Category: work

Practice makes awesome

Eric Johnson14 Comments

I’m reading a brilliant book, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, which was recommended by one of my students. (Thanks, Sarah Elizabeth.) The author explores what accounts for those people who possess extraordinary talent. How do the greats get great? This book points toward an unexpected answer which just might be the Holy Grail for anyone who wants to be world class, who wants to get really, really good at something.

There is some fascinating science explained in the book, and a previously mysterious and lightly regarded substance in our bodies, myelin, takes the spotlight. Just being aware of this substance and how it works could change your life. Go read the book, but I will tell you that the more myelin you develop in your body, the more awesome you will become. LeBron, Tiger, Yo-Yo Ma… those guys and anyone who are masters of their crafts are loaded with myelin.

You want the shortcut, the quick recipe for loading up on myelin and generating the kind of awesomeness that has made masters out of regular humans for centuries? Here you go:

Practice.

You knew this, right? Most of us have now heard of the 10,000 hour rule: it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get really good at something. But there’s a bit more to it. Masters practice in a certain way that makes all the difference. “Deep practice” is necessary to get great. It’s the kind of practice where you keep bumping up against your limitations and sticking with it till you overcome and move on to a higher level.

I learned to juggle when I was a teenager, thinking girls would be impressed. They were not. (Toddlers, though, are wowed. Who knew?) It was a struggle when I was learning. I dropped a lot of bean bags, got frustrated, but kept going until I mastered the basic three bag juggle. But, from then on, whenever I practiced juggling I just did the same trick over and over. And I never got better. Never learned anything more than how to juggle three items in the same pattern. A master juggler would have kept going, pushing past the basics, failing again and again with new moves and tricks until finally gaining mastery.

Deep practice requires facing struggle and persevering. And repeating. Over and over. Don’t just practice the easy stuff, the stuff you’ve already got. Push yourself to conquer the hard stuff.

And practice daily. Myelin, which is created by this repetitive, deep practice, is living tissue and needs to be nurtured and replenished

You want to be a writer? Write every day, even when, especially when you don’t feel it flowing. Want to perform? Seek out every opportunity to perform, to stand before audiences. See what works and what doesn’t, and then hone in on getting every little detail sharpened.

What’s the Kryptonite that can weaken the skills of a master? Don’t let them practice. From Coyle’s book:

As Vladimir Horowitz, the virtuoso pianist who kept performing into his eighties, put it, “If I skip practice for one day, I notice. If I skip practice for two days, my wife notices. If I skip for three days, the world notices.”

Same for the great Louis Armstrong:

“You can’t take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I’ve been playing 50 years, and that’s what I’ve been doing in order to keep in that groove there.” -Louis Armstrong via Kottke

I’ve been guilty in the past of almost pridefully disdaining preparation and practice, confident I could wing it and still be good. I’ve been learning, though, that practice, deep practice, makes the difference between being good enough and being awesome.

How great do you want to be? Target the skills that you want to strengthen and get busy practicing. Embrace frustration and struggle and pain as the signs you’re on the right path to mastery. If it’s easy, you’re doing it wrong. But if it were easy, everyone would be a master.

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“I’m glad I’m not dead!”

Eric Johnson1 Comment

The great author Oliver Sacks has this delightful essay, The Joy Of Old Age. (No Kidding), in the New York Times.

We who are younger often imagine life diminishing as we get older. Sacks is celebrating being 80 and the perspective on life it gives him.

Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over. My mother was the 16th of 18 children; I was the youngest of her four sons, and almost the youngest of the vast cousinhood on her side of the family. I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know.

I relate to this, still thinking of myself as this kid who’s just getting started even though I just turned 49. In my mind I’m still the kid brother, the boy wonder, the wide-eyed, brown-haired guy on the verge of my life’s adventure. Of course, my young daughters, when they draw family portraits, reach only for the grey crayon to fill in my hair. And the college students I work with think of me as a father figure instead of the cool older brother figure I imagine myself to be.

Maybe it’s having a wife ten years younger and coming to parenthood late that’s prolonging my illusion of youthfulness. But I do think age is such a state of mind. I’m proud to have reached 49. It’s better than the alternative, to not have made it this far. (As Sacks proclaims, “I’m glad I’m not dead!”)

And each decade of my life completed seems better than the one before. My thirties topped my twenties, and my forties have been richer and more meaningful than any decade in my life so far. I’m looking forward to turning 50 next year.

Here’s Sacks’s similar sentiment:

My father, who lived to 94, often said that the 80s had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective.

I do feel I’m only now beginning to embrace how little I truly know. And I’m excited at what I hope the decades ahead of me will unfold in knowledge and experiences. Sacks in his essay yearns for even a little more time “to continue to love and work, the two most important things, Freud insisted, in life”.

I agree. I will gladly embrace the good fortune of aging if I continue to fill my days with love and kindness and people I care deeply about and with meaningful, engaging work that seems more like play.

The happiest people I know are often the oldest people I know. The sweetness of life seems to expand for many as its end nears.

I’m looking forward to this final year of my forties. But bring on 50.

In praise of email

Eric Johnson

Email gets a bad rap. But I like it.

I would rather receive or send an email about a task than receive or make a phone call or go to a meeting about a task. Email allows you to respond in your own time. A phone call does not. Email allows a person to assess and look into something, to build a potentially thoughtful, worthwhile gap between the stimulus and the response. Problems certainly arise when people don’t utilize that gap and instead respond thoughtlessly or too hastily. But email respects the time and attention of others better than conventional communication methods.

Most people need a couple of hours of uninterrupted time to get into a flow of productive work. Phone calls, especially, but meetings, too, have a skewed sense of urgency that does not respect the time and need for the deep focus of others. Certainly, some things have to be talked out or are best handled in person. But I appreciate someone who emails asking me to suggest a day and time when a call or face-to-face would be convenient. I have even set my phone’s voicemail message to encourage the caller to send an email instead of leaving a voicemail if possible.

Yes, email can be overwhelming if your email inbox is your de facto task list, especially if you don’t tend to your inbox consistently. But I’m an inbox zero guy. I process through my inbox every day and empty it almost every time I open my email app.

That doesn’t mean I respond to every email, and it doesn’t mean I respond quickly to every message. I just do triage. I decide which emails need a response from me and which can be deleted or archived. If an email needs a response, I do it right away if it will take less than a couple of minutes. If it will require more thought and take longer than two minutes, I file it in an “Action” folder in my Mail app for review at another time. Also, I only open my email app two or three times each day, ideally.

A good email should have a clear subject line, nothing cryptic, and the body of the email should be as short as possible. You’re more likely to get effective responses if you keep your emails clear, direct, and simple. Don’t cc unnecessarily, and there are very few cases where you need to bcc.

Tone is always important. Some people allow the impersonal nature of email or social media to enable bad manners. Be impeccable with your words, always. Read over everything you send or publish to check for errors, of course, but also to check your tone. Imagine anything you send being published for all to see. Don’t email anything you would regret becoming public. 

Email is just a tool, but used effectively it can help you work smarter and better.

My email inbox just minutes before this post was published
My email inbox just minutes before this post was published

 

Doing hard things

Eric Johnson4 Comments

I get to work each morning and regularly write down (in Day One) my MITs (Most Important Tasks). These are tasks that typically are important but not necessarily urgent, and getting them done will move my work forward in a meaningful way.

Yesterday I wrote down four tasks that had been nagging at me, none of which would take much time to complete. But each of them had enough friction or resistance to keep me from getting started on them. I did none of them yesterday. How could I get through the day and not start on even one of the tasks I had deemed most important?

I went home with those tasks still tugging at me, draining some mental energy that could have been better spent elsewhere. So, today, I just started, even though I didn’t feel inspired, and got three of the four done.

While the tasks weren’t complex, they each required some creativity, some thoughtfulness about how to express myself. And that can seem hard.

I often wait for inspiration to strike on those kinds of projects. Haven’t I learned that starting usually comes before inspiration? I may think, “I’ve got nothing”, but once I start I tend to come up with something. That something may be terrible, but it often primes my brain for another something that’s at least a little better.

I recently read about the McDonald’s Theory. You know what it’s like when friends can’t decide where to go to lunch together and everyone seems stymied? Just say, “Let’s go to McDonald’s!” Then, everyone suddenly comes up with lots of great lunch ideas because no one (usually) wants to go to McDonald’s.

Starting with something terrible gets you over the hump of having nothing, and then you can move on to something better than terrible.

Two words

Eric Johnson3 Comments

Two words are enough to convey meaning and mission, to inspire and guide.

