Tag: Accomplishments

Developing Self Esteem

Developing Self-Esteem

Posted on by jabittan
One of the reasons I write this blog is because I believe that we need deeper conversations about minor aspects of our lives. I think we need to be more considerate about what is truly important, and we need to think more deeply about how we can remove some of the less important things, so that we spend more time engaging with what is meaningful. I want to pull out the crucial ideas within the aspects of our lives that go overlooked and that are under-discussed so that hopefully someone can have a more thoughtful conversation about these important topics.

 

One topic, which came to mind from Sam Quinones’s book Dreamland, is the development of self-esteem for adolescents. I’m not a parent, so I am sure that I am missing some important points here and I’m sure that my perspective is limited, but from my experience and observations I feel  confident to say that important conversations about meaning, value, and expectations are not taking place with adolescents. What I’m thinking about now is how parents, coaches, and people in society can help young people develop a sense of self-esteem aligned around meaningful values that help make the world a better place.

 

Quinones quotes Ed Hughes, the former executive director of The Counseling Center in Portsmouth, OH, “You only develop self-esteem one way, and that’s through accomplishment.” Quinones himself is critical of parenting in the 90’s and 2000’s writing, “Parents shielded their kids from complications and hardships, and praised them for minor accomplishments – all as they had less time for their kids.”

 

The critique that Quinones and Hughes make is that parents have gone through great lengths to give their kids everything and to try to ensure that their children are never bored, never unhappy, and never potentially harmed – either physically or mentally. The result, according to Quinones and Hughes, is that children are unprepared for real life. They lack self-esteem because any accomplishments that they have are minor, and were parent assisted or directed. Many kids did not struggle on their own, did not learn from mistakes, and were propped up with empty praise. This left them feeling bored, empty, vulnerable, and inadequate, which made drug addiction all the more likely.

 

What I hope we can do, not just as parents but as a society, is talk about real opportunities for taking meaningful actions in our lives. I hope we can back away from terrible work schedules and the pursuit of ever more money and consumer goods, and move toward a society which encourages real interaction and contribution toward involvement and engagement. This can be done starting with our youth, with the opportunities we provide them to be engaged in something meaningful, and with the conversations we have with them about what is important in life.

 

If we don’t have these conversations with our youth, if we don’t help give them opportunities to do something meaningful, then they will look to TV, celebrities, and our own actions to determine what is good and important. Often that will be the same empty vision of happiness presented in our consumer culture focused on buying products and showing off our wealth. Quinones and Hughes would likely argue that this is only going to exacerbate our loneliness, emptiness, and the potential for drug use and despair.
Deep Work is Pragmatic

Deep Work is Pragmatic

Posted on by jabittan
The final quote that I have from Cal Newport’s book Deep Work is just a reminder of the pragmatic reality of deep work: “the ability to concentrate is a skill that gets valuable things done.” The reason we should take ideas of deep work seriously is because it will help us be better at doing the most important things. Everyone has goals for their life, everyone has things they want to accomplish, and everyone has something they are aiming toward, but nobody will get there if they cannot focus on the things that matter.

 

Whether it is at work, in our family and social lives, or with a new hobby, being able to focus on the important things is crucial. Without developing concentration skills, we are going to be distracted by social media, outrageous news reports, and one million other notifications on our smart phones. These distractions will stop us from putting  the necessary effort into the meaningful things in our lives, and will train our brains to expect constant input.

 

As the world becomes even more distracting, with phones continuing to grab a foothold in our lives and with more opportunities for distraction all around us, it is important that we remember the value of concentration. It is important that we work on becoming better versions of ourselves through focus and deep work so that we can excel where others become bogged down and unable to move forward with complex high value tasks. Without being able to truly concentrate, we will never get important things done.
Clarity on What Matters

Do You Know What Matters?

