Last week, I wrote a piece inspired by a conversation about diversity, and more importantly, the explicit and implicit biases we hold. And over the weekend, I’ve had some time to think. To think and introspect once again about the biases – explicit and implicit – that I hold. I was specifically reminded of an exercise I learned 2 years ago.
Snapping briefly back in time, one of the most creative and self-aware founders that I know – having just graduated from a top-tier startup accelerator, taught me a mindfulness exercise that he uses every year at the Burning Man camp he leads. I’ve used his framework not only to help myself surface my own unconscious incompetence, but also as the curtain call for a few of my social experiments. He starts with having people focus on their conscious self, then gradually begin to explore our subconscious:
“Take a few seconds to notice who stood out to you. Whom you liked. Who might have caught your fancy. Who you plan to meet up or hope to meet up with after today.
“Now, notice whom you just didn’t click well with. Whom you didn’t like. Who you won’t catch up with after today.
But what I found the most profound was his prompt for the last few minutes of the exercise:
“And finally notice who, for whatever reason, you didn’t notice at all. And pause… and ask yourself why you didn’t notice them.”
Like what the above did for me, I hope this exercise helps provide another frame of mind when considering who we unwittingly leave behind. Why we do so. And how we can shed light to our unconscious to bring to our conscious. Hopefully, in the process, expanding the upper and lower bounds of our cognitive bandwidth.
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost).Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow!
Are these jellyfish friendly or not? Will they “bite”?
As colorful and as beautiful jellyfish are, we are still scared of the possible danger that each possess. So, most of us only admire them from afar. And for many of us who have seen some, we’ve watched them float gracefully in dark blue aqueous solutions across a sometimes distorted film of glass. These beautiful mysteries of the deep blue.
To Touch the Jellyfish
Much like my fascination every time my parents brought me to the aquarium as a kid, I’ve been fascinated with the people around me. Especially about the thin, sometimes distorted, film between these exceptionally fascinating souls and me. The distortion created as a function of society’s, as well as their own, efforts.
Exactly a year and two months ago, I embarked on a journey to host small-scale social experiments, like:
Hidden Questions. A game where no one else knows the question, except for the person answering it. And where the person answering has the choice of sharing the question that inspired the answer or taking it to the grave by taking a shot of hot sauce (about a 700,000 on the Scoville scale, for reference) or a variable number of Beanboozled beans.
Brunches with Strangers. Quite literally, Saturday brunches with strangers. Hosting a cast of people from all walks of life. Like founders, street artists, astrophysicists, concept artists, athletes, criminal investigators, filmmakers, college drop-outs, and much more.
The Curious Case of Aliases. Where players (strangers to each other) under aliases guess each other’s hobbies, occupations, deepest fears, etc. after only playing in a 30-minute game session. For instance, skribbl.io. Cards Against Humanity. Codenames. And Mafia.
And, the most recent addition to my small Rolodex of social experiments, Improv Presentations. A TED talk-like night where people present someone else’s creatively esoteric slide decks, with no context as to what’s in the deck until they’re on “stage”. To the postmortem dismay of my cheeks and core, we saw everything from how to survive a cat-pocalypse to how to master the art of DM’ing using military tactics to how to be a good plant parent.
The Thesis, The Questions
As COVID would have it, the lack of in-person interaction and self-quarantine inspired the last two. Yet, all of which with the same thesis: helping make the world feel a little smaller, a little closer, and a whole lot more interesting. Starting not with the people who bathe in the limelight, but with the people directly around me.
Why is it so hard to be candid with strangers? And sometimes, even harder with family and friends?
Do we need alcohol, drugs, crazy incidents, violence, a lack of sleep, or stress to truly be ourselves?
Though not all-encompassing, people seem to be naturally curious about things, events, status, money, and gossip. Why aren’t people more curious about people – well, as just themselves? Like me, you’ve probably posed and have gotten the question: “How are you?” or “How are you doing?”. And likely, with more times than one is willing to admit, we didn’t really care about what the answer might be. Often times, since we know we’re just going to get a “Good” or “OK” in response.
