A New Source Code

Push a hockey puck on concrete and I can bet you it wouldn’t get very far. But push it on a sheet of ice and the puck goes at least 10 times farther. Why?

Friction.

Friction affects all moving objects, no matter their size or how much energy they have. It’s an immutable law of nature. If you want to move farther or faster, then you must lower the friction.

It’s the main reason that multiple swimmers broke World Records during the 2008 Olympic games. The frictional coefficient of their racing suits dropped dramatically, which reduced the friction affecting their swimming.

Now here’s another immutable law: within teams, friction will always exist.

People will always have their differences. They will want to complain about each other. They will want to withhold information from the group. They might even try to undermine their colleagues to gain all the glory.

It’s your main job as the leader to reduce the friction in the group.

Yet, you have been brainwashed to believe that you only provide the forward energy for the team. It’s what we’ve learned from our current society. We constantly immortalize the leader that did something drastic to turn around the struggling team.

But remove the friction that holds the team back and you improve your team’s speed. You get the same final result and you save time and energy in execution.

If you’re looking to be a more effective leader tomorrow, ask yourself what blocks can you remove from their performance?

When you meet someone for the first time, how do you “see” them?

Do you see their height, their hair and eye color? Do you notice their facial features, their size and their sense of style?

Do you see them as their job title? Are they doctors or engineers or lawyers? Are they funny?

Or do you see their hopes and dreams? Do you notice their fears as they worry about being good employees? Do you see their internal monologues as they introduce themselves to you?

Let’s face it – you pay more attention to their outer self than their inner being. That’s okay. It’s what the normal, busy person does.

But the true leader cares about each person and sees them in their entirety. This person sees their broken pieces and relates to them at those precise places. She relates with full empathy for their struggle, whatever their struggle is.

How are you “seeing” people?

What’s the most important habit you can start in 2019?

Freewriting.

It’s the act of writing down by hand, whatever comes to mind as quickly as possible for 20 minutes. It can be used as a tool to improve your creativity, or it can be used to process negative emotions. However you use, it changes your life.

It’s the secret sauce used by billionaire investors like Ray Dalio, wildly successful authors like Tim Ferriss, Elizabeth Gilbert and Seth Godin, and even used by people like Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs as a way to get in touch with their inner creativity.

Why?

They’ve used it to get past their inner censor and to “see” their current thoughts. Once you can see your thoughts, then you can consciously change them to create the life you want.

I was skeptical – how can writing things down on a page change your life? I tried it for a month and was incredibly surprised by the results. I started getting lucky. But like lucky like “this is really weird – this never happens to me” kind of lucky. People would offered me free bikes. I found $100 bills in the streets. Even girls I never spoke to would walk up to me and ask me out on dates.

It baffled me but I’m not going to complain. Now it’s the one habit I must do daily because of the luck that I’ve gotten since I started doing it.

Whether you freewrite to get lucky, to become more creative or just to vent, freewriting is what all the cool kids are doing now. It’s time to start writing in 2019.

 

 

Pop quiz:

When your client sends you an email at 8 p.m. requiring you to rework the presentation which is due the next morning, what do you do?

A) Say nothing to the client and quietly complete the request, building up resentment until the day you finally tell your client to fuck off.

B) Complain to your colleagues that your client is stupid, insensitive and you secretly hopes that his company implodes. And you stay up until 2 am finishing the presentation.

C) Don’t do the request and hope that someone else on the team picks up the slack.

D) Communicate openly and honestly to understand the need for this change, even though you know that you might still have to stay up until 2 am working on the presentation.

If you’re the person who wants to do work that matters, your choice must be D. Even though, it’s painful and scary to look your client in the eye and tell him the truth.

Otherwise, you’re a sheep.

When was the last time you told your best friend about how glorious your wool sweater is?

Taking pride in your work is more important than the fear of staying silent and following the rules. It’s about time you stop being a sheep.

There’s one major difference between the two.

Hearing uses only the ears. A hearer recognizes what word was said, how it sounded, and even the volume and pitch of the speaker.

On the other hand, listening uses the ears AND the other senses. A listener uses her eyes to see the body language and hand gestures. She notices the mouth moving and sees the scrunched up face of the person who communicates with anger. She feels the weight and force of the words as they leave the persons’ lips. She can almost smell the fright on the person who can’t leave his wife because of what might happen to the kids. She can taste the tears as they come down a little girl’s face.

What stops us from becoming true listeners is that we’ve learnt to only use our ears. It’s time to recognize that listening is a sensory experience. Yes, it requires more brainpower than we can currently spare. Yes, there are a multitude of other things you can do. And yes, it is a time-consuming process.

But the difference between being heard and being listened to, is like the difference between looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and hiking it. There’s not even a comparison.

Go ahead. Make listening a full body experience. I promise you the person being listened to will feel the difference.

People thought that Rome would never fall. That the Soviet Union would never fall. That Great Britain would never fall..

