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personal development

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personal development

The Use of Barriers

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:25 am

I wrote about the Use of Feedback to calibrate my work. Today I wanted to write about Barriers. I define a barrier as a tool or technique that prevents distraction.

I remember in college, I had friends who complained about being unable to study. They said they couldn’t focus. They became web doctors and self-diagnosed themselves with ADD or dyslexia, not taking into account their study environment. Nothing about their environments were conducive to studying: it was a dorm room where either someone was playing a videogame, or the television was tuned into the latest rerun of NEXT TOP MODEL.

The answer seemed ridiculously simple: turn that shit off! Right? Wasn’t it easy?

The Nonstop News Feed Of Our Lives

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized it wasn’t so simple. What I realized is these were all intelligent people, and if the solution were a simple “off” switch, they’d have done it already. But our default environment today is one of non-stop stimuli and instant gratification:

  • Email – we know the message is transmitted and hits their inbox instantaneously.  So we expect a prompt response in return.
  • Information – any morsel of information is available on the Internets, and access is nearly ubiquitous, across any number of platforms (computer, phone, tablet) so if we want to know something (e.g., how far is the earth from the sun?; what was Coriolanus’s mother’s name?) we expect to find out right away. Information retrieval is an exercise in instant gratification.
  • Text – as long as they have their cell phone on them (which most of us do) we know they’ve received the message right away. So if we asked them a question, we expect a prompt response.

newsfeed

We’re conditioned to life’s nonstop news feed, which has restricted our ability to shut down. I believe this ability is a muscle, and like any muscle, it needs to be developed. It is a skill we must acquire. The  idea that’s it’s worthwhile to develop this muscle, has been made so clear as I study people I admire and see what they’ve accomplished in short amounts of time. A shortlist: Ted Melfi, Charlie Hoehn, Jeff Bezos.

There’s so much to accomplish, but getting through the task at hand requires a high level distraction-free focus. You’d think this requires great will power, but it doesn’t. It requires taking will power out of the equation. Thus, the objective changes: don’t fight distractions, but pre-empt them. Will power has no say in the conversation. Which is done through Barriers.

My Barriers

Here’s a list of barriers I use to make distraction a non-issue. I didn’t implement these all at one time. (That’s akin to telling my friend (above) that in order to study better, they need to change all their habits. Or “just focus harder.” It doesn’t work.) These barriers developed over years, one at a time. They keep me focused despite the new feed of our lives:

  • Don’t push e-mail – I’m probably a rarity for Hollywood assistants who don’t push e-mail (e.g., get a notification when I receive new e-mail. Many claim this isn’t an option for them. I sympathize. It must be utterly demoralizing to receive pings on your phone at any point in the day. I have the good fortune of working for agents who understand there are two choices: you can either respond to every ping, or you can get to work. They prefer the latter, as do I.
  • No TV – When I visit my family, the TV is always on. I’ll walk by and see ENTOURAGE or THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is on, and I’ve basically forfeited an hour of my life. Because I don’t have the willpower not to watch.
  • Freedom and LeechBlock – Browser tools that prevent you from using the Internet.
  • I carve out time to be alone – Mostly in the morning. When it’s still dark out, after I’ve eaten something and hours before I let myself check e-mail.
  • No music – Which is a complete 180 degrees turn for me. I once required blaring music to tune everything out. Until I noticed it was tuning out my own thoughts.
  • TK’s – I write every time I come across something I need to research or look up. Rather than lose my flow, I write TK (which stands for “to come”). I’ll return and fill in later.
  • Phone is off

I compare the time when I can put all my barriers to use, versus the time I spend in the office, and all my lines are ringing and I have to jump from executive to executive to executive and schedule all their meetings. So much more gets done without the distractions.

What barriers do you use?

Photo Credit: Huw Gibbs

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Prioritizing So Hard It Hurts

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:20 pm

“I’m prioritizing so hard it hurts.”

I first heard BJ Fogg, a Stanford professor who studies and teacher persuasion, utter this expression a year ago. As I listened to his interview (again and again — check it out here) I tried wrapping my mind around that idea. I didn’t get it, until a recent Saturday afternoon (which I’ll get to it below). The circumstances in which prioritization can inflict pain and cause ache suddenly emerged into focus.

The Progression of My Understanding

First the easy part: awareness  at the macro level, all the things you want to accomplish with your life. This is the long list of projects gathered and standing idly on your life’s to-do list, looking sophisticatedly bored, with “Hello, My Name is” tags like Learn French, Become a Working Actor, and Run a Marathon.

My list at the moment looks like: Build a Personal Finance Blog for Young Hollywood Professionals, Work for a Best Selling Author, Shoot Another Web Series.

The Granular Level

Next is the micro view, breaking these projects into actions, and understanding the next step at the granular level. The macro is understanding our year (or 3 years or 5). The micro is how we’ll spend the week or day. When I say granular, I mean, knowing precisely what you’re going to do for the next hour, in five-minute increments. That’s the exactness required.

Yes, it’s exhausting. Accomplishing life goals should be.

For me, that means when I wake up, if the plan is “Work On The Blog,” then I know which post and where I left off (annotated with “MING YOU ARE HERE”). If I’m studying a development course, in my notes I’ve marked where I’ve left off (e.g., Module 3, Video 2, 12:38). When I get to work, if I’m in the middle of an Option Agreement, it’s opened on my computer, a document next to it where I’m making my comments.

This is what granular looks like (gaps typically mean I’m at work, where I keep a different calendar). The idea of using Google Calendar to borrowed from Scott Dinsmore:

Time

The third component of prioritization is understanding how much time everything takes. At the granular level. Not, “just start now” or “if I work at this for ten years, I’ll be successful.” Not that it’s not true, but it’s difficult to take any action at such a high level. What this looks like: “okay, this blog post will take me 1 hour to write. After that, it’s going to take me another 30 minutes to post because the formatting screws up after adding headlines and images. So really, I should  budget an extra 45 minutes. That’s how long the last few took.”

I accommodate this time into my schedule. Then I come to the all too human conclusion that there aren’t enough hours in the day. However, I understand why I’m doing something , what I’m doing, and how long it’ll take, so there’s this huge fundamental shift in how I look at time. The cliché, “not enough hours in the day” transforms to “I need to find a one-hour block to fit in this research but the only time I can give up is time allotted for drinks with John. Which is more important?” The first time I made that transition, I finally understood B.J. Fogg’s words, “you have to prioritize so hard it hurts.”

Cal Newport explained it a different and fantastic way: when you master the skill of manipulating your time, it’s like seeing the Matrix.” You see how all the pieces fit together. If you need to free up a chunk of time you can move this piece here and make room for it.” Seeing the Matrix is a skill you develop, through judicious practice, and an understanding of exactly how you work.

Personally, solid chunks of uninterrupted alone time (1 to 4 hours) are precious. Ask any assistant how often they have enough uninterrupted alone time to write an email, never mind string together 500 coherent words — it’s like unicorn hunting. Which is why to me, my mornings are sacred. Especially Saturday mornings, which I try reserving just for writing.

Prioritizing So Hard It Hurts

But one particular Saturday a few weeks ago, I scheduled a lunch, not giving much thought to it at the time. I tried squeezing in work before it, but it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to even get into the right headspace, and by the time all the engines were firing, it was time to make a 45-minute drive over the hill. (Neil Strauss says that’s why he keeps all appointments tentative: if you get going, don’t stop — you don’t know when it’ll come back.) The lunch was amazing and productive and will hopefully lead to an amazing partnership, but I was still berating myself for not defending my creative time more judiciously.

Amy didn’t quite understand why I was so upset with myself. “It’s only one afternoon,” she said. She was right: it was only one Saturday afternoon, with many more to come. I couldn’t really explain the feeling, until now: I was upset because the circumstances were completely within my control — this was a lunch I scheduled. I could have chosen another date, but I didn’t, so I let that determine my day.

