Professional Development

Quick hits: Taking control of emotions

Thinking about thinking
~ Steven McNutt ~ Leave a comment

Greetings programs!

I recently took a course on critical thinking, and I would like to share a couple of ideas about working with emotions and using them as a diagnostic tool.

Thinking about thinking
Thinking about thinking

Think—>Feel—>Want

If we look at how the human mind works, we can simplify the order of operations down to three steps:

  • Thinking
  • Feeling
  • Wanting
Credit: ‘Critical Thinking’ By Richard Paul and Linda Elder

The implications of this are rather profound. If our emotions are driven by our thoughts, it follows that we can change our emotional experience of the world by changing our thinking.

It further follows that if we’re having emotions that don’t seem particularly helpful, such as a generally negative outlook, than the key is to examine the thinking that led to those feelings. Which brings us to the second idea.

Check your assumptions

Assumptions represent our implicit beliefs about the world, and they are usually subconscious in nature. We use assumptions to rapidly interpret and make decisions. This pretty helpful in a situation where we need to react immediately such as taking evasive action to avoid a car accident. They are less helpful when they are used to make judgments based on a perspective or situation that’s no longer relevant, such as being an adult instead of a child.

Credit: ‘Critical Thinking’ By Richard Paul and Linda Elder

If we want to evaluate our thinking, and we know that our thinking is driven by subconscious assumptions, we have to find a way to bring those assumptions to the surface so we can take a look at them. How can we do that? We can ask questions!

Questions we might ask:

  • What is the goal of this thinking? What problem am I trying to solve?
  • What questions am I trying to answer?
  • What facts do I have?
  • What perspective am I looking at this from?

Putting it together

Once we’ve brought these assumptions to the surface, we can decide if they’re relevant and make sense. If they are, we now have an explicit reason and supporting argument to underpin our thinking.

If our assumptions don’t hold up, and we have no good supporting facts or reasons behind our thinking, then we can go back and look at the purpose of the thinking and see if it makes sense to reframe things in a way that can be supported by facts or reasons.

  • Maybe I’m just tired or hungry.
  • Maybe it’s something I can’t control and I have to let go.
  • Maybe it’s an unhealthy a situation I need to extract myself from
  • Maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective

Wrap up

Welp, that’s it for today. I hope was interesting and/or useful, and I’ll see you around.

-s

Professional Development #1: Skillsets – T, Pi, & Stacking

~ Steven McNutt ~ 1 Comment

Greetings Programs!

Today we’re going to talk about managing skillsets over time to give oneself the best chance of long term career success and contentment.

Pi shaped skillset: Sun and lighthouse

Introduction

In a perfect world we would all be geniuses with photographic memories and could maintain the maximum attained level of skill for anything we trained for. Sadly this is not how it works for 99.99 percent of the population. It takes time and effort to develop skill, and when we stop doing that thing, skill deteriorates, memory fades.

What’s more, we now live in the age of digital transformation, a time of rapid change and upheaval. There is a good chance that the job you are doing today will not exist in 20 years.

When we combine the perishability of knowledge and skills with a rapidly evolving workplace, it’s self evident that it would be wise to implement some sort of strategy. I have come across several, which I will cover in the following paragraphs. Let’s start with the one everyone knows: T shaped Skillset.

T Shaped Skillset

T-shape skillset example

The T is the classic skillset mix that’s been promoted for a very long time. It’s based on the notion of developing deep expertise in one discipline, with a set of supporting skills around it. This was a very successful industrial age strategy and what a typical university education is designed to produce.

The fundamental problem with the T is it’s very risky in the current day and age. To use an old analogy, if you’re an expert in making buggy whips and people start buying cars, you’re going to have to reskill, and that takes time. You’re going to have a lot of downtime of not making much money while the reskilling is occurring. Been there, done that, not the best strategy for today.

The obvious solution is to have a plan B. Which brings us to the next strategy.

Pi Shaped Skillset

Pi shaped skillset

With a Pi shaped skillet, you cultivate a secondary skillset alongside the primary skillset you use in your day job. Second Skilling is a way to ramp up on emerging or disruptive technology without the income and career impact of reskilling. Additionally it also has the benefit of some cross-pollination, where deeply learned skills can be used across knowledge domains.

There is a third common strategy which typically seen with self employed and business owners/entrepreneurs, which we will cover next.

Skill Stacking

Skill stacking

Skill stackers take a number of skills and combine them to good effect. You don’t have to be particularly great at any of them, but you know how to combine them to produce results. Skill stackers tend to be independent consultants, business owners, inventors, and entrepreneurs.

Skill stacking leverages the concept of the Pareto Principle, which states that approximately 80% of results come from 20% of effort.

In his 2011 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the ten thousand hour rule, which roughly translates to the idea that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master something.

If we combine these two ideas of the Pareto Principle and the 10,000 hour rule, we come up with the idea that if we invest approximately 2000 hours of effort in learning and practicing something, we’re getting some real efficiency out of our time, which enables us to have a broader and deeper skillset than we might otherwise be capable of.

Broadening and Creativity

One thing I have observed, is that broadening your horizons and learning a little about a lot of things, particularly in the arts, can beneficial on a number of levels. For example, Nobel prize winning Scientists are 2.85 times more likely to engage in arts and crafts than their counterparts.

Closing thoughts

Anya really wants some fish. If only she had opposable digits and a fishing pole

We live in a world where to stay relevant professionally, we have to be agile; always preparing ourselves for the next opportunity. It’s exciting and frightening at the same time. Having a strategy to stay in position to take advantage of new opportunities is really important. I hope you enjoyed the read, and I’ll see you around.

-s