I think I’m pretty good at what I do for a living, but there are always ways to  improve. In a current project that I’m assigned to I’m working as a project manager. I’ll spare you the details of the project as they are rather uninteresting, but I will share one thing with you. How to elicit honest and genuine feedback from your co-workers.

The story

As a person I’m almost always looking for ways to improve my skills, be it social, communication, or anything in between. It is however not entirely trivial to get this feedback from people, or is it? How can I create a situation where my ‘subject’ will feel comfortable with telling me exactly what’s on their mind? The answer is rather simple, just ask them but be genuine and honest about your intent. I try and do what I preach. I decided to try this experiment at work.

I began with my own project manager and said I wanted to review my work, and performance so far. In the meeting I asked, that they with no hesitation or worry about ‘hurting’ me should tell me both the good and bad. I emphasised the fact that I can separate personal ‘attack’ from business. There were some good and some bad things. But, when I think about it there really only were  good things. The bad aren’t really bad, they are possibilities to change and improve. After all the purpose of this experiment was for me to learn more about myself. I did the same thing with someone that works in my project. The same thing, there were some good and some bad things.

The intention

One of my original goals with this was to establish more trust. Without trust very little can be achieved. I generally tend to, from the outset of any social contract, decide to trust the person I’m meeting or talking with. I guess to some extent this might be a naive and foolish thing to do, but honestly I feel it’s served me well. Why shouldn’t I? Surely it’s must not be better to distrust a person that I’ve never met? No, I’d much rather immediately trust the person and then let them decide what to do with that implicitly given trust. Of course, they’re not aware of it, but maybe it can be felt, I don’t know.

The results

The great thing about this little experiment was the outcome. Those asked almost seemed relieved to be able to freely speak their mind. I’m sure that they probably held back on some things, me being a crazy nuts and gojiberry eating vegan, but still, they did seem to speak their mind. What I find particularly interesting is that I was actually already aware of the things they mentioned. Oh, and I also didn’t bother trying to make excuses about the bad, but rather just acknowledged what they were saying.

Hopefully more trust was indeed built and by continually asking for feedback perhaps it can only get better? If someone asked me, what I myself have asked them, I think I would have more respect for that person. It shows that the person is not afraid of their potential vulnerabilities and also willing to expose those vulnerabilities. Granted, it’s difficult to be entirely objective in this regard because after all, I did ask these questions from a selfish perspective.

So, concluding, are you asking for it?

Do you often look up? I do and I also mean that literally. Whenever I’m on my way to work I often find myself staring up into the sky, for no real apparent reason. Having spent some time reflecting on this I actually think it represents a little bit of what I’m doing, or rather, trying to achieve. See, the sky and beyond is for all I know limitless. However looking down, into the ground, all I see are my own two feet and the ground on which I’m walking.

How is this relevant, to anything one might ask? Honestly, I still don’t know, I just like the idea. I’m very much a dreamer, often allowing myself to drift off into the distant nothing-is-impossible-land. Whenever I want to do something, I don’t limit myself to what is reasonable, or even rational, no, not me. I always imagine the unimaginable, the beyond of what should be possible. And why should I limit myself? These are my dreams to imagine and I will have nothing less.

So, what is it that I’m trying to achieve? Well, I’m reaching for the limitless. I don’t want to be confined to the rules of common sense. Not to be bound by the box of sanity. No, I want to be free. Free to imagine a life where nothing is impossible, where dreams are not just dreams but rather a visualization of a future to come. The sky is my guide. Each time I need to be cheered up all I have to do is look up. There it is. All the possibilities, the future, freedom, all that I desire.

Do you look up?

Maybe you’ve seen the movie ‘Click’ with Adam Sandler where he gets a universal remote for his life. He can choose at will to fast forward through ‘boring’ parts of but a consequences is that each time this particular ‘event’ occurs it will be automatically fast forwarded through again. Anyhow, I wasn’t planning on writing a review of it, but rather a feature of the remote, ‘Pause’.

Pausing is very powerful indeed. It will allow us to quickly run to the bathroom in the middle of a movie, make some more popcorn or perhaps just readjust the pillows for better comfort. But, I wasn’t actually thinking of the actual ‘Pause’ feature of most entertainment systems, but rather the pause button of life, yes there is one!

I spend far to little time pausing my life to just breath, relax and observe my surroundings. In the huzzle-buzzle of life, working a 9-5 job, getting consumed by doing is all to easy unfortunately. This is when it gets even more important to actually stop, put down the pen, remove oneself from the computer, make some tea, wrap oneself in a blanket and go sit outside and be quiet for a few minutes.

The sad thing is that each time I do this I get equally surprised at how calming, and nurturing it is, yet I only do it once in a while. It should be mandatory, just like having breakfast or breathing. Johanna and I have for the past two weekends spent at least an hour on our porch having breakfast and watching the sun climb the sky. It’s beautiful and utterly relaxing. I realize that we’re so very fortunate now with our new house in the countryside, but it hasn’t always been like this.

