The secret to winning Jeopardy?
Hit the buzzer before you know the answer
If you wait until you know the answer, that split second hesitation lets the other person get ahead of you.
If you hit the buzzer first, you’ll at least have a chance of getting it right.
But if you wait, the opportunity to succeed instantly passes you by.
(H/t to Seth Godin for reminding me of this principle.)
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Here’s a quote worth writing down:
A Stoic believes they don’t control the world around them, only how they respond—and that they must always respond with courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice.
I believe the same thing applies to all humans, not just those of us who practice Stoicism.
Write it down (and check out the author’s post).
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I’ve had a migraine all day long… I’ve been so miserable it’s been tough to get anything done.
And yet, in the back of my head, I’ve heard Seth Godin’s voice from one of his best podcast episodes:
“You’re not sick… You don’t get a day off.”
Sadly, when we’re creators, artists, people trying to change the world—essentially, because we’re human—we don’t get a day off from our responsibilities.
It would be so easy to use something as a reason not to do the work I desperately need to do for myself and others.
But I don’t get a day off from being human. So I put in the time, however small or insignificant the progress might seem.
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Often we get so caught up in the future that it paralyzes us.
Or we feel so overwhelmed by everything we have to do that we accomplish nothing. Not the stuff we have to do… or that we want to do.
Our task lists, calendars, projects, dreams, and goals seem to cause more angst than hope. So we veg out in front of the television. Or mindlessly scroll on our phones.
Anything to avoid facing what we need to do.
The solution is simple: do the next right thing.
I’ve heard this phrase from both Julia Cameron and Michael Hyatt.
It’s a simple idea with wildly beneficial results. Rather than staying paralyzed and accomplishing nothing, the next right thing creates a tiny step forward.
It doesn’t feel like much, but then it’s not supposed to.
One step forward each day adds up to 365 tiny steps over a year. That’s a lot of progress.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself this question:
“What’s the smallest, easiest next step I can take?”
Then do that and only that. Afterwards you can reevaluate and decide whether to take another step or stop and chill out.
But at least you’ve taken that one step. And that’s one more than you would have otherwise.
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Time for a math lesson! Bear with me—it matters.
The Transitive Property of Mathematics says this: for all real numbers x, y, and z, if x=y and y=z, then x=z also.
That makes sense, right?
Why am I telling you this? Because this same mathematical property affects all outcomes you experience in life.
Think about it: how you see an aspect of reality affects how you behave. How you behave affects the results you get. Therefore, how you see things affects the results you get. X=Y and Y=Z, so X=Z as well.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey called this the “See-Do-Get Continuum.” How we see the world affects what we do, which affects what we get in life. (You can learn all about it in his monumental work The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)
Covey likes to say, “How we see the problem is the problem.” In this case, “seeing” could also translate into “believing.”
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you’re a manager and you’ve recently had a few millennials added to your team. If you believe all millennials are lazy and entitled, you’re going to treat them as such. This will so alienate them and undermine your relationship that pretty soon, they’ll start acting out.
Most likely they’ll rebel against you by doing the bare minimum, scraping by because in their minds nothing they do will be good enough to please you anyway. Why should they put out more effort than necessary?
How you saw them affected your behavior towards them, which affected how they behaved (your results). It’s the Pygmalion Effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Can you see how this continuum affects us when it come to things like race, gender, or religion? Our beliefs shape our actions; our actions shape our outcomes.
So what’s the bottom line?
If you want to change the world—or maybe just your situation in it—start first by changing your beliefs. Work first on how you see things.
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We have the definition of optimism wrong.
We think optimism means believing that everything will work out for the best. Over time and on its own.
That’s not true. Plenty of awful things happen whether we’re optimistic or not.
“Well geez, Nathan! You’re obviously a pessimist with that outlook.”
No, actually, I’m quite optimistic. Because I realize that I’m the creative force in my life. I’m the driver of my own destiny.
As long as I’m alive, I have the chance to make something good happen.
Optimism isn’t simply believing that everything is going to be alright: it’s believing that whatever happens, you can make the best of it.
So if you’re reading this, you’re still breathing. And that means you can make the best out of whatever situation you’re in.
That is true optimism.
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(HT to Seth Godin and the “EntreLeadership” Podcast)
If you’re piloting a sailboat, you don’t care in which direction the wind blows. All that matters is that the wind is blowing.
