Visual Wisdom 21: Nov 22, 2020.

#newsletter

Hi folks,

Greetings from Chicago!

As you know making visuals make me happy, helps me learn new stuff and I get to teach
others what I learned. However, I have not been putting out as much as I would want to. So
I have been sharing theindex card sketches on Twitter and making the digitally illustrated
visuals when I find free time.

Turns out people don’t care as much as I thought they would about paper sketches as long
as the visual is clear and the idea is shared. Lesson Learned: Just ship it!

Here’s a snapshot of everything in store for this edition:

The Idea of the week: Approach Goals vs Avoidance Goals.
Tweet of the week: Worker Identity ft. Paul Millerd.
Book of the week: The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson
Quote of the week from Charles Darwin.

1. Idea of the week: Approach Goals vs Avoidance Goals

> People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people
 look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working."-Elon Musk

The key to any achievement begins with the right goals. Yet, there is a problem with the
way we set goals. Just a handful of people and organizations get them right.

According to Goal Theory, all goals can be broadly categorized into two:
1. Approach Goals
2. Avoidance Goals

When you set approach goals, you are aiming at something higher and making gradual
progress towards it. It is associated with positive emotion.

A few examples of approach goals are:

Elon Musk's SpaceX aiming to build a colony on Mars.
A Student aiming for A+ grades on all subjects.
A person trying to get wealthy.

On the other hand, when you set avoidance goals, you are focused on staying the hell
away from problems and mistakes. Instead of pursuing greatness, you are actively trying to
avoid ruin. They are usually associated with negative emotions such as stress and anxiety.

A few examples of avoidance goals are:

A dying company like Yahoo trying to avoid vanishing into obscurity.
A Student who studies with the sole aim of avoiding an F on a subject.
A person trying to avoid going bankrupt.

We must be trying to stay away from avoidance goals since they make the journey towards
our goals filled with negative emotions. In order to live a meaningful life, enjoying the
journey towards success is equally or more important than reaching your goals.

Applications Steps:
1. Take a good look at all your goals (conscious or unconscious).
2. Categorize them into avoidance and approach goals.
3. Find ways to convert any avoidance goals into an approach goals.

You can read more about the Avoidance and Approach Goals here:
Goal Orientation Theory
2. Tweet of the week

I wrote a tweet and a visual about how we need to misidentify from our worker identity.
When someone asks me who I am, my first tendency is to say, “I am a Sr. Engineer at
Pfizer”. When I think more about it, I often ask myself, “Really? Is that all you are?”

I know that I am much more than what I do from 8-5. However, this idea of work is so
ingrained in our society, that we don’t even take the time to reflect upon our true identity.
We simply assume the identity that is convenient to us.

You should follow Paul Millerd, an ex-strategy consultant who is trying to reimagine how
we perceive work. This tweet was inspired by Paul’s body of work that talks about the need
to stay away from the trap of the worker identity.

https://twitter.com/Deepuasok/status/1330221909242474496?s=20

3. Book of the Week.

The Relaxation Response is a book written in 1975 by Herbert Benson, a Harvard

physician, and Miriam Z. Klipper. The books explores the effect of meditation on the
human system (both nervous and musculoskeletal body).

They studied meditators from the Transcendental Meditation practice. Our body and mind
enters a flight or fight response in the face of a threatening stimuli.

The relaxation response is the result of practices such as meditation, progressive relaxation
etc. that will let you enter the exact opposite of the flight and fight state.
4. Quote of the Week
Follow VW on Twitter | Follow VW on Instagram | Deepu’s Twitter Profile.