Ailian Gan | >140

Things that cannot be taught

…that I wish could be:

1. How to make yourself happy

People I know who are best at making themselves happy were also acutely miserable at some point. 

People I know who are bad at this have only known a numb unhappiness and a lot of inertia. 

Being able to make yourself happy is different from being lucky. 

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2. Professional judgment 

In roles that require managing people and processes, the difference between the average performer and the very best is professional judgment. 

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3. Self awareness 

It is the pre-req for the ability to self correct, which is important for growth beyond the limits of your natural talent.

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Or can they be taught? 

Or perhaps they can’t be taught but they can be learned? 

Discuss. 

For giving to feel like receiving #generosityday

I didn’t always get generosity. Sasha Dichter once ran a Generosity Experiment. For 30 days, he said yes to every request for help, for money, for anything from friends, people on the street, anyone. I loved the idea. I also thought it mildly crazy. I wanted to feel what he felt, but couldn’t get comfortable with it. Giving is supposed to feel good theoretically. But in reality, sometimes I feel bad after giving. For instance, I often struggle with what is the right amount to donate to charity. Once I finally pick a number, I feel worse. I feel like I haven’t given enough, but I also start wondering if that’s really the best way to help. Is that really the best use of my money. 

Giving didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel conflicted. 

In recent months, something changed, something clicked. I experienced acts of unexpected generosity that have led me to this: the giving must feel like receiving.

Generosity feels good to the giver only when we have the right intent. In too many instances, we have mixed intents. We want to be patted on the back. We worry about feeling good about being good. We wonder about the return on our generosity. I realized that mixed intents are what made me feel bad. For giving to feel right, we need to have the right intent. That comes about when the giving feels like we are receiving. 

If you’ve never had the opportunity to attend a Wednesday meditation session, it is quite a profound experience. The Mehta family plays host. They open their house to friends, strangers, anyone who comes by every week. They invest the time to build this community, to create this meditation space. Then they provide a satisfying dinner to every single guest. The fact that they do this entirely free of charge is already an amazing act of generosity. You feel wowed by how they’ve created this feeling of abundance. You feel gratitude to be able to be part of the evening. 

As if all that is not enough, we come to the part that really gets to me. Every week Nipun Mehta will basically say, we thank you for the opportunity to host this gathering. 

What?? It sounds like it could be some ridiculously corny line, except that these hosts mean it fully. They are the ones who have given so much every Wednesday evening, we are the receivers, and here they are saying thank you. To have to listen to a “thank you” of that magnitude after having received so much generosity is… it is almost too much. But you see, for this family, giving feels exactly like receiving.

I have no idea how you get there. All I could think was, these people have seriously figured something out. I want that. That is the kind of generosity I seek in myself every time I give.

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In that spirit, I have made my Generosity Day pledge. Sasha Dichter & co. are rebooting Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day. If you’re intrigued, I encourage you to sign up too. I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Valentine’s Day. 

Connecting online to offline

For these two weeks back home, I’ve scheduled lots of meals (when one is in Singapore, one eats) to catch up with friends. These are typically with Singaporean friends I’ve known since my school days. This is the first time that most of these meals are with people whom I’ve gotten to know in the past year. A couple of you I’ve only met once in person. One of you I have never met in person. We have only had a very long Skype call. 

I suppose our circles have evolved. I have taken more introductions since b school and since joining the startup community. The more introductions you take, the more you want to do, the more you receive. A virtuous cycle. 

I have been fortunate enough to meet most of you through very good email introductions. The first degree friends who did the introductions knew why we should get to know each other. There is context, there is some kind of essential common ground. There is something valuable that could be exchanged. That something valuable is most often each person’s perspective (on startups, on bondbreaking, on whatever). Not all introductions are created equal. With weaker introductions, that something exchanged is information. With very good introductions, that something exchanged is friendship. In the best cases, a kindred spiritness. 

In all these instances, our offline interactions have been enhanced, sustained by our online presences. I think about the friend I am meeting for dinner. We have only met once in person for maybe 10 minutes in a group setting, had one long Skype conversation. But through all our other mutual reading of blogs and tweeting and email exchanges, I feel I know him well enough that I would be glad to use my social capital to recommend him to anyone. (And I also feel close enough to demand that he bring an autographed copy of his new book to dinner!)

I would go so far as to argue that there are meaningful parts of online interactions that cannot be replicated offline. When you read someone’s blog for instance, you get to hear a version of what they sound like to themselves and how they want to be heard by the world. 

