Data Science Meeting @ Google London Offices (Oct 25th '16) - Takeaways

1. Scala for Data Science - by Pascal Bugnion (ASI Data Science)

• You can use Python and R in Data Science in new data science projects to start with. However when/if you need to scale them exponentially Scala is the way to go due to how it can handle concurrency (i.e. Java based) 
• The 'problem' with Scala is that it does not have powerful visualization libraries - in contrast with Python or R. The solution to that is using a tool such as Plotly 
• Plotly can be used to create and share visualizations online simply by sending your data in a JSON format, among other ways. It takes care of the rest for you. 
• You can use plotly for graphs, dashboards and a number of charts and it also works with Python, R, Matlab and more. 

2. Application Architecture for Big Data - Tom White, Head of Development at Method Digital, Prev CTO of Skin Analytics

• Differences between Data Scientists and Developers when working together on the same project 

• Data Scientists
• Focus on meaningful results 
• Exploration and experimentation 
• Large datasets
• Preprocessing, model generation 
• Lots of scripting 
• Limited scope for effective code-reuse 
• (Sometimes) little knowledge of how Software Engeneering works 
• Developers
• Focus on stable, secure, rapid iteration 
• Agile Development 
• User Stories
• Git workflows
• Continuous Integration 
• Code Reviews
• User Acceptance Testing 
• DRY Coding 
• (Sometimes) little knowledge of how Data Science works 
• Antipattern in DS and Devs working together - Developers write 'all the code' - i.e. linking to too low level Data Science components which often change as experimentation continues 
• Suggested approach 
• Separate, co-owned app providing an API 
• Only use the minimum data-science functions you need - 'freeze' them into the API
• Version the APO and maki it purely additive 
• Version any datasets too 
• Keep a 'live' version on top for tinkering in test environments if need be 

3. Google Big Data Lifecycle 

AgileExpo 2016: The Agile Enterprise London - Takeaways

Disciplined Agile - DAD - Mark Lines 

• Agile Maturity Evolution - from Scrum to Lean to Lean Startup 

• Disciplined Agile Delivery - goal driven framework with a number of subcomponents 

Dave Snowden, CTO Cognitive Edge - Cynefin Framework Author 

• Recommended book - 'Brave new world' - Aldous Huxley

• 'Every corpse on the Everest was once a highly skilled, motivated person that hit an accident'

• 'It takes 2 to 3 years of practice for the mind and body to internalise skills. Not 2 days courses'

• Example of the perverse effect of incentives

• The cobra effect: 1 rupee paid per cobra head to incentivise population to help reduce the number of cobras in the wild - which worked as an appropriate incentive only for the first 6 months. It led to cobra farms being created and then the government cancelled the payments. Ultimately the cobra's were released into the wild again

• 'If you don't understand Why something happened don't repeat the What!'

• 'If you introduce any new thing to people it will usually work nicely for the first time' 

• Cynefin framework is about energy efficiency - know in what system you're really in before you try to understand what is possible to do 

• Complex domain:

• Create a prototype with team 1 using client requirements

• Give the output to team 2 w/o requirements and ask them to improve it

• Give the new output to team 3 and ask the same

• Usually results in a superior product!

• Chaotic - is a temporary state

• Complex system

• Experiments - most of them need to fail or they're not wide enough
• Scrum moves issues from Complex to Complicated space
• The problem with ERPs is assuming the organisation is static!

• Complex systems can be managed through vectors (directions) but not clearly articulated goals!
• 'Complicated space' - is actually the manufacturing model

• 'When people work for defined targets it undermines intrinsic motivation!' (scientifically proven fact)

• 'Don't tell people what to do but limit yourself only to the things they should not do ...' - imagine how kids react/learn 
• 'Build systems that work with the biases that people naturally have, not that 'attack' those biases'
• 'You scale agile not by making execs more agile but by integrating what they do with what you/agile teams do'
• 'New/different clothes' can sometimes trigger new behaviours - i.e. doctor, policemen, businessmen 

Arie van Bennekum - Agile transformations 

• 'A project should not take more than 6 months because too many things change on a longer timespan' 
• Nokia, BlackBerry - both had the right level of information (i.e. all relevant trends and market research results). But they haven't responded to the change and chose not to transform themselves 
• For complex solutions/situations - take one step forward to change current paradigm - if it doesn't work don't return to the previous paradigm as a safe place. Take another step forward! 

