Die Empty Book Review

Purpose Paralysis, Urgent Diligence, Pointless Efficiency, Satisficing (Satisfy + Sufficing), Busily Bored, Curse of familiarity, Bliss Station, Commonplace Book, three kinds of work, four types of employees,• Define Your Battles • Be Fiercely Curious • Step Out of Your Comfort Zone • The cost of inaction is vast • Action defines reality

1. Book Review by
Dr.N.Asokan
9 4 4 5 1 9 1 3 6 9
n t v a s o k a n @ g m a i l . c o m

2. Work: Definition
Workiscoretothehumanexperience
Anyvaluewecreatethatrequiresustospend
ourtime,focus,energy,andeffort–whether
inthecontextofoccupation,relationshipor
parenting–iswork
Workisareinforcementofthatsenseofbeing-
ofoursenseofbelonging-andawayto
discoverourselvesasweinteractwiththe
worldaroundus
Meaningfultoindividual,Valuetoothers

3. Your Work:
Not occupation/ Designation
Youcontributevaluetotheworld
usingyouravailableresources
Everytaskyoudoandassignment
youengagein
Everyinstant/efforttogrowyour
skill/developyourmind
Everytimeyougototheextramile
eventhoughyouareexhausted

4. Your Body of Work
Comprises the sum total of where you choose to
place your limited focus, assets, time, energy,
and effort
Work:
Any instance where you make an effort to create
value where it didn’t previously exists.
Your work is the most visible expression of your priorities

6. Three Kinds of Work
Worksometimesfeelslikeonemassive,melded
blendoftasks,conversationsandmeetings
Totrulyunleashyourfullcapacity/potentialand
toultimatelyfindyoursewetspotof
contribution,youmustengageinallthree
kindsofwork
Mapping, Making and Meshing

7. Three Kinds of Work:
1. Mapping
•‘ Work before the Work” -individually or
with others
•Planning
•Strategy meeting
•Setting priorities
•Less tangible aspects of work, such as values,
sense of why you do what you do
•Fail to account for these, lose your focus and
land in wrong direction

8. Three Kinds of Work: 2. Making
•Actually doingwork……..I did that
•Making is what typically comes to mind when
you think of work
•Executing tasks, Tackling objectives
•Creating value of any kind
•Engaging with reports
•Deliver tangible values

9. Three Kinds of Work: 2. Making
•Easy to gravitate toward Making at the
expense of other two kinds of work
Mosttacticalofthethreekindsof
work,whereit’seasiesttoget
distracted
More moving parts,
decisions with
immediate impact,
more opportunities
for things to go awry.
Must have some guiding
principles to stay aligned
and on task.

10. Three Kinds of Work: 3. Meshing
•‘work between the work’ makes more
effective
•Rarely tied directly to results
•Don’t get paid for it
•Doesn’t show up in anyone’s organizations
priority
•Most important of long term success
•Getting best work out of individuals and team

11. Three Kinds of Work: 3. Meshing
•Composed of activities that stretch and grow
•Acquiring and developing new skills
•Reinforcing and enhancing knowledge
•Cultivating curiosity
•Generating better understanding of the
context for work
•Paying attention to the adjacent spaces in
industries

12. All of us have a tendency
to gravitate toward
one of the three kinds of work at
the expense of other two and
while the negative effects of neglect may
not be evident in the short term, they
can be disastrous in the long term

13. Four Types of Workers

14. Developer = Mapping + Making + Meshing
Weaving resources and
opportunities to create value
Works with urgency and diligence
Does not work frantically
Making plan and execute them
Learning from his actions and
then redirecting as needed
Recognizes uncertainty is not enemy
Takes advantage from opportunities
Constantly developing skills
to move to next level
F o c u s o n
becominga
D e v e l o p e r
F o c u s o n
becominga
D e v e l o p e r

15. Driver = Mapping + Making -Meshing
•Extremely focus on results
•Spends most of the time in planning and checking the tasks
•Obsessed with today’s results
•Becomes narrowly effective
•Unable to spot opportunities
•Wane in performance over time due to doing the more of
the same
•Neglecting to grow skills and develop the intangibles helps
to tackle new challenges
•Sheer will and determination is only one element of
success
•Fail to unleash full potential
Career Beginners ok