I can’t recall many days, before we got the house, where I just sat outside doing nothing. Having been on the move for the last 6-7 years, seeking a home, it has been nothing but unsettling and quite mentally draining. I could have benefited from pausing more often to appreciate the things I have and calm myself down.

That’s why I will attempt to spend more time doing nothing, pausing life to allow myself to be grounded and appreciate my current situation for what it is and what I have. I wouldn’t want to become the person that looks back at his life only to remember working and stressing about this and that.

Now I’m off for my morning walk.

I’m currently reading a book on software development practices. It’s not a regular book about the boring old, regular process. (Software requirements, use-cases and all that boring shit.) But, I will not bore you with the details, I just wanted to share something I realized while reading. While I’m sitting here reading about their approach to software development I can’t help but notice how extremely relevant this is for life in general. Read this (my notes):

• Create a clear vision
• Fuck the details, get the stuff working
• Don’t deal with problems that doesn’t yet exist
• Don’t try and please everyone
• Focus on the absolute minimum, features can come later
• Essentials only, cut the crap
• Better be a no-man, than a yes-man (Perhaps not applicable to all, but certainly to some!)
• Make only promises I can actually keep
• Iterative development is key

See what I mean? Pretty much all of these (except for, you know which one) are totally applicable to life. Take ‘Fuck the details, get the stuff working’. I could definitely use some of this in my life. How often do I find myself obsessing about details, when all I should focus on is to actually get something done. It’s almost laughable how often I do this. Details, details, details…

‘Essentials only, cut the crap’, another good one. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with all the stuff I have in my house, and it’s distracting. These days, since having become aware of the problem, I make an effort into telling myself no, especially when it comes to ‘getting stuff’. Thinking in terms of ‘Essentials only, cut the crap’ isn’t exactly bad advice.

My favourite is probably ‘Iterative development is key’. This really is true for life. Don’t try and design and figure out life in one go, it will never, ever go the way it was ‘supposed’ to. It’s much better to start doing something, anything, then make small adjustments through an iterative process. Trying to get rid of a bad habit? Iterative development! Do it in stages. Don’t try and do it all at once… do it iteratively, one small piece at a time. Trying to learn how to paint? Don’t bother with getting amazing results the first time, it won’t happen (definitely not for me anyway). Iterate, one stroke at a time until you reach some results, they may not be the desired results, but they are results nonetheless.

If you’re interested in reading the book yourself, you can find it here.

It’s quite funny (or sad) when I think about it, but this is one of the few books that I’ve read through and finished in a long time, the last one was probably ‘The Da Vinci Code’. This is not to say that I’m a “light” book reader, quite the opposite, I love reading. However, the books on my shelf are not those of fiction, but non-fiction, hard to plow through factual and technical books. You see I’ve always assumed I didn’t like reading “normal” books, another one of my silly assumptions. Books that I’ve read have pretty much only been related to work, because that’s where I could apply my newly acquired knowledge. I couldn’t possibly learn anything from a normal books. Silly, silly Christoffer.

buy at Amazon

The Unincorporated Man is a sort of science-fiction story about a man that discovers he has terminal liver cancer, Justin. It’s important to point out that while the book is set in the future, it’s much, much deeper than a pure science-fiction light sabre type of story, trust me. Moving on. Justin is an incredibly successful business man with heaps of cash. Death is unacceptable and the only way forward is cryogenics, and hope for a cure in the future. A brilliant scientist builds him the life tank he needs and off to the future he goes.

This is where the story really begins and becomes incredibly interesting. The writers have imagined a future where every person born immediately becomes his, or her, own corporation with stocks. This is due to the Grand Collapse, portrayed as our present time, where the entire financial system collapsed under its own weight and because derived monetary value was never attached to reality but to the perceived value. (This really is how our economy works today!)

The government, no longer powerful, gets a mandatory 5% of all your future generated income. Your family gets 20%, the rest are up for grabs. You then start the long journey towards self-majority (>50%), or super-majority (>70%). Age is not longer a problem, we’ve reverse engineered that, and we can easily become either 20 or 70, no difference. Justin, the unincorporated man, faces the biggest challenge of all, being unincorporated in an incorporated world.

The book is very much about exploring social dogmas, and putting them on their edge. Governments with very little power, and where corporations have massive amounts of power. The birth incorporation idea is brilliant and the book carefully explains, through storytelling, the pros and cons of such a future. Being personally involved with your “investments” mean that you’ve got a vested interest in ensuring the well-being of your “assets”. The book explores the consequences of giving up bit by bit of freedom and the impact technology can have when used in the wrong context. Virtual reality becomes so real that people prefer that reality over the real reality, leading to the inevitable Grand Collapse.

It’s a brilliant story, filled with drama, technologically intriguing ideas and most of all highly entertaining from beginning to end. I highly recommend this book.