Authenticity is lazy

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It’s great to be authentic. Sharing your struggles and strategies can be a huge benefit to many people. However, if you lay back and just be solely “authentic”, that’s a lazy approach to life.

We all know someone that “just tells it like is” that no one wants to be around, because they’re often just a jerk. You can be transparent and honest, but you should try to layer it with some kindness.

Back in episode 24 of The Long and The Short Of It podcast, Jen dug into this idea by sharing some thoughts from Seth Godin. She pulled a few great quotes from Seth’s “This Is Marketing” book about the pieces that need to connect to authenticity.

Emotional Labor

In large part, Jen and Seth argue that it’s not simply “kindness” that you need to add, but rather “emotional labor”; spending energy to showcase your thoughts in the best light.

From the book:

Emotional labor is the work of doing what we don’t feel like doing. It’s about showing up with a smile when we’re wincing inside, or resisting the urge to chew someone out, because you know that engaging with him will make a bigger difference. It takes a small amount of energy and guts to be authentic.

Further along in that same thought:

And if the authentic you is a selfish jerk, please leave him at home. If you need to be authentic to do your best work, you’re not a professional, you’re a fortunate amateur.

I love being around people that are authentic and can help me become a better person, but I don’t like hanging around selfish jerks. If you can ride the balance of authenticity with emotional labor, you are likely to be a very valuable person to those around you.

When Calendly goes wrong

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Tools like Calendly can be fantastic. Rather than a dozen emails back-and-forth to find a time to meet, you can just share a link with your available times, and the other party can pick the one that’s best for them. It’s great!

At times, though, it can unintentionally seem like a power move and be taken the wrong way.

In a story shared by David Berkowitz, Ahana Banerjee sent this message to someone she was working to find a time to meet with:

Please let me know if you’d have some time in the coming weeks, or if easier, feel free to find a time via my Calendly.

That seemed to be a very thoughtful email. “Let me know some times when you’re free, or go ahead and use my Calendly link.” Their response?

I’m very happy to help you but a spot of advice: I won’t be self finding a spot in your calendar to do this.

It was an odd response, for sure, but one that’s seemingly growing. The conversation that followed on Twitter was super interesting.

Rather than seeing it as rude, though, I see it the opposite way. As David says in his article:

Calendly and its ilk aren’t a power play for the sender; they give control to the recipient. Instead of me telling you, “I’m free Tuesday 3-5 and Thursday 12-2,” you let someone choose what works for them. To me at least, it’s the epitome of respect.

Spam is different

The examples above were in situations where both parties were wanting to meet. The other side of this is unsolicited spam which comes along with a Calendly link. I’m getting more of this lately, and it’s certainly quite rude.

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Among other things, it’s spam. Unexpected interruption-based marketing is lazy, and adding a Calendly link to that kind of garbage makes it even worse. If people are upset by that kind of Calendly pushing, I wholeheartedly agree.

However, for situations where both parties are looking to find a mutually convenient time to chat, a Calendly link from either party should be welcomed as a way for everyone to save some time and set a perfectly-timed appointment.

New information needs to tie to old ideas

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Last month I shared the idea of “anchor & twist” when it comes to marketing. You need to anchor your new product to an existing idea so that people will understand what you have, and then you can twist them to the new benefits that your product can bring.

The same can work for your memory.

If you can anchor a new piece of knowledge to something that you already understand, it will be much easier to recall it in the future. In his book Limitless, author Jim Kwik put it this way:

“To remember any new piece of information, you must associate it with something you already know.”

An article from The Guardian a few years ago takes this even further:

Always recall related knowledge actively when you’re learning new information. For example, if your task it to learn about the current situation in a certain country, recall what you already know about its history.

Don’t be tempted to look everything up immediately – even though Google has made that so easy. Take some time to retrieve what your own brain has stored about the topic first, even if it doesn’t relate directly to what you’re studying.

The key is to make this intentional. From that same article, they say “We do not always consciously make use of what we already know when we try to learn new information.” Our brains will do it to some degree automatically, but taking a brief moment to intentionally focus on that connection can help with long-term memory to a huge degree.