• Paradigms -  see picture above. The purpose is not to put the pole in a specific place on the street. But to provide light on the street. That's what happens when information is passed from one team to another through 'paper work'
• Want vs Need - see picture below 

• People working on multiple projects - productivity is decreased by up to 70%
• Paradigms - see picture below 

• 'You can't change people. You change the system in which they operate. And they may be changing themselves afterwards!'
• Paradigms gradually change through different waves of transformation. It  takes up to 2 years for change to be sustainable 
• Type of coaches - 'elephants do it with elephants' (i.e. you need a coach that has had similar experiences to yours or can relate to them extremely well) 

• Beware of 'Yes but' people ... 'How do you know if it works if you haven't tried it yet?
• 'When you want something you've never had you need to do something you've never done' 

Jonathan Smart - Barclays - Adopting Agile 

• Learnings

• Culture is huge. It's not about applying a scaling framework. You need to nurture culture. 
• Use Aiki principles: 

• 1. Blending not clashing: 
• One size does not fit all. Teams can choose their own Agile flavour. 
• Pragmatic approach: Practices are Principles 
• Enterprise scaling is not about the rollout of the same thing everywhere. It's about recognising breath, diversity and complexity and adapting to it!
• 'To scale agile, don't, descale the work first.' Big vision, small teams and small investments. Test hypothesis through an Agile portfolio method. 3 months initiatives first and then adapt 
• Pragmatic pace, not too fast or too slow. Change takes time. First results in 6 months - but only a few - it takes 2 - 3 - 4 years to change a large enterprise and it's an ongoing journey anyway!
• 2. Use of internal strength 
• Top down and bottom up support. Full support not only tolerance. 
• The need for psychological safety was the biggest discovery in Google's survey on High Performing Teams (HPT)
• Champions, fence sitters and critics. Don't waste time on the critics - instead fuel the champions! Then work on the fence sitters through stories - as they transform into champions. 
• Communicate 3x more times than you think you need to and your a third of the way done. 
• Communicate 3x more times than you think you need to and your a third of the way done. 
• Communicate 3x more times than you think you need to and your a third of the way done. 
• Training and coaching. Knowledge informs behaviour. 
• Learning anxiety needs to be lower than survival anxiety. 
• Empower people 
• 3. Leading the assailant 
• Holistic agility. BizFinancePMOHrLegalComplianceAudit ... otherwise it will be just a local optimisation 
• Lead time, quality, happiness & outcomes 
• Customer at the centre. Value stream first 
• Embed change. Move into BAU. But still allow for empowerment and diversity - one size does not fit all
• Control tribes - engage with key governance teams at the beginning 
• Next steps 

• The Leadership trio
• Product Manager defines the What
• Enterprise Architect defines the How
• PM / Delivery Manager / SM - removes constraints to deliver the above 

AWS Summit 2016, London - Takeaways

 

Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon - Keynote

• Customer behavior in changing rapidly around speed of adoption or new technology products
• Today the amount of data generated in the 1st day of a child's life (ie multimedia) is equivalent to 70 times the content of US Library of Congress

• We are in Industry 4.0 already

• Example: Sushi chain in Japan using an automated assembly and client delivery line. Each plate of sushi is 'assembled' by machines and is uniquely identified through an RFID tag to track its freshness and automatically retract it when necessary 

• Example of Analytics/IoT used in agriculture - The Climate Corporation (Total Weather Insurance) 

• 'If you went to bed last night as an industrial company, you're going to wake up this morning as a software and analytics company.' -  Jeffrey R. Immelt, GE CEO 

• GE - the only company in the S&P 500 from the original ones due to continuously reinventing themselves 

• Deconstruction - company specialised in adding sensors and analytics services to construction sites. Use cases include building an audit trail for governance and in case of future problems

• The Sports of the Internet of Things

• Every player has sensors in their training gear

• Team strategy today is not defined on the field anymore but in the analytics rooms of the coaches days ahead (ie tracking includes measuring if 'pulse' of the team is 'in sync')

• Socks for runners to track cadence, foot landing and foot contact

• Philips health suite: e-care platform built around health tracking, prevention and care 

