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Life Beats with Sirisha
Life Beats with Sirisha
Transforming Your Life, One Percent at a Time: Insights from Atomic Habits-Mani Jonnalagada
Are you trying to be a better version of yourself? Are you struggling with making change? By making 1% change everyday you can drive a 37 fold impact in a year.
Welcome to Life Beats with Sirisha! In today's episode, we have , Mani Jonnalagada, a product Tech exec who will be sharing her experiences in product management and discussing the book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. Join us as we dive into the world of habit-building and explore how making small changes can lead to significant transformation. We will uncover the secrets to living your best life and the way you approach habits.
Mani Jonnalagada is a seasoned product manager with a diverse background in industries such as engineering, airlines, travel, fintech, and commercial real estate. With a master's degree in engineering, Mani has developed a deep passion for product management, believing that it is pivotal to understand what you are trying to build, the why behind it, and the desired outcomes for the business, stakeholders, and users. Mani's commitment to designing delightful experiences within the product world has propelled her career and led her to learn from industry expert Marty Kagan. Inspired by the concept of continuous improvement, Mani embraces the idea of achieving 1% progress every day, knowing that it can lead to a significant 37-fold improvement in a year. Conversely, Mani recognizes the danger of allowing skills to decline, emphasizing the importance of consistent execution and maintaining expertise.
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I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host and an entrepreneur. I work with Universities on Organizations to transition students to the corporate world and building successful leadership pipelines ensuring a healthy financial future.
If you're interested in coordinating or working with me on keynotes, workshops, or on a one on one basis, you can go to my website www.sirishakuchimanchi.com
Check out my other podcast "Women, Career & Life" where I share stories and practical advice to achieve your career & life goals as you strive towards financial independence.
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Hello. Have you wondered how to be the best version of yourselves? You've been trying to make these changes and been struggling with it and trying to figure it out. Hello, everyone. This is a gorgeous Thursday afternoon. Can you believe it's only 80, 70 degrees out there? It's actually it's like a cold front. Welcome to Live Beats with Sirisha on Radio Caravan. I'm your host, Dr. Sirisha Kuchmanchi, a former semiconductor tech executive, an entrepreneur, and a speaker. I host the podcast Women, Career, and Life. You can check it out on any of your favorite podcast platforms. It basically talks about How women can grow into, how do you elevate yourself into leadership roles and also become financially empowered? I also do keynote speaking for organizations and universities on basically enabling people to get into leadership roles and for graduate students to enter the corporate world and become financially empowered as well. If you're interested in partnering with me or learning more about what I do, check out my website, Sirisha Kuchimanchi. I'm going to spell it out because it's a mouthful. S I R I S H A K U C H I M A N C H I. I always like to hear from folks, so you can DM me on LinkedIn. But let's dive into today's topic, because I have so much to learn. Today's topic, we have Mani Janagadda joining us. She is a product tech exec. And her experience is in product management, and she's worked at many companies, CBRE, Capital One, Sabre the breadth is so phenomenal. Mani is going to briefly touch on that, but really she's going to talk about this book she's been reading called Atomic Habits by James Clear. I've heard of it. I've seen snippets. I've read it a bit, but I think that's things I need to learn. So we're going to have a conversation. But more importantly, as always, the phone lines are going to be open. Call in with your questions, call in how you are making the change or how you're thinking about it or what challenge you might be having. The number is 214 817 3333. I hope you call into the phone line number again, 214 817 3333. So let's welcome money today. I'm so excited for this conversation money. Thank you for being here. Why don't you start with briefly what you did and what segwayed you into reading this book and this changes that you are seeing in your lifestyle.