I prioritized poorly. It hurt.

Photos Credit: JSN Skeet

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The Use of Feedback

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:25 am

I wanted to write about Feedback, Barriers, Stakes, and Batching (though I covered some thoughts on batching in My Morning Routine). I put off exploring these ideas and concepts because:

  • Covering all of them felt extremely daunting
  • Tactically I hadn’t worked out a system to implement them
  • Wasn’t sure if my ideas were completely fleshed out

However, the only way I’ll eventually get through all three is by first exploring one. Thus…

What is Feedback?

Feedback is the process of soliciting criticism for our work, using focused time to filter and distill those criticisms, and meaningfully implementing changes to improve in the long run. “Constant calibration” is another way of putting it, but CC doesn’t quite capture the essence of feedback I think is most important to recognize: it’s really fucking uncomfortable.

The discomfort happens across a spectrum of projects and endeavors, but it always feels the same. Whether I’ve started a new project and need to email friends for their feedback, I want to raise my hand to ask a question at a panel, or I need to defend my position on a deal point, my body always runs me through the same gamut: my stomach drops, I become very aware of my tongue, the hairs on my arm bristle, and a heat spreads across my neck like a warm breath.

These feelings used to be my cue to eject. Excuse myself, stop what I was doing, get the fuck outta dodge.

Now I’m reading the feelings as, “okay, this is where I want to be.” If it’s uncomfortable, it’s personal. If it’s personal, then you give enough of a shit to make it better. That’s the only purpose of receiving feedback. It’s saying, “this one matters, so make sure you get it right.”

Years ago, when I only thought of these ideas in the abstract, I told my friend Joshua, “not asking for help is something that’s held me back for a long time.” I didn’t know how to be in that discomfort zone. Growing up, no emphasis was placed on short-term failure in exchange for long-term gains. Mistakes were examined through a singular lens: “don’t make them.” (To be clear, I don’t blame my parents or upbringing for my hang-ups. They were (are) loving and amazing. As J.K. Rowling said, “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.”
Source

The more I encounter better thinkers, the more I realize the importance of high-feedback environments and tight feedback schedules. This means: getting quality feedback, on an expedited, regular timetable.

Examples of high feedback environments

How Good Writers Become Great

Great writers work with great editors (the editor doesn’t have to be an Editor. It could be a manager, an executive, a friend.) Someone who’ll push your abilities past their current level, who won’t let you publish until every word has earned its place on the page. While blogging and self-publishing has its place in the world, I wonder if it’s stopped some very good writers from becoming great writers. In the mad dash to put something out into the universe, we may not hone our abilities or polish the product before offering it to the world. (With so much stimuli clamoring for my attention, I know I don’t.) “Great” is sacrificed for the result of “done.” I think we need to seek a balance, between shipping to get to done, and shipping because it’s only through shipping we’ll leap to the next level.

Literary Option Agreements

Preparing and making comments to a Literary Option Agreement is a high feedback environment of mine. It’s made up of several components:

  • Consistent exposure — between three bosses, there’s always a deal pending.
  • Regular assessment — my comments are reviewed immediately (i.e., within a day). I see right away how certain language should be phrased.
  • Regular discomfort — receiving comments back from the other party is always uncomfortable. I go through rejections (of comments) but more importantly, I see the logic their rejection was based upon.
  • Deliberate calibration — armed with their logic, I can compare to previous deals to deliberately find ways to close the deal point.
  • Real-time calibration – on the other hand, when I listen to calls, I learn the nuances of a live negotiations. I see this is the standard and speed I need to be able to implement the previous step (deliberate calibration). I’m exposed to mastery: the ability to put together a good deals in real-time.

Attraction and Social Dynamics

On a less literary note: for as long as I’ve known him, my friend was good at meeting new women. Then one fall, he started working in a nightclub with major traffic, and that experience launched him to a new level. Because in this environment, he was exposed to countless opportunities for feedback. He literally had the opportunity to hit on 100 women in one evening. There was never a formal process: he didn’t study his tactics, or “go over yesterday’s tape,” so to speak. He just landed in an environment of extremely high feedback level, where he could barely get rejected before he was presented with an opportunity to try again. He put his environment to use.

Creating a high feedback environment

In their career mastery course, Scott H Young and Cal Newport covered using quantitative metrics to supercharge your feedback and to create tangible skills. Tactically speaking, I won’t get into career factors or career metrics (thought I acknowledge their importance.)

For my purposes, if I’m struggling to create a habit, I have to systematize the process so it happens automatically. In creating a high feedback environment with a tight schedule, I need a system that automatically pushes me into my discomfort zone. I still don’t have a formal outline of what this looks like, but some attributes would be:

  • Smaller group projects — small because lowered stakes will force me to get to done. Group because it forces accountability. Also, in a group project, “any failure is a public failure, but no failure will never be fatal” (I believe this quote is most commonly attributed to Seth Godin).
  • The right people — these are more difficult to find than you think. The “right” people can be critical without discouraging. They genuinely want to see you do better, and understand at the big picture level what you’re trying to create and believe you’re capable of it.
  • Deadlines — a tight feedback schedule requires deadlines with real stakes. The amount of time a project requires will expand or shrink in proportion to when it’s due. So without a deadline, the project can drag until gravity and friction stop the momentum forever.

In my queue of projects there’s one specifically that I’m both slowly getting feedback on and using as a sort of beta to create a formal feedback system. When it’s fleshed out I’ll follow up with what I’ve learned.

Photo Credit: Clairec12003

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What You Listen To Can Change Your Life

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:25 am

Ninety percent of my car rides I spend listening to “self-development,” a convenient grouping for the countless interviews, TED talks, and commencement speeches on my iPod. These last three months, as I steadily increased the number of times I bicycled to work in lieu of trapping myself in a steel cage with wheels, I’ve missed out on hours of their words of encouragement.

In their place, I’ve traded for the sounds of morning sprinklers on pathetic strips of grass adjacent to sidewalks and apartment complexes, the rumble of earth movers beneath the stretch of the 10 across from Palms Blvd, and the whine of car horns as drivers blow reds and cut lanes sans signal. These are the sounds of the Los Angeles morning, the harmony to the melodious bike chain whirling beneath my seat and clacking against the gears. The sounds aren’t particularly educational or inspiring, but carry their own brand of tranquility, stillness in the chaos.

Seth Godin recently published a blog post entitled Can an audio book change your life?  that inspired me to once again wire in. In the post he said:

“One of the key factors in both surviving this time and figuring out how to shift gears was my exposure to (as we called them then) books on tape, particularly the work of Zig Ziglar. I listened for sometimes hours every day. I’ve been grateful to Zig every day since, and I still listen regularly.

Wiring (Back) In

I started plugging in earphones for my bike commutes, tuning out the morning sounds as people I admire drop some knowledge while I pedal to work. (The first two pieces I listened to was the Charlie Hoehn interview on Blogcast FM and Tim Ferriss’s interview of Neil Strauss for CreativeLive, two interviews that have been on my queue for a while.)

Nothing’s changed me more than this unparalleled access to greater minds by simply plugging in earphones and touching play. Self-development audio books, interviews, and speeches have gotten me through more than commutes. I remember the summer before moving to Los Angeles, I listened to interviews every morning as I cleaned chairs and swept floors, prepping the restaurant before the first customers strolled in for an early lunch. Those interviews inspired me to continue injecting heart into my work, especially when it was difficult, and I was made better for that. For people who don’t listen to self-development for whatever reason (as Seth puts it, “People who haven’t tried it don’t want to. It feels a bit off-putting or mesmeresque to intentionally brainwash yourself with content designed to change your outlook”) the way I see it, there are only three alternatives for your commute (except of course, for silence):

You listen to the news. The news gives you a macro lens on current events upon which you can take no action, other than use in topical conversations with strangers who have nothing else to say to each other.

