Blog

Toltec Wisdom

Published on March 24, 2019.

Today I read The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz. It was an interesting reading that connects with other books that I read.

My first highlight is

Children compete for the attention of their parents, their teachers, tehir friends. “Look at me! Look at what I’m doing! Hey, I’m here.” The need for attention becomes very strong and continues into adulthood.

This is one of the reasons that social media is so addicted, it gives opportunity for us to ask for attention and provide us with the illusion that we have someone’s attention.

Trust

Published on March 23, 2019.

I have been climbing for more than a year now. Most of the time I go to Manchester Climbing Centre because is a walk distance of my place and they have awesome indoor lead climbing walks. Unfortunately, they only have a small indoor bouldering area which means that if you are starting climbing you might end up bored because you can only climb a few of the routes, this was what happen with me when I started.

Principles app

Published on March 10, 2019.

Ray Dalio, in Principles, mentions a couple of apps used at Bridgewater:

• Coach: a library of common situations which are linked to the relevant principles to help people handle them;
• Dot Collector: used to allow people to express their thoughts and see others’ thoughts in real time;
• Baseball Cards: data visualisation fo a person’s strengths and weakness;
• Combinator: staff-job assignment based on staff profile;
• Issue Log: recording of mistakes;
• Pain Button: record emotions for later reflection;
• Dispute Resolver: paths for resolving disagreements;
• Daily Update: improve communication;
• Contract Tool: make and monitor commitments;
• Process Flow Diagram: visualisation of processes;

Some of the apps (e.g. Dot Collector and Issue Log) can be implemented on top of other online services (e.g. Google Docs) but others can not. Would be great to have free and open versions of those apps.

Handle a family estrangement

Published on March 3, 2019.

Around last Christmas, Anna Goldfarb’s article “The Best Way to Handle a Family Estrangement” (archive PDF avaiable) found my RSS reader. This was the same time that I was processing the wish of my parents to not spend Christmas with me in the UK.

Anna’s says in her article:

when someone else is setting those boundaries, it’s crucial to the future of your relationship that you respect them. Someone who has been cut off “may continue to send messages, cards and presents, or criticism when they know they are unwanted,” [Becca] Bland [(chief executive of Stand Alone, a UK-based charity that supports adults who are estranged from their families)] says, but “research suggests this is more harmful than helpful if the other person has asked for time and space.”

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First time manager

Published on March 3, 2019.

A while ago, I read Anna Goldfarb’s article “What I Wish I’d Known as a First-Time Manager” (archive PDF available). Anna’s words are worth sharing so I decided to leave a link on this blog.

If you are too busy to read Anna’s article fully, skip to the last section: “Trust your team.”