Notes on “Jobs to Be Done is Product Management”

The focus of the Jobs To Be Done is Product Management episode is about:

  1. Disruption Theory and Innovation
  2. Current Innovation Approaches Established Companies Do
  3. How “jobs to be done” Drives New Features and Product Development
  4. Companies that Embraced “jobs to be done” Either Explicitly or Implicitly
  5. A Lens To Look Through

The guest is Karen Dillon, co-author of Competing Against Luck.

The rest of this blog post contains pretty much raw notes. The notes contain a mixture of direct quotes from the podcast, my own thoughts, and sometimes ideas that came to mind while listening.

Disruption Theory and Innovation

Clayton Christensen is known for the disruption theory aka disrupting the established company. The theory of disruption doesn’t cover everything. It covers the established company. The startup is not covered by the theory.

“Getting innovation right” is not just luck. The “theory of jobs to be done” is the “casual mechanism” of success. You need to understand it.

Current Innovation Approaches Established Companies Do

  • They gather lots of data, but the evidence is correlational as opposed to based on causation
  • Most innovations fail which may mean they are not in the field a year later
  • They don’t understand the “causal mechanism”

How “jobs to be done” Drives New Features and Product Development

As given 8:17 into the podcast episode, the definition of “jobs to be done” is:

The progress someone is trying to make in particular circumstances.

Very key: We pick a product or service based on our social and emotional reasons.

We should view things from the perspective of the progress that someone is trying to make. We have to understand the social and emotional circumstances along with the functional reasons for choosing a service / product. They use the language of “hiring” instead of “buying.”

Companies that Embraced “jobs to be done” Either Explicitly or Implicitly

AirBnB

They are a good example of a company that applied the “jobs to be done” approach successfully. Competition and solving the problem.

Intercom

  • In 2001, they did things based on various personae. That’s changed.
  • They even changed how they organized their company based on the “jobs to be done” framework:
    • They now have different physical teams around those “jobs to be done” which includes technology, marketing and so on.
    • They did great by offering prices for specific jobs and made more money overall.
    • They target the job to be done as opposed to the personae.

Intuit

“Help me get my accounting done now” is the “job to be done.” The up-sells they used to do were counter productive and interfering with the “job to be done.”

Amazon

They get “it.” They are focused on the “customer’s job to be done.”

They measure the speed of delivery from the moment when the customer makes the order to when the item arrives.

A Lens To Look Through

Looking at things through this “jobs to be done” lens, highlights what to do in regards to:

  • Customer service
  • Billing
  • How to renew and talk with people

It’s hard to find the right KPIs related to “jobs to be done” to show it’s working. Also, “jobs to be done” has to be integrated throughout the organization to succeed.

Summary

The “causal mechanism” is used often. It’s clearly an important part of the “jobs to be done” theory. Although there is concern about coming up with KPIs that demonstrate the successfulness of the approach, it absolutely makes sense. I encourage you to listen to the podcast episode yourself.

Notes on “Empathy is Product Management”

The focus of the Empathy is Product Management episode is about:

  1. Advantages of being new to an industry
  2. How to get industry knowledge
  3. Strategies for keeping empathy
  4. Formula?
  5. They have users near them
  6. Career transition

The guest is Jon Stross, a Co-Founder of Greenhouse.

The rest of this blog post contains pretty much raw notes. The notes contain a mixture of direct quotes from the podcast, my own thoughts, and sometimes ideas that came to mind while listening.

Advantages of Being New to an Industry

The advantages of being a product manager in an industry where you don’t have any experience:

  • Can stay objective. Can have a wider perspective.
  • Requires you to get out of the office.
  • You are not “..blinded by your biases.”

How to Get Industry Knowledge

(Talking to Potential New Customers)

Need to talk to many people. For them, it was recruiters. They would ask them, what do you like or hate about your tools and jobs? His business partner was an expert. He ran a team of recruiters.

They went and said “we want to teach a course on how to make recruiting a strength of your company.” They did a handful of classes. They figured out what resonated and what did not. They looked to see who showed up. They wanted to bounce ideas off of them. It was “great market research.”

They created a paper product. It was made of notecards and more. “They walked around to people’s offices and tried it out with them.” Before they wrote code or even made a company, they had a pretty good idea that the idea would work.

Strategies for Keeping Empathy

  • They hire out of their consumer service department. The tech team gets a sense of which of those “get it.” So, technical expertise and domain expertise is there.
  • They have a user experience research group.
  • They break out the different segments.
  • Sales and Consumer Service provide input.
  • They look at user data.
  • Product Managers synthesize all of those inputs and decide which ideas to go with.