Emails, long pensive personal emails, achieve a similar effect. I once had a friend call me and he said he wanted to pick up the phone and call because he was tired of how emails felt so impersonal. I thought to myself, no, that’s just because you don’t understand how good emails work. I love a great 2-hour catch up phone call, but don’t dismiss email. A good, thoughtful email gets closer to how that person wants you to know them when they are presenting themselves, edited and uninterrupted. There is communication and then there is communication.

I’m not about to suggest that online interactions are better than offline. Of course not. I do think it’s simplistic to insist that all offline interactions are “better”. I don’t know what “better” means. You can’t build the same connection across different media. But that’s the whole point. A smiley face :) is a poor substitute for how it feels to have someone beam at you in person. But there are tones of a lighthearted Twitter exchange between friends that cannot be replicated in an offline conversation. You cannot speak a URL. 

The point, to me, is always the connection. 

The internet doesn’t change what we as human beings need to feel connected to each other. It’s just another tool, another medium. Our psychological and emotional needs for connectedness are the same as what they have been for thousands of years. The internet, if you get how to use it, is connection enhancing. The very opposite of isolating.

People who want to connect will find a way to do so meaningfully in any medium. On this trip, I am glad these online interactions can go offline. And I’m sure we’ll pick them back up online. Seamless. It’s wonderful. 

Of business trips and a three-year-old

Another day, another business trip. This place is growing on me. 

It’s funny but there are things mentioned in the meeting that refer back to things that happened months ago. I remember what happened and I also remember how I felt back then, how lost, how mildly terrified that I was going to screw up a big deal. Except that of course, I had no idea how big a deal. And I had no idea that this particular working relationship would turn around and become a partnership. We’ve come a really long way. 

Getting to see people change is an amazing thing. Getting to see companies change equally so. 

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I squeezed in an extra meeting that afternoon. I got to catch up with a b school friend over ice cream. He brought his two daughters along. Kate is 5 and Jane is 3. At one point, I have a moment alone with little Jane and she decides to pretend to be Kate. 

I ask Jane, “Okay, if you’re Kate, what would Kate say? Say something that Kate would say.”

Jane thinks for a long time. Then she bursts out, “‘No, Jane!!’ That’s what Kate would say.”

:)))

When we leave, I hug my friend. I get in my car. Then Jane decides she wants a hug too. So her dad carries her over. My new three-year-old friend hugs me and kisses me on the cheek. 

**

May all your business trips be so full of blessings. 

Growth requires friction

In the first couple months of my job, the two most common phrases I used to describe my experience were “thrown in the deep end” and “drinking from the fire hose”. I felt slightly overwhelmed on most days, totally overwhelmed on a few days, and it was great. 

Fast forward half a year later, I work less hours (somewhat). I generally no longer feel lost. I am less stressed. Which is great… except that in order to be in flow, you need to be sufficiently challenged. Growth requires friction.

In the next 6 months, my biggest challenge will be to force my learning curve to be steep enough so that I stay in flow. I could optimize around the edges - be faster to respond to clients, know the product better, tweak processes. But that is pretty much cruising to me. Not very interesting. The point, the proper use of my effort, is to be performing at an entirely different level in 6 months. 

Need to go think about how to do that. 

**

I wrote the part above around the new year. A turn of events in the last couple of weeks has basically offered me my challenge. I’ve had to shift from thinking about what I can contribute as an individual, to what we need to contribute as a team. 

And lately, I find, the less you think about yourself and the more you think about everyone else, the better things seem to work out. 

(Perhaps one could also say, the less you think of yourself and the more you think of everyone else, the better things seem to work out.) 

I am definitely back to feeling the learning curve. And feeling grateful for that. 

The way to love your job

Step 1. Follow that feeling
Last March, I almost chose a different path. I actually gave up this job, almost signed with another one. But then I just couldn’t fight the feeling. It ate at me. I couldn’t sleep. I was terrified that I was changing my mind so dramatically - overnight it seemed! I’m not one to make fickle decisions. When I make decisions, major ones, even smaller ones, I tend to know. But it was just one of those few moments in life where the feeling overrode everything else. I wanted to move across the country and take this job with a startup that I frankly knew very, very little about.

I would say whenever you get that feeling, follow it. Especially if you think of yourself as a rational person. Follow it. 

