I recently had to write a recommendation letter for a colleague, and as I never start from a blank page, I went back to some of the letters that were written for me, and noticed one phrase repeatedly come up…”Amina has a good grasp of the fundamentals”.
I’m kicking off the year with some reflections on lessons I’m carrying into the new year (and decade), and since I always try to have a good grasp of the fundamentals in every area of my life, let’s start there:
Life:
- Protect your time and energy
While there are many variants to the law of energy conservation, its essence is the same: the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; energy can neither be created nor destroyed but is transformed or transferred from one form to another.
As your responsibilities grow with time, you learn that you neither have the time nor the energy to do everything and deal with everyone, so it becomes increasingly important to be more intentional about defining your priorities, setting boundaries, and simply say “no” more often…without explaining or apologizing.
Two questions you can always use to guide your decisions:
- How is this activity/person helping me grow?
- Am I feeling energized or drained engaged in this activity/being with this person?
2. Manage your attention
Related to the previous point, I’m currently reading the book Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey, and he starts off by introducing the attention space as what you are aware of at any given time. Your attention is finite and it can process only a tiny fraction of the millions of ‘bits’ of information streaming in from your environment. Studies show that on average, the capacity of one’s working memory is limited to 4 meaningful items at a time.
So choose wisely.
Business:
3. Know how to build and nurture relationships
There is this lady who sells grilled corn down the corner from my place, and everytime I pass by, the smell evokes vivid memories of summer vacations spent with my family at Mombasa’s lighthouse. But she hasn’t been able to capitalize on my nostalgia, and this is why…
The two times I actually stopped to buy from her, she gave me so much attitude, you’d think I was stealing from her rather than buying, so I decided not to buy from her anymore because the experiences were too unpleasant.
As I’ve written before, one thing you learn when you come from an entrepreneurial family is this; relationships lie at the heart and center of any business; relationships with your suppliers, your employees, and your customers.
For some reason, many businesses in the market forget that businesses don’t do business with businesses, but people do business with people. Small gestures matter.
Interesting enough, managing relationships is an area that does not come naturally to me because I prefer my own company. I always tell the story of spending a long weekend once for UAE’s National Day where I didn’t talk to a single human being and I was totally fine with it.
Actually, it was only towards the end did I even realize that the only text messages I received during that time were from Pizza Hut telling me they’ve opened a new branch at Yas Mall.
So to work with this natural tendency of mine to completely disappear into my own head, I built a process for nurturing relationships that works with my energy, and now my mantra has become, “Stick to the process”. Now, I would talk more about my process but that’s an idea for another post.
Personal Growth:
4. Your environment greatly shapes who you are.
I always write that you’re the triple integral of your values, experiences, and environment.
So before leaving the UAE in 2017, I passed by Dubai to bid one of my closest friends farewell in person, and we were in her car on the way to the tailor when she said, “Honestly, I’m glad this happened.”
Of course, her statement surprised me at first. I had expected some empathy from her. I felt like I was being kicked out of the closest thing to home I knew. I have been in the country since I was in diapers. I watched the Dubai skyline change from one where the most iconic building was the Dubai World Trade Center to Burj Khalifa. I saw Abu Dhabi’s Corchine with and without the volcano fountain.
But then she explained that I was too far in my comfort zone in the UAE, and that I was capable of so many greater things if only I were in a more challenging environment, and she was hoping Kenya would provide the right conditions for me to thrive.
Now I realize she was right.
You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only option, and environments do matter in shaping who you are.
Creativity:
5. Just ship
One thing you learn working in product teams is the value of shipping rapid prototypes and getting feedback from your intended audience without a huge upfront investment. You don’t want to spend years building something and ‘perfecting’ it only to discover that the entire product is being built on false assumptions and the market doesn’t really want it.
The same applies to any creative project. Whether you want to start a blog or a youtube channel, stop waiting until you can afford web hosting services or a great camera. Just start somewhere and go from there.
These are a couple of related interesting ideas I came across last week;
Use the 1-50 rule highlighted here that asks the question: How can I build and launch this in ONE day and still deliver 50% of the results?
Another idea is flinstoning – basically when your app, product, or business itself lacks a feature… but, you can make up for it manually.
Honestly, despite blogging for years, I still struggle to hit publish sometimes. As an example, I’ve been sitting on this particular post since December. I thought I would build a series around it titled 20 lessons to carry into 2020 and share 5 lessons every post. But then the idea became so complicated, and I just realized I should follow my own advice and ship, so here it is. It might turn into a series so who knows.
Also, you learn most times that what is stopping you from hitting publish is really a fear of judgment and ridicule from others, so if it makes you feel any better…there are high chances that not many people are going to read it so just ship and see where it goes.
“You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.”— Will Smith
ThrowbackSunday
So this year, I finally unpacked my boxes from Abu Dhabi (yes, about time) and retrieved my personal journals. I often get asked what it takes to write at my skill-level, and the honest truth is it takes 20+ years worth of filling such journals.
So here’s a question for you; to read or not to read?
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