I believe all of the problems that we face require an interdisciplinary approach to solving. No one skill or idea tackles the complexity of life. We need to encourage the development of individual unique talents in individuals and even our children. Let them find what they are good at and then bring those skills together across different disciplines.
The hardest part of creativity is overcoming the status quo and saying “What if We? How Could We? How Might We?”
This requires immense courage. The willingness to stick our necks out and potentially look foolish or make mistakes. In a group setting like with the Imagineers, there had to a culture of trust so they could have this courage to take chances.
When collaborating it’s important to emphasize the individual strengths and skills of our team members. Do not get over concerned with their weaknesses.
What is their unique approach to problem solving? What skills do they bring to the table? These are the things that will energize and bring them joy as well making helping the team work more effectively towards their goals.
When I was younger, I didn’t get a lot of formal education. Most of the things I learned were hard-won from just working hard and making mistakes. I’ve made my share of them and one thing I’ve learned is how important it is to seek out the insights of people with more life experience then me. Today I am much more intentional about seeking out people with experience so I can learn from them and perhaps avoid some of the mistakes that I may make on my own.
“Investing in the Loss” is a term that we discovered in Josh Waitzkin’s book, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance. It’s had a profound influence on how we approach life and performance.
Josh is a former Chess Champion who then became a champion and master of Tai Chi Chuan. One of his biggest takeaways was that everyone who wants to perform at a high level needs to invest in the loss to succeed.
Investing in the loss is a mentality. It’s a process of acknowledging that something is going to be painful and difficult. This is where the growth comes. Through the process of humbling yourself and being ok with it.
Most people are not willing to be embarrassed, look foolish, or do anything that might result in failure. This fear is what holds them back from achieving new levels of performance. When we’re afraid, we revert back to old habits and avoid activities that might be difficult or make us uncomfortable. This is why we won’t speak new languages in public, take on new ventures, or step up in high performance situations.
In his book, Josh references how Michael Jordan, made more game winning shots then any NBA player in history, but he also missed more game winning shots in NBA history. Make or miss, Michael Jordan was willing to invest in the loss. He knew it would be painful and he would be exposed if he missed but he was willing embrace that as well.
In order to improve we need to embrace a growth mentality and invest in the loss. Acknowledge that something might painful. It might be embarrassing and you might even fail very publicly. But willing to accept that allows you to reach levels beyond where you might have imagined possible.
The words from “Man In The Arena” exemplifies investing in the loss.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I have had a number of careers in my 79 years. I had 5 employers since I was 13. In every one, I was approached and offered the job. My view is that God had a hand in my life from a very early age. My parents were faithful and had high expectations of me and my siblings. I had many careers in that timespan.
Husband, father, employee, volunteer, board member and retiree. I was not always performing at my best. I learned many lessons that may be useful to others.
We all have different god-given talents and I believe God expects each of us to be the “Best we can Be” in all that we do. So have high standards and sound values and let them be your foundation. Maintain balance in your life – your spouse and family are critical parts of your long-term support system. Do what you like and like what you do.
If you do not enjoy your job or volunteer activity, find another one. You will not excel in an unsatisfactory environment and your important personal relationships will suffer.
Do not let money cloud your thinking. In most activities, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Be in the 20%. Take an interest in people you meet in your work and during your day wherever that may be.
Sharing their stories will make their day and you may be surprised about insights you may find. Be a listener. Seek the views of your subordinates and others. Ask questions and be sure you understand their views. It is easy to jump to conclusions on a matter before you understand where someone is coming from.
Finally, nurture interests that recharge you in life’s busy times that will be stimulating in your later years in life.
I once heard the famous Olympic hurdler, Edwin Moses say something like, “The hurdles are just something I go over on my way to the finish line.”
This is a good mental framework for life. During my own life, I’ve encountered so many people who simply could not make a decision and move forward. They get fixated on the hurdle and lose sight of the finish line. They would overthink, over evaluate, and get caught in this emotional tug of war that ended with them stuck in a state of over-analysis paralysis. I would imagine this was exhausting for them mentally, physically, and probably spiritually. I would also guess a big part of their hesitancy is they didn’t want to make a mistake.
Imagine Edwin Moses, racing down the track and stopping at each hurdle, unable to commit or move forward because of the risk of falling. Instead, he was assessing, timing his steps, and moving forward with his eyes on the finish line. He didn’t allow himself to get fixated on each hurdle.
I think the ability to make decisions has been a big contributing factor to whatever success I’ve had. I decide yes or no, then I move forward.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I did my best to think through my decisions and move forward committed. Particularly when it came to my business life, I’ve always found that looking backwards didn’t serve me well at all. I’d gather all the information that I could, then I’d make the decision to move forward or not. With every decision I know that there is a possibility it doesn’t work out, but being to able to humble myself and accept the possibility of embarrassment or failure lets me move forward.
I had a comfortable job and life in Milwaukee when I had the chance to buy my first company in San Antonio. My father and I flew down to look at it and I then moved my family from Milwaukee to San Antonio. It was a huge change for all of us. We didn’t know anyone, we were leaving all our family and relatives behind, and there was always a chance it might not work out. But the opportunity came and I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m grateful because it gave me personal opportunities with my family that we would never have had in Milwaukee.
I’ve made mistakes and will probably make more, but I try not to let fear of making mistakes or indecision get in the way. “The hurdles were just something to step over”.
An essay by Tony Schwartz in the New York Times, “Addicted to Distraction,” has created a lot of buzz, including being the most emailed piece from the newspaper in the days after it appeared. The buzz is deserved: Schwartz describes a phenomenon that plagues many people—the seemingly irresistible draw of the internet for “the brain’s craving for novelty, constant stimulation, and immediate gratification”—and he compellingly describes his own efforts to overcome it.
As a neuroscientist who has worked with organizations and their leaders for three decades, I would like to expand a little on Schwartz’s observations and suggest a larger phenomenon that might be even more important. Schwartz attributes our distractibility to a specific “addiction” to various forms of instantly-available information, and writes, “Like lab rats and drug addicts, we need more and more to get the same effect.”
It is valuable to recognize that our brains are wired for distraction, not for paying attention, and so distraction is just our brains having their way with us, as they always do if we don’t consciously manage them. In many ways, not only related to distraction, our brains’ hardwired tendencies move us away from our hopes and expectations for ourselves, not closer to those hopes and expectations. We are hardwired to be at less than our best most of the time, as our best intentions are hijacked all day long by our brains.
Regarding distraction, our brains have two independent systems related to attention: one for paying attention, and another one for being distracted. The paying-attention system is what scientists call “top-down”: you manage it with your conscious mind, but the being-distracted system is “bottom-up”: it happens automatically. The top-down paying-attention system has to be deployed by you; the bottom-up getting-distracted system has a life of its own. As one neuroscientist has put it, “The mind is always trying to wander, every chance it gets.”
Schwartz quotes Nicholas Carr: ““The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention.” No, the net is what it is. We, and our enthusiastic brains, find interruptions and diversions appealing, and the net simply services that. Research shows that we’re just as distracted walking down the street as we are in front of a computer. It’s how we’re built.
It’s easy to imagine why our brains might be wired in this way. Flitting attention might have kept our distant ancestors safe from sudden attacks from predators, or more attuned to opportunities for hunting or foraging. It also could be that often the things we switch our attention to are just as important or valuable as the things we divert our attention from. Whatever the evolutionary or practical reason, our brains are as they are, and they want what they want.
There are scores of other kinds of brain wiring that are detrimental to our biggest dreams. They might not be as apparent or infuriating as the urge to distraction, but they’re unhelpful individually, and cumulatively their effects can be very severe. For example, there’s the inclination to view situations, other people, and even ourselves negatively—“negativity bias,” as neuroscientists call it. How costly can it be to have instant negative reactions (which often are not even apparent to the conscious brain) that hold us back from constructive engagement, or that cause us to dwell on our current and past shortcomings instead of our strengths or our future potential?
There’s the brain’s incessant observation of ourselves in relationship to others, the comparing and calibrating that can leave us satisfied with less than our best if it’s as good as others are doing, or that leads us to seek to fit in rather than being our own unique selves. When neuroscientists isolated the parts of the brain that enforce conformity to social expectations, the lead researcher said, “We have shown the mechanisms of what is probably the most fundamental social mistake—that of being too different from others.”
Other brain wiring has other potential negative consequences. It can make us too fearful of change; too committed to less-than-fully-effective reactions and habits; too quick to judge others; too ready to give up before we have given our best; too inclined to drift, on autopilot, through too much of each day.
In short, our brains often make choices for us that are different from what we actually want for ourselves at our best. Tony Schwartz put in a lot of effort to change that regarding distraction, and we’re potentially better off from his example. We also know, of course, that pieces like Schwartz’s may also get emailed and tweeted not as a serious incentive to change, but because they confirm and even subliminally reinforce the idea that this is just how life is—ain’t it awful, but maybe inevitable and even kind of amusing, too, in a misery-loves-company way?
Schwartz, after all, had resources that most people don’t have: among other things, a background in behavior change; no boss demanding instant responses; and a month-long vacation to wean himself from distraction. Bravo for him, many might say, while not feeling that they have the same skills, freedom, and flexibility—or even willpower—that he has.
The “addiction,” as he notes, will never be fully conquered. The constant vigilance that he describes is essential: he writes, “As often as possible, I try to ask myself, ‘Is this really what I want to be doing?’ If the answer is no, the next question is, ‘What could I be doing that would feel more productive, or satisfying, or relaxing?’ ” Unlike distraction, many of the brain’s traps that I mentioned above, such as negativity, comparing, drifting, and unwarranted fear, are so natural and comfortable to us that we may not even recognize that they are occurring or are interfering with the attainment of our goals, unless we learn about them and attune ourselves to noticing them. Once we start noticing them, they can be addressed by asking questions like the ones that Schwartz asks himself when he starts to become distracted: Where is my brain taking me right now? Is that really where I want to? What would be a better choice?
Schwartz also applied systems to the distraction issue. He writes of setting priorities at night and then working on them the next morning in 60-to-90-minute interruption-free periods. A great idea that changes lives when it’s implemented with commitment. Other systems can be created to be sure that the other obstacles our brains create are also challenged, not just in the moment but systematically.
By hard-wired nature, our brains are primed to do what they’re built to do. Recognizing the many ways in which they are structured to thwart our higher hopes for ourselves is a critical step for changing things. As I have written in previous posts, new studies suggest that we can add vital new brain cells through effortful successful learning—even in very brief bursts of focus—and, via self-directed or intentional neuroplasticity, we can change or guide some of our wiring into more optimal performance states for work and life.
But as a starting point, I think, we will be best served by a greatly heightened awareness of the traps our brains set for us, along with knowing practical, straightforward workarounds to sidestep those traps. The workarounds can even grow into new and more effective habits if they’re consistently applied. The more that we learn to manage our brains instead of letting them manage us, the greater our potential accomplishments and satisfactions will be.
Most behaviors that are short term motivated are robbing our future of our most amazing life.
Health: Smoking, drinking, poor diet, not exercising, not getting enough sleep are all examples of short term behavior that might feel good in the moment (maybe) but rob us of healthier, longer life down the road.
Financial: Overspending, taking on bad debt, not investing all rob our future selves of more financial security.
Business: The best business and investors in the world tend to think with a long term mindset. They make decisions that will play out in 10 to 20 years of building vs thinking about next quarter.
I’ve included a link to Nick Sleep and his business partner, Qais Zakaria. Together they ran the investment partnership, Nomad Capital and now run a foundation. I try to read everything they write, because how they view businesses is profound and aligns greatly with long term thinking. The amount emotional fortitude it takes to think this way is how I aspire to live my own life.
I’ve heard comedian Dave Chappelle say that when he’s performing, that whether the he lands the joke perfectly or not, “The Beauty is in the attempt.” I believe he’s referring to the attempt of trying to do something difficult, challenging, audacious.
I think there is a lot of wisdom behind that mentality. It’s only by attempting to tackle challenges and to take big risks that we might actually accomplish something special. To me, finding beauty in the attempt means that we should continuously focus on the process of the work that we are doing and remain emotionally indifferent to the result that follows. So many people are afraid of “failure” that it paralyzes them from ever attempting something that is meaningful to them. How many dreams and ideas die before they are even given the chance to succeed?
I’ve also heard Dave Coggins say that failure is just his first attempt, then his 2nd attempt, then 3rd attempt. You only fail if you quit or you never try. These are very powerful mental models that I believe can offer the person the courage to attempt difficult challenges as they strive for their own best life.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt