Max Mednik

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." --Aristotle
 
This is the last post in my "professionalism" series for now. I might come back to this topic in the future, but I wanted to conclude with a few techniques that are purely about your own preparation and diligence as a professional rather than about your interactions with others.

My other posts dealt mostly with the subject of respect in interpersonal professional communications. Being organized, responsible, and doing what you promised were all important elements of that.

But the core of being a successful professional lies in not only how you work with others but how you do the actual work itself. This involves constantly learning new things, remembering how to do your work correctly and in a timely manner, and presenting it in a way that is acceptable and understandable to your audience.

This sounds simple, but there are many pitfalls to doing this consistently. I'd like to point out three main categories of pitfalls or techniques that resonate strongly with me or that frustrate me a lot when I have to deal with them being done poorly by others.


Information should be Consistent, Correct, and Fresh

At AMA Capital, I had the opportunity to work with a lot of different brokerage firms and international trading companies. They would send me documentation of how their systems and APIs worked, and we would rely on that information to trade with them or engage in some sort of business deal.

We quickly learned that 9 times out 10, the information provided always had some (significant) flaw. I don't expect perfection out of other people or businesses, but I expect the only mistakes or omissions made to be insignificant ones. Instead, we would consistently find that information was copied and pasted incorrectly and without modification, major details were excluded, and certain clear parameters were defined completely wrong. And this happened across many different companies we worked with.

This obviously made us quite distrustful of what anyone told us and taught us to have the mentality that we always need to discover for ourselves how something works rather than relying on someone's word. On the one hand this may be a decent practice, but it's also pretty sad and inefficient.

The three major areas of mistakes that we kept seeing (and which I wish professionals would improve at) were the following:

1. Consistency: Numbers from one page to the next (or spellings of names or descriptions or details) were different. This is particularly troublesome because we don't know which number is correct and we end up counting the entire document as pretty much useless. This might come about from modifying one section of the document without remember to modify another section. By being more thorough and careful in doing document updating and by having one list of parameters that everything else refers to, this type of inconsistency can be avoided.
   
   
2. Correctness: This is obvious, but the information listed needs to be correct (accurate numbers, units, etc.). If something is an estimate or guideline, that should be differentiated from something more concrete.
   
   
3. Freshness: Information should be kept up to date. People often skip the work of documenting technical or business changes because the documentation work is boring and time-consuming. This leads to documents being out of sync with reality and confusing the people who depend on that information. This applies to information online as well, such as features, specifications, blogs, etc. Keep your information fresh and up-to-date to show others that it can be relied upon.
   

Be an Expert and Amateur at the Same Time

The first part of this tip is obvious, but the second part may not be.

The first part says that you should aim to be an expert in your field. This means doing your work carefully and staying up-to-date on industry news, blogs, etc. For example, I read the Wall Street Journal on a daily basis, the Economist weekly, three different futures or currency magazines on a weekly basis, and follow about 20 blogs through Google Reader. Most of my reading is skimming, but I fully read articles that catch my attention or seem relevant to something I care about.

An important part of being an expert and being responsible with one's knowledge is knowing where that knowledge ends. When someone asks me for help with something I don't know, I volunteer to them that I don't know and explain whom we should talk to or how we can go about finding that information. This shows a level of humility to the other person (that I know where my knowledge stops) and makes them confident in the things that I tell them I do know about. This is much better than always giving your best guess and having people think that you know how to guess but can often be wrong.

The second part of this tip is cultivating the "beginner's mind." This is a term that Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi, a Zen master, wrote about. In essence, this means considering yourself an amateur at all times and willing to learn new information and change your preconceptions or world views. By being more open in this way, it will be easier to take in new ideas and ways of working, which will allow you to grow much more effectively throughout your life.


Language Matters

Finally, I will end this post with some thoughts on language, grammar, and why they matter.

I am always paying attention to the style of a message in addition to its content, and so does everyone else (even if not consciously). For me, noticing many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors makes me question how careful and educated the writer is. Even if I know they learned grammar in school and may even remember it, the fact that they can't take the time to proofread or consider which punctuation or spelling makes sense in a given situation shows me they are not careful with details and cannot be trusted to complete a job all the way themselves. Of course, I easily forgive occasional typos or small grammatical mistakes, but if they happen all the time, I get worried.

I'm sure people will argue that little things like commas and apostrophes don't change the course of the world. Most of the time they're right, and it's just about care for detail. However, in some contexts, such as legal documents or email communications in business negotiations, using ambiguous words or forgetting some punctuation can drastically alter how others understand what you write.

Therefore, I think it's always prudent to be careful with grammar and language, even in very informal contexts like Facebook and Twitter. Sure, you can use abbreviations and online-speak, but make sure you're clear, and sometimes, a comma is really worth that 1 character out of 140.

A book I particularly enjoyed reading a few years ago about all this is Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. It's for people who already know grammar but are always confused about certain things like where to put the apostrophe on words that end with "s" (no, it's not always at the end of the word), when semicolons or dashes are appropriate, and when capitalization is required or not required.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this small series of posts, and continue to let me know what you think (and if you have suggestions for future topics).

The last class of the three-part Zen miniseries I was attending took place yesterday. It was an emotional evening because I had really started getting into and enjoying the discussions and presentations. The cantor told us that any teacher is biased and incendiary, and he admitted wholeheartedly that he hoped his teachings would inspire in us a flame to want to learn more.