Until they all did.

History is littered with famous empires and companies that have fallen over the years.

The reason… Empires started attacking themselves.

But why would they want to attack what they created? Why can’t they stay away from attacking themselves?

Because each person in the empire starts defending his own turf. His own idea. His position of power. His land.

This drive to defend is sneaky. It’s not one that people think about. In an ideal world, there are plentiful resources. Each person can have what they want and doesn’t need to think about storing or defending their own stuff. You can have your car, I can have my car and we would all be fine. Nothing would ever get stolen.

But here in the real world, once your friend steps onto your lawn, you put up the walls. You construct elaborate fences to keep your “friend” out. That’s the drive to defend at work.

It gets even more problematic when ideas are involved. My religion vs. your religion. My prize winning idea vs. your lame-brain get rich quick scheme. Then the claws really come out and people start fighting nasty. Even when you’re on the same team.

The only way to get out of this trap is: create a bigger pie for all.  If you’re not expanding the pie, then you’re fighting over scraps.

No one eats the ends of the pizza anyway.

 

The old man grudgingly agrees, and begins testing him and teaching him the ways of the ancient warriors of the village. Slowly, our young hero learns how to fight and how to control his emotions. 

How many times have you heard of this part of the story? Luke Skywalker needs to learn a skill. Yoda teaches him. Luke becomes stronger and ready to fight his father…

This drive to learn is another core drive. You are able to thrive in the world based on your capacity and willingness to learn new things. And it is not only related to formal education. You learn how to drive, how to have sex, how to/(or not to) fight with your partner. You even can learn how to die.

Why do you like listening to podcasts on the train or while driving? Maybe it’s to feel productive – that you’re achieving something while you wait. But maybe, you just like learning something new.

Learning is hella fun. And it’s an innate drive that we can keep using to get better and better. Which is also hella fun.

And they fall in love…

This drive is straightforward. Everyone wants to have a little helping of love. And they’ll fight wars, or create video games, or even rally the troops to defeat the dreaded Golden State Warriors simply to get some love.

In more formal terms, it is known as the drive to bond. Now what does this look like on a daily basis? Well, imagine you had the choice between feeding your future ex-girlfriend your normal meal or cooking yourself. You could just get a massive portion of Chipotle via UberEats for her.. But you’re thinking a home cooked Spanish style tomato salad with salmon and chickpeas doesn’t sound bad either..

Because you want a little more action that just a peck on the cheek, you choose to cook. You venture to Whole Foods and grab two healthy looking organic Pacific-caught farm fresh salmon steaks. You buy two portions of kale salad and you decide to make your own vinaigrette. Excessive? Yes. But when else will you get the chance to “bond” with her? It’s now or never, baby.

This is what people will do for the drive to bond. This drive explains businesses such as cosmetics, perfume or lingerie. But it also explains why people throw Friendsgiving parties or go to live sports games. People want to feel a sense of connection to something bigger than themselves.

Unsurprisingly, it is also an easy way to get people to pay more. When you trigger this drive, people feel compelled to go beyond the call of duty.

How can you connect your work request to their drive to bond today?

Hearing the news, he immediately hatches a plan…

And our young hero now has a goal to work towards. This is one of the most powerful drives that exists – the drive to Achieve. We want to work towards achieving our goals, whether they be insignificant ones like taking out the trash, or more grandiose goals like landing on the moon.

Everyone has this drive – to feel important, to do things that will give us status in our tribes. This is why we work soul-crushing jobs at law or consulting firms, in order to gain the status the will make us and our friends/family feel proud. And the flipside of this drive is also true – if you can do anything to not feel like a failure, trust me, you will do it.

It’s important to understand this drive and explain it directly to the users. “If you use this app, you can save 10% on your normal purchase..” or ” Try this shampoo, you get 2x the volume so you can look even better!”

What else can be simpler than that?

Question is: How can you help the user become rich and famous?

A clue to what all people want lies in the first sentence of the story..

“A young boy in a rural village, toiled in the fields under the scorching sun. He longed for an escape, a thrill – anything that would break him out of the crushing grip of routine…”

This is one of the things that all people crave. They want to feel something. Joy. Gratitude. Excitement. Hell, they will want any emotion as long as they don’t have to feel bored. If you can do anything to remove the feeling of boredom, the user will do whatever you say.

This partly explains the rise of the social media apps – Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook. They all take away the feeling of boredom. Yes, they are used to “connect” with loved ones from far away. But is that how it’s really used now?

When you wait for the elevator doors to close, are you checking Instagram to connect with your friends? Or is it to give yourself anything to do while you go up the 10 story building?

People want a thrill. Plain and simple.

And this is big business. How else can you explain Disney and Netflix being currently valued as more than $100 billion? “Netflix and Chill”has become a popular term simply because they remove the feeling of boredom.

Question is: how can you put that wow into their life? What could you do that would positively surprise the customer? Or better yet, what can you do to remove the boredom they feel?