Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code, through quick snapshots, for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done.
Separating The Doers from The Dreamers
This article from Inc. Magazine outlines Warren Buffett’s beliefs on what separates the Doers from the Dreamers. Here are the ones in his view he thinks make a difference:
Pick your friends wisely: Make friends with people who are better than you. Make a few good friends, keep them for the rest of your life, but have them be people you admire and like.
Go to bed a little smarter each day - There is a remarkable similarity between investing and acquiring knowledge. As you gain more knowledge by reading, it builds up enormous value like compound interest.
Improve your communication skills - One easy way to become worth 50 per cent more than you are now, at least, is to hone your written and verbal communication skills.
Say no - Saying no over and over again to the unimportant things flying in your direction every day and remaining focused on saying yes to the few things that truly matter.
How To Be A Long-Term Thinker In A Short-Term World
Dorie Clark, a Duke University professor, has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 and recognised as the #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. She is also a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and consults and speaks for clients including Google, Microsoft, and the World Bank.
In this conversation about her book, Long Game, Dorie Clark talks about doing small things over time but keep doing them persistently though it may sound or look dull, pointless and hard. Some of the key takeaways from this conversation are:
Your personal goals need a long-term strategy.
Lasting success takes persistence and effort.
Why it is essential to stay away from doing what’s easy, what’s guaranteed, or what looks glamorous in the moment.
It is critical to remember that this is never an overnight process, but the long-term payoff is immense.
The Intersection of Technology, Art and Design for Creative Leadership
John Maeda is Chief Technology Officer of Everbridge. He is a technologist and designer whose work explores where business, design, and technology merge to make space for the "humanist technologist." Maeda served as the President of Rhode Island School of Design from June 2008 until December 2013.
In this video, he talks about taking inspiration from technology, art and design to understand the importance of creative leadership and how it differs from traditional leadership. He showcases a tool that brings this concept alive.
He talks about how today's leadership is more about:
Being interactive rather than one-way
Being real rather than being right
Learning from mistakes rather than avoiding mistakes
Improvise appropriately rather than follow a manual
Hoping to be right rather than wanting to be right
Open to unlimited critique rather than limited feedback
Instant Gratification: Boon or Bane?
You live in a world where the society or community around you - both at work and in your personal life- is often only able to recognise instant gratification success markers. In your personal life, it could be the grades you get in your school or college or the company you work for or the business you do, your promotion, designation or the assets you acquire like home, car etc. It forces you to make short-term decisions as there is no other way to make your achievements visible to others, let alone be convinced about it yourself. Also, it makes you do things that may not be your strengths or are not very convinced about. The question you have to ask yourself - ‘Why should you focus on others and seek their endorsement?’
In many cases, what you want to do and achieve may not happen instantly, and it may take more time than standard templates of achievement or success in the eyes of others. Therefore, what you believe and do every day requires deep conviction within.
However, the long-term dream or goal must not dilute the short-term effort you have to put in. This is where the contradiction will come into your own head. As you need to be brutally truthful to yourself about the effort you are putting, honestly evaluate if there is an improvement or slight movement toward your long-term goals. Hence, this is an appraisal you have to do about your effort and outcomes every day, and this is not one annual yearly affair where somebody else - it could be your manager or boss, evaluates you and gives a judgement on your increment, promotion, or decides your career growth. This often comes in the form of instant gratification - an appreciation note or mail, an award, monthly recognition, quarterly kudos from colleagues and management, etc. Invariably at the end of any period, if you don’t get what you expect, this allows you to blame the other person, the management, or the company for not being fair and reasonable for the effort you have put in over the year. You can hide behind this for many years till it is too late.
Also, thinking long-term, measuring slow improvement towards those goals but acting with discipline in the short-term is very difficult to execute. It requires a robust mental makeup to face reality, not being bogged down by daily success or failure, as the gap between what you aspire for and what you do every day may be huge. It requires you to make subtle changes and improvements in your practices every day so that you have to feel the ‘micro movements’ yourself but are invisible to others. It may look dull, frustrating, and something you may not be able to show others explicitly, but that cannot bog you down. When you go to bed every day, you will need to keep track of these daily improvements, failures, or static markers. And plan how to better them the next day.
Instant gratification that is external will be short-lived. But, instant gratification that is internal will last a lifetime. The question is, do you have the patience to bear the short-term pain?
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Separating the doers from the dreamers is about giving your ARM(Authentic, Real, Mindful) for your efforts towards achieving your goals.
When it comes to achievement, ‘feeling yourself’ is a better marker than ‘seen by others’ over the long term.
Leadership is now becoming an open, collaborative system rather than a closed, hierarchical system.
The world prepares you for visible, external instant gratification, but over the long term, it pays to work on invisible, internal gratification.