If you want to have some fun, I highly recommend the next time someone asks you that, say “Terrible”. And watch the computer chip in their brain malfunction for a quick second.
What did I learn?
I won’t claim I found the universal truth or a holistic answer to any of those questions I posed above. Because I haven’t. After all, someone I really respect once told me:
“50% of what you know is true. 50% is false. The problem is you don’t know which half is which.”
So, in my life, my goals are two-fold:
Build a system to help me discern my two halves of knowledge.
Expand the total capacity of what I know.
I will share more on this blog as I am able to draw more lines of regression myself.
But in the context of this post, through social experiments, I’ve discovered that people yearn for psychological safety. Not only does Google’s Project Aristotle share its effectiveness in the workplace, it’s equally, if not more true, outside of it as well. The reason that it’s sometimes easier to share your thoughts and struggles with strangers is that strangers often won’t judge you to the same extent as friends and family do. Frankly, they don’t have much context to judge you from – implicitly and explicitly.
People want fairness. Not in the sense of you get 1 cookie, so I should get 1 too. But a fair system to be judged by. That I will get the same benefit of doubt as you will give to anyone and everyone else. When we all get drunk together, we will all be drunk and we will all relieve ourselves of any filters we may previously have. And though everyone’s drunk personality is different, and frankly everyone will still be judged… For that moment, that night, everyone’s on the same playing field.
The Applications
Let’s take most recent experiment with improv presentations as an example. The initial idea was that everyone should present their own slide decks. As serious or as silly as they might be. But some of my friends were hesitant. In their words, they felt they needed to “impress” or “have better public speaking skills”. Some simply said that they didn’t think they’d “be as good as others”.
Before our first “TED Talks@Home”, I shifted it altogether where we’d all be presenting each other’s presentation. All of us would have no context as to what we’re presenting until we get on “stage”. Whether we were experts on a specific topic or in comedy or deck-making, we’re all jumping into a bottomless pool together. After our second virtual improv night, this past weekend, between muted giggles and visual laughs, one of the presenters told me that it wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be, and that she’d want to do it again.
Luckily, it seems more than 60% of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances come back to participate in more brunches or game sessions or improv nights. 1 in 4 guests have proactively started friendships outside of the experiments. And about 5% have introduced their new friends to their friend circles. A small handful have also been inspired to start their own. So, maybe I’m doing something right.
Building Communities
The same (psychological safety and fair system) holds true for building communities, creating your corporate culture, and finding and keeping your friend group and your significant other. Although in the context of building communities, but applicable elsewhere as well, I forget who told me this once:
“A strong community has both value and values.”
– The person who told me this, please come claim this quote
Value is why people initially come out to join a community and admittedly, reach out to be a friend. Whether it’s because of who you know or what you can offer or how you can help them pass the time, it’s the truth. Values are why they stay. And safety happens to be one of those values.
In closing
As always, my findings aren’t meant to be prescriptive. But merely act as a guide – another tool in your toolkit – so that you are better equipped for future endeavors.
Like with people, when one day I get to touch a jellyfish, I don’t care about being stung. But I do want to know where I can touch where I won’t be stung. And subsequently, where I will touch where I know I will be stung. The difference between going in blind and not is that when I get stung, I am prepared to be.
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost).Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups!
The other day, I jumped on a call with a friend who was going through a speed bump in his relationship. Though I’m no behavioral scientist nor expert in all matters regarding relationships, I’ve been privy to cousin cases between other couples, dorm-mates and roommates, as well as startup teams. And like most people out there, I’ve been through my fair share as well.
From my own experience, as well as from being a fly on the wall to others’, a large portion of the drama starts with the time spent dancing around the elephant in the room. And the longer a pair (or more) dances, the worse it gets. At the same time, it’s easier said than done. Rationally, we know that we should start with the truth. But frankly, it’s hard for many of us, myself included, to speak the truth when we need to. And in my hesitation, I usually regress to thinking: “Maybe it’ll get better over time. Maybe he/she will just forget about it. Maybe someone else will solve it in my place.”
