Category: Blog

A couple of question for you

• How do you think? Are you a fast-thinker, a slow thinker?
• How do you decide? By impulse, after cooling down, by documenting, after confronting with others?

In other words: How do you handle your life?
It’s important to know it because you have to be prepared in both cases.

The slow ones.

I know. Slow has a negative connotation, but in fact slow in this case means: Taking time.
You might be slow in making decisions because you need to have a clear view of what’s happening.

You need more data, or you need to be relaxed.
_You have to know this_. Why? Because there will come a time when you’ll be asked for a quick answer and you’ll need a backup plan.

You need to know exactly what to say to gain more time, you need to know how to gain more time and how to get back into a relaxed mindset.

This way you’ll be yourself and be true to what you do best.

**The Fast Ones**

If you’re fast you have to know it too. Because sometimes you’ll be put in slow situations, waiting for a call or whatever.

This will test your temper. It will test your character and you have to be prepared so that you will avoid falling into these traps.

Or you might know what your fast-making ability is great _only_ in some cases and if so you’ll have to learn when to take time and when to speed up.

In both cases, we’re talking about understanding how you work, how your mind works, how your emotions are triggered so that you know how to act in any situation.

If you don’t know, you can’t act.

What is the one thing you would not like to do?

At work, at home, what is it?

When I think about this question many boring things come to mind. Cleaning for example is one of them.
But none of these answer is the correct one.

The hardest thing to do is to do a thing well when you don’t want to do it. 
Is to show up, do your work in the best possible way in your worst possible day.

That is the hardest thing to do. It might happen during work, during life, during a night out.
In those moments everything leads you to surrender, to give up, to stop, and it’s only when you do your best work anyway that you’ll discover the value of persistence, of doing the thing each and every day.

That is what I call Being Professional.
It means thinking rationally even when you are in bad mood, it means working even when you don’t want to, it means creating value even at your lowest energy.
It means exceeding the standard, because what you provide cannot be easily obtained elsewhere.

When I was a child my mother would often remind of a saying “If walls were made of glass, you’d see what families do for real”She meant that we change our behaviour based on the fact that “nobody is watching us”, that if people were watching us it would show all the bad things we do or we would stop doing them because of that kind of transparency.

In the internet era this is so true. Everything is made of glass, each and every word you write can become something that will be available to everyone in the world.

This means that what we write and say is important and thus we should do our best to say it like the whole world is reading that email to our boss or our coworker. 

It’ll change everything. You’ll see that if you think about “having more people reading what you write” it’ll change the tone, the message.

Everything will be different. 
Part is because we tend to protect ourselves from backfire, and that’s what we should avoid.

Having glass walls doesn’t mean you should lie, fake emotions or intentions. No. You have to be true to what you think, but expose it more kindly, with more thought and empathy so that if it “leaks out” it’ll still be fine.

I think it could be summarized with: Be honest, be kind.
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How many times did you felt like this isn’t the right way to manage a project, to let people work with you, to talk, to express your opinion, to discuss complex topic?

There is no shortcut, no way around, and it’s the same old song: We can’t change the world. 
It’s absurdly hard to change the behavior of the people around us.
We can try but they’ll get difensive, they’ll start protecting their own positions.

So what to do? Lead the way.
Be impeccable, show _your_ way of doing things, your way of approaching a problem, your way of sharing bad news.

Lead the way and do it at your maximum. Don’t try it, do it. Do it like if you are on television and everyone is watching you, do it like if this is the way of your life.

Because, afterall, if you believe in your preachings, then why not practice them as much as possible? Do it in the places you can, express them, show the way to the people that can embrace a different course of action.

It’s only by leading, by showing the way, that you can encourage people to do the same.
Think about when you’re in a course and the teacher asks “What’s the reason for this?” and it’s not a clear answer, right? Maybe we’re talking about politics, the universe, money, whatever.

You feel like you got a good answer, but you’re afraid.
You’re afraid to be wrong, to be shamed in public, to be that stupid guy that says stupid things.
So what do you do?
You wait until someone puts one hand up to share an answer and after that many hands come up too.

That single person _enabled_ everyone to do the same. He/Her gave you the courage to do the same.

Be that one, be the one that puts the hand up first.
Take the leap, lead the way.