The Right Kind of Crazy

“Hold on to the doubt!”

That’s one way to approach a physics test and career trying to land stuff on Mars, eh?

Science confirms Adam’s wisdom that the fear of failure makes that failure more likely. In fact, here’s what the Make It Stick authors (see Note) tell us about the science of successful learning:

“Let’s return to the old saw ‘If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.’ It turns out there is more truth here than wit. Attitude counts for a lot. The studies of psychologist Carol Dweck have gotten huge attention for showing just how big an impact one simple conviction can have on learning and performance: the belief that your level of intellectual ability is not fixed but rests to a large degree in your own hands. …

Dweck’s research has been triggered by her curiosity over why some people become helpless when they encountered challenges and fail at them, whereas others respond to failure by trying new strategies and redoubling their effort. She found that a fundamental difference between the two responses lies in how a person attributes their failure: those who attribute failure to their own inability—‘I’m not intelligent’—become helpless. Those who interpret failure as the result of insufficient effort or an ineffective strategy dig deeper and try different approaches.”

Adam is the EMBODIMENT of the growth mindset.

We simply can’t tolerate ambiguity and challenges if we think our intelligence/worth is at stake with every potential mistake. Blank pages freak us out.

To really lean into those challenges and “Hold on to the doubt!” we need to *KNOW* that, with hard work and persistence and a willingness to try a bunch of different strategies, we have a very good shot at getting the answer right. Never a guarantee, of course, but a solid shot.

How’s your tolerance of ambiguity these days?

Can you step back, allow the unknown to be present and diligently, patiently, and persistently work through the potential solutions?

#HOTTD

Self-authorization.

If we want to show up as an optimal team member in our work and broader role as a human being on planet Earth, we need to trust ourselves enough to speak our truth.

Is there a way you can self-authorize a little more today?

I love this: “Advancement and influence in any industry do not in general keep pace with an industry’s most famous outliers.”

Two things.

First, let’s not compare ourselves to the youngest, most exceptionally successful and famous people in our cohort if we want to be happy. (Laughing as I type that.)

Seriously. Social comparison is TOXIC.

As Sonja Lyubomirsky tells us in The How of Happiness (see Notes): “You can’t be envious and happy at the same time. People who pay too much attention to social comparisons find themselves chronically vulnerable, threatened, and insecure.”

Plus: “The happier the person, the less attention she pays to how others around her are doing.”

Second, when I read that line, I think of George Leonard and his wisdom from Mastery.

Just as advancement in any field does not in general keep up with the pace of an industry’s most famous outliers, a true sense of happiness and flourishing and mastery does not keep up with the pernicious pace of media + modern society.

Here’s how Leonard puts it: “In all of this [media], the specific content isn’t nearly as destructive to mastery as is the rhythm. One epiphany follows another. One fantasy is crowded out by the next. Climax is piled upon climax. There’s no plateau.”

Plus: “If you’re planning to embark on a master’s journey, you might find yourself bucking current trends in American life. Our hyped-up consumerist society is engaged, in fact, in an all out war on mastery.”

So, let’s put our heads down, do good work and make ourselves useful as we honor our own rhythms in pursuit of mastery.

P.S. What note would YOU write to your younger self?

Dear Younger Self: ___________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

P.P.S. Now a good time to live that?

In addition to that warm coat in the middle of the blizzard, Adam worked out.

A lot.

(Hah.)

The most stressful times call for our deepest commitment to the fundamentals.

(Echo echo!)

May we always remember that not exercising is like taking a depressant.

Here’s to popping our virtual Ritalin + Prozac in the form of our favorite workouts as we get a 12 hour mood boost and navigate our blizzards with grace!

The Dark Room.

Every great creative process (and I would imagine life for most people—certainly for me!) includes at least one trip into the Dark Room.

As I read Adam’s line about the stress hormones flowing, I immediately think of Kelly McGonigal’s great book The Upside of Stress (see Notes).

Adam touches on the challenge of avoiding hopelessness. Here’s how McGonigal frames it—juxtaposing the fight-or-flight response and the challenge response:

“Like a fight-or-flight response, a challenge response gives you energy and helps you perform under pressure. Your heart rate still rises, your adrenaline spikes, your muscles and brain get more fuel, and the feel-good chemicals surge. But it differs from a fight-or-flight response in a few important ways: You feel focused but not fearful. You also release a different ratio of stress hormones, including higher levels of DHEA, which helps you recover and learn from stress. This raises the growth index of your stress response, the beneficial ratio of stress hormones that can determine, in part, whether a stressful experience is strengthening or harmful…

People who report being in a flow state—a highly enjoyable state of being completely absorbed in what you are doing—display clear signs of a challenge response. Artists, athletes, surgeons, video gamers, and musicians all show this kind of stress response when they’re engaged in their craft or skill. Contrary to what many people expect, top performers in these fields aren’t physiologically calm under pressure; rather, they have strong challenge responses. The stress response gives them access to their mental and physical resources, and the result is increased confidence, enhanced concentration, and peak performance.”

The challenge response vs. the fight-or-flight response.

Your heart rate still rises and adrenalin spikes and muscles and brain get more fuel while feel-good chemicals spike AND you feel focused rather than letting the terror take over—holding on to the doubt and persistently taking the next baby step in pursuit of more clarity.

With that approach, we get to use all the goodness from the challenge while concocting a very different mix of chemicals that aid our process.

P.S. Although a somewhat cheesy metaphor that Adam does not employ in this context, negatives are processed in a dark room, eh?

The naughty bits and the mundane. :)

Reminds me of John Wooden and his socks.

We’ve talked about it a number of times but let’s not forget that the greatest coach e.v.e.r. started each season teaching his players how to put on their socks. Then he ran ONE defense, one offense and one out-of-bounds play.

Here’s how Andrew Hill puts it in his business memoir Be Quick But Don’t Hurry (see Notes) in which he reflects on his time with Wooden: “There was no simpler program in America than UCLA in its heyday. We had one defense (man- to-man), one out-of-bounds play, a simple high-post offense, and the firm belief that a fifteen- foot bank shot at the end of a fast break was a fine result. Scouting UCLA was a waste of time; our opponents knew what we were going to do—they just couldn’t stop it. Coach ran the exact same offense his entire coaching career, which spanned forty years, except for the six years in which he had the two greatest centers of all time. But without Kareem or Bill, the Bruins plays were so familiar that they were run by high school teams all over America. One clear by-product of the simplicity of the system is that it could be run to absolute perfection. In Coach’s words, ‘The more you make things complicated, the more there is to learn. Keep things as simple as you can and you have a chance to do them better. I’d always rather do a few things well.’ We learned our lessons so well that when I played in an alumni game nearly fifteen years after I graduated, the plays were still completely fresh in my memory!”

In my interview with time management guru David Allen, he reminded us that one finds the sublime via the mundane.

In another interview with Robin Sharma he said that greatness is all about optimizing simplicity.

Basic routines and rituals. Turning off the Internet. Creating time blocks for deep work. Eating well. Moving more. Sleeping better. Disciplining our minds.

Those aren’t the naughty bits of life. They’re more like a trip to Radio Shack. It’s MUCH more interesting to talk about the latest and greatest Big Idea—which, of course, is awesome. But, if we want to get to Mars, we need to focus on the nuts and bolts as well.

You need to make a trip to the Radio Shack of optimizing? :)

We are born half-baked.

Reminds of Rollo May’s wisdom from The Courage to Create (see Notes) where he tells us: “The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”