The Achievement Habit (12 page)

As you now know, at the d.school, one of the basic principles is a
bias toward action
: that is, it is better to start to do something and fail than it is to do nothing and wait for the correct path of action to appear. Failure is part of the result to expect if you have a bias toward action.

The idea is not to be paralyzed in the face of uncertainty. If you do something and it works, great! If you do something and it fails, maybe even better. You do, you fail, and you learn. You do again, you fail again, and you learn some more. If you are mindful about what you have done, failure is a teacher. With a little luck, after enough failures you will succeed. In many cases this is a much better approach than a long, drawn-out investigation into the right way to proceed.

Nobody wants to fail, and yet we all do. Don’t be afraid of failure. It is part of the price you pay for action; there’s no need to sweep it under the rug and pretend it does not exist. The most liberating way to acknowledge failure is to celebrate it.

Let’s look at circus clowns. When they unintentionally drop an item they are juggling, they often jump up with arms outstretched, a big smile, and a loud
ta-da!
My former colleague Rolf Faste used to have participants in our workshop take the clown’s
ta-da
bow when they messed up. It did wonders; it made it okay to show one’s mistakes and not try to cover them up. The accepting-repeated-failure route, if used with an open mind, can lead to much better solutions than does a fear of failure. A system that punishes failures rather than accepting that they occur on the road to success squelches creativity.

People tend to accept the notion that failure can be productive as an abstraction, yet unsurprisingly, in reality they find it difficult to accept failure unless they’re in an environment that supports this notion. In the d.school we have had a great deal of success in creating such an environment. It is incredible to watch graduate students free themselves from the thrall of an entire career based on the principle that it is bad (or even catastrophic) to make a mistake. The pressure disappears, they feel reborn, and they often produce amazing results.

My seventh- and eighth-grade years are blank in my memory save for the bottle cutter I built. That one experience stands out; I recall every detail of the project. I remember the fruit market where I found the crate to dismantle and use as a wooden base. I recall the purchase of a three-foot length of nichrome wire. This was the heart of the device. A thin wire made of nichrome has high electrical resistance and becomes red-hot when electricity passes through it, as it does in toasters and hair dryers. When wrapped around a glass bottle (no plastic in those days!) the red-hot wire gets the glass hot enough to crack if the bottle is
plunged into cold water. If the wire is thin enough and the wrap is tight enough, you get a perfect break and the bottle splits into two perfect pieces, the neck and the base. I thought it was magical, although I have no recollection of needing to cut bottles for anything.

The only teacher I can recall is Mr. Dill, the science teacher who inspired the project and who feigned mild annoyance when I came to him after class for advice. I also vividly recall discovering the hard way that I needed to have my own fuse on the device if I did not want to blow the fuses in the entire apartment.

It was a memorable experience because it was the first time I can remember really making something on my own. I discovered I could make something real in the world. It was a formative experience that increased my self-esteem and gave me self-efficacy. Although I did not realize it at the time, that small success presaged a life of deriving great satisfaction from figuring out how to do things on my own and solving problems.

I’ve noticed that similar early experiences have stayed with many of my colleagues. David Kelley talks about how, when he was young, he succeeded in taking the family piano apart. My friend Vic talks more about his youthful science project than the sophisticated robot designs that subsequently made him famous.

Even habits such as reading are learned by building upon small successes. I recall how empowered I felt as a child after I read my first complete book. From that point on I was a reader. Later, as I got busy with my professional life, I lost the reading habit. So when I started to teach my “Designer in Society” course, I put readings into it—as much for my own sake as for that of the students. I ask them to read a book a week for eight weeks, and that regular activity gets all of us used to making
time in our lives for reading. I have regained the habit, and many students tell me how thankful they are to have it as an unexpected side benefit of my course.

Success opens the door for increased self-esteem. If it comes early in life, it can do much to shape your future direction. If it does not come early, it can still be achieved. It is important to attempt different modalities and not to remain stuck in one that does not nurture and fulfill you.

Fear of failure often keeps us in an unsatisfying routine. Instead of daydreaming about change, reach out and attempt new things. Small steps with accompanying successes lead to major life transitions.

Did you have a youthful formative experience of accomplishing something on your own? Think back to the essence of that experience. Looking at your current life, what would you do differently if you were not afraid of failing or looking bad? In the next week, attempt something new in one of these areas. At first take a small step forward. Then, in each of the three subsequent weeks take an additional step. If you trip, pick yourself up and keep moving forward.

T
HE MAIN CONSTRUCTS OF
this chapter are easy to test in your own life: Be honest and notice the differences between your self-image and the ways you actually act. Notice the difference between
intention
and
attention
, between
trying
to do something and actually
doing
it. Finally, notice how the habit of acting on your dreams builds from direct experience, and from overcoming the fear of failure.

