between boredom and anxiety/failure.
.

Elon Musk studied battery technology for more than a decade before starting Tesla. Twelve foolish publishers turned down J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter manuscript before someone agreed to pay her an advance of just £1,500 for the book that would become an international blockbuster.

Steve Martin’s comedy career is an excellent example of the Goldilocks Rule in practice. Each year, he expanded his comedy routine—but only by a minute or two. He was always adding new material, but he also kept a few jokes that were guaranteed to get laughs. There were just enough victories to keep him motivated and just enough mistakes to keep him working hard. When you’re starting a new habit, it’s important to keep the behavior as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren’t perfect.

Two steps to motivation : If we want to break down the mystery of how to stay motivated for the long-term, we could simply say:

1. Stick to The Goldilocks Rule and work on tasks of just manageable difficulty.

2. Measure your progress and receive immediate feedback whenever possible.

Wanting to improve your life is easy. Sticking with it is a different story. If you want to stay motivated for good, then start with a challenge that is just manageable, measure your progress and repeat the process.

Credits :

1.  “Atomic Habits” by James Clear

2. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279109

3. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/follow-this-1-rule-to-maintain-peak-motivation.html

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That's one small step for a man

-Neil  Armstrong ,Apollo 11 astronaut - the first person to walk on the Moon.

July 20, 2019, was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing when American astronaut Neil  Armstrong became the first person ever to plant boots on the dusty lunar surface.

Buzz Aldrin followed Armstrong about 20 minutes later on the moon wrote in his 2014 AMA….

"In all previous missions, if someone, a crew member, was to spacewalk, it was always the junior person, not the space commander who would stay inside" .

At least one team at NASA thought the junior person should go out first, Aldrin wrote, "but many people felt the great symbology of the commander [taking that responsibility]."

So Armstrong climbed down the ladder onto the moon's surface, shortly followed by his now-famous "one small step" line.

"The decision that was made was absolutely correct as far as who went out first, symbolically" .-Aldrin'

But how “ CHOOSING THE FIRST MAN ON THE MOON” happened..

The decision was taken by Deke  Slayton (NASA's first Chief of the Astronaut Office and Director of Flight Crew Operations, and was responsible for NASA crew assignments) on a pure protocol basis and Bob Gilruth( first director of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center)  approved the same. Neither Armstrong pull his rank ,nor his opinion was asked and It was also fine with Aldrin  if it was to be Neil.

No one can argue that technologically stepping on the moon by a man is a gaint leap for mankind. From a managerial perspective it shows how successful orgnisations work and function. What is to be observed is the simple way to decide and procedure of implementations of the decisions. Such small step of decision making and implementation in an organization  make them a giant one like NASA.

-Credits:
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-8-7.html

https://www.businessinsider.in/The-Surprising-Reason-Neil-Armstrong-And-Not-Buzz-Aldrin-Was-The-First-Person-On-The-Moon/articleshow/38628778.cms

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2a5vg8/i_am_buzz_aldrin_engineer_american_astronaut_and/

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Addition by Subtraction

"Addition by Subtraction" is a phrase used by coaches to mean that sometimes your team can get better not by adding more talent, but by shedding some people or practices that are interfering with or inhibiting your success.

In his book “Atomic Habits” author  James Clear mentioned about  an article published in the New Yorker titled “Better All the Time,” where in James Suroweicki writes: “Japanese firms emphasized what came to be known as ‘lean production,’ relentlessly looking to remove waste of all kinds from the production process, down to redesigning workspaces, so workers didn’t have to waste time twisting and turning to reach their tools. The result was that Japanese factories were more efficient and Japanese products were more reliable than American ones. In 1974, service calls for American-made color televisions were five times as common as for Japanese televisions. By 1979, it took American workers three times as long to assemble their sets.”

This strategy can be stated as addition by subtraction. The Japanese companies looked for every point of friction in the manufacturing process and eliminated it. As they subtracted wasted effort, they added customers and revenue. Similarly, when we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort. “

On personal front one has  to identify those habits and shed those daily routines which spoil the health,wealth and peace of mind even if they are providing the pleasure and joy.

Some companies ,sport teams , organizations  have to adopt this strategy well before the game is over for them ,they have to shed those people (even if they are super stars) if they interfere with the success of a team , company or organization.

“1 Rule All Leaders Should Practice: Addition By Subtraction, As a manager, entrepreneur or CEO, you have to move bad people out. Only then can your company truly achieve growth and success. “ - By Tom Gimbel ,Founder and CEO, LaSalle Network. Read more @ -https://www.inc.com/tom-gimbel/1-rule-all-leaders-should-practice-addition-by-subtraction.html

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