Cal Newport’s Shutdown Ritual

• Make sure your master task lists are up to date.
• Read over these lists in their entirety.
• Review your calendar for the next two weeks.
• Review your plan for the week and what you did that day.
• Then say, “schedule shutdown, complete.”

The idea is that doing this daily keeps you on track and helps to prepare you for a true evening or weekend break.

I’m happy to report that it has worked better than I imagined. I’ve basically eliminated stressful work-related thoughts from my evenings and weekends. As you might expect, this has really improved my ability to relax and focus on other things.

— Cal Newport

It works. I have my own version of this, which, I’ll share below, with its companion, the Workday Startup Routine.

Workday Startup Routine

I work at a company that is fully remote and distributed around the world. That means new work and information to process is constantly piling up. Without a routine for getting started in the morning, I can easily become overwhelmed.

Close your eyes and take two or three deep breaths

• If you’ve ever tried a guided mediation, imagine that. I close my eyes, take slow deep breaths in through my nose, and exhale through my mouth like I’m blowing up a balloon.
• When I don’t do this, sitting down in my chair and putting my hands on the keyboard feels a bit like jumping out of a plane. I skydive through the day and land suddenly 8, 10, sometimes even 12 hours later a bit confused about how I got there.
• When I do take this moment to breathe, however, I feel an instant break and reset. It creates a pause that makes me feel like I can plan and get in control of my day.

Plan the day in Akiflow and select three goals

• This is actually a bit of a multi-step process:
  • I review my goals for the week that I might have set Monday morning, the weekend, or the week before.
  • I go through all my tasks for the day on my todo list and select three goals that represent the most important things I want to accomplish.
  • I plan out my day on the calendar, making sure my three goals are being done at a time that is most likely going to see them accomplished. (Usually as early as possible in the day, but not always.)
• I only recently started using Akiflow to time-block my tasks for the day. Note: that’s an affiliate link but before you try out Akiflow you should know that it can be a bit buggy sometimes and that there are cheaper options. I was using Todoist and my Google Calendar to do the same thing. You can also do that on a piece of paper or your daily note in an app like Obsidian.

Review Google Task List

• Occasionally I will get tasked with items in shared Google Docs using the Google Task List system and I like to manually review this in case I’ve been tasked with something and not been aware.
• I also move these tasks to Akiflow and have to sometimes come back to check these off.
• Technically, these should be flowing into Akiflow automatically on creation — but they don’t when their origin is a Google Doc. Did I mention that Akiflow was buggy?

Up to this point, I’m solidifying my plan for the week and my day in preparation for new information. Here’s where the new information comes in.

Triage GitHub Notifications

• We build software at work so I like to start every morning by checking issues I’m following and any mentions I might have received on them.
• If I was doing more direct software myself, I’d be checking these more regularly throughout the day. But one clean sweep in the morning that gets me back to an empty inbox is just what I need.

Triage Gmail

• It’s email. You know what this is.
• I like to get to an empty inbox every morning.

Triage P2 Notifications

• P2 is the private, networked, blogging tool we use to manage our work communication.
• It uses WordPress to create networked team and project blogs that combine the best of project management systems, emails, forums, and social networks for work.
• It also has it’s own notification system and in the time between I end my day and start up my day there is always something new I have to read and manage.

At this point, I’m ready to dive into the final item that is most likely to throw a wrench into my plans: opening Slack.

Triage Slack

• Opening Slack can sometimes feel like you suddenly woke up to find yourself somehow concurrently present in dozens of important high school classrooms all at once and every teacher is simultaneously asking you a question you didn’t hear while you were sleeping.
• At least, it did until I started this workday startup routine. At this point, I know what is most important for my day, when I think I can do it, and what’s been happening since I ended my day. I’m prepared.
• My workday routine makes diving into what could be a chaotic maelstrom — if unprepared — something routine.

Workday Shutdown Routine

This is very similar to Cal Newport’s list. In fact, I have this in a checklist in Obsidian that links out to the blog post above to remind me of that.

Close your eyes and take two or three deep breaths

• Just like in the Workday Startup Routine this really helps stop the skydive feeling and gets me ready to close out my day.

Review Google Task List

• Just in case there are any new tasks I was added to during the day.
• I could do this in my startup ritual but …

Zero the Akiflow Inbox

• As part of how I plan my day I like to make sure I have all my new tasks collected in one inbox. I do that in Akiflow.
• Then I wrap my day by making sure I have tasks placed appropriately in my calendar for upcoming days or weeks. (Sometimes breaking things down into sub tasks.)

Review my calendar for the next two weeks

• If I don’t do this I’m guaranteed to be surprised.
• Additionally, I find this creates opportunities for not just avoiding being surprised but being better prepared.

Review my Weekly Note and Daily Notes in Obsidian

• These are essentially the same notes you’d find in a Full Focus Planner.
• I really like the system but much prefer to have everything digital and always with me in my pocket on my iPhone at all times.
• As part of this review I’m also making notes on any wins of the day — often with links back to the work. Another reason why a digital solution is better for me.
• I’m also adding notes on how my day went.

Close Slack

• If I don’t do this I’ll be distracted in the morning.

Shutdown

• Unlike Cal Newport I don’t say, “Shutdown complete.” I do however, sometimes exhale loudly, clap my hands, and say, “alright!”
• I don’t need a ritual to remind me that I’ve shutdown, I find the order I do things and the manner in which I do them sets me up for the same result as Cal Newport. I’m ready to disengage.

Do you have any daily rituals or routines that help you manage your day? I’d love to hear them.

How do you stay ahead of ever-rising customer expectations? There’s no single way to do it – it’s a combination of many things. But high standards are certainly a big part of it.

Jeff Bezos in a 2017 Amazon shareholder letter

That’s great but the question is how do you recognize those high standards consistently and get on the same page with everyone so you’re all heading in the same direction? That might seem like a tall order some days but luckily Bezos thinks high standards are teachable.

Here are some further thoughts from the same letter, lightly edited for clarity, on how to get better at recognizing the best work possible:

• High standards are teachable and people are pretty good at learning high standards simply through exposure.
• You can consider yourself a person of high standards in general and still have debilitating blind spots. It’s critical to be open to that likelihood.
• “Most people,” he said, “think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting.” Unrealistic beliefs on scope – often hidden and undiscussed – kill high standards. You need to form and proactively communicate realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be.
• Often, when a memo isn’t great, it’s not the writer’s inability to recognize the high standard, but instead a wrong expectation on scope: they mistakenly believe a high-standards, six-page memo can be written in one or two days or even a few hours, when really it might take a week or more! The great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can’t be done in a day or two. The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope – that a great memo probably should take a week or more.
• The football coach doesn’t need to be able to throw, and a film director doesn’t need to be able to act. But they both do need to recognize high standards for those things and teach realistic expectations on scope. Even in the example of writing a six-page memo, that’s teamwork. Someone on the team needs to have the skill, but it doesn’t have to be you.

I think that can be boiled down into three pieces of advice.

• Understand that you can consider yourself someone with high standards and yet still miss things.
• Find people who have the skill of recognizing high standards and seek feedback from them.
• Set realistic expectations on reaching high standards and don’t give up.

It’s a good list.

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

— Steve Jobs

There’s something I know about you that you may or may not know about yourself. You have within you more resources of energy than have ever been tapped, more talent than has ever been exploited, more strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given.

You know about some of the gifts that you have left undeveloped. Would you believe that you have gifts and possibilities you don’t even know about? It’s true. We are just beginning to recognize how even those who have had every advantage and opportunity unconsciously put a ceiling on their own growth, underestimate their potentialities or hide from the risk that growth involves.

— John Gardner, from Personal Renewal.

I know no better aim for life than to be broken on something great and impossible

— Nietzsche

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.

— George S. Patton, Jr.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

— Spinoza

It takes courage to admit that you have been doing something wrong, to admit that you have something to learn, that there is a better way.

— W. Edwards Deming

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

— Winston Churchill

And finally, while it’s not exactly a quote in the form of a pithy aphorism, here’s some advice based on the work of Bronnie Ware expressed in the most common deathbed regrets from The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

In other words …

1. Avoid lying to yourself.
2. Don’t live to work, work to live.
3. Be brave enough to share your feelings.
4. Stay in touch with your friends.
5. Allow yourself to be happy.