I’m a believer in a brute-force style of memory in a lot of ways, but some simple tricks can take whatever method you use and make it even better.

Unexpected ads are the problem

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Advertising isn’t a problem. Most people recognize that services are often paid for via advertising, and that’s often preferred over having to pay out of our own pockets.

However, unexpected advertising is a bigger problem.

If I’m watching TV, listening to the radio (or a podcast), or browsing a website, I know ads are likely to be present. They may be annoying, but they’re expected.

However, things like cold emails, cold phone calls and other intrusive ads are unexpected and we see them under much harsher light. In the David Meerman Scott theory of ads, these go from the “buy” category of normal ads to the “bug” category of ads that we all hate.

Earning attention is always your best bet, and buying ads is sometimes a direction that you need to go. However, if you find that surprising people with unexpected ads is your only choice, you may need to revisit your strategy.

Where did that time come from?

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When people say they don’t have time to exercise, visit with friends, or just relax, they’re likely telling the truth. Their calendar is full and things can get tight.

A big (somewhat hidden) reason for this is social media, which on average consumes nearly 2-1/2 hours every single day (source). Where did that time come from? People were plenty busy before social media came along, but we’ve found ways to squeeze an extra 147 minutes into every single day.

I think the reasoning behind this is two-fold:

First, you have Parkinson’s Law (“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“) coming into effect. People may take more time every day to mess around on social media, but still find ways to get their work done. In a way, you could say it enhances their productivity because they have to get more done in less time.

This was shown in a funny manner on “The Office” back in season 3. When Jan (the big boss) showed up unexpectedly, while most of the staff was watching a movie, she asked “How would a movie increase productivity?”.

Michael’s response? “People would work faster after. They’d have to, to make up for the time lost watching the movie.”

Here’s the clip if you’ve never seen it:

The other side is that people’s priorities shift around, which is really the appropriate response to someone being too busy. You are absolutely not “too busy” to make that change in your life, but it’s just not a priority for you.

Take your time back

For most of us, we’re on social media more often that we probably should be, so that time is easy to take back. Seth Godin famously isn’t on social media at all, which helps explain why he’s able to produce so many books, podcasts and blog posts.

You’ve made room in your life for social media (and hundreds of other things), so if you want to make room for something more important you have some low-hanging fruit that you can move out of the way to get things started.

Discuss ideas

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You’ve likely heard this saying before: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people“. It’s often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but seems to track back to Henry Thomas Buckle, as explained in this great research about it.

While I’ve heard and appreciated that quote for a while, it’s only recently that I’ve begun to see people through that lens. Not that I’m noticing the “average” or “small” minds, per se, but some of the idea-based “great minds” have been popping up more around me more often, and it’s fantastic.

Ideas

The first includes some friends from the altMBA, like Rachael Studebaker. If you want to find people with amazing ideas, joining a session of the altMBA will surround you with those kinds of people (details on the program here). As I’ve kept up with more folks from there, I really notice a different kind of conversation than I see with most people.

I’m also finding it more frequently in my interactions on LinkedIn, with folks like Evan Chasteen and Tony Albrecht (among many others). Generally speaking, I find LinkedIn to be full of people talking about ideas, and Facebook tends to be more about people and events.

However, a follow-up quote from Buckle shows a need for all three:

“The fact, of course, is that any of one’s friends who was incapable of a little intermingling of these condiments would soon be consigned to the home for dull dogs.”

This manifests itself most often for me with people like Ali Green. She and I frequently need to discuss people and events, as that’s the core of the work we do together, but we also drift into deeper topics and I find those interactions to be fascinating.

People & Events

Depending on context, I’m sure many folks would consider me just a “people & events” conversationalist, and that’s accurate in many interactions that I have. However, those times when it truly goes to “ideas” brings incredible value and I encourage you to seek out those kinds of discussions.

Chance still counts when you win

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Last summer, I wrote about how luck and chance are two different things.

Chance is out of our control.

Luck includes a degree of chance, but also is affected by our curiosity and hard work.

When something goes wrong, it’s easy to blame chance for it — and you might be right! If you can learn a lesson from those times, it can be very helpful, but chance may indeed have played a big part.

However, the same is also true when something goes very well. I would hope that your skill and knowledge played a role, but you need to account for chance that might have gone in your favor.

A silly example is this woman that bowled a strike. What part did chance play in making that happen?

I think it’s safe to say that while she literally bowled a strike, she can recognize that her skill was merely a tiny piece of why it worked.

Nietzsche said it best when he simply said “No victor believes in chance.“

I think that statement is generally true, but if you can fight against that desire you can learn more valuable lessons to help make your next effort even more successful.

I let the “other” Mickey handle that

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Years ago, Jerry Seinfeld told a joke about “night guy versus morning guy”. You can see the clip below, but he essentially says that when he stays up too late, that’s him as “night guy”, and he’s not concerned with what “morning guy” needs to deal with. Here’s a clip:

I’m finding that I’m the same way in parts of my life, particularly with Anki.

Anki is essentially a flash card app to help me remember things, and I use it every single day. I love it because I can put anything in there that I want to learn, and I’ll “magically” learn it over the coming weeks. As Michael Nielson has said, “Anki makes memory a choice“.

That’s not my problem

The drawback to using Anki so frequently is that I’ve got a lot of cards in there, and it’s in large part to treating Anki like Seinfeld treats sleep — I’ll let the “other” Mickey deal with actually learning them.

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When I find something new that I want learn, such as the NATO phonetic alphabet, I can just throw it in Anki and it’ll magically get learned! All that *I* do is put it in Anki, and I know that I’ll learn it over the new few weeks.

Of course, “other” Mickey still has to work through the cards every day, but it really does feel disconnected — in a good way. When I want to learn something new, I can put it in there right then and know it’ll get taken care, even if I’m the one that needs to deal with it later.

Writing with empathy

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Empathy is the key to great writing. If you can really understand the worldview of those that are reading what you write, you’ll tend to be much more effective.

In her book “Everybody Writes“, author Ann Hadley shared two great quotes that go into this.

First, she shares how empathy isn’t just something you have; you need to work for it.

“Empathy—like writing—isn’t a gift. It’s a discipline. It takes some intentional effort and diligence to develop enormous empathy so that you can apply it to your writing.”

Taking it a step further, she shared some thoughts from Facebook content strategist Jonathon Colman about what comes next:

“Start with empathy. Continue with utility. Improve with analysis. Optimize with love.”

If you can start from a place of empathy and refine from there, you’ll end up producing far better content than if you just dive in without a plan.

Run more parity checks

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In computing, a parity check is “the process that ensures accurate data transmission between nodes during communication“. In other words, it’s a simple test that will help make sure that the data being sent is the same as the data being received and that nothing was lost along the way. They’re imperfect checks, but they’ll catch (and help to fix) many potential errors.

We need more parity checks in our lives too.

The week ahead…

I’ve talked a good bit in the past about my process of running a “weekly preview” every Friday. It’s where I look at what’s coming up and try to catch any scheduling issues before they become a big problem.

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In recent months, though, I’ve added one small thing to it. After I’ve looked at the week I send two simple emails — one to my wife and one to my business partner — with a quick outline of what’s coming up. Here’s an example:

The main benefit of those emails is simply to make sure we’re aligned on everything approaching next week, and 90% of the time all is smooth. However, on a few occasions they’ll write back and point out a conflict that I might have missed, such as “Why is that meeting on Thursday? We have that other thing on Thursday.” Discovering that a week ahead of time is much better than scrambling to solve it on Thursday morning.

A real example from a few weeks ago in my email to Ali I mentioned “I’ll be working from home on Monday since I don’t need to go in” and she quickly reminded me that our meeting with a client on Monday was in person, not on video chat. Had she not told me, I likely would have realized that when the meeting was starting and I was not in the right location. Great catch!

Not too much

With all things, though, there’s a balance to be struck here. I could send them both an email every day to discuss tomorrow, but that would add a whole lot of meta work and likely not be worth the effort.

Similarly, I try to pay attention to how much detail I put in my weekly emails to them. More is better, but only to a point. I try to stick to just a bullet point or two for each day with the highlights, simply to make sure we’re on the same page.

Parity checking won’t catch every error, but if it can fix a few then it’s worth doing.