Driven By Values, Sushi, And Great Sex

This is test drive #2 announced in Practicing Colin Powell’s Rules.

I was practicing

• Jason’s “Know your values, be consistent”
• Leo’s Cook a romantic dinner.

Here is my interpretation of values. Actually, very same Jason helped me to figure out my core coarse grained values after reading his Priorities for Tough Decisions. He has good punch line in the end (good place for the punch line I guess):

What’s more important:

• Career or family?
• Emotional comfort or thrilling risks?
• Material success or physical well being?
• Connection with others or time alone?

As for me, it is not black or white with above statements but it really helped me to be more focused.

• Family is most important for me, I would not trade my family happiness for great career.
• Emotional comfort is what keeps my family peaceful and happy, I like thrill but would never let it hurt my emotions that would for sure reflect on my family.
• Material success or physical well being? - Not sure why would one trade one for another, I think there is a room for both. I think I need to work on physical part - more practice ahead!
• If time with family counts toward “time alone” then it would be “time alone”.

Seems like my core value can be summarized by keeping my family happy, and then everything else comes together. I am happy I know it, thanks Jason!

“Cooking romantic” dinner was changed to “Show off with your home made sushi”. I have spectacularly prepared about 40 rolls of sushi in 15 minutes while hosting couple of friends. 10 minutes to boil rice in microwave while slicing veggies and the rest time for actually rolling it. Our friends were amazed by the speed of preparation and the taste - I know, I need some practice to master my modesty :). I got plenty compliments spoken out load - but the greatest compliment came after they left…

Conclusion - Jason and Leo, both tips work very well. Thank you.

Coming up next:

• Collin’s “The day employees stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
• Leo’s “Give a full-body massage“.

“I don’t fear death because I don’t fear anything I don’t understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.” - Hedy Lamarr