Mani Jonnalagada:Hi everybody. Good afternoon, Sarisha. It's a pleasure to be here and Funny how sometimes you have an intention and you work towards it and things fall in place. Sirisha wanted to a better version of herself in certain aspects and I was working on it and we happened to have this conversation and this transpired. So I'm excited to share some of my learnings and my journey. It's a vast subject, but we can pick up a few. A little bit about me. I've been in Dallas for a while. I have a master's in engineering and then, I have worked for American Airlines Travelocity, Sabre, and also in the FinTech world, Capital One, CPRE, and Mr. Cooper, CBRE is a commercial real estate company, but my experience has been a broad range of different industries, but my core practice and my core interest and passion has always been product management. And for me, product management is pivotal and we talk about it quite a bit. Most important thing is you. Understand what you are trying to build, and you understand the why, and you also understand what outcomes you want to derive for your business, for your stakeholders, for your users, and on top of it all, you also have to design an experience that is delightful. So that's what keeps me ticking in the product world. And Thank you. And anybody who is interested in learning more, let me know. And one of my first forays into really formally learning product management was with Marty Kagan, who came and did a workshop in Dallas many years ago. And I follow him, and he's our product management guru. Most people know him in product management. That said, the whole thing about failing fast, And, iterative development, iterative delivery, all of these things keep coming up in our day to day work day. And then, we spend more time at work than sometimes with our families. Most importantly, when we are looking at all these, we also, product managers, have this gene to continuously improve ourselves. So some of my colleagues have been talking about atomic habits. And the thing that really got me in was we are all about metrics, being product managers. It's a... If you get better 1 percent every day, 1 percent by the end of 365 days in a year, you will be 37 times better and the converse, right? Think about it first of all, before I go into the converse. So just a little bit, a minor win every day on anything that you want to practice. And then you will have a 37 fold improvement. That got me quite interested. And I was like, okay, so this sounds very easy to understand, how do we follow through, right? A lot of things that look easy, we have to know how to execute because things look easy because people who have mastered it make it look easy. And that we know based on our experience. So the converse about what he says, if you just let it slip, a 1 percent decline every day, you may completely your touch or your skill or you may get to zero in whatever it is that you're declining at the end of the year. So that really got me into it. So
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:that's what hit home as well. Yeah. So I know we've you started with the product management experience and we're talking about atomic habits. And I don't think this is James Clear's example, but I remember when someone was talking about flossing, they're talking about stuff with one tooth and then you pick a second tooth and you practice. And we started our discussion largely around exercise. So this is a running joke between me and my son about doing a pull up, which I cannot do. For those of you who can do one, kudos. I'm going to give you a round of applause because that's something on my list. Maybe I will actually put it as a goal for the end of the year. So I'm going to figure out how to use this atomic habit. to get that. So what do I have to think about if I want to hit it? Essentially less than a little over three months to be able to do a pull up.
Mani Jonnalagada:No, give yourself. See, this is another thing. We always focus on goals and results, right? So if you want to, if your goal is to be able to do a strong pull up, right? So then, the concept that really got me hooked is the identity, right? Sirisha is this person who can do pull ups. So if you latch on to that identity. What is a person who wants to be doing multiple pull ups or a pull up on the fly? What does that look like? And then you have to also believe that is your identity, right? You have to really, really clue into that identity. I'll give you one of my examples. But the biggest hook for me for this book was he talks about this. And I'm going to read verbatim and a lot of kudos to James Clear. If you have ever wondered, Why don't I do what I say I'm going to do? Why don't they lose the weight or stop smoking or save for retirement or start that side business? And then he says this powerful thing. Why do I say something is important but never seem to make the time for it, right? They say you vote with your time. And, it, it rang so true to me. A lot of times I have amazing goals, amazing ideas. I keep n number of lists. But then I somehow see a pattern of all the mundane stuff gets done, the important, most important, most, most urgent get done the important, just stay on those lists forever. So for me, the biggest thing was I always tell my friends, I won't look like an athlete when you see me, but I always say I'm healthy, I'm fit, but the fit portion, started declining recently. I also have these challenges. When I go hiking and stuff like that, I feel that I'm falling behind. I also wanted to make sure that I wanted to be a person who can go hiking and not lose a breath. So my identity, the identity I wanted to go into is a person who is fit, who can do multiple hours of hikes on mountains. So how does that believe? How does that person evolve from this person who can very easily be a couch potato? So I really dug deep. Into this book and the concept. The concept that really hit home was your identity. You have to believe what you want to be. And once you start seeing yourself as this person who's a hiker, who is going to go on these long mountain hikes, who is going to have this adventure, then you start saying, okay, so what do I need to do? And I'll tell you my personal growth. This and, some of these concepts are very just intrinsic and we all know. However, what James does is he gives us a very clear system and you can design your own system and he gives you all the tools to design your own system.
