Your Grass Is Greener: Make The Most Of Your Current Reality

According to the old bromide, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

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My grandfather, who had limited formal education but a wealth of common sense, countered that with, “Just water and fertilize your own grass. After all, it’s your grass and you are in charge of how it grows! Besides, that other stuff may be nothing but AstroTurf.”

Why do people fall for that old bromide? Psychologists say it’s due to unrealistic expectations, a lack of gratitude, and a focus on perceived shortcomings.

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) also plays a role. Some people prioritize the unknown over their current situation.

And then there’s comparative thinking, a tendency that creates the illusion that others have it better, making their “grass” appear greener.

Jason Silver counters all that with his new book Your Grass is Greener: Use What You Have, Get What You Want at Work and in Life.

Who’s Jason Silver, you ask? He was a key early employee at Airbnb, then helped build an AI company from the ground up before AI was on everyone’s to-do list. Today he advises a startup portfolio valued in the billions on how to build strong, durable companies where people actually enjoy working.

Silver’s highly readable book is chock full of pragmatic tips that can make life—both in the workplace and at home—more productive and more satisfying. For example, you’ll learn how to:

• Do five days of work in four (without burning the midnight oil)
• Enjoy your day-to-day work (without hanging out on LinkedIn looking for a new job)
• Progress faster (without waiting … and waiting … for a promotion)

Silver sat down for a visit and shared his thinking on a range of issues facing people in today’s workplace.

Let’s start with miscommunication. It seems to be at the root of many relationship problems. What principles and practices can be helpful for clearing up—or altogether avoiding—miscommunication?

“There’s a common assumption that communication is about understanding,” Silver says. “It’s not. It’s about interpretation. You can understand my words perfectly but misinterpret my meaning. The only way to know if you communicated successfully is not to check if you were understood, but how. Ask: ‘Can you let me know what you’re taking away from this conversation?’ Hearing their interpretation will help you confirm that you communicated your intended message. Or you can try again if you’re off the mark.”

In a workplace team, what’s the key to managing differing opinions on the way to a decision that everyone is expected to support?

Silver says the first step is to get disagreements out into the open”. Often, we see heads nodding in agreement and feel great, but that’s the time to be worried you’ve missed something,” he says. “Ask who disagrees or has a different opinion. Decisions improve when they face disagreements, and you’ll get more buy-in when everyone has had an opportunity to voice their concerns. To help you move on from building agreement, which you don’t need, to getting alignment on a decision everyone can support, ask your team: ‘What would need to be true for you to support this decision even though you don’t agree?’”

In today’s workplace, what is it about busyness that causes so many people to embrace it as a badge of honor when it’s actually sabotaging their effectiveness?

“We seem to have a deep-seated need to constantly compare ourselves,” Silver says. “Am I progressing fast enough? Adding more value than Jane? More successful than John? Questions like these are nuanced and hard to answer, so our brains take unhelpful shortcuts. Without being consciously aware, we use simplifying metrics like how many hours we work and how much money we make as proxies for our impact and success. This usually misaligns incentives away from our true effectiveness and enjoyment on the job. Busyness is a one-way ticket to burnout, not a badge of honor.”

Silver quotes French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry as saying, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” How does that perspective apply to managing one’s time, energy, and focus? In other words, how can people learn to say yes to more no?

“I love a good quote, and that one has a special place in my heart,” Silver says. “In contrast, I don’t love the common quote, ‘Less is more.’ We’ve all heard it, but does anyone believe it? Have you ever been promoted for doing less work than your colleagues?

Silver offers a different emphasis. “If you want to be more productive, focus on making more substantial progress on fewer priorities,” he says. “Pick the three most important initiatives you want to significantly advance every week. Put everything else on a not-to-do list to clarify your distractions that week and help you keep focused on whatever matters most.”

Even some of the most capable people around us experience occasional bouts of imposter syndrome. Silver offers advice for dealing with that—as both a “victim” of it or when you observe it in someone else.

“Common advice says things like, ‘Believe in yourself’ as if it’s simple to switch off self-doubt,” he says. “Not only can I not stop myself from feeling imposter syndrome, there’s a growing body of evidence showing I shouldn’t even try. Turns out that imposter syndrome can help you perform better by making you more focused on the needs of others. Nothing builds trust and belonging better than taking a genuine interest in what matters to your colleagues. Imposter syndrome doesn’t drop your performance, it improves it. Stop trying to turn it off and embrace it as the performance supercharger it can be instead.”

Most people would like to have joy in their work. How can they get a sense of what’s going on in their jobs that helps produce enjoyment (or not)?

“This one is so simple you’ll laugh when I tell you,” Silver says. “To enjoy your work more, do more work you enjoy. Simple, but not easy. If you want more joy on your job, start by getting a baseline. Take out a piece of paper and on the left side write a of activities you enjoy doing like giving presentations or problem solving. Then, open your calendar and on the right side of your paper write a list of everything you did in the past week. Draw a line from activities you enjoy on the left of your page to tasks you actually did on the right. How many lines did you draw?”

Silver says many people don’t like their work as much as they could because they’re not doing their work in the best way for them. He explains.

“’Best practices’ is a dangerous term,” he says. “Often, what’s best for me won’t be best for you. I might love giving presentations, where you prefer writing reports. If I write your report or you give my presentation, it wouldn’t be best for either of us, even though both approaches accomplish providing a project update to our team. We each have to define our own best practices, our own best way of getting any given task done. When you do, you’ll perform better at the work you already have—and you’ll enjoy yourself more along the way too!

Some businesspeople contend that emotion or “gut feelings” shouldn’t play a role in decisions. Silver says that while emotion should not be the key factor in decisions, it’s still needed.

“Not only will factoring in your emotions improve your decisions, without feelings your brain fundamentally can’t decide,” he says. “Since the 1800s, neuroscientists have been exploring the role of emotions in decision making and they’ve found that our rational minds need feelings to collapse deliberating into deciding. When you try to stop your feelings, you’re fighting the very nature of how your brain is wired and that’s not good for business (or anything really). Instead, you can include your gut feel in decisions and consider it just like you would more ‘rational’ factors like price, quality or risk.”

For leaders, what seems to be the key to effectively soliciting—and receiving—performance feedback?

“Many leaders tell me they regularly ask for feedback, but rarely receive any,” Silver says. “It’s not because people don’t want to give feedback, it’s because they aren’t ready when you ask. Usually, we ask for feedback when we finish a task. The most common response is ‘Let me think and get back to you.’ Then everyone gets busy and never follows up. What you can do instead is prime people before you start a task. For example, you can tell your team you’re going to ask for feedback at the end of your presentation before you start. This way, they’re paying attention for feedback throughout your talk and are more likely to have comments for you when you’re done.”

How can leaders “make it safe” in providing feedback to their team members?

“Receiving feedback, particularly when it’s negative, can be disorienting,” Silver says. “Is my manager telling me I’m underperforming, or simply helping me grow?”

He says one of the most impactful tactics leaders can use when sharing feedback is to remove this uncertainty. “Tell people your intent upfront. Start your conversation by clearly stating how you want the receiver to interpret your feedback. This way, they can focus on what you’re saying, rather than trying to guess what it all means. With your intention clear, your feedback feels safer and is more likely to be effective.”

If Silver could share only one message, what would it be?

“You’re good! You have more agency in the job you already have than you think you do,” he says. “You can be more successful with the skills you currently have than you know. It’s possible to accomplish more and enjoy yourself more without making major changes to the work you need to do or launching into deep professional development. All you need are the right few tactics to unlock better work.”

By Rodger Dean Duncan, Contributor