Stuck figuring out what to do with your life? We can blame Passion.
Dave Evans correctly points out that “what’s your passion?” is a dangerous question. When we use a question to judge and organize our life, we empower its hidden beliefs.
(1) We all have a passion
(2) You’ll know it early in life
(3) Your passion won’t change
(4) It’ll make you money
(5) The world will let you do it
The alternative is to look for clues in your interest. Talk to people, prototype and learn.
Netflix has no OKRs (Objective and Key Results). It has “freedom and responsibility”.
This is not entirely true. Reed Hasting later added processes for employee safety and sexual harassment, customer data privacy, and financial reporting. Stating its importance in “high-volume, low-error” or safety-critical environments.
Comparing it to Intel, where OKRs are the backbone of the management success, Netflix believes that OKRs stiffen creativity and create operation overhead.
When your product is creative, beware of the tradeoffs.
The same is true for startups who have yet to a product a people love and recommend.
No one has told me how hard it is to declare failure before the world has called it a failure.
I interviewed 200 producers, hired two, created a show bible, learned about storytelling, one episode, and another. Then it stop, I stopped.
It beginning of the end started with a feeling of annoyance.
I was in Italy. I need to record a session. I booked a meeting room to record the podcast, too echo-y. I tried the hostel. They couldn’t allow me to book a room for 2 hours. I tried again, in Amsterdam, in a WeWork. Again, plans failed. I won’t go into details.
It was a lot of friction. Perhaps it’s supposed to. After all, I’m doing something new.
I remind all the people that might learn something from this podcast. All the praise I would get. I would have a podcast season that benefits future new coaches, just like me. I focus on the outcomes and tell myself the suffering is worth it. It’s part of the process.
It’s a passion project. If I’m not getting paid, isn’t it supposed to be enjoyable? After all, isn’t the moment all there is?
There is a war happening on the inside. I started to drag waking up. I was not looking forward to the day. Days were dark. I escaped to food, learning, reading, porn, cigarettes, podcast and other work.
I started asking myself why am I doing this? I couldn’t come up with a good answer.
I was driven by momentum. A well-laid-out plan. All the successful outcomes I dream of. But I couldn’t come up with a reason why it is important enough.
After weeks of introspection, (1) the podcast wouldn’t be great if it was a drag every day. (2) If things stay the same, I would hate my passion project till the very end (3) I overweight a beautiful plan, a great outcome (4) I am stealing myself the opportunity of doing something I enjoy and enjoying the same results.
Other factors: (1) I was lonely. (2) I was burnt out. (3) I was conflating learning and sharing coaching to the podcast (4) My skill didn’t translate well (5) it wasn’t aligned with my life goals
Would I still make the podcast? Yes, knowing what I knew then.
What would I do differently? Write a “specs sheet”. Why do I want to start this? What’s the outcome I want? What does success look like? What milestone to achieve to prove this endeavor is a good idea? Me and my audience? How does it align with my life goals? Is this a full-body YES? If it’s not a success, how can I make this worth doing personally for me?
When I feel frustrated, I can look back and see what assumption I’m making.
If you’re facing a similar situation, what to do? Pause everything that you can and make time. Isolate other causes of frustration (jet lag, family relationship, health, grandma funeral, and cleaning my environment.) Come to a sense of peace and boredom. Be impatient with journaling and be patient with decisions. Writing down the question swirling in the head (why am I doing this? is this worth it? how long it’s going to last?). The only way to make decisions is to think through all these questions.
After going through the intellectual information, ask the body and heart, and see if it’s a full-body YES.
If it’s not, then STOP.
What’s next? Back to the drawing board to find the idea where my curiosity meets my genius meets what the world needs.
Thank you, Steve Schlafman for the generous questions. And writing out his failure, closing a VC fund and podcast before it got published.
For Jim Collins that it takes 4 years to find your hedgehog.
Putting together a plan is scary. It’s a negotiation with our future-self to do something uncomfortable. A promise we’re making now.
Sometimes when we’re stuck in a seemingly unachievable dream, a plan is exactly what we need. It is to own the uncomfortable work that needs to be done. Alternatively, give it up.
What’s not a good idea is dreaming it, not making it happen, then beating yourself up when it’s not happening.
People don’t want what you make. People want what they want. People don’t really like you. People like how you make them feel. People don’t do charity because they are altruistic. People enjoy the pleasure of pleasing others.
In case you’re wondering, we are all selfish. But what if it’s okay to be selfish? What if we can all be selfish while making others happy? Of course we can, that’s the best kind of selfishness.
One of the insurmountable challenges is to convince any parent to go for family therapy. And this is how I did it.
It has been 6 months since we’ve embarked on our monthly “family dinners”. I put time away to discuss our challenges, triggers and wants, hopefully, to improve our relationship. Yet, my only reliable strategy for a delightful dinner was to shut my mouth.
I’ve read books (Non-Violent Communication, Why You Won’t Apologize), listened to interviews with renowned therapists (Esther Perel, Brene Brown), and implemented learnings into these dinners. Everything sort of works until one of us would get triggered and that’s the end of dinner.
On this day, I had a new perspective. Perhaps it is not the message, it’s the messenger. Time to bring in the professional, the family therapist, the person with years of experience resolving deep-rooted issues. A person with a wall of certificates and success stories to share.
Now, the plan is to convince my parents for therapy. 1) Align common goals: A better family relationship. 2) Agree that the current approach is not achieving results: Monthly dinners 3) Seek advice for possible reasons 4) Actively listen to them 5) Suggest my solution: family therapy 6) Conclude and execute on the new approach
“Mom, what do you think could be possible reasons why we are not progressing in our relationship after months of dinners?” I asked.
Mom got silent and replied, “Bryan, I think you have depression.”
My jaw dropped. “Oh… okay. Well, what about you? Maybe you’re the one who has depression? We should go to the doctor together!” I’m surprised by my reply.
And there we go, sitting outside the polyclinic waiting for our number to be called.
After a round of questions with the doctor, he concluded, “Bryan, you don’t have depression. You’re too productive to be depressed.”
“Well, I know that already. Now you just need to convince my mum,” I smiled.
My parents got invited back into the room and were debunked of their concern that I have depression. Out of possible reasons, that’s how my mum got roped into the family therapy.
Often times, we have a certain way of seeing the world. Instead of a verbal argument to change someone’s mind, or worse, using power to instruct orname -call which is not at all effective, the next best thing might be to let reality do its job. There is no need for power, logic or debate. It’s simply an embrace of the opinion of others, treat it as an experiment and let reality do its teaching. Perhaps, this is the best way to change someone’s mind and even better, be beside them like the kind teacher we all hope for.