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:Essentially you're saying you're building a toolbox. It's, I'm going to drop two parallels here before we dive into it. One of the things like entrepreneurs are always worried about sharing their ideas. And then what people say is, I'm not saying give away your IP, so there's a caveat here, I'm just claiming. But one thing that you have to realize is ideas can be a dime a dozen, it's the execution that comes. So essentially, you're in some ways, you're talking about the journey and the execution of it. And then you and me met at this Dallas Startup Week last week, there was an event. And Nirav, who is the co founder co CEO of Nextdoor, was at the event as well. And one of the things he talked about there was what his business coach basically said is, I think what you said is absolutely right. There's a lot of mundane that, we like checking that box, it makes us feel good, but we that's all the minutiae. We a really not productive thing. So his coach made him do, and actually I tried this exercise after that. It made me focus. You put a hundred points on whatever things you wanted to. And see what the top three things are and give them a point. If this task is the most important, does it have 40 points? And are you spending 40 percent of your time doing it? If you're not spending the amount commensurate to that thing to get it done, then you're not getting it done enough. So think about it from that standpoint, because there's so much of the daily grind that we spend our time on, which actually has very little impact. And it's not significant impact, so you can let it go. So in keeping that in mind, I want you to think about what Mani is going to talk about the 100 points and also thinking about how you want to put your focus, whatever it may be, it may not be in your career, it may be family, it could be like your health, whatever it is. So walk us through how you've been doing it. And then I'll see what my challenges are as I'm thinking
Mani Jonnalagada:about it. I'll get into it. But you've mentioned Nirav next door. If he's talking about the coach that. He is referring to Bill Campbell. He's known as the trillion dollar coach. He's no longer here. There's an excellent book. Any people, manager, anybody who aspires to be a better version of themselves as a leader or as a, as an executive or an entrepreneur, I would highly recommend reading it. It really ground grinds you, grounds you on how you can escape the daily grind and really rise above it. So coming back to this concept, right? So when he talked about identity, right? He talked about, Hey, a lot of these things are tied to your self beliefs. If you say, Oh, I've always been that way. I don't know if I can do it. I don't think I'm going to run a 5K. I've never even run a mile or I've never even walked for 30 minutes at a stretch. If somebody is thinking that he's talking about, Hey, you can develop something very minor. But be consistent. He talks about don't worry about the outcome. Outcomes will take care of it themselves. But you've got to hone into the identity. So let's say I wanted to be a person who was fit. And for me, the definition of fit was I went to this great boot camp. My friends recommended and we do it in the morning. I never was a morning person. I can be up to three in the morning and I'm a night owl. But this bootcamp is at five in the morning. For me, the payoff was you're done working out by 6 30 in the morning and you paid yourself first. Something that is very rewarding for me and that worked. So I've tried it a couple of times. It worked. And so the identity I was going afterwards, I wanted to be a fit person. So the first couple of days I went to her class, she wanted me to do a plank. I had an idea of a plank, my form was all wrong. I was not really holding my form. I couldn't hold my form. I could probably hold it for maybe two, three seconds. So she kept correcting me and she asked me to keep at it. The funny thing is, you don't even know that you're getting stronger, but I kept going to the class and I really wanted to. Say that, I'm committed to getting better and I wanna do a perfect plank. And then lo and behold, it's been a year and a half now, when we do planks, I can hold a plank for 45 seconds to a minute and a half, depending on how much sleep I got the night before, but also my mood. But usually I would've never thought I could be there. How did I get there? It's minor increments, right? Showing up. Showing up consistently. And that's what he talks about. So for that, We have to build a habit. He talks about and make it obvious, right? So if you want to eat healthy, make it obvious, have more fruits and vegetables in front of you take away. So and then make it attractive, so maybe start with the Fruits that you like, right? And then make it easy, right? So just put it somewhere in your pathway, right? So if you're going towards the fridge when you're hungry, you can put an interception point Maybe you're going around the counter and the fruit is right there So it reminds you then you can just pick up the fruit instead of going into the fridge and picking up cheese or going To the pantry and picking up something not healthy, but then also make it satisfying So maybe you start with the fruit that you like the most, right? So the four things about creating a good habit or make it obvious Make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying. But then you're not going to do everything at the same time, right? So if you want to run a marathon, you're not going to start running or walking two miles or five miles a day, right? So you could at least start with, I'm going to do something for a short period of time. He talks about two minutes,