I came across Benjamin Zander’s fabulous TED Talk years ago. It is a must watch, and I require it of all our new student employees before their first training session. There is usually a bit of pause when they see it’s a talk about classical music. Classical music? How fascinating and relevant could this be? Watch and see:

Near the end of the talk Zander says he realized that while his occupation is a symphony conductor, his calling was to “awaken possibility” in others. When he said that I realized those two words speak for my calling as well. That’s what drives and delights me, awakening possibility in myself and others. And, as he said, you know you’ve done it when you see “shining eyes” looking back at you. I live for those moments.

In my work in higher education I tell our campus tour leaders their mission is to awaken possibility, too, as they introduce high school students to the wonders of college life. We want high school students to leave excited about new possibilities about what education could be for them no matter where they choose to enroll. We are not selling our brand. We are aiming higher and offering a gift they can take with them anywhere.

Too many organizations have committee-created mission statements that don’t resonate and can’t be recited by anyone except maybe those who were on the committee. But what if, instead of a mission statement, you had a mantra, even just two simple words, two words that articulate simply and powerfully why you do what you do, what you are about?

If being awesome is the goal, clarity and simplicity of purpose are crucial for an organization, a family, and, especially, an individual.

Steve Jobs returned to rescue Apple in 1997. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy. The products were not great and the employees were demoralized. One of his first and most important actions was the creation of the famous “Think different” campaign. Just those two words alongside the Apple logo overlaid on the image of an iconic, world-changing personality appeared on billboards and the back cover of magazines, reminding the world why Apple was special. Those two words reconnected Apple employees with its core values and reminded everyone why Apple became great originally. That two word campaign was the turning point for Apple, which continues to rock the world with its different approach to technology.

Can you sum up your organization’s purpose in a couple of words? What about your own work? What is your calling? Can you narrow it to a couple of meaningful words?

Do you…
spread love
create beauty
solve problems
connect people
generate ideas
serve selflessly
explore frontiers
research mysteries
make art
educate children
nurture health
empower underdogs
enlighten minds
arouse hearts
provoke action

You get the idea. Give this some thought and explore how to get to the essence of what’s most important for you or your organization. Then clarify and simplify and point yourself and your people in that direction with as few as two simple words.

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How to find work you love

Eric Johnson1 Comment

Some of my students and former students may have read my “Follow your passion” is not helpful advice post, and they’re saying to the screen: “But EJ [they call me EJ], what about Howard Thurman?”

I have shared this Howard Thurman quotation with thousands of college students over the past fifteen years:

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I stand by this quote as great advice for a college student and anyone trying to pick a career path. Sounds a lot like the misguided follow your passion advice, I know. “Follow your passion” is just not helpful as a stand-alone, magic bullet for a happy career. While skills trump passion in your quest for satisfying work, you still need to choose a path that offers delight and interest, that makes you come alive. What kind of work would be a good enough fit for you to spend years getting good at it? That’s a much less overwhelming, paralyzing question than asking you to figure out your lifetime passion.

If you’re trying to just “follow your passion”, you’re likely to get stuck searching for that one elusive match. If, instead, you explore all the things that make you come alive, you will focus on a direction rather than a destination, on a set of skills that you can begin refining. Be intentional about asking what it is that you love to do, not for the extrinsic rewards, but for the joy of the thing itself.

“You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself. Think of something that you love to do for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out. Cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.” -Anthony DeMello

I challenge university students to leverage their time here to ask these kinds of questions. If they don’t ask the “what makes you come alive” question while they’re in college, when will they in the rest of their busy adult lives? In answering that question, look for patterns – skills that keep recurring, interests that intrigue more than most, problems that you enjoy solving.

Gretchen was a student orientation leader with wisdom beyond her years. When confronted with incoming freshmen in angst over choosing an academic major, she told them how she picked a major. She was undecided when she arrived as a freshman, so she read every course description in the college catalog. Each time she read a course description that seemed remotely appealing, that looked like a class that was interesting or fun, she circled the class. When she finished reading every course description and circling only those that grabbed her attention, she went back and counted which major had the most courses circled. And that became her major.

Brilliant, no? And so simple. She was figuring out what made her come alive. But then she got on that path and worked hard at getting good. She was good enough to go on to an Ivy League graduate program and great success in her career and family life.

The “don’t ask yourself what the world needs” quote is especially crucial for new students to hear. Many arrive on campus with their parents’ expectations setting their own. We get a lot of “pre-wealth” majors at freshman orientation. I had a student whose father required her to be pre-med. She didn’t like science so much, and when, after a rough freshman year in the classroom, she pleaded with him to let her change her major, he relented only if she would then choose business instead.