Step 2. When you get there, give it all you’ve got
People tend to put too much effort into a getting a job, and sometimes even a wrong job. This seems to be especially prevalent among b school types. They don’t put enough effort into the job itself when they get there. Given that you should be at your job longer than you spent recruiting for it, it would make sense to channel your efforts into the actual job. 

If you have gone through the pains to find work that you deem worthwhile, the thing that matters is committing to the work.

Step 3. Then let it go, give it away
Give away the success. The only thing you can do with any success you receive is to use it to benefit others. Any skill, power, influence you accumulate must be used to help those around you do better. You can’t hold onto it anyway. I know, I’ve tried holding onto it before and lost more than I thought was possible. So I have learned that the best way to hold onto success is to give it away. 

And give, more. This week came with a very nice prize. Regardless of whether I deserve the prize, I know that the conditions that led to the circumstances that made the prize possible, the conditions that made it possible for me to love my job? That is undeserved good. Grace.

A good friend sent a note this morning saying the universe has been kind to him recently, so he’s doing his regular habit of putting money into Kiva. A good reminder. I put $100 into Kiva this morning and will give more this weekend. 

Taste-making

I’ve been thinking about taste and my funny affinity for people who exhibit good taste. It’s not necessarily expressed in a visual way. It’s not just about picking out good art, or being able to distinguish good sashimi from bad, or being able to put together a stylish outfit. Taste can be exhibited in abstract ways. Like people who get when an idea is beautiful. Or people who get that a plan was executed well.

So it was with great joy that I stumbled across this very old Paul Graham essay, Taste for Makers. 

My favorite excerpts (bold mine): 

“I think it’s because humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one’s sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one’s sense of humor is to be wounded by them.”

“There is good pain and bad pain. You want the kind of pain you get from going running, not the kind you get from stepping on a nail.”

“When people talk about being in ‘the zone,’ I think what they mean is that the spinal cord has the situation under control.”

“It’s not so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a long time to work on the problem.”

“A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it’s more important to be right than original.”

“But if you just try to make good things, you’ll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn’t help painting like Michelangelo.”

“The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.”

What a satisfying read. 

What it’s like to advise scholarship bondbreakers (or a reflection on giving)

[This post is on scholarship bondbreaking. If you are not from Singapore, there are some articles out there for context. However, even without context, this entry really is about gift gifting.]

This year, I’ve gotten an almost steady stream of requests for career advising chats. They are either about wanting to join a startup, about getting a job in social venture capital, or about scholarship bondbreaking. This last category particularly gets to me. It is hard for me to describe the immense empathy I feel when someone comes to me and wants bondbreaking advice. It’s been 5 1/2 years since I broke my bond, and I have gone from being bitter and vindictive towards the scholarship system to being relatively agnostic on what I think scholars should do. But I still know what it’s like. How stifling, isolating, confusing, and self-denying it feels. 

A few months ago, I started to get burned out by the chats. It was emotionally draining. I had one conversation where I knew I was going through the motions. I ask a bunch of questions, listen, tell a bunch of stories, toss out a few ways to adjust the person’s perspective. It comes easily to me now. I’ve done it enough to know what buttons to push. But I didn’t feel good about the conversation at the end of it. At the time, I blamed the person, not aloud but in my head. We just didn’t click, I told myself. This is not so fun anymore, maybe I should stop. 

In retrospect, I was struggling with feeling used, not by this person in particular, but I felt that it was in some way unfair that I felt obligated to do this. There are lots of other bondbreakers out there. There are a whole bunch that I talked to! Why does no one else do this. Why am I saddled with this obligation, this empathy. I didn’t feel like doing it anymore. There are tons of other things I should make time for. But I felt like I had to keep doing it because I would feel too guilty otherwise. 

I stopped for awhile. I was still fielding the requests for the other chats - for social VC at that point - but it’s not the same. Those chats are mostly about delivering information. But those people are not lost. Ok, that’s not true. Fairly often, they are lost. But I don’t know how to help them, I mean really help them. 

Earlier this week, I attended a lecture about giving. We have all heard that “it is better to give than to receive.” But what does that mean. And who really buys that anyway. Then the speaker explained the various kinds of giving. The first one was the gift of wealth. Giving up money, personal resources in order that someone else may benefit. 

The second one is the one that got to me: the gift of courage. Being able to say the right thing at the right time to someone, so that they may go forth with courage. 

Ahh.

I wasn’t thinking about the gifts I had given in the form of the chats. I was thinking about the fact that I had this gift to give. The gift - of the ability to give courage - was mine. And that’s where it all made sense. It is better to give, wholeheartedly and with good intent, than it is to receive. 