CHAPTER 6

Sincerity—if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

—George Burns

The way we communicate with people has a significant effect on their opinions of us. It’s not just about what we say, but about how we say it. Becoming better communicators can heal relationships, lead to better job opportunities, and enable us to reach wider audiences with whatever messages we want to share.

Language influences the way we see things. Public relations specialists and advertisers certainly know and exploit this, as do politicians, governments, and all sorts of spin artists. It has long been known that using different labels for the same thing will promote different behaviors. For our purposes it is important to understand what we do to ourselves with our own choice of words and use of language. Once we are aware of our usage, we can adjust our language to be more in keeping with our true intentions and the existential situations we are describing.

Let’s start with a simple dichotomy: yes and no. There are situations in which we say one thing and mean the other. Some cultures, for example, recognize specific situations where it is considered impolite to say no; in others it is considered polite to say no when one means yes. For instance, in Iran, you’re expected to refuse at first when a host offers you food or drink. Only after he pushes you to accept are you supposed to say yes.

I often use
yes
and
no
in a simple exercise. I pair people and ask them to have a conversation where one person repeatedly says yes, and each time, the other person answers with no. After some minutes I ask them to reverse roles: the yes person now becomes the no person, and the no person becomes the yes person.

Most people find it easier to say yes. A substantial number, however, report being more comfortable saying no, and very few report no difference. For me the interest is in the dynamic between the two people. It can take many forms. For example, it can have the form of an argument, a simple sober conversation, a big joke, or even a courtship. The point is for the participants to experience the big difference between the lyrics and the music in a conversation. In this exercise, I wrote the lyrics—
yes, no, yes, no, yes, no
—and the participants got to write the music and even the choreography (what tone and body language they used when they delivered their yes or no). After they think about this exercise, people often find something in their choice of music that helps them reach greater self-understanding.

The lyrics tend to dominate the music for the words
and
and
but
. The existential situation almost always calls for the conjunction
and
, not
but
. Yet we often use
but
in place of
and
. This
substitution is so common that it sounds correct. Unfortunately it often has the effect of changing a neutral statement into a negative one.

Let’s take an example: “I want to go to the movies,
but
I have work to do.” The sentence uses the conjunction
but
to tie together two phrases: “I want to go to the movies” and “I have work to do.” Let’s assume that the existential situation is that they are both true. Then, in fact, the actual situation is represented by “I want to go to the movies,
and
I have work to do.” Existentially, movies and work are not in opposition. The word
but
is okay in common usage,
and
it does not reflect the true situation.

When you use the word
but
, you create a conflict (and sometimes a reason) for yourself that does not really exist. With the word
and
, there is no issue. You might or might not choose to go to the movies or to work. The use of
but
closes off the conversation space, while
and
opens it up. Furthermore, what follows the
but
is often bullshit reasoning. In improvisation terms,
but
is blocking; it is to be avoided as much as possible.

Where are you putting your
but
s?

Whatever you’re trying to achieve, notice where you’re blocking yourself by shutting down the conversation with a
but
. Let’s say your goal is to get a popular internship, and it requires extensive travel. “I want this internship,
but
I’m afraid of flying,” you tell yourself. What your brain then hears is, “Oh, well,
c’est la vie
. Guess we’re not doing this internship.”

When you open up the dialogue with “
and
I’m afraid of flying,” your brain gets to consider how it can deal with both parts of the sentence. Maybe you’ll see a therapist about it. Maybe you’ll practice meditation.

The problem is that if you only use
and
in conversation,
you sound weird. I did an experiment years ago and went an entire weekend using
and
rather than
but
. Believe me, you don’t want to do it.

I often handle the situation when I find it prudent to say
but
out loud by simultaneously converting it to
and
internally. This works well, except when someone who has taken a workshop from me hears the
but
, and shows how smart they are by publicly correcting me. I smile,
and
I hate it. Please don’t be a smart-ass; just fix yourself. If you want to fix your friends and family, just give them a copy of this book. It will be much better for your relationships.

To get the flavor of this, the next five times you use the word
but
, simply change it to
and
in your mind. Do this silently by repeating to yourself what you just said out loud, with only this one word changed. Notice how it feels.

Next on our list of words to be used as little as possible is the phrase
I have to
. The true situation is usually best described instead by
I want to
. Rather than argue with people about this, I always have them do a simple exercise, one that works best with a partner. You compose a sentence that starts “I have to.” Your partner repeats the sentence with “You want to” substituted for “I have to.” For example, you say, “I have to finish my work” and your partner replies, “You
want
to finish your work.”

This works for just about anything, and can show you how much your own choice and desire play a role in decisions that you think are imposed on you. For example, “I have to breathe” turns into “I want to breathe.”

“What? I do have to breathe!” you might say.

That’s true . . . if you want to stay alive. You have the option to commit suicide and stop breathing. Choosing to continue to breathe is a good tactic if you want to stay alive.