Formula?

There’s no formula that they use. Their agile philosophy helps a lot. If they can get twenty things done and eighteen of those things are right, they are doing fine. They keep things scaled small. They manage scope and have things be smaller. Six months is too long.

They Have Users Physically Close To Them

They used their network. They can easily find folks. It helps that recruiters are real public. They want to be easy to reach.

They have lots of data. The hard part is figuring out who to listen to and “the patterns that matter.”

Career Transition

Product Management is a natural step towards becoming a CEO or general management.

Summary

Lots of great things in here! Clearly, Jon and his partners have figured out a way to dive into a domain and come out with awesome products. I really enjoyed the podcast episode and invite you to listen to it yourself.

Wondering about the Wandering Retreat on 10% Happier?

Is the “Wandering Retreat” the most ambitious and craziest course on the 10% Happier meditation app? I say yes!

Dan gave us a preview tweet tease back in December with this picture of Jeff Warren and Dan Harris:

Since then, I have been waiting for this release with great excitement! It has arrived and I am overwhelmed with how good it is. The course is heart warming, insightful, pragmatic and frankly a work of art.

It's a work of art.

Discussing the Plan and Working on Dan’s Face

The course begins with seeing a little bit of Dan’s work day which is quite fascinating. While a little bit of makeup is artfully applied, he discusses the retreat. As he says, part of the plan is to literally get lost.

Next, I’m seeing a sweet and cute family scene that makes me smile brightly. It transitions to hearing family goodbyes of “Bye Daddy!” and “I love you!” It’s truly touching.

This switches to a funny scene where Jeff and Dan meet and choose where to go. Dan initially suggests a luxury beach retreat! There’s some playful back and forth where the choice is between luxury and the woods. In a lighthearted way, Dan says “Coursing under everything you’re saying is a raging river of like you’re a sissy if you don’t do the latter.” Jeff playfully says “That’s right.” Meeting adversity head on, they chose the woods.

Meditating On Day One

Camp is set up and the day ends with their first meditation. Now, here’s where the app does something truly magical. As opposed to a hard transition from video to recorded meditation, you are led into an experience that goes like this. You’re watching the video, you close your eyes, and then you’re meditating with them in the woods. That is exactly how it feels! Well done!

In the meditation itself there’s a mixture of nature sounds, Jeff’s guiding voice, and what I will describe as the occasional technology related sounds. This demonstrates a great integration of meditation practice with real life. Here there’s equanimity and really just taking it all in.

After the meditation, there’s a funny and insightful followup discussion around the campfire.

Meditation Follow Up Discussion

Dan doesn’t hold back his innermost thoughts where he has “an embarrassing moment.” Although I don’t want to spoil it by sharing this hilariously funny moment in detail, I don’t think Dan’s going to hell for it.

After their first day, the adventure continues with hiking, swimming and insightful wisdom shared along the way. It’s worth watching the videos multiple times and listening carefully to the wisdom that is shared. Among other things, a great thing that Jeff shares in the “Field Naturalist of the Mind” is:

You’re experiencing your own experience through the only means that you have available which is your own experience.

It’s clever and deep. That might take time to sink in and context is needed. He’s saying this in the context of meaningful and playful exploration that is available by training the mind. What Jeff is sharing throughout the course is practical and pragmatic yet it’s life changing.

Jeff and Dan touch on so much in this short retreat such as pain, equanimity, compassion, and Jeff’s favorite of muditā which Jeff says is “like celebratory joy.” What I especially like is at the end where they deal with “a mathematical impossibility” of logistics that Dan is facing. Will Dan make his meeting? Will Jeff make his flight?

Jeff says he has the perfect meditation for this common ailment titled “Where is a Thought?” The context is to work with the thinking process as it is. It’s extremely useful and I will be using this meditation often!

Logistics and a Meditation

So, wonder no more. This latest “Wandering Retreat” course is a beautiful gift to the #10PercentHappier community. With humor and beautiful nature scenes throughout, wisdom and practical tips are shared.

If you wish, check out my other posts about the 10% Happier app or better yet check out the 10% Happier app itself now!

CARROT iPhone App Video Marketing Done Right

The maker of the CARROT TODO app does user experience and marketing right in so many ways. To keep this post short, let’s just focus on one bit of video marketing titled CARROT Launch Trailer. The video is fun enough that I even saved it to watch again!