• Sonos- 'a 10 year product can do things that weren't invented 10'years ago' via software update capabilities 

• AWS IoT:

• Scalability at core of its architecture 

• Analytics: retrospective, here and now or predictions 
• Amazon Kinesis used as live stream analytics engine (here and now)

• Use case - removing the 'tyranny of choice'. Refers to reducing the number of choices for your customers based on past data and other preferences to enable a better, straightforward customer experience. Ex: choose a toothbrush from 3-5 options instead of having to choose it from 52 options 

 
Other takeaways:

• Evrythng - Dominique Guinard, CTO 
• Started by 4 co-founders in 2011
• Pragmatically targeting a much larger market opportunity (80 Bn items and 5-10 Tn consumables compared to roughly under 30 Bn connected 'things') and 'inevitability' for simple, taggable consumer products to be tracked and interacted with.    

• Doing load stress simulations: flood.io + gatling.io + EC2

• Amazon Alexa - Voice Interface / Personal Assistant: How to add new 'skills'
• An Alexa skill is a new piece of custom functionality that enriches Alexa's range of responses 
• Can be created by anybody and published subject to an Amazon vetting process (similar to Apple Store)

• Alexa to be integrated by Ford and Kitchen furniture manufacturers in their products  

• Alexa has a companion App which can provide the user with additional visual information  

• Voice User Interface (VUI) best practices (see picture below)

• Crawl - Walk - Run Approach

• Make it as natural as possible 

• Support multiple utterances 

• Utilise the built in help intent

• It takes about 3 weeks on average to build production ready Alexa skills 

• Tip: spend more than 50% on designing the interactions 

• In my opinion Alexa is an unavoidable step forward in how we interact with technology but it is in it's infancy at this stage.
  
  It is still quite limited - i.e. no support for recognising different voices and associated profiles, no monetisation model yet to name but a few. And it looks more like a good speech to text and text to speech service rather than anything else at this point in time.
  
  I would expect this to change however – especially due to the straightforward and fast process of building new skills for Alexa.

Breeding Successful Hardware Startups

A few takeaways below from the Hardware Pioneers' Breeding Successful Hardware Startups event on June 2nd 2016 in London, UK

Hardware Pioneers community apparently reached over 4,000 members although there were around 100 150 attendees at this June event. 

1. Ben Einstein - Bolt - Ilustratative guide to product development

• Is the problem your startup trying to solve email big enough? 
• Successful Startups Strategy: target a small number of people that would be very very happy to buy your product 
• Write your specs for (hardware) product development. It makes huge difference in terms of time and money
• Bolt - seed Investment of USD 200k - 500k in Startups for 1 to 2 years. They are the 1st institutional money coming in. 
• It's far more valuable to charge for software subscription then build/scale/sell hardware!     

2. Marc Barros - Moment (previously founder of Conduit - ie GoPro competitor)

Lessons learned from Conduit failure:

• Have a clear and simple purpose. Live by it. Let it be large enough to 'fit' future products as well.
• Read 'The hero and the outlaw' - helps paint a picture of who you are and what your brand stands for 
• Tell stories (as a brand)! It captures hearts! Make it personal, bring in emotion, challenge, triumph. (It leads to avoiding comparison on price  with other products)
• You can't be wrong if you believe in your Startup strong enough. And remain consistent about it
• But at the same time brand alone doesn't win 
• Iterate++ until you find the recipe. Only then scale it up (i.e. VC money)
• If you take VC money be sure you've got top chances to be the dominant player in your market
• Make something (i.e. a product) simple. Do it well. Sell it. Do the next one. Iterate and evolve

3. Raph Crouan - Startupbootcamp - MD IoT Programme -Funding your hardware company - myths and reality 

Myths:

• Raising money is easy. In reality it's not and it's getting harder and longer. See failures such as Kickstarter 
•  Kickstarter money is enough. That's not the case. It may be good market validation but not enough to fund a startup. Building is expensive: 12 months runway for software company and 16 months for hardware. Hardware iterations are expensive (ie not to mention shipping costs as well). 

• Regulations: FCC type certification can be a pain. Think about the initial region where you want to sell your product as certification is localised. 

• Seed funding: you need to raise working capital for 1st production set (ie 300 - 500k USD).

On shifting focus...

