Image Credit: Superman Card Game by Whitman (1978) - Green Kryptonite by Mark Anderson via CC by 2.0

10 Minute Challenge - July 2015

In my opinion, Superman is one of the most insanely powerful comic book super heroes. Basically, he's invincible. Since he cannot be beat, Superman comics tended to be very dull comics. It's like watching Real Madrid demolish a 5 year old soccer (football) team in a scrimmage. There is no drama because there is no suspense about who's going to win the battle with Superman.

Boring.

That's why the creators of Superman invented kryptonite 5 years after Superman's first appearance. For those of you unfamiliar with the Superman mythos, kryptonite is a fictional radioactive material from Superman's home planet of Krypton. When Superman is exposed to kryptonite, the radiation disables Superman's powers, causes him pain and nausea, and will eventually kill him. [1]

So, what can fictitious super heroes teach us about leadership? Simple, even the most high powered and skilled leader has weaknesses. These weaknesses can take many forms, such as environmental, psychological, or simple bad habits.

“Even the most high powered and skilled leader has weaknesses. ”

A few of my weaknesses

To help illustrate the point, I will describe a few of my weaknesses:

[Habit] Computer use near (or even after) my bedtime. If I'm a finely tuned machine during the morning hours, then I am a broken down machine that's out of gas late at night. In stark contrast to my morning time, I'm so unfocused and unproductive at night that I might as well go to sleep and finish in the morning whatever work needs to be done. But often I don't. I find myself wasting time looking at pointless "Internet stuff" instead of researching or working. Before I know it, an hour has passed and I've accomplished very little except losing valuable sleeping time. I also find that when I do eventually go to sleep, the quality of my sleep is degraded. I track my sleep with my Fitbit Flex and it consistently shows worse sleep quality and duration when I use electronics within an hour or going to sleep.
[Habit] Watching television series. I don't watch much TV. In fact, I watch almost none. If I had to pick a habit that has consistently returned me productivity time each day, it would be my decision to abandon television. However, there are a lot of high quality TV series out there and sometimes I do get hooked watching one. When I say "get hooked", I mean "I cannot stop until I watch every episode of that season, or all episodes of all seasons". If there are more episodes that I haven't yet watched, it's hard for me to focus on anything else until I've watch them all. It's great for entertainment but it's devastating for productivity.
[Environmental] Drinking alcohol. When I'm in social situations where alcohol is served, I will often drink with my friends, family and coworkers. However, when I do, my focus, motivation, and productivity pay the price. I'm not talking about getting "drunk" or alcoholism. I'm saying any alcohol has an impact on high performance (after all, alcohol is neurotoxic).
[Psychological] False consensus bias. This is a common bias that I have had for a long time. This bias is where we tend to think other people agree with us, even if they don't. For me personally, I tend to assume that others will see the merit in my ideas, and see them as obvious improvements over the status quo. Like all biases, I do my best to defend against it, but sometimes I'm still surprised when I think people agree with me but they really don't. The consequence of this behavior is that I need to spend extra time convincing and persuading others after-the-fact, when it would've been simpler and and easier to persuade them of a new initiative or strategy beforehand.

Your Challenge

This month, your 10 minute challenge is to go to a quiet place where you can feel introspective and really think. When you're there, get brutally honest with yourself about your weaknesses, behaviors and the situations that do not help you in your quest to become a strong productive leader.

Now that you have them in your mind, write them down on a piece of paper. The act of getting them out of your head and down onto paper takes a lot of their power away. They are now actionable if you choose to take action.

This month we aren't going to do anything more with your productivity kryptonite items, but if you want to create a habit to break one, now you have a list to choose from. We'll come back to this list later on, and use it to strengthen your productivity.

Take care, and I'll talk to you next time.

1: Interestingly, another famous superhero in the DC universe, Batman, keeps a kryptonite ring as "insurance" in case he ever crosses paths with Superman. Even though Batman is a normal man, and Superman is an invincible alien, the presence of the kryptonite ring means that either superhero might prevail if they battled each other.

In the comments sections, briefly describe one of your productivity killers.

Seek out and Remove Your Productivity Kryptonite

10 Minute Challenge - July 2015

A few of my weaknesses

Your Challenge

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