It’s essential that we make new mistakes.
We don’t make nearly enough of them. Not enough original effort, not enough generous intent, not enough daring in search of something better.
But at the same time, we need to stop making the old mistakes again and again. What did you expect to happen when you did the very same thing that didn’t work last time?
For some of us, it’s more frightening to do something new than it is to retry something that failed.
This is the moment, right here and right now, to start your podcast.
Not because it will make you rich. Hardly. There are too many other ways for people to spend their attention for you (or me) to possibly assemble a large enough audience to make a killing selling ads.
There are three good reasons to start a podcast now:
Over the last year and a half, Alex DiPalma and I have offered the Podcasting Fellowship, an Akimbo workshop that helps people find their podcasting footing. (Alex is the producer of my podcast and many others). Nearly 1,000 people have been through our Podcasting workshop, and it works. Our alumni have created thousands of hours of material, including at least one iTunes Top 10 podcast.
We’re running it for a fourth time, because this is the best moment to begin.
Enrollment starts today. I hope you’ll check it out at the link below. Look for the purple circle today to save a few dollars.
Take it seriously. Of course. That’s required.
But you don’t have to take it personally.
In fact, if you want to be a professional, it’s impossible to do both at the same time.
Our days are filled with the path to future skills, tasks and commitments that we believe we can’t possibly take on. We’ve seduced ourselves into believing that we’re not born with the talent, or that the obstacles to doing the work are just too great.
In fact, it’s more likely that we’ve simply decided that the work isn’t worth the effort.
Or the fear is too much to bear.
But it’s hardly impossible.
We just don’t care enough.
“Use your best judgment.”
Bureaucracies have a very hard time saying this to their staff.
They create an endless series of scripts and rules, procedures that force people to not care. “I’m just doing my job,” which is the precise opposite of, “I see the problem and I’m going to fix it.”
As any organization hits a sufficient size, it will increase rules in order to decrease responsibility. Because they’ve gotten big enough that they no longer trust the people who work for them.
Is that a job you want?
Is that a company you want to hire?
The second law of motion isn’t true because it was discovered by Isaac Newton, it’s simply true. Newton merely described it.
The fact that he spent most of his time doing alchemy and looking for magic doesn’t impact the truth of what he discovered.
There’s a chasm between science, where the identity of the discoverer doesn’t matter, and culture, where, “because he said so,” is a factor in our beliefs.
The reputation of a jazz musician, or a comedian or a political leader can influence whether or not we think the work is any good. And it can even cause us to change our mind once we discover something about its originator.
In our culture, it’s easy to choose to live in deficit.
To spend just a bit more than you make, so that you’re in debt.
To need to drive just a bit faster than the prevailing traffic, so you can push every interaction.
To measure yourself against someone (there’s always someone) who has more (there’s always more) than you do.
If this habit of becoming ‘behind’ is the fuel you need to do your best work, it’s difficult for an outsider to argue against.
But consider that it’s also possible to choose to live in surplus.
To spend a bit less than you make, so you’re never worried about paying the rent.
To drive with the flow of (metaphorical) traffic, because not only is it safer, it frees you up to dream.
And to measure yourself against no one but yourself. Raise your standards as often as you can, but not because someone else you chose out of the lineup of success is somehow ahead of you.
When you live in surplus, you can choose to produce because of generosity and wonder, not because you’re drowning.
PS an unrelated but important pointer to the work they’re doing at Lenny. Some of the resources they’re offering to counselors who helps students include:
Counseling therapy, Crisis response, Mental and emotional health, Community resources and Self management.
If you’re engaged with teens in any way, I hope you’ll check this out. It matters.
“Well, that was super helpful.”
Was it? Or are you trying to be sarcastic?
Because if it was helpful, you could simply write, “thank you, that was helpful.”
On the other hand, if you’re trying to express disappointment or displeasure, you could write, “I’m disappointed that you weren’t able to contribute more here. We were really looking forward to your input.”
