The courage to learn and adapt

The weight of any success we have had tends to harden us in our approach to new problems. This would be great if the world never changed or if circumstances remained the same in every event of our lives.

We know that is not the case, however. Thus, when our past success hardens us in a mode of operating and we’re closed off to new ideas or methods for getting things done, we “get stuck in the past.”

The 60-year-old former drill sergeant had success screaming to get things done. If he doesn’t accept the circumstances which made the screaming and threats both acceptable and effective, he’ll be doomed to a life of people seeing him as a violent or unsettled person.

The same can be said for the 60-year-old marketing executive. The tactics and methodology of the 1990s may have given him success, but he was perfect for the 1990s. The question becomes, will he adapt to the new Information Age and the way people purchase things today?

The lesson for each one of us is that we must take great care not to let our past success harden us and thicken our willingness to adapt to an ever-changing marketplace. We should be open to seeing the need to change and then courageous enough to do something that we might be unsure will work at all (after all, nobody had success with social media marketing in the 1990s–because nobody had social media.)

The courage to learn and the courage to do what we haven’t done before. This will become my generation’s greatest marker of future success.

The lifecycle of accepting new tech

The adoption of new tech is a funny cycle.

1. We start out skeptical.

2. We become fearful.

3. We become reluctant users.

4. We become proficient users.

5. Finally, we come to rely on the very thing that we feared.

To be skeptical of something new makes sense to me, but I don’t always understand the need for the doomsday-like predictions that seem so prevalent with so much new tech (i.e artificial intelligence could take over the world and who knows what could happen!)

Before we know it, we will have it harnessed and we will be using it to our great advantage.

Catering to our comfort

I have a theory that, when left undisturbed, humans immediately begin to slide toward an undisciplined and self-indulgent lifestyle. I don’t have any science to back up the claim and maybe it’s just an indication of what I know about myself deep down inside.

When we cater to our desires for an easy life, we elevate comfort and short-term success above our larger goals–delivering greater value to our clients, creating artwork that has an impact beyond our bank account, and taking the time to develop and acquire rare and valuable skills.

No matter what we’re doing or how much money we are making, we should be constantly competing with ourselves and creating challenges that force us to extend our capabilities and deepen our skill sets.

Competing with ourselves will keep our motivation alive, prevent us from doubting our worth, and ultimately improve our lives.

The case for daydreaming

The human mind wanders. Whether we’re doing what we love, or suffering the agony of trying to pass the time, our minds wander into an unfocused haze.

This unfocused haze contains all kinds of wonderful things that we all too often miss in our haste to get back to work.

However, this wandering focus is both a weakness and a strength of the human mind. Often these moments of wandering thought return nothing. Sometimes they return terrible ideas. But sometimes they provide us with moments of brilliant creative insight that seem to come to us with spontaneous unpredictability.

To paraphrase the brilliant Latvian Chess Grandmaster, Mikhail Tal, very often it’s better to follow the intuition that springs into your mind after deep thought and contemplation rather than carefully considering every possible condition that may arise.

To take more interesting pictures, we need to become more interesting people. This allows us to have more productive sessions of unfocused contemplation. In these moments, there will spring forth brilliant ideas that will inform your art.

To the outsider, you might appear brilliant. But it wasn’t deep thought that gave you the idea, it was your ability to give up searching for the right decision and spend time in the hazy unfocused world that we drift into every so often.

The great artist can relax and fall into this state of creative insight from which he extracts brilliance.

Getting there and staying there

With success comes responsibility and tremendous pressure to be even more successful.

Some people are incredible challengers and then terrible champions.

The drive to get somewhere or conquer some goal is much different from the challenge of staying on top.

If you’re great at building, start working on getting better at sustaining, too. Both driving and sustaining is the goal.

Don’t focus on your strengths

The willingness to keep trying new things, even when you are an expert, is what separates the good from the great. It showcases your humility and your ability to cope with uncomfortable things. The ability to cope with the uncomfortable will transform you from bad to good and good to great in any endeavor in life.

Focusing on what you’re best at is needed for optimizing your performance, but improving what you’re weak at will lift all aspects of your work and life. It’s easier to go from 20% to 80% competent than to get from 80% to 98% competent. Improving what we’re bad at will have a massive payoff much faster.

Greatness comes when we eliminate weaknesses, not accentuate strengths.

When things are going well, it’s hard to leave your comfort zone. Outside of the comfort zone is where growth happens. Growth in the weak areas will lead to greatness.