16. Drifter = Meshing + Making -Mapping
•Enjoys the process of making
•Loves to develop skills and engage curiosity
•Poor Planner, wasted opportunity
•Good work ethic and quite successful in short
bursts
•Frequently bounces from work to work
•Lacks the conviction of long term plan
•Fails to follow through on many ideas
•Have spotty success, never seems to sustain

17. Dreamer = Meshing + Mapping -Making
Obsessed with ideas, personal
growth, and strategic plan
Lacks conviction, courage or
ethic to put his plan in motion
Talker, rarely accomplish tasks
Effective when they want,
quickly lose interest
Always moving to the next thing

18. Persistent focus,
willingness to
constantly disrupt
and question not
only what your
doing , but how you
are doing matters
Actively engaging in all
three kinds of work will be
better positioned to Build
a Body of work that you
will be proud at later
Developer
Cultivating
the
Developer
mind-set
takes time

19. The degree to which your
contribution reflects your
true potential will be largely
determined by how disciplined
you are about improvingyour
self-awareness and skills
every day

20. Mediocrity : Definition
Negotiation between
the drive to excel and
the biological urge to
settle for the most
comfortable option
Doesn’t always
mean
underperforming
Sliding scale and a state of mind
Compromise of abilities and potential

21. Growthcycleissteepandrapid
incareer,whenweconstantly
facingunfamiliarchallenges
andinneedofdeveloping
newskillstodealwiththem.
Wegrowstagnant,relying
onexistingskills,earn
respectintheindustry,but
deepdownNOTdoingbest
work
Starting
of
the
career,
everything
new,
work
with
full
vigour,
put
our
best
foot
forward
to
win
respect,
recognition
and
to
prove
then
become
auto
pilot

22. Mediocrity
Doesn’t mean doing poor work
Doesn’t mean failing to achieve success
Appear very successful to others
Outwardly unimpressive to others yet to be
maximizing your abilities
Deep down you are settling
Mediocrity is thoroughly subjective and relative

23. Satisficing(Satisfy + Sufficing)
•Don’t get the same level of satisfaction once did
•Progress but NOT important progress
•Invisible force holding and feel trapped
•Begin to experience a fear of choosing poorly
•Become paralyzed with inaction
•Exchange aspiration for practical ones
•Fit better with expectations of others
•Settle for the best available option to meet most
of our expectations
Selection options that is sufficient to meet enough of our ongoing expectations

24. L e a r n i n g C u r v e f o r C o m p l e x Ad a p t a t i o n
D i f f i c u l t y o f l e a r n i n g s k i l l
B e n e f i t s o f s k i l l a c q u i s i t i o n
Followed by a slow levelling off
Rapid growth as the fundamental
mechanics of the skill become
easier to perform
Slow growth at first

25. People who are successful over the long
arc, and who continue to produce in new
and interesting ways after they are well
established in their career, refuse to allow
circumstances to define their engagement.
They continue to grow, develop new skills,
and seek unanticipated opportunities to
use their skills to create value

26. Seven Deadly Sins of Mediocrity
1.Aimlessness
2.Boredom
3.Comfort
4.Delusion
5.Ego
6.Fear
7.Guardedness

27. 1. Aimlessness
Aimlessnessmeansagenerallack
ofcohesivenesswithinyour
day-to-dayactivities
Itisadestructiveforcebecauseit
removesboththejoyof
successandthegratification
thatcomesfromhard,focused
work
Conqueringaimlessnessisto
definethebattlesthatyou
needtofighteachdayinorder
tomakemeaningfulprogress,
thenfocusyoureffortson
thoseaboveallelse.

28. 2. Boredom
•Boredommeansmindhasgrown
wearyoftherutyouareinandis
readytojumpthetracksandtry
somethingnew
•Notnecessarilyabadthing
•Rathertouseasadvantage,often
succumbtoitandallowittozapour
creativefirepower
•Cureforboredomisintentionaland
appliedcuriosity
•Maintainalevelofdisciplinedcuriosity
•Practicethemechanicsofdivergent
problemsolving
Problem finding is increasingly more critical than problem solving

29. 3. Comfort
•Past innovations inhibit future
innovations
•After success, inevitably leads
to stagnation, out of comfort
or over confidence, stops
focusing on developing their
skills
•Overcome the comfort is a
commitment to continual
growth and skill development
•Identify relevant skills that will
help continue to contribute
•Have frequent check points
Love of comfort is frequently enemy of greatness

30. 4. Delusion
•Cultivate self-awareness
•Have accurate sense of your skills, weakness,
and core drivers
•Orient daily activity around self –awareness
•Self-delusion is a fast
track to a life of wasted
potential

31. 5.EG0
Rather go down with the
ship than admit that the
ship might be sinking
Overtime, become inflexible
and unwilling to adapt or
learn because of ego
To countermand ego, adopt
a posture of adaptability
Being in a state of continual
learning and openness to
correction
Failure should be a learning experience NOT a shaming experience

32. 6. Fear Fear thrives on the
unknown
Paralyzing effects often
rooted more in
imagination than
reality
To Countermanding fear
is to instil a practice
of strategic,
intentional and
purposeful risk-taking
in life and work

33. 7. Guardedness
•Great work happens consistently in the
context of community
•In work, always depend on others
•With obligations and pressures, relationship
gets spoiled
•Easy to get into isolation mode, cut 0ff from
opportunities to grow and collaborate
The best defenseis almost always an at-the –ready offense

34. Passion: Suffering
•Great work requires
suffering for something
beyond yourself
•It is created when you
bend your life around a
mission and spend
yourself on something
you deem worthy of
your best effort
What work am I willing to suffer for today?

35. Productive Passion
•The sort of passion that motivates you and is
also beneficial to others
•It is others –focused, NOT self –focused.
•It is what drives you to labor”on behalf of”
rather than to simply satisfy your own needs,
though it may stoke your own fires as well

36. Compassionate Anger
•Compassion = suffer with
•Where do you see dynamics in the market
place pr the world at large that cause you to
feel a desire to step in on behalf of those who
are suffering in order to bear part of their
burden or rectify wrong?
•Willingness to address certain problems, even
at great personal cost

37. Forgotten Battlefronts
•What do you know you should be doing, not nave
been ignoring?
•They are things that have been weighing on your
mind for a while now, and things that you care
deeply about, but you nave been ignoring
because either
•A) you fear that you won’t have time for them OR
•B) you haven’t defined them enough to know
your next steps

38. Busily Bored
•Highly productive, meeting expectations but
mentally stagnant professionals
•Not stretching minds
•Not acknowledging deeper questions
•Not trying new things
•Living with unchecked, limited assumptions

39. To avoid busily bored,
stoke the fires of curiosity by addressing
•Specific form (diving deep into topics of
interest)
•Diversiveform (exploring possibilities through
purposeful questioning)
Establish Hunting Trails
Keep a list of questions: points of curiosity
Dedicate time to pursue your questions
Prototype Relentlessly
Find your ‘Bliss Station’
Develop Possibility Thinking
Refuse to settle for status-quo ideas
Relentlessly embracing the pursuit of great
ones
Engage with full curiosity
Truly define the parameters of the problem
When you have clear boundaries to work within, you can feel more comfortable asking
extremely divergent questions and exploring initially irrelevant-seeming possibilities.
Structure and freedom are two coins of the same coin.
Structure yields freedom to creatively roam

40. Entertainment Vs Engagement
The never –
ending
stream of
new stimuli
is
seductive,
and can dip
toe in
anytime
feel slightly
bored
More
opportunity
for
entertainme
nt, but less of
the
breakthrough
synthesis
that often
comes form
deep,
purposeful
engagement
with
experiences
Blessing and the curse of technology
“ i n b e t w e e n ”

41. Curse of familiarity
•We can become numbed by the constant influx
of new stimulusand our mind may gravitate
intuitively toward whatever is new and shiny
•Because of my awareness of something, I am
often falsely under the impression that I
understand that
•Some people will never learn anything, for this
reason because they understand everything too
soon

42. If you want something to
happen predictably,
you systematize it

43. Bliss
Station
•Where is your sacred place?
•It doesn’t have to be a
dedicated, specially equipped
room in your home
•It can be certain chair, coffee
shop, or a bench in the park
•Wherever and whenever it is,
make it your place to Escape,
Think, Pursue your deeper
questions, and stoke the fire
or your curiosity

44. Structuring your thinking about the work
Four Elements of Redefining Problem
1. Aspirations: taking just a
few minutes to define our
aspirations immediately
sparked new and valuable
insights.
•What does this want to
become?
•What would be the
ultimate end, if we were
to perfectly solve this
problem?