Though I’ve gotten better at getting straight to the point, I’ve, by no means, mastered my approach.
“The truth has legs. It’s the only thing that will be left standing at the end of the day… And since that’s where we’re going to end up, why don’t we just start with it?”
The Boiling Frog Problem
As all drama goes, we end up beating ourselves and others up in the process. Yet, when the dust settles, we still come back to the one left standing. There’s a similar concept that I learned in a college business course called the boiling frog problem.
If you put a frog in boiling water right away, it’ll jump out. But if you put the frog in lukewarm water and slowly heat it up, it won’t notice until it’s too late. And for the sake of the analogy, end up dying in the latter case.
The emotional turmoil we go through in our daily lives is no exception. It’s much easier to address the problem from the get-go, then let it rot you inside out. To put it into perspective, let’s say you address the problem at the beginning. There are only two outcomes possible:
It’s not as bad as you expected, and you’re able to resolve it easily.
It’s just as bad as you thought it’d be (as your mind regresses to the worst case possible). And well, you get burnt, as expected. But you will come out as a stronger person than when you went in. A phoenix reborn.
In closing
In tricky times, many of our relationships have been put on the rocks. The important part isn’t the conflict itself, but how we resolve the conflict. A frame of mind where there is no blame to dish out, but taking mutual responsibility to come out stronger in finding the resolution. Mike Maples Jr, co-founder of Floodgate, one of the most successful VC firms in the Valley, once said:
“Ego is about who’s right. Truth is about what’s right.”
Last Friday, I jumped on a call with my wickedly-creative founder friend. Given his cognitive flexibility, our conversations usually span a multitude of topics. And our Friday call was no exception – from product design to community management to de-stressors. Then, finally, marriage counseling and its applications in managing team dynamics.
Empirically, I focused my attention on co-founder dynamics when sharing an exercise I learned in my expedition to find the curiously passionate and the passionately curious. But I realize now that there are so many direct parallels on a broader scale to teams at large. From none other than a marriage counselor.
I want to preface that this exercise isn’t designed to be universal. And there’s a good chance it may not be useful for the situation you’re in or have been in. But nevertheless, hopefully, it can be another tool in your toolkit. So, if ever, when you do feel the need, it’s something that you can pull from your arsenal.
The Exercise
Start every day gauging your individual gross energy level (i.e. motivation, excitement, emotional state) on a percentage scale with your partner(s)*.
* Yes, this was shared to me from a perspective that was inclusive of various forms of romantic relationships, including polyamory. Though I find it to be equally useful, when used among multiple co-founders/team members.
To put it into perspective, I usually sit around a 60-70%. When I’m inspired, motivated, or feel I can take on the world, I’m at 90-110%. Although extremely rare, when I’m down (i.e. sick, depressed, sad, unmotivated, stressed, in emotional turmoil, burnt out, or when I just want to regress to my shell), I’m usually at a 10-20%.
Assess if you and your partner(s)’ collective energy level add up to 100% or more.
If one of you is feeling down, can (the rest of) you make up for that energy deficiency?
If I’m feeling 10%, and I just find it hard to get shit done, can my partner make up that 90% and help us as a team champion the day?
And let the person hovering 10% take the day off.
If the collective energy just isn’t there, then the team falls on 2 types of contingency plans.
Can you design a system (or if you already have a system in place) where all of you don’t have to put in 100%, but can still get things done?
Maybe this is the day to clean your house. Or wash the car.
For founding teams, maybe this is the day the whole team just does data entry.
For content creators, I hear this is the day to go through fan mail.
Take the day off. Yes, the full day. And, no halfies. As great philosopher, Ron Swanson, once said:
“Never half-ass two things; whole ass one thing.”
Go take a day trip into the wilderness. Play video games. Read a fiction book. Draw. People-watch in a cafe (well, after the quarantine). Netflix-binge. Go tackle something on your bucket list.
And cap the downside – the potentiality of a slippery slope. I usually cap it at 3 days. Any longer, the counselor recommended seeing a relationship specialist.
Relationship counselor, if romantic.
Therapist/psychologist, if emotional.
