Chamber 🏰 of Tech Secrets #24
Principles
The Chamber 🏰 of Tech Secrets is open. There are no tech secrets this week. I have a handful of ideas I am working on, but they did not make it to the level of readiness to be published. That said, I have something non-tech that I think is helpful in life and work, and thats some thoughts around Principles.
Principles
I have been a big fan of developing principles for several years. I think it helps a lot to write down how you think about things. Principles are a way to codify your thinking and hopefully be a force multiplier for you and others by making the one decision that makes 100 others. It also lets others in to understand how you think and what you value.
Examples of Principles
I find principles useful in both work and life.
I have written a lot about our Enterprise Architecture Principles at Chick-fil-A, so I won’t rehash them here. We use them as the foundation in a huge percentage of our conversations and they help us ensure that we focus on things that matter and don’t just dispense our opinions as if they should be unilaterally followed.
Ray Dalio has a good book called Principles: Life and Work that I recommend. Interestingly I valued the first half where he told stories about his principles much more than the second half where he listed out hundreds of them. I like the accompanying journal, too.
Principles, done well, can become the default configurations for your life. We all fall back to something, and principles are a system that can help us fall back to something intentional and aligned with our goals.
Ben’s 10
One of my favorite podcasts is “Chasing Excellence”. Ben Bergeron did an episode where he unpacked the following 10 principles, which I call “Ben’s 10”. You can listen to that episode here, so I’ll give you my thoughts on these to hopefully add some valuable info.
Put first things first: What is most important? What do I want in life? Make sure to put the things that matter first. For me this is my family and friends (be rich in relationships), my physical health as much as I can control it (be the healthiest me I can be), the experiences I can have in my life both alone and with others I love (maximize freedom, travel and adventure in our lives), and doing things that matter and that have a positive influence on the people around me while avoiding be self-centered (do meaningful work and give back). Do I have systems for these things (I do) and am I keeping them top of mind?
Have a growth mindset: See everything as an opportunity to expand my thinking and way of looking at the world. Challenges are ways to get better. Remember that its important to see the opportunity ahead instead of fixating on what is tough, painful, or broken today.
Focus only on what you can control: What can I control? Usually its just my own attitude and my response to things that take place. Focus on those and many problems get immediately better.
Grind through obstacles: Every day is going to bring different kinds of challenges. Every obstacle presents a challenge to be positive and figure out how to overcome it. The alternative is to shut down, feel bad for myself, pity party. I want to be the person that learns from obstacles and gets better, not the person who gives up.
Own your attention: It is so very easy to become a captive to the devices in our lives or the things that we own. To channel Fight Club, “the stuff you own ends up owning you”. Of all my principles, this is often the biggest struggle and it is good to remind myself regularly, even now, that I want to be a person who gives my attention to the people who are present in my life.
Question your self-limiting beliefs: I am capable of things I doubt I can do. This takes balance as I can’t just suddenly believe I can back squat 550# and then do it, but I should question ideas like “I can’t back squat 550# because I am over 40”. No magic. It takes work. But a lot is possible with focus.
Turn every "have to" into a "get to": In every situation where you want to say “I have to…”, flip the script. This makes me much more grateful for every situation I find myself in.
Never whine, never complain, never make excuses: I have written that I see complaining as a sign of engagement, because it means you have not resigned yourself to the status quo. That said, I prefer to not be the one who is complaining whenever possible. Generally whining and complaining don’t take me anywhere. The same for making excuses.
Don't judge people, thoughts, ideas: It is easy to quickly default to judgement instead of openness. I want to be a person that is willing to hear out ideas and understand people with different perspectives. I want to take the time to at least hear the story before reaching a conclusion.
Chase excellence: I see this as not settling and constantly seeking to improve myself and all the things I touch.
What are your principles?
Do you know what principles guide your work? Your leadership? Your family? How you spend your time? Your money? If not, I encourage doing some reflecting and thinking about which ones are important to you.
A few tips for making your own:
Steal from others liberally. There is no consequence for principle theft and no reward for principle creativity. The reward is the life well-lived when the right principles are followed.
Make sure you represent who you are and want to be, not what others think you should be (should be doing). Own your own principles.
Principles are different than goals (obviously) but serve as a powerful force when closely aligned with goals as a source of “why”.
Reflect on your principles often, perhaps even writing what they mean, why you like them, and how you want them to show up on a regular basis.
Be okay with changing your principles during reflection and cautious of changing on the fly.
I hope this gets you thinking about how to use principles as a tool for work, life, or both. If you have your own list and are comfortable sharing, drop a comment below. I have some others of my own, but will save those for another time.
Thanks for reading and have a great week! 🙏
Solid. Just bought the Principles Book and the journal. I haven't written any down officially, but it makes sense to have them on paper and to reflect on them.
Use them not only to make 1 decision that makes 100 others, which I think is awesome, but to ensure i'm on track with putting the people and things in my life first.
Great reminder to have principles in check in order to have life in check. Your insights to the 10 were definitely valuable. I really like the Questioning Limiting Beliefs part where "a lot is possible with focus", but man I really liked them all.
And the whole "steal liberally because there is no consequence for principle theft except a life well lived" really fired me up to get my principles down in a journal. Books arrive Aug 24th!