It’s important that you see the interconnectedness of these five disciplines.

• Vision:
  • A compelling vision creates a clear picture of the future.
  • If you don’t have a clear, compelling vision, then the other disciplines really don’t matter because you’re not living by design but by chance.
• Planning:
  • An effective plan clarifies and focuses the top-priority initiatives and actions needed to achieve it.
  • If you have a vision but no plan, then you have a pipe dream.
• Process Control:
  • A set of tools and events that align your daily actions with the critical actions in your plan.
  • If you have a vision and a focused plan but lack process control, then you’ll have a lot of frustration, because some days you will execute and make progress and some days you won’t.
• Measurement:
  • Measurement drives the process. It is the anchor of reality.
  • Effective measurement combines both lead and lag indicators that provide comprehensive feedback necessary for informed decision making.
  • If you have other disciplines in place but lack the courage to keep score, then there is no way for you to know what’s working and what isn’t. There is no way for you to make game-time adjustments that can accelerate your success.
• Time Use / Prioritization:
  • Using your time with clear intention is a must.
  • If all other disciplines are in place but you are not intentional about what you say yes to and what you say no to, then the day is controlling you.

While the 12 Week Year is focused on a system for personal productivity the disciplines can just as easily be applied to your team.

• Do you know where you’re going and how you’ll get there?
• Do you have the right processes in place to meet your goals? Not too much and not too little?
• Do you have after-action reviews of those processes (like team retros) and the outcomes of your projects?

They’re good questions and I think this highlight jumped out at me because I haven’t always had these all correctly balanced or in place across every project or goal. It’s not always been easy to do so but when they’ve been in place it’s always been worth it.

It can be a lot of 1-1 meetings and I want to use the time wisely. So lately, I’ve been wondering, what makes a great 1-1 meeting?

It seems like a good question. Luke Thomas says that without objective evaluation of their efficacy, 1-1 meetings will tend to become inefficient venting sessions.

These meetings tend to feel like a therapy session at work, so team leads don’t want to cut the meeting off when one of their employees is in the middle of venting. I certainly wouldn’t feel good telling someone, “hey, sorry to cut you off, but your 30 minutes is up.”

This is precisely why 1-1 meetings become inefficient over time. This gravitational and emotional pull prevents many people from objectively evaluating the effectiveness of these meetings.

Howard Lerman says you shouldn’t hold 1-1 meetings at all. He calls them “a cancerous time suck in today’s modern organization” and thinks, like Luke Thomas, that they can “awkwardly teter on turning into unnecessary and unwanted therapy sessions.” Moreover, they’re decades past their best by date and that’s the root cause of this dysfunction. Why? Now that you can resolve issues immediately and asynchronously over text, 1-1 meetings are always going to fill up time with non-essential conversation.

The regularly scheduled 1:1 came out of the mid-century best workplace practices. In the 1950’s, middle management was a vital communication link between executives and the front lines. In an era before e-mail, text and video conferencing, leaders relied on middle managers relaying the message downward in a top down approach.

… with the rise of modern communication technology, it’s no longer necessary to route stuff downward through a chain of people, like an old telephone tree. Leaders today can reach everyone right away, and they do – freeing up time in the 1:1 meeting, and shifting the balance to a bottom up approach, where employees and their managers often are forced into an awkward session of irrelevant conversation to fill up the time.

Basically, a waste of time (the opposite of what we all want) and out of date.

I don’t think they’re out of date and I work at a company that is 100% remote and fully distributed around the globe. Most of my work day is asynchronous text communication. In my 1-1 meetings we step outside of the day to day, review weekly trends, set new goals for upcoming weeks, and hash out not-urgent but important issues that need the extra bandwidth of a video call.

On the other hand, I’d definitely agree that, like all meetings, and anything really, they can be a waste of time when not done with intent, a plan, and some way to improve.

The question then is, how do you do that?

One of the things I try and do is make sure they’re helpful with a bit of feedback. I try and ask, “What was most helpful in our 1-1 today?” at the end of most of them to help measure that. (Something I picked up from, The Coaching Habit.) It’s a small habit that quite often surprised me when I started it, and sometimes still does. I recommend trying it.