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:do something for two minutes. Run down the block and come back, go to the post box, something small. Absolutely. I think that's where it is. So I just want to remind everyone the phone lines are open. This is going to be, I have a feeling we have 10 minutes on the show left, so we're not going to unpack everything today. We'll have to come back and continue, but we also want to hear what you want to have questions. Number is 214 817 3333. You're tuned in and listening to Life Beats with Sirisha, and we are talking about essentially James Clear's book on atomic habits, but it's beyond he's obviously given us the framework and everything and given us the thought process to think about it, but it's about making our surroundings and our systems around us. And I know Mani is going to talk about hers, and I'm going to tell you what my, I go for a walk with my neighbor sometimes, and she has a hard time getting up and, working out in the morning. She actually sleeps in her workout clothes now. I know most things probably you do is you set it up ready to go and you jump slide into it. And so she said that the only way it works out for her is if she goes to bed and she actually gets up and then gets to the office at 530 in the morning to work out. And she set her day up. Yeah.
Mani Jonnalagada:So that's the implementation intention, right? So we have many things. I talked about how do you make it easy, attractive. At the end of it, it needs to be satisfying. But then let's just say you said, you know what, I'm going to work out with a friend or I'm going to walk 10 minutes or. Whatever it is that you choose or I'm going to start every time I drink coffee, I'm going to put 10 bucks into my savings account, whatever it is that you want to do, right? So you have to have an intention, the implementation intention, right? And you don't have to have mega inspiration, right? You can just start with something small. Maybe you want to read a book. So instead of reading a whole book, you could say, I'm going to read a page, right? That's all the implementation intention to be a reader. If you read a page every day, you are a So start there. Then have a predetermined plan. So that's the most important thing I found was important. So consistency, doing the same thing over and over. He's given many examples. And what he says is that you have to, first of all, standardize your behavior before you can optimize it, right? So now I have a team and this is wisdom from everybody who works out. They set out their clothes, workout clothes in the night before. So when you wake up without even thinking, my routine is I just put my workout clothes on before I even brush my teeth. So immediately after I brush my teeth, I'm already ready. to go and you're like totally awake. It's all ready to go. Yeah. And then, the fitness instructor tells everybody half the battle is getting there. Once you get there, you're amazed
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:at what you're surrounded. In some ways you have your accountability partners, right? That's the other part of the journey as well.
Mani Jonnalagada:Yeah. And he, and also he talks about having systems and culture. So if you want to be an athlete, You have to find people who are very athletic bent, and you need to surround yourself with that. If you want to be a financially savvy person, you need to surround yourself with that kind of a culture. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to find people who are trying to make it on their own. And if you want to be a student who wants to really ace it and go into some Great school or great career. You absolutely need to have that culture and environment around you. So you, that is the key. And it automatically becomes the implementation intention, right? So you have an an intent. The second thing I wanted to hit home before we run out of time is, just start something small, but have a predetermined plan. That's the plan, right? For me, laying out clothes on the bed, Before I go to bed. So now I know in the morning, it's a predetermined plan. So don't stray from it. And then, all you have to do is just execute. And then this needs to really the intention nearly needs to match the identity that you want to strive for. Second thing is you need to have a simple, easy, attractive, satisfying plan that you can cut, repeat and can be consistent about. And then Always go back to your predetermined plan. So once you get to a level of a standard, then you can say, you know what? I've been doing this. Now I get up automatically. I go to the gym. Then you can say, you know what? What else can I do to improve? What? What's the next level? You can start
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:thinking that. Yeah. And I like the satisfaction and the happiness factor of it because it should, whatever it is, whether it's, work out or maybe you're not a reader, maybe you have to do, you have to learn something new. I think the When you start viewing it as a chore, a punishment, a way because we have to do it, I think that sort of takes the joy out of it. And if you surround yourself with the right people, I think they're going to push you and keep you on track anyway. Because when I was talking about this, doing a pull up and essentially it's about staying healthy. The pull up is my measure of how healthy am I, like you're doing a plank as a measure of how... How strong are you feeling? That's it's all about. Do I feel my strength? Do I feel strong as a person? Because oftentimes none of us can tell from the visible outside. It's not just about having the muscles that they show on TV, but it's about a different an external and an inner strength as well. And the consistency of it. So may I
Mani Jonnalagada:interrupt you for one thing? You said, you said a very key thing and James talks about it. You said, I have to do this. I have to do that. Then it's definitely already putting you on a move on a bent of mind that is not positive. But what he says is how amazing is it that I get to work out with this group of people? How amazing is it that I get to, so you make it about your identity, that you get to do this and you're getting to that identity. So I strongly advise everybody to really go and. Dream your biggest, baddest vision of your super awesome identity and write it down. Put it somewhere you can see and then start working on small things to get you there.