45. 2. Affinities: These are
similarities you notice
between the project you
are working on and other
experiences you ‘vehad.
•Connecting the dotshelp
to spark new creative
insights or possible path
to pursue in your work
•We learn best within the
context of what we
already know

46. 3. Assumptions: If
assumptions were not
challenged, innovations
would cease
•It is the continual
willingness to press
against assumptions that
eventually opens a crack,
and then a steady flow of
progress
•Spend some time
intentionally challenging
any assumptions you
uncover, and use them as
a basis for generating new
thought and ideas

47. 4. Attributes: These are the characteristics of
the problem you are trying to solve.
•List specific, concrete words that describe the
problem you are really trying to solve-the
specific attributes of the problem-and then
use each of those words as a way to develop
new questions to pursue.
•What does it look, feel, and sound like?

48. When you are Blocked……….
Conceptual Block
•Solve by asking different
and better questions
ExecutionalBlock
•Constraints
•Bottleneck
•Unnecessary complexity
•Relational tension
•Surrender control of project
to someone
•Simple lack of knowledge

49. The Biology of Comfort
•I ma biologically wired to stay within a
certain zone of comfort and to avoid
the seemingly unnecessary pain that
comes from stretching beyond
•I need regularly challenge that
biological instinct by jumping over
hurdles that force me to grow.
•Growth is about daily, measured, and
disciplined action.
•Growth is about embracing purposeful
skill development and pursuing new
opportunities that stretch you to step
beyond your comfort zone, even when
it means venturing boldly into the
unknown

50. Three Types of Goals:
Step, Sprint, and Stretch
Growth does not happen
by accident.
It’s the result of intentional
effort and consistent
progress.
Step, Sprint and Stretch
nest within one another
Step goal help to
accomplish Sprint, sprint
goal help to accomplish
stretch goal

51. Step Goals:
What will I do today, no matter what?
•They are small,
measured steps help
you to maintain
forward motion
•Building blocks of
Sprint and Stretch goals
•Help you be strategic
about steeping outside
your comfort zone daily
Make sure to celebrate when you achieve your goals
Very short –arc goal (often daily)
Helps you to maintain even it is small progress

52. Sprint Goals
•Series of step goals that extend over a
season/period
•Designed to stretch your endurance and
generate momentum on your stretch goal
•Plan your week or two weeks to accomplish
intermediate goal, determine daily task
Make sure to celebrate when you achieve your goals
Medium-arc goal (A week or two weeks)
Causes you to go beyond yourself for a season
in order to increase your capacity

53. Stretch Goals: What is the change?
•Big and a major
feat
•Challenge you to
grow
•You can control
and measure
•If you can’t control,
you can’t plan for it
Make sure to celebrate when you achieve your goals
Long-arc goal,
forces you to go far beyond our comfort zone

54. Four Key Areas of Stretch Goals
•Health
•Emotional growth
•Self-awareness
•Personal skill
development
•Cultivating
and growing
relationship
•Developing
Intellectual
capacity
•Ability to process
complex
information
•Skill
Develop
ment
Business/ Work Mental
Personal/spirutualRelational
Be Aware:
the goals many people set are less practical or strategic and more like wishful thinking
You cannot pursue greatness and comfort at the same time

55. •The singular, oppressive force stands between
where you currently are and the great work you
want to do.
•Actively works against your engagement and
causes to seek any excuse from abdicating fro the
great work
•This leads to distraction, which leads to
procrastination, then eventually to self-loathing,
further feds you cycle until you reach in a
downward spiral of disengagement.
•March confidently into resistance to overcome it

56. Self-awareness: Belief & Assumptions
•Deeply held beliefs that hold about the work
place, your abilities and the motivations of your
peers can affect your behaviour
•We become coded with assumptions about the
world works, our place in it and what we are and
w are not capable of.
•Over time these beliefs become solidified and we
act reflexively.
•These assumptions can rule our behaviour, career
choices, relationships and capacity for
effectiveness
Self-awareness is a willingness to explore whether your beliefs about wrk
place line up with the reality of your situation

