10x10 Sleep Challenge - Day 2

The sleep challenge continues. One participant noted that it was difficult to go to bed at 10 PM last night. It was as if their body was so used to staying up late that going to bed at a different time just felt odd. In fact, they reported sleeping worse than other nights.

Other factors, besides the time you lie down, affect how you sleep. This month we’ll spend some time on other factors. For now, let’s stay with this participant’s feedback. If you stay up later than 10 PM on a regular basis, you’ve trained yourself to stay up. That might seem like an overly obvious statement, but it’s true. Going to bed at a specific time is a habit. If you go to bed too late, it’s a bad habit. If you go to bed at a time that gives you optimal sleep and gives you max energy the next day, it’s a good habit. This challenge is all about a tiny habit that affects everything you do. Keep on going to bed at 10 PM (or earlier) and keep track of how you feel.

We’ve got 30 more nights to prove this out. If you didn’t quite make it last night, make a plan to be in bed at 10:00 sharp tonight.

10x10 Sleep Challenge

Today begins the 10x10 Sleep Challenge. For the month of October, we’re going to bed at 10 PM. Join us in this relaxing journey to improve our nights and supercharge our days. The easiest and most effective way to have enough energy all day is to sleep properly at night. This challenge doesn’t require fancy equipment or special trackers. You don’t have to buy anything. Instead of asking you for more, this challenge invites you to do less. Accepting this challenge gives you permission at 9 PM to say, “I’m shutting down, switching my phone to airplane mode, dimming the lights and preparing for bed.” For many of us this is a real challenge. We have so many obligations during the day that it’s easy to stay up late at night squeezing in just a little more. See how the simplest act of going to bed on time positively impacts everything you do. Every day in October, we’re going to bed at 10. Do you accept this challenge to do nothing

…after 10

…except sleep?

This is your chance to apply the Pareto Principle to your life in a meaningful and practical way. Sleep is the ultimate recharge and powers everything we do. Go to bed at 10:00, recharge, and power through every day of October. Make the 10th month of the year your most consistent month of sleep by hitting your pillow at 10 PM. 10x your sleep tonight!

learning is a mindset

When I finished college I thought my education was complete. No surprise there. Our academic institutions convey this false narrative that everything good in life will come with a college degree. Kids are told to do well in school and learn their subjects, so they’ll be prepared to go to work. As most of us found out, college courses didn’t teach us much that was practically applicable in the real world. Learning isn’t a concept tied to your first 20 years of life. Learning isn’t a goal you accomplish. Learning is an attitude. Learning is a mindset. With a learning mindset, every day presents opportunities to succeed by gaining valuable insight and growing personally.

delay action for guaranteed results

What’s a guaranteed way to make little to no progress? Procrastinate.

This blog focuses on positive applications of the Pareto Principle. It’s exciting and motivating to think about the one lever that can move the world in the direction you’d like. Unfortunately, as easy as some of these tools are to apply in your favor, some tools are easier to apply against you. Worse, still, you apply these instruments against yourself. Procrastination is one of these.

Procrastination is the delay of action. If you told someone to wait to act, it could be interpreted as patience. Isn’t patience a virtue? Yeah, that’s one of the tricks of procrastination. While procrastinating you’re delaying action on high value endeavors and looking for instant gratification through low value activities. Procrastination is a highly leveraged version of the 80/20 rule. Your delay of the right action makes the result you want impossible. Now stop procrastinating and go do the right act for you right now.

sleep

It's unavoidable. It's part of life. Some people need less of it. Some need more. But everyone needs sleep. If you want to live, you must sleep. If you want to live well, sleeping well is critical. While many studies and science can provide support for this, the goal here isn't to give a scientific analysis of the benefits of sleep. Sleep is a quick hack for improved performance. Many people in modern society are running on too little sleep. We stay up too late, get up too early, and don't sleep well in between. Sleep will have more immediate and dramatic positive impacts on your abilities than any supplement, stimulant, or exercise. Arguably, sleep can provide more immediate and greater benefits than food. Don’t misinterpret that as a claim that sleep can save a starving person. The point is simply that the average person in modern societies can get a big return on investment in their personal performance by improving their sleep. Even better, it’s free. You don’t have to pay for a subscription or drive to a gym each day. Walk in your room, get in bed, and sleep. Make sure you go to bed early enough to get the sleep you need for the next day. Take it one night at a time. You don’t need big goals or a complex plan. Start tonight. Go to bed on time to make tomorrow successful. Start reaping the benefits of your best self by getting the proper sleep.

