Everything you do in life will be a struggle, so need to find the right struggle for you.Identify what you really enjoy doing.

Struggle

Suffering can lead to great things, but if you don't have the right values, you'll never be happy.Values are more important than success when it comes to happiness

Values

Many people tend to focus on shitty values, so it's important to find some good ones to believe in.Comparison of success, seeking pleasure over anything else, measuring life through material success are some shitty values. Instead develop good values like honesty, generosity, creativity and humility.

Belief

Sometimes we feel like victims, but positive change only happens when you take full responsibility for your life.When we stop blaming others, or the situation for the shit we are in, then and only then is positive change attainable.

Responsibility

We often flee when our identity is threatened, but identity is an illusion, a mental construct.Similar to a comfort zone, we form an identity of who we are. And as soon as there is a possibility of change, we avoid it, we choose the "flight" path. Our desperation to protect our identity is often more a hindrance than help. Identity is an illusion, a mental construct which isn't real, and we shouldn't let them dictate our lives. Learn to let go of your identity.

Manson's Law of Avoidance

You need to accept your mistakes and insecurities if you want to see positive change.You need to question yourself every once in a while, to know that you're on the right path, and not feeding your insecurities, or making the same mistakes.

Acceptance

﻿Romantic love can be destructive unless we learn to control it.For example, the greatest love story you know, Romeo and Juliet, is hardly a happy one. It's a rather chaotic story involving murder, blood feuds and ending with suicide. Let your love be healthy, and not destructive or unhealthy.

Love

Humans are terrified of death, and so they try to live on beyond it.Ernest Becker wrote a book called "The Denial of Death", where he writes about two main ideas. Firstly, that humans are terrified of dying, and secondly, humans try to create a conceptual self that will live on after their demise. This has led to war, demise and widespread destruction. The desperate urge to make a mark causes stress and anxiety.So, we need to stop "giving a fuck" about fame and power, and instead focus on the present. Live here and now.

Death

We try to do too much in life and this leads to stress and unhappiness. Each of us needs to learn to stop “giving a fuck” about the things that are causing us pain. Choose what it is you really want to care about, and develop a more constructive approach to work, love and life itself. FORGET FOMO AND LEARN TO SAY NO

Summary

I've been a rebel all my life. And when the book says "counterintuitive approach", that was my cue to pick it up!

#1 New York Times Bestseller Over 1 million copies sold In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek. There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

#1 New York Times BestsellerOver 10 million copies soldIn this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.

Mark Manson (born 1984) is a professional blogger, entrepreneur, and former dating coach. Since 2007, he's been helping people with their emotional and relationship problems. He has worked with thousands of people from over 30 different countries. He regularly writes and updates his blog at: www.markmanson.net

Mark Manson

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

.If you apply yourself to something or apply your mind to something, you concentrate hard on doing it or on thinking about it.

Application Of Mind

🌈Be Conscious About What You're Putting in Your Head. ...🌈Work on Desire. ...🌈Have the Right Sources. ...🌈Give Yourself a Drive to Learn. ...🌈Be Open to Change. ...🌈Allow Yourself to Be Creative or Successful. ...🌈Don't Let Others' Thoughts Influence You. ...🌈Be Around Positive People and Things.

Ways To Use Your Mind Power

💢 Try puzzles.💢Play cards.💢Build vocabulary.💢Dance.💢Use your senses.💢Learn a new skill.💢Teach a skill.🌈Listen to music.

Things Help You In Stay Sharp

Natural Ways To Boost Your Brain Power & Sharpen Your Mind🌈Practice meditation to decrease stress. ...🌈Take up cognitive training exercises. ...🌈Exercise your body—for your brain. ...🌈Practice deep listening. ...🌈Ditch the sugar. ...🌈Nourish your brain with antioxidants. ...🌈Sleep on it.

Natural Ways To Boost Your Brain Power & Sharpen Your Mind

Hey beautiful people today we are going to learn how to stay sharp at every situation please follow and support 😁

education

Learning & Education

entertainment

Entertainment

How to looks smarter

<ul><li>Be proactive.</li><li>Start with the end in mind.</li><li>Ensure that you priorities your goals properly.</li><li>Strive to understand the other person before you try to be understood.</li><li>Make agreements where you and the other parties involved all win.</li><li>Practise your skills individually and as a group</li></ul>

Lessons From “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”!!

Important learnings from the book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” at a glance.

