Read The Achievement Habit Online
Authors: Bernard Roth
The Achievement Habit (2 page)
Encountering a different breed of cat forever changed a small piece of this child’s worldview. In the same way, we don’t realize how many of our fixed views of the world are based on limited samples of reality. It is my hope that this book will bring yellow-eyed cats into your world.
Y
ELLOW-EYED CATS WERE BROUGHT
into Paddy’s world. Until the class, he had not thought of himself as an innovator or creator. He was achieving in the more commonly accepted sense—that is, he had become an officer in the marines and he was doing well as a journalist—but he had not
had any breakthrough
personal
achievements that were of his own making. He was just doing a good job walking the paths others had created. In my class he learned not to recoil or procrastinate when a new idea arose, but to act. Just that small insight, which we call bias toward action (which we’ll discuss later), has changed his worldview and pushed him down several roads in the last two years. He prototyped and produced several new products for the radio program
Marketplace
, published a book about economics (
Man vs. Markets
), completed a previously abandoned novel, and started on the road to building his own business.
Today, three years after leaving the d.school, Paddy is making another gut-wrenching leap, from the safety of being an employee to the wide-open space of being his own boss. Part of him is screaming in terror at this idea, and the part that channels what he learned in the class is telling him to go one small step at a time, to prototype his ideas, and to trust the design thinking process and himself.
You can do the same thing. As you read on, you will find out how you can become more effective at solving problems, more focused on things that matter, and more satisfied with your life. This book will open your eyes to the power you have to change your life for the better. It will give you confidence to finally do things you have always wanted to do while ridding yourself of issues that stand in the way of your full potential. And the
experience
of taking control of your life will change your reality, making it possible to achieve almost anything you seriously want to do.
A NOTE ABOUT DESIGN THINKING
So what is this design thinking stuff, anyway?
Design thinking is a set of general practices a group of us has developed over the years that are effective in solving design challenges. A design challenge can apply to just about any kind of product or experience. It’s not just about how to build a better mousetrap (though that’s part of it); it’s also about things that are not physical objects: how to improve the wait time at a popular amusement park, how to clean up a highway, how to more efficiently get food to needy people, how to improve online dating, and so on.
Design thinking is an amorphous concept that was given its name by David Kelley, another Stanford professor and cofounder of IDEO, when he was trying to explain that successful designers have a different mind-set and approach from most people. We all adopted and adapted it at the d.school, and the idea took off like a shot. Suddenly everyone was talking about this new concept, design thinking, something I’d been practicing for half a century without having a proper name for it.
It’s difficult to give an exact definition for design thinking, however, but because I’m one of its “inventors” I can certainly give you an idea of the principles, which we’ll get into throughout the book:
1.
Empathize. This is where it starts. When you design, you’re not primarily doing it for yourself; you’re doing it with other people’s needs and desires in mind. Whether you’re designing a better roller coaster or a better hospital
waiting room experience, the idea is to care about the users’ experiences and figure out how to help. In this step you’re learning what the issues are.
2.
Define the problem.
5
Narrow down which problem you’re going to solve or which question you’re going to answer.
3.
Ideate. Generate possible solutions using any means you like—brainstorming, mind mapping, sketching on napkins . . . however you work best.
4.
Prototype. Without going crazy to make anything perfect (or even close to it), build your project in physical form, or develop the plans for what you’re going to enact.
5.
Test and get feedback.
Though I’ve just given you a list of principles, it rarely works that neatly or follows that specific order. You may get to step 4 and realize you need to go back to step 2, or repeat step 3 several times. That’s built into the process; one of the other important concepts of design thinking is that failure can be a valuable part of the process. “The only thing to fear is fear itself,” said Franklin D. Roosevelt, and I say the only thing to fear is not learning from your mistakes. You can fail lots of times as long as you learn from these failures and figure a solution out in the end.
We also focus on action—
doing
rather than overthinking. In one of our classes, “Launchpad,” professors lead you through starting your own company in ten weeks, and by the end of that time you’ll be producing income. Or you can go to a conventional business school and spend a year plotting and planning before taking an actual step.
Design thinking is very group-focused. We practice radical collaboration—both as professors and as students.
What’s different about my work and this book is that design thinking is normally applied
outward
—toward building solutions for other people’s problems in a business or school setting. My special interest is in using it toward improving your own life and interpersonal relationships, designing the best version of yourself.
While much of my teaching is rooted in this framework, not all of it is. There are many exercises throughout the book that you can try on for size. My view is that you take what’s useful to you and spin it in whatever direction works. Sometimes I’ll think someone has done an exercise “wrong,” only to find out that he got more out of it than I’d even anticipated. I’m a big fan of whatever works.
It is in this spirit that I say, Let’s get started.
How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
—E. M. Forster
Your life has no meaning.
I’m not telling you this to make you think about jumping off the nearest bridge; instead I mean it in a much more contemplative way. Let’s first acknowledge that the meaning we find in people, objects, and our own circumstances is subjective. These things have no inherent meaning. Functional and dysfunctional behavior both result from choices people make based on meanings they create. This also means that we have the power to alter our perceptions, revising perceptions that bring us down and enhancing those that help us. Your outlook on life is deeply entwined in your propensity for success. Miserable blowhards can achieve, however they still wind up miserable. That’s not success. Success is doing what you love
and
being happy about it.
To learn how to get a better handle on your perceptions, emotions, and behavior, it is useful to look at how you think.
Mike, a graduate student in my class at Stanford University, planned to design a musical instrument for that summer’s Burning Man festival as his project. The festival is held each year the week before Labor Day in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada; among the main attractions at Burning Man are massive art pieces, machines, and structures created by the participants. Mike got the idea of doing his project in my class because we both attend the festival. Mike wanted to construct a wearable pipe organ powered in a most unusual way: it would contain a small fire-powered boiler that would then provide steam that could be directed through different pipes to produce music.
The project seemed overly ambitious to me, yet I did not discourage Mike because he appeared highly motivated. Our agreement was that he would come to see me once a week and report on his progress.
Things didn’t go according to plan. At first he visited me sporadically with excuses and little progress to show, and I soon tired of wasting time for both of us on these meetings. I told Mike to forget about the meetings unless he needed me for some reason; I would wait to see the final result.
When the festival arrived, I went at a prearranged time to Mike’s campsite at Burning Man. I brought along Adrian and Steve, two very capable engineers who were part of my Burning Man group and who had a keen interest in seeing the final product. Mike’s presentation was a disaster. Clearly he had not finished, and during his demonstration the instrument worked badly or not at all. Mike was embarrassed, I was embarrassed, and Adrian and Steve were embarrassed for him. Had I been asked to evaluate Mike for a job at that moment I would not have been able to recommend him in good conscience.
Fast-forward three years. I was again at Burning Man with Adrian and Steve, watching a dance performance by a group called the Flaming Lotus Girls, done in conjunction with an amazing animated sculpture called
Serpent Mother
, a 168-foot-long metallic sculpture of a skeletal serpent coiled around her egg. Propane fire ran down her spine from forty-one flamethrowers that erupted from the top of her vertebrae and shot flames twenty feet in the air. Her head and jaws were hydraulically operated. The three of us stood there transfixed, as did thousands of other participants. Everyone agreed it was by far the most impressive project at the festival. We watched for a while and then wandered off.
A few hours later I returned by myself. By this time the dancers were gone, and the crowd had thinned. I was able to get up close to look at the details of
Serpent Mother
’s construction. The mechanical engineer in me became curious about the joints connecting the movable head, and I asked one of the attendants about its structure. He told me he didn’t know, but “that guy over there holding the controller knows everything.” I looked up, and there was Mike. I walked over to him, and without hesitation we hugged and started to talk.
It turned out he was very active in the Flaming Lotus Girls organization and their mission to bring more women into the maker culture that stands at the intersection of sculpture, kinetics, robotics, pyrotechnics, and electronic technology; they use a collaborative process that empowers participants to learn new skills and become active artists. Obviously I was very impressed by what he had accomplished.
On my eight-hour drive home after the festival I had plenty of time to think about my experience. I remembered how embarrassed I had felt for Mike about his class project, and thought
of how proud I was now of his new endeavor. Based on my previous experience, I did not have a high opinion of his abilities; yet, if anyone asked me now, I would not hesitate to give him a strong recommendation. Clearly Mike was not who I had thought he was, and his story certainly was much more nuanced and complex than I’d imagined.
“Did I redeem myself?” he wrote to me afterward, and I had to laugh. Yes, he did.
Getting to know someone can take somewhere around forever. People are always changing and evolving for both good and bad, and we are all capable of reinvention. I don’t know what Mike had going on in his life during my class. My guess is that he was just a typical student who procrastinated and didn’t place enough value on his schoolwork. At the time, that’s all he was to me: I had written him off as a slacker based on that single impression. That was the meaning I had assigned him. I had not stopped to consider that there might be greatness in him.
The lesson to me was clear: Nothing is what you think it is. You give everything its meaning.
In my class, I do an exercise in which I go around the room and ask participants to single out something in their lives—anything. Then I tell them to say that this thing has no meaning. I’m showing them that meaning isn’t inherent in an object or person. So, for example, during my turn, I might say my job has no meaning, and the next person might say that his wife has no meaning. This might be followed by others saying the d.school has no meaning, their shoes have no meaning, their shirt
has no meaning, their hair has no meaning, their weight has no meaning, their bike has no meaning, their math ability has no meaning. From minutiae to things that seem of obvious high importance, they’re all lumped into the same category: things that have no intrinsic meaning.
After that the entire group starts mentioning items all at once so that no one is listening to one particular person and everyone is talking at the same time, each creating her own list of stuff that has no meaning in her life. It’s a lot of noise and a lot of fun. The cacophony and pandemonium free people, so they don’t feel as awkward saying out loud that things they otherwise hold dear have no meaning.
If you are alone you can still do this exercise. Saying things aloud, even to yourself, can be very freeing.