when lacking information, go to the best source

I had a boss that liked to give directions before she understood the full task at hand. She would tell me what she thought I should start doing based on her current understanding. Unfortunately, her understanding represented a small percentage of what I needed to act effectively. In these situations, I went to the source. Because of the team-based nature of the job, a team lead was usually better informed and closer to the information. Instead of taking my manager’s word and running in my own direction, I would go to the source. The team lead might not always have much more information than my boss provided, but usually that person held meaningful context for the request. It’s common to receive first instructions that are ambiguous. The 80/20 rule helps us recognize that 20% of the details will get us at least 80% of our solution. Lacking details is not a reason to refrain from action. It’s a signal to get more information. I’ve often found that going to the source of information provides valuable context even when my information doesn’t increase or improve. As a result, I’m able to get the ball rolling in the right direction without wasted efforts.

a good start gives lasting impact

Be careful how you start your day. If your day begins with yelling and profanity, it sets the tone for everyone involved. When someone tries to start your day like this, choose instead calm and gratitude. A calm and grateful start will benefit you the entire day. If the negative influence repeats, apply preventive measures.

New book report: Influence

New book report: Influence

Follow a Pareto Guide through Influence by Robert Cialdini. Get a quick introduction to concepts that impact you every day. The psychology of persuasion will teach you about automatic compliance and the triggers that cause it.

Book report: Influence

Terry Pratchett’s Death by Small Caps

Terry Pratchett’s Death by Small Caps

Terry Pratchett was a successful author and best known for his Discworld novels. He sold tens of millions of novels in his lifetime. While many factors contributed to his success, one innovation sticks out for its effectiveness. Pratchett developed Death as a character. Instead of speaking as most characters do within quotation marks, Death speaks in all capital letters. Pratchett didn’t invent this, it’s called small caps. In Microsoft Word it’s a font setting you can check that will make all the lowercase letters smaller yet capitalized. This technique is so perfectly employed that Pratchett deftly introduces Death in one novel with a single word.

WHOM.JPG

Death prompts another character with this word providing grammatical help while announcing his arrival. Because I’ve read a few of the other Discworld novels, I received more from this word than one word should normally give. I was reading at a brisk pace and almost missed the small caps. My brain registered what I’d seen a millisecond later, and I laughed aloud. A small joke exists in this part of the text; however, I was laughing because I knew the arrival of Death promised much more.

This technique was so well-known to his readers that when Pratchett died his Twitter account announced the following.

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

Notice that death isn’t mentioned or implied by any of the words. But everyone with basic knowledge of the character Death in Pratchett’s novels knew the significance of this statement.

The small caps provide the 20% of the input that gives at least 80% of the effect. As an example, let’s borrow this technique to see the effect.

Speaking in Small Caps example.JPG

Suddenly Death is writing this piece for me and displaying his odd appreciation of food. Now I don’t recommend typing in small caps even a percentage of the time. Instead, take a moment to appreciate the outsized impact of a finely executed technique. For greater appreciation, you could read a Discworld novel showcasing this technique. Mort is a good place to start.

know your solution before letting others adopt it

When you are an expert on a team, don't rely on the opinions of others less informed in your discipline. If you propose a solution that others quickly adopt, be sure of the solution. If the solution is incomplete or lacking in some way, the others on your team may simply reply that they relied on the expert in accepting the solution. They were understandably ignorant. You, on the other hand, are the expert.

remove the one thing that causes you the most pain

Right now, you likely have the best job you've ever had. Compared to any previous job, your current job has more positives. That doesn't mean it's perfect or even that you like it. You could hate your current job and it is still the best job you've had. You considered it in comparison to all previous jobs. This gave you the perspective to make a better choice during your last job search. Despite turns in the economy and other setbacks, I've liked each job more than the last. This is largely based on a simple but effective technique. Every time I considered a new job, I thought about what I most disliked on my current job and eliminated any options that contained those attributes. Naturally, over time the ratio of positive to negative has shifted favorably.