A leading management consultant outlines seven organizational rules for improving effectiveness and increasing productivity at work and at home.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

habits

Habits

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

The 7 habits of highly effective people is recognised as one of the most influential books ever written. In this seminal work, Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centred approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change, and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. The 7 Habits have become so famous because they work. From Habit 1: Be Proactive and Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, millions of People have worked their way through the 7 and found in them a key to transforming their lives. This book has been the key to the success of legions of business leaders and individuals the world over.

Stephen R. Covey is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Stephen R. Covey has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Stephen R. Covey's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Stephen R. Covey

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

When you wake up in the morning, don’t jump out of bed for your workout immediately, or drag yourself to the washroom. Sit up straight, relax, and close your eyes. Say to yourself, “I am grateful for those who support me, believe in me, and are always there for me.” Say this with a deep breath in between each time you say it, for a full five minutes.
When you open your eyes and look at everything around you—keep that moment of gratitude with you, throughout your day, reminding yourself how you can’t wait to get home to your loving family.

Morning Gratitude

Begin your day by stretching with your family and doing some physical activity together. 
All you need is 10 minutes. You’ve accomplished a two-for-one: physical activity and family time!

Workout Partners

On your shared streaming service, make a playlist of your family’s favorite music. When you take a break at work or feel a negative moment getting the best of you, listen to that music, think about your family, and regain your focus. 
Music is a powerful voice and has the ability to affect our mindset. Your family playlist will energize you and improve your mood.

A Family Playlist

At least once a day, call or text your significant other or your kids and repeat Stevie Wonder: “I just called to say I love you, I just called to say how much I care.” 
Let your family know they are always in your thoughts. Even in the face of a big deadline or an important meeting, that moment will relax you and make your family smile!

Daily Phone Call

Discuss with your boss his/her expectations of you in regards to your time and your position to foster a mutual and clear understanding of your role. 
Should your role involve evening/weekend hours, and tasks such as answering emails, working from home, or extra time needed for special projects, establish a strategy and discuss with your boss how to meet these expectations so you don’t feel overwhelmed and pulled between your family and your job.

Clarify Your Work Hours & Expectations

It’s common for colleagues to hang out after work. Say yes when your significant other and/or kids are also busy. This will balance things out more. 
There are times to have beers with colleagues, but there are also times to go home, relax, watch a movie, and simply have fun with your family.

Socializing At Work

We all deal with a lot at work and at times might get irritated or annoyed. Remember you are a human being, not a robot, and thus it’s acceptable to have a buffer moment for these feelings. 
Take a deep breath, zone into your happy place that involves your family, think about how your energy can be used towards something else, and move on.

Buffer Moment

Allocate the last half-hour of your day to do the following and leave the office at 5:30/6:00 p.m.:<ul><li>For two minutes, take deep breaths, in and out, looking away from your desk, feeling the moment of gratitude you felt in the morning. </li><li>Organize your emails based on what is to be reviewed, what requires follow-up, and what needs a response after your breakfast/snack/meal. </li><li>Write out your to-do list, priorities, goals, and key items for the next day.</li><li>Double-check that you have a water bottle and healthy desk snacks.</li></ul>

Winding Up The Day

At the dinner table, leave your phone and turn off the TV. 
Focus on your family, not on work, and use this as a time to bring all your energy, your aura, and your being in the moment with the people who support and believe in what you do, and love you for the ability to do what you do.

Phone And TV-Free Dinner

Keep a two-week work diary: try to track every fifteen minutes of your work time. After that, analyze for, and attack, any inefficiencies! This will import balance in your day and yield a well-deserved coffee break, a breath of fresh air, and time to make your daily family phone call!Does email control you and take you away from your priority list, and thus your work-life balance? Organizational skills are an important factor in how you balance your day, affecting your work-life balance. Get organized and get happy! You'll find that work-life balance sooner than you think.

Your Work Journal

Balancing a career and family is a common concern for most individuals. However, it's important to realize the smallest of changes can produce the strongest of impacts.

career

Career

timemanagement

Time Management

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

10 Tips For Balancing Career And Family

Gratitude: A feeling of thankfulness among people which do increases the standard of living, feeling of belongingness and loving nature towards one another.Many people think that gratitude is just a feeling but I feel very happy to share tha it is not just feeling but has genetic bases behind it.