57. Values and Code of Ethics
•Identifying the things that you hold dear-values
•They are passive, not active imperatives
•Code of ethics is a series of words that concretely
defines how you will engage in work.
•Defines ahead of time how you will make
decisions, interact with others, and make choices
when things get difficult

58. Willing to take a stand on behalf of the work and what they
believe is right
I can get this right
Acts, observes and redirects
I am valuable
Willing to subvert their own interest for the sake of the work
Potentially compromise when there is a strategic advantage
See past failures as learning
My track record demonstrates competence
I am not explaining it well
Willing to work thro’ communication issues
More concerned with what they will be perceived and how
much credit they will receive
I can do no wrong
Create blind spots that prevents to see the obvious areas of
vulnerability
Do not calculate the risk because they don’t really want to
know the answer
I am invaluable
They believe they add value by their presence
Willing to compromise the overall effectiveness of a project
for the sake of getting the credit
Rationalize past failure or rewrite history in order to protect
their self-worth
My track record demonstrates invulnerability
You don’t get me
Shifts the blame for communication issues to the other party
Confident
Person
Overinflated
Ego

59. “What can I Offer?” Instead of ‘What can I get?’
Contribute as much as possible, if you want to
successfully navigate the dynamics of politics
Best strategy is to seek ways of making everyone
else’s job easier.
“Others First” mind-set is not for the sake of
others, but that it’s actually in your best
interest-AMAZING THINGS HAPPEN
Waiting for permission mind-set

60. Critical Business Skill
It does not matter how much
drive or motivation you got,
if you don’t share information
with team members openly,
share credit with colleagues
readily,
put others agendas and
schedules ahead of your own
when necessary and
help your colleagues, then
you are missing a critical business
skills
GIFT (Generosity, Initiative, Forward Momentum, Transparency) to challenge people to seek
ways of adding unexpected value in the work place –Jodi Glickman, career expert

61. SWOT Analysis
Strength : Activities you are actually good at
What unique value am I able to add consistently?
What have I recently discovered I am good at?
Weakness: Activities you struggle with
What activities am I consistently poor at, despite my best effort?
Is there a way to improve my skills in the more crucial areas where I am
failing?
Opportunities:Areas where you are likely to perform well if given a chance
Where do I have the most potential to add value over the coming weeks or
months? How can I position myself to do so?
Threats:areas where you are vulnerable
Where am I most vulnerable, and where do I have the most likely chance of
failing over the coming term?
How can I mitigate the chance of failure?

62. •How much time do you spend doing those things –the
true work that really adds value –on a daily basis?
•Because that work –that you alone are capable of –is
your voice
•It is the unique combination of knowledge, skill, talent,
passion and experiences with which you alone are
capable of approaching your work
•Many people ‘close to the middle’ OR ‘simply do what
is expected’ –NOT unleashing their maximum
potential, much of their unique contribution unrealized
Many people present, even successful, but NOT actively engage to do better unique work.
Not engaging in the difficult work necessary to find their voice

63. Great work results when you stop
doing only what you know you can
do and
instead begin pursuing what you
believe you might be able to do
with a little focussed effort

64. Stay Connected
We are not wired for isolation
From childhood days, we
grow, learn and understand
our place in the world
through interactions with
others
We need people to help us
stay aligned and to bring
out the best in us
Relationships can be
uncomfortable and
challenging at times

65. Relationships
•It is easy to slip into
guardedness and close
ourselves off from the world
when dealing with the
messiness involved in
navigating expectations,
misunderstandings, and
collaborative disagreements
•We do not have emotional
bandwidth to deal with the
complexity of relationships

66. Relationships
“What can I offer?”
Relationshipsaretrickybecausetheyalwaysinvolve
diverseinterest,objectives,andpersonalities,and
therearenosurefirewaystoensurerelational
success
Approach the your relationship with the attitude of
“What can I offer?” instead of
‘What can I receive?’

67. Probing Conversations
1.TheClarityConversation:
BeclearandorderedaboutyourObjectives.
Itisimpossibletoaccomplishsomethingthatyou
can’tdefine.
Many people and teams
waste unnecessary
energy doing work that
was NEVER asked of
them in the first place.
Are you clear about what’s expected of you?