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:The two things you said there. So in some ways it's like vision boarding, put your big picture. I, though he talks about the way I take away his words, though he's got different ways of framing. It is about execution and the joy of the journey, not just the outcome. But we all work with outcomes. So it doesn't mean not don't have a goal, have the goal, but don't focus only on the goal. And if any of you were tuned into Simon's show right before this, she ended the conversation with this. This is what her friend told her when he goes into a meeting or when he's talking, he said, and I think that's why, why you were reframing how I was saying it as well. Don't think about it as a negative, but replace it with a positive word. So you're right. She should be thinking that I have to do this. Like I like swimming. So I have. I should really look at it. It takes me, I have to cross this hill sometimes to think about going swimming. But once I enter the water and I swim for a few days, I'm like, why am I not doing this? Because it's just. So much fun. So it's thinking about the joy of the experience or the people that you're going to be surrounded by, or maybe it's nature, maybe it's not even people, maybe enjoying that really good food.
Mani Jonnalagada:It's interesting, a lot of times if you focus on external factors, they help you to a certain extent, but it really needs to be satisfying to you internally. So what is that thing? So I can talk to you guys about my factor of satisfaction. Many times we are always giving care, giving, raising Children, working and working with our teams, growing teams, working long hours. But then, at the end of the day, you keep hearing this. What are you doing to love yourself? What are you doing for you? And for me, the satisfaction, satisfying factor that came in with this regimen was the routine that I had was. Okay, I'm paying myself first. I did something for money first, that's the satisfying factor. So you've got to find what makes sense to
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:you. Yes. And in some ways doing it first thing in the morning is your fill that bank balance. So one thing I I want to make sure as they talk about willpower. So willpower is for many of us. This is this has been research on this. It's like a it's like a water jug. It starts full in the morning. And as you go at the end of the day, it starts to deplete. So if we keep these like high intention goals at the end of the day, it's very unlikely to get done, which is why we end up eating candy bars and desert at the end of the day when we are hungry. And we eat the salads in the morning. So think about that. That's why doing workout or something that is important to you, whatever it is, it needs to be done. So before we go off, we have a little over a minute money. If someone wants to reach out to you, what is the best way to connect and what can they have a conversation about?
Mani Jonnalagada:So they can connect me on LinkedIn. Just, they just have to search money and then they'll find me. And they can talk to me about, I also wanted to really give back to the society and also wanted to be a better leader and mentor and build empathy. So I also did some coaching work. So I, if somebody needs some topic. But they need help and coaching. I can help with coaching too. Okay.
Sirisha Kuchimanchi:Absolutely. So I know we've been talking she helps in a lot of like D W H W and a lot of other places as well. We are pretty much tuning out. We will probably pick up this conversation because I think there's more to unpack. You are listening to Live Petes with Isha. I'm your host, Dr. Sirisha Kuchimanchi. You can check out my podcast, Women, Career, and Life, and if you're interested in partnering either on leadership or enabling students to, enter the corporate world and how do you grow in that, you can check out my website, sirishakuchimanchi. com. I'm going to spell it and then Mani, you need to spell your name, S I R I S H A N K U C H I M A N C H I. I want to thank you because I've had to go figure out things about my workout, but how do you spell your name? Because you said it really fast.
Mani Jonnalagada:It's Janalkarta. It's J O N A L A G A D E A.