Take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes for a few minutes. Then open them and move your attention around the room from one object to another. Each time you notice an object, say it has no meaning (as in, “The chair has no meaning”). Then think of people in your family and in your life and things you hold dear, such as your biggest accomplishments and most prized possessions. Name each, saying it has no meaning. When you are finished, sit quietly for a few minutes and then reflect on your experience.
My colleague Sheri found it difficult to say that her daughter had no meaning. Of course her daughter has meaning, however, the meaning Sheri gives her daughter is not preordained. Some mothers abandon their daughters. Some mothers murder their daughters. Some disdain and deride them, and others cherish
and support them. The variety of possible mother-daughter relationships and the meanings mothers attach to these relationships are endless.
The point of the exercise is not to get the participants to change any of their relationships. Rather, it is to empower them with the realization that they have
chosen
the meanings they give to all of their relationships. As a result, participants often become more aware of how important a person or item is to them (as in the case of Sheri, who cherished her relationship with her daughter even more after this exercise), and they realize that they have the ability to change the meaning something has to them.
For example, experiencing failure in an endeavor may initially be painful, but it is rarely catastrophic unless you give it that meaning. My colleague Georges was devastated when his son committed suicide after being jilted. The young lover took events that would probably be forgotten in short order and magnified them into literal life-and-death matters. It is easy to see the tragedy, both in the event itself and in the lack of perspective. Yet many of us lack this perspective, usually on a smaller scale, and it’s hard to step back and see this in ourselves.
Once you understand that you can
choose
what meaning and importance to place on something, you can also understand that it is you, not external circumstances, who determines the quality of your life.
As is likely true for most people, there have been many incidents in my life about which I can now laugh, even though they seemed terrible at the time. The earliest I can remember was the day I came home for lunch in tears from my fourth-grade
class. I had been making noise in the stairwell and a teacher, hearing me, told me that the offense would go on my “permanent record card.” I was devastated, believing that this record would follow me forever. My mother attempted to soothe me, telling me it was nothing to be concerned about, but I couldn’t be convinced. Of course, years later I figured out that there was no such thing as a permanent record card. And the bigger question is, even if there had been, would it have really made a difference in my life?
A similar incident happened in graduate school. I was much older and should have been much wiser—alas, I wasn’t. I was studying for my PhD and took an advanced course, “Mathematical Methods in Physics,” from a young Nobel Prize winner. The final examination relied heavily on some things well known to physics majors that I had not heard of and that had never been mentioned in the class. I got an F. When I talked to the professor about it, he told me, “Well, you are an engineer. If I took a music course, I would expect to fail too.”
I didn’t cry to my mother, otherwise the situation played out almost exactly as my fourth-grade trauma had. I was miserable and went to see my thesis professor. He assured me that it was nothing to be concerned about. Still, it bothered me for a long time. Eventually, of course, I discovered that no one cared about the F grade on my transcript. Even if they did, would it really have made a meaningful difference in my life? Nope. I did take the next course in the sequence, with another professor, and earned an A+. And guess what? No one noticed that either.
In life, typically, the only one keeping a scorecard of your successes and failures is you, and there are ample opportunities to learn the lessons you need to learn, even if you didn’t get it right the first—or fifth—time.
During a workshop I ran in Bulgaria during the Cold War, I showed a videotape of some student robotics projects to the group. We broke for lunch, and when I asked for my tape back, I was told it had been locked away for safekeeping and that they were tracking down the person who had mistakenly left with the key.
The story seemed a little odd to me. Later in the afternoon I mentioned this to one of my friends who was also in the workshop. He told me in confidence that the delay was because a professor and his assistants—people I knew as friends—had taken my tape elsewhere to have it copied. Eventually my tape was returned, and they stuck with their original story about the reason for the delay. What nerve! I was hurt and angry that they had betrayed me and violated our friendship.
When I gave my second talk at the workshop, I spoke about scientific interchanges fostering friendship and trust. While doing this, I looked pointedly at the perpetrators. I was sure they understood that I knew what they had done and was slyly reprimanding them—still I wasn’t satisfied. Upset, I went off into the woods to sulk by myself, thinking I would show them how wrong they were. I would leave early, skipping the gala closing banquet.
As I walked in the woods, I kept festering. Eventually, my “nothing has any meaning” exercise came to mind. I ran through the events of the day in my head, listing off each item and repeating that it had no meaning. When I got to “This tape has no meaning,” a light bulb came on in my head. It could not have been truer. There was absolutely nothing on that tape of any special value to me or to them. What were they planning to do with it? I still don’t know. Give it to their intelligence agency?
Show it to their students? Watch to get ideas for projects? I had already shown the tape; there was nothing private or groundbreaking on it. If they had asked, I would gladly have let them copy it, so what was the big deal? I had given the tape a meaning it did not really possess.
They should have asked, and they didn’t. Big deal. Why was I about to let this ruin my night? Once I cleared my head, I returned to the hotel and ended up having a wonderful time at the banquet that evening.