The problem with sarcasm is that the level of displeasure is hidden. You might come across as snarky when you don’t mean to, or, the snarkiness you were sending might not land.
My new rule of thumb is to always assume goodwill and ignore any perceived sarcasm. Call it a Type II sarcasm-detection error.
It’s hard to imagine a situation where sarcasm is the most effective way to make your point.
If you ask for mustard at a French bistro, you’ll get a strong Dijon, handmade in a little village three hundred kilometres away.
If you ask for mustard at a game at Fenway, apparently you’ll get Gulden’s.
Within a rounding error, all mustard costs the same. It’s not about the price. It’s about coherence with the story. When a Marriott brings you the little sealed bottle of fake dijon from Heinz, they’re not offering you mustard, they’re sending a signal about what they think is fancy.
And at the ball game, the yellow mustard in a giant pump tells a story as well.
Is one better than the other? It’s a matter of taste and context. Of course, I have a favorite mustard and a narrative about what’s appropriate in a given setting, and so does just about everyone else I know. But favorite is different than ‘right’. There’s no absolute scale. How can a mustard be yuppie? Pretentious? Down to earth? It’s simply a condiment.
And yes, there’s a mustard analogy in everything you do. In how you shake hands, in the typeface you use in your presentation (and whether you call it a ‘font’), in the volume you choose for your voice when in conversation.
Being in sync is a choice.
For the longest time, school has been organized around subjects. Fifth graders go to math class and then English class and then geography.
Mostly, those classes don’t teach what they say they teach. Sure, there are some facts, but mostly it’s the methods of instruction that are on offer. School usually has a different flavor than learning.
It turns out, the skills we need to use in life (and in school) aren’t subject specific. But we use those subjects to teach the skills we actually end up using. Everyone knows that the typical person doesn’t need binomials, but the argument is that problem-solving, etc, are totally worth learning and so we pretend to teach the subject when apparently, we’re teaching the skill.
Perhaps, instead of organizing school around data acquisition and regurgitation, we could identify what the skills are and separate them out, teaching domain knowledge in conjunction with the skill, not the other way around.
It turns out that the typical school spends most of its time on just one of those skills (obedience through comportment and regurgitation).
What would happen if we taught each skill separately?
Obedience
Management
Leadership/cooperation
Problem-solving
Mindfulness
Creativity
Analysis
Indeed, you are required to do all seven of these things in math class, but in what proportion? Is a kid who has trouble with obedience “bad at math,” or is it that the obedience part of a class got in the way of the analysis or problem-solving part of the class instead?
It’s entirely possible for a kid to make it through 16 years of organized schooling with a solid B average and never do much more than do well on just one thing–remembering what’s on the test. We’ve failed when we’ve turned out someone with just one of the 7 skills.
What happens if we are clear what we’re doing and why? Because obedience isn’t the point of math or science, but sometimes it’s taught that way.
And then, when obedience session is over, we can find other ways to approach the work at hand, developing the other essential skills. A 45 minute Creativity class that uses algebra is going to feel very different from a Leadership class covering the same material.
Some kids spend a decade in the school sports system and learn leadership and management and creativity and analysis. And some learn nothing but how to follow the coach’s instructions and sit on the bench. This has nothing to do with sports (or geography or biology) and everything to do with what we decide we’re teaching in any given moment.
Is there a cognitive difference between solving a chemistry problem and solving a crossword puzzle? Not really. Getting good at solving–putting on your solving hat and finding the guts to use it–is a skill that gets buried under the avalanche that we call obedience.
“How’d you do in Creativity today, son?” or perhaps, “Wow, you got an A in Analysis–that’s going to open a lot of doors for you…”
Bureaucracies over-index for obedience. They do that out of self-preservation, and because it’s the easiest thing to sell to clients, funders and parents (and to measure). But since we’re currently overdoing that one (they do it far more in other countries, though), we end up getting confused about what it means to learn a subject area in a useful way and we definitely under-develop people on the other six skills.
My guess is that most parents and educators are afraid to even discuss the topic. More here.
