⚒️ Toolbox #3 - Motivation Slumps, Priming Difficult Conversations and To-Not Do Lists

🛠️ Welcome to the Weekly Toolbox. Our most practical resources, tools and strategies so you can level up each week in minutes.

1. 4 Tools To Overcome a Motivation Slump | BrainTools #57

Our mini episode giving you 4 practical BrainTools to break through a motivation slump, refocus and build momentum to achieve your goals:

• Tool 1: The Power of Cold Exposure

• Tool 2: Three Types of Goals

• Tool 3: Dopamine Fasting

• Tool 4: Write Down Your Small Wins

Listen on Apple or Spotify.

2. What’s Going On Here, With This Human? by Graham Duncan

This is, to us, the most comprehensive resource on how to hire well. After thousands of candidate assessments, Graham Duncan has boiled seeing the truth of any human into a science.

Our favourite interview question he asks: “If I were to speak to your last 3 bosses, and ask them to rank your performance on a scale of 1-10. What would they give you and why?”

Read it here.

3. Improving Your Decision Making with Daniel Kahneman

All mistakes in life come down to your decision making. In this 30 min podcast, the godfather of decision science, Noble Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman, shares practical advice for improving your decisions:

• Don’t trust your intuitions, test them - intuitions are only reflected of the current data our brains have. Test them with data.
  

• Data-first decision making - delay trusting your intuition before collecting data, as our intuitions are prone to availability bias.
  

• Multi-sampling - make a decision multiple times over a few days, then take the average decision to increase decision sample size

Listen on Spotify | Apple.

🤔 Brain riddle

You see a boat filled with people. It has not sunk, but when you look again you don’t see a single person on the boat. Why?

Reply to this email and share your answer! We’ll reveal all next week.

🤝🏼 Conversation Priming

How to make difficult conversations go smoothly

Awkward conversation? Uncomfortable topic? Have to fire someone? Research suggests the best way to handle these types of difficult conversations is pre-framing the conversation. Doing this primes the other side, letting them put on mental armour to reduce the pain. It also feels a lot better.

Implementing Conversation Priming

1. Prime the difficult conversation:
   
   - I'm going to ask an awkward question and I'm probably going to get it wrong
   - This is going to be a hard conversation
   - This is a really hard thing to discuss, and it may be painful

2. Share your position to show vulnerability and connect:
   
   - I'm asking because I feel… (nervous, scared, concerned)
   - I’m trying to understand… and I feel…
   - I’m feeling… about this because…

As Chris Voss says: “People have a remarkable ability to handle emotional pain if they’re prepared for it.”

Research & Further Reading

• "Y, what do you think about what X just said?" Conversation analysis of stance-eliciting questions in open dialogue network meetings

🚫 Success To-Not Do Lists

Here’s one of our GOAT questions: Imagine at the end of this [situation/project/relationship] and we’ve failed. What might be the reasons for our failure?

Any answer that comes from this should be on your to-not do list. And if you avoid these, then your probability of success skyrockets 🚀 

Implementation

1. Have a specific and clear vision of what success looks like to you. Write it down. This is your success anchor.

2. Speed think all the possible reasons why you might not achieve that goal, in and out of your control. The focus is on quantity, not quality.

3. Prioritise them in order of threat. Which of these actually are a legitimate threat to our success?

4. Take the top five and make this your to not do list. Review this daily, weekly and monthly to make sure you avoid these at all costs.

In the words of Charlie Munger: “It’s much easier to avoid stupidity than it is to seek brilliance.”

Research & Further Reading

• Make A To-Don’t List | HBR

• Performing A Project Pre-Mortem | HBR

• Not-To-Do List: A Conscious Way To Break Bad Habits | Ness Labs