Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda, and What People Actually Regret

/in , , /by

Here’s a real story, but let’s anonymize him. We’ll call him Joey. So Joey, a local mild-mannered grown-up went to a high school soccer match in Virginia, and sat with friends and colleagues in the stands, on the home side, the side hosting the game.

The game got competitive, the kids got all riled up, the coaches too. At one point his own friends and colleagues got caught up in the moment, and began denigrating and ridiculing the opponent players, talking trash to them from the stands. Joey snapped, and turned to face his friends, heart racing, nearly shouting, he loudly chastised their behavior. He was in the presence of local adults and community leaders actively taking part in ridiculing teenage players in a local soccer game. No, he said, this will not be tolerated.

Joey is not likely to regret that action. Not at all. In the short term, he might have some misgivings about how he reacted – like maybe he was too forceful, to shouty, too something. In the short term, he might worry about how he was viewed by others. But in the long term he will remember that moment with pride. And so will the people there who recollect it. Heck, I was inspired and I wasn’t even there. I heard it secondhand.

What is that thin line between being inspired by someone’s actions, and taking action ourselves? We celebrate when someone else speaks up against a bully, but maybe in that moment we didn’t quite have the nerve ourselves.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

– Elie Weisel, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor

We don’t tend to regret the actions we take that align with our values. We are much more likely to regret inaction. We are much more likely to regret not living up to our ideal version of ourselves.

We can read about Ghandi’s civil disobedience and be inspired, yet remain quiet ourselves when we witness injustice. It’s not genes, or even necessarily learned behavior that drives us to take action. Although it is true that once you speak your mind to voice your values, you are more likely to do it again. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “foot-in-the-door” effect. When you engage in a small or initial action related to your values, it can lead to a sense of commitment and consistency, making you more inclined to do it again.

When we think of people who take a chance, speak up, and say, or do, something courageous at work, we think of real heavyweight whistleblowers. “Deep Throat” from the Watergate investigation, or Karen Silkwood, who famously revealed plutonium contamination at the Kerr-McGee nuclear facility in Oklahoma. Her story was later adapted into the film “Silkwood” played by Meryl Streep.

Or Terry Bryan. Bryan was a nurse working at Winterbourne View Hospital in the UK when he witnessed appalling abuse of residents with learning difficulties. He tried reporting through the correct channels. He told his boss, then his boss’ boss. When they refused to do anything, he told the oversight regulatory agency called the Care Quality Commission. They didn’t do anything either, so he called the BBC and did an extensive interview describing the abuse and neglect he witnessed. It led to a documentary and exposé. He describes his experience here.

In the documentary, the interviewer asks Terry if he would do it again, if he has any regrets. He said, “It’s about following your conscience,” he says. “How would you live with yourself if you didn’t do it?”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

– Steve Jobs

Here’s the thing – we get one shot at this life, and every day we get an opportunity to make a difference. When we consider recent decisions in our short-term memory, it is true that we sometimes cringe at our own actions. We think, “Why did I say that?” “What was I thinking?” “Lordy, I hope I didn’t offend him by telling the truth!”

Yet, research shows that in the long-term the things we are most likely to regret things are the things we didn’t do, not the things we did try.

“In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make.”

― Lewis Carroll

_______________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, just released a new series of courses on Thriving through Emotional Intelligence, and how to make exactly these types of decisions. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Really It’s Okay, You Can Say No.

/in , , , /by

Judith, community organizer extraordinaire, just asked you if you can work the Snack Shack for two hours at the Saturday afternoon soccer game. You have a walk scheduled with your sister then. But your sister will understand. Your sister is easy to reschedule and Judith is hard to say No to.

So you say Yes. You didn’t really want to. Sure, you would love to help out, honestly, almost any other day. It’s just that Saturday you had something else scheduled with your sister.

It’s fine. Whatever. Your sister will understand.

Joseph in marketing just asked if you would write a guest blog about your current project. Great, one more distraction looming over me. You’re busy enough as it is, but you say Yes. You hate writing, and you know the task is going to hang over you for two weeks. You cheerfully say Yes anyway.

Why do we constantly say Yes to things we honestly don’t want to do, or even when we have a conflict? Vanessa Patrick calls this the Acquaintance Trap. If a stranger asks if you will sit in an hour meeting, that’s easy. Just say No. You’re busy. Or don’t even respond. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know them.

If your best friend asks you to walk their dog, you normally would say Yes. But on Thursday afternoon you have a workout class and can’t do it. You say No. She understands. You have your workout class, and it’s important to you. Together you both find someone else to do it.