I can tell you that when I do these chats wholeheartedly, I gain tremendously. It is an enormous privilege to hear someone’s real story, to have them open up and share their fears, their vulnerabilities, to pour out things that they have had to keep secret for fear of being judged unfavorably or dismissed. And then to see them figure it out. To imagine the future with hope. To see them face the hard questions, to reflect and stall and flounder and sometimes panic, to be able to see them do the essential work of figuring out what makes them happy. The search for fulfillment. I know I cannot get them there - that is their work, not mine - but I get to be a part of it. That kind of connection with another human being - there is nothing else quite like it.

The gift is mine to give. 

The amazing thing is that the only thing I can do with this gift is give. I cannot keep it for myself. It is of benefit to anyone only when I give it away. 

I never asked to be able to do this bondbreaking advising thing. I’m not formally trained in any way to do this. The main way I know that something is working is that I get referrals. A steady stream of referrals from friends and friends of friends. And repeat customers. And emails from strangers who find these posts.

I know that it is an incredible gift that I had the means to break my bond. That was the original gift. I now also know that it is a gift, not a burden, that unhappy scholars come to me and that I can help them. It doesn’t matter if anyone else can do this. I should do this. It is my gift that I can do this.  

The most recent chat I had, just 2 days ago, I went into it wholeheartedly. Just give, I told myself. Just give. And I felt better about this work, this bizarre thing I do, than I have in a long time. I felt like I got more out of the conversation than the person did. And I want to give more. 

So there are 2 things to come out of this: 

1) I’m going to write a series of blog posts about the things that I discuss in these bondbreaking chats. So all of you who search for queries like “break bond scholarship” and “singapore scholars dissatisfied with scholarship” (real queries to this site) will have a resource. 

2) I am going to set up a simple bondbreaking advising service, so that any scholar who wants a bondbreaking chat can ping me for one. You don’t have to know me, or know someone who knows me (the current system). You just email me. You may have to wait awhile depending on my schedule, but I will find time. If you are local, we can meet in person. If you live elsewhere, we can Skype. 

There will be no charge. In exchange, I ask that you perform an act of kindness to pay it forward. Pay it forward in whatever way you feel is right. Pay for coffee for a stranger, be kind to someone having a bad day, make a donation. Whatever you feel is yours to give. And then write and tell me about it. 

**

I wish you very good gifts for 2012. Happy new year. 

Why we trust some people and not others

I’ve been thinking about trust. Trust as a kind of foundation that makes social and professional transactions much easier. 

A colleague once made the remark that there is no way we can explain all the details of our product to our clients. And we should not have to. It should not be their job to worry about all the details. What we need is to get them to trust us and trust the product. The rest will take care of itself. 

So trust must be the goal (the outcome) of what we do (the tasks). There is no one action that secures trust. It must be earned through a consistent pattern of behavior. Be responsive. Be transparent. Listen to what they really care about. Look out for their best interests. Admit when you’re wrong. Be thorough so they don’t have to be. 

In the same way, I’ve been thinking about how it works when you’re on the same team, as colleagues or classmates or group members of some kind. Why do we trust some people more than others?

At a base level, there is a competence requirement. You need to believe that the other person is competent, if not excellent, at their job. You respect their competence. The lack of respect leads to contempt, which will destroy a working relationship faster than just about anything.

Then there is the reliability factor. You need to know that they will always be there to do their job. Bonus points for going above and beyond their job scope to help you out when you really need it.

Then there is whether or not you understand and agree with their motivations. Here again, it is the patterns that count. It doesn’t really matter what you say - lots of people are good at saying the right things - it’s what you do. Do you defend people in their absence. If you are deeply frustrated by someone’s actions, do you still regard them fairly. If someone screws up, do you assign blame or do you help share the responsibility for fixing it. And all that adds up to whether you sincerely want the team to succeed. Everyone’s interests are supposed to be aligned. But I’ve seen so many instances where team members sabotage the team’s success because they were unwilling to let go of personal gain and pride. 

You can’t trust someone if you know they’re always worried about establishing trustiness, which is the attempt to appear trustworthy as opposed to actually being trustworthy. Many people go for trustiness or try to reverse engineer authenticity because that’s easier. You just have to do enough to get away with it. It’s much harder to be the real thing through and through. But that’s why the payoffs are huge, because in the long run people always recognize it. The real thing wins.