Getting Sh*t done ! Ten myths that highly effective people do not fall for..

“Did you hit my brother ?”, he asks menacingly. There are eleven of them, averaging around age twenty. Big, tough looking guys from the other side of the tracks. The physical contrast makes the 15 year old Roy look smaller than his five feet six inches. He looks the taller guy in the eye and calmly states, “Yes I did. I will do it again if he provokes me. And I will break the face of the first one among you who touches me now”. A lot of glaring and cursing ensues. Curiously but, no one touches Roy yet. They wait for him to look down or back away. He doesn’t. Finally, after a long pregnant pause the older guy says gruffly, “ I am letting you go today. But dare you repeat this again, and you will face the consequences !”. Roy keeps staring insolently into his eyes without blinking. The gang leaves. Roy turns back to his best friend and asks for a cigarette.

“Wow ! Weren’t you nervous ?”, asks his best friend as they light up Charminars.

“Of course I was”, says Roy with a wink. “But why should I let those jerks know that I was nervous ?”. They both break into laughter. Like 15 year olds usually do.

That best friend was me. And I was assimilating one of my earlier lessons in life that my university course wouldn’t teach me.

Roy had, what they call Street Smarts, a survival kit you assemble from your environment and not from a fancy B-School.

Over the course of my years , I have collected a few lessons from people like Roy. The weirdos and oddballs from my own tribe and beyond . They are the folksy, earthy ones who might not have patience to sit through a Power Point festival , and who like getting to the point in the first few minutes . What’s the problem ? How do we solve it ? What can I personally do here ? What more do I need ? So on.

In short, they are ones who get sh*t done. No matter what their walk of life be, they are effective people. Not in a 7-point Stephen Covey-ish way perhaps, but with a unique rule book that they write and live by. Their rule book that defies conventional wisdom. Actually , it mocks conventional wisdom and turns it on its head.

Here are the top 10 myths that such highly effective Doers don’t fall for. 

