* no humor based on religion

* no humor based on gender

* no humor based on ethnicity

* no humor based on physical appearance

* no humor based on age

- General Eisenhower

1. Search for the “perfect” someone

There may be exceptions but as a general rule I don’t think there is that “perfect” someone out there. The first step of filtering people based on certain attributes will still lead to a large set of people from whom you have to choose. This can be daunting as there is a possibility of that “perfect” someone being in that set. You won’t know it until you finish the search. This would mean that you spend a ton of time in the search rather than building relationships.

2. Mismatch of expectations

When you are trying to hire candidates you would have seen that there are some (slight) mismatches between what is represented on the resume and what actually the person is. People have come to terms with it. That’s why there are a series of interviews to determine the right fit. If one could exactly represent who he or she is in the resume, the job of hiring would be very easy. In dating, the problem is more complex because there is a two-way interview happening. Both parties are checking out each other. While putting their best foot forward, each party is also trying to figure out what criteria the other person is using to determine whether they are the right match for that other person. Think about this process for a second. Imagine repeating this with a totally new person until you find the “perect” one. Would that be stressful? You bet!

3. Inflated expectations on both sides

May be there is that “perfect” someone on the dating site – you see there more than a million profiles in several dating sites. There ought to be  right match. So the expectations are high on both sides and the quest is to find the “exact” match. The requirements can be very specific – tall, fun-loving, caring, intelligent, software executive, love outdoors, action movies, must be a republican, god-fearing, long hair, must love dogs of a particular breed, must enjoy cruises and so on. Most of all what people forget is that the person with all those characteristics should like them. In fact, they should not only like them they should love them and accept them for who they are. Do you see the complications?

4. Shortcut to relationship building

I don’t think there is. What the dating sites can do is that they can accelerate the step one in relationship building. Imagine a relay race where the first leg is shortened by half. You may complete the first leg quickly but you still need to run the other legs to complete the race. If you forget this, it may appear like there are shortcuts because of technology.

5. The “Best of All” syndrome

You can browse through the profiles very quickly and find a few attributes in a few people attractive. However, now you want to combine the “best attributes” from several people and find a person that has all of them. That is a sure shot ticket to disappointment, don’t you think?

6. Low tolerance

One strike and you are out. Reason: Why give a second chance? There are so many people out there that may be available. This makes it too easy to quit.

7. Chooser’s remorse

When you finally decide to buy something, there are cases of “buyer’s remorse” where you are not happy with your choice – just because there could have been a better item from the choices that were available. The same analogy holds good here too. When you choose someone, you can always feel sad that there COULD have been someone else that was better.

1. First observation is that this offer is too good to be true. If the first impression is that it is too good to be true, it is.

2. This offer is coming to us as a Google Ad – meaning that the advertiser has paid for this. Let us take a conservative estimate that the advertiser is paying about a dollar per click. If the conversion ratio is 2%, then the cost of acquiring a client for them is about $50. Meaning, they will make about $49 per client. If they have to make any money, they have to “serve” tens of thousands of clients as google adwords is not the only cost for them. This leads me to believe that $99 is just a marketing ploy to get someone engaged. The real money will be made by upselling something very expensive.

3. The claim is questionable. The current claim is that a person should invest $99 and one day (valued at lets say $800) and at a minimum, the person can make $1000 per week or $4K per month. So in month the ROI is more than 400%. Too good to be true? You bet! (Remember: You are only working 2 hours per day – meaning in a month you work about 44 hours. Sounds like a deal!!!!)

4. Let us think as if we are the company making this claim. If there is any sense of truth in this offer, it would make sense for us to just keep this a “top secret.” Why should we spend money on Google to spread this knowledge? We might as well make all the money.

