All posts tagged life

Twelve Life Lessons Learned from Burning Man

by Jason on September 9, 2012 in Essays with 1 Comment

12 Life Lessons Learned at Burning Man

I recently went to Burning Man for the second time this August – it was a great experience, though very different from the first time I went in 2011. I’ve heard from veteran Burners that your first time at Black Rock City will always be your best.

I’m not sure that’s true yet. It’s definitely less mind-blowing when you know what to expect, but on the other hand, this second experienced allowed me to think more about what we all can take from the values, culture and experience of Burning Man.

1) Listen to your body

One of the 10 principles of Burning Man is “radical self-reliance” and it’s a critical one when you’re trying to survive out in the middle of nowhere. The 100+ degree heat, chalky alkaline dust, reduced sleep schedule and new diet of dried fruit, beef jerky and water forces you to really be mindful of your body. If you’re not careful, you can be hit with heat exhaustion, super chapped hands and feet, or a GI issue.

But why leave that mindfulness out in the playa? Back in the “default world” there are plenty of opportunities to be more aware of what you’re eating, how well you’re sleeping and how stress is affecting your body.

2) Be more open to new opportunities

There are so many things to do out at Burning Man – send post cards, connect with camp mates, volunteer to light lamps, dance on art cars or run 5k’s. I heard someone call it “Disneyland for adults” at one point this year.

But in most cities and of course with the internet, opportunities are everywhere. You can volunteer at a local homeless shelter or take up a new yoga class or study to become a bartender or just say hi to your neighbors. If you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, just look around and find something that catches your eye. Opportunities to do interesting things are all around us.

3) Focus on the now

There’s a joke at Burning Man that everything runs on “playa time”. Meaning scheduled events often start late or perhaps not at all and coordinating anything is tricky (in part because of all those shiny opportunities we talked about).

In some ways that’s a hassle, but in other ways, it’s very freeing. People aren’t operating on schedules and tight timelines – instead they live in the moment. They’re not thinking about what they have to do next but focus on what they’re experiencing right now.

Obviously, we can’t all be like Arnold Schwarzenegger and work without a schedule, but if we can remember to catch our breath in a busy work day and realize that we’ll do our best work when we focus on the now, we’ll all be better off.

Continue reading →

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A Request (and Giveaway!) for My Twenty-Sixth Birthday

by Jason on May 21, 2012 in Essays with 58 Comments

Best. Cake. Ever. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Photo credit by Solo

People fall into two camps about birthdays – either a socially-acceptable time to feel entitled to special things because you were born a certain number of earth rotations ago, or it’s just another arbitrary day and nothing to get worked up about.

I generally side more with the latter – but this year I’m giving my birthday a little more ballyhoo. I think its a good time to reflect on things because similar to New Years, our birthdays remind us that death is coming)

My birthday wish comes in the form of a question:

What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were 26?

(or, if you are not yet 26, what’s the one thing you hope to know, be or do by the time you turn 26?)

Leave your thought in the comments below.

The sweet, sweet prize

I’ll be selecting one lucky winner to get a free Impossible T-shirt from Joel Ruyon’s Blog of Impossible Things – you can see me rocking one out here.

So wish me a happy birthday by sharing your wisdom (or aspirations) with me. Thanks!

I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.

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How to Overcome the Naysayers and Get People to Buy-In [art of buy-in 2/3]

by Jason on April 11, 2012 in Essays with 6 Comments
This is a 3 part series on the art of buy-in. In my last post, I talked about how smart people often get great ideas shot down. In this post I share a story of how I overcame the naysayers and got buy-in for team dues.

I would venture there are few groups harder to organize than a bunch of cocky college athletes. Gymnasts especially, since we all spend the first 10+ years of training by ourselves, without much of  ”team” mentality. That’s why I want to share this story of how I won over my gymnastics team and got everyone to pay team dues.

Our team’s money problem

Photo credit: JMR Photography

September 2008: fall training for the Stanford Men’s Gymnastics team was about to start.

I was meeting with the other team captains to plan for the upcoming year. We had discussed attitude in the gym, our focus during training competitions, etc. While most of the conversation was on how we were going to win the national championship, there was one logistical item on the table: team dues.

As a team, we had become close over the years – organizing annual gifts for coaches and graduating seniors, printed handbooks for freshmen, a camping retreat in the fall and a team banquet in the spring. Usually the captains or other seniors would front the money (around $1,000 total for the year) for these sorts of activities and then try to collect afterward.

Collecting money, a few dollars at a time, from 15+ guys who are usually close to broke, sucks. No one has the exact amount on them, you forget to ask, it’s hard to keep track of who paid and who hasn’t and generally speaking, this is a big hassle. Inevitably the person who fronted the money gets screwed.

The dismal history behind team dues

Now the previous year we had a captain named Dylan. This guy was brilliant – earning above a 4.0 GPA as a Stanford premed – but his ideas for the team often didn’t go anywhere, much to his frustration.

He had tried to push through the idea of team dues – where people would pay an advance to the captains which would be spent on the various team sponsored-activities. It’s a win for everyone – team members would stop getting hassled all the time, and captains would have the necessary funds to do their job.

It died. People said it wasn’t necessary, too much work, and that the current system was just fine and the conversation just fizzled. [1]

Despite this failure, I felt that team dues was still a really good idea – and I knew that once implemented, it’d become institutionalized as a part of the culture and thus worth giving another shot. My co-captains agreed hesitantly – as long as I did all the work, they would support the idea. Continue reading →

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Why do some people almost always get their ideas shot down? [art of buy-in 1/3]

by Jason on April 10, 2012 in General with 5 Comments

Falling off the face of the earth

Photo credit: another point in time

This is part 1 of a three part series on the Art of Buy-In. Part 2 is about my first experience in using these strategies to get a good idea implemented. Part 3 explains the specific tactics I used (and would use in the future) for getting buy-in plus further resources to check out.