Today I have one big item that causes an outsized amount of discomfort. Despite company policies, my boss is hyper-focused on overtime hours over an imaginary threshold. Colleagues on other teams tell me they never talk about overtime with their boss. My experience is that every time I get put on a last-minute or large project the overtime naturally follows. This in turn leads to difficult conversations around my hours and, worse, my capabilities as a professional. In a simple 80/20 analysis it's clear that a direct solution is available to me. Manage the overtime hours that cause the pain. I know I have a variety of options.

The solution is easier to see with the problem identified. The same goes for your situation. You can immediately improve your situation by identifying which single issue causes you the bulk of your pain. Once you identify that, it will be easier to identify solutions to your specific challenge. At that point it becomes a matter of testing and execution. Test the easiest solutions first and find the solution that yields the result you want. A double Pareto approach is to eliminate your biggest source of pain with the smallest input that gives the biggest gain. Applying this approach will immediately shift your mindset to give you an immediate improvement in job satisfaction. That works much faster than finding the perfect job.

start your message by listening

I was struggling with my approach to a conversation. I didn't know which approach was right for the customer. My information was limited. This is not unusual. The pending conversation was approaching quickly and I expected the customer to be highly analytical and detailed when receiving my message. Along with my presentation I had a couple of solutions I could offer them. I didn't know what they do today. The solution to my problem was hiding in this realization. If I didn't know what their baseline for the conversation was, why not ask them? That's what I did. After brief introductions, I asked them what they do today. A dialog emerged from this that continued throughout the presentation. With just a few minutes of listening to them I was able to tailor the next thirty minutes to the message they needed.

test old assumptions

After a new system was implemented, it unexpectedly required a receipt for expenses over $10. This wasn't the old policy, but the system was generating policy violations regardless. Thereafter, I complied with policy and dealt with all the tiny receipts. Later, I checked whether I could submit a valid expense over $10 without the receipt. To my delight, the system had been updated to reflect the previously stated policy. I eliminated a large percentage of receipts. Time, energy, space, and paper saved - all because I tested an assumption. This is broadly applicable. As we witness the pace of change, it's wise to consider whether some assumptions might have staled.

New book report: help your humor, creativity, and writing

New book report: help your humor, creativity, and writing

A new book report has been added discussing Scott Adams' book The Joy of Work. The book has some great instruction to help you improve your humor, creativity, and writing skills. In addition to improving your quality it also gives great ideas for increasing your output in these categories. Check out the book report for tips on gaining the most from this guide.

Book report: The Joy of Work

 

keep a budget, keep your freedom

I know someone who recently discovered they were broke. To the shock of everyone around them things were not as they seemed. The abundant lifestyle that was being kept up had not been met with equal income the last couple years. As a result debts stood in the place where savings were expected. The sad thing is this is a situation more common than many want to admit. I don't say that to diminish the seriousness of the issue. If you're in this position, you need to put your house in order. Keep a budget. Any budget is better than no budget. Whether you use cash in envelopes, a spreadsheet, or a fancy app keep a budget and keep yourself fiscally responsible. You open yourself to significant risk and lifelong impacts by spending more than you make. In it's most basic form a budget is simply this. Make sure the money coming to you is more than what you are spending.

test your knowledge of regular skills and gain mastery

I completed some work procedures from memory the other day. This struck me as a great tool for personal development. Prove you know something to yourself by performing it from memory. You will gain confidence and uncover weak points that may remain in your understanding.

small talk holds big rewards

During my regular 1-on-1 I engaged with my manager on a personal level and inspired her to talk about herself. Most of the scheduled time was used up by that. Even better I didn't get grilled about minutia of my work. It made for a shorter and less stressful call. The relevant work details were covered efficiently and adequately at the end of the call. And my boss probably liked me more because I truly listened to her.