When the deal falls apart, or the team loses the game, or a partnership hits the rocks, it’s easy to focus our energy on what just happened.
“What if they had called a different play?”
This overlooks the real issue. It’s the first move, or the fifth, that led to this problem, not what happened at the last moment.
Creating the conditions for success is a very different project than finding a heroic move that saves the day.
When a resource can be used more efficiently, we end up using more of the thing, not less.
So, when cars get better gas mileage, people drive more, and consumption can actually go up.
When AI learns to write computer code, the demand for programmers goes up, because more efficient code is more attractive, and we want more of it.
Household appliances that are designed to save time and trouble end up being used for more than simply maintaining the previous level of tidiness. Because it’s easier, we raise our standards for tidy and use them more as they get easier to use.
We rarely consider the fact that human beings have invented 6 billion jobs in my lifetime.
My hunch is that AI is going to produce far more opportunities than it destroys.
Most of our errors are in this category.
Yesterday, The New York Times sent this newsletter to a million people or so:
I’m sure it wasn’t the best part of the day (or the week) for whoever messed up, but I also know that it had little impact on anything that matters.
Being careful is smart.
Being perfect is unattainable, and seeking perfection is a trap.
It’s tempting to hand it to other people. If someone else takes the blame, if they accept the responsibility, then we get satisfaction and we’re off the hook.
Alas, this doesn’t work unless the others do the taking and do the accepting.
Which is unlikely. We’re giving power to someone who isn’t going to use it to make our day better.
It’s far more predictable and reliable to simply take it ourselves. At least that way, we can do something with it.
This simple shift gives us power and authority over our narrative. It helps us avoid wasting time on wishes and ever more ornate arguments about our version of things.
What can you build now that you have everything under your control?
Why is that?
The new diet. The fundraising after a natural disaster. The relationship. The hype cycle of a new technology or the media frenzy around a hot new fad or candidate…
It always feels like it will be different this time.
It rarely is.
If it’s going to be different, the forces involved need to be different as well.
Fear is self-focused. Day to day, our fear is about us. What will happen if we give that speech, launch that project, get stuck in traffic, are eaten by an alligator…
And generosity is about others. “How can I help?”
Jumping in the water to save a struggling swimmer stops us from worrying about how we look in our suit or whether the water is cold. And if you’re worried about the customer instead of your quota, making a sales call is easier too.
The key scene at the climax of the Wizard of Oz happens when Dorothy intercedes on the scarecrow’s behalf. Once again, she finds the courage to overcome her fear when she’s generously supporting a friend.
It’s more than a shift in narrative. It’s a shift in intent.
Courage is a generous act that involves risk.
It’s not courageous to hang out with friends and make a crank phone call.
The risk involved might be actual risk (it took courage to go to the moon) or it might feel risky (raising your hand at a meeting to ask a useful question probably has no real downside but it feels that way).
Too often, we get hung up on how risky it feels, and fail to focus enough on how generous the work is. Generosity is a great antidote to fear.
Some people go to the gym for health and energy. Some go to lift more weight than they did yesterday (or more than the person next to them).
You can start a company to make an impact and surround yourself with people on a similar journey, or you can seek to maximize the stock price and profits.
You can write a post to express yourself, or you can try to get more followers…
There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work.
One way to change the pressure of work is to expand or contract the size of the container that holds it. It’s a trap to embrace a productivity shortcut that isn’t a shortcut at all–simply more time spent.
Boyle’s law helps us realize the same thing about any gas in the physical world. The pressure is related to the volume…
If you’ve found a way to make a living, the challenge in making a life is to find the guts to think about the size of your work container.
That’s not easy.
It comes with trade offs.
We don’t always succeed.
But it’s not called Boyle’s guideline.
Questions people ask themselves when looking at a web page aimed at businesses (B2B). They are rhetorical, but should give you a place to begin:
Is it my job to deal with this?
Who sent me here?
Will this advance my project?
Will it help me get ahead if I take action?
If I ignore this, will I fall behind?
What are the promises being made?
Are they achievable–promises that break the laws of physics or contradict my experience are hard to believe.
Why should I trust this person?
What are the clues that lead me to want to believe this?
What are the clues that lead me to doubt it?
–These could include: Design, testimonials, page responsiveness, typos, clarity of language, urgency of presentation, credentials, domain knowledge…
How easy is it to take the next step? What will happen if I don’t?
And the biggest one, the one that is so easily ignored: What will I tell my boss?