I heard a commencement speaker last year say that your parents do not want what is best for you. They want what is good for you. They want you to be safe, secure, successful, and have all your needs met. But what’s best for you might be risk and struggle and failure, key components on any path to mastery and awesomeness. Respect your parents, but lead your own life. And know that one day you might be that parent wanting what is just good for your child. And that’s okay. Parents are wired by evolution to protect their babies. Of course, the way you live your life will inform your children more than anything you say to them.

If you’re struggling with finding a career, use the “come alive” question to help you find a general direction, a path to follow. You don’t have to know the one thing you need to be doing, your life calling. You just need to know enough to start moving in a direction that works for you. You need a place or a profession that you don’t dislike and where you can start building skills and getting good enough to truly love what you do and come alive in the process.

“Follow your passion” is not helpful advice

Eric Johnson7 Comments

When I was in school my dream job was not to one day run a university visitors center and be a campus tour guru. It’s not exactly an obvious dream career. My first career dream when I was a kid was to be an astronaut. (I came of age when NASA was the coolest thing in the world, and we were sending men to the moon.) Then later I imagined I would be a politician or a TV news guy.

I stumbled into a job in higher education a few years after graduating from college after a stint working on Capitol Hill. I thought I would stick around in my university job just until I figured out what I really wanted to do. Twenty-one years later, I’m still here. And I’m passionate about my work. It’s not because I lucked into work that is a perfect “fit” for my passions. I do care about education, and I really like being on a campus and working with college students every day. But I wouldn’t be here if the twenty-something version of myself had insisted on discovering some innate passion that I was born to follow.

So many people struggle to answer that question: “What is my passion?” We’ve all been told to do “what you love” and “follow your passion”, but how do we figure out what that is? The pursuit of this perfect career-passion match ends up paralyzing and frustrating more than it results in blissful job nirvana.

Earlier this year I read Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. Newport makes a compelling case that “follow your passion” is not particularly helpful advice. After looking closely at those who had found genuine career satisfaction, he realized that it wasn’t because they followed some inborn passion. Instead, career passion seems to come from getting really good at something and sticking with it. Passion follows excellence.

In a recent post on his blog, Newport offers this advice on choosing a career:

Pick something that you wouldn’t mind investing years in mastering. If you already have some skills, then it might make sense (though is by no means necessary) to start there, as you already have a head start on mastery, but you should still expect years of deliberate improvement before deep passion can blossom for your work.

The key thing, in other words, is to direct expectations away from match theory — which says passion depends primarily on making the right job choice — and toward career capital theory — which says passion will grow along with your skill.

This has been true for me. I chose work that seemed like fun, then I invested years in getting good at it. Passion for it bloomed naturally as I kept getting better and more knowledgable and more valuable to my employer. My continuing pursuit of excellence and the increased autonomy that comes with it have created genuine job satisfaction.

It’s not so much what you do as how well you do it. Certainly, pick a path that seems interesting or fun or meaningful, a career where you could see yourself spending a decade or so. Then throw yourself into mastering your work. Don’t wait till you find your passion. Just focus on being awesome at whatever path you choose, and passion and joy will find you.

So Good They Can't Ignore You

The honest waiter

Eric Johnson

My wife and I were at a favorite local restaurant for a rare date night. We were scanning the familiar menu, and she found an item she’d never tried. She mentioned it to the waiter, and he said, “Have you ever had that here?” When she said she hadn’t, the waiter crouched down, got close, and said quietly, “It’s not good.” He then went on to recommend several items on the menu he felt were outstanding.

We trusted that waiter for the rest of the night. We deferred to his recommendations on appetizers and dessert as well. And we had a delightful, memorable evening and left a generous tip.

He easily could have just smiled and nodded and let us order whatever. But he was honest, at some peril of being seen as disloyal to his employer. His tactful frankness (he wasn’t snarky or disrespectful toward the chef) endeared him to us and gave him credibility. This waiter cared about our experience and was willing to take a bit of a risk in the effort to delight us. He wanted us to have the best of what the restaurant offered.

We often feel we have to tow a party line in our work. Our public face has to look perfect, and our eagerness to simply meet a customer’s expectation can preclude exceeding those expectations. There’s great value in honesty and authenticity, even when, especially when, it pulls back the curtain a bit to reveal some flaws.

