Irresponsibles Anonymous

I have referred often to the limits of human short-term memory, but on this occasion I wanted to delve a Little deeper to evidence exactly why we forget our commitments.

“The role of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths such as weaknesses become irrelevant”

-       Peter Drucker

Understanding the memory is essential to make, as Drucker says, its weaknesses irrelevant.

Memory… What memory?

The first thing that needs to be clarified is that the brain has different kinds of memory, to simplify we will divide them in two types: “Working Memory” and “Storage Memory” continue reading…

“When life demands more of people than they demand of life – as is ordinarily the case – what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death”

- Tom Robbins

What do you demand of life?

David Allen used that quote in his “Getting Things Done” book, and I remember reading it and thinking about the amount of work that I did for others, and how little I demanded in return.

I don’t refer to compensation; money by itself does not represent anything real. Neither do I mean getting something back out of a gesture… a good deed that demands something in return stops being good and becomes a service.

I’m referring to how many of your initiatives you do for yourself, and what do you ask in return of your sacrifices. continue reading…

What is the third wave?

In 1979, futurist Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock, where he goes into the process of change in social, political and economic structure.

Alvin describes three “waves”, the first one being the Agrarian Revolution (8000 A.C.  Until the 17^th Century), during which we built the social paradigms needed to end our nomadic phase and construct the cities that gave origin to our civilization.

The second wave  was the industrial revolution (1650), changing the way the world was organized by replacing human effort with advanced tools, thus empowering mass production and expansion, the caveat was that it led to a unification of products, media and ideology, all because of the inflexibility of our tools at the time.

According to Toffler, in 1979 we were in the cusp of a third wave, in which the tools become flexible enough to bring about a change in production paradigm oriented towards individuality and self-expression.

The advent of customized products coupled with the recently established Internet would bring about an important change in human society characterized by decentralization, demassification and personalization… all necessary to satisfy the human need to differentiate. continue reading…

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is Step 12 and it’s about implementing iterative cycles of self-improvement.

It’s impressive how fast 12 weeks pass, the experience of writing these articles has been very revealing, and has forced me to retake things I though left behind and do lot of exercises I had forgotten.

I’m a defender of utopic ideals; it is part of my personal philosophy and hope to keep it that way. It doesn’t mean I consider them possible, but it’s a tragedy to abandon the search for perfection simply because it’s impossible.

For us, the naturally irresponsible, the process of taking control is cyclical. The search of a state of relaxed execution, where we are masters of what we say and do, achieving in all contexts of life with singular perfection, is a goal that seem unachievable…and it is; But we have to be unstoppable in the search for a better life, and when we achieve it, it’s time to fight for an even better standard.

The 12^th step is to return to the beginning, starting a new iteration in the way we live, act, think, love, laugh… it’s the essence of being human, the search for an elevated state of conscience where we achieve wonderful things every day, doing the impossible and living our dreams.

It’s time to review and redo our plans, accept that even though we have taken control, some things slip, processes are lost and ideas remain undone. Getting better is just a matter of practice and evaluation of what we have done in the past.

I know some of the steps are hard, each speaks to different aspects of life and as such, each of us has different opportunities for improvement, and let’s admit it…we are irresponsible.

So some of the steps have gone by with a half-hearted effort, or have remained in promises without being incorporated into the daily routine, that is ok, because nothing and no one starts out perfect.  Its only you that decides how much is “enough”  response-ability, and if you are there, then I congratulate you and wish you well, but if not, I invite you to read back to the points where there is still work to be done, and do it.

I will continue to post material to help with each of the steps, but the essence of the process is already here, I hope it has been helpful and want to remind you to carve your own path in the process, there is no “right” way, only “your” way.

Thank you for reading,

Alex.

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is Step 11 and it’s about figuring out your life’s purpose.

What is my purpose in life?

This question has frozen a lot of us in our tracks, the extent of the answer and its ramifications are so huge that it looks like an impossible riddle.

Any problem you tackle in life is made easy if you do two things:

1. Achieve a clear understanding of the problem.
2. Fragment it into smaller, easier problems.

If the objective is to find your purpose in life, you can divide the problem into 10 small steps, which can be done in a week each, and in only 3 months it’s possible to get a clear vision of something that was murky and hard to define.

continue reading…

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is Step 10 and it’s about creating a record of your day to day life. This is a guest post by Psic. Jorge Graterol

How many times have you been unable to remember a face, a gesture, a moment that was an important part of your life?

Our memories are stored in different sections of the brain through a complex process of segmentation. For example, visuals are stored in the occipital cortex, but that doesn’t imply sounds, smells, or tastes… all of which are stored in different areas of the brain, the result is a fragmented memory that is hard to access. continue reading…

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is Step 9 and it’s about seeing the long term and not getting stuck on the small defeats.

Between 1337 and 1452 occurred a series of events historians call “the war of the 100 years”.

The 113 years of conflict between England and France is a period that defined our global reality, and I take it as an example of persistency and focus.

The war was eventually “won” (if such a thing can be said about war), by France. This victory wasn’t the consequence of one heroic encounter between two majestic armies, like in the movies, but the sum of battles beyond count, not only in the field of war, but also in politics, religion and economy.

continue reading…

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is Step 8 and it’s about learning to cope with chaotic days.

Failure has become the greatest Taboo of our generation.

The obsession of our modern society with winning (being competitive if you want more subtlety), has created a whole generation of human beings that measure their success in quantifiable terms: Account statements, Increments in Percentages and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

I admit I’m a big fan of data, as a Project Manager i know it’s very hard to control, review or improve things that cannot be measured…I am a data junkie and my work at 42 Soluciones reflects that. continue reading…

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is step 7 and it’s about finding some time for reflecting on the way you get things done.

Asking you become an observer in your life seem like anathema to everything I’ve written, but you don’t necessarily have to take action all the time, there are singular moments where it’s more beneficial to reflect.

During the previous articles, we have been developing two behaviors: Thinking/Planning and Doing. This is one of the keys achieving responsibility, by separating these processes you give your system some flexibility and adaptability to the constant tide of commitments. continue reading…

Irresponsibility can be an addiction as strong as drugs or alcohol, Irresponsible Anonymous is a 12 step program to kick the habit of breaking promises, this is step six, it’s about figuring the final destination of your day to day work.

On the second post in this program, I stated that it’s not important to know where your life is headed if everything is out of control, this is a corollary of a point David Allen makes in his presentations about GTD (Getting Things Done).

David Allen speaks about the duality of Control vs. Perspective: Too much vision with no control turn you into the mad hatter, changing seats around the table with brilliant arguments but no consistency. Control without perspective makes you a micro-manager: Archiving system with alphanumeric code and FIFO inventory control… for the coffee napkins; the idea is to find equilibrium between both things. continue reading…