Daniel Kestenholz

Paving the way for people with great ideas for improving the world

Daniel

Life Principles

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As a disoriented teenager, I started collecting principles that helped me align my thinking and action with my values—how I want to be and how I want to relate to the world. I put those principles in a document that I’d review roughly once per week to stay on track and avoid getting washed away by the currents of everyday life. This document has changed a lot over time based on the challenges I faced and what I learned from them. I’m sharing the current version of this work in progress below in the hope that it will be useful to you, too.

Note that some of the principles might appear to contradict each other. I don’t think that’s the case: they apply to different situations, and life isn’t black-and-white anyway. Note also that I don’t hope to ever achieve those principles—they’re guidelines, not end goals.

It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

Epictetus

Thinking

  1. Awareness
    • Pause and attend.
    • Notice that everything is simply appearing.
    • Relax in the midst of struggle and unsatisfactoriness.
    • The quality of your attention determines the quality of your life.
  2. Acceptance
    • Dwell in reality and don’t argue with it.
    • Relinquish your reaction to experience by simply noticing it.
    • Your experience in this moment is good enough.
    • Don’t wish to be fulfilled. Instead, welcome all things.
  3. Perspective
    • Begin again in each moment.
    • Step away and look at the situation from above.
    • Focus on what you can control. Embrace what you can’t control.
    • It’s not external events that upset you, but your judgment of them.
  4. Ego
    • You are nowhere. There are no bounds between you and the world.
    • You are not your feelings, thoughts, and other contents of consciousness.
    • Ignore the crowd. Improve your life in relation to yourself, not others.
    • Keep your identity small.
  5. Attachment
    • Everything is impermanent. There’s nothing to hold on to.
    • Don’t cling to ideas. Keep your mind open to what is.
    • Let go of the results of your actions.
    • You are entitled to nothing.
  6. Gratitude
    • Enjoy this moment where your consciousness is bright.
    • You will die soon. Let this teach you how to live fully.
    • Compare downwards to feel how lucky you are.
    • Marvel at the universe.
  7. Fear
    • Fear of the unknown will always be with you. Why let it stop you?
    • Own your fear and lean just beyond it, in every aspect of your life.
    • Choose to be excited rather than afraid.
    • Your life shrinks or expands in proportion to your courage.

Action

  1. Resolution
    • Your mission is your priority.
    • Dedicate yourself to excellence.
    • Always have a challenge.
    • Every action is a vote for who you want to be.
  2. Ownership
    • Act for the well-being of the whole world.
    • You have to find a way to help yourself.
    • Pain plus reflection equals progress.
    • Own your desires and be shameless about your intentions.
  3. Resilience
    • Treat setbacks as a test to your ingenuity and resourcefulness.
    • Don’t cling to your comfort.
    • Diversify in everything. Always have a backup.
    • Do what you can, then let things take their course.
  4. Adventure
    • Follow your curiosity, wherever you can find it.
    • Explore the unknown corners of the world and sample experiences.
    • Life is a series of experiments. Do what will teach you the most.
    • There’s no treasure at the end of the process. The process is the treasure.
  5. Transparency
    • In the long run, the truth comes out.
    • Unobstructed self-expression: nothing to hide, nothing to defend.
    • Align what you say with what you think and feel.
    • Seek out games where honesty is the dominant strategy.
  6. Connection
    • Treat everyone as family and assume other people like you.
    • Hold space and experience the full range of feelings behind it.
    • Resist envy. Most of life isn’t zero-sum.
    • Occasionally forgive.
  7. Execution
    • Action allows you to see the world for what it really is.
    • Let your actions control your emotions.
    • Ideas are worth nothing unless executed.
    • Optimism in the face of uncertainty.

If you’d like to explore these ideas further, here are a few books that you’ll find useful:

  • Meditations – Marcus Aurelius (Gregory Hays translation)
  • Tao Te Ching – Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
  • The Bhagavad Gita (Stephen Mitchell translation)
  • Principles – Ray Dalio
  • Algorithms to Live By – Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths
  • How to Fight a Hydra – Josh Kaufman
  • Waking Up – Sam Harris

Brainstorming

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Coming up with options is one of the critical steps in any decision-making process. Brainstorming is a useful tool to explore the options space. This post illustrates how to do it.

1. Setting the stage

Decide whether you’ll brainstorm on your own or in a group. The latter is preferable since the perspectives of several people typically produce more ideas than any individual on their own.