Executive coach, if pertinent to co-founders.
Organizational therapist/psychologist, if pertinent to team.
What I didn’t realize until the Call
It seems obvious in retrospect, but it didn’t click until my buddy and I were thinking aloud. Subsequently, we realized how pertinent that exercise can be in understanding team workflows, as well as knowing when to double down and when to backpedal. Productivity has taken a sharp decline in this pandemic. For many, they’ve felt busier and working longer than before. The lack of diverse human interactions – for both extroverts and introverts – is really taking a toll. After all, we’re a social species. For managers, co-workers, and lateral teams, this exercise can be a way you can proactively assess your team’s morale and mental health. Assess early and optimize flexibly.
I dedicated three-quarters of my life before I turned 18 to swimming. More than half of which I spent competitively. Although I never amounted to a Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky, the years I spent swimming were some of the happiest, yet character-building times of my life.
I was a mid-to-long-distance swimmer – anything between 200 yards (or meters) to miles-long open-water swims in the SF Bay. By golly, the waters in the latter ‘pool’ were dirty. I couldn’t see my own hand when I reached out underwater. But I digress. As a distance swimmer, the biggest lesson I learned was how to fight the mental battlefield.
The Legs of a Race
Coach taught me to break every race down into 4 quarters. The first leg, the second leg, the third leg, and the last leg.
The first leg is comparatively the easiest. You’re brimming with energy, motivation and (potentially nervous) excitement. As long as you don’t exhaust yourself in this leg, but put in enough effort to break away from the pack, you’re golden. And in doing so, you’re going at 80% of your top speed.
The second leg is when you start engaging in a psychological battle with your competitors. Understand where they are in the race, as well as their racing personas.
Are they a front-half or back-half swimmer?
Are they a sprinter from the blocks?
Do they typically negative split in a race?
In an individual medley (IM) race, what’s their best stroke? Their worst stroke?
I typically dial back to 70% speed.
The last leg is probably the second easiest. You burn everything and anything you have in the tank. The goal is in sight – within reach. It comes down to how well you’ve raced the first three legs, and how much you trained. Effectively, it is a battle of strength – a Hail Mary. 110% speed.
Now let’s rewind back to the crucial leg I skipped. The whole reason I started writing this post.
The Third Leg of the Race
Whereas the second leg is based on ‘external warfare’ and the last leg is based on ‘physical warfare’, the third leg, and arguably the most important, is one based on ‘internal warfare’. By this point in the race, you’ve exhausted more than half of your energy, yet you’re expected to output more than when you started. You’re worn and tired. And, you can’t see the goal yet, so you know you have to save some strength for the last leg.
Yet, if you can hold this leg, it can mean the difference between a win and a loss. If you lose this leg and succumb to your thoughts, your chances of winning are slim. Quite frankly, it sucks.
So I made bets with myself.
“If I can finish this lap in 14 strokes, where I’m reaching out and scooping that ice cream just out of my arm’s reach, I’m going to treat myself to some Haagen Dazs after. One scoop for every lap I succeed in.”
“I’m going to flip turn faster than my opponents. And if I can do this thrice in a row, I’m going to get rock-solid abs when I finish this race.”
“I’m going to hold my breath till the other side of the pool, so I can smell and taste the teriyaki chicken.” *At swim meets, they’re always selling teriyaki chicken and rice for lunch. It’s greasy, super salty. But if you add some sriracha, it is a hungry swimmer’s heaven.
As you might notice, some of my bets were outright ludicrous. But it was because they were crazy that I was motivated to keep going. When there were no tangible goals, I made my own.
Why am I sharing this?
Life, seeking employment, running a business, and so much more run in the same way. After your academic career, no one really tells you what your goals are or can be. You have to make your own. When you’re job-seeking and no interviews are coming your way, you have to muster the strength to continue applying – either spraying and praying or finding creative ways to obtain certain opportunities.
In startup land, day 1 till day 365 (or even till day 730) will be a honeymoon. It’ll be the first leg. You’re hacking away by yourself or with pals on something you feel strongly about. For many, your next leg is scoping out the competition and pacing yourself.