Posted on by jabittan
For a while I worked in the healthcare tech start-up space, and two of the biggest challenges we often faced was knowing what was the most important thing to work on, and how to be productive to accomplish our goals. I was in a role where I interfaced between multiple teams and a lot of my day was spent with email. I didn’t spend my entire day producing reports, working on spreadsheets, or creating new policy documents. Much of my day involved putting out minor fires that popped up for people working across the teams I worked between. This left me in a position where it was hard to measure my productivity. If I wasn’t producing a report of one type, and was just going to meetings and responding to emails, how did I demonstrate that I was working continuously and trying to accomplish things?

 

The easy answer which I often fell into was email. The quicker I responded to email, the more email I responded to, and the more visible I was in those emails, the more everyone would know I was working hard. The problem, however, is that responding to a ton of emails often isn’t very productive, and it often doesn’t address the most pressing problems. When I started to recognize this and shift my activity, a lot of emails fell aside (not to mention Slack Channels), and I started to actually be better at my job.

 

In Deep Work Cal Newport writes, “Clarity about what mattes provides clarity about what does not.”

 

For the first couple of years I didn’t have good clarity about what mattered. I spent a good amount of time on projects that were never going to go anywhere, and I spent a good amount of time responding to emails that really never needed a response. I looked productive, but what I worked on didn’t help drive toward the company’s biggest objectives.

 

In our work lives (and really in our lives in general) we need to start focusing on what truly matters. The better we can be at asking what is important and the better we can understand the why behind that importance, the more we can accomplish. As we practice this we will see what things are unimportant in our lives, and we can take steps to cut those things out, leaving us with more space and time for the important things. If we don’t stop to ask what things really matter, we won’t see which things don’t matter, and we won’t be able to move those things to the periphery.

Pride and Ego

Posted on by jabittan
Ryan Holiday describes pride in his book Ego is the Enemy as a force that “takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one.” It is the piece of us that ascribes our success to some essential character of our selves and hyper-inflates that piece around us. It is the sense that we are inherently something special because of our qualities and accomplishments.

 

The problem with pride Holiday explains by writing, “Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride. Most dangerously, this tends to happen either early in life or in the process-when we’re flushed with beginner’s conceit. Only later do  you realize that bump on the head was the least of what was risked.”

 

Some days I am proud of my writing. Some days I am proud that I just ate a simple and healthy lunch or that I did at least some type of exercise at the gym. These are minor accomplishments that build on each other over time to lead to positive lifestyles, and that is something I can find very comforting and take pride in. To me, it seems that the problem with pride is when we take these small things, and begin to boast and brag about them as though they set us apart from the rest of humanity. When we intentionally post a picture of us snacking on apple slices with peanut butter because we know we have friends who are currently at a bar. When we use seven hashtags in our gym post about how a fit life is somehow morally superior than sleeping in and having waffles. And when we fake-complain about how hard it was for us to publish a blog post 7 days in a row, we are taking the small things that can make life meaningful and elevating them (along with our ego and pride) to a level they don’t deserve.

 

Holiday presents pride to us as something that distorts reality, in the same way that many other elements of our ego do. It creates situations where your actions become the most important thing about you and about the category of people you belong to. Other people can only fit in with you if they also do these small and meaningless things that you take pride in. Pride says that someone can’t really be a baker if they don’t use specific cookware, that someone can’t really be a runner if they don’t have a new GPS watch and post to Strava, someone can’t really be smart unless they have graduated from college or gotten an advanced degree. Pride is a way of creating barriers between us and other people that don’t really exist. It gives us a reason to believe we are more special than others, and that as a result we can self-segregate into groups of people similar to ourselves and distance ourselves from the undeserving others.

 

None of these outcomes of pride are healthy, which is why there are so many warnings to avoid pride and remain humble. We can be proud of the small actions that drive our life in the right direction, but we should be aware of when we are bragging about those small actions and when we are trying to use those as justification to suggest that we deserve more than what we have or more than another person. We must do our best to include other people and remember that we can only do what we do and be who we are with the support of an entire society, so our pride must also include a sense of community and belonging with all people in our lives.