Strike while the iron is hot

Don’t burn your opportunities in exchange for temporary comfort. Instead, we must be willing to make sacrifices and tolerate some discomfort in the short term.

When we choose to procrastinate or avoid difficult tasks, we may experience a momentary sense of relief, but ultimately we are sacrificing our opportunities for growth and success. There is little deep satisfaction from the distractions that keep us from working hard on the opportunities that we have.

Instead of seeking temporary comfort, we should focus on the long-term benefits of hard work and perseverance. We all probably know this. The key is analyzing our behavior to find the weak spots, then building barriers to help keep us from those fears and distractions, and finally, we ought to slowly build habits that push us to a more structured and disciplined lifestyle. (Hint: Achieving productivity is behavioral, not a product of circumstance.)

By staying disciplined and committed to our goals, we can avoid burning opportunities and achieve better productivity.

Minimal Efforts vs. Max Effort

There is work for everybody in the world. Everybody can make money and build a living. No matter how much effort you choose to put forth, you can make something.

The question is, how great do you want to be?

If you’re comfortable living a quiet and forgettable life, you can skate through life with minimal effort. Doable, easy, but forgettable.

If you put in the work, take the notes, and really commit to deep learning and deeply working on specific things, you take the more difficult road.

That road takes you to a place of impact and influence. You are rewarded for your hard work and practice with prestige, freedom, and money (among other things.)

I am convinced that virtually anybody can become great at something they do. Most people can become so good at what they do that they might be one of the best in the entire country.

Far more people choose the path that requires minimal effort. With minimal effort comes minimal pressure. That’s momentarily comfortable.

With maximum effort is difficulty and challenge, but the rewards are greater than you would ever imagine.

The max effort puts our own happiness on the back burner temporarily for the hope of long-term payoff. The satisfaction of knowing you’ve performed your best and had a major impact is a greater satisfaction than momentary personal pleasure.

Making my daily nightmare

Be motivated by your dream of the future, and be invigorated to start by the nightmare of today.

The great ones find the doubters and the haters and generate their own “daily nightmare” to fuel their dream for the future.

When your commitment wavers or when doubt creeps in or when you start feeling tired or stressed out, don’t look to the future. Look at where you’ve come from and how much you have done already. Think about today’s nightmare and the beauty of tomorrow when you pressed on and finished the job.

When we feel strong and committed, then we must look to the future. Let us be filled with inspiration and aspiration when we look at the gap between where we stand and where we want to be.

Can you see the beauty?

“Some people could be given an entire field of roses and only see the thorns in it. Others could be given a single weed and only see the wildflower in it.”

— Amy Weatherly

The power of negative thinking

The big weakness of positive thinking is that it often blinds us to the pitfalls that we might face. We rush in brimming with confidence and when the first thing goes wrong, we don’t know how to react.

The power of negative thinking is that we work all this out in our heads. We’ve already embarrassed ourselves by tripping over our words and we’ve faced the calamity of absolute failure… in our own minds.

Then when we hit the stage and it’s time to get to work, we can better face the challenges and difficulties of doing work in the real world.

Our negative thinking must not stop us from starting, but it should be the motivator for better preparation. In that way, negative thinking and doubting yourself is one of the best things you can do to get ready for the next big thing you’re trying to do.

Eternal optimists fail to see their own weaknesses, and therefore they don’t improve them.

Optimism is good, but negative thinking can be one of the most effective things you do for yourself if you are trying to get better at what you do.

Artificial Intelligence and man

One interesting topic to explore is the recent advancements in artificial intelligence and its potential impact on society. With breakthroughs in natural language processing and computer vision, AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated and capable of tasks previously thought to be exclusive to humans. This has led to exciting applications in fields such as healthcare, finance, and transportation.

For example, AI algorithms can analyze medical images and predict disease progression with high accuracy, helping doctors make more informed diagnoses and treatment plans. In the finance industry, AI is used to identify patterns in financial data and make better investment decisions. And in transportation, self-driving cars are poised to revolutionize the way we move around cities and could potentially reduce accidents caused by human error.

Another fascinating topic to explore is the concept of time and how it is perceived by humans. Time is a fundamental aspect of our lives, but our understanding of it is limited by our subjective experience.

Recent research has shown that our perception of time is not fixed but can vary depending on our surroundings and circumstances. For example, time seems to pass more quickly when we are engaged in an enjoyable activity and more slowly when we are bored or anxious. Furthermore, our perception of time can be influenced by external factors such as the color of a room or the amount of light in a space.

Understanding how we perceive time can have practical applications in fields such as psychology and design, as well as help us gain a deeper understanding of our own consciousness.

Artificial Intelligence coupled with the human touch will form a robust and streamlined set of tools for those who use it well.

Hate losing more than you love winning

When the fear of failing outweighs the fear of failing or the fear of criticism, then you can act without delay. Fear of starting and procrastination will quickly fall by the wayside when you hate failure more than you love winning.

Humble but not timid

“Argue like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong.” –Karl Weick

Valid criticism and how not to be a cult

Valid criticism and minority viewpoints are important because they make us stop and address the issue. We’re forced to think around the problem and re-examine our position from different angles.

Even bad criticism or bad minority arguments are valuable in this regard.

When the consensus is disrupted, we almost always will come to a better or more creative solution for the problem at hand.

A CEO surrounded by “yes-men” and a culture of groupthink, is a CEO that will not have a company for very long.

Promoting dissent and allowing people to question things for themselves is one hallmark sign that you have a culture, not a cult. In a cult, dissension is swiftly crushed and no examination or questioning is allowed.

The value of mistakes

When we try not to make mistakes, we avoid all risks and, eventually, we become paralyzed by a fear of failure. Thus we cease doing anything that could fail.

This is the greatest failure of all.

Success is not avoiding making mistakes. It is to venture and risk and make mistakes, but only to make the mistake once.

Mistakes are valuable when we take them, examine them, and learn from them.

Otherwise, they’re useless and very harmful. Take hold of your mistakes and figure out why they happened and use them to make yourself better.

You win big or you lose big

Sometimes it’s valuable to take on projects that we’re likely to fail at. There is a value in “getting in over our heads.” Becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Because when we reach higher than our toes can lift us, we dare to be great. While that will often leave us with a failed objective, it will, at times, deliver us success on the grandest scale.

Take the risks, jump into the deep end, and dare to be great.

Most conversations are simply monologues

Many conversations lack true interaction and understanding. In such conversations, one person is usually dominating the discussion, while the other person is passively listening without actively engaging. True communication requires a back-and-forth exchange of ideas and perspectives, where both parties actively listen and respond to each other.

Think about how often in conversations we think more about what we want to say, rather than listening while the other person is speaking.

The lack of genuine communication in many conversations can not only lead to misunderstandings but could also prevent connections from forming. To have a successful conversation, it is important to put aside one’s own agenda and actively listen to the other person’s perspective, allowing for a more equal and productive exchange of ideas.

“Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.”

Praising the character and the process

There are many different cyclists with whom I ride bikes (when the weather is warm and nice.) Among cyclists online, there is generally a healthy community of positive encouragement and it’s all quite nice.

I have noticed that particularly talented riders often get praised for the outcome of their rides and not the ride itself.

The example would be, “Wow, John, you averaged 20mph on that ride! Incredible!” Or something like, “You rode over 100 miles today! That’s a huge accomplishment!”

These are all nice things and things that I very rarely do. I can’t help but wonder if it takes some of the joy away from the process of just riding your bike when you feel labeled as “the guy who always goes 20mph” or any other label that is thrust upon you.

I’ve learned that when I pay compliments to my children, friends, or colleagues in work, I try to praise the thought that goes into something and the process that made the result possible.

I think praising the creative for their creativity or thoughtfulness is more valuable to them than praising work they did that happens to be “creative.”

For the cyclists, I try to praise their toughness, tenacity, willingness to train and get in shape, and determination to ride long or fast. You can be tough and only ride 35 miles, or willing to train hard and still not break 17mph.

You may also be ultra-talented and creative and not yet have the most incredible work. Not yet, at least.

It’s better to know how it affects the people around us

If we want to motivate somebody to do something good, we should explain to them how it helps others, not simply how it helps them.

You could say, “when we wash our hands, we help to prevent ourselves from getting sick.” Or you could say, “when you wash your hands, you help prevent others from getting sick.”

When we think about consequences toward ourselves, we invoke the logic of consequence in the decision-making process. But when we think about the consequence toward others, we invoke the logic of appropriateness.

This logic of appropriateness shifts our focus to a contemplation of our values, what is morally right, and our obligation of right and wrong. This would include both personal and professional moral obligations.

For ourselves and others, it’s good to know how it affects us, but it’s better to understand how it affects those around us.