You can earn credibility and trust by letting your guard down and giving your guests or your customers the inside scoop, the real deal on how to make the most of what you have to offer. We’re still talking about that honest waiter and enthusiastically recommending that restaurant. Be honest. Be real. Be remarkable.

Making ideas happen

Eric Johnson

I was talking with my dad this week about the conference I just went to, and he reminisced about attending photography conferences. He said that he, too, would leave conferences with lots of new ideas and enthusiasm. But if he didn’t take action immediately when he returned, those big ideas were never realized.

making ideas happen

In the spirit of showing my work and forcing myself to take action, here’s my plan for making some of these new ideas I’ve collected happen. My office has a “fall kick off” staff retreat set for August 24. That is my ship deadline. I plan to have something remarkable ready to show our team by that date. Some are small projects that we’ve discussed for years but just never got around to doing. Others are big and can’t be completed in two months. However, it’s worthwhile to show them the progress we’ve made on longer term goals and begin to include the whole team in the next steps on bigger projects.

Watching Apple’s keynote yesterday, I was inspired by the way Apple announces new products and reminds its customers and its own employees of their mission. Apple keeps coming back to why they do what they do, and that makes the how and the what more meaningful. I’m envisioning allocating at least a portion of our staff retreat for an Apple-like keynote where we will unveil all the cool new stuff we’ve been working on while reinforcing the why’s of our work.

Having a fixed deadline will focus our efforts this summer. We can’t get away with just talking about these projects. If you’re ever frustrated about never getting around to that project that’s important but not necessarily urgent, give yourself a deadline. Make it public if you can. Magic happens when you’re working against the clock.

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” -Leonard Bernstein

I’ve created a Keynote document that may or may not be the starting point for an actual presentation at the August 24 retreat. But I’m beginning with the end in mind and imagining now what would be ideal to present on that day. And then we will begin taking action to make these ideas happen. Keynote’s “Light Table” view (in Powerpoint it’s “Slide Sorter” view, I think) is a great place to brainstorm a project. I treat each slide like an index card with one separate thought or possibility per slide. They’re easy to see at a glance and simple to sort and rearrange (or delete) as the ideas evolve.

Real artists ship. If our work is our art, we need to make like a real artist and get busy making our ideas happen.

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Be like a “dog chasing a tennis ball”

Eric Johnson

This commencement address by Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston is terrific. He’s speaking at his alma mater, M.I.T., and he’s only been out of college since 2005. He tells the story of how he got started as an entrepreneur, and he offers some great wisdom about choosing work that challenges and delights you like a “dog chasing a tennis ball”:

When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don’t just love what they do, they’re obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way. I have some other friends who also work hard and get paid well in their jobs, but they complain as if they were shackled to a desk.

My dog, Mosley, certainly gets crazy eyes when I fling a ball across the yard. He could be waking from a nap, but if he sees me with a ball in hand, he comes to life in a flash. I feel that puppy-like excitement when I get caught up in creating something worthwhile or working on solving a problem and making a dent in the universe.

I love how Houston concludes, with the call to tell an interesting story with your life:

Every day we’re writing a few more words of a story. And when you die, it’s not like “here lies Drew, he came in 174th place.” So from then on, I stopped trying to make my life perfect, and instead tried to make it interesting. I wanted my story to be an adventure — and that’s made all the difference.

We’ve got a limited stay here on this planet. If we’re lucky, Houston points out, we might get as many as 30,000 days. Today is my 49th birthday. I’ve lived 17,885 days, and I’m delighted to have made it this far. But I’m on the back side of my days. I just want to make the ones that are left worth talking about.

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Mise en place and “habit fields”

Eric Johnson

Chefs rely on “mise en place“, which is French for “putting in place”, for an orderly, efficient work space. All the kitchen tools and ingredients for the next meal are placed in a way that allows the work to flow with minimal resistance and maximum focus. We can arrange our work spaces for optimal effectiveness, too.

I just came across this thoughtful post, Habit Fields, by Jack Cheng. What if we arranged our work tools and surroundings to embed work habits that more readily get us into the “zone”, where we create with less distraction? Go read the whole post, but here are Cheng’s first and last paragraphs:

Consider the desk in your office. Maybe it reminds you of when you opened the box and put the pieces together. Or maybe it recalls your first day at work, when your colleague showed you where you would sit. The desk, the computer on top of it, the chair you sit in, and the space they comprise are all repositories for memory. But these things don’t just store our memories; they store our behaviors too. The sum of these stored behaviors is an object’s habit field, and merely being around it compels our bodies and minds to act in certain ways. By understanding these invisible forces and employing strategies to shape them, we can enjoy more frequent, sustained periods of flow.

…

We have the power to bestow our abilities onto the things around us. By being conscious of our tools, habits, and spaces, and actively conditioning them to help us behave the way we want to behave, maybe we can more efficiently tap into the thousands of hours of creative genius embedded in our everyday objects. Maybe we’ll be able to maximize the capabilities that new technologies afford us without being overwhelmed by the distractions. And, just maybe, we’ll remember what it feels like to be utterly engrossed in our daily work.

I love the idea of sitting in a different place or even facing a different way at your desk depending on whether you’re doing work or taking a mental break with some kind of distraction like Twitter. I have been doing most of my writing recently on my iPad, which makes switching to other apps just enough of a hassle to keep me on task. It’s a better uni-tasker than my Mac, and I’ve been building a writing habit around the iPad that I never did with a desktop computer.

Sharpen your “habit fields” and condition yourself to respond to your physical surroundings. Set up your work space for optimal focus when you’re working. Then the tools can better fulfill their purpose and allow you to cook up something awesome.

A conference mindset

Eric Johnson

I’ve been at a conference all week. I appreciate how just being away from a normal routine and in a different environment can spark possibilities and new ideas. There is a lot of sitting and listening time in conferences. Often, the speaker is thoughtful, effective, or even, ideally, provocative enough to challenge assumptions, rock the status quo, and make you rethink your work. It’s great to walk out of a presentation with new possibilities and a surge in energy that a dynamic speaker can provide. (If you’re going to speak to an audience, why not be awesome?)

Sometimes the speaker doesn’t connect, or maybe I walked in with a misperception about the published topic. Even then, just sitting still for forty-five minutes can lead to contemplation of new ideas. A quiet idea, maybe even poorly communicated, can take root just because I was forced to focus as I’m away from the day-in, day-out distractions of my typical routines. My mind often has been sent on productive tangents in the midst of an otherwise forgettable conference session.

Maybe we should try creating that conference mindset even in our normal day-to-day routines. Regularly disconnect from your place of distraction and put yourself in a place where you’re trapped for forty-five minutes or so with nowhere to escape. Find a remote place to do some work – a coffee shop or empty conference room or a lunch spot – where there’s more friction required to distract yourself.

Create a conference mindset regularly and see if new possibilities are awakened more regularly as well.

Best. Day. Ever?

Eric Johnson1 Comment

Sunday is bittersweet for most of us. This day of rest that gradually and surely turns into a night of unease, or even dread, for too many. Today is an exception because tomorrow is a holiday, so this Sunday is sweeter than most.

My daughters love the movie Tangled. (Okay, I love the movie Tangled, too.) There’s a great scene where Rapunzel leaves the tower for the first time and is overwhelmed with how amazing it is to be free and doing things she’s never experienced before. As she’s swinging through the forest by her hair she exclaims, “Best. Day. Ever!”

My daughters now regularly use that phrase when things are going well. And, they say the opposite, “Worst. Day. Ever.”, almost as frequently. Often multiple times in the same day. We all know that feeling, right? Well, what makes for a great day? A great week? A great year? A great life? These are fundamental questions that don’t often get examined with any serious intent.

I often ask student applicants in our interview process to “describe their ideal day.” I’m confounded by how many struggle coming up with a response to this and how many just offer only a few superficial plans for an ideal day. “Sleep in…” is way too popular a response. Here’s a similar interview question we regularly ask: “When you get to the end of a particularly satisfying day, what was it about that day that made it so satisfying?”

Both are great questions to play with and see what you come up with. Explore the answers to these questions in your journal or in a conversation with friends. (The Day One app is a beautiful electronic journal that I use every day now. It’s like having your own private Twitter that only you can see. It’s iOS and Mac only, but there certainly are alternatives for you Android and PC people.) Then, be intentional about crafting days so they’re filled with those things that delight and satisfy you.

Clearly, some days are going to just be a struggle, so it’s not realistic to expect every day to top the one before. But it you put together enough great days, you’ll have a great week. String great weeks together, and you’re going to have a great year. Great years make for a great life.