Genetic Bases Of Gratitude 

CD 38: Cluster of differentiation 38 geneThere are several genes responsible for Gratitude but CD 38 varient has major in expressing gratitude. Couples having a pirticular variant of CD 38 show 70% grattitude during day and other couples show 38% during the day suggesting that genes do have some role in expressing gratitude.

Genetic Bases of Gratitude 

COMT: catechol-O-methyltransferaseThis gene has two version a more greatful version of this gene makes people more greatful about a thing .A less greatfull verson in which person is negative biased and is not so greatful but this doesnot mean that you have to think bad about it. Those people have better memory and attention.

Genetic Bases of gratitude

<ol><li>Person has more grey matter in brain means more intelligent</li><li>Better peronality</li><li>Good and Health relations </li><li>Socialistic</li><li>Positive attitued</li><li>No Over thinking </li><li>Built a respect among peers because you are thankful to them</li><li>And Many more.....</li></ol>

Uses or Advantages of Gratitude

I am wanted to share this because people these days donot show grattitude so I thought to find some scientific reason behind it. I came up with something you love to read.. 🙂

If you have trouble with gratitude, you’re not alone. Luckily, there’s something you can do about it.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

Why Is Gratitude So Hard for Some People?

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">At the beginning of the day:</li></ul> “What am I optimizing for?”<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">During the day:</li></ul> “What's the best small thing I can do right now?”<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">​At the end of the day:</li></ul> “Did I do my best?"

3 simple questions to improve your day.

“The person who gets 1 shot needs everything to go right.The person who gets 1000 shots is going to score at some point.Find a way to play the game that ensures you get a lot of shots.”

“People often think it's weird to get hyped about reading one page or meditating for one minute or making one sales call. But the point is not to do one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can't learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize.”

Excerpt From Atomic Habits

“There is no formula for success—you just begin and then you continue. I’m often asked how to have a career in stand-up and the answer is confoundingly simple: Do the work. Over and over again, just do the work. After you build the courage to get onstage that first time, it’s all about repetition.”

“It is wonderful how much work can be got through in a day, if we go by the rule—map out our time, divide it off, and take up one thing regularly after another. To drift through our work, or to rush through it in a helter-skelter fashion, ends in comparatively little being done. “One thing at a time” will always perform a better day's work than doing two or three things at a time. By following this rule, one person will do more in a day than another does in a week.”

If you know what you want, why are you waiting?

1 Question For You

3-2-1: Productivity, success, and 3 simple questions to improve your day

The Stoics were known for having good habits and self-discipline.The Stoics understood that first you make your habits, but then your habits make you. Once set in place, your habits shape your character and quality of life. This can work for you or against you — depending on the quality of your habits.

Stoics

“Truth is, how you spend your time is how you spend your life. So, if you want to be in control of your life, get in control of your time.The Stoics were very intentional with their time, as they understood the value of time. They understood that you could always make more money, but you can never make more time. Once a day is gone, it’s gone for good.

Manage Your Time

“It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it’s given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well.”

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”

For the majority of people, most of the stuff they’ve acquired is collecting dust somewhere in their homes as it’s hardly being used. All it did was cost money, occupy space, and took up Earth’s resources in the production- and transportation process.Nevertheless, consumer culture wants you to believe you need more stuff, better stuff, and more expensive stuff to feel happy and confident.Truth is, freedom is the highest degree of wealth — not luxury items.

Practice Minimalism

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realise how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."

Walking is underrated. Not only does it contribute to greater health, but it also clears the mind and sparks creativity. The Stoics would regularly go on long walks by themselves to sort out their thoughts.I recommend you go on walks by yourself, without any forms of input (no music, audiobooks, social media, etc.). Just be with yourself, your thoughts, and the fresh air. It will put life in perspective.

Walk Often

“Only thoughts won by walking are valuable.”

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. Through reading books, we can learn from others who have walked the path before us, so we don’t have to make the same mistakes and face the same obstacles.The Stoics read a lot because they understood it was the most efficient way of learning and developing themselves. You can gain the wisdom someone spent a lifetime to acquire (through trial and error) in just a few days merely by reading the books they wrote.Make reading a daily habit, and your life will change.

Read Often

“Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.”

There is great power in being by yourself for an entire day — no one there to influence or entertain you.When it’s just you and your thoughts, great things can happen. You can put your life in perspective, gain fresh new ideas, and sort out your thoughts. This is nearly impossible when you’re constantly surrounded by other people.Practicing solitude is something most people find challenging. Even when they’re alone, they seek other people’s presence by going on social media.