Next, define the problem for which you aim to generate options, and frame it as a question. Make sure the question is open-ended and provides the appropriate amount of constraint for the brainstorm. Good examples include:

  • What are some questions you could ask yourself about [this problem]?
  • How many ways can you think of to test [this hypothesis]?

Agree on the rules for the brainstorm. Here are some suggestions:

  • Aim for quantity, not quality. Measure the success of the session by the number of options you’ve generated, not the quality of those options.
  • Defer judgment. Don’t censor at this stage. Get every idea out on paper. Don’t do anything that would signal liking or disliking of any of the ideas.
  • Make sure everyone feels safe to bring up any idea that comes to mind. Encourage wild ideas since they help go beyond the obvious ones.

Finally, decide how much time you’ll dedicate to the brainstorm. Start with a short session (2-4 minutes) to create some urgency, which helps overcome censoring of ideas.

2. Doing the brainstorm

Give everyone a set of post-its and a pen, set a timer, and do the brainstorm. Don’t have the facilitator collect ideas as this limits the speed of the brainstorm.

3. Evaluating the results

Once the timer goes off, collect all post-its in one place. Group similar ideas and give every unique cluster a descriptive name.

Then, vote on the ideas. Do this in silence so everyone can form their independent opinion. Use colored sticker dots to cast votes.

Identify the ideas with the most votes. Discuss their merits and decide what to do about them.

Sample questions

Below are a few questions that have helped me come up with ideas in a variety of situations. Liberally skip any question that doesn’t elicit useful thinking.

  • Meta: What are some questions you could ask yourself about this topic? Add those to the list.
  • What are the individual steps? Why is each step performed?
  • What are the limiting steps? How can you work around them?
  • What would this look like if it were easy?
  • What metrics can you use to find out if you’re on track? How can you install these metrics in your digital and physical workspace?
  • Where does this process need monitoring and gate-keeping?
  • What are the worst things that could happen? What could go most wrong? What do you want to avoid?
  • What if you did nothing at all?
  • What are the second-order effects?
  • What are the critical assumptions? How can you verify them?
  • Where are you uncertain and expect additional information to be valuable? How can you collect this information?
  • Who is an expert at this? How can you get their input?
  • What’s the minimum effective dose to get the desired results?
  • What would you do to achieve your goal with only 10% of current inputs?
  • How can you increase the leverage of your efforts? What do you need to stop doing?
  • How can you make yourself redundant?
  • What if you could only subtract to solve problems?
  • Would you be worried if the details were made public? If yes, why?
  • What would your successor do?

Goal Setting

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I rely heavily on setting ambitious monthly goals for myself and the people I work with. This post provides guidance on how to set and evaluate goals. I recommend doing this on a monthly basis. Set aside 2-4 hours at the end of each month to go through the steps outlined below. Your manager should invest about 1 hour to give feedback.

Why set goals?

  • Identify and focus on what’s most important.
  • Motivate yourself and your employees.
  • Establish accountability for certain outcomes.

Effective goals

Goal setting produces the best results when goals are:

  • Aligned and important. Each goal should help the organization to deliver one of its most important objectives.
  • Limited. Each employee should have no more than three to five goals for any period. Do less, then obsess.
  • Ambitious. Bigger goals that create lots of value motivate us to deliver bigger results since we’re hardwired to respond to a challenge by giving more effort.
  • Beyond key job responsibilities. Goals should represent major achievements rather than items from the job description or single tasks.
  • Set for a short period of time. See Parkinson’s Law. If a goal will take more than three months to complete, break it down into more proximate goals. Start with monthly goals.
  • Clear and specific. Describe your goal in ten words or less. Goals should start with a verb and identify a single key outcome. Ensure you can assess whether you’ve achieved, exceeded, or fallen short of the goal.

Examples:

  • Identify 35 new leads and convert five into donors. (Specify a deadline if it’s not clear from the context.)
  • Test three new methods for collecting credit card payments.
  • Design and conduct two experiments that will help us decide how to organize catering in the future.

Goal-setting process

This section proposes a step-by-step template for how an employee and their manager can set individual goals. Involve the employee in setting goals and determining how to achieve them. This gives them a feeling of commitment and will help with accountability.

1. Develop draft goals

Employee: Use the prompts below to come up with possible goals. Aim high: What would it take to rate this period—e.g., this month—10/10? What are the big promises you can make to your organization? Don’t constrain your brainstorming by worrying about how you’d accomplish ambitious goals.

  • Organizational strategy. What are the three most important objectives for your organization for the next three months? Support them with key results.
  • Unit (project) strategy. Ideally, it is completely aligned with the organization’s strategy and breaks the larger strategic goals down into responsibilities for each division.
  • Comments and suggestions from previous brainstorming on monthly goals.
  • Comments and suggestions from previous performance reviews.
  • Organizational problems and pain points. Talk to colleagues about how to improve internal processes.
  • Personal development and interests.
  • Key job responsibilities. They are an inspiration for what the employee should accomplish within their job.

Once you have a list of possible goals, narrow it down to the three to five goals that will create the most value for your unit and the organization.

  • Eliminate trivial goals or big tasks, or combine several related tasks into one goal.
  • Which goals does your organization value the most?
  • Which goals will have the greatest impact on performance and profitability?
  • Which goals best position our team for future success?

Manager: Draft your own set of goals for the employee. Compare the employee’s draft goals with your list and consider which are most important to your organization and department.

2. Meet to finalize goals

Employee and manager: Meet to finalize a list of three to five goals and turn them into succinct statements. Ensure each goal meets the criteria for effective goals (see above). With the list finalized, talk briefly about how the employee might accomplish each of their goals.

3. Make a plan

Employee: Flesh out each goal using the prompts below, then send it to your manager for review.

  • Goal statement: What will you achieve?
  • Connection to strategy: How will this advance your organization, division, or team strategy?
  • Measures / verifiable criteria: How will you determine if you’ve actually achieved this goal?
  • Resources required: What will you need in order to complete your plan?
  • Existing resources: What existing work can you build upon?
  • Step-by-step plan: What are the main steps you need to take to achieve your goal? What are the immediate next steps?
  • Completion date / deadline. Be aggressive and use artificial deadlines if possible.

Manager: Approve the plan, or suggest changes.

Goal-evaluation process

Employee: After the end of the period, answer the following questions for each goal:

  • What were the desired outcomes?
  • What were the actual outcomes? Please reference the most important materials you’ve produced for quick accessibility.
  • Was the goal achieved? If so, how was it achieved? If not, explain why not.
  • What went well and why?
  • What can be improved and how?
  • Do you need to communicate your evaluation to anyone?

Manager: Give feedback on the goal evaluation and capture lessons.

If you’d like to explore these ideas further, here are a few resources that you’ll find useful:

Minimalist Productivity System

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To be productive at work without struggling unnecessarily, you need to have a reliable way of organizing everything that’s part of “your world”, including tasks, deadlines, meetings, external dependencies, etc. This post outlines a minimalist approach to designing a productivity system that helps you do your best work.

Introduction

Getting Things Done, or GTD as it’s often referred to, is a popular time-management system developed by David Allen. GTD is a framework for organising your todos, priorities, and your schedule in a way that makes them all manageable. While the system has its merits, it often tries to do too much and requires a considerable amount of time just to maintain the system. Furthermore, GTD is a bottom-up, runway-level system and doesn’t put enough emphasis on your goals.

In this post, I have tried to simplify GTD and break it down into a few essential habits that you can adopt step by step. This was inspired by Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done. People who want to implement the most simple system possible should focus on the first four habits listed below.

Habit 1: Collect

  • Externalize your thoughts; write them down.
  • Carry a small notebook (or whatever capture tool works for you) and write down any tasks, ideas, projects, or other information that pop into your head.
    • Pen and paper
    • Emergent Task Planner
    • OneNote
    • Bear (only Mac/iPhone)
    • Do-Button (IFTTT)
    • Evernote
    • Things (only Mac/iPhone)
    • Workflowy
    • Send an email to yourself
    • Siri, Google Assistant
  • Have a way to capture ideas that’s always available, in every context. Your best ideas about work will often not come to you at work.
  • Every place where you collect information is an inbox. Cut the number of inboxes you have down to the smallest number possible.
  • Only drop notes in inboxes that you actually trust yourself to check in time

