The Achievement Habit (11 page)

A friend recently told me that she wanted to learn to ride a bike. She’s a woman in her thirties, so I wondered why she had never learned as a child. What were the issues that had prevented her from learning thus far? My first assumption was that she must have lived in a busy city.

“No, the suburbs,” she said. “I tried to learn, but I have a terrible sense of balance. I never got it.”

It was a good time to check out problem solving through design thinking, so we went through the steps. First I had to make sure she was solving the right problem. Did she really want to learn to ride a bike, or was there a higher-level problem that she needed to solve? I asked her why she wanted to do this now.

“My daughter just learned how to ride a bike, and she’s good at it. Right now, I can just jog alongside her and keep up, but I won’t be able to do that for long. I want to learn so I can ride with her.”

The problem one level up was that she wanted to be able to keep up with her daughter, and I had enough empathy to see it through her eyes. Working on bike riding seemed a good way to tackle it. So it was time to ideate: How could she learn to ride a bike?

“I figured I’d just go to a bike shop and ask them for the easiest bike to ride,” she said. And that was one possible solution, however, what if she encountered the same balance problems she had as a child? She indicated that she still got dizzy easily.

We talked through a few ideas: She might take a yoga class to improve her balance. She might see a doctor to find out if she
needed medication for an inner ear problem. She could take lessons, or she could put training wheels on an adult’s bike. That one made her laugh, but fortunately it led to a more serious potential solution.

“You know, there are three-wheelers for adults,” I said. A light bulb went off; she hadn’t considered that. Sure, they might look a little odd compared to sleeker road bikes, but it would solve her problem instantly, without the need to really “learn” to ride a bike. She could keep up with her daughter (which was the higher-level problem) and skip right over the balance problem. It’s just what a friend of mine had done when her aging body had given up on regular biking and her mind had not.

She felt so good about this solution that I did not bother exploring other ways for her to keep up with her bike-riding daughter.

This is the power of working with a partner or team: we each have different experiences and perspectives to lend. I was able to give her an instant solution to a problem she’d been putting off tackling because it seemed too difficult. It enabled her to stop thinking and start doing.

Something we read in my class is “Tractoring Off,” an excerpt from
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck. It tells the story of a confrontation between a Dust Bowl farmer whose land has been foreclosed by the bank and a young tractor driver who is hired to plow the land, in the process destroying the farmer’s house and farm. The tractor driver grew up in the neighborhood, and the farmer knows him and his father.

After the class has read the story, I ask for a show of hands as to how many people would choose to drive the tractor if
they had no better means of supporting their family. Then I ask how many would not drive the tractor and how many aren’t sure. I get about 45 percent on either side and about 10 percent undecided.

This essay represents a classic moral issue. The tractor driver realizes that what he is doing is destructive to the farmer and the farmer’s family, yet he feels he has little alternative if he is going to support his own family. Ultimately he rationalizes his position by telling the farmer that if he does not do it, someone else is going to plow the land and destroy the farm. Even if the farmer shoots him, someone will come tomorrow and do the job. This rationalization and justification—“If I don’t do it, someone else will”—is very common. So is the variant “I had to take care of my family,” and the slightly less philosophical “I was just following orders.”

I like this essay because it gives me a great opening to share with students my belief that they have no way of knowing what they will do when they are actually confronted with a comparable moral dilemma. I tell them that in moments of crisis in my own life, I have found that I did not always act in keeping with my self-image.

Once my wife, Ruth, and I were traveling around France by car. She was driving, and our younger son was in the backseat. We rounded a turn at the top of a hill and saw a line of cars stopped at a traffic light at the bottom. Ruth tried to slow the car down, and nothing happened. She shouted that the brakes were not working. After a moment of terror, I felt relaxed and comforted by the sense that at least all three of us would die together. Fortunately, the only one to die was the car, which was totaled; neither my family nor the unfortunate French family we plowed into was injured.

In fact, the French driver was very gracious. In spite of our having ruined the trailer that he was towing on the way to his family holiday, he suggested that because we could not do anything until the rental agency and the tow truck company reopened after their lunch break, we might as well all have lunch together. To my later embarrassment, I was much too upset to accept his generous act of civility.

Shortly after the crash, I figured out what had happened. The car had a manual transmission, and Ruth, who was used to driving an automatic transmission, had mistakenly put her foot on the clutch rather than the brake. I felt really stupid! Instead of blissing out over our impending deaths, I should have reached my foot over and stepped on the brake (or told her to do it), or pulled up the emergency brake, or jammed the car into reverse—anything other than what I did! I am usually so clearheaded and action-prone in emergencies. What happened to me? This was not the Bernie I know.

I had a similar experience when a good friend and colleague was being considered for a promotion. A question had arisen in the provost’s office about his effectiveness as a classroom teacher. It fell to me to survey his current class. I was asked to have the students fill out rating forms. I did what I was asked and collected the completed forms. I looked over the forms in the privacy of my office and I realized that a few of them would cause difficulty. The promotion would not go through if I sent them on to the provost’s office.

I hesitated. I knew my colleague was a good teacher, although his style was unorthodox, and not all students appreciated his creative approach. I also did not believe the survey forms were a good measure of his teaching. Most of all, I thought of myself as being loyal to my colleague and I certainly did not share many
of the values the provost’s staff used in judging people. With all these factors on the side of “losing” a few of the forms, my self-image at that time was that I would not turn them in. However, in the end I did forward the entire package.