The video starts with some exciting music and a strong message similar to this: “the todo list with a personality.” It’s a good clear message which shows how it distinguishes itself and what the app does.

With the blue circle pulsing, the video moves on to the playful and humorous statements of “Let’s play a game. We’ll call it ‘Don’t Suck at Life.'” It shows some functionality of the app and then moves on to the rules of the game. Get stuff done or CARROT will get mad!

As someone who has used the app for years, I guarantee she (CARROT) will get mad. CARROT is often referred to as the user’s “new mistress.” Here’s the video:

One thing the video doesn’t show you is the funny and sometimes creepy (in a humorous way) push notifications that the app receives. I highly encourage you to turn the notifications on. Although the humor is often dark, it is fantastically funny. Check out the app for yourself!

Staying Alive, The Beatles, Basic Income, and Gamification

Paul from The Beatles said, “We got more freedom to be artists.” Paul means the freedom to live. Don’t we all want that?

This struck me hard while listening to a short sound clip where Paul said “..more freedom to be…” Now wait a minute. So at first, they had to make stuff that might appeal to others and would pay for. OK. What if they did that but then died or broke up before they got to make one of my favorite albums, the Magical Mystery Tour?

What a horrible loss that would have been! What if that is happening all the time and we don’t know it?

It’s about to get worse. As Sam Harris puts it here in How Rich is Too Rich?:

Future breakthroughs in technology (e.g. robotics, nanotech) could eliminate millions of jobs very quickly, creating a serious problem of unemployment.

So, we should be afraid for our very lives with automation continuing to expand. The game is changing and humans need to change with it soon or die. What to do?

Credit goes to Nir Eyal who pointed out to his followers on Twitter a concept called Basic Income.

I had not heard of Basic Income before. Searching Twitter for BasicIncome, I learned more. Of course, the “what-if”s started popping up. What if people game the system? What if, nothing gets done?

I completely understand the concerns. They may be right. They are worried about some fool doing nothing, but sitting on a hill and watching the world go by. Hey! That’s a fantastic Beatles’ song, The Fool On The Hill! Since Paul McCartney was writing about the Maharishi and thus meditation, a fool on the hill is a horrible example.

Refocusing back on to the legitimate concerns at hand, what if someone games the system. Wait a second! “Game the system.” Hmm. What if we work with this gaming idea instead of against it?

There’s a concept called Gamification. Gamification may be a good answer to alleviating concerns about people being lazy. As Yu-kai Chou calls it, Gamification is another word for “Human-Focused Design.”

Here is his popular TEDxLausanne talk:

Ironically, Yu-kai says “..everything’s still functioning better than before. No. I’m not talking about a society run by robots.” I invite you to watch the video. It’s only 17 minutes long.

So, answers will come if we look for them and look for them we must. If we experiment carefully, I think we can try things like Basic Income. In fact, we should be afraid not to. We should be afraid for our very lives with automation continuing to expand. The game is changing and humans need to change with it soon or die.

Let me emphasize. The game of life is changing. Humans need to change soon or else. Seriously.

This can be an enjoyable and exciting journey if we start immediately and listen to Gamification leaders such as Yu-kai Chou (Octalysis), Andrzej Marczewski (gamified.uk), and Nir Eyal (Behavior Designer), and others who have already done a ton of work for us. We just need to piece it all together and learn what works.

One thing I know for sure, I want the freedom to live. Due to my background driving me to actualize my potential, I will contribute as best as I can. How important is the freedom to live for you?

Once we feel we’ll survive, we can stretch ourselves and work on filling the world with compassion and maybe even love.

Imagine. What might humanity achieve if we weren’t so afraid?

 

On Fire

Shining sun

Sun energy by yogialessandra

Oh! Such a rush! In an explosion of ecstasy, I experienced something like the sun’s rays shining through my mind.

For a few mornings, I found a way to repeatedly experience a rush of happiness. A happy mental “boom” and a tingling rush of energy throughout.

How?
How I got there is summed up like this:

  • Used the 10% Happier iPhone app and listened to one of the meditations. (But which one?)
  • When done, I switched over to YouTube and started playing a “This is Water – David Foster Wallace” video.

In the video, I gave special attention to the words: “sacred” and “on fire.” I played until he says “Love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.” It’s a great video, but for this purpose I stopped the video.

Why?

Why did this happen? Many possibilities. Most importantly, how one holds the world in her or his mind matters. As said in the video:

If you really learn how to think, how to pay attention then you will know you have other options.

Learning how to pay attention is what mental focus exercises like mindfulness meditation is all about. Through such mental exercises, you can recognize that we’re all in this together. We’re all experiencing life and it is life which binds us all together. We’re all on fire with the same forces. As he said in the video, we can experience a situation as:

…not only meaningful, but sacred. On fire with the same force that lit the stars. Love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Note: I broke the above quote up to give the concepts separate emphasis. They are: “Sacred”, “On fire”, “Love”, “Fellowship”, and “Oneness.”

These aren’t just nice words. They are universal truths that tap into how we’re wired as social interconnected beings. It’s because of these truths that I experienced the happy mental rush and more importantly why we might survive together. Like all things though, the series of mental rushes have faded into the past.

If I searched long enough through the 10% Happier iPhone app, I could probably find the specific meditation that helps trigger this experience for me. It’s probably a Sharon Salzberg’s Loving Kindness meditation. Even now, if I do a five minute Loving Kindness meditation and do the video as described above, I get the energetic buzzing in the face. It’s fun, but it’s not all there is to life.

What It’s All About

For me, life is about love, fellowship, and oneness. A connection with the whole human family and all of life. A connection that is to be continuously explored and deepened.

For the curious, I’ve blogged about how great the 10% Happier is since the year 2015. Feel free to explore the blog posts and then if you wish checkout the iPhone app that you can download for free at http://www.10percenthappier.com.

Update: Removed a broken link to a “This is Water – David Foster Wallace” video.

Notes on “Networking Is Still Not Working”

The focus of the Networking Is Still Not Working episode is about:

  1. Business indifference is a huge issue
  2. Nourishing new relationships versus existing relationships
  3. Dormant ties and what that means
  4. Optimizing a networking event
  5. “Host a different kind of networking event as a way to offer value to the people you already know and work with.”

The guest is Derek Coburn, author of Networking Is Not Working: Stop Collecting Business Cards and Start Making Meaningful Connections.

The rest of this blog post contains pretty much raw notes. The notes contain a mixture of direct quotes from the podcast, my own thoughts, and sometimes ideas that came to mind while listening.

Notes

Leaping into indifference from a software developer point of view, a supervisor might see people as fungible software developers. How to disrupt this? Just going heads down and working harder doesn’t help.

Financial Advisors have a 94% retention rate. 75% of the time it’s because they provide great client service. The way to disrupt things is to focus on providing more value for your existing clients beyond just doing a good job. You can help them network and make introductions.

Strategically and effectively communicating how you are different will give you great opportunities. It’s better than waiting around for people to contact you.

Create a different rung of service that people have ever thought about or ever seen as necessary in their job. Don’t just be someone who does their job.

Derek’s general example: You can be someone who generates trust and rapport and makes the client feel safe by sending them something in the mail. Specific example:

Here are five reasons you don’t have to worry about Brexit.

[or] I’ve already come up with something in order to help you deal with Brexit.

Be an extension of your client’s development and marketing team. Derek positions himself to work with business owners.

Nourish Existing Network

Existing relationships are very important. Among other things, it’s important for job searching. Nourish your existing network. Existing clients are a good place to start. You can say to your client “I want to know more about your ideal client. What are your trigger phrases?” What is meant by trigger phrases is that certain phrases provide a clue that someone may need your services now or at some point.

A trigger phrase would reflect perhaps a triggering event. Perhaps, something that happened in life. You can share this with clients and others. Example: Someone is getting ready to sell a business. They said this 3 to 6 months before they know they even need you.

Figure out good triggering phrases for your business and then help your clients figure out triggering phrases to listen for for their own business. You can teach your clients how to do this by giving examples of what phrases you would be looking for. This also teaches the client to listen for trigger phrases on your behalf. Even though the client interviews are for learning about your clients, you can teach clients and friends how to help you.

Teaching Others How To Help You

Generic questions of “How can I help you?” doesn’t work. Having something ready to share with those who honestly want to help you is helpful.

This is what I am looking for. If you know someone that knows someone that would help.

Networking

Don’t just go to a networking event. Go to an event that has a great speaker and content. Invite a client. Tell the client to bring a friend.

Setting Up an Event Yourself

You can host round table discussions. Facilitate events. Examples: Poker or wine tasting events (for a client and someone else.) You can tell them: “Don’t feel like you have to bring a prospective client for me.” This plants a seed. Initially, they thought about their wife or friend. With that seed planted, they may bring a prospective client.

Start with a 5 to 10 minutes idea. You can share an idea and not a sales pitch. Think about sharing a couple things that are not directly related to the thing you provide.

After sharing a bit of information and sharing wine, you’re the thing in there they all have in common.

Hosting a technology event can get you in touch with the recruiters. You’re the hub. You know all the recruiters / head-hunters. Tons of lateral connections or non-lateral connections in your industry.

How often events? Roundtables are easy to set up. With Open Table, you can search for all the restaurants that have private rooms. Contact the restaurant; can they do separate checks? Invite people to come together and have lunch. You can facilitate a conversation about whatever you want to have a conversation about.

You can start with 4 to 5 people and 2 of those people can be your friends to get feedback.

He stumbled into great success with this. He invited a few influencers that are influential in the industry. This made the events very popular.

Summary

Lots of good gold nuggets in here. How to stand out and be seen as essential by providing extra value. How to nourish the existing network. How to set up an event. There are more tips in this podcast that I couldn’t capture in this post such as don’t just reach out to someone periodically with a template. I recommend listening to the podcast episode.

 

How To Not Be Pushy With The .gitignore in Git

Programming

Image by Ramotion studio

There are things one never wants to store away into a version control system such as Git. In the source code world, we’re talking about junk like temporary editor files, .DS_Store, and user specific files. In a team environment, it’s essential to not burden others with things that only you care about.

So one typically creates a .gitignore file. Usually that takes care of everything you need. However, there is that awkward moment where you want to add something to the .gitignore file, but it only pertains to you. Worse, what if it only pertains to you in a specific project?

There’s a great article titled Ignoring files which outlines just what you need. As it says in the article, you can use the “explicit repository excludes” approach. You just have to change the .git/info/exclude in your Git repository root. For example, when I do a git status, it shows:

Untracked files:
(use “git add <file>…” to include in what will be committed)

switch_to_1_2_3.sh
switch_to_develop.sh

If you change the .git/info/exclude in your Git repository root, it takes care of it.

This is a great solution if you are not worried about losing some simple .gitignore rules and they are project specific. In my case, I simply added the following to the mostly empty exclude file that is already there:

switch_to_1_2_3.sh
switch_to_develop.sh

Done! It’s that easy.

Given that I work at a place (CARFAX) which prides itself on knowledge sharing and software developer growth, I decided to blog this here for all to enjoy. So, enjoy!

Communities in Nonsocial Mobile Apps

Nonsocial apps with a social community inside of them. It seems to make sense since you already have a captive audience. However, does it always make sense? Let’s first dive into mobile apps that come with communities.

Besides the obvious social mobile apps, there are multiple apps with communities aka groups inside of them. These apps are not primarily social apps, but they attempt to support a community. Since humans are social beings, it can be a nice feature which can make the app more appealing and thus used more often.

Some Community Supporting Apps:

  • Argus – It’s a highly social activity tracker app that has a groups section. There’s more on Argus further down in this article. iPhone and Android apps exist.
  • Coursera has a “Discussions” area in the iPhone app. There’s an Android app too. Discussions are not available until a course starts. So, one cannot peek inside right away and explore it.
  • Lose It! – Weight Loss Program and Calorie Counter – Has a “Social” section with many groups in it. The group activity in it is kind of strong. Strongest are the groups which are promoted as “Featured Groups”. iPhone app and Android app exist.
  • Not quite a discussions area, but Udemy has a Q & A section which has questions directed at the instructor in a particular instructor. This provides longterm value with credibility in the information since the answers come from the instructor. However, there is no sense of community. They offer an iPhone app and an Android app.
  • It’s worth noting that I have seen apps drop support for groups. That can sometimes be the smartest move.

More on Argus

The target audience of the app focuses on people who like to be social while tracking health, fitness, meditation, sleep and other trackable activities. Even though the semi-new groups section is pretty dead, there’s a novel tie in from a group into the tracked activities of group members which I find interesting.

It’s interesting in how it provides a kind of newsfeed style of tracked activities. You can tap on a button in the group and see a combined newsfeed from the group members. Compared to the messages button, this has much more activity. Unfortunately, most of the activities have nothing to do with the particular group you are in since they are not filtered. At a glance, it’s also a slightly confusing user experience.

Also, the downside of the groups section is that it’s slow to load and has an annoying bug which makes the iPhone app crash when you click on a link. As a side note, I happen to run a meditation group in Argus that has 25 members.

All that said, it’s worth a look. The groups has potential if a few things are tweaked, promoted, and fixed.

Externally Support the Community?

Should one just tie into an existing social app such as Facebook to support a community? It’s a fair question. Facebook has a groups feature which can be successful. The most successful Facebook group I have been a part of is the Octalysis Explorers. It has over 2000 members. Like any group, a lot of effort goes into keeping the community engaged. Fortunately for the Octalysis Explorers, Yu-kai Chou is a master at the art and science of engagement. He has a handful of awesome and loyal people who support the effort.

The people supporting the Octalysis Explorers group are continuously driving people to the Facebook group through multiple channels. Even in its own “Join the Movement” section, the group is highlighted in Yu-kai Chou’s great book titled Actionable Gamification – Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. There are also multiple administrators for the group. Also, there is always at least one person actively interacting with every post. A successful community relies on that kind of wonderful support from its administrators and its members.

Summary

Even though the implementation and user experience is pretty rough, it seems like the app with the most group activity without overt support is “Lose It!” However, that’s not saying much. The app with the most potential from a technology point of view may be Argus. However, Argus is already a highly social app so its group feature doesn’t add much.

If one can dedicate people to supporting a community on Facebook, that might be your best bet. If you go that route, you will need to continuously drive people to the group through your existing email marketing, verbal announcements in events or podcasts, and every other chance you get. Communities require care and feeding.

No matter how you support a community experience, it can provide an advantage over other solutions who don’t provide such. If one cannot dedicate the resources to the community experience or if the community experience doesn’t ever pay off, my advice is to drop it and refocus on other things.

I want now!

Freeing Yourself From “Want Pain” Through Meditation and Octalysis

I want now!

Pain by Nathan Phillips

“If I don’t get this, I’m going to just die.” Ever heard something or said something like that? Did you ever want something so bad it hurts?

How does one free themselves from an undesired want? How does one still respect the aspirations which guide us in life?

As Joseph Goldstein had said in the 10% Happier app in “Non-Attachment to Results”, aspiration is a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with it. Expecting and becoming attached to the results of going for something is when things turn sour. There is a difference between wanting something with a unhealthy attachment to the results and energetically striving for something. It’s ok to go for something. It’s undesirable to get so caught up in the outcome that you set yourself up to suffer.

Now if you are not yet fortunate enough to be enjoying the 10% Happier app subscription, there is something else you can listen to called Joseph Goldstein: Letting Go of Expectations & Craving.

However, I recommend getting the 10% Happier iPhone app or getting on the web and listening to:

  • “Will Meditation Kill My Edge?”
  • “Non-Attachment to Results”

Yes, to get to those two items, you have to subscribe. If you’re not ready yet, get the app and listen to the free Q & A and courses first. I share more about the app in a slightly older post titled 10% Happier Meditation App Is 100% Satisfying.

Equanimity

Releasing yourself from painful wants can also tie into equanimity. This insight came upon me while listening to the “10% Nicer” section of the 10% Happier app. If you are not subscribed to 10% Happier, you have to spend more time digging around more. Since I really dig people like you exploring meditation, I dug into the internet for you.

There’s a funny and enjoyable video titled Sharon Salzberg on EQUANIMITY for InsightLA (Part 1). It’s a great video. Yet, it takes time to digest.

 

Octalysis

Is there a totally different way to view this? Absolutely! Let’s view this from a human behavioral design approach using Octalysis from Yu-kai Chou.

In Octalysis terms, it’s best to focus on what you want in life from a Core Drive 2 (CD2), Accomplishment and Development approach as opposed to Core Drive 8 (CD8), Loss and Avoidance. With CD2, you try something. If it doesn’t work out, you change the approach and try something else or you decide to try for something different and perhaps better. CD2 is white-hat and one is energized by pursuing it. CD8 is black-hat and the most you can hope for is the avoidance of pain. The avoidance of suffering. There’s a lot more to Yu-kai and Octalysis and even an Octalysis Explorers Facebook community if you want to explore Octalysis and its application to your life further.

Now What?

So, “now what” you ask? Although you effect every single person you interact with, how you approach life is your choice. What I have found useful is to remind myself why I am striving for something. What is the good and higher purpose of what I intend to achieve? I win the game of life by trying, being resilient, letting go of attachments to outcomes, and changing direction as needed. I also keep listening to the 10% Happier app and exploring Octalysis (TEDx talk). May you be happy, healthy, and at peace as you energetically strive to achieve great things in life.