1. Follow your passion – In recent years, thanks to an overdose of wisdom literature from self-appointed Gurus, the world has been consumed by what we call, a Passion Hypothesis , urging every youngster to chase his / her passion, resulting in a collective disillusionment among millions of youngsters who can’t figure out why they do not seem to make it big in spite of chasing their teenage dream with all sincerity. I have rarely seen an effective individual fall for this trapping. Does that mean that they are not passionate about their work ? Of course not ! But they do not start with a singular passion. They discover their passion along the way as they navigate through their serendipitous journey, tinkering to check what works and what doesn’t. They keep fine tuning till they discover their sweet spot. Then they go all in.
2. The first mover advantage – Highly effective people understand that being first to rush into something could potentially prove disadvantageous at times. They prefer being improvers over being pioneers , whether it comes to voicing an opinion, or investing themselves in an initiative.  (Quick example – Consider Facebook over My Space or Orkut . Or the classic story of Dean Camen and the flop of Segway ) . These people rarely venture into spaces unknown, fooled by one big passionate vision. Unlike a hedgehog who holds to one big view of the world, an effective person is like a fox. He bids for his time, he waits for others to do the mistakes, and give up. He learns. Then he steps in.
3. Burn your boats – As a contemporary adaptation of 16th century Spanish commander, Hernando Cortez’s strategy when he set foot on Mexico, there is this big myth we are lured into which urges us to put ‘all at stake’ and go in with a ‘no-retreat’ option if we are really serious about a goal. While I have been personally guilty of following this bit of wisdom at different times in my life, I have rarely seen the super effective folks do that. Even if they burn their boats, they keep a life boat handy. They never bet on the unknown without a suitable Plan B. Sometimes, even a Plan C. They know that in life, and in work, even the best laid plans fail.
4. Don’t look trouble in the eye – I mentioned Roy. People like him don’t blink when they see trouble. They stare back, till trouble itself looks away. Even when they are nervous and unsure. Especially when they are nervous and unsure. There is something about boldness that makes adversities shrink in size and that gets the universe to deflect its curve balls.
5. Be Punctual. Don’t procrastinate - The ‘Zeigarnik effect” named after Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik , states that people tend to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks more than completed ones. Some of the most effective people are strategic procrastinators who get into snooze mode in between tasks , which in turn allows them to gain insights at the back of their heads. In other words, you don’t need to be the first in order to be effective . ( Quick fact byte - Did you know that the “ I have a dream" phrase was not even there as part of Dr. King’s original speech, but a last minute on-stage improvisation, that went ahead and changed the history of the modern world ?). Interestingly, these people always arrive fashionably late to the party. As Adam Grant quips in his book, ‘Originals’ , you really need a lot of discipline to delay.
6. Think out of the box - There is a café called Lindy in New York that prides itself for its cheesecake. However, the real reason why it is famous is because, over the past many decades, physicians and mathematicians have validated a peculiar heuristic that evolved from there. Apparently, this is a place where artists would assemble to discuss the work & fate of other artistes. And it has been observed ( and proven multiple times over) that a show that lasts 100 days on Broadway, is likely to last for 100 more, and a show that lasts for 200 days, is likely to last for 200 more. And so on. Known as “Lindy Effect”, this phenomenon has established time and again, that non-perishable things such as concepts, impressions, social trends etc tend to obey the law of time, that is - if something has worked for X units of time in the past, chances are that it will work for X more units of time in the future. So while fads might come and go, the core basics of human existence will stay consistent. (Quick fact check – do a Google on the highest selling books or the most loved movies of the past century. You won’t find the latest bestseller or the last Billion dollar grosser movie on the list, but you are surely going to find the time tested classics there, which have survived the bullshit filter of many generations) . As is said - Laws will come and go. Ethics will stay. Fashion is temporary, class is timeless. Super effective people respect the box . They understand that the box is Lindy and 75% of life must pass through it. Like someone joked , if everyone is thinking out of the box, something must be wrong with the box.
7. Be a specialist – As technology keeps devouring regular jobs, it will keep spinning off new professions that need human intervention. Effective people understand that their professional toolkit of the future is not going to be a function of their skin color or a laminated diploma from a certain university, but rather it will be their ability to live like a constant immigrant who is comfortable in a movable tent rather than a concrete home, their craftsmanship when it comes to that one thing they do better today than others , and their Zen to accept themselves as constant work in progress. Till the last century , people still had the liberty to freeze themselves as a commodity and peddle themselves in the job market. The workforce of the future cannot afford that, where, being a specialist will actually be a liability. The most effective people are specialized generalists, always in Beta version – testing themselves, tuning themselves and adapting themselves to new realities.
8. Have a work-life balance – Till some years back, there was this huge hype created through articles and workshops that implored us to re-think around how we should compartmentalize our work and life. Effective people never fall for such fads. They respect the fact that the lines between work and life are often dotted , and work is not something separate from life but is a part of life. They understand that personal life is not an umbrella they leave at the door when they enter their work space. And vice versa . These people carry their entire selves around, whether in work or in life, prioritizing priorities over rules. For them, getting things done is way more important than the where or the when.
9. Be authentic – Yet another fallout of the digitally over-connected world of today where most people are lured into an authenticity illusion, mistaking their digital identity for authenticity. So they engage in lengthy public displays of affection towards their family on social media to be considered as caring and they have this burning urgency to be news broadcasters and social commentators on every contemporary topic through their Twitter handle as they engage in what I call, the 140-character empathy. In this age of overkill of self-aggrandization, the highly effective people are contrarians. They seldom have a very active social media identity. Nor do they commit to or condemn every fad that is trending for the day. They understand that a chimpanzee can afford to be authentic in public. An effective human being must have some propriety.
10.  Cause and effect – Effective people understand that there is a lot that they do not know or do not know well. They rarely have the intellectual arrogance that they know all the levers to pull to get their desired outcomes. They have the sense to accept that life is never a linear cause and effect project . There will always be efforts that won’t bear fruit and there will always be an occasional windfall when least expected. They have a healthy sense of self-respect that they earn over a period of time, experimenting with life, dabbling in daily moral adventures to develop a modest outlook on how the universe works. When things go their way, they are grateful. When they do not, they are graceful. They wait for the cycle to change.

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