Issue #7

Improve your focus, overcome decision making bias, and dive into how Pixar makes its magic ✨

Author

Stride Team 🐶
November 01, 2022

7 Cover Image Getting Things Done

This week's AI prompt: beautiful bound notebook and pen and coffee mug on table, splashes of colour, high-resolution

We’re back at it with Issue #7! Thank you to everyone who has given feedback on the newsletter to help us make it as useful and relevant for you as possible. We now have readers from every corner of the world and we’re excited to continue to grow this audience!

You can help us immensely by sharing this newsletter with your friends, or even tweeting about us or the content /links you see in this newsletter (please tag @hello_stride). Thank you to those of you who are already spreading the word, you’re the real MVP 🌟

WHAT'S INSIDE

  • 🧠 Set up systems to improve your focus, and use a tool from psychology to put an end to procrastination 

  • ⏳ What we can immediately remember influences how we make decisions - sometimes for the worse. Learn about the availability heuristic and how to avoid bad decisions from lazy thinking (Note: managers of remote teams - please read the article at the end of this week's mental model section)

  • 💻 Open leadership roles (fully remote!) at fast-growing startups backed by Y Combinator, a16z, and more

  • ✏️ Pixar never skimps on the details when it comes to research for their movies

A DEEPER DIVE: FOCUS & DEEP WORK

Last week in our Mental Model of the Week, we talked about the Importance-Urgency Matrix and how it can help you focus on the things that matter. But focus runs deeper than just prioritization - how many times have you committed to getting 8 hours of sleep, only to find yourself up at midnight scrolling through cute puppy vids 🐶 on the ‘Gram (or is that just us 😅)?

Today we wanted to turn our attention — yes, we’ve got puns for days — to the topic of focus and deep work. We hope the articles below help you unleash your inner productivity powerhouse 💪

What is Deep Work? Boost Concentration With 7 Tips [2022] • Asana

Deep work is a state of peak concentration that lets you learn hard things and create quality work quickly. Learn 7 steps to leverage deep work today.

What it's about: The team at Asana shares insights from psychology and productivity research so you can maximize the efficiency of your focus time

TLDR / Key Takeaways

  • Deep work (coined by Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport) is a state of peak concentration that pushes your cognitive capacities to their limit and helps you learn hard skills and create quality work output

  • Deep work’s converse, shallow work, pertains to logistical-style tasks that can be performed while somewhat distracted, like work coordination and communication tasks that are easy to replicate. Asana’s research suggests that 60% of knowledge workers’ time is spent on coordination tasks like answering email, coordinating projects, and scheduling meetings

  • To build your capacity for deep work, create rituals to increase your focus. Consider organizing your work environment, keeping any necessary supporting materials you need on hand, calendaring your deep work time, and adding certain triggers to signify the start of deep work (for example lighting a candle, listening to a specific type of music, or dressing a certain way)

  • 80% of knowledge workers report working with their inbox open and nearly three out of four employees feel pressured to multitask every day. Since it’s a well known fact that context switching actually slows down your productivity, try to avoid digital distractions by closing unnecessary tabs, snoozing notifications on your phone and apps on your computer, and scheduling focus breaks so that you’re less tempted to give in to distractions

How to break the anxiety-fear-avoidance cycle

Using ACT to move toward what matters.

What it's about: Founder and executive coach Casey Rosengren gives an overview of a tool from psychology research called the ACT Matrix, and how to use it to work through task avoidance (i.e. procrastination or feeling stuck)

TLDR / Key Takeaways

  • “The ACT Matrix is a tool to help us better understand where avoidance is coming from and how it’s driving our behavior. Ultimately, it’s meant to help us make new choices with our actions, even when facing things we’d typically avoid.”

  • The ACT Matrix divides the world among two axes: Towards vs. Away and Inside vs. Outside. Towards vs. Away is the ‘carrot vs. stick’ distinction; Towards activities are motivated by a future reward, Away activities are motivated by the avoidance of punishment. Inside vs. Outside is in relation to your person; Inside refers to experiences happening within you (i.e. thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations) and Outside are behaviors in the outside world

  • The anxiety-fear-avoidance cycle arises when our behavior is overrun by away  moves. By more deeply understanding how your internal experience changes as a result of pressures, you will be able to continue moving towards what matters, even in the face of challenges

  • The matrix comprises of four quadrants that unpack elements relating to the two axes:

    • Who or what do I care about? (inside-toward)

