Category: work

Lines of excellence

Eric Johnson

In a press conference just weeks before his death, President Kennedy was asked by a reporter if he liked his job. Kennedy’s response:

“Well, I find the work rewarding. Whether I am going to stay and what my intentions are and all the rest, it seems to me it is still a good many, many months away. But as far as the job of President goes, it is rewarding. And I have given before to this group the definition of happiness of the Greeks, and I will define it again: it is full use of your powers along lines of excellence. I find, therefore, the Presidency provides some happiness.”

The “full use of your powers along lines of excellence”.

Powers?

I’m late to the Marvel Cinematic Universe party, and the last few films have had me wondering who many of the superheroes are and what exactly are their powers.

Well, what exactly are your powers? I’m not completely sure what mine are.

Whatever they are, I know I’m not putting them to their “full use”.

Passive mode prevails over active mode way too often and the easy distractions of this age make it even harder to muster the will, to fully tap into my powers.

The looming regret just around the corner will be that of unfulfilled potential and unlived life. Powers wasted, left dormant and unsummoned.

Snap out of it, this half-slumber that most of us are muddling through. Fully use your gifts. Make them true gifts that offer value beyond yourself.

And be awesome in the process. Aim for excellence. Be discontent with just good enough.

Full use of your powers along lines of excellence.

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.” –Robert Louis Stevenson

The Journey is the Thing

Eric Johnson

“Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.” Tal Ben-Shahar in Happier

It’s about pointing yourself in a direction and toward an end that matters to you, and then fully inhabiting the journey toward that end. But it’s this moment, this step in the journey that is the true destination.

President Kennedy, in one of his final press conferences, responded to a question about how he was liking being President with a reference to the ancient Greek definition of happiness as “the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”

That resonates. Tapping the limits of your potential and employing the full use of your powers in the quest toward some noble destination. An excellent journey.

Hard work, hardly working

Eric Johnson

“What you choose to work on, and who you choose to work with, are far more important than how hard you work.” –Naval Ravikant

Hard work overrated?

Yes, especially if the “what” and “who” are undervalued.

Hard work and efficiency are actually detrimental if you’re heading in the wrong direction with the wrong people.

Get the who, what, and why right and the work won’t seem hard at all.

(By the way, Ravikant is a great Twitter follow—@naval.)

Work and play

Eric Johnson

“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.” –Arnold Toynbee

Flow states are the blissful blur that line is calling for.

“Happiness is absorption.” –T.E. Lawrence

Kurosawa on peaking at 80

Eric Johnson

I make a point in a talk I do for student groups that there’s no hurry to make your mark or to “hit it big”.

There seems to be more pressure than ever for young people to not only have their career figured out right out of college, but to be rich and famous by the time they’re, say, 30. Crazy.

I challenge these 20-year-olds to instead aim to be awesome by the time they’re 60.

This advice goes over with a resounding thud every time I share it. But I’m convinced that you will make better decisions and actually grow and improve faster by choosing the long game instead of trying to conquer the world in your youth.

Even DaVinci’s first great success, The Last Supper, didn’t come till he was almost 50 years old.

Recently I saw this letter from a then 77-year-old Akira Kurosawa, the great Japanese filmmaker, wishing a happy 70th birthday to fellow filmmaker Ingmar Bergman:

Remarkable. At 77, he was expecting his best work was still ahead of him.

You don’t have to have it figured out. You won’t ever. Do your best where you are. Be excellent in just the next five minutes. Don’t force it or rush past this moment or compare yourself to some arbitrary or pointless standard set by others.

The arc of your life, should you be fortunate to have it counted in many decades, could bend gently and satisfyingly towards a kind of excellence you can’t even imagine from your current vantage point.

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” –Henry David Thoreau

A calling

Eric Johnson

My wife has a knack for making things beautiful and making beautiful things. It’s her gift and a noble calling. Even her handwriting is artful. You should see the cakes she decorates. She cares about the small details and delights in delighting others.