68. 2. Expectation Conversation
•Clarify each person’s expectations to avoid
misunderstanding and misinterpretations
Iteliminatestheuncertaintyand
ambiguityofwhat’sexpected
It creates a culture of
accountability
Thegoalistobringexpectationsinto
alignmentandensurethateveryoneis
focusingtheirenergyinthemost
productiveplaceontheworkitself

69. 3. Fear Conversation
•Fear can cause self-limitation and unnecessary worry
Discuss the true
consequences of failure
Conversation help you to
redefine reality and assess
what’s TRULY versus what
you perceive to be a risk
What was the last risk you took?

70. 4. Engagement Conversation
•Help you indentify patterns of energy and enthusiasm in others
Explain concepts and
teach others about
what you are seeing
and noticing
Thought and Feelings are often very different
You can change your thinking on a subject,
but it’s impossible to immediately change
your emotions
Don’t sacrifice emotional engagement on the altar of rational engagement
What is the best thing we are doing and why?

71. 5. “Final 10 %” Conversation
•Final remnant-a “final 10%” –that is left unsaid turn
into GOSSIP.
Speak difficult truth one
another to create a
culture of transparent trust
Effective tool for Self-awareness
What is something obvious that you
don’t think I am seeing?

72. Five Step Action Process: EMPTY
E:Focus on your Ethics
M:Focus on your Mission
P:Focus on your People
T:Focus on your Tasks
Y:Focus on You
Daily Check
Point is to
refocus on your
Effectiveness
rather than
Efficiency
It doesn’t apply directly, it has to be translated to individual situation

73. Intention and Theory do not Change the
World; Decisive Action Does
Measure you’re your work by daily
progress on what matters to you.
Don’t worry about being Great
in the eyes of others;
Focus on Excelling at your work

74. Lag :Gap between Cause and Effect
It is the season between a seed and reaping a harvest
When you are in the lag, the only thing that keeps you moving forward are
1.Confidence in your Vision and Ability to bring
it to Fruition
2.Willingness to say NO to other things that
tempt you to divert from your course
3.Daily, Diligent, Urgent Progress
Quitting should be a Strategic Choice, NOT on anything else
Don’t Forget, There is always a DELAY in Planting and Harvesting

75. Redefining Success and Failure
Definition of failure defines us more than we may realize, because
“fear of failure” is one of the most frequent sources of paralysis.
When we
perceived the
threat of potential
consequences
outweighs the
perceived benefits
of success, we
stop acting
Definition of
failure became
“NOT TRYING”
not the outcome
Two Things will paralyze our creativity faster than anything else
1.We haven’t defined Success
2.We haven’t defined Failure
What did you fail at this week? How did you know?

76. Stay out of the “Gray Zone”
Allgreatfeats,whetherbuildingabusinessor
raisingahealthyfamily,aretheresultof
alternatingcyclesoftensionandrelease
CapacityandCharacterarebornandtestedin
thefertilefieldsoftension,whereweare
challengedtostretchtoourlimits,andthen
recoverthroughrestandreflection

77. Today -Tomorrow
•An ounce of preventive discipline today is
worth a pound of corrective action later
•Be mindful of how today’s actions will affect
tomorrow’s outcomes
•The seed of tomorrow’s brilliance are planted
in the soil of today’s activity

78. Urgent Diligence
•Brilliant work is forged by those who
consistently approach their days with urgency
and diligence
•Urgency means leveraging your finite
resources (focus, assets, time, effort, energy)
in a meaningful and productive way.
•Diligence means sharpening your skills and
conducting your work in a manner that you
won’t regret later.
When you adopt the mind-set of urgent diligence, you bring value to the world around you

79. Read to know more about
•Purpose Paralysis
•Urgent Diligence
•Pointless Efficiency
•Satisficing(Satisfy + Sufficing)
•Busily Bored
•Curse of familiarity
•Bliss Station
•Commonplace Book

80. Read to Know more about
•Action defines reality
•Our actions that define us, not our intensions
•Potential is nothing but unproven,
hypothetical value
•The cost of inaction is vast
•Act with urgency and diligence every day
•All lives of contribution are built decision by
decision

81. You have a finite amount of focus, time,
and energy to offer the world, and it can
never be reclaimed once it’s spent.
Focus on What’s Next.
Your Life will be measured by
What you gave ,
NOT
What you Receive.