Habit 2: Process

  • Check and process your inboxes frequently—for instance, once a day. Don’t allow your inboxes to overflow. If necessary, set reminders such as calendar events at times when you want to process your inboxes.
  • Start with the top item in your inbox, and make an immediate decision. Don’t skip over it or put it back in or delay the decision. Note that the items below contain references to a later section; Habit 5: Simple System.
    • Delete: Throw away, shred, or recycle anything that has no potential future action or reference value. Make this your first choice.
    • Delegate: Are you the person who should be doing this? If not, send it to someone else and create a note on your “Waiting For” list. Record the date on everything that you hand off to others.
    • Do it immediately: If the task will take 2 minutes or less, just do it rather than adding it to your to-do list—the efficiency cutoff is at about 2 minutes.
    • Defer it for later: If it will take more than 2 minutes, add it to your to-do list to do later.
      • If you need to do it at a certain date or time, put it on your calendar to get a reminder.
      • If you don’t need to do it anytime soon, put it on a “Someday” list, so it doesn’t clutter up your more important to-do lists.
    • File it: If it’s just something you need for reference, file it in your reference system.

Habit 3: Plan

  • Separate planning from doing.
  • Each month, conduct an in-depth review. Evaluate progress on your goals and set new goals. Reflect on several levels (for instance, current actions, current projects, areas of responsibility, 1–2-year goals).
  • Each week (ideally, Monday morning), sit down and look at your to-do list. What 4-6 things do you want to accomplish this week? These are your “Big Rocks”. Place them in your weekly schedule. Place only one or two per day, so you aren’t overwhelmed. Place them in 1-2 hour blocks, early in the day if possible.
  • Each day, create a list of 1-3 “Most Important Tasks” (MITs – basically your Big Rocks for the day) and be sure to accomplish them. Block out time for them early in the day to get them out of the way and to ensure that they get done.

Habit 4: Do

  • Choose a Big Rock: First, select a task (preferably one of your MITs) and decide that you are going to work on it either until it’s done, or for a set amount of time (say 30 minutes).
  • Get zoned: Before you get started, eliminate all distractions. Shut off email, cell phone, Internet if possible (otherwise just close all unnecessary tabs), remove clutter on your desk, anything that might interrupt you. Focus on one task at a time.
  • Timed burst: Set a timer if you like, or otherwise just focus on your task for as long as possible. Don’t let yourself get distracted from it.
  • Interruptions: If you get interrupted, write down any request or incoming tasks/info on your notepad, or toss the document into your inbox, and get back to your task. Don’t try to multi-task. If you feel the urge to check your email or switch to another task, stop yourself. Re-focus yourself and get back to the task at hand.
  • Urgency: There are times when an interruption is so urgent that you cannot put it off until you’re done with the task at hand. In that case, try to make a note of where you are with the task at hand, and put all the documents or notes for that task together and aside. Then, when you come back to that task, you can pull out your folder and look at your notes to see where you left off.
  • Relax: Take deep breaths, stretch, and take breaks now and then.

Habit 5: Simple System

  • Keep simple lists and check them daily. Use a simple setup and simple tools so that your system does not need to be maintained much. Below is a sample setup that may differ substantially from your system.
  • Inboxes: Every place where you collect information is an inbox.
    • Email inbox (try to have just one)
    • Slack
    • Task management app inbox (Asana/Trello/Things/etc. — check out this article for an overview of the best apps out there)
      • Integrate with Chrome: Use the Trello extension to create new cards and send them to your inbox.
      • Integrate with Gmail: Use Zapier (this template) to create Trello cards from new starred Gmail emails.
      • Integrate with Slack: Use Zapier (this template) to create Trello cards from new starred Slack messages.
    • Evernote app (phone and desktop)
    • Paper notebook (for instance, the Emergent Task Planner)
    • Physical in-tray
  • Calendar: The calendar provides the “hard landscape” for the day. Record all your events in one place. Example tool: Google Calendar. Things that go into your calendar:
    • Time-specific actions: Appointments
    • Day-specific actions: Things that you need to do sometime on a certain day, but not necessarily at a specific time.
    • Day-specific information: Things you want to know about on specific days – not necessarily actions you’ll have to take but rather information that may be useful on a certain date.
  • Lists: Below is just a sample of lists that you may find helpful. Previous sections in this post referred to a “to-do” list, which you can read as all of the lists that you use.
    • “Projects” list: A list of project titles, descriptions and intended outcomes of the projects. A project is any objective that takes more than one action. Example tools: Google Document, Trello board, Asana.
    • “Next Actions” list: A list of tasks that should be done as soon as possible, and that you can choose to do at any moment. Example tool: Google Document.
    • “Someday” list: This list contains ideas and projects you might want to realize at some time in the future. Limit the number of items on that list to below 20, or it will cease to be useful. Example tool: Google Document, Trello board.
    • “Waiting For” list: Take a note when you delegate work to others, send an email you expect (or need) a reply to, order something, or have a task that is “blocked” because you are waiting for someone else to do something. These items should always be marked with the current date so you can refer to it later. Example tool: Google Document.
      • “Streak” or “Boomerang” are Gmail extensions that can notify you if you haven’t received a response to your email within a pre-set amount of time
    • “Issue Log”: Record your mistakes and learn from them. Anything that goes wrong must be “issue logged” with the severity of the issue, who is responsible for it, and how to fix it. Here’s a template that you can use.
    • “Read/Review” list: A list of things that you want to read. The idea is to have this material available whenever you have a few minutes to kill. Example tool: Save to Pocket.
  • Reference system: Reference material that requires no action but may have value as information. Example tools: Google Drive and Documents.
    • General-reference file: Use a Google Document (or any software that you’re using) that is close at hand for storing ad hoc information that doesn’t belong in some predesigned larger category.
    • Password manager. Example tool: 1Password.