I love that about her. Making things beautiful is her calling. It’s not her job. She’s not a professional artist, though her artistry infuses all she does.

We all need a calling, whether it aligns with a career or not. A gift to give, a contribution to make. What will be your life?

Making excellence a habit

Eric Johnson

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives —choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” –Aristotle

Plan to be excellent. Winging it only takes you so far.

Craft routines and habits that obligate you to take action regularly on your plan.

Determine what’s most important, then be determined in consistently making that your priority.

Be awesome on purpose.

Delete yo’ self: Aziz Ansari’s unconnected life

Eric Johnson

This recent GQ interview with Aziz Ansari highlight’s the comedian’s unconventional approach to the Information Age. The interviewer seems incredulous as he comprehends just how much of an outlier Ansari is:

I heard you deleted the Internet from your phone. And that you deleted Twitter and Instagram and e-mail. No way that’s true, right?

It is! Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on The New York Times to see if there’s a new thing, it’s not even about the content. It’s just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling. You’re not going to be able to control yourself. So the only way to fight that is to take yourself out of the equation and remove all these things. What happens is, eventually you forget about it. You don’t care anymore. When I first took the browser off my phone, I’m like, [gasp] How am I gonna look stuff up? But most of the shit you look up, it’s not stuff you need to know. All those websites you read while you’re in a cab, you don’t need to look at any of that stuff. It’s better to just sit and be in your own head for a minute. I wanted to stop that thing where I get home and look at websites for an hour and a half, checking to see if there’s a new thing. And read a book instead. I’ve been doing it for a couple months, and it’s worked. I’m reading, like, three books right now. I’m putting something in my mind. It feels so much better than just reading the Internet and not remembering anything.

What about important news and politics?

I was reading all this Trump stuff, and it doesn’t feel like we’re reading news for the reason we used to, which was to get a better sense of what’s going on in the world and to enrich yourself by being aware. It seems like we’re reading wrestling rumors. It’s like reading about what happened on Monday Night Raw. When you take a step back, it all just seems so sensationalized. Trump’s gonna get impeached! No, he’s not. None of that shit’s happening. But you are going to read all the articles. So if you take yourself out of it, you’re not infected with this toxicity all the time. Also, guess what? Everything is fine! I’m not out of the loop on anything. Like, if something real is going down, I’ll find out about it.

Yeah, but take yesterday’s insane breaking story, for example.

Wait, tell me what it is. I don’t even know if I know what it is.

You didn’t hear about Pence stepping down?

Mike Pence stepped down yesterday?!

Dude! Yes. Mike Pence is no longer the vice president. He resigned because of the Russia investigation.

Wait, wait, wait. That really happened?!

No. It didn’t.

Okay, see! [laughs]

But that could happen! And you could have missed it.

No, see, I would have found out now—like, now. I would have found out, and then I’d be like, Wow, that’s crazy.

But you’re choosing to be uninformed.

I’m not choosing ignorance. I’m choosing to not watch wrestling.

Ansari’s career seems to be on a roll. Bringing Tom Haverford to the world through one of my all time favorite shows, Parks And Recreation, is a heck of an accomplishment on its own. But he also created, writes, and stars in his own critically acclaimed TV show, Master Of None. He’s producing quality and quantity at a high level. And he’s not paying attention at all to the constant flow of “new things” most of us fill our time with.

I’m guessing the most prolific creators and most productive knowledge workers take an Ansari-like approach to their time and attention. They at least carve out distraction-free days, times, and places to get things done or just to have moments of calm and quiet. One of author Jonathan Franzen’s rules for writers: “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”

How much of significance would you really miss if you deleted even a few of those internet portals that consume your attention?

And how much could you learn and grow and produce and connect authentically if you freed up some of your head space from the attention suck of your flickering devices?

Do you even remember what it feels like to be bored? Can you, as Ansari suggested, “just sit and be in your own head for a minute”?

Can you engage in a long and winding conversation with a fellow human being without glancing at a screen or flinching at that buzzing notification in your pocket?