"If you want to work in a new field, don’t be driven by creativity—be driven by impact.”
Dr. Bruno Michel, IBM Research Labs
Source: The Economist

On a somehow different note note, a short insight into fulfilling or not your Personal Legend available here
By Paulo Coelho

A few IoT Tech Expo Conference 2016 Takeaways

New user / customer interface starting to be introduced where 'simple' interactions are targeted

Large (hardware manufacturer) players providing end to end support (prototyping to scaling production grade solution)  

Several alternatives available to RasPi's and Arduino's for IoT fast prototyping – available from hardware global manufacturers - i.e. Linkit series from MediaTek

Major IoT challenges remain security, interoperability and viable business models 

IoT pitfalls:
- Solution created w/o a real problem behind it to charge for 
- Not using (some) off the shelf products which can reduce time and risk 
- Power management 
- Monetisation 
- Security built-in not added-on 

E-textiles to replace conductive materials 

Industrial IoT in focus: predictive and real-time analytics to minimise critical equipment downtime 

Augmented reality showcased by ThingWorx

How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

An excellent article on how to avoid diluting the organisational DNA that triggered growth in the initial phases of a company.

'Here are the top ten signs of bozosity to help you decide.

1. The two most popular words in your company are “partner” and “strategic.” In addition, “partner” has become a verb, and “strategic” is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense.

2. Management has two-day offsites at places like the Ritz Carlton to foster communication and to craft a company mission statement.

3. The aforementioned company mission statement contains more than twenty words–two of which are “partner” and “strategic.”

4. Your CEO’s admin has an admin.

5. Your parking lot’s “biorhythm” looks like this:

8:00 am – 10:00 am–Japanese cars exceed German cars
10:00 am – 5:00 pm–German cars exceed Japanese cars
5:00 pm – 10:00 pm–Japanese cars exceed German cars
6. Your HR department requires an MBA degree for any position; it also requires five to ten years work experience in an industry that is only four years old.

7. Time is now considered more important than money so you have a company cafeteria, health club, and pet grooming service. Moreover, the first thing that employees show visitors is the company cafeteria, health club, and pet grooming service.

8. Someone whose music sells in the iTunes music store performs at the company Christmas party.

9. An employee is paid to do nothing but write a blog.

10. The success of a competitor upsets you more than the loss of a customer.

(If you’ve seen other signs of the slide to bozosity, leave them as a comment, and I’ll append to this list.)

Addendumbs (sic) to the list from readers:

11. You have a layer of middle management who worked at big-name companies (usually consumer goods) who like to call meetings and designate “project leads.” (I experienced this first hand.) Zoli Erdo

12. Your hire a big name consulting firm who brings in MBAs with one year of experience to re-think your corporate strategies.

13. The front-desk staff gets better looking and less competent. Jeff Barson

14. Your CEO or CFO spends more time on CNBC than in the office. Laurie Sefton'

Source: Guy Kawasaki, How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion - http://guykawasaki.com/how_to_prevent_/

Building Resilience for 10 more extra years of life

One of the best Resilience building mechanisms I found so far:

1.  Phisical resilience: stay permanently active to be an active person
2.  Mental resilience: give yourself small challenges and don't give up until you completed them 100%. Will Power is a muscle. 
3.  Emotional resilience: 3 to 1 positive emotional ratio - provoke powerful positive emotions (i.e. curiosity, love) 3 times more than negative ones per hour. Ex. imagine a baby elephant, for instance 
4. Social resilience: energy from friends, gratitude (i.e. incl. saying thanks to others) and shaking hands more than 6 seconds creates powerful positive emotions. Ex. reach out to a friend every day 

Source: Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life

Worse is better

A concept recently brought to my attention about when the curve of value over resources flattens, basically. It was originally used in software development but can easily be extended to organisational resource allocation (both time and money), as well, and it's a similar concept with the Agile 'just enough' theory and 'less is more' design approach. 

Come to think of it, examples can be found all around us - from the iPhone's limited number of external buttons (i.e. emphasising simplicity) to the tipping points we expect before taking (more) radical decisions (i.e. career or personal wise). More info on the original concept here.  