To get the flavor of this, change
have
into
want
in your mind the next few times you say “I have to.” Do this silently, simply repeating to yourself the sentence that you just said out loud, with just the one word changed.

This exercise is very effective in getting people to realize that what they do in their lives—even the things they find unpleasant—is in fact what they have chosen. Occasionally, someone gets stuck on an item or two. A good example of this is what happened with my good friend Ozgur. While he was a student in my course, he could not bring himself to say that he wanted to take the math courses that were a required part of his master’s degree program. In fact, he knew he definitely did not want to take them, and certainly wouldn’t take them if they were not required.

After graduation he went to work in industry for a year and then returned to Stanford to do his PhD. One of the first things he did upon his return was to seek me out and invite me for a Turkish dinner in San Francisco. He told me at dinner that even though he still found the master’s degree math requirements odious, he realized he actually had wanted to take those courses, because the benefit to him considerably outweighed the discomfort. It was worth the wait for me: I love Turkish food, and that meal started a tradition in which, over the next few years, we sampled every Turkish restaurant in the area.

Even if Ozgur had not had the belated realization about the
math requirement, the have to/want to exercise would still have made its point for him. It is important to realize that everyday life is not an exact science. In some fields, such as mathematics, a single counterexample is sufficient to prove that something does not work. By contrast, my view of life is that if you do something and it works almost all of the time, then you might as well take it as a guideline.

If Ozgur had examined his entire life and the only thing he found that he had to do and did not want to do was the math requirement, then he might as well live his life as though he wanted to do everything he did. Have you ever heard the phrase “The exception proves the rule”? Well, if you have to struggle to find a single exception, you might as well live your life as though the rule is valid.
¹

Next let’s look at
I can’t
and test it against
I won’t
. A good way to make the test is to use the same procedure as in the previous exercise. So, for example, if you said out loud, “I can’t stop breathing,” you would then say to yourself, “I won’t stop breathing.” The simple change of
can’t
to
won’t
is often empowering.
Can’t
implies helplessness;
won’t
signifies volition and choice.

Similar word-change exercises worth doing are:
I need
changed to
I want
and
I’m afraid to
changed to
I’d like to
. Try these out the next time you notice yourself saying
I need
or
I’m afraid to
. These simple substitutions make a difference. They add empowerment to how you feel about yourself and your actions.

Two other words that are good to discard or minimize the use of are
help
and
should
. If you think about
help
versus
assist
, the
difficulty with the use of
help
becomes clear. When you
help
someone, you may be treating her as though she is helpless and only you are capable. By
assisting
someone you are treating her with dignity and saying that she, too, is capable.
Assisting
is empowering language;
helping
can at times be disempowering language.

Similarly,
should
is a disempowering word. It implies doing something under obligation—sort of a
have to
rather than a
want to
. The exercise that I like to do with this word entails having one member of a pair utter a sentence that starts with “I should . . .” The partner then responds, “What is a
should
?” After about two minutes of this nonsense, the
should
person gets the idea, and it is time to switch roles so that the partner can realize the absurdity of most
should
s. It is almost as much fun to do both sides of this exercise yourself.

Avoid asking
why
questions when possible in interpersonal communications. When you ask someone why he did something, the word has a slightly negative, disapproving connotation, making him feel a need to defend himself.

Instead, state your position clearly, using
I
statements. Instead of asking, “Why did you choose Jane as your coleader?” say, “I felt hurt that you didn’t choose me to colead.”

Straightforward, honest conversation saves time and achieves your goal effectively. In this example, the answer to why Jane was chosen might be any
goooood
reason, and it most probably would not give you an opening to say that your feelings were hurt.

Factual questions, questions of opinion, and rhetorical questions are the most common questions used in normal conversations.
It is important to realize that
not all questions are genuine ones
. Most people know there is no real question behind the customary greetings “How are you today?” “Are you having a good day?” and “How are you feeling?” People are not expecting a real answer.

These seemingly meaningless questions demonstrate goodwill and can be used to acknowledge another’s humanity. When I’m asked these questions by strangers, I usually assume goodwill on their part and play the game by answering as expected. However, it is harder for me to behave when the other person is obviously preprogrammed as part of her job. On one occasion, the devil possessed me. I had the following conversation with a checkout clerk at a supermarket:

       
SHE
: How are you today?

       
ME
: I am dying of cancer.

       
SHE
: That’s good.

       
ME
: Have a good day.

Clearly she did as expected, and did not care about or even listen to my answer.

In addition to using questions as greetings, some people regularly ask them simply to fill space. They feel they need to say something, so they ask a question. Like the checkout clerk, they don’t really care about the answer; their attention goes elsewhere, and they don’t actually even listen to it. Sometimes they deliver another question before the other person has finished answering. In these cases the specific question is clearly irrelevant. If the questioner does not care about the answer, it is not a
genuine
question.