Focus on changes
Written by Ivan Zamesin, CEO & Founder at The Product Gene
In December 2017 I had to learn doing something I never knew or liked doing, which was selling. I didn’t have a job, money in my account was slowly coming to an end and I absolutely did not believe in myself. I thought “well, I doubt I’m a DOPE PM, but I’m okay, I guess”. I had a hypothesis that I could earn money via a) consulting and b) conducting workshops, but I didn’t know FOR SURE if I could earn that way.
To start testing the hypothesis that I could earn by consulting, I spoke to a few experts (special thanks to Nikolai Zayarniy) and asked how they achieved it, what they were doing with it now, what were the right things to do and focus on.
And one of the important skills one needs to learn to start working as a consultant is being able to sell yourself AND doing it a lot.
I had very serious barriers to overcome before I could sell. Among them were: lack of confidence in myself and my self-worth, not knowing how to sell, slight contempt towards the act of selling in general (I thought that the only products someone sells are the ones that don’t sell themselves, in other words, they were being flogged) and a terrible fear of failure.
Surprisingly, a chat I started with friends to develop habits helped a great deal. Every month we picked a new skill or habit to implement in our daily lives. In August we started writing affirmations, in September-October exercising regularly, in December writing a post every day, and in January-February we chose to work on our courage.
The Jewish have a “superpower” called hutzpa — the gall and ability to achieve what one wants despite both real and fictional (made-up in one’s head) societal pressure. So, we implemented hutzpa. Everyone made a plan for themselves to do 10 and 20 uncomfortable things in Jan and Feb and dove into it.
And after a long while it turned out that if you keep overcoming yourself and doing very scary things, selling becomes EXTREMELY EASY. All the barriers (90% of which are fictional) leave the mind and the act of selling turns into a common task, same as answering an email.
Thanks to the chat, I was able to start earning money by consulting and it gave me an opportunity to work with A LOT of cases, as well as helping me polish the instrument I teach at my customer development course. In other words, this was only for the best.
BUT
The most important thing here is not exactly what I did to start selling, but the fact that I had an ecosystem in which I acquired new skills.
Here’s everything we know about the way brain works so far:
- Most of our decisions are made subconsciously based on previous experiences (I think for me this amount is about 95%)
- Fears are extremely serious AND they don’t let us react in a new way
- Brain is very quick to fall back into old habits
- Personality and freedom to choose don’t exist as such (check out Sapiens and Homo Deus to learn more on that)
- According to this book, each day our neocortex gives us about 2–4 hours to make decisions before we fall back into automatic reactions.
All of that brings us to the fact that if I want to achieve more, I have to focus on one thing: constantly changing my subconscious responses, which includes the ability to change AND create an environment in which it would become easier for me to switch from my usual way of responding.
To change means to acquire new skills, new habits, give up old ones, learn and solve new problems.
Changing our subconscious responses
Each new skill gives us an opportunity to automatically react in a more interesting way. For instance, my skill of knowing how to sell subconsciously helped me to sell a “company-paid psychological help” service to a company I conduct a workshop at. If I didn’t have this skill, once I heard “we’re actually in search of a therapist” I would probably think “that would have been cool to try” but likely didn’t have the guts to actually do it. But because of my skill, I said “hey, awesome, show me to the HR”.
Every new helpful habit (and giving up on the old ones) lets you do the following things via compound effect:
- be healthier — drink water instead of coffee and practice intermittent fasting
- be happier — say 5 good things every evening (I highly recommend reading The Happiness Advantage), meditate, get help from a therapist
- and most important, doing all of that SUBCONSCIOUSLY!
Constant learning helps you make better decisions. This is how you can learn all the time:
- read a book for an hour every day
- talk to a smart person every week
- test 10 hypotheses a month in your project
- crunch new mental models
- Learn systematic thinking
- Seek interdisciplinary patterns
- Crunch systematic and critical thinking
And as a result, I make decisions subconsciously, because I have neurons that:
- analyze the world better and try to build a more realistic image of the world through mental models and the skill of asking the right questions in each specific situation
- account for more factors
- provide more accurate solutions based on an understanding of interdisciplinary systems, mental models and different thinking principles.
And all of that also occurs subconsciously!
Environment of constant changes
Remember that the biggest part (95%) of my responses are automatic and undetectable (but dramatically rationalized after the fact) and when I acquire a new habit, it comes with GREAT difficulty, because the brain keeps resisting anything new and says: “hey, buddy, everything was cool, what the hell are doing?” and instead of giving up drinking coffee I’m ordering my second flat white (with 4 shots of espresso, for the record) in a row. That’s why it’s really important to help the changes occur by changing the environment.
- I want to quit drinking coffee, so instead of having breakfast in a coffeeshop I’m having breakfast at home or in places where they don’t make coffee
- I’m giving up on using social networks and the same 10 websites every day, so I install Parental Control, switch all of my devices to grayscale, prohibit downloading new apps and give the Parental Control password to my girlfriend
- I’m doing sports, so I gather a group of people who do it regularly and learn to exercise together and motivate each other
- I’m learning visual thinking, so I hired a trainer, paid for 10 workouts in advance and asked the trainer to MAKE ME come to the gym even if I really want to find an excuse not to.
Derivative
BUT, at any moment in time we can focus on just one, maybe two applicable things. Today my relationship feels rocky, so that needs fixing. Tomorrow I’ve got a complicated work project. In a year I want to go to Burning Man. In two years, I want to have a healthier heart, blood vessels and overall state. All of that requires different skills, habits and focuses. Getting a new habit is awesome! Crunching a new skill or mental model is awesome! But it’s even more awesome to constantly change and make new skills, getting rid of old ones, improving decision-making a common, routine process. We can focus on one thing. I choose to focus on constant changes. And through constant change I acquire new skills, habits and my decision-making improves as well. Imagine that the standard (satisfaction, quality of life, happiness, you name it) of your life is measured by a number.
To me, it can be measured if I count the following 5 things:
- Fun and games
- Love
- Decision-making principles
- Basic quality of life (health, satisfaction of basic needs)
- Luck
Conscious thinking is divided between decision-making, love and leisure. And at any point in time I can focus on one, two things max.
In math, the changes in a graph are defined by a derivative. I keep this concept in mind and ask myself — what should I devote my energy to so that the quality of my life improves?
I imagine coming up to the luck graph (or love graph, etc.), sitting down, taking the derivative in both hands and trying the best I can to lift it up. And after a few months of such efforts I look back and I’m OFTEN amazed by the result.
And this focus is on one and major thing — constant changing. Constantly trying to lift the derivative of one of the most important aspects of my life.
Process
After every four-week-epic AND every personal sprint I ask myself the following:
- What is my weakest and strongest point?
- What can I do during a four-week-epic and this sprint, to improve my weak point and realize the full potential of the strongest one?
- What kind of cool Definition of Done is there for this epic’s or this week’s result?
And now, for the magic!
Of course, the most changes I plan simply DO NOT OCCUR! 70–80% of skills/habits/mental models/practices I give up half-way, and that’s completely normal. But, considering that 20–30% do stick, it gives me a relatively good pace of developing new habits, improving my decision-making, health, happiness, love and luck. And these 20–30 % are truly enough, to grow at a pretty rapid pace!
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