Practice Solitude

“People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. . . . So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”

“Solitude is a state in which the mind is free from input from other minds.”

<ul><li>Manage your time</li><li>Practice Minimalism</li><li>Walk often</li><li>Read often</li><li>Practice Solitude</li></ul>

In Brief

Increase your productivity, wealth and happiness . 

This is why Marcus Aurelius ruled over the largest empire on earth, Epictetus triumphed over slavery, Seneca became the greatest writer of his era, and Cato led his troops to victory. The Stoics…

5 Stoic Habits For Increased Productivity, Wealth & Happiness

Let’s begin with the 5 Second Rule. It was presented by Mel Robbins in her book of the same name. In Robbins’ own words :If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it.This is how it works:i- Start counting backward from 5 to 1(5,4,3,2,1).ii- As soon as you hit 1, push yourself to take action.Actually, this method is kind of a brain hack in which you trick your mind into starting a task. Counting backward till 1 has a psychological effect and it forces our mind to take action.

1. 5 Second Rule

On the second spot, we have the 2 Minute Rule. It was introduced by David Allen in his famous book Getting Things Done.It states that:If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it’s defined.In simple words, if a pending task takes less than two minutes to complete, you should start it now. It may appear that this rule only works with smaller tasks. Some examples of the 2 Minute Rule in action:i- Text a loved oneii- Reply to an emailiii- Clean your deskiv- Book an appointment

2. 2 Minute Rule
On the second spot we have the 2 Minute Rule. It was introduced by David Allen in his famous book Getting Thing

Eisenhower Matrix was coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower who was the 34th President of the United States. This is a graphical method where you divide all of your tasks into four quadrants.First Quadrant: Do itTasks that are urgent and importantSecond Quadrant: Schedule itTasks that are important but not urgentThird Quadrant: Delegate itTasks that are urgent but not importantFourth Quadrant: Delete itTasks that are neither urgent nor important

3. Eisenhower Matrix

In this method, you divide your tasks into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to completing a specific task or groups of tasks. In this technique prioritizing is of utmost importance.For example:From 9:00–9:30, you will check and reply to emailsThen comes 10 minutes break.Then from 9:40 to 10:00, you will write your college essaySo on and so forth.Author Cal Newport in his famous book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World states:A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.

4. Time Blocking

Pomodoro Technique is a popular yet simple method to remain focused on the tasks at hand.This is how it works:Pick a task you want to complete.Set a timer for 25 minutesStart working on that task. Keep working until the timer rings.Take a 5–10 minute break.Set the timer again and so on.These days, there are many mobile and desktop apps available that are specifically designed for Pomodoro Technique

5. Pomodoro Technique

Let’s begin with the 5 Second Rule. It was presented by Mel Robbins in her book of the same name. In Robbins’ own words : Actually, this method is kind of a brain hack in which you trick your mind…

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Five Best Productivity Hacks of All Time

Time-shifting can be a wonderful thing. I talked last year about <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/time-shifting-and-clubhouse/">how time-shifting is so helpful for entertainment and communication</a>, which is why I suspected Clubhouse might have trouble staying relevant.There’s another angle to be considered, and that’s time-shifting your effort.

Time-shifting your effort

Part of this is pretty obvious, when you schedule your work around various other priorities and focus when it’s time to focus. If you have an information-oriented job, it’s often pretty easy to slide around your workload to fit your schedule.However, looking ahead can help a bit more and I’ve seen this come up in two ways.

Effort

The first is the weekly preview. My routines can vary a little bit, but <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/weekly-previews-are-intentionally-inefficient/">I haven’t missed a weekly preview in a few years now</a>. Some are more in-depth and some are rushed, but they always get done.The beauty of these are to identify issues well in advance, because solving them the day they arise can be way more difficult. For example, if my wife and I both have a meeting at 3:00 one afternoon, neither of us can pick up our daughter from school. If we discover the overlap a week early, we can adjust schedules or find a friend to help. If we discover the issue at 2:55 that day, it’s a big problem.

Weekly

The second is just looking at the day ahead. A few days ago, I knew I’d have a busy Saturday morning running some errands, and I wasn’t sure the best route to get from one to the next. Complicating things further is that they weren’t easy things to just look up the address for (one was a weekly vegetable pickup, the other was an emissions test I needed at a place I didn’t know the name of).In this case, I looked them up the night before and put the events (and addresses!) in my calendar. When I hopped in the car, Android Auto knew where I needed to be next and it was one tap from stop to stop.