Pride and Ego

Posted on by jabittan
Ryan Holiday describes pride in his book Ego is the Enemy as a force that “takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one.” It is the piece of us that ascribes our success to some essential character of ourselves and hyper-inflates that piece around us. It is the sense that we are inherently something  special because of our qualities and accomplishments.

 

Holiday explains the problem with pride by writing, “Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride. Most dangerously, this tends to happen either early in life or in the – when we’re flushed with beginner’s conceit. Only later do  you realize that bump on the head was the least of what was risked.”

 

Some days I am proud of my writing. Some days I am proud that I just ate a simple and healthy lunch or that I did at least some type of exercise at the gym. These are minor accomplishments that build on each other over time to lead to positive lifestyles and that is something I can find very comforting and take pride in. To me, it seems that the problem with pride is when we take these small things, and begin to boast and brag about them as though they set us apart from the rest of humanity. When we intentionally post a picture of us snacking on apple slices with peanut butter because we know we have friends who are currently at a bar. When we use seven hashtags in our gym post about how a fit life is somehow morally superior than sleeping in and having waffles. And when we complain about how hard it was for us to publish a blog post 7 days in a row, we are taking the small things that can make life meaningful and elevating them (along with our ego and pride) to a level they don’t deserve.

 

Holiday presents pride to us as something that distorts reality in the same way that many other elements of our ego do. It creates situations where your actions become the most important thing about you and about the category of people you belong to. Other people can only fit in with you if they also do these small and meaningless things that you take pride in. Pride says that someone can’t really be a baker if they don’t use specific cookware, that someone can’t really be a runner if they don’t have a new GPS watch and post to Strava, someone can’t really be smart unless they have graduated from the right college or gotten an advanced degree. Pride is a way of creating barriers between us and other people. It gives us a reason to believe we are special, and that as a result we can self-segregate into groups of people similar to ourselves and distance ourselves from the undeserving “others”.

 

None of these outcomes of pride are healthy, which is why there are so many warnings to avoid pride and remain humble. We can be proud of the small actions that drive our life in the right direction, but we should be aware of when we are bragging about those small actions and when we are trying to use those as justification to suggest that we deserve more than what we have or more than another person. We must do our best to include other people in our positive lifestyles and remember that we can only do what we do and be who we are with the support of an entire society, so our pride must also include a sense of community and belonging with everyone who supports us in our lives.

Believing in the Self and Achieving Success

Posted on by jabittan
Ryan Holiday encourages his readers to be confident in who they are, but to build their confidence through real work and effort and to base their belief in themselves on real achievement. His book Ego is the Enemy is a look at how our egos can ruin our lives and put us in situations where we cannot be successful unless we are honest with ourselves about our abilities. He quotes a biographer of a little known Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman, to help us see what honest and sincere self-confidence looks like. The full passage that he quotes is:

 

“Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable – those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To the men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the shame of insincere self-deprecation but the modest of “moderation,” in the Greek sense. It is poise, not pose.”

 

When we believe in ourselves despite having no reason to believe that we can accomplish what we desire, we risk pursuing a goal without being honest about ourselves, our position, our advantages, and our limitations. We put ourselves in a position where we believe we understand more than we truly do and where we believe that we know more about the world than we do. This may help us bulldoze our way to success, but it may also cause us to be brash around colleagues and friends who may be better suited than us for achieving goals to make a true difference in the world. Ultimately, this form of ego reduction requires that we also shift the traditional view of success. If our success is not tied to our own income and to being better than other people, then we can see success as helping improve some aspect of the world, and we can then improve the way we learn from others and achieve success by helping others make a difference. Modesty and a healthy appreciation for ones abilities can aid us in our growth by allowing us to be comfortable in a position where we make a big difference, even if we are not in the spotlight. While keeping us grounded on our true abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, humility helps us grow and learn and so that we can develop the skills necessary to accomplish things that matter most.