Make a list of things you used to believe. Fervently, certainly, completely.
Things that you were sure of, but now, with the passage of time and the benefit of experience, you know to be incorrect or incomplete.
Of course, it’s not just mythical creatures beloved by children. It’s our adherence to a social norm, loyalty to a leader or the structure of a point of view.
We’re pretty good at allowing our incorrect certainties to slowly fade into the background, without a crisis or reckoning. We gradually move on, now even more certain about the other things we’re certain of.
Resilience can be found by holding onto our certainties just a little less tightly. One way to do that is to remember just how often the old ones fade away.
July 31, 2024
Important hills usually get much steeper at the top.
99% of the training in competitive athletics is devoted to the last 1% of performance. A tenth of a second.
The same is true for squeezing the last bit of performance out of a car, a grape or a semiconductor. And healthcare, luxury goods and science as well.
As soon as we declare it important and invite the world to compete, the problems become more difficult.
Our experience tells us that more input leads to more output, but in asymptotic conditions, where competition is seeking to go to the very end of the curve, this rule is often suspended. The entire point of the competition is how extreme the last few steps are.
The options are pretty clear:
- focus on activities where you’re in the sweet spot of the curve, where more preparation, focus and effort lead to huge benefits. This means walking away from competitions against people who are committed to being unreasonable.
- embrace the unreasonable and accept that your competitors will as well.
While the unreasonable is thrilling, it’s difficult to build a sustainable career around it.
July 30, 2024
A philosopher can spend a month, a year or a career thinking about one knotty problem.
Making assertions, testing theories, understanding how others are thinking about it as well.
But this exercise shouldn’t be reserved for academics.
What are you working on? When will you change your mind? What can you learn, what can you challenge?
It’s better when we’re on the cusp.
July 29, 2024
What a simple verb. A five-letter modifier that opens the door to discussion.
If we state something as a fact, we’re asking for an argument.
But seems opens the door to learning and discussion.
What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?
July 28, 2024
There are a lot of structural reasons why in-person meetings don’t involve a break every 12 minutes. It takes too long to stop and start. But those rules don’t apply to Zoom.
Screens off! Stand up. We’ll be back in 60 seconds.
If it’s not worth coming back, the meeting should have ended already.
If you’re on the call, be on the call, lean in, let’s make something happen.
Or else we’re out of here.
July 27, 2024
Willpower is overrated.
If you want to eat healthier, don’t work hard to avoid stopping at the cookie jar when you walk into the kitchen. Get rid of the cookie jar.
Systems are long-lasting, widespread and resilient. We can push back on them with effort, but over time, the system usually comes out ahead.
Once we see a system, we can change it.
Fixing the metrics and rewards of public education is more productive than celebrating one teacher who managed to outmaneuver the existing paradigm. And banning gas leaf blowers makes a lot more sense than shaming one landscaper for using them.
July 26, 2024
It’s expensive. Hundreds of people were involved in getting you that simple bowl of rice. It involved countless gallons of water, hours of labor, gallons of fuel. A complex supply chain that ensured you got what you needed, in perfect condition, just as you were ready for it.
And it’s cheap. The amount of time the typical person needs to work to earn enough to buy a bowl of rice is lower than it has ever been in history.
It’s tempting to make the rice just a bit cheaper, just a tad more convenient. To pay even less attention so we can get back to whatever it is we were doing.
But it’s useful to realize that we can make the rice far better, and just a little less convenient.
I can make a bowl of rice using brown Nagano Milky-Queen rice from Japan. I can prepare it in a Cuckoo pressurized rice cooker. And I can serve it in a handmade ceramic bowl. All in, perhaps this bowl of rice costs me an extra twenty cents and takes a few minutes longer. And when I eat this bowl of rice, I can pause for a minute and think of all the resources and all the labor that went into bringing it to me.
Better is possible.
July 25, 2024
Momentum activities like public speaking, board sports and leadership all share an attribute with riding a bicycle: It gets easier when you get good at it.
The first error we often make is believing that someone (even us) will never be good at riding a bike, because riding a bike is so difficult. When we’re not good at it, it’s obvious to everyone.
The second error is coming to the conclusion that people who are good at it are talented, born with the ability to do it. They’re not, they have simply earned a skill that translates into momentum.
There’s a difference between, “This person is a terrible public speaker,” and “this person will never be good at public speaking.”
And there’s a difference between, “They are a great leader,” and “they were born to lead.”
The thing about momentum activities is that we notice them only twice: when people are terrible at them, and when they’re good at it. That includes the person you see in the mirror.
July 24, 2024
I was surprised to discover that for many AI questions, if you add, “please figure this out step by step,” the AI will provide a dramatically more accurate and useful answer. This works on simple questions like, “how many times does the letter ‘r’ appear in the word ‘strawberry'” to much more complex issues.
It probably won’t surprise you to consider that this works even better for people.
When we ask a simple question, we often get an opinion or a memorized answer in return. “Freon gas” is not how a refrigerator works, it’s simply a two-word meme to get us through the question so we can move on. When we prompt a human brain to explain the steps, an entirely different process kicks in.
Thoughtful inquiry, pedagogy and user experience design push us to activate this sort of thinking. Yes, a problem often needs a knee-jerk response. It’s not efficient to perform rote tasks with step-by-step analysis.
When it’s important, though, we often benefit by thinking step by step.
July 23, 2024
Finding a pattern that explains events that seem like chaos is a breakthrough. It offers us understanding and a lever we can use to make an impact.
Sometimes, though, the breakthrough lies in understanding that there is no pattern, simply unpredictable noise.
We need effort to find patterns. We need humility to accept the chaos.
July 22, 2024
