Ricardo Semler - The seven day weekend

• Relentlessly asking "Why" into deep levels
• Soon enough there are no easy, comfortable answers
• This explosion of technology means we must re-gain the time we've lost to the merging of personal and work life. People should be allowed and encouraged to re-arrange their week, drop the traditional notion of a weekend, and divide the seven days among company time, personal time and idleness
• Enjoy a sunny Monday on the beach after working through a chilly Sunday
• If I insist on standard work hours, I may be sacrificing a certain amount of employee potential every day. By encouraging uniformity, I lose productivity.
• Punctuality is a mind-set. It has no relation to watches.
• Stress is the difference between your expectation and reality.
• The list of stressful activities includes going on vacation - theres the expectation that it will be perfect, of how many things need to be arranged before you leave. Not to speak of the stress when you are about to return, and start to fret over the work or mail or errands awaiting you. No wonder there is so much shouting at airport counters.
• Another source of stress and disappointment is the expectation that the workplace is an extended family.
• The fact is, you dont have to like people to work with them.
• Organizations make it possible for employees to feel exhilaration once in a while. Let them get invovled to the point that they shout "yes!" and give each other High Fives because they did it their way - and it worked.
• If the people Arent motivated, they dont need to sign up for motivation training - they need a different job!
• Its human nature to lose interest in anything after time!
• People cannot be passionate about doing the same thing over and over. That particularly true about companies that are highly departmentalized. Even more so if the company spells out job parameters.
• Companies need to understand that interests tend to be cyclical. At Semco we offer incentives to employees to move around different jobs and departments.
• Employees need the latitude to try sifferent jobs because man of them emerge from an educatino system that compels them to make career and training choices at a very young age, when they have little information about professions and no experience.
• Thos who stick around simply learn to live with boredom. But thats a huge waste of human potential.
• We are of the opinion that assembling special people is more difficult than finding something for them to do- or, as is our case - letting them find something profitable to do. Wed become famous for hiring people without having a job for them
• Sales! people would exclaim - he has never sold a pencil in his life! Thats what qualifies him, I would insist. We need to find new ways to sell, and make more solid pitches to customers.
• A human resources department once had 90 people. We decided the department really had no reason to exist. … They blossomed because manager are uncomfortable dealing with personnel issues.

On self-control

Self control

·        Your belief about how self-control works become a self-fulfilling prophecy

o   If you think your willpower is limited, youll fel depleted after exercising self-control

o   If you believe your willpower is unlimited, youll feel energized by self-control tasks

·        You can gradually change your beliefs to become more unlimited

·        Do you have to or do you want to?

o   Reconsider whether its worth wasting your time and effort on something you don’t really want to do in the first place

·        Strategies

o   Temptation bundling

§  TV, favourite podcase, music -> in combination with chores like dish washing, laundry, workout

o   Limit yourself and exlude options

§  No alerts / push notifications

§  No social media apps

§  App block / time restrictions

§  Phone on silent / in another room

o   Adjust your identity to prevent self-control failures

§  “I am…” fit / a sportsmen / a marathon runner

§  Indulging in temptations would incur a cost to your self-image

§  “Every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you wish to become”

o   Think broadly about a choice

§  Think of your choice (whether to indulge or not9 not as a  one-shot decision, but as a sequence of habitual decisions

§  Always ask yourself: what will be the consequences if I indulge every time?

§  Realize that in the future you likely wont change much – youll be equally tempted to indulge as youre now and you wont have more willpower or resources to deal with temptations than you have now

§  Ask yourself – what would my older self ask me to do better now?

o   “rephrase” your thinking

§  Instead of “Oh a yummy cake” think “hmm, what a fattening piece of high-calorie, vein-clogging dessert”

o   Decide once – in general rules – vs over and over again

§  Eg. “I don’t eat desserts” vs deciding against it at every meal

§  “I eat from the salad/veggie bar in canteen” as a general rule. Then you don’t have to consider your choice, decide against the 5 other options actively,…

·        On decision making

o   Whenever making an important decision, get yourself into a high-level (=abstract) construal by asking yourself a series of “why” questions

§  Want to lose weight!

·         “Why”?

o   More attractive

§  Why?

·        Do this until you’ve connected to your deepest values (because is gives me great joy, because I deeply value my life etc.)

o   (This works great! I did not do a career choice for reasons of money or possible power (i.e. climbing to leadership) for itself as money / power does not interest me – I am interested in learning, observing, and my priority of taking care for family and spending/having time is higher than “job”)

We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.