Take an Interest in People

How many times a day are you asked “how are you doing?” How often does the question actually have meaning? Very rarely. It’s usually just an automatic part of speech. The person asking it doesn’t really want to know how you’re doing and would likely prove to be impatient if you were to take the time to tell them. If you run into someone and say “I remember the last time we spoke you were thinking about changing jobs. How’s the hunt going? Are you feeling any happier in your current gig?” That’s a very different kind of question. That’s showing care and interest. When you do that people feel good about themselves and feel good about you.

About a month into university I walked by a guy on campus who I recognized from residence. We had never spoken before but this was the third time we had crossed paths and exchanged nods so this time we decided to stop and chat. We both had time before our next classes so we decided to grab lunch. When we sat down to lunch he asked me “So Rob, how are you doing?” I told him I’m doing fine. He said, “No, no, no, how are you really doing?” The question caught me off guard for a second but then I opened up to him. I told him about feeling a bit weird about my Israeli girlfriend returning home, and still getting adjusted socially to living in Montreal but on the whole life was going well. We had a real conversation. This guy went on to be my roommate and best friend through university.

I find it particularly enjoyable to go about life this way. When I take an interest in people and give them my proper attention I feel good about myself and it makes me happy. Similarly, I find that I get the best out of people. When you treat people in a way that makes them feel good they treat you well which in turn makes you treat them even better. The positivity builds on itself. It’s an awful lot like smiling. When you smile, the world smiles back at you. Being a kind, engaged person is a reward in and of itself but it has other long term rewards too.

Have you ever met a person that things always seem to work out for? A person who seems ill prepared, kind of goofy but somehow their ass always lands in the butter. (it’s an actual expression, I promise). I’m that guy! I’ve been told numerous times that I was born with a horseshoe up my ass (horseshoes are lucky apparently).

I’m sure part of it is that I’m just plain lucky. However, I’m confident that I’ve created some of my own luck just by being good to people. When you’re good to people as you walk through life you find people willing and eager to help you at opportune times. I got my first real job in life because a friend of a friend unsolicited thought give me the username and password to his university job board. I had established a connection with him when we had spoken in passing. Taking the time to get to know him resulted in him thinking of me. It was an easy favor for him to do and it made a big difference to me. Fast forward two years later and I got him a job with my neighbor. Fast forward a year after that and he set me up with his girlfriend’s cute friend. It was a nice cycle of goodwill, favors and karma. I got my second professional project because I volunteered my time to help when I had nothing to gain. When circumstances changed I had already established trust.

The same rule proves itself in smaller ways too. You’re in much better shape when you’re running late to file a document if you’ve established a rapport with the filing clerk. Similarly, you’ll be happy you took the time to get to know your neighbor when you board a flight and aren’t sure if you turned the oven off.

So again, take an interest in people. It’s its own reward and you’ll see somehow life seems to just work out a lot smoother when you’ve made friends along the way.

Don’t Listen to your Body, It Lies!

I’ve learned that how productive I am in a day is in large part a function of how early I put on my pants. This is true of weekdays and weekends. If you work for yourself or at home then this is especially true.

I am not a morning person. I wish I was. I find that when I wake up in the morning, my body screams at me: “Go back to sleep! There’s no point in getting up now because I won’t be able to function properly anyway. Trust me, I know myself. You might as well get some more sleep so you won’t suffer through the whole day.”

Doctors always say listen to your body. I’m telling you that as it relates to staying in bed, your body lies to you. If you get up and get going you might feel like crap for the first half hour while you recover from your grogginess but after that you’re ultimately fine. Your body isn’t telling you how you are going to feel but just how awful you feel right now.

This is especially true for naps. I love naps. One, I just enjoy them. Two, I’ve been reading that they are a very efficient form of sleep. There’s a theory that the rapid eye movement (or R.E.M.) portion of sleep is the critical, recharging portion of sleep. When you sleep eight hours in a night you can expect to have 2 hours of solid R.E.M. time. This should leave you feeling well rested. If you incorporate a fairly consistent nap into your routine, your body learns that it has less time to work with during the nap, so you shift into R.E.M. a lot faster. As such, napping can provide much more concentrated sleep. So if you incorporate napping into your life, you can get away with sleeping fewer hours for every 24 hour cycle while feeling equally rested. This can be an important trick for sleep deprived parents. (Research the veracity of this paragraph for yourself. I don’t know it to be true)  

I’ve spoken with many people that say that they can’t nap because they just feel so awful afterwards. Again, I ask do you feel awful for the rest of the day/evening or do you just feel awful for the next 20-30 minutes while you’re “degrogging”. I suspect it’s the latter.

Back to the issue of putting on pants. You can start taking care of things in your underwear. You can fire up your laptop and address some emails. You can clean up a few things around the house. But are you really being that productive or effective when you’re still in this half started mode?

I find that staying in bed is a form of procrastination like anything else. You can be procrastinating from doing your morning routine or getting on with your day in general. The key thing to breaking procrastination is inertia. When you’re doing nothing, you like to keep doing nothing. When you get going on a task you like to keep going. So it can make a huge difference to your day if you choose to pop out of bed and jump in the shower right away. I find that I’m infinitely more effective and more committed to making good use of my time once I’m wearing pants.

This same notion of getting going in the morning can be applied to any task that you’ve been procrastinating on. The trick is “cracking the egg” or taking the first step towards accomplishing what you want. Momentum is very important and I find that once you take just the very first step your natural inclination will be to keep going. Avoid the excuse of thinking that you need a bigger window of time to make meaningful progress so you’ll wait till you have more time to get started. Shenanigans! Take even the most basic of first steps right away and it can help tremendously. Also once you start to tackle a task you start to know everything that’s involved. Once you know what’s involved, even if it’s a lot it seems far less daunting than the unknown.

In Sum, Don’t trust your body when it tells you to stay in bed. Put on pants early. Embrace napping. And crack the egg on tasks you been procrastinating on.

I started writing this blog in hopes that it might help improve people’s lives. In that spirit it would make me very happy if after reading this post, you take 20 minutes to get started on something, anything that you’ve been putting off for a while. Give it a shot! I think that it’ll make you happy. If you actually follow through I encourage you to let me know about it in the comments.

Don’t Say Fuck You While Giving In or Doing Favors

When I was working in Florida my boss from the Toronto office came to town for a visit and we went out for dinner. We ordered a couple drinks at the bar while waiting to be seated.

We’re sitting enjoying our drinks when an argument breaks out between one of the bartenders and a customer. The customer has just paid his bill and believes he has given the bartender a 20 and is expecting appropriate change. The bartender on the other hand believes that she received $10 and provides change accordingly.

They argue back and forth over who’s correct. They’re both really confident in their position. The customer argues that he knows how much money he had in his wallet and can judge by what remains. The bartender explains how they have standard procedures at the bar whereby every dollar they receive gets counted twice before being put in the till. The argument is getting heated. The customer is half yelling, the bartender is speaking in a soured tone and many of the people at the bar and nearby tables have stopped what they’re doing to watch the confrontation. The customer bemoans “whatever happened to the customer is always right!?”

Finally the bartender gives the customer the extra money and says, “Here you go, I know you’re completely wrong. I’m certain that when we count up the receipts at the end of the night, it’s going to prove you were wrong. But fine! If it’ll make you happy take the money!”

The customer exclaimed how the bartender cost herself her tip, and asked to speak to the manager. He complains to the manager about the service he received and leaves in a huff.

For what it’s worth, my best guess is that the bartender was actually right and the man had given her $10 and not $20. And the customer was not trying to get away with anything. He was genuinely convinced that he was right.

My boss asks me what I think of the situation. I said that the bartender was in a difficult spot. My boss then explains: The bartender handled the situation in the worst way possible. He reasoned that the bartender has two competing objectives. On one hand, she would like keep the money. On the other hand she would like the customer to leave happy. She failed miserably to achieve either objective. My boss could support her politely keeping the money at the expense of angering the customer. He similarly could support accepting the loss of $10 in the name of customer service even though she knows that she is right. However her course of action was useless. She lost the money and the customer left pissed off anyway.

My boss was absolutely correct in his assessment. This type of conflict comes up a lot in life and it’s an important lesson to learn. I experienced this when I was begrudgingly given a raise. My employer gave me more money and inspired resentment in return. You can similarly see this in customer service all the time. I’m confident that anyone who ever complains or seeks refunds from larger companies can relate to this. You call in to complain to a company about anything. After wasting some time the customer support rep says “OK we’re going to credit your account or give you part of what you’re asking for but only this time.” Why is there a need to emphasize: “only this time”? The support rep is taking the time to tell you that you’re getting your way because he is making an exception and not because you’re actually justified in your complaint. I’m personally numb to these kinds of remarks now. People will give you what you’re explicitly asking for while going out of their way to make you feel invalidated.

I think I understand why this happens. A person takes a hit to their ego and pride when giving into you. Their comments to assert that they are right is their attempt at an emotional consolation prize. This way they don’t feel defeated. It’s an ineffective strategy. People ought to take solace in their own knowledge that they are right and their ability to recognize that being right isn’t always the most important thing. This should be sufficient without the need to rub the other guy’s nose in it.

The other more important application of this lesson relates to giving and receiving favors to loved ones. Have you ever asked a friend or your spouse for a favor, they agree to do it but carry out the favor with resentment? They come through for you but bitch and complain the whole time.

A few negative things happen when this type of exchange takes place. One, the person receiving the favor is unhappy about being bitched at and is unappreciative of the favor. Two, the person providing the favor gets a horrible deal. They’ve now inconvenienced themselves to provide a favor, feel resentment instead of affection for the person their providing the favor to and worst of all the person they were trying to help begrudges them rather than appreciating them for their efforts.

If you’re anything like me you would much prefer that people say no rather than say yes and bitch at you. Worse still is if someone says “Yes” but then secretly resents you for asking. In either case they have done you and your relationship a disservice by providing the favor.

In conclusion, either say “No” and hold your ground or say “Yes” with a smile. But everyone loses when you give people what they ask for but say “fuck you” while you do it.

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On a related discussion point many of the problems that arise from giving and receiving favors might be caused by a conflict between two types of people: Askers and Guessers. Andrea Donderi in a very insightful web post identified two kinds of people. There are Askers who feel free to ask people for whatever they want under the assumption that the other person can quite freely say no if they feel uncomfortable. Then there are Guessers who try to anticipate how the other person feels and will only make the request if they are confident that the other person will say yes. Guessers will try to put out subtle feelers to gauge a person’s feelings rather than just asking for what they want and risking putting the other person in an uncomfortable position. The asking approach has the benefit of being more direct, while guessing shows a greater sympathy for other people’s social comfort. Both approaches are valid but conflict can arise when these two types of people clash. The take-aways would be to try and feel more comfortable saying no.  And when asking for favors, be more cognizant and respectful of the type of person you’re dealing with.

- I first read about Andrea Donderi’s web post in the wonderful book called “Help!, How to become slightly happier and get a bit more done” by Oliver Burkeman

How to Kick Ass at a Job Interview

First of all before the interview, do at least the most basic level of research on the company you’re applying to. I was wildly shocked by how many people showed up for an interview with me having not even looked at our company website. It’s important for a few reasons: One an employer can use this as a quick and dirty way to assess your diligence. Frankly if you show up to an interview having not even checked the company website you’re not diligent. Two, you can speak more intelligently about the company, their challenges and the job itself. Lastly, you can begin to evaluate whether you actually want the job and see what additional information you want.

During the interview there are a few strategies I recommend. One, whenever possible, turn the tables so that the interviewer is qualifying themselves and selling the job to you. You do this by asking the right questions about the company and the position. On the surface you are gathering information but the undertone is asking, why should I come work for you? This is a good strategy for a number of reasons. First, you want to properly understand the company and the position. It’s no good if you get yourself a job but it’s a shitty one. Once you’re going through the pain and the ecstasy of a job search you might as well find a longer term solution rather than a short term band aid. Similarly an employer wants someone who wants their job not any job. Two, probing and asking the right questions shows you’re intelligent and that you think things through. Three, once you’ve demonstrated that you properly understand the company and the position, you come off as less full of shit when you tell the potential employer that you’re very well suited for the job. Lastly, getting someone to qualify themselves to you is a very effective psychological ploy. It leverages the concept of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is the idea that a person feels unsettled or experiences cognitive dissonance when their beliefs and behaviors are inconsistent with each other. People will then look to change either their beliefs or behaviors in order to restore consistency. Cognitive dissonance affects many aspects of daily life. If you spend a lot of time taking piano lessons and you dislike playing piano you’ll feel silly about yourself. To resolve this you’ll either stop playing piano (change in behavior) or start to like playing piano (change in belief). Similarly if an employer finds themselves engaged in the behavior of trying to persuade you that he is offering a good job, he will feel silly about himself if he doesn’t think you are a good job candidate. To avoid feeling silly he will subconsciously begin to like you.

Cognitive dissonance has a very strong influence on people. Don’t underestimate its effect. Incidentally the exact same principle applies to attracting women. Whenever possible avoid qualifying yourself to women. You will improve your chances with a girl considerably whenever you can stop persuading her that you’re a worthy mate and get her to start trying to persuade you.

In general both with jobs and with women just remember you are there to try and prove your worthiness but you are also there to assess whether the job or the girl is worthy of you.

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When applying for a job it helps to create the impression that you have competing options. Again, this parallels meeting women perfectly. Human nature is to want what others want. This is a big part of why I so strongly recommend asking evaluative questions during interviews. Someone who has multiple employers competing for their services wants to know a lot about each opportunity to help them decide. When someone doesn’t care to learn about the company or position it’s usually because they have few other options and are happy to take any job they can get. Similarly whenever possible it helps to look for a new job while you still have your old one. Your old job serves a viable alternative to the job you are applying for.

I also think it’s a shame that so many people are too shy to ask about compensation. It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Part of the interview process is you evaluating whether you want the job. How can you make such a decision and weigh the job against competing options without knowing how much you’ll get paid. If an employer doesn’t volunteer the information, ask confidently and without hesitation.

Some companies have a structured hiring processes and have a built in time line for when they will make a decision to hire you or not. I think it’s great when a company has this structure. Unfortunately most companies do not and it’s easy to get in a loop where you are perpetually waiting for an answer one way or another. In the absence of the company bringing structure to the hiring process, it’s important that the job applicant does. Ask about what the next step is and when possible politely establish a timeline.

Many people fear establishing a timeline because they would hate to rush an employer who might have hired them had they only had more time. I suggest that scenario while theoretically possible is rare. I prefer to be told no and move on with my life then to be strung along with a maybe. More importantly, I’m confident that many people fail to get jobs due to the employer’s indecision and you increase your chances of getting the job by pushing for a decision one way or another.

When I first graduated from school I was unemployed for nine months. Then I finally had a successful interview. I inadvertently did something very clever. When I saw the interview was going well, I asked them what their timeline was for making a decision. They told me sometime within the next month or two. This is the type of answer which can put you in an endless loop of indecision. I told them I had a job offer from an investment firm and had committed to let them know if I would accept within the next week. I said that I didn’t expect an answer from them within one week but I would appreciate if they could at least get back to me to let me know if they were seriously considering me. This way, if they were considering me I could get back to the investment firm and ask to push back my deadline. They agreed to my request and in fact called to offer me the job an hour after my interview.

I did two things very well here. One, I created the impression that I was highly in demand. (I did have a competing offer but in truth it was a shitty one) Two, in a non-threatening way I created a timeline. I didn’t give the employer an ultimatum but in a respectful, tactful way I got them to commit to a concrete date.

Applying for a job is very analogous to a sales process. In fact you’re selling yourself.  And any good sales person will tell you it’s crucial that you create a structure to the process and create a track towards making a decision one way or another. The people interviewing you are real people who have day to day responsibilities that have nothing to do with hiring you. It’s very easy for them to put making a hiring decision on the backburner and forget about you. You’re doing them a favor and increasing your odds relative to other candidates if you can establish a clearly defined course for the hiring process.

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When you’re offered a job, if the employer doesn’t have a cemented pay scale don’t be shy to ask for more money. It is much easier to negotiate for more money upfront than down the road. Plus most employers provide annual increases on a percentage basis so a higher starting salary will have a ripple effect for your entire time with an organization. An employer has gone through the time consuming, tedious task of searching for a new hire and finally decided on you. He won’t want to settle for someone they liked less or start the whole process over again over a few shekels. Don’t be greedy but ask for what you’re worth and what you feel an employer would reasonably be willing to pay.

Embracing Failure

One of the costs of pursuing dreams is the cost associated with the risk of failure. Many People don’t know what would make them really happy. Then there are others who do know but fail to act on it. Fear of failure paralyzes people in many facets of life. People don’t even try to do or get what they want because they’re scared of the consequences of being unsuccessful. This applies everywhere. My first encounter with this was getting up the courage to approach women. The psychological hit you can take is scary when you put yourself out there and someone rejects you. A big turning point for me was when I felt far worse for pussying out than I would ever feel from rejection. There is no embarrassment in approaching a girl and getting shot down in flames. Any guy with perspective watching this will respect you for the effort rather than look down on you for the result. You’re still better than 90% of the guys out there who wish they had the courage to even try.

Now what about taking this approach to failure to our professional lives? There are many reliable, non-risky ways to earn a living. Unfortunately many of these ways leave us feeling unsatisfied and generally living ordinary lives. If you’re doing something you’re passionate about and wake up in the morning with excitement then that part of your life is awesome. If that’s not you, then I ask you why not? I discussed in earlier posts that your happiness will not actually come from achieving your goal but from enjoying the pursuit of the goal. If you chase something really special, something in-line with what you really want and it doesn’t pan out you can look yourself in the mirror and respect yourself for having gone for it. I believe this type of attitude is what makes truly special people who achieve special heights of happiness and generally live awesome lives.

In the professional arena failure likely comes with financial consequence. You need to be calculated in your risk and be smart about it. However if you’re a capable person you can always find a way to earn money and bounce back from failure. In fact the key to feeling comfortable enough to take any kind of risk largely lays in being confident that you can cope with the consequences of failure. Believe in your ability to cope with and handle whatever life throws at you and you’ll expand your scope of options infinitely. 

Click here to see a related post about pursuing dreams.