But your acquaintances are your weak ties. It’s a Mom on the volleyball team. (What’s their kid’s name again?) Or it’s Joseph from marketing whom you sort of, kind of, know. When an acquaintance asks you, there is a momentary spotlight on the question, and the inescapable truth: we care what other people think about us. We care about our relationships, our reputation. We want to be viewed as competent and capable. So we say, “Yeah, sure I can totally do that. Easy.” We describe ourselves as someone who gets along, someone who know how to please other people, how to solve problems, be available.

The other big reason is that we don’t know how to say No. Nobody teaches us to say No. No one tells us it’s okay to say No.

When someone does ask, there’s a spotlight on you, a spotlight on the question. What do you do? How do you respond? The social expectation is that you will say Yes.

If we can muster the courage to say No, we often come up with an excuse that blames a third party or circumstance. We might say, “Oh I’m sorry I can’t. I have to take my cat to the vet then.” So here we are sustaining our identity as a do-gooder, yet blaming circumstances beyond our control.

As Vanessa Patrick describes in her book, try instead using an empowered refusal. An empowered refusal is when you tell the other person you are not available for their ask because it doesn’t align with your values, goals, and identity.

An empowered refusal is a proclamation that that’s not the kind of thing you do as a person. You can apply this idea to anything – “I’m not the kind of person who skips the gym. I’m not the kind of person who takes on work that will bury me in anxiety. I’m not the kind of person who takes the elevator when the stairs are available.”

Or in the first example, you might say, “I’m sorry I can’t work the Snack Shack on Saturday. I made a commitment to my sister and I need to keep that promise.”

So when your boss surprises you by asking you to attend a 4pm Wednesday meeting, you tell him honestly, “I’m sorry. I have an exercise class at that time and I’m committed to my personal health and well-being.”

Most importantly, an empowered refusal is a declaration of who you are, and not a rejection of the other person. Because we worry most that our saying No will be viewed as a rejection of the other person. When, in fact, saying No can be an assertion of who we are.

_______________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, just released a new series of courses on Thriving through Emotional Intelligence, and how to make exactly these types of decisions. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Parachuting Beavers and Other Oddities of Innovation

/in , , /by

So a couple weeks ago, I boarded a flight to Missoula, Montana. My try-hard intrepid plan was to pedal a gravel bike, loaded with gear, through the captivating Bitterroot Valley, south from Missoula between the Sapphire and Bitterroot mountains three days to meet a week-long rafting and kayaking trip on the Main Salmon River, then cycle on to Boise, ID. I designed this to be about a 12 day adventure—5 days of cycling and 6 days of kayaking in the wilderness of Idaho and Montana.

I rode about 65 miles down the beautiful Bitterroot cycling path, and spent my first night in Darby, Montana, then onwards 55 miles to North Fork, Idaho, an intersection with a general store, campground and a motel. From there, a half-day ride down a 45-mile gravel access road following the Main Salmon River.

My reward at the end of this ride was a group of six experienced guides and 24 adrenaline junkies, all prepped for a six-day adventure on the late June high waters of the Main Salmon River. I left my bike with the outfitters, to be stored in a warehouse waiting for the end of the rafting trip, from where I would ride another two days south to Boise, ID.

Embarking down the river, I thought I knew what to expect: breathtaking views, complete isolation within the vast Frank Church Wilderness, eagles, black bears, beaver, elk, bighorn sheep, ospreys—and even the promise of good food. The heart-stopping Class III and IV rapids during the late June high waters were also expected, yet terrifying from the view in my inflatable kayak.

However, the real revelation of this adventure was the discovery of the human spirit in its most admirable form. The guides are astonishing humans. Each one in their own fabulous way. Caring, giving, inclusive, patient and accommodating, and yet always expecting you have more within you, encouraging you into the next massive rapid. They demonstrated an intimate understanding of their surroundings, possessed exceptional navigational skills, and approached every situation with an unwavering cheerfulness that was contagious.

One such guide, Ian, was a living library of the local history and ecology. During a hike, he narrated an intriguing tale of ecological innovation—the Beaver Re-population Project, a narrative intertwining the past, present, and future of the Chamberlain Basin of the Frank Church Wilderness—it was a tale with threads of innovation, daring, and well, parachutes.

Centuries ago, this region was rife with beavers—furry engineers whose dam-building prowess contributed to the health of the local ecosystems. However, in their quest for fur to satiate Europe’s fashion market, early fur trappers severely depleted these beaver populations, just so they could be worn as hats and coats by wealthy Europeans.

Beavers are instrumental in shaping ecosystems. Their dam building adds structure to waterways, slowing water flow and creating ponds that gradually release water in dry periods. This process enhances groundwater storage, sediment collection, and enrich habitats for waterfowl, amphibians, mammals, and even offer refuge for juvenile fish. Yet, despite their benefits to ecosystems, farmers think of the beaver as their enemy, a destructive pest, who chew at fences, flood cropland, and should be controlled or removed.

Fast forward to the 1940s and 50s, after the devastation of World War II, a surplus of parachutes provided an unconventional solution to the beaver crisis. In a masterstroke of innovative problem-solving, Elmo Heter, a game warden with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, initiated a beaver relocation program. The reluctant hero of this endeavor was Geronimo, a beaver who was the first to be air-dropped safely into the wilderness.

Geronimo was not only the star of this audacious plan, but also its test subject. The initial wooden boxes failed to contain the beavers during transit, leading to the sight of free-roaming beavers within the plane. The trial-and-error approach, with Geronimo’s cooperation, eventually led to a successful box design.

The program was a resounding success, leading to a healthy increase in the beaver population in the region. They’ve since worked their magic, restoring the ecological balance of the watershed.

Reflecting on this adventure, here’s a lesson: How can we repurpose excess? When life hands you the oddity of parachutes, don’t just stash them away. Take a page from Elmo Heter’s book, harness your creative problem-solving skills, parachute some beavers into the wilderness. You might restore the health of a watershed environment.

Oh, yes at the end of the rafting expedition, I cycled on two more days to Boise, met up with some dear friends, and flew back to Maine.

_______________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

What if We Are Actually Hard-Wired for Kindness and Compassion?

/in , , , /by

Remember the book, “Lord of the Flies”? You probably read it – or at least heard about it – in high school. The story plays to our darkest fears of human nature. “Lord of the Flies” a fictional story based on the idea of “veneer theory.”

The idea behind veneer theory is that human civilization is like a thin veneer or layer on top of a more primal and savage nature. According to this theory, human beings have an inherent capacity for violence and aggression, and it is only through the rules and norms of civilization that we are able to suppress these tendencies and create a peaceful society.

Published in 1954, “Lord of the Flies” sold slowly at first, until taking off and eventually selling tens of millions of copies. It won a Nobel Prize in 1983. Translated into over 30 languages, the book tells the story of a group of boys who are stranded on a deserted island and the ways in which their society devolves into chaos and violence. “Lord of the Flies” is known for its exploration of human nature and the darker side of humanity.

It was written by William Golding, an Englishman who grew up in a middle-class home and then served in the Royal Navy in World War II, where he witnessed the horrors of war. These experiences had a profound impact on his writing. His works often explored the darker aspects of human nature. Or as Golding put it, ‘Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.’

Yeah, well, Golding was also a reclusive, brooding alcoholic, who once divided his students into opposing gangs and encouraged them to fight each other.

While his fictional narrative certainly grabs your attention, just like a good Halloween movie, the premise doesn’t hold up. It’s just an alarming and exciting story that makes you stop and pay attention. In the British news, that’s called a “marmalade dropper.” As in, “That crazy ass story about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars made me drop my marmalade!”

We’re attracted to conflict, but it’s more unusual than we realize because the media knows we’re triggered by negativity, and feeds the beast within. And now that AI and user algorithms have taken over your feed, they know EXACTLY how to pull your chain, because every click and scroll surrenders that much more control.

What’s that old parable about the internal battle between the good wolf and the bad wolf? The good wolf represents bravery, generosity, and love. The bad wolf represents anger, hatred, and greed. The child asks his wise grandfather, “Which one wins?” and the grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”

Remember, there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. – Scott Adams

Every day we are actively creating the world together with the stories we tell ourselves and each other. We believe what we choose to see in the world. I choose to see that people are innately good, prone to assuming best intentions, and quick to lend aid and help in times of calamity and adversity. History is full of stories of disaster altruism:

  • On September 11, 2001 immediately after the plane attacks into the burning Twin Towers, thousands of people were descending the emergency exit stairs, knowing that the building was on fire. They cleared the way for firefighters to ascend, and helped each other in an orderly and polite way. One survivor reported, “People would actually say, ‘No, no, you first. I couldn’t believe it, that at this point people would actually say, ‘No, no take my place.’
  • During World War II, people throughout Europe risked their lives to protect and hide Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. These individuals demonstrated incredible courage and selflessness, often at great personal risk.
  • In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many people from across the United States traveled to New Orleans to provide aid and assistance to those affected by the storm. This included volunteers from all walks of life, who donated their time, money, and resources to help others in need.
  • In 2011, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, many Japanese citizens organized to provide aid and assistance to those affected by the disaster. This included volunteers who traveled to affected areas to provide medical care and supplies, as well as citizens who opened up their homes to those who had been displaced.

Ok, yes if you look for it you can find hoarding, pillaging and “shortage psychology” too. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, competition for jobs and resources was fierce, with many people struggling to make ends meet. This led to a rise in crime and antisocial behavior, as people competed for limited resources and opportunities.

More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, competition for resources such as medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a significant issue. Remember the run on toilet paper? The world shut down on about March 13, 2020 and by March 23, 70% of grocery retailers were out of toilet paper.

Crises can bring out both the best and the worst in people, depending on a wide range of factors, including cultural norms, resource availability, and the nature of the crisis itself. Yet, what if we are actually hard-wired for kindness and compassion?

What if a belief in our innate generosity is exactly the kind of idea that has the power to change our communities, our society, and our nations, for the better?

________________________________________________

Recently I wrote about Mindscaling’s big project to convert Faisal Hoque’s book, LIFT into an interactive learning documentary. You can see previews of that elearning project, and his important new book here. Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy here. And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Oh, There You Are!

/in , , /by

David Sedaris wanted to quit smoking. So he moved to Japan for three months. It worked, and it only cost him $23,000. He read a book that told him the best way to change a habit is to change the environment. The author suggested that if you wanted to stop doing something difficult, perhaps addictive, you should move to another location temporarily. Change the environment, change your surroundings. Either that, or the author suggested move your couch.

We know that willpower can only take us so far. Willpower is so fragile, that the people who are best at self-regulation seldom use willpower as a lone tactic. Two researchers at the University of Toronto did a series of studies and concluded that willpower didn’t even help participants achieve their stated goals, it mostly just exhausted them from the effort of resistance.

Which explains why David Sedaris moved to Tokyo, where everything was not only strange and new, but also officials have banned almost all smoking in the city, except in specifically designated areas (which don’t look very inviting…).

Sedaris didn’t have to use willpower. He removed the temptation. Just like avoiding the bakery section at the grocery store. And while you should always be wary of your triggers, also seek out your glimmers. A glimmer is a sign, a cairn, you may find on the road to Future You. It could be a thoughtful conversation, a beautiful sky, or a quiet walk. It’s something that is representative of where you are going.

Changing your environment is similar to the advice of pruning your social environment as well. You may have to do some careful peer de-selection, at least for the short term. If you have a goal of losing weight, its hard to have a group of friends who want to go out for pizza and beer every Friday night. You could go, but then there you are having water and a salad with your friends and their pizza and beer. For some people that works, but likely not at the beginning when the goal is still fresh, and the temptation still strong.

Stopping something, or avoiding an ingrained behavior is also harder than starting something, particularly if you make that new something very easy. James Clear calls this the Two-Minute Rule. If you want to stop sitting on the couch and start running, a Two Minute rule might be “pick out what to wear for my run.” That’s it. You don’t even have to run. Or if the goal is to do more cooking, in two minutes you could probably read a couple recipes. That’s it. It’s about getting on the path. It’s about slowly becoming the kind of person who goes for a run, or cooks a meal.

Change your mental landscape, show yourself more self-compassion, and recognize that your gratitude practice is only partially about expressing thanks, and more about committing to an enhanced version of a future you. Your gratitude toward someone else is an expression of who you want to become in the future.

All of which – if you’re still reading – brings me to the point I’ve been trying to get to. When we get on the path, the path of starting something, pushing through, persevering, finishing the thing, or perhaps stopping some poisonous relationship or detrimental habit, we should do so in plain sight, out loud. And the reason for living out loud with your progress open for your friends and family to see, is because then they will see what you see.

When you can envision your future you, and you tell those you love, they will see it too. They will recognize who you are becoming.

In the movie Hook, there is a scene in which Robin Williams goes back to Neverland, and tries to convince the lost boys that he really is Peter Pan. No one believes him, until one small boy goes up to Robin Williams, takes the glasses from his face and starts to smush, and stretch Robin’s face and look deeply into his eyes, until he finally exclaims, “Oh, there you are Peter!”

_________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Every Big Thing You Have Ever Done Required This

/in , , , /by

Hello and welcome back to my newsletter! Last week I was musing about ultrarunning Japanese monks. How they can possibly fathom their own astonishing goals? Not to oversimplify it, but basically they don’t. They just take it one step at a time.

This week I’m thinking about how our attention is fracturing. Our eroding focus is not only robbing us of our own big goals, but our loss of attention is making it harder for us, as a community, to collectively solve some of the big problems we face together.

While writing this post, I’ve started, stopped, then started writing again, many times over the past week. I took a break to clean the kitchen, got distracted by a news article on the counter, distracted again attending to the dogs who wanted to come in, then go out again, then my phone rings, then I wonder what to cook for dinner, then forget what I was thinking about, and then start listening to another podcast with Johann Hari, discussing his new book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention.

At this moment in time, the average office worker focuses on one thing for just 3 minutes, before switching to some other shiny distraction. Often the narrative we tell ourselves is that either we are suffering a personal failure of grit and tenacity, and if only we could muster the discipline, we could maintain our focus. In other words, we tell ourselves that we are failing.

Or we tell ourselves that it isn’t really our fault at all. It’s just the ubiquity of technology and devices which overwhelms our ability to focus. But the truth is that our willpower is no match for an army of engineers focused on designing systems that prey on our limbic brain response. Programming techniques like pull-to-refresh act like a slot machine to keep us “playing” even when nothing’s there. Infinite scroll designs remove natural stopping cues and breaks so users don’t realize when to stop, because there is no end. Which is the point of the design.

“You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.” – Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology testifying to U.S. Senate

As Johann Hari points out repeatedly in his book, and interview discussions, we aren’t simply surrendering our attention to facebook, snapchat, tiktok, etc., our attention is systematically, and intentionally being stolen from us. We all know this. On “free” social media platforms, we are the product being sold. We the humans are the commodity being sold to the highest bidder, who again is advertising to us in order to, yet again, steal our attention.

Every click, every scroll, every like and post is scraped by artificial intelligence and algorithms to form a profile of us, which is packaged and sold to advertisers. When Google released Gmail, they were scraping your email content with artificial intelligence to form a profile of you. In order to sell to you. It’s the business model.

 — But here’s why this really matters. Here’s why our focus and attention is so critical. —

Think of any major accomplishment in your life – a business you started, a degree you earned, a promotion you worked for, a book you published or a big project you delivered. Or even consider your strong relationships with your partner, your children, your friends and family.

The one single thread among all of these accomplishments and strong relationships is that it required your sustained attention. You had to focus. You had to stay on task, on message, on point. You had to write the content, rehearse the presentation, read the material. And with your meaningful relationships, you had to slow down. You had to listen.

If your attention breaks down you are less able to achieve your goals. Period. Accomplishing anything momentous or valuable, requires your focus and attention.

People who can’t focus, will be drawn to simplistic, authoritarian solutions, and less likely to see clearly when they fail. – Johann Hari

The problem compounds when the task of problem solving requires the collaboration of many people. In this era of distracted, segmented attention, we are less able, as a community, to focus collaboratively on big problems which require the sustained attention of many people.

An example Johann Hari uses is the ozone layer degradation first discovered in the 1980s. Susan Solomon led a series of expeditions to Antarctica in 1986 and 1987 to take readings of the ozone and discovered that a hole was rapidly expanding because of chlorine dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere. The principle culprit was CFCs commonly used in aerosol spray cans, and refrigerants.

Her work expanded the scientific understanding of CFCs and the importance of the protective ozone layer in shielding us from ultraviolet radiation. This was all patiently explained by scientists to global communities of government legislators, business leaders, and consumers. We, common non-scientist people listened, understood the problem explained to us, and then collectively decided to cease use of CFCs and to ban their use in consumer products.

It worked, and since then the ozone layer has been healing to continue to protect species.

Hari worries about our collective ability now to focus on scientific truths, and respond rationally, and in unison, to the realities of climate change, threatened democracy, misinformation, and more.

Hari argues that if we were confronted with the same ozone dilemma now we would fracture in the same ways we do today. As he believes, “You would get people who would film themselves spraying CFCs into the atmosphere to own the libs and make them cry. You would get people saying, ‘How do we even know the ozone layer exists? Maybe George Soros made the hole in the ozone layer.’ We would become lost.”

We would not be able to summon the collective attention required to solve this dilemma that requires critical thinking, sustained attention and collaboration.

How can we solve the world’s most urgent problems if we’ve downgraded our attention spans, downgraded our capacity for complexity and nuance, downgraded our shared truth, downgraded our beliefs into conspiracy theory thinking that we can’t construct shared agendas to solve our problems? This is destroying our sense-making at a time we need it the most.
– Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology

Well, if you’ve read this far – even while perhaps checking your email or texts – you must be wondering what to do about it. Johann Hari has a lot of advice and hacks to take back your attention and focus, but I’ll give you just one I use which works.

Do something every day which requires your total attention. Go to an exercise class. Shop and prepare a new recipe. Go for a run. Schedule a coffee with a friend and leave your phone in the car. Engage in an activity which demands your total attention. In other words create situations in which you know you will have total presence. It’s called “pre-commitment”.

Another way to ensure you won’t check your DMs and likes is to lock up your phone. Seriously. Grab yourself a K-Safe and set the timer. The research backs it up. You’ll have your focus back for that duration.

Here, just for you, have a micro-learning course we recently published on Being an Agile Critical Thinker.
_________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Why Successful People Don’t Focus on Success

/in , , /by

Hello and welcome back to my newsletter! Last week I was writing about how gratitude is more about defining our future and who we will become, not only celebrating the past. This week I’m thinking about a mind shift to focusing on projects we can control, instead of big successes we can’t control.

Here’s my question this week: If most successful people say they never predicted their own successes, what did they do to get there?

You know the 1973 song “Ooh La La” by The Faces. Yes, you do. With that famous refrain:

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger

It’s a great song. But there’s something wrong with that lyric. No, you don’t really want your younger self to know what you know now, do you? Right now, I don’t want to know what 80-year old me knows. Not yet anyway.

We persevere on projects because we don’t know yet what is going to stick and what isn’t. And even if we try to predict what’s going to work, how do we know it wasn’t the series of projects that came first which set the stage, built our experience, honed our craft? We don’t want to skip to the end. We want to live the best version of our life that’s happening now.

Stick to Your Short-Term Choices

We don’t know what we don’t know. And not knowing is both the angst, and supreme joy, of being 10, or 20, or 30 or __ years old.

My Dad had this bit of advice I always remember: When you think of where you are right now, you can easily trace it back in time. At school I met this teacher, who gave me a job, where I met Andre, who I went camping with, and we met those travelers from New Zealand…

It’s like cairns in a forest, breadcrumbs on the path. It’s so obvious from where you stand now. The opportunities and situations of your childhood, the choices you make in your teens and twenties, the schools you attend, the clubs and sports you participate in, the teachers, coaches, pastors, and mentors you listen to, all lead to the long line of choices that bring you to now.

And while each choice takes you down a path, you can’t really foresee where it will go. You don’t know who you will meet, what you will learn. So see it through – the adventure, the school, the class, the project you’re on at the moment. Commit. Or at least micro-commit to the experience.

Dan Gilbert and his colleagues did an experiment years ago at Harvard. They created a photography course, and invited the students to go around campus and take 12 black and white photos of their favorite people and places – faculty, buildings, classmates, etc.. Then they set up a dark room and invited the students to develop their own photographs and enlarge just two of them into big beautiful prints.

Then the teacher said, “OK, one of the photos you can take with you to keep. The other photo stays with the school and goes into the archives.” Half the group were told they had to decide immediately, and the choice would be final. The other half of the group was given fours days to think about it, and they could change their mind at any time. If they wanted the other photo instead, no problem. They could switch if they wanted to.

Those who had to make an immediate, irrevocable choice, reported that they were much happier with their choice than the other half of the students who had the opportunity to change their mind over the next few days.

If you can bail out, change your mind, second guess yourself, you can rationalize that decision and it can make you crazy. Stick with your choice, and see it as a small project, an experiment, a building block for something bigger to come.

You Can Control Projects, Not Outcomes

Instead of focusing on the goals you want to accomplish, start asking who you want to become.

Reframe the story you tell yourself. Stop focusing on running a 4-hour marathon, instead become a runner. Stop focusing on publishing a bestseller, instead become a writer. Goals aren’t a bad thing, but set it aside. Instead of focusing on the end result, focus on becoming the kind of person who can accomplish that goal. Ask yourself, what are the types of projects this person would take on?

“Habits are not a finish line to be crossed, but a lifestyle to be lived.” – James Clear

Neil Gaiman, the fabulous writer, said once that when he sits down to write, he gives himself just two choices. Write, or look out the window. That’s it. There’s no choice called scroll through twitter, check email, call Mom, or clean the kitchen.

The control he sets on his writing process is: Write, or look out the window. That’s it. It’s what he can control. He wrote great books by becoming a writer, not by focusing on writing a great book.

Stop focusing on the goal itself. Become the kind of person who accomplishes the goal you envision.

_________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

It’s OK, You Should Ask. They Will Say Yes.

/in , , , , /by

Welcome back! If you prefer, you can receive this newsletter when first published over here on LinkedIn. This week I show that you can – and should – ask for help, along with a few tips on how to ask from the research of Vanessa Bohns.

Recently my wife and I wanted to visit our son, a first year student at a university about a 7-hour drive away. He had only been there a few weeks, and we thought it would be nice to visit him at school for parent’s weekend, meet his new friends, and take in the fall college scene in New England.

In the end, we didn’t go. We have two dogs who would not have enjoyed 14 hours in a car, and a younger daughter who would need a place to stay for the weekend. She certainly wasn’t interested in a getaway with her parents on a long car ride, just to visit her brother. Yuck.

So what happened? We didn’t ask for help. It would have been easy. When I explained this to some friends, every single person said they would have taken our dogs for the weekend, including our old sweet yellow lab who we couldn’t bear to leave at a dog boarding kennel. Our daughter could have easily spent the night with friends. It would have taken two phone calls. We just didn’t ask.

In general, people hate to ask for help, or ask favors from other people. Our aversion to even interrupting someone else can be so strong, Vanessa Bohn has demonstrated in her research that we don’t like to approach strangers just to give them compliments (“Your sweater looks great on you!”), because we are concerned we might not express ourselves well to others. We believe we might appear awkward, strike the wrong tone, or be misinterpreted. So we say nothing. We ask for nothing.

But we shouldn’t be so worried. People will agree to requests more often than we think, particularly if the request is benign, or well-intentioned.

There’s a guy named Jia Jiang who tested this theory by spending 100 days asking random people for pretty benign, but often unusual requests. He called his experiment Rejection Therapy, and during the experiment, he made many requests of strangers. He went to a high school track and asked a random person to race him (yes), asked a police officer if he could sit in the squad car (yes), asked a Wal-Mart greeter if he could hug her (yes), asked a Subway sandwich maker if he could go behind the counter and make his own sandwich (no), asked a car salesperson if he could test drive an $80k BMW (yes), and even asked if he could give the flight safety announcement on a SouthWest flight (sort of).

The point is that people are more agreeable, and more willing to say Yes to our requests than we think they are. And because of this fact, we should be careful of the requests that we do make, and ensure they are well-intentioned, and designed for positive outcomes.

So, once you’ve figured out what you want to ask for, that comes from a place of good intent, here are a few tips from Vanessa Bohn’s research on how to make a successful ask.

Be direct: A mistake we often make is that we think it will be more polite to hint at the request, or drop clues that the other person is supposed to understand and interpret, to allow them to intuit our request, and volunteer to help. So instead of asking outright, we suggest or hint at it. People don’t always pick up on our hints. Be direct, and plain, in your requests instead.

Don’t overthink the ask: We often think we need to craft the perfect email, with compelling arguments, and carefully selected words, to gain their attention and get someone else to Yes. Actually, you don’t. The most compelling asks are direct, simple, and in-person.

Ask in-person, or at least by phone: It is very difficult for people to say No to someone else in person. Our default response is to agree, mostly because we don’t want to create conflict, adversity or disappoint someone else. And emails are easily ignored.

Don’t water down your request: In a series of studies at Columbia Business School, participants engaged in negotiations who thought they were being too assertive, or too pushy in their requests ( the “line-crossing illusion”), were more often viewed by the other person as being appropriate, and fair, in their ask. So don’t ask for half of what you actually want.

It’s OK. You can, and should, ask for help. Asking strengthens relationships, expands connections, and gives someone else a chance to give. Because giving someone an opportunity to give is a good thing.

________________________

Still trying to figure out what you want? We wrote a 5-minute microlearning course on that. Enjoy!

No alt text provided for this image

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful online micro-learning experiences to drive the human change that propels your team. You can find our catalog of high-impact courses here. And if you want something more tailored, you can learn about our custom work here.

My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

And if you want to learn to apply some of these ideas and be an effective coach for your team, we wrote a course on that too. It’s called Coaching for Managers available over at UDEMY for Business.

Are “Should” Statements Ruining Your Life?

/in , , /by

This kind of thinking will destroy your motivation, and make you less likely to actually do these things.

  • “I should work out more often.”
  • “I should figure out how to meditate.”
  • “I should hug my kids more.”
  • “I should make more healthy dinners.”

The last time I posted something here was May 4, 2020. It was fairly early in the pandemic. Those were the days of warily touching doorknobs and railings, then saturating your hands in disinfectant until they were red and dry, the days of wondering if COVID was somehow lurking on our groceries or on our mail. You never know.

Back then I wrote about Victor Frankl and Michael J. Fox, and themes of hope and resilience, and spiritual growth through crisis and adversity. And then I went silent. I read expert interviews about the virus, the distant hope of vaccines, the increasing death tolls. I made meals for my family. I focused on my growing company. I went for bike rides. I turned off the news.

I also expended energy thinking I really should write something publicly. I should keeping connecting through this blog. What I didn’t know is that berating myself with shoulds is demotivating energy. It’s a cognitive distortion that only compounds the external pressures that make us anxious. So on top of worrying that humans are under attack by a novel virus, our democracy is in peril, and our planet is suffering catastrophic climate change, I decided to worry about all the things I should be doing, but aren’t doing. It’s not useful energy.

It’s no surprise that stress is up across the board – from teens to parents – and includes professionals from pretty much every industry segment. Anxiety, stress, substance abuse, suicidal ideation are all up.

Now, people are suffering from something experts are calling COVID Anxiety Syndrome, a condition in which people, who have been vaccinated, still won’t venture out into the world. Post-pandemic stress disorder is real.

And if, on top of all that, we start to layer in I should or I ought to self-talk, it can paralyze us. According to behavioral therapists, there are straightforward solutions to help us change our language, change the way we think, and move toward meaningful action.

Should statements typically only make you feel more hopeless about your situation. Should self-talk reinforces your sense of procrastination and lack of agency. Stop it. Become aware of your shoulds, oughts, and musts and try to replace them with thoughts about what you CAN and WILL do.

Reframe your should statements. Turn I should into I want to, or I can, or I would like to. The expression I should conveys to your brain something that you feel is an obligation you aren’t living up to – an unfulfilled promise to yourself or someone else. I want to and I can are more powerful statements of intention. They convey power, agency, and choice.

Finally, be aware of others who use similar burdening language. When someone says to you, You ought to or You should… they are probably talking about themselves anyway. Let it go.

    ____________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now.

In other news, our son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

Your Idea Wants to Live

/in , , , /by

“There’s a rule they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School: if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess.”
– Edwin Land

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak famously started Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. It’s hard to imagine, but Jobs had his own innovation hero. If Jobs was the wiz kid of the 1970s and 1980s, that was Edwin Land of the 1930s and 1940s. At 17, Land enrolled at Harvard but quickly became bored after discovering it was populated with wealthy kids without ambition.

Edwin Land had no patience for idleness. His mind was racing constantly. One of his early employees said of Lamb, that he could “see into my head. It was really a kind of interesting sensation of having your head briefly searched for content.”

Since he was a child at summer camp, he was fascinated with optics and light. He slept with a copy of Physical Optics under his pillow, and spent his teenage years fixated on creating a man-made polarizer. A polarizing lens today reduces glare and significantly increases your ability to see in bright conditions – on water, on snow, or even blinding oncoming headlights. Polarizing filters help pilots see in the clouds, anglers see fish in the water, and photographers capture beautiful color in stark light.

But in the the 1920s polarizing filters only existed in nature, discovered by accident when holding tourmaline crystals up to the sunlight and watching the filtered light shine through. Edwin Land believed he could create such a filter in a laboratory.

He persisted and eventually synthesized his own polarizer by embedding millions of fragile tiny crystals within lacquer (the shiny gooey stuff you spread on guitars that makes them shine) and then aligning all of the crystals in the same direction using magnets. Voilà! Polarized light streamed forth. He was 19 years old and described the moment as “the most exciting single event in my life.”

That was in 1928. Fifteen years later, in 1943, he would have his famous epiphany while taking a family photograph at the Grand Canyon with his family. It was in that moment, after taking a family photograph, that his daughter asked, “Can I see the photo now?”

The question stopped him. He mused, “What if we could build a darkroom inside a camera?” That question led him to conceptualize the Polaroid camera, which was released only four years later in 1947.

“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?”
– Jack Sparrow

Often we are halted by our doubts, hesitations or comparisons to others. But remember, your competition is not your competition. Your competition is yourself, your ego, your procrastination, your lack of discipline, your indecision, your eating choices, your lack of follow through, or that person in your life who is living rent free in your head.

Dispel your fears. Your idea is yearning for life. Stay in motion.

    ____________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

In other news, our son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.