Hey Everyone,
Happy Saturday!
As I’m sure some of you know, I used to lead a Salesforce team.
Let me tell you a story about a data analyst I once hired.
His name was Andy.
When onboarding new team members, I scheduled 1:1’s twice a week to get them up to speed, and I did the same with Andy.
We built up a friendship, discovered a shared interest in poker, (we both lived in Las Vegas), and found we both liked reading.
He was learning the ropes, and despite some initial hesitation with learning Salesforce, he was doing well.
In some ways he felt like a little brother I was helping mentor.
After roughly 6 weeks of working together, I showed him two images that highlighted the power of focus and concentration.
I liked to use them to brainstorm with the team.
The very next day, without two weeks notice or any warning, he quit!
After choosing him from among several candidates, and working closely together for 6 weeks, I felt blindsided to hear he was leaving!
In our final conversation (which was the very next morning) he said he had thought deeply about the two images and it made him want to change direction in life.
He was going back to graduate school to pursue an advanced math degree.
Ugh. All that time and effort spent training – lost!
You might be thinking – what images could be so powerful that it would cause someone to quit their job within 12 hours of seeing them?
Check them out:
These were the two pictures.
(I made these ones look cooler but the concept is the same.)
We only have so much energy.
If we spend it evenly across 8 different tasks (or goals), we’ll make one unit of progress in each.
Alternatively, if we cut out 7 of those items and concentrate on one task (or goal), we’ll make 8x the progress – using the exact same amount of energy!
And that was the takeaway I liked talking with my team about.
What could we subtract from our workload to make more progress on the one thing that matters most?
It’s a fun brainstorming question.
And it also applies to personal life.
What could we subtract from our life, to make more progress on the one thing that matters most?
Simply put, we’re looking for improvement by subtraction.
There’s at least two levels of this.
First Level: eliminate items you clearly recognize as being detrimental to what you want, and you’ll make more progress.
For example, I find myself on YouTube watching podcasts or watching old sports highlights or uncovering conspiracy theories about aliens (they’re real!!) more often than I should.
If I ever need to focus on a more important goal (like studying for an upcoming certification exam), subtracting YouTube is an easy way to make more progress.
Second Level: After eliminating items you clearly recognize as “bad” the second place to look for items to subtract is activities/goals you do well or are “kind of” interested in – but still take time away from your highest priority.
For example, I love playing chess. Sometimes I want to do chess puzzles for hours on end.
There’s cognitive benefits to playing chess and the intense concentration definitely gets me into a flow state.
But I know I want to make way more progress with updating my Flow Course (as an example) than I do in increasing my chess rating.
So by not playing chess, I update my course more often.
This doesn’t mean we always need one most important goal to relentlessly hammer away at.
The key idea is that by deciding what we’re after, and by eliminating activities that don’t help, we’ll move towards what we want more quickly.
Being thoughtful in this way can pay big dividends both personal and professionally.
And that’s it for this week!
So, did Andy really see these two pictures and quit the next day?
Yes, he really did.
Was it really these two pictures that caused him to quit, or did he already feel like quitting and this helped him explain his decision to me?
I may never know, but the experience imprinted these two pictures in mind a way that will be hard for me to forget.
Hopefully they’ll be useful for you too.
Best,
Nick