Creative momentum and action overflow

Eric Johnson

I’m in the midst of final preparation for two presentations I’m giving at a national conference next week. As the conference week approaches my focus is sharpening, and I’m making good progress on my work. And I’m enjoying it. I wake up excited about fine-tuning my thoughts and the slides I’m creating. I get to the office and work with purpose. I find I’m less likely these last couple of weeks to wander off into internet distractions. I’ve been putting my headphones on mid-morning and working intently, shutting off the world for an hour or so at a time.

What has surprised me has been how productive I’ve been on other projects during this time. It’s as though working with focus on one project has spilled this extra energy into other areas of my work and my life. There’s been this wonderful overflow of action. Creative momentum has led me to post six days in a row on this blog, something I’ve never done. What if I did this every day? Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, which seems to be an infrequent occurrence, what if I just treat every day like an important project deadline is looming? And just start doing something.

When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly. –Gretchen Rubin

Consume, create, share. That’s the cycle I’ve been on lately. Or, is it: create, consume, create, share? Creating has sparked consumption of new material as much as reading has sparked new ideas. As I’m trying to make things, I keep searching for and stumbling across new ideas which in turn spark more action, and then I want to share and keep going. I’ve been consuming much more information while working on this project, and ideas seem to be popping. I came across this quotation recently while exploring the power of taking action:

Our creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not self-made. We are dependent on one another, and admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness. It’s a liberation from our misconceptions, and it’s an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves and to simply begin.
 –Kirby Ferguson

“Everything is a Remix”, indeed. And if you’re holding off on your work until you’ve got a truly “original” idea, you’ll never do anything. “Simply begin” and see where the act of creation takes you.

I’m going to see how long I can keep this creative momentum rolling. I’m tempted to challenge myself to post something public every day. Seth Godin offers that challenge and says no one ever complains of getting “talker’s block”, so don’t complain of writer’s block:

Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure.

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly–you don’t need more criticism, you need more writing.

Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.

If you know you have to write something every single day, even a paragraph, you will improve your writing. If you’re concerned with quality, of course, then not writing is not a problem, because zero is perfect and without defects. Shipping nothing is safe.

The second best thing to zero is something better than bad. So if you know you have to write tomorrow, your brain will start working on something better than bad. And then you’ll inevitably redefine bad and tomorrow will be better than that. And on and on.

Write like you talk. Often.

Stay tuned. (Or not. I realize I’m posting publicly, but I’m not looking for page views or to become an A-list blogger. If someone reads my stuff and has a new possibility awakened in them, I’m delighted. But I’m writing as much for my own benefit as I am for readers. And that you are reading this is amazing. How cool to live in the 21st century, right? Welcome to the future.)

Bruce Springsteen still rehearses

Eric Johnson1 Comment

Keeping up the craftsmanship theme I have been exploring recently, I’ve been meaning to share this feature on Bruce Springsteen that I read last summer in The New Yorker. It’s an immensely interesting long profile on the enduring, iconic rock-and-roll star. (You’ve got to add the “roll” for Springsteen, don’t you? He’s more than just a “rock” star.) I was in college when his biggest album, Born In the U.S.A., dominated our music consciousness. It seemed like every song on that album was a huge hit. It was one of the first CDs I owned. (I was one of the first in my dorm to own a CD player and make the transition from vinyl. I have always been a bit of an early adopter.) Unfortunately, I have never seen Springsteen in concert, and his performances are considered epic. He goes for hours at high energy and gives the audience more than they expect. The man is in his sixties now and still going strong as an artist and performer. Here’s an excerpt from the article describing a rehearsal:

Springsteen arrived and greeted everyone with a quick hello and his distinctive cackle. He is five-nine and walks with a rolling rodeo gait. When he takes in something new—a visitor, a thought, a passing car in the distance—his eyes narrow, as if in hard light, and his lower jaw protrudes a bit. His hairline is receding, and, if one had to guess, he has, over the years, in the face of high-def scrutiny and the fight against time, enjoined the expensive attentions of cosmetic and dental practitioners. He remains dispiritingly handsome, preposterously fit. (“He has practically the same waist size as when I met him, when we were fifteen,” says Steve Van Zandt, who does not.) Some of this has to do with his abstemious inclinations; Van Zandt says Springsteen is “the only guy I know—I think the only guy I know at all—who never did drugs.” He’s followed more or less the same exercise regimen for thirty years: he runs on a treadmill and, with a trainer, works out with weights. It has paid off. His muscle tone approximates a fresh tennis ball. And yet, with the tour a month away, he laughed at the idea that he was ready. “I’m not remotely close,” he said, slumping into a chair twenty rows back from the stage.