If you have wind, you can adjust your sails and steer the boat in the direction you wish to go. Only when there’s no wind are you actually stuck.
If we adopt this same thinking in our work and personal lives, we’ll thrive no matter what happens to us.
Technology changes in your industry? Embrace them and move forward. Your job becomes obsolete? Re-skill and do something else. (Both have happened to me.)
Circumstances will always be less than ideal. Sometimes they’ll be downright awful. But we can’t change which way the wind blows.
Don’t complain about its direction—adjust your sails and keep going.
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I am in the second week of a leadership course created by FranklinCovey based on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.*
This week’s topic is Habit 1: Be Proactive. For those of you unfamiliar with the 7 Habits, the first habit is about personal responsibility. It posits that we are the creative force in our own lives. We can choose how we respond to stimuli in the world, and these choices drastically alter our results.
One statement this morning stood out more than others:
“Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming.”
—Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
We show respect when we refuse to let others blame circumstances for their situations. Holding others responsible tells them “you are where you are because of the choices you’ve made.”
At the same time, we are communicating another message:
“You can make choices now that can lead you to a better situation.”
Of course, our environmental factors must be taken into account. Outside, uncontrollable forces definitely influence our lives. Our upbringing, sex, gender, or socioeconomic status can make things easier or harder. But they do not determine our lives!
Each of us has within us what Viktor Frankl calls “the last of the human freedoms.” We can choose our response to any stimulus. It may not seem like much to you, but this idea was incredibly liberating to me.
“Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.”
Show another person respect. Let them know they have the power to choose.
When you choose, you change things.
*If you want to level up your leadership skills, and earn an industry-recognized certification in the process, check out FranklinCovey’s LeaderU courses at leaderu.us.
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Dr. Covey taught me perhaps the most important and fundamental life lesson of all. It’s the idea of paradigms and the See-Do-Get formula.
Paradigms are our ways of seeing the world. As Dr. Covey describes it, they are maps of the territory we are navigating. As we know, maps are a representation of the world but not the world itself. These “maps” affect every aspect of our daily lives.
Our paradigms put us into a cycle known as “See-Do-Get”. How we see something (our paradigm) affects our behavior (what we do). Our behavior affects the results we get. These results then reinforce our viewpoint. They become a never-ending cycle that can only be short-circuited by changing how we “see”. We must examine the map.
I once knew a teacher whose students approached him about putting on a short play for the school. They saw this as a way to put the English literature they were studying into a fun and creative context. But this teacher saw his students as an uncreative bunch of hooligans with no talent. He did not believe them capable of staging anything worthwhile.
Grudgingly, he let the students “try” to put something together. Because of his mindset, he failed to encourage them, coach them, or help them in any way. His only offering was scathing criticism because he saw no possible positive outcome. The students became increasingly frustrated and unhappy with their efforts. They began to believe their teacher correct in his views and quit the project after a few weeks. Their “failure” further reinforced the teacher’s own paradigm.
I felt devastated when I found out about the situation from the students. Why did it happen that way? Because he saw them as uncreative, incapable, and without talent, he treated them as such. He failed to help or encourage his students and did nothing but criticize and condemn. This behavior led to the results he expected all along.
How we see a problem (or person, political party, or random happenstance) is a problem itself. It affects our behavior and the results we get, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Design thinking teaches us to reframe problems in ways that allow us to take positive action on them. Only by changing how we see something can we get to the root of the issue. If you want to make positive change in any area of your life, first examine how you see the problem.
What would have happened had this teacher been aware of the way he saw his students? What if he had taken a step back and seen them as young, curious, and full of potential? Maybe he would have treated them as budding thespians and offered encouragement. This change in behavior might have led to a fun, engaging, and successful student project. And who knows? It might have had lasting effects on all the students, even the ones who came to watch.
Instead, his negative mindset destroyed all hope of having any success at all.
I’ll leave the final word on this subject to Dr. Covey himself:
“If you want to make minor improvements, change your behavior. But if you want to make quantum improvements, change your paradigm.”
—Dr. Stephen R. Covey
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No one ever got paid for an idea alone. Only those who came up with an idea, or took someone else’s, and acted upon it have made a difference worth anything.
“I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing.”
—Thomas Edison
I have dozens of ideas pop into my head each day when I’m taking a shower, walking at the park, or driving in silence. Not one has generated anything for me or anyone else except those I showed to the world.
Better to have one idea and the will to act upon it than 1,000 ideas and procrastinate.
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