I resolved my moral crisis by doing exactly what I was sure I would not do. Fortunately this was not a matter of life or death. My friend was unhappy for a time. However, his promotion was delayed for only one year, he went on to a distinguished career, and he has lived—more or less—happily ever after.

Although it can be interesting to read about another’s situation and pass judgment about how you might have handled it differently, it’s more useful to look at your own life. By examining your own rationalizations and moral compromises, you can better understand the complexity and unpredictability of peoples’ ethical and moral decisions.

I faced a dilemma when Dave, the CEO of a company in Berkeley that designed custom automation equipment, invited me to lunch to talk about joining the company’s board of directors. As we talked, some of the plans Dave had about the use of automation instead of actual humans in jobs pushed my buttons. It was a difficult spot: I didn’t want to be associated with anything that would take away people’s jobs, and yet I was tempted by the offer—which included substantial stock options. I was sure that if I told him about my objections, it would kill the deal.

It was a moment of pressure, and I needed to give him an answer. I told him that I would not accept his offer. He asked me to explain my decision. After I detailed my objections, he assured me he shared my concerns and would not be doing the things I objected to. Did I really believe it? I wasn’t sure. Automation is designed to take away human tasks, after all . . . yet
all it took was that little nudge to get me to set aside my conscience. I acquiesced and agreed to join the board.

My experience on the board was quite positive on both technical and personal levels. Several years later the company was sold to a large corporation, and my stocks brought me one of the largest single financial gains of my life. Looking back, I always remember how sure I was at that lunch that by voicing my objections I would kill the deal. What actually happened was quite the opposite.

I learned two big lessons that day. First, I believed I could know how someone else would react, but you can’t. You can never be sure what someone else is thinking. Second, I was sure I would resist temptation, yet when push came to shove, I easily rationalized away my principles once someone gave me an excuse to do so. It gives me a lot of compassion for friends who, at the crucial moment, choose to drive the tractor.

A classic study of anxiety over how one will act under pressure is described in Stephen Crane’s
Red Badge of Courage
. This novel gives us a vivid psychological portrayal of a young soldier beset by the anxiety that under fire he will be overcome by fear. As the war proceeds, he exposes his cowardice and ultimately his heroism. Like this young soldier, regardless of our self-image, it is difficult to know beforehand how we will actually act under pressure.

When you make decisions based on “the research,” you can easily be led astray by researchers’ biases, which can lead them to make false claims and exaggerations.

I have spent most of my professional life publishing research papers, so I feel I know something about research. I
understand scientific research processes and their limitations. Furthermore, as they say, some of my best friends are scientists. Some of them are even psychologists and behavioral scientists, and I have witnessed—and even been a subject in—a few of their experiments.

Based on all these experiences, I feel that in studying human behavior, it is really hard to come up with categorical statements. There is a lot of potential for misinterpretation, exaggeration, and just bad science. So I am often put off when someone uses such phrases as “Science shows,” “The research shows,” or “The fact is, there is science behind this.” I wish that we
did
know all the things that are claimed. Although there is a lot of good—and even great—science, I do feel claims of scientific verification are at times exaggerated and unwarranted when it comes to human behavior.

The overreach of science probably arose because of the many unsubstantiated claims and ridiculous belief systems being bandied about. To combat this fraud, exploitation, and just plain ignorance, a sort of scientific vigilantism has developed. For some people, nothing can be considered valid without the imprimatur of science. My main concern is that when we insist on claims of scientific veracity, we downgrade or even rule out important sources of personal wisdom that exist independent of formal experimental verification.

Unfortunately, experimental verification is itself also a rather imperfect tool. I think it is important to understand that every time someone uses the word
science
or
research
, he is talking about the work not of some omnipotent beings with access to revealed truths but of fallible people working in a currently accepted paradigm and socialized into a scientific family and job structure. What it comes down to is that it is hard to
convincingly prove or disprove things experimentally unless they already fit into people’s belief systems.
¹

Do
—don’t
try
—this: list as many of your core beliefs as possible, and then ask yourself what basis you have for each belief. My own experience is that, unsurprisingly, a large number of my core beliefs come from my parents, the social and physical environment I grew up in, and my various peer groups. The next question to ask is, Which of your beliefs still serve you, and which have become dysfunctional and are best discarded?

Even when the data is sound—like the fact that half of all marriages end in divorce—does that mean that you should give up the idea of getting married because it has too high a potential failure rate? Statistics can show you trends, they can’t predict your life.

Likewise, consider that the odds have
always
been against greatness. If one were to decide on a career path just by the odds of financial success, we would have no movie stars, authors, poets, or musicians. The odds of any one person becoming a professional, self-supporting musician are very low—and yet turn on the radio and you can hear hundreds of them. The odds were against the Beatles, Elvis, and the Grateful Dead, too. They could have been “scientific” about the whole thing and chosen more reasonable career paths, and what a loss for the world that would have been!

If you succeed, the odds are meaningless. Any path may have a 2 percent success rate, yet if you’re in that 2 percent, there’s a 100 percent chance of success for you. The long shots are often the most rewarding.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a television anchor. That’s a good thing; can you imagine what she would have missed out on if she’d gotten comfortable as a reporter in Baltimore? Dr. Seuss’s first book was rejected by dozens of publishers and saw the light of day only because a friend agreed to publish it himself. Thomas Edison failed numerous times when trying to produce a light bulb, so many times that he famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

Almost without exception, people who have done great things have also experienced great failures—and in many cases, getting fired or a similar devastating failure turned out to be a gift that allowed them to ultimately find great success.