    • What does it look like when I'm moving toward what I care about? (outside-toward)

    • What difficult thoughts and feelings get in the way? (inside-away)

    • What does it look like when I'm focused on avoiding or lessening those thoughts and feelings? (outside-away)

  • By thinking through how these questions apply in your own life, you’re able to understand sources of anxiety and what happens internally and externally in the face of challenges. The ACT Matrix is not a tool for getting rid of challenging thoughts and feelings, but rather a way to learn how to adapt and adopt new behaviors in their presence

MENTAL MODEL OF THE WEEK: THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC

Earlier in your career, did you ever see a co-worker get promoted who wasn’t even particularly good at their job, simply because they were well-networked with management? Or have you ever bought something at the store when it was on sale at a steep discount, even though you wouldn’t have even considered buying that same item if the sale price had been the original price?

These are examples of the Availability Heuristic, and its one of the most potentially fallible decision-making shortcuts that our minds take in our complex and fast-moving world.

Availability Heuristic

For: Decision making

What is it: A human tendency to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent

When it’s used: Fast decision making, influencing others

When it’s NOT used: Complex or nuanced decisions

Psychologists often give the analogy of the brain as a computer. And just like a computer, our brains seek out ways to most efficiently process large volumes of information. Some of these unconscious energy-saving tactics are problematic, because, when used by people in power to make decisions, they can breed inequities and discrimination. Or even simply just get you to the plain wrong answer.

The availability heuristic is the catch-all term for this efficiency shortcut, though it takes on different forms, such as the primacy-recency effect, anchoring, and different types of overconfidence biases. Essentially, our brains (particularly when pressed for time) tend to make decisions based on how easily similar instances come to mind, with an assumption that what we recall is all that there is (in other words, we decide that whatever we remember is sufficient information to make the decision). 

The mediocre employee that we mentioned in the opening paragraph got their promotion not based on an objective assessment of their work performance, but because the boss remembered frequently interacting positively with them and then assumed that meant they were a good worker. Likewise, when you bought that item on sale, because the discount was large you subconsciously kept the original price point fresh in your mind and chose to buy it based on the value you expected you’d get from buying other items at that expensive price point.

The best way to avoid falling for the availability heuristic is by contextualizing your decision and gathering more data. This might look like getting an outside opinion, or just giving yourself more time to do research and gather other confirmatory or refuting information. While this approach to decision-making takes more time and effort, data-driven decision making is more equitable and less prone to human errors in judgment.

YOUR NEXT STRIDE

We’ve streamlined the Jobs section to make it more scannable. Here are our 5 top jobs of the week! If you want to share an open role, please use this form.

OFF HOURS

Wellness 🏅

If you have stiff or aching shoulders, you’ll want to try this quick 10 minute routine. Jay had a nagging rotator cuff injury and this instantly cleared up 80-90% of the pain! 

Watch 

14 Peaks â›° The ultimate story of endurance. 14 Peaks is the story of Nepalese mountaineer Nimsdai Purja MBE who embarks on a quest to scale all 14 of the world’s peaks above 8,000 metres in 7 months

Read 📚

Think like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol. Nine strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life—whether it’s landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Fun fact: Varol was on the team at NASA's 2003 Mars Exploration Rover project, which sent two rovers to examine the Martian surface

Listen 🎧

The Secret to Being Lucky. Tech exec and entrepreneur Shaan Puri from the My First Million podcast loves frameworks. In this short episode, he talks about useful ways to think about and increase your opportunities for luck

Doing Good ❤️

We're adding a new section! Every week, we'll share one cause to learn about and support. If there are any causes that you're involved with, let us know and we'll feature it! 

The Latika Roy Foundation is a voluntary organization in India that has worked for nearly three decades with children and adults who have developmental and other disabilities. They’re fundraising for India’s first state-of-the-art campus for disabled children and their families

RANDOM BUT INTERESTING

This section is going to feature one material a week that we found interesting - but couldn’t really fit it in anywhere else. You can think of it as coming down the rabbit hole of curiosity with us just because — or fodder / anecdotes for your next speech 🤷🏽‍♀️

We’re in Mexico City now, and the city is magical for Dia de los Muertos. In the spirit of the season, we re-watched Coco and read up on the intense research Disney Pixar did to make sure the movie was authentic. This led us down the rabbit hole learning more about Pixar’s approach to research and detail in their movies. 

SHARE THE LOVE

That’s all for this week. Have a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ week ahead!

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Hasta Luego 👋🏽