I deleted Facebook and Instagram from my phone a year ago. I don’t miss them. At all. I used to open The New York Times and The Washington Post every morning to check the headlines. I haven’t done that in a year. (I still have a Twitter problem. It’s my internet version of “treat yo’ self”. I’m no Aziz Ansari. Yet. I still have some Tom Haverford in me.)

Delete yo’ self (forgive me) from those things that suck your time and attention—basically your life—without offering worthwhile value or meaning in return.

Make something wonderful

Eric Johnson

I’m a sucker for an Apple product announcement. Yesterday’s event inaugurated the Steve Jobs Theater at the new Apple campus. The theater looks stunningly gorgeous, as you would expect from the world’s most prominent design-centric company.

The products announced were almost overshadowed by the venue and by the touching tribute that opened the keynote. The first voice heard as the event began was that of Steve Jobs himself. It was a recording of what I’m assuming was an internal speech Jobs gave to Apple employees years ago. It’s worth watching just the first five minutes of the keynote to appreciate this moment.

Here’s the text of that opening message:

“There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there. And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands.You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation.” –Steve Jobs

A lovely thought. To express your appreciation for all you’ve been given by others, “make something wonderful, and put it out there.”

Do your part for humanity. Make good art. Be a craftsman of your work. Give your full attention and your best effort to whatever has been entrusted to you.

Shine where you can. Be awesome.

It’s a small price to pay in gratitude to those who’ve given their best art, who’ve made something wonderful and put it out there for us.

Darwin’s plodding path to brilliance

Eric Johnson

I filed away this Farnam Street article and just now read it. It’s a great take on what made Charles Darwin such a transformational thinker.

In short, Darwin wasn’t gifted with an off-the-charts IQ. He was no Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. But he could focus intently on minute details and stick with an idea for a very long time. And he was relentless about fully considering any contrary evidence, any doubt or kernel of hesitation about his own ideas.

He clearly had what turned out to be a crucially valuable ability to sit with the discomfort of not knowing, of probing deeply into how he might be wrong.

Most of us are inclined to be content with our own opinions and never entertain contrary viewpoints. Blissful ignorance is a thing.

So much of current public discourse makes no pretense of genuinely trying to understand the opposing view.

Criticism is painful to absorb, and I know I don’t seek it out.

But Darwin squarely faced any sign that he might be in error. And with diligence and vigilance he sought to test and to prove and to meticulously weigh every argument that challenged his thesis. 

He could have published his landmark theory many years earlier than he did, but instead he patiently pursued the long game to be certain his idea had the full weight of the most compelling evidence. 

Talent tends to be overrated. Raw intellectual horsepower is a wonderful gift. But it is effort and persistence and a willingness to trudge through adversity and obstacles that just might vault you into a level of accomplishment that mere talent alone will not. 

On having the courage to look silly in pursuit of excellence

Eric Johnson

“Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.” –Lou Brock

via Shane Parrish

My ego puts me at a disadvantage.

If I don’t care that I might come across as weak or naive or silly, I’m open to possibilities and flexible and more willing to try something daring.

But if I’m worried about protecting my image, I’m significantly less likely to accomplish anything worthwhile.

There’s safety in sticking with conventional wisdom and not being an outlier. Of course, “caution is the devil.”

The author Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of Wilt Chamberlain’s free throw problem in his excellent podcast, Revisionist History. (What a great podcast series, by the way. Every episode is compelling.)

Chamberlain was one of the all-time great basketball players, dominant in every phase of the game except one—free throws. His teammate, Rick Barry, was one of the best free throw shooters, but he used an unconventional method, the granny shot, an underhanded and surer shot. 

Barry coached Chamberlain on the granny shot, and Chamberlain switched to it—for a while. But using the granny shot subjected the player to the chance of being ridiculed, by other players and by fans. When Chamberlain used the granny shot, his free throw percentage improved significantly. But he refused to stay with it, because as he later wrote in his autobiography, “I felt silly… like a sissy.”

Instead, his brilliant career was marred by his terrible 51 percent free throw percentage.

I’m a big fan of the high school football coach, Kevin Kelley of Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, who is famous for defying the conventional wisdom about how to play football. He rarely punts on fourth down and almost always calls an onside kick when his team kicks off. And he’s remarkably successful, with six state championships and many appearances in the state playoffs. He was recently named USA Today coach of the year. 

When asked why more coaches don’t adopt his methods, he said “It’s simply risk aversion. People are scared they will have to suffer ridicule by fans, players and the media.”

If you don’t care about looking silly or making a fool of yourself, you’ll have so much room to grow and to fulfill your potential.

For me, I simply need to more regularly just say “I don’t know” rather than scrambling for any response to avoid looking clueless. So many of us feel like we will look bad if we don’t seem sure or confident. It’s acknowledging the not-knowing that often lights the way to breakthroughs.

Have the courage to look silly in the pursuit of excellence.

Do something amazing

Eric Johnson


I just discovered this message above the exit of my daughter’s middle school.

As you exit this week today, do something amazing before you go. 

Make a connection that you’ve been meaning to make. Be that person that lights up the room, that summons smiles even from strangers. 

Solve a problem. Get started on that big idea. Focus intently today, without distraction, for a solid hour or more and make something that delights you. 

Uncork your enthusiasm. Make room for wonder. 

Do something amazing.

Cal Newport: Quit social media

Eric Johnson

Cal Newport has a knack for counterintuitive insight.

His book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, was a compelling challenge to quit trying to find your elusive vocational passion and instead focus on obtaining the kind of mastery that leads to genuine career fulfillment. (Pick a career path you wouldn’t mind getting really good at and stick with it for a while.)

His most recent book, Deep Work, is a wake up call that most of us are doing work wrong. Busyness is not the same as effectiveness. He exhorts us to escape the trivial distractions that drain our time and attention and instead block out time and space for focused, deep work.

Now he’s shared his recent TEDx Talk that is a provocative encouragement to quit social media altogether.

He makes a solid argument. Social media is primarily entertainment. And it’s particularly, deviously addictive and distracting.

Weeks ago I deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from my phone, and I don’t miss them. 

Tweetbot, though, is still on my home screen and is my most used app by far. Whenever I get even the slightest bit restless, it’s off to Twitter I go. I can disappear there for a long time, mindlessly scrolling, hypnotized by whatever others are tweeting at the moment, clicking links that lead me further into interesting if not important diversions.

I have unearthed some real insights this way, but most of my time browsing internet time-sinkholes is sadly unaccounted for by meaningful results. 

I’m not ready to delete my social media accounts. But I can put a hedge around my attention and structure my time more rigidly to get real work done. 

I’ve found that my best work comes after I’ve spent around 30-45 minutes ramping up my focus without taking breaks to check email or Twitter. It’s like I need that warm up time before flow sets in and then magic can happen. 

Two hours can fly by once I get in that zone. And that zone is a happy place to be and exponentially more productive and more fertile for breakthroughs than ten times as much time spent flitting about the internet. 

Quit social media? Maybe. 

But at least shrink its hold on your attention and on the little time you have to make something worthwhile each day.  

Mike Birbiglia’s excellent advice

Eric Johnson

The comedian and filmmaker offers his unsolicited advice, ostensibly to those who want a career as a performer. But these tips apply to anyone who wants to make something meaningful on their own terms.

Here’s his final tip:

6. CLEVERNESS IS OVERRATED, AND HEART IS UNDERRATED

Plus, there are fewer people competing for heart, so you have a better chance of getting noticed. Sometimes people say, “One thing you have to offer in your work is yourself.” I disagree. I think it’s the only thing.

Career goal: Spark more smiles

Eric Johnson

I laughed with delight when I first saw this tweet. 

It made me think fondly of people I know who light up a room with their kindness or humor or enthusiasm. 

And there just aren’t enough people who are like that. 

The thing is, though, everyone could be like that. 

Why so serious, bro? Why so numb to the wonder and the possibilities all around you?

How can you be that person that sparks smiles and generates even little jolts of joy?

“O wondrous creatures, by what strange miracle do you so often not smile?” –Hafiz

Relax already: David Letterman on ego and perspective

Eric Johnson

David Letterman reflects on no longer having his television show:

“We did this television show—my friends and I—for a very long time. It’s probably like anyone else’s professional pursuit. When you are doing it for so long, and for each day—I have always likened it to running a restaurant—because you get response to the day’s endeavor immediately. Either from the audience or the ratings, but you know as early as the next day how you did.

And because of this introspection, you believe that what you are doing is of great importance and that it is affecting mankind wall-to-wall. And then when you get out of it you realize, oh, well, that wasn’t true at all. (laughter) It was just silliness. And when that occurred to me, I felt so much better and I realized, geez, I don’t think I care that much about television anymore. I feel foolish for having been misguided by my own ego for so many years.”*

When you are in the middle of a thing—your job, an organization, or some silly drama—it seems gigantic and so obviously important.

But if you could zoom out and view it from some distance of time or space, that thing that seemed like a big deal would be revealed for what it is—a tiny blip, a miniscule drop, an otherwise insignificant thing in the vast scheme of all the things.

Not that when you’re in it you shouldn’t give it your full attention and your best effort.

Just know that everything changes, and every thing, ultimately, is quite tiny in the context of all that is.

The thing that stresses you or weighs you down as you trudge home or as you start your day is probably not as big as you imagine.

This, too, no matter how important it may seem in the moment, shall pass.

The center of the universe is everywhere, but you are not the center of the universe.

Relax already.

 

Lin-Manuel Miranda on leaving college with “stuff” already created

Eric Johnson

Lin-Manuel Miranda is the man of the moment with Hamilton’s incredible success.

This Rolling Stone feature sheds some light on his drive.

He has written his way to the top. Like the character he portrays on stage, Alexander Hamilton, Miranda is a prolific writer.

Here’s Miranda in the Rolling Stone interview talking about his creative output while he was a college student:

I finished college with a ton of stuff written. I was painfully aware of the financial sacrifices my parents were making so that I could go to college, so I was not going to just leave with a B.A. in something. I was going to leave with stuff. I wrote a show every year of college. Not for credit, but because I needed to be leaving with more than just a B.A. So in that way, I’m very Hamilton-esque, in that I’m aware of both time and of the incredible opportunity that I’m lucky to have, and not wanting to squander either.

“I needed to be leaving with more than just a B.A….” Incredible.

He didn’t wait on a degree or permission or a paying gig to start doing what he wanted to do.

He acted as if, as if he already was who he wanted to be.

What if we just started doing what we think we want to be doing without waiting to be picked or to qualify somehow.

Miranda didn’t wait. He’s a smashing success not because he paid his dues or bought into the system or followed a path others laid out. 

He made it big because he got busy doing the work that was calling to him as soon as it called.

He picked himself. 

 

Showing my work: The Good Life, San Diego

Eric Johnson

Screen Shot 2016-05-26 at 2.44.56 PM

I’m giving the opening talk at my professional association’s annual conference in San Diego next Tuesday.

I’m not ready. Yet.

I’ve had a theme in my mind for a few months now, but the ideas are just now coming together.

When I’ve been asked to do these kinds of conference talks, I’ve been fortunate to be given the freedom to talk about what I choose, whatever I think would be of interest to this audience.

I do begin with the audience in mind. If I were in their seats, what would I want to hear? How would I want to feel? What ought to be said at this event, at this time?

But I’m also channeling whatever key idea has been churning in my brain recently, and having an audience is an opportunity to explore that idea in a structured way.

My aim is to awaken possibility and to send my audience out better than they were before they walked in.

I don’t know how effective I’ve been at transforming audiences, but I know that making the attempt to convey something meaningful to others certainly transforms me.

If you’re given a chance to express yourself, to speak or write or connect with others in any way, take it. It might make a difference for someone else, and it will make a difference for you.

*The screenshot of my desktop today shows my work in progress on this talk, and includes the apps Keynote, iA Writer, and Notes. I collected ideas in Notes on my phone, then began connecting them together with a narrative written in iA Writer. Lastly, I create slides in Keynote.

 

Coach Smart has a process for building relationships. You should, too.

Eric Johnson

Kirby Smart is the new head football coach at my alma mater. It’s Coach Smart’s alma mater, too.

This recent column highlights some of the methods the new coaching staff is implementing, and this part stood out to me:

Smart said the most important charge he has given his staff is to build trust with the players. To do that, he has directed Georgia’s assistants to meet with at least one player every day, and they’re to talk about anything but football. He also has the coaches ride the team buses to the temporary practice fields at the Club Sports Complex and never with their own position group.

“It’s about developing relationships with players,” he said. “If they don’t trust you, they will not give you everything (they) have.”

The cynic could see this as leveraging relationship-building merely to get better results on the field. Are these relationship efforts simply a means to an end, a savvy tactic to make the team more successful?

However, my own career experience has demonstrated repeatedly that it is indeed all about relationships. The culture of an organization or any kind of team is shaped primarily by the quality and authenticity of the relationships within the group.

It’s common for the leaders of an organization to be generally in favor of strong relationships and yet have not much to show for that sentiment.

What’s remarkable about Coach Smart’s approach is he’s building a system to take action on something most people passively hope will head in the right direction just because of good intentions.

Putting a system in place to support, realize, and build accountability for your good intentions is crucial.

I have learned this in my job recently, and it was my employees who showed the way. The student tour guides who lead the campus tours at our university have always been directed generally to make the tour experience conversational, to get to know the prospective students on their tour. But the tour guides systematized this directive themselves by setting an expectation that by the end of each tour they would have had an individual conversation with every prospective student on the tour and know each one by name.

That focus and that specificity has made our campus tour well known for its surprisingly personal nature and its emphasis on relationships. Visitors routinely remark on how delightfully surprised they were by the genuine connection our tour guides made with them.

It’s the clear, measurable expectation, though, that elevated the experience we offer into a consistently remarkable success.

What if we built systems and habits and routines, a process even, to make sure we take action on our professed priorities, especially about something as important as the quality of our relationships?

Schedule a standing date night with your spouse for every month and have the babysitter pre-booked.

Schedule a weekly time to call your parents or siblings or children.

Put time on your calendar to invest in conversations with your coworkers. I appreciate that Coach Smart forbid the assistant coaches to talk football in the daily meetings with individual players. Your relationship with your team members should be a relationship with a fellow human being, not just a coworker.

For family, friends, work, and community, be intentional about building and strengthening the quality of your relationships.

Make a plan. Put it on a calendar. And get busy investing your time in what matters most.

 

 

 

Showing my work: The Five C’s of Leadership

Eric Johnson

Screen Shot 2016-04-27 at 2.18.31 PM

I was asked recently to guest lecture in a leadership class at my university.

My original plan was to do a very informal talk without slides. I was going to base it on my Five C’s of Leadership post.

The morning of the class, though, one of the students who works for me and is also in the class told me I should do slides because he wanted his classmates to see my approach to using visuals in a presentation.

So, I whipped up some slides pretty quickly.

Now, I’ve been asked by another student who was in that lecture to offer the same talk to an organization he’s in. I tweaked the slides today, and I’ll speak to his student leadership society tonight.

A good presentation is about the connection between the speaker and the audience. It’s not about the quality or content of the slides. If your slides can stand alone, then what was the point of showing up to speak? Just email your slide deck to the audience.

But I find real value in connecting strong images and key words on screen with the message I’m sharing. Visuals done right can make the ideas resonate and stick with an audience in a way that just hearing the talk can’t.