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Welcome back.

I am Avy Leghziel, an organizational consultant and trainer with a knack for unorthodox ideas. This is what I do.
Every two weeks I share ideas here on Masters of Babel about how we work, learn and manage.
If you would like to have a chat, reach out here.

In this issue:

• Clearer thinking and communication depend on a simple skill

• Organizational culture can be changed, but not through artificial initiatives

• Giant armadillos and a podcast on pretty much everything

Let's get to it.

Thinking in complete sentences

In a recent interview, Andrew Huberman talked about the ability to "Stay still and force yourself to think in complete sentences after the kids go to sleep," quoting Karl Dice Roth. When was the last time you had a conversation with yourself "in complete sentences"?

The privilege of interrupting whatever we do, whenever we want has become an obvious feature of modern living.

As a child, I eagerly waited for the cartoons I liked on TV to start and had to wait through bad episodes; my children can choose on Netflix or Disney Plus what to watch, and change programs every time the episode seems to be boring - or too slow (Captain Underpants set a very high bar). They can do that multiple times in the same hour.

It’s not only a childish tantrum: we all have become accustomed to exercising our right to interrupt much more often than we used to. 

The first behavior that comes to mind is doomscrolling, but our interrupting habit is very present also outside the screens. We are comfortable with quitting texting exchanges without ending the conversation; we start and stop new habits or hobbies every few weeks; we exchange jobs more often than ever in history.

One of the consequences is that our thoughts also flow in the same way. When a thought is not interesting or sharp enough, instead of cooking it until it becomes an insight, we leave it behind and start thinking about something else. We don't even try to do what Huberman mentions: think in complete sentences when we are alone with ourselves.

Mental fitness

Adopting a deliberate thinking practice has several advantages:

• Thinking time. It gives us legitimacy to just sitting and thinking, without doing anything else at the same time. Shower thoughts without the shower.

• Reflective muscle. It trains our reflective muscle, which is crucial for understanding and analyzing situations. In particular, we get used to observing and understanding events without immediately looking for solutions. We learn to understand a problem in depth instead of immediately looking for a quick fix.

• Slow motion. It gives us opportunities to rethink our past behavior, the decisions we have made and the conversations we have had, find fresh insights, and recalibrate future behaviors for the better. We learn to avoid spiraling thoughts and to give ourselves time to let draft thoughts mature until they become complete ideas.

• Accurate speaking. It improves our articulation skills. We are familiar with that colleague who in meetings would always speaks at length, starting a thousand sentences without finishing them and taking endless tangents. Insisting with ourselves on thinking in complete sentences helps us get used to the fact that every idea deserves to be articulated fully, to the point.

William James introduced the concept of stream of consciousness: he described consciousness as an “unending parade of thoughts, feelings, images, ideas, sensations, conceptions, emotions, etc”. The way we think follows the same style as the way we speak - and it affects like a boomerang the way we communicate. If we are used to speaking chaotically, without filtering and without trying to make order in our ideas, our inner speech in our mind will also follow the same dynamic. And when we try to express ourselves, we will spit out a confusing skein with no head or tail.

If we want to reach a feeling of clarity, in our thoughts and in our conversations, we need to get used to, simply, being still and thinking in full sentences.

Three ideas to play with

☞ 1 You can’t engineer a company’s culture

Brian Chesky, AirBnb’s founder and CEO, is one of the most brilliant CEOs of our times. AirBnB proves time after time to be a strong, creative, resilient company. One of the reasons, besides a long-term, sophisticated business model, is Chesky’s interdisciplinary approach towards tech, management and strategy.

The whole interview is a masterclass in deep thinking for business leaders. I recommend listening to the eye-opening take on organizational culture (spoiler - “culture building” programs are rubbish, but some deep, authentic alternative exist). Listen here to the interview.

☞ 2 All personal finance books are wrong

We are going to call it the self-helpization of non-fiction. A mouthful, but you get the point. The writing style of self-help books, written in second person to speak directly at the reader who is seeking guidance for their personal development, creeped into many other topics. Personal finance is one of them.

The drawback is that many of these books, particularly the simplistic and barely useful ones, use a condescending and manipulative approach. Sometimes it works, because they push the reader to ask the right questions. Often they are just dumbing-down themes to the point of leaving the reader empty-handed. Read more here.

☞ 3 Abilities that come natural to you are as valuable as your expertise

For many years I’ve been the guy in the office who understands computer stuff. I have no background in IT or in programming, but I learned to figure out software-related issues. Colleagues would reach out to solve issues instead of calling the IT, because that would take time (and because no one likes the IT people, sadly).

We all have micro skills that help us design, manage and perform better. These skills do not replace an expertise, but are its greatest sidekick. Not only because of the social capital that they attract, but mainly because they expand our chances of deliver excellent work. Read more here.

Ease into investing

“Ease” being the key word. With automated tools like portfolio rebalancing and dividend reinvestment, Betterment makes investing easy for you, and a total grind for your money.

Get started

Unrelated

There used to be giant armadillos, but we ate all of them.

One more thing

Imagine if you could hear Paul Giamatti’s voice every time you want, without going to the cinema or sitting in front of your tv. Who wouldn’t do that?

He recently started a podcast called The Chinwag, together with the philosopher Stephen Asma. They discuss whatever they want, and it’s brilliant. Check it out here.

If you enjoyed what you read, you should forward this e-mail to at least one friend who will enjoy it as well.
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