You can listen to music. While relaxing or enjoyable, in the long run, doesn’t provide much value (other than knowing the current pop sensation).

You listen to self-development. Which if you do over and over again, will create and alter life-long habits, by surrounding yourself with smarter people who’ve done greater things.

The latter, who is by far the most beneficial, has also never been much simpler as long as you have the right tool: Clip Converter.

clipconverter3

A Shortlist To Get Started

After that, it’s a matter of curating what you’d like to listen to. I started a short list below. (I wanted to wait until I curated a monster list, separated by categories, but realized something was better than nothing, and a shortlist was more accessible than a monster one I envisioned):

Another thought on the benefits of audio: I recently completed a Career Mastery pilot program created by Scott H. Young and Cal Newport. It was a four-week email course, where they explained the principles in writing and you completed “homework” that was emailed back to them. At the end of the pilot program, Scott and Cal conducted a “graduation webinar.” I struggled with the material for four weeks, and it wasn’t until the webinar that the concepts and theory really struck home. Hearing multiple examples of ideas in practice untangled the concepts for me, and for the first time since I joined the course, I had a clear idea of what I could accomplish with the strategies and how to go about it.

Choosing Who Surrounds You

There was a time when we couldn’t chose who surrounded us, or what ideas we immersed ourselves in, other than through books. But even that was limited, by access to the right books. Essentially we were locked to our context and our environment. Today we can pretty much immerse ourselves in anyone’s thoughts, and open ourselves up to whole new planes of thinking, without so much as leaving our computers. With unlimited access, it’s never been so easy to change our lives, and any excuse not to, falls on ears filled with the voices of people who already have.

Photos Credit: Jacob Bøtter

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My Morning Routine

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:00 pm

For the last few months, my creative output has been in a rut. I didn’t understand how or why. I don’t attribute it to “writer’s block.” (The idea of “writer’s block is stupid. Typing the words is cringe worthy.) The problem, I realized, was how I batched my work.

My Old Morning Routine

Wake at 6 a.m. By 6:30 a.m., I’d sit to write (having washed up and eaten first.) I’d squeeze in 60 minutes of work before getting ready for my bike commute to work. A quarter of that time I spent “ramping up” so actual production lasted 45 minutes. Work consisted of a blog project that’s been in the works (and can hopefully talk about soon) or a script.

The problem was I didn’t protect and cultivate how I spent that time. For example, blog posts were a linear process: research, write, edit, polish, search for images, format the post, check the display, and schedule, in that order.

This methodology was neat and simple. It was also wrong. It didn’t leverage that Golden Time in the morning: alone, with an unopened inbox. A time to be completely selfish. I should carve out this time specifically for activities that require complete focus: writing and editing for content. The rest: polish (line editing), searching for images, formatting, display and scheduling don’t require the same level of concentration. Why waste my most precious commodity (uninterrupted time) on these activities?

I changed the morning routine to leverage this commodity. I want the best opportunity to do good work, and batched the work differently to focus on the right things at the right time.

alarm clocks

My New Morning Routine (for now)

Monday through Wednesday: I wake at 5 a.m. I wash up, drink a protein shake and make coffee. I’m sitting and planning my day by 5:30 a.m. Basically, I ask myself: what do I want to accomplish with my day? What projects will I work on and in what order? If I could only accomplish one thing, what would it be? Sunday evenings I queue up a shortlist of work, so I already have a good idea of the projects and the order to approach them.

From 5:30 a.m. until 7:30 a.m., I only produce. I don’t research, I only edit for content, and I don’t post. It’s about creation only. In the morning stillness, as the sun rises outside the back patio, before the Los Angelinos climb into their steel boxes and head for the 10, I produce more in a single day than what I’d produce in an entire week, under the old schedule. Batching time and work gives me the opportunity to melt into the work, something the old routine didn’t provide. I don’t listen to music. I don’t open a browser. I don’t fend off non-stop interruptions, spending half the time rebuilding momentum or recapturing a train of thought. (This applies not only to writing, but at work, as well. Carving out time, when I’m not under siege by requests from any of the three bosses, or the phone isn’t ringing every 45 seconds, I can attack a Literary Option Agreement long enough to make my comments, or study a lawyer’s comments on a deal to acquire character rights to an Author’s best selling series.)

That is my Monday to Wednesday routine. Thursday I sleep in until 7:30 a.m. I don’t do any work on Thursday morning. It’s typically the only day I drive to work (depending on my drinks schedule) so I practically wake up, eat, and then I’m out the door. On Friday mornings, I wake at 6:30 a.m. and line editing or research before headed to work. This type of low-intensity work I spread throughout the day. Saturday mornings I switch back to high intensity, content producing work.

High Level Thoughts on a Morning Routine

  • Importance of “rest” days – my “rest” days are analogous to working out rest days. In order to produce, you need to recover. I recover on Thursdays and Sundays. Most days I go to sleep around midnight, so by Wednesday morning at 5 a.m., I am sluggish. The way I push through is knowing I have a rest day coming up.
  • Urgency – The first two minutes after waking up feel are the most difficult. It’s warm and comfortable and I have the love of my life asleep next to me. Drifting back to sleep is all I want and on the weekend I’ll occasionally indulge myself. But lately, I’ve been more aware of a sense of urgency. It comes from a combination of things, I think: being in my late 20s, surrounding myself with people who’ve pushed themselves to accomplish great things, being aware that now is the time to take risks and work on projects that I can point to and say, “this may not work” and still effortlessly bounce back from the consequences. This won’t be true forever. The urgency helps propel me out of bed in the morning.
  • “Next action” – I always mark exactly where I ended in a post or idea. It’s eloquently notated with (yes, in all caps) “MING YOU ARE HERE.” It’s difficult to miss. I also write in my project to-do list the next two steps in completing a task, so I always know the direction I’m moving in. This is as simple as, for a blog post, “look up images” and “format post.” At work, it’ll read, “study reversion clause” and “memorize book royalties and break points on the LG contract.”

I’ll adhere to this morning routine for the next six months. Circumstances change, however. For example, if I got a new job, or if I start a new project that involves filming on the weekends — the morning routine needs to flex with these changes. The important idea is: revisit your routines every few months, even if you “feel” like you’re accomplishing a great deal in its current iteration. Can you batch your time and work better? Are you leveraging your greatest resources, at the proper time?

Photo Credit: Nikola and Tamara

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Defining Self-Dev: A Glance Through Someone Else’s Lens

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:00 pm

At LAX in the baggage line stood a family of six: Mom & Dad, the boy (7-years-old and the eldest,) two girls and a baby of unidentified gender. Behind them, the things they carried: Dora the Explorer roll-y bags, cheap carnival-won plush animals popping out of backpacks like Whack-a-Moles, Samsonite luggage and a car seat. The kids were quiet. Elephant-dart tranquil. When Mom asked them to stand aside, so they could get everything sorted, they obediently did so. With even the softest palette of primary colors, Norman Rockwell couldn’t paint domesticity this serene.

Yet the parents looked absolutely haggard. Pacquiao could warm up on the bags beneath Mom’s eyes. She wore a hand-knit scarf the color of Kansas’s skyline that accentuated the lines by her eyes. Dad raised a hand to push back his thinning black hair, and exposed the pouch of a Once-Upon-a-Time baseball player. He kept the weight at bay for years with after work jogs and heavy-weight/low-rep lifts, but now when he returns home he’s tripped up worse than an AT-AT Walker on Hot, by a toddler-barrage fighting for his attention.

I always (half-) jokingly said I’d like five children. I have three siblings already and thought there was room for yet another little person to look up to me and adore me, as I’m vehemently assured my brothers and sister always did. A family of seven would have been wonderful.

