Last month I made a mistake on work. Our defect manager planned sick leave on Friday. One day before, she asked me to deputy her to check bug inflow. It means to deal with new bugs reported by downstream teams. She emphasized: specially for critical bug, need assign to team member as the highest priority. I know it of course, Critical bug is always the most important thing for team daily work. So I promised and said to her: ?Sure, no problem, don't worry. But on Friday, I have several meetings one after another. When I went through bug list and found two critical bugs in our team, it's already time to get off work. I checked the bug history and found it's already in our team for the whole day but no one deal with it because I didn't assign to our team member. ?Suddenly I felt my back cold, and full of guilty. Why I didn’t find it earlier?? I ever checked in the morning, why I didn’t continue when I was disturbing? What would the defect manager think of me? Am I a untrustworthy person? I asked many questions to doubt myself.
Do you have the similar experience to doubt yourself?? It’s just an example. Even though you haven’t this experience, you are also anxious for your child’s study, or pressure of house loan, or some unhappy thing in your daily work. Many many things flow into our brain, give our pressure, make you anxiety but no good resolution, it becomes internal conflict（內耗）, make you tired and hard to sleep.
Is there any way to help us to keep away these kinds of anxiety? Yes I found a secret and will share with you today -? Zero Second Thinking.? Have you heard it?
What is zero-second thinking? It is?proposed?from the book titled "Zero-Second Thinking," written by a Japanese who worked at McKinsey for over ten years. It's a highly effective and practical method to exercise our thinking. The author's original intention for this method was to improve rapid summarization and response, but during my practice, I discovered that it unexpectedly?cured?my?mental exhaustion?and helped me sleep peacefully. Here's how it works: every day, convert the things that come into your mind into questions and record them. For each question, give4-6 answers within a minute, without overthinking. Then?proceed?to the next question-and-answer session. aim for around 10 questions per day. For questions you want toexploremoreseriously, you can ask more deeper and wider questions to yourself. Take my mistake as example, I asked myself these questions:?
Why did I forget such an important thing??
How will she think about me??
If she tells the product owners, how will they think about me??
What are the worst impact??
What method can I use next time to remind myself to remember important things??
Which methods are better and more suitable that I can use immediately??
I realized that it wasn't as serious as I thought, and I had a plan of action for improvement. I use stickers to write down important things to follow up every day, which I can see whenever I lower my head. Also, every morning, when I write morning dairy, I think and record the important things of the day to remind my brain. I have been practicing these two methods for the past few weeks and haven't missed any important things any more.?
And back to that black Friday night, after I answered questions by myself, I was peace again, every minute when I though it again, another voice reminded me:? hi, what are you thinking? You already think about it enough and you already have solution. So take it easy and enjoy your weekend. So I had a happy weekend without any internal conflict.?
If you just need it, try it. Maybe some of you are thinking: the tool looks too simple, will it effective? Actually the greatest truths are the simplest(大道至簡), the simpler it is, the easier it’s to persist. The best two benefits of this tool is:?
First, not occupy your too much time, so it’s easier to insist. half hour at most, or less.
Second, easy to start, if you are interrupted, easy to continue. You can write in white papers following required in the book, you can also write in app in your mobile phone such as I write them in my Evennote. Even you only have several minutes, you can answer some questions by your own.
We often say that we've redden so many books and heard so many principles, but we still can't live a good life. It’s because those books and others' advice aren't your own. You need to apply them in practice to trulyinternalizethem. So you think it useful, you can read the original book or not, but more important thing than reading is practicing. Also, during your practicing, if you can’t persist after a while, don’t anxious, it's okay. Maybe it’s not the right time for you. The root cause is that you lack enough motivation for it, then you needn’t persist it until you get the strong motivation. You can restart again. Because that was me. I red this book three years ago, considered it as a excellent book, and stuck with it for a month. Later, I became lazy and felt I didn't need it for work, so I stopped for long time. Until three months ago, I restarted zero-second thinking and realized how beneficial it is. Now, I use zero-second thinking for daily reflections, identify my real hobby, enhance the relationship with family, preparing club officer campaign speeches, writing my last secretary reports, and structuring speeches. It's almost all-purpose. If you also need it, I suggest you try it.