Preparing for a tour is a process far more involved than middle-aged workouts designed to stave off premature infarction. “Think of it this way: performing is like sprinting while screaming for three, four minutes,” Springsteen said. “And then you do it again. And then you do it again. And then you walk a little, shouting the whole time. And so on. Your adrenaline quickly overwhelms your conditioning.” His style in performance is joyously demonic, as close as a white man of Social Security age can get to James Brown circa 1962 without risking a herniated disk or a shattered pelvis. Concerts last in excess of three hours, without a break, and he is constantly dancing, screaming, imploring, mugging, kicking, windmilling, crowd-surfing, climbing a drum riser, jumping on an amp, leaping off Roy Bittan’s piano. The display of energy and its depletion is part of what is expected of him. In return, the crowd participates in a display of communal adoration. Like pilgrims at a gigantic outdoor Mass—think John Paul II at Gdansk—they know their role: when to raise their hands, when to sway, when to sing, when to scream his name, when to bear his body, hand over hand, from the rear of the orchestra to the stage. (Van Zandt: “Messianic? Is that the word you’re looking for?”)

The article goes on to describe Springsteen leading his band through a meticulous, intense rehearsal in an empty hall they rent just to prepare for a tour. I’m sure after all those years of performing, The Boss could just walk out on stage and put on a good show without much preparation. But he doesn’t want to be just “good”. He’s great because he approaches his work with discipline (note above how he takes care of his body) and attention to detail. He’s a master, constantly refining his craft. And rehearsal is crucial.

My college speech teacher, Cal Logue, was insistent that we must rehearse our presentations out loud on our own multiple times before facing an audience. I was reluctant, feeling it silly to talk to myself in an empty room. But I did it, and in the process discovered problems and new ideas and connections that wouldn’t have been obvious had I not rehearsed out loud. I still do it when preparing a big presentation. I close the doors on the presentation room in our office, load my slides, and give my talk to a bunch of empty chairs. And I never fail to come up with improvements. Timing and flow especially benefit from live rehearsal, and you can’t get that from just reading over your notes multiple times and clicking through your slides over and over. If the first time you give a prepared talk is in front of a live audience, you’re giving them something less than your best. If Springsteen still rehearses, you should, too.

Jerry Seinfeld’s craftsmanship

Eric Johnson7 Comments

It’s easy to think some people are just born gifted, with some divine spark that enables them to accomplish more and at a higher level than everyone else. But if you look closely at the lives of true masters, you’ll see discipline, focus, persistence, and a pursuit of intrinsic rewards.

I clipped this excellent New York Times profile of Jerry Seinfeld last year and have just dug it back up from my Instapaper files. Note what drives Seinfeld:

For Seinfeld, whose worth Forbes estimated in 2010 to be $800 million, his touring regimen is a function not of financial necessity but rather of borderline monomania — a creative itch he can’t scratch. “I like money,” he says, “but it’s never been about the money.” Seinfeld will nurse a single joke for years, amending, abridging and reworking it incrementally, to get the thing just so. “It’s similar to calligraphy or samurai,” he says. “I want to make cricket cages. You know those Japanese cricket cages? Tiny, with the doors? That’s it for me: solitude and precision, refining a tiny thing for the sake of it.”

When he can’t tinker, he grows anxious. “If I don’t do a set in two weeks, I feel it,” he said. “I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don’t I know how to do this already? The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.”
…
When he scored his first appearance on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” in 1981, he practiced his five-minute set “200 times” beforehand, jogging around Manhattan and listening to the “Superman” theme on a Walkman to amp up.

Seinfeld, an almost-billionaire, is more than set for life. He could stop working now and never want for money, and his reputation as one of the entertainment greats of our era is secure even if he doesn’t ever perform again. But he still works on his craft in small clubs and big theaters and continues to tour. He still keeps polishing tiny bits from his routine and searches for new material. He uses the freedom he’s earned to do more of the work that he clearly loves. I keep returning to this profound Walt Disney quotation that perfectly captures what I think we all should be aspiring to in our work lives:

We don’t make movies to make money. We make money so we can make more movies.

The great ones are motivated by the intrinsic rewards of their work. And work is a key word. You want to be great at something? Find the thing you’re willing to spend lots of time working on without any expectation of approval, applause, or money. And then work like crazy on it.