One day, our health will worsen. Our loved ones will die. We will make mistakes. We will fail.
When that happens, it’s painful.
We can deny (and avoid) the pain.
We can learn from it.
Once you understand the cause of pain and devise a way to work with, or through it, the quicker you can stand back on your feet. I observe this is true for me.
Journaling, therapy, or seeking out people who experience similar experiences to gain understanding.
The good news is the faster we learn from pain, the faster we can get through it.
Pain + reflections = progress.
And that might be the breakthrough that many can benefit from.
Last year, feels like a great year. A turn of events and everything came crashing.
There’s a meaningful project that I’m working towards.
I feel more connected to myself. Being more open and sensitive.
Along with that, I made a commitment to improve my family relationship.
Then late Dec, my grandma passed away. I flew back, took a break and felt misaligned since.
General lesson
It sucks right now, and you need to rest.
Rest till I reach cold boredom (feeling great without needing to achieve anything).
Diagnose issue before solving.
Face up to the brutal fact and emotions.
Release emotions from the body, and come back to see if there are lesson to learn.
Meditate and back to the body.
Separate what’s in my control vs not.
Accept what’s not in my control.
Call friends and ask for help. You are not alone.
Feeling alive comes from feeling great in peace.
Storytelling (NPR-style) is hard
I underestimated the level of effort needed to create NPR-style content. I was enamored with Start Up and Millennium podcasts. As one of my story producers grew busier, I was left with expectations that my resource could not meet.
Find another story producer.
Find an easier content format that can hit the same goal.
Content > learning
As I ceased the content production, I lost motivation to study coaching. Initially, I thought it was due to the funeral. Or maybe the coaching takes too much out of me. Finally, I think it’s because I enjoy creation more than learning. Learning was support for creation.
Diagnose the issue before finding solution.
Find a coach to help me unpack.
Doing too much
Learning + creating + working + traveling = intense.
As I travelled from UK to France, there was the language barrier to contend with + weekly traveling + winter, add layers of difficulty and caused decision fatigue.
On top of learning about coaching, I was also learning about story-telling. I generally enjoy learning, but there’s a point of “too-much.”
Travel slower. A city a month.
Find another story producer.
Pause.
Grief well
After coming back to Singapore, I had 2 weeks break from the podcast and coaching. Not realizing I was running on the past week’s momentum.
I had a cognitive expectation of doing and achieving. I did not adjust my expectation, then I grew anxious when I did not do those expectations.
Journal to unpack.
Rest till rested. From hot boredom to cold boredom.
Allocate a “no schedules plan” for 2 weeks, till cold boredom.
15min of awareness meditation daily.
Failing sucks. I hope I will look back at this article when I face another failure.
“I feel stuck about my job and I’m not sure I can do this anymore.” It could be that doing something new is scary. And when we shine a light on what’s scary. It’s disappear like the boogeyman. We can start plan for the few worst-case scenarios instead of being paralysed with fear.
“I dislike this person.” And get busy building a wall and manipulate everyone else around me to hate this person. Not knowing that, it is hindering a vulnerable conversation of the real issue.
“I really want this thing. I see everyone who hinders the goal as an enemy to defeat.” Could it be that people are minding their own business and you are banging into them because of your high velocity.
To know the layers of the repercussions from our actions. The layers of different intentions. We benefit ourselves (and the people around us) when we are aware.
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.