1. The fisherman and the Harvard MBA

2. The tortoise and the hare (slow and steady wins the race??)

a. Greed is not good

b. Focusing only on short-term can lead to problems in the long-term

1. Think about the way the story ends and the conclusions drawn. It almost makes you feel that the Countryman did a mistake by cutting open the goose that laid the golden egg. If that was a mistake, it gives you an impression that NOT cutting open the goose was the RIGHT thing to do – meaning the Countryman should have continued to expect one golden egg everyday as long as the goose was alive. Question: Is that greed or what?

2. The reason for which the Countryman killed the goose was wrong. Being an entrepreneur I have to think in terms of business. I would say it was the RIGHT thing to do. When you build a business, sometimes you have a good thing going and it appears like a goose with a golden egg. You become complacent and assume that there is an implicit guarantee (like the Countryman expecting ONE golden egg everyday) but in reality there is none. Some new startup somewhere can obliterate the business model in record time. So in essence, you have to be willing to kill your darlings before others do. In that sense, the Countryman actually did the RIGHT thing. Now he has no option but to go and earn real money.

3. The reason for drawing the second conclusion is also flawed. The second conclusion is that by focusing solely on short-term, we may have problems in the long-term. I like the conclusion but the basis for that conclusion should not be this story. It seems like if he had NOT killed the goose everything would have been fine. Think about it – if he didn’t kill the goose, he is making a couple of assumptions

If he had not killed the goose, he would have taken care of his long-term needs? How? I think he would have become a vegetable by becoming more complacent day by day. In essence, he really woke up by killing the goose.

4. Last but not the least – if this story really happened, we know that the Countryman was VERY lucky. What are the chances that this kind of thing repeating? Same as winning big money in gambling I suppose. Are we saying that if you get lucky once (get ONE golden egg) we now have the RIGHT to CONTINUE to get lucky (expect golden eggs everyday)???

1. Handling bad news

When everything is going good, you may feel that you are at the top of the world. This is life. So there is no way everything can be going good all the time. In fact, when something does not turn out to be as planned, that is when you really need to use the full capacity of your brain. For some reason, most people have trouble dealing with bad news. The problem gets compounded for technology professionals. They seem to think that it is “really” not required to mention about the concerns that they are having as they are very “equipped” to take care of them “before” they become problems. So they work hard and try their best to “take care” of problems but by the time they realize that they really can’t take care of them it’s too late. Everyone is unhappy and they have to go and “win back” the trust.

Since you have to deal with bad news anyway, why not come up with a plan to handle it when there is a need. We buy insurance policies just in case something were to happen to us. How about insurance policies for the projects that you are engaged with?

2. Asking for help

Since there is no way you can do everything on your own, you have no choice but to ask for help from time to time. In fact, let’s say very frequently. However, just asking won’t help. What if your request for help is rejected every time or even half the time. That would put you under pressure and you will have to make twice the number of requests for help. So if that is the case, why not fine tune your art of asking for help. Unfortunately, this is a topic that should be taught in schools and colleges but let’s face it – they don’t teach such stuff – that would be too practical

When I discuss this in my talks, people tell me that asking is not the real problem. The bigger problem, I believe is that people really don’t have time to help with so many things going on in their life. So irrespective of how you ask, it doesn’t matter you won’t get any help is what they say.

OK that’s a good argument but not good enough. The easy way to prove that this argument lacks logic is to apply this on yourself. Have you recently helped someone? If yes, why did you do it and if no, why didn’t you? Think about what went through in your mind before you made a decision to help or not help? Similar things are going on in the heads of other people.

There is so much more to this but for now, I urge you to take this seriously and start thinking about how to structure your request for help.

3. Connecting people

Making one good connection that will help the other person accelerate his or her career/life may be a big gift that you can give to the other person. You know – it takes a while before you establish trust with a new person. By making a connection happen, what you are doing is that you are transfering your trust into the new relationship. Both the parties that you introduced start off at a higher base than normal. What’s the advantage? It’s the saving of time which is something that is in limited supply in all of our lives. So what is a good connection?

