Doing things out of love

 

Yu Darvish, starting pitcher for the LA Dodgers, was on the receiving end of an insensitive, racial gesture. This is during Game 3 of the 2017 World Series. Rather than attack or persecute the other individual, Darvish’s response is an incredible act of love.

He starts by pointing out nobody involved (himself, the individual that made the gesture, the media, etc.) is perfect. His focus is on coming together and learning from the situation.

Society today (2017) would be much better off if we took this approach toward others and acted out of love.

Not like riding a bike

If it was easy, everybody would do it. Like riding a bike.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, greater value comes from the tough stuff. The things that take more grit to accomplish. The determination that not everybody can do or wants to do.

Thankfully, practice helps. Is it easy to run a sub-4 hour marathon? To complete an Ironman? To break 80 playing golf? These are all difficult and often require years of training to incrementally improve to achieve this high level of performance.

The same goes for work. Is it easy to understand and debug thousands of lines of code? Is it easy to close the deal on a million dollar contract? Is it easy to manage a team during a turn-around? These too require years of experience and incremental improvement.

This experience and accomplishment has a price. You are worth more because you showed the grit and determination to go through the training and experience to become a top tier talent. You can earn a greater salary and bonus as a result.

It easy to forget how much grit was needed to accomplish this. The years of effort. The countless challenges and fortitude to overcome the desire to quit. To achieve something worthwhile requires a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

It’s not like riding a bike.

Will you, can you, make that sacrifice again for what matters to you?

Mental barriers

Before the 4 minute mile was broken, there were myths saying it could not be done; that it was beyond the physical limits of human capability.

Then Roger Bannister broke the barrier. What is interesting is how many other people did it soon after Roger did.

Did this many people all of a sudden become physically able to run faster than a 4 minute mile? No. They became mentally able to break the 4 minute mile. For these people the 4 minute mile was not a physical barrier, it was a mental barrier. Roger broke the mental barrier which allowed others to follow suit and do the same.

Mental barriers keep us from achieving our maximum potential. Remove these mental barriers and go accomplish great things.

Is feedback necessary?

Feedback helps us listen and learn from others. Feedback can make it easier to improve a product and deliver what the customer wants. Feedback gives customer’s a voice.

Why disable or ignore comments? Why eliminate feedback?

Feedback can distract attention from what is important. When creating something new, something risky, something the world might not be ready for, feedback can derail, diminish, or destroy the work before it ever gets off the ground.

Feedback needs to be useful. Feedback needs to be constructive. Asking farmers how to make a spacecraft will result in feedback devoid of value.

Do you need feedback? How do you extract value from feedback?

You find the right audience to provide feedback. If the audience is the masses, listen to the masses. If the audience is you, listen to yourself.

The best way to listen to yourself is to eliminate feedback from others. This allows you to be revolutionary.

Does it matter?

Does it matter if nobody reads this blog. None of it. Not a single post gets read ever. Not even by a web crawler.

The purpose of this blog is to help organize my thoughts by writing them down. The additional effort to write them down and share them is minimal and might provide greater value by being shared.

Pat Flynn was in the architecture business when he created the precursor to Green Exam Academy as a place to store his notes when studying for the Leed exam. His intention was to help himself. It turned out to help others. He would have created the site either way.

My hope is this blog can help others too. As long as it helps me, the posts will keep coming and the site will stay up.