Do you hold them? Have you held them? Been in them? What would make your 1-1 meetings more helpful today? I’d love to hear a story or two from your lived experience in a comment.

‘To reckless courage in incurring dangers he united the greatest judgement when in the midst of them,’ wrote Livy. This is the difference between leadership and plain bravery.

From Hannibal by Ernle Bradford and, of course, Livy.

While there’s a difference between just being brave and showing leadership, this has me wondering how I might be more brave and more courageous when being a leader by taking action with the attitude and intent to change something for the better. As Bradford notes, the action and attitude are linked.

I loved it so much, I took notes. I’m sharing those here but with some other related advice for writing, reading, thinking, and decision-making folded in. I hope you’ll find it useful as you watch, or re-watch.

Get to the point

Vicky Zhao recommends following the framework of “the one thing you must know about this topic is …” when you start sharing an idea.

• Use your language to guide your thinking before you even have chance to ramble.
• The easiest way to get to the point is to use the word “one.”
• Start with, “the one thing you must know about this topic is …”
• It doesn’t have to be a groundbreaking statement. The purpose is to provide clarity and direction for you and your audience.
• As you continue, you’ll be able to refine the initial statement.

This idea is a lot like a McKinsey- or BCG-style Action Title for presentations in Slide Decks. An action title is like the “So what?” statement for your slide that captures the singular point and key takeaway of what your slide is all about.

Providing this at the top of a slide — just like starting with “the one thing you must know about this topic is,” — frames the whole presentation you’re making, grabs your audience right away, and helps them evaluate and understand everything you’re going to say next.

Lately, I’ve been doing this even in my Slack communication, leading with a tl;dr or something like Dharmesh Shah’s communication with Flashtags and then following with a short, bullet list expansion of the statement.

You can also follow this framework when it’s you who is the audience.

If you’re reading a non-fiction book, follow Mortimer Adler’s advice on How to Read a Book. Read the book backwards, read the index, and skim the whole book — before you even consider reading it. This lets you absorb the main thesis, the “one thing”, and better understand the arguments to follow.

Add story structure

Sharing ideas in the framework of a 3-line scene will help you think on your feet and get your point across.

Line 1

• The first line sets the scene and you already have this in place if you’re starting with “the one thing you must know about this topic is …”
• This will put everyone on the edge of their seat eager to know more.

Line 2

• The second line adds depth and you can add depth in two ways.
• First, you can go deeper with statements like, “What I mean by X is …” and follow up with an explanation of your “one thing.”
• Or you can add depth by introducing a surprise — something that people wouldn’t know by staying on the surface. Introduce a “BUT the surprising thing about X is …” statement that adds a surprising wrinkle to the “one thing.” This really puts people on the edge of their seat.

Line 3

• The third line answers the question, “What’s next?” and you have two options for resolution here.
• First, you can open the conversation with a Question, “And the question is X — discuss.” This will propel you into a discussion and contribution phase.
• Or, you can close the conversation with an Answer by using the phrase, “And it’s because … X.”

This 3-line scene framework of setting the stage, introducing a new wrinkle, and then swinging into a resolution phase follows the structure of all great storytelling. The Story Spine is a great example of what that looks like in a structure we’re all probably more familiar with.

Once upon a time there was ______. Every day, ______. One day ______. Because of that, ______. Because of that, ______. Until finally ______.

You’ll find stories like that set up everywhere. Even in UX Design.

Be specific

Specificity forces articulate communicaiton.

• The advice above uses set phrases to introduce specificity like, “The one thing you need to know about this topic is …”, “What I mean by X is …”, “But the surprising thing about X is …”, “And the question is …”, “And it’s because … X.”
• To practice being more specific use Via Negativa: talking about what something is not rather than what it is.
• Sometimes it can be really difficult to articulate exactly what something is but it’s easier to say what it’s not.
• When you’re on the spot and under pressure, using Via Negativa can really help you rethink what you’re trying to say, and focus in on the specific things people need to understand.

This is also just great advice when you’re not on the spot and trying to check your own thinking. I’ll leave you with the advice of legendary investor Charlie Munger here in his famous speech at Harvard in 1986, How to Guarantee a Life of Misery, and expanded version of Johnny Carson’s similar speech to the Harvard Class, which itself is Via Negativa in action. His recommendation to always “invert” reminds me of it most though.