There are two parts of this last class that really stuck with me.

The first part came from this quote:

"Through all my teachers I have become wise."
-Song of Songs

The cantor said that there are several interesting things about this quote. First, it points to how one can learn from all one's teachers, not just the most obvious or most acceptable/easy ones. In addition, the quote says "all teachers" and not "male" teachers or "old" teachers or "human" teachers. The key is that one can learn from everything in life, even the plants and animals around us (there were profound Zen quotes about this specifically as well).

A class member raised the question of whether there are still true "teachers" or prophets nowadays or if that is really something that is just in the ancient days when religions were being formed. The cantor had an interesting take: He believed that not only are individual "teachers" or prophets alive now, but he also thought that a teacher can be a collective consciousness that we can all learn from (a Zen concept as well). It struck me at that point that while before the collective consciousness was very hard to make explicit and open for all to see, nowadays it is much easier with technology and social media. Even though networks like Twitter still touch a small segment of our society, they at least hint at some of our collective "teachings" and feelings and make learning from each other a lot easier.

The second part that resonated with me was the following:

"There are few things as straight as a crooked ladder.
There are few things as crooked as the straight face of a con-artist.
There is nothing blacker than the white garments in which a corpse is dressed.
And there is nothing more complete then a broken heart."
-Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

This quote caught me not only in its beauty and structure but also in its message: to have a broken heart is to live and grow. The cantor's interpretation of this was also that "anything worthwhile will break your heart." When I heard this, I almost jumped out of my seat because this has been one of my own mantras for a long time: anything worthwhile in life is difficult, complex, and impossible to perfectly optimize and predict. This goes for relationships, business opportunities, and self-improvement. I was delighted to find references to this same sort of philosophy and also some more perspective on it from others out there.

Overall, I really enjoyed these classes and have come away with many more questions than answers -- which is a good thing.

An interesting quote from the second Zen class I went to yesterday (the third and last class in the series will be next week):

A frog can just "frog."
A bird can just "bird."
But a human cannot just "human."

The key is that animals have very little that gets in the way of their just being themselves. They can sit, eat, sleep, and most importantly focus on exactly what they want and what they feel at every instant. In this way, they are somehow able to be at peace with themselves and in touch with the world around them and with other beings much more powerfully.

But people are different. It is extremely difficult for us to just sit and think of nothing. Or just eat and enjoy our food. The main "practice" in Zen is nothing but sitting -- detaching from the world and one's thoughts and just being. Just humaning.

Why is this so hard for us? Why do we have so little control of our thoughts? What makes us different from animals? I think it's much more complicated than just the fact that we are self-aware and have "intellect." I think our ability to just human changes as we age and changes based on the situation we're in, and I think it is something that we can even learn to do better through practice.

This concept of just being and why it is difficult for us has kept my attention since the class I attended. I'm curious also about how I and other people are able to see glimmers of bright spots when we are just being or doing one specific thing very effectively -- when we're "in the zone" or able to be creative or concentrated. I'm curious about what allows us to be that way from to time and how we can do that more often.

Also, what role does technology play in all this? In some obvious ways, technology really distracts and makes us the least human I can imagine, especially when it disconnects us from establishing heartfelt and direct communications with other people and brings us further rather than closer to others. However, when used in other ways, I think (social) technology can also allow us to be more human than was ever possible before, and I'm curious how we can make that happen.

This blog post isn't really meant to answer any questions; it is meant to put out there some of the questions that have gotten me thinking and welcome others' feedback and input.

I just went to a fascinating seminar on the intersections between Zen Buddhism and Judaism. It sounded crazy to me too, which is exactly why I went.

It was held at my temple and run by our new cantor, who grew up Jewish but also found Zen and studied it devoutly. I very much respect him for his clarity of thought, precise memory for quotations and stories, and of course his amazing voice.

The seminar went through the history of both Zen Buddhist and Jewish/Kabbalistic traditions and showed how many of the most influential thinkers in each tradition were saying the same thing, but with different words. There were important differences between the two disciplines, but many of the core messages were extremely complementary and shockingly similar.

I learned way too much to write here, but I figured it would be interesting to point out the idea that resounded with me the most and the idea that was the most difficult for me to grasp.

(As an aside, both traditions teach that once you have grasped an idea, you have failed. It is in the act of grasping and striving that one learns.)

Idea I relate to the most: Having a beginner's mind.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." -Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi

This quote sounds very close to home for me because I am always interested in the things that I know nothing about and in how I can always improve in various ways rather than how I'm good at something. Though at times my "beginner's mind" can seem limiting, it is often what drives me to learn and study hard and to always be prepared and expect the unexpected.

Idea that I struggle with the most: Finding myself where I am and feeling the emptiness.

"If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?" -Dogen Zenji

The seminar talked a lot about the idea of non-attachment as well as of dependent co-origination -- that all things in life are somehow connected and affect each other. And it is only when we can quiet our minds and feel the emptiness around us that we can truly feel ourselves. This concept is so difficult for me and is what I'm struggling with right now -- how to quiet my mind and all my busy-ness and just be.

I've learned a lot already and look forward to the next two meetings of this seminar. In the meantime, I hope to just be with my beginner's mind.