Too often, the best ideas get shot down.

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: a group that you’re a part of has a thorny problem and no one seems to have come up with a workable solution.

You rack your brains and realize that there’s an answer that will fix the problem in an effective and responsible manner. You make a proposal, explain your idea and expect everyone to get on board. But for whatever reason, the group rejects your idea and either does nothing, or implements a worse solution.

I’ve definitely been there – and it sucks!

For smart, good-intentioned people, seeing one of their ideas get killed – often for no good reason – can be one of the most frustrating things in the world. But what can we do?

Well, here are some options:

  • blame the group for being dumb
  • dismiss the decision as a political game / popularity contest
  • avoid proposing ideas in the future
  • withdraw from the group because you are frustrated

But do you really want to do those things? If you care about growing as an individual and genuinely care about the group you are a part of and your ability to make a positive impact on these people’s lives – you must recognize that none of these options are ideal.

What you really want is the ability to get people to understand and implement your good ideas – helping everyone win.

I’m sure you’ve run into at least one person in your life, maybe a mentor, a coworker or fellow student or just a friend, who people seem to listen to and who actually is able to get the group to go along with their good ideas. How do they do it? Hint: it’s not because they’re smarter, better looking or more popular than you.

It’s because they’ve mastered the art of buy-in.

There happen to be a number of strategies that are highly effective in getting a group on board with new idea. The fact is, people are not robots – there are social and psychological dynamics to getting a group to agree to do something.

For instance – often times a person might personally agree with an idea but is worried that others disagree and don’t want to make waves. If everyone thinks this way, your idea never gets off the ground, even if everyone in the group agrees with it. How frustrating!

The good news is - you can learn these strategies.

I once dealt with a thorny issue where I got buy-in for an idea that had been previously proposed (and shot down) by a leader in the group by using what I’ve learned about getting buy-in. I’ll be writing up this story very soon.

Email subscribers will get this post in their inbox as soon as I hit “publish” – if you want to join them, click here to join hundreds of smart readers who want to make things happen. I’ll also send you a free copy of Guide to YC (the indispensable 92-pg book for founders applying to Y Combinator) and some other great goodies.

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How to Make the Time to Do it All (guest post)

by Jason on April 4, 2012 in General with 1 Comment
Time management is a topic many seek to understand and master, but it is somewhat of a misnomer. We can’t really manage our time, we can only manage our behavior and what we put our energies and efforts on. Between Microsoft, volunteer work and competitive tennis, our guest poster Lilia Gutnik is a busy woman. Learn her secrets in the guest post below – Jason

Photo credit: Ricksflicks

It’s cliche, but I have come to appreciate the adage “Time is the great equalizer – everyone has the same amount.”

I used to beat myself up for not doing as much as the incredible people around me; people who could accomplish so much more than I seem to be able to. I would hear about their accomplishments and instead of being inspired, I would feel overwhelmed.

I talked about this on a 30 mile bike ride commute into work with a buddy of mine a few years ago. We would do this once a week at daybreak, catching the sunrise over the lake. The ride took 2 hours, plus shower and chocolate milk rehydration put me at my desk by 9am. I didn’t feel like I could balance training for a 300 mile bike ride (STP, a 1 or 2 day Seattle to Portland ride) with my tennis team upcoming season.

He said: “Lil, think about everything you are doing right now. List it out.”

So I did. And I felt pretty accomplished, actually. Because when I added everything up, I felt like I wasn’t as far off from those people I was feeling jealous of.

Thought Exercise #1:

When you feel like you’re not doing enough, consciously list out everything that is on your plate.

Then he said: “Now, if you want to ride 300 miles in a day, you’re going to have to train for at least 2 months ahead of time. That means riding every week 3-4 times to and from work, the long way. Plus a long ride every weekend, working up from 50 to 100 miles.”

“But I can’t ride that much and play tennis, I won’t have enough daylight left. And my legs will be worn out”

“That’s right, Lil. You have to choose. You can’t keep adding things to your list. If you want to do this, you definitely can. But you have to drop something else. What would you drop?”

Thought Exercise #2:

Be honest with your time. If you pick up a new activity or are working towards a new goal, evaluate how much time it will really require to do well and think about what existing activities will be affected by it.

And here’s the important part, at least for me. When I choose my activity, I actively stop doing something else. I don’t try to keep a hold on it just a little, just on weekends, just once a month. If I pick something new up, I have to commit to the new thing whole-heartedly or else it won’t really be fulfilling, worth-while, or done well.

So that helps me – it helps me say no to new random hobbies (Trapeze? Glass-blowing?). It helps me feel good about what I am doing (Look at me! I do all this stuff!). And it helps me really take on new activities without feeling like I’m going to fail because I know I’ve made the time for it.

Oh and by the way: I didn’t do the 300 mile ride. Instead I fully committed to my local tennis team season. We ended the season first in the division, won our local championship, and traveled to Portland to compete in the regional championship. So I guess I made it to Portland after all.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2007, Lilia Gutnik (liliagutnik.com) moved to the Pacific Northwest where she learned how to ride her bike around Lake Washington with the encouragement of her friend Matthew Pearlson. Her commute to work is now to the Bing offices, where she is a technical product manager on the monetization team. In her spare time, she still plays competitive tennis, travels to far-off countries, tells stories, and occasionally gets overwhelmed by the number of things she wants to do but doesn’t have time for.

I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.

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