What Carson did was to approach the study of how to create X by turning the question backward, that is, by studying how to create non-X. The great algebraist, Jacobi, had exactly the same approach as Carson and was known for his constant repetition of one phrase: “Invert, always invert.” It is in the nature of things, as Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward

I’ve also heard this expressed as a way to get to decisions faster. When people can’t decide on a several options you can promote a “bad idea” and watch people start defining better ones in answer to it. Like suggesting McDonald’s as the choice when no one can decide on a restaurant. Suddenly, people can decide pretty quickly in the moment then.

Huang prefers an agile corporate structure, with no fixed divisions or hierarchy. Instead, employees submit a weekly list of the five most important things they are working on. Brevity is encouraged, as Huang surveys these e-mails late into the night.

Huang communicates to his staff by writing hundreds of e-mails per day, often only a few words long. One executive compared the e-mails to haiku, another to ransom notes.

When scheduling, Huang asks employees to consider “the speed of light.” This does not simply mean to move quickly; rather, employees are to consider the absolute fastest a task could conceivably be accomplished, then work backward toward an achievable goal.

— From How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution by Stephen Witt in the New Yorker.

Communicate quickly and efficiently. Work backwards from the absolute fastest possible means to an end. Be brief; be quick. Great approaches.

You are a manager and a leader because you cannot do everything yourself, and your impact is going to increase dramatically as you work through your team. The process of achieving impact through others and increasing that leverage by growing the ability of others to execute and add to the direction you are providing is called coaching. It is about providing direction and empowerment without doing the job yourself.
— Arnie Lund, User Experience Management.

A nice summary of why you even need a manager or team lead in the first place. You can’t do it all yourself but that challenge is actually an opportunity to do even more. And in particular, you can accomplish that in part with coaching.

If you’re a manager or team lead — or a leader because of the actions you take — it’s worth knowing that a strong coaching habit can help you help your teams find a real connection and meaning in their work. Coaching can help them grow through self-reflective problem solving associated with work.

It’s also worth knowing that coaching isn’t necessarily a formal, scheduled “It’s Coachin’ Time!” event. You can coach someone in ten minutes or less and it should be a daily informal event that happens organically if you’re a manager. It shouldn’t have to be a formal thing you do.

If you’re interested in getting better at coaching I recommend Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit and for an introduction, my notes on his Seven Essential Questions for Coaching. I think back on these questions at least once a day. They’ve really helped me improve how I lead, my comfort with seeking out feedback, and given me a framework for solving problems with my team.

It is a bit like watching The Matrix for the first time in that it’s consistently surprising. The authors, based on a few decades of their own in-depth research and experience, outline a framework for different stages of adult development and how understanding those stages will help one grow in leadership effectiveness. It’s a fascinating concept well explained and argued for by them.

I’ll let you read the book to learn more (though I intend to write more about it at some point) but I’ll leave you with this quote from the introduction on just what Leadership is in their definition. The second paragraph is a footnote to the first that I’ve folded in for clarity.

Throughout the book we use the term leadership to refer to a way of taking action, not to an organizational role or position. Because we distinguish between five different levels of leadership agility, our definition is a broad one, designed to apply to all five levels: Leadership is action taken with a proactive attitude and an intention to change something for the better.

You may be thinking, “Leadership isn’t just about intent — it’s about getting results.” That’s our definition of effective leadership. But leadership isn’t always effective.

A leadership initiative, we say, is any action you carry out with this attitude and intent. This means that you don’t need to be in a position of authority to exercise leadership. Leaders at all levels of agility have found that this way of thinking about leadership helps them to approach their work in a way that is more proactive and intentional.

Leadership isn’t something tied to an organizational role or a position. Leadership is a way of taking action with the attitude and intent to change something for the better.

It’s the actions you take that make you a leader.

I love how simple and clear this definition is. I’ll often note that anyone can be a leader regardless of position or role. And it’s always been in recognition of or encouragement of just these kinds of actions intended to make things better. Having this definition at hand has made that simpler and easier for me to identify.