Habit 6: Organize

  • Find a “home” (physical and digital) for everything, then put everything in its home. Every physical item in your house should have a place where it is supposed to rest. Every task, event and project should have a place in your system where it will wait.
    • The 30 seconds test: Can you find anything you need in 30 seconds?
  • Put it away immediately.
  • Keep flat surfaces clear.
  • Digitize everything, make backups.

Habit 7: Review

  • A Weekly Review helps you get things together and refocus yourself on what’s important. Do the review at a set time on the same day every week. For instance, do it every Monday at 9 am.
  • Review your notes: Find unfinished tasks, phone numbers to enter into your contacts, etc. Just do a quick scan and jot down any unfinished items.
  • Review your calendar: Look back over your last week’s calendar items to see if there’s anything that needs to be moved forward, and to see if there’s anything that triggers new tasks that need to be done. Also look over your upcoming week’s calendar to see if there’s any tasks that need to be done.
  • Review your lists: Whether you have multiple context lists or one to-do list, it’s important to look over them, to make sure they’re up-to-date. Cross off completed items. Also review your follow-up list, your Someday list, and your project list, if you keep them.
  • Review your goals: Evaluate progress on your goals and set new ones. Set your short-term goal this week and plan your Big Rocks.
  • Brainstorm on new tasks and goals: Write everything down on a white sheet of paper. Don’t judge or evaluate. Go for quantity, not quality. Put analysis and organization in the background. Determining what might go most wrong in a situation is at times the best way to generate the best ideas about how to make it successful.

Habit 8: Simplify

  • Eliminate: Take a few minutes to review your task and project lists, and see how much you can simplify them.
  • Know what’s essential: You know what’s essential by knowing what your main goal is, and other goals if necessary. Work on your 1-3 most important projects whenever you’re not bottlenecked by external forces. Focus on completion.
  • Biggest value: Focus on the tasks that create the most long-term value. Those are your Big Rocks and MITs.
  • Batch small tasks: Take a look at your lists and find ways to put smaller tasks together. This saves time and cuts down on interruption. Small tasks might be calls, emails, writing a short letter, doing paperwork, etc. Try to do them quickly and knock them off your list.
  • Simplify your commitments: Value your time and learn to say no.
  • Simplify your information system: This includes RSS feeds, news platforms, TV, email, etc.

Habit 9: Set Routines

  • Create daily and weekly routines to give your week more calm and order.
  • Daily routine: Look at your lists and see which tasks need to be done every day. Those might include planning your day and setting your MITs, answering emails, making phone calls, writing in a journal, exercise, and more. Plan out your daily routine. Don’t schedule every minute of your day, but have certain set times each day when you do these daily tasks.
  • Weekly routine: The stuff you do once or twice (or more) a week, but not every day, should be on your weekly routine. This could be things like your weekly review, laundry, reviewing goals (although this could be put in your weekly review), exercise, and more.
  • Trying it out: Try to stick to a new routine for at least a week, then review how it went.
  • Sticking with it: Once you find a good set of routines that work for you, if you can stick with them for 30 days, it will become a habit.

If you’d like to explore these ideas further, here are a few resources that you’ll find useful: