My Personal User Manual

a ”how to work with Jake Hirsch-Allen" guide - 2024 edition

As I leave LinkedIn, I hope to use this guide, also known as a Personal Operating Manual, as “a way to shorten the learning curve when you build new teams and bring new people on board.” More pragmatically, I hope it will help my colleagues work more effectively with me by shortening the "norming" stage of group or team development. Credit to Jay Singh for giving me the idea and David Torrens for joining me in writing my first guide way back when he was an intern.

Like me, this manual is a work-in-progress and I would be grateful for feedback on it. Help me know myself better and I will endeavor to return the favour.

About me:

• I am curious and happiest while learning, get me excited about an idea and resilience, persistence and passion will follow

• I love nature, particularly dense forests, design, contemporary art, photography

• My sports include ultimate frisbee, hiking, innertube waterpolo, biking, yoga, rock climbing and I used to row

• Efficient at running on little sleep but happiest when well rested

• I enjoy coincidences, apparent randomness and complexity and question order, rules and the status quo

• I'm good at - and take pleasure in - making connections, with people, between people, between ideas and organizations and even systems

• I expect others to work as hard and as effectively as I do, bringing past experiences and new insights to hard problems with an ethical lens. I expect this of myself as well and of those I love and respect most. I ask that you tell me when I don’t meet this expectation

• My dog Gio (a whippet, full name Alberto Giacometti) taught me love and my wife and I are expecting a child soon who I expect will precipitate another paradigm change in my emotions and life with implications for this manual

• My favourite thing to do is run in the woods in British Columbia with Gio.

• I live in Toronto but travel frequently, particularly to Vancouver, Ottawa, DC, NY, Montreal and Europe.

Still working on:

• I'm good at inspiring and teaching others but not as good at listening to them or exercising patience with them

• I am learning empathy but still struggle with viewing things from others' perspectives

• I'm good at starting projects and bad at finishing them, I'm more about the ideas than the execution

• I'm outgoing and love public speaking but can't project sound well

• I talk, think, judge and act fast but often don't reflect enough before I speak or do

• While I love beautiful perfect products, I often do the minimum necessary when I don't value a task sufficiently

• Bad at mornings, good in the evenings, late to rise and late to sleep

• I'm terrible at carving out space and time for myself: I love company and fear loneliness, I live to be busy and fear boredom

• I think I can multi-task better than I can, often juggling multiple calls and tasks while knowing that this is less efficient than being focused on one task. I want to do less better.

• I have serious issues with FOMO

How to help me:

• I have a hard time saying no: Overly generous with my time to the point of burnout and neglecting commitments. Help me say no

• When well rested or when I have too much caffeine, I can be a little manic so please let me know when I'm going to fast or don't exhibit enough compassion

• I'm always eating and hungry so I appreciate regular breaks in long meetings and excuse me if I'm eating on our call

• I need fitness and mindfulness but have a hard time making time for it so social pressure to do so is helpful

• Excitable and ambitious but often not realistic: reign me in

• While good at persuading others, I see myself as poor at negotiating in general and often prefer that someone else play bad cop

• I'm not very organized but I'm good at being told what to do even by my reports

• I'm good at hard rational deadlines

Communication preferences:

• I'll always take an in-person meeting over a call, a call over a synchronous message and an SMS over an email

• Please don't take my short, cryptic or blunt emails/ messages/ communication as critical or neglectful: I'm just multi-tasking (or trying to use my time efficiently). Instead, seek clarity whenever necessary: more productive communication and feedback is always appreciated

• I use my inbox, tabs, and have a dozen other queues as to-do lists but things often get lost there as they do amongst the chaos of my life

• I move around a lot which means I'll often take calls in transit.

• I have to stare at a screen too much so am always grateful to convert a video call to audio.

How and why I work:

• I love the macro: systems change, international vs. local, etc. and while I love seeing the grassroots impact of my work, I am quickly exhausted by the emotional toll of frontline social impact work

• I network constantly: I'll weave through a networking event, conference or party to interact with every group, always asking to add someone on LinkedIn and find reassurance in lasting online connection after often-fleeting in person connections.

• I can make friends fast and am charismatic but unfortunately my networks have gotten so large and memory has always been so flawed that I often forget people or our interactions. I don't like this about myself and am seeking to deepen a smaller network

• I don't do a good job of putting my loved ones ahead of professional contacts and while I value family, friends and community above most other objects of my attention, my desire for social impact and legacy, and my inability to say no, often overwhelm this value