'People do not buy What you do, they buy Why you do it'

“up to 90% of errors in thinking are in perception not judgement”

“up to 90% of errors in thinking are in perception not judgement”                      

Prof. David Perkins, Harvard University

Think about that when arguing passionately that you're right, next time, or wondering why some people behave just the opposite of what you were expecting them to.  

About sharing

'If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples, we both still have one apple….. However, if I have an idea and you have an idea and we exchange ideas, we each now have two ideas…' 

George Bernard Shaw

Results and evolution

"Solving problems doesn't lead to evolution and results but prevents possible losses. What leads to results and evolution is the exploitation of opportunities that arise."
Source: Peter Drucker

"Management should be more of a verb than a noun."
Source: unknown

Independence or Security?

After reading a very interesting post the other days, I came to realise the deep correlation between our need of security and comfort (as defined in Maslow's Pyramid of needs) and our inclination towards one type of job or another. In other words, by having a regular work schedule, an agenda filled with appointments and to do's, we overcome a feeling of insecurity of 'what to do next' and 'what our role is in all of it'. Moreover, these security and comfort drive alignments between us and our jobs, other peoples opinions / actions and generally taking on the beaten path. As such, this allows analysts  identify trends in generations or in groups of people sharing common characteristics.

On the other hand, there are those that do not feel the need for security and comfort as much as the majority. They are usually called entrepreneurs, change agents or rebels but their main aim is independence. To achieve it, they build new organisations, trends or just look on how to fix issues in places where other people seldom look at so they basically start writing new sets of rules. Some make it, some don't but probably all of them manage to sharpen their survival instincts due to their permanent exposure to threats and the need to adapt and overcome them.

All in all, the question arises: when you feel you're over-booked, how much of it really depends on external factors and how much on you, trying unconsciously to belong or adhere to initiatives and/or secure a purpose for yourself ?

What really 'drives' us ?

In Daniel Pink's opinion if your work is anything else but a mechanical task, the carrot and stick approach would surprisingly result in diminishing performance rather than improving it. He says that the real motivators for creative, highly skilled individuals are:

• Autonomy (ex. Atlasssian example of a day off to work on something of choice)
• Mastery (e.g. getting better at stuff, reaching a sense of inner reward)
• Purpose (e.g. meaningful challenge, something bigger than ourselves) 

Source: Drive - the surprising truth about what motivates us, Daniel Pink 

Thinking of it, this is in line with both:

• Maslow's theory on our pyramid of needs and also with 
• modern leadership approaches (e.g. based on providing Hope / Vision, Compassion and Mindfulness / Inspiration / Trust / Value) 

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) - Dynamics CRM 2011

I've recently passed the MB2-866: Customisation and Configuration exam - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011- with 985 / 1000 points and I would like to share some thoughts about it (without breaching the NDA I had to sign):

• it was, generally speaking, a medium-difficulty test, which covered a wide range of settings areas 
• some questions in the exam were not updated (that is to say, for some years now, unfortunately). For instance, current versions of MS Dynamics CRM 2011 support customising Views with multi-series data right from the user-interface (e.g. it is not necessary to export the view as an XML file, edit it and re-import it, anymore). I feel it is somehow unacceptable for such an exam not to be updated to software's solution current editions !
• the test itself is scheduled for 180 minutes. However, one may finish it in half the time if he / she studied the relevant documentation and has had hands-on experience with Dynamics CRM before. 
• some questions were aimed at replicating real-life problems - asking for a proper solution while others were pure theory. Given the fact that you can easily find the theory in the standard documentation, it would probably be worthwhile to put even more emphasis on the practical aspects of the solution. After all, a certified professional should be able to solve real business problems and posses knowledge about best practices rather than be able remember standard settings and their location in the system. 

All in all, it was quite an interesting experience and I look forward for the future set of certification exams to come out  (e.g. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013).

(New Release) MS Dynamics CRM 2013 User Experience Overview

A wealth of improvements that directly increase productivity: video here

Codenamed Orion, the new MS Dynamics CRM release is due for October, 2013.

Out of the (Jobs) box

“Life can be a lot broader than that when you realize one simple thing, and that’s that everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you.”

Steve Jobs 

No comment. 

Lean Start-up: the new standard

A revelling article on today's approach in managing (startup) businesses. Game changer! 