Watching the spectacle at LAX was the first time I examined the possibility of raising five children through the lens of a parent, however. The idea, now, requires revisiting.

Revisiting ideas through a different lens is why I track the books I read, and ideas as I read them, in Evernote and here. At different junctures of life and career, the lens changes — we change focal length by moving closer or further from the situation, we shift the curve of our trajectory, or there’s new clarity when something was once opaque. It’s an exercise in self-development and self-awareness, but more importantly, it exercises our ability to understand others. To empathize with others.

Isn’t that what self-development is? Seeing the world through someone else’s lens, and realizing that we are not always right, and they are not always wrong?

Photo Credit: Katja Kemnitz

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What’s the Point in Writing About Self-Dev?

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:02 pm

In March I had gone to see a taping of Conan on the Warner Bros lot. Colin Farrell was on the show, as was Jenna Elfman.

What sticks out most in my mind wasn’t Colin’s new movie trailer, or Jenna pantomiming a blowjob, but something I noticed afterwards, when the cameras finished rolling, and everyone rose from their seats, prepping for the mass exodus:

Conan O’Brien walks back to the set. A woman stands there waiting for him, probably a set PA. Without looking her in the eye or saying thank you, he hands her his microphone, then disappears behind the stage. The set PA disappears in the other direction.

It’s an innocuous thing, really. He wasn’t rude: he didn’t throw the mic at her, or like, spit on her or anything. But I believe the sum of our thousand innocuous actions throughout the day paint an accurate portrait of who we are and how we view the world:

  • Do you hold open doors for others?
  • Do you hold open doors for strangers?
  • Do you arrive on time?
  • Do you say “please?”
  • Do you say “thank you?”
  • Do you turn to the waiter when they greet you?
  • Do you greet them back or just start reciting your order?
  • Do you look them in the eye when you order or leave your face buried in the menu?
  • What about when you hand them the menu — do they deserve your attention then?
  • Or do you think none of that is necessary if you give them a 20% tip?
  • Do you know the names of your interns? Of your PA’s? Your assistants?
  • Do you thank them for their time?
  • For the scripts they cover and the unsolicited manuscripts they read?

Getting away with any of the above, without rebuke or reprimand, is a sign of higher status. In the dizzying rush to reach that status or level of success, it’s easy to say, “I’m going to emulate that behavior.” After all, people who’ve climbed to these levels reached it for good reason (not all, but many). It’s not hard to pick up bad habits.

There are stretches of days and weeks where I feel suffocated by these bad habits. Which is when I need to remember that I’ved worked for people who understand the concept of mutual respect. Gentlemen like Mark Teschner, who looks you in the eye when he shakes your hand, and remembers an actor’s name after a whirlwind casting session of 50 actors for one role.

I’m glad to read that even at the agencies, you still come across gentlemen like Sam Haskell, who Rob Carlson (partner at WME) described in THE MAILROOM by David Resin as “the best agent in that building”:

Because of his attitude and his personality, his ethics and his family values, he turned out to be probably the best agent in that building, and he did it by being different from everybody else. That was the biggest surprise for me: that you could be that great a person and still be amazing at your job. You didn’t have to be a jerk. You didn’t have to treat people like shit. You didn’t have to treat your assistants terribly. Every night Sam would walk out, and no matter how bad a day we’d had, or if I’d fucked up, he’d say, “Rob, thank you very much my friend. I appreciate it. Have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Every night.

There are times I wonder, “what is the point of this? What’s the point of listening and reading and writing about self-development?” Moments like the Conan-moment above remind me that for most of us, on a day-to-day basis, we can’t choose the people who surround us. We can’t always distance ourselves from their habits we’d like to avoid. But that isn’t our excuse for our own bad habits, because the behaviors we do want to emulate: good habits, mental frameworks, philosophies, strategies, and tactics — they’re never more than a click away.

Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” So spend time with the right people — even if you have to pipe their words directly into your brain, from a podcast, or a book.

Photo Credit: mrehan

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