Daily

In both cases, I time-shifted my effort back to an earlier time in order to help future me have an easier time with things. I’m not always good about seeing those issues in advance, but the weekly preview really helps expose a lot of them, and then being wise enough to take the time then to solve them is something I never regret. 

Time-shifting can be a wonderful thing. I talked last year about how time-shifting is so helpful for entertainment and communication, which is why I suspected Clubhouse might have trouble staying relevant. There's another angle to be considered, and that's time-shifting your effort. Effort Part of this is pretty obvious, when…

When you spend years responding to problems, you can sometimes overlook the fact that you could be preventing them.

Downstream actions are reactions to problems. These efforts are fast and tangible.Upstream actions attempt to prevent those problems from happening in the first place by systematically reducing the harm caused by those problems. These efforts are slower and broader. A sign of upstream work is that it uses systems thinking.Example: You can offer a homeless person a meal today, but to figure out how to reduce evictions so that people don't become homeless might take years.

Upstream thinking

<ul><li>Expedia: 58% of customers who booked travel on Expedia placed a call afterwards for a copy of their itinerary. No one was responsible for ensuring that customers didn't need to call for support. It was identified as an upstream problem. Once changes were in place, the need for customers to call for help decreased to 15%.</li><li>Dutch Bicycle Company: VanMoof regularly received complaints that many of its bikes were damaged during shipping. They started printing images of flat-screen televisions on their shipping boxes, thinking couriers would be more careful. It resulted in 70 - 80% less damage.</li></ul>

Examples of upstream thinking

<ul><li>Problem blindness. "This problem is inevitable." You can't fix a problem you can't see.</li><li>A lack of ownership. "It's not my problem to fix." People resist acting on a problem because they may feel it is not their place. When no one owns the problem, it probably won't get solved.</li><li>Tunnelling. "I can't solve the problem right now." Researchers found when people lack money, time or mental bandwidth, the little problems take preference over the big ones. When people juggle many issues, they give up trying to solve them and instead adopt tunnel vision.</li></ul>

Barriers that prevent upstream thinking

In 2014, the C-section rate in Brazil was 57%, the highest in the world. In the country's private health system, 84% of children were delivered by C-section. The system was designed to prefer C-sections. After educating doctors and patients, the upstream solution caused a 40% increase in natural childbirth.The move away from problem blindness is the shocking realisation that you've come to treat the abnormal as normal.

Example of problem blindness

Organisations have a tendency for downstream thinking. To succeed, leaders should change the focus to upstream thinking.<ul><li>Identify problems early</li><li>Target leverage points in complex systems</li><li>Find reliable methods to measure success</li><li>Consider new ways of working together</li><li>Embed their successes into systems.</li></ul>Find new ways of working together:<ul><li>Hand the problem to the right people.</li><li>Give them enough notice of that problem.</li><li>Align their efforts toward preventing instances of the problem.</li></ul>

Upstream thinking in leadership

Measures can fool you in three ways:<ul><li>“A rising tide lifts all boats.” Your measure shows that you're succeeding, but you mistakenly attribute your success to your own work.</li><li>Your short-term measures don't align with your long-term mission.</li><li>Your short-term measures became the mission and undermined the real work.</li></ul>

Ghost victories

<ul><li>“Rising tides” test. What else might explain the short-term success other than our efforts?</li><li>Misalignment test. How can we find misalignment as early as possible? What alternative measures could provide potential replacements?</li><li>Lazy bureaucrat test. What would someone do to succeed on the measures with the least possible effort?</li><li>Defiling-the-mission test. If short-term success undermines your long-term mission, what was the cause?</li><li>Unintended consequences test. What if we succeed at our mission, but cause negative unintended consequences? What should we pay attention to?</li></ul>

Find reliable ways to measure success

Banning plastic bags in San Diego caused serious unintended consequences.The deadly 2017 hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego is attributed to the lack of plastic bags. Homeless people used the bags to dispose of their own waste. But when the bags became hard to come by, the alternatives were much less sanitary.

Unintended consequences example

This book is about how to build a good product

Wall Street Journal Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention? Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

business

Business

Wall Street Journal Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention? Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

Dan Heath is a Senior Fellow at Duke University's CASE center. Dan has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. from the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin.He co-wrote a book titled Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard with his brother Chip Heath.

Dan Heath

Upstream

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