When things are going well, we naturally focus our time doubling down on the things that have made us successful. Our offering are resonating, so we focus on raising awareness, pitching to those who haven’t bought yet and investing on expanding our reach, so that we can sell more.
All of that makes sense – why wouldn’t we double down and capitalize on what’s working?
At the end of season 2 of the HBO series, Succession, one of the show’s main characters, Tom, tells his wife, Shiv, something I found to be especially poignant:
“I wonder if the sad I’d be without you, would be less than the sad I’d get from being with you.”
What would you choose?
Would you rather be happy or special?
For so many of us, our identity is wrapped up in our work, to the extent that we let it become the defining element. That’s not hard to do, especially if we think the work we’re doing is important.
There’s a tendency we all have to try and ride out a tough spell or a difficult challenge. To try and just “get to the other side”, mentally, at least, even if you have to physically go through the motions.
Thing is, that’s a passive strategy. One that intends to remove us from the reality of the situation and the challenge of the actual battle.
I was having a conversation the other day about what it takes to drive change within a community and the person I was chatting with made an interesting point.
She said that people often think that, in order to shift behaviors, we need to focus on those who don’t believe and are diametrically opposed to our ideas.
The thing about transformative technologies is that they expose where value is - or isn’t - being generated.
As a result, they accelerate the shift towards value ‘maximization’. In other words, those tasks that technology should deliver, it will, and those high value tasks that humans should focus on, they will.
Big problems are intractable.
They’re hard to get to grips with, hard to manage and hard to overcome.
No matter how much we believe in the cause, the scale of the mountain is daunting and, more often than not, can seem insurmountable. Which is why they’re ‘big’ problems.
Is there a difference between facts and opinions?
That seems like a question with an obvious answer, but I saw it posited on someone’s Twitter feed earlier.
They were suggesting that what we consider to be facts are nothing but very strongly held opinions.
If that were true, it would suggest that what we believe is simply what we believe - ideas that we’ve come to accept as fact based on our own observational, anecdotal or experiential learnings.
When Lebron James broke Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s all time points scoring record in the NBA last week, he did so with about 10 seconds still to go in the third quarter.
As soon as he scored that 38,388th point, the game was paused and celebrations ensued. His family came onto the court along with the press and a host of others.
Taking risks is a challenging idea when it comes to implementation.
When the rubber meets the road, and we have the opportunity to actually do something, that’s when we find out whether or not we’re actually ready.
It’s tempting to think that the right resources will help us bridge the gap, or that having the right people around us will help, or even that our own personal (decades of) expertise will be enough.
There's plenty of upside to being a contrarian, until there isn't.
Sometimes, it's worth considering that the popular opinion - the consensus view - may very well be the right view.
So much of my youth was spent constructing who I wanted to be, my sense of self. With that came the confidence to do the things I needed to do, in order to be what I defined as successful.
But with it also came a series of behaviors (facades? Personas? ) that were designed to protect me from getting hurt, personally or professionally. I was conscious that…
One of my (many) shortcomings when it comes to cooking is that I follow recipes to a tee.
Yes, I appreciate that that can be a positive and it is - in the sense that the resulting dish will be exactly to specification. It will taste and (for the most part) look exactly as the recipe author intended.
We often see success as a destination. It's not because destinations suggest we can stop when we get there.
True success isn't a destination, it's a journey - and that means addressing complacency, as I discuss in today's episode.
Seth Godin recently wrote about how bitterness is consistent and impenetrable. If you let it, it can become “a wall you can lean against, whenever you choose”.
That resonated with me, as I’m sure it does with many of us. When we’ve been wronged (perceived or otherwise), it provides us with a point or direction towards which we can channel our emotions, most notably our anger.
Are you a Craftsman or an Artist?
Rick Rubin posed this question on a podcast recently and it made me perk up and take notice. We tend to conflate the two terms but Rubin suggests there’s a difference.
We tend to think effort and graft are the most critical ingredients to doing our work well. They're not.
The fact is that there's one, far more important and foundational requirement for success, as I discuss in today's episode.
Are we at an Inflection Point?
According to Investopedia, an Inflection Point is “an event that results in a significant change in the progress of a company, industry, sector, economy, or geopolitical situation and can be considered a turning point after which a dramatic change, with either positive or negative results, is expected to result.”
The Greek-Armenian philosopher, George Gurdjieff, believed that we are born without a soul and that our life goal is to grow and develop our soul - our souls are earned.
From a young age, we're stuck on this idea that we have to get everything right, right from the start. Because you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Truth is, in so many aspects of our lives, especially our careers, that's just patently false. As I discuss in today's episode, you can indeed have second acts.