Here are some components of a good connection:

How many good connections did you make in the last one month? How many are you planning to make in the next one month?

For those of you interested in benchmarking yourself: I talked to many great connectors and they make upwards of 300 good connections in a year. So, good luck!

4. Keeping a promise that you made to yourself

Hardest thing to do. If this topic seems like it is a repeat, you got great memory. It is repeated and here is the link: Ways to distinguish yourself #33 – Keep promises you make to yourself

I couldn’t resist repeating it. It is that IMPORTANT!

5. Holding others accountable

When you ask for help, some people help but many others only make promises to help. You depend on them and in the last minute they provide a great excuse on why they “really” can’t help. If you don’t have an insurance policy, depending on the need, you may be in a mess. So, the next skill that you must master is the art of holding others accountable.

This is difficult because each person is different and what motivates one person to keep his word may not motivate another person. Same rules don’t apply. However, it is clear by now that you have to give strong enough reasons for them to keep their word.

6. Dealing with choice

Too much of choice today is a problem that has been identified and accepted. Unfortunately this is a problem that you can’t ignore. You are faced with choices everywhere – at work and in your personal life. The sad part is that there is no “one right way” to deal with choice. Also, if you have a way of successfully dealing with choice in one area today, it may not be “THE WAY” to deal with choice tomorrow. This is because the speed with which the choices themselves are changing is mind-boggling.

If you don’t have a plan to deal with choice, you can easily get overwhelmed. Andit can also lead to “Chooser’s remorse” meaning whatever choice you make you may not be happy as you think “there might have been a better choice than this one.” You can’t win that battle so best is to not fight it.

7. Adapting with speed

They say change is good as long as they are not involved. They say change is the only thing that is constant. I say “change at breathtaking speed” is the only thing that is constant. You can either adapt to change or sit on the sidelines and complain (and watch those who adapt prosper)

Adapt, you must – at a breathtaking speed.

What if you changed your outlook towards change? What if you embrace change rather than resist it? What if you dropped the idea that certainty is a fundamental requirement in anything?

Here is one tip to get started on adapting with speed. Pick a day and decide to get involved in rapid context switches throughout the day – meaning do a variety of things totally unrelated to each other in a rapid sequence. This exercise will put you on the track to rapid adaptation.

8. Wisdom to know when to persist and when to let go

In earlier days of CIGNEX (a company that I co-founded) there were more sellers than buyers for any technology offering (2000s so you can imagine)

I was extremely persistent with many of the early leads (or those companies that we thought were “leads”) and spent a ton of time pursuing them. However, the only thing that came out of that was fatigue. The bigger problem was that because there is only a limited amount of time and it was consumed by chasing the wrong leads, it also introduced a huge opportunity cost.  If that is one extreme, the other extreme is also very common. I see people all the time giving up prematurely. That won’t help either.

We all know that there is a time to persist and there is a time to let go. The wisdom is in knowing to what category an opportunity belongs to. Make a wrong assessment and you pay a big price.

9. Dealing with fear and failure

Fear and Failure and of course, the combination “fear of failure” are all bad. All of them force you to NOT take action on one or more of your projects. Most of the time, fear is overhyped and failure is part of life. So “fear of failure” is almost meaningless. Oops.. that is taking it to an extreme. But you get the point

1. You buy a song based on rating of the song

Check: Did you see the rating was based on how many votes?

2. You buy a book based on its appearance on the bestseller list

Check: Do you know how a book can get into the bestseller list? While most books on the bestseller list may be good, there is no guarantee as you can pay to structure a program to accelerate a book’s journey into the bestseller list

3. You normally don’t forgive someone’s mistake.

Check: If you had committed the same mistake before and you see that someone else is committing the same mistake, would your outlook towards that mistake change?

4. You trust the conclusions based on the survey results

Check: Do you continue to trust those conclusions after you look at the sampling size and the details of the participants that participated in the survey?