In two words: instead of relying on classic strategies and business planing that works rather on established business models than on fresh initiatives / projects, the idea is to launch MVP's (minimum viable products) and to constantly iterate and 'pivot' based on customer feedback. 

Why the Lean-Startup changes everything

Source: Harvard Business Review

Another way to look at religion

Religions were born out of fear rather than love. Fear of death, more exactly. Apparently, that is the most powerful fear of all, closely followed by the one of being / remaining alone. 

Source: Namaste by Sega, 2012

Makes sense when thinking that religions (Christian religion, especially) prepare you all your life to face the afterworld, whichever that might be. This is at its core, to be precise, since nowadays a lot of it turned into a genuine 'business'. 

Happiness precedes success...

Envisioning the outcome, feeling it, believing it, breathing it and THEN transmitting it around you!

Extra tool: Aim high (10 times the Goal) - Create and Live a Vision and the smaller things will just happen.

(a) Definition of Sales

Definition: looking for people that are looking for us

Process: get-a-meeting, book-a-new-meeting

Some IT vs Management humour

A man flying in a hot air balloon suddenly realizes he’s lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts to get directions, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes. You're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.

"I do" replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but It's of no use to anyone."

The man below replies, "You must work in management."

"I do," replies the balloonist, "But how'd you know?"*

"Well", says the man, "you don’t know where you are or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were before we met, but now it’s my fault."

Comparison is the thief of joy

Sometimes, you just have to know when to stop searching and start enjoying...

The modest's man vicious circle

"While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior."

Henry C. Link

Socrate's 3 questions test

Before stating, asking or commenting on something, let's ask ourselves these three questions:
 - Is it true ? (filter of truth)
 - Is it good ? (filter of goodness)
 - Is it going to be useful ? (filter of usefulness)

If we won't get a pass on at least one of these questions, maybe we should reconsider what we were going to say.

This test was designed by Socrates in ancient Greece and it is seems too be even more relevant now, with all the "information noise" around us.

Source: Friday Reflections

The 90-9-1 rule of participation

According to research started more than three decades ago (e.g. Will Hill from Bell Communications Research) on the phenomenon of participation inequality, some "new" conclusions state that from a group of people:

• 1. 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).

• 1. 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.

• 1. 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs.

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: October 9, 2006; Nielson - Norman Group - 

Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute

This puts in a new light (e.g. numbers) all the interaction one experiences in work meetings, groups he/she is associated to and even among friends. 
Based on this, I believe we usually put on different "hats" according to the environment we're in rather than entirely belonging to one of the groups. For example, in circumstances  we are most familiar with, we tend to contribute, or at least add, to what others are stating (e.g. groups of friends, with old working colleagues). Conversely, the less information we have about a matter and the less outgoing we are as an individual, we tend to act as spectators and seldom give original inputs.  That makes you wonder: 

 - to which group do you belong to in your relevant environments ? 
 - is it ok to belong to that group of participation ? 
     - if yes, when should you reassess this ? 
     - if not, what should you do to re-adjust it ? 

The endowment effect

Something that really made my day since I was trapped in a sad mental trick before reading this:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.

Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.

Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.

Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place. [...]

First, use more extreme criteria. Think of what happens to our closets when we use the broad criteria: “Is there a chance that I will wear this someday in the future?” The closet becomes cluttered with clothes we rarely wear. If we ask, “Do I absolutely love this?” then we will be able to eliminate the clutter and have space for something better. We can do the same with our career choices.

Second, ask “What is essential?” and eliminate the rest. Everything changes when we give ourselves permission to eliminate the nonessentials. At once, we have the key to unlock the next level of our lives. Get started by:

• Conducting a life audit. [...]
• Eliminating an old activity before you add a new one. This simple rule ensures that you don’t add an activity that is less valuable than something you are already doing.

And then:

[...] Third, beware of the endowment effect. Also known as the divestiture aversion, the endowment effect refers to our tendency to value an item more once we own it [...]

As a simple illustration in your own life, think of how a book on your shelf that you haven’t used in years seems to increase in value the moment you think about giving it away.

Tom Stafford describes a cure for this that we can apply to career clarity: Instead of asking, “How much do I value this item?” we should ask “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?” And the same goes for career opportunities. We shouldn’t ask, “How much do I value this opportunity?” but “If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?”

Source: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Harvard Business Review, Greg McKeown, 2012