Should you launch with press releases on TC, NY Times, etc?
Should you stay in stealth?
Can you continue bootstrapping?
Do you need to hire more people to help you out?
Which distribution channels are the most effective? Overlooked by competitors, but you think there’s a lucky draw in it.
And then, there’s the third leg. The leg that will decide if your adoption curve forms a hockey stick or a pitcher’s mound. You have a vague idea of where you need to go, but you haven’t hit critical mass. You’re questioning your initial assumptions. You might even be questioning yourself. Did you make the right calls? Is there anything you missed? What went wrong? Should you have just taken the job your friend offered?
But if there’s anything we’ve learned from some of the best entrepreneurs out there. It’s the ones who weather the storm – the ones who have that grit – that often make it. Being able to weather that third leg doesn’t guarantee success. But not being able to weather it is close to a sure-fire for failure.
As a world…
We’re on the third leg now.
And what we do now will decide if we win or lose the race.
We’re all privy to our emotions. It’s what makes us human. And I am no exception. Like many people that I know, there have been many moments in my life when I’ve been stressed. When I felt forced to make split decisions. When I’m not rational. Only to regret my actions and words down the road. Despite it all, though I have friends and colleagues who have, I’ve never dipped my feet into therapy. Instead, after years of diligence, I found solace in other solutions to navigate through my mental gymnastics:
Meditation and visualization,
Exercise/swimming,
Gratitude journaling,
And, dream journaling.
Last week, I caught up with a founder who found her initial sanctuary in therapy – a service I have only observed from the periphery. Historically, therapy seems to have carried a negative stigma. If I were to say, “I’m going to see a therapist.”
Many people’s naturally response would be: “What’s wrong?” Subsequently, many people have used therapy and its cousins as a reactive measure, rather than a proactive one. Luckily the conversations around mental health have finally reached the limelight, and people, more talented than I am, are working to change the biases associated with mental health. Although just a comparatively small step, I’m writing this post now to help shed light to an industry that for too long has remained behind stained glass.
The toolkit of skills
“Therapy, just like any other class out there, pairs you with a set of skills to tackle the world.”
So, I asked her, “What was the most impactful skill you learned in therapy that enabled you to better react to the world around you?”
“There’s this process I learned, when in the moment, where I first identify the initial ‘bad’ cause. Then I notice and name all the colors in the room. And after I do so, then I identify the next action I would have taken after the ‘bad’ cause.”
Seeing, my perplexed look over Zoom, she elaborated, “In the beginning, I would count a lot of colors in the room. But over time, I only needed to count less. The reason… so that I could take time to think and react appropriately to situations.”
Just like I was taught to take deep breaths when Joey steals my crayon. Just like meditation isn’t inherently bad or good, it’s merely an exercise you do to channel your thoughts. If you become obsessed with negative thoughts, you will heighten you respective emotions. If you focus on more positive thoughts, you will leave with a happier state of mind.
Counting colors was that for her. And practice makes perfect, as do all skills – be it mental or physical. Our brain is a muscle that’ll only get better the more we stretch, ‘tear’, and put it through the wringer. Although now she’s “graduated” from such exercises, she still practices her mental discipline through other means, like journaling.
In closing
Too often, we regress to our instinctual emotions. The purpose of such exercises is to give time for our mammalian brain to catch up to our reptilian brain. Or, more scientifically put, for our pre-frontal cortex (PFC) to catch up to our amygdala. And in giving them time to level out the playing field, we are able to make a decision where we can minimize our regrets in the post-mortem.
I’m not advocating to throw away your emotions. Personally, on multiple occasions, I have to thank my emotions for the results I was able to achieve – from channeling anger and frustration to keep myself going in the last leg of an open-water race to embracing contentment to inspire me when writing. Emotions can be your strength or your weakness. But hopefully, in honing in the toolkit available to you, you are able to make better judgments at the many crossroads of your life. One of such tools in the toolkit may just be letting the tortoise catch up to the hare, metaphorically-speaking. Or the hare catch up to the tortoise, physiologically-speaking.
