How to Get Unstuck (a scientific take) | Adam Alter | Good Life Project Transcripts

There are demands way, you're not allowed to file away when you do file culturally, that seen it as a moral blemish and that's very damaging, obviously, for all sorts of reasons, because failure does happen, its inevitable and filing is such a moral Staying in that domain, it means you. I try less often you going to take fewer risks, you're going to grow more slowly, if at all, you are going to stagnate and you'll be stuck in the comfort of not ever having to try anything that requires that you potentially expose yourself to failure, and so it's just a different flavor of stuckness, but it still being stuck, I think, of always succeeding as a kind of stock was too it's not the way to live a life. It's the way to live a moment. It's nice to see seat in the moment, but a string of unbroken successes that involve no change, no pushing against boundaries. It's not a good way to live, it's not a good way to build, meaning So have you ever felt, stuck in literally any part of your life trapped in

second job and unfulfilling relationship, health, fitness or performance plateau, or maybe the creative wrought, well What if there was a way to tap scientifically validated principles to get unstuck to break free from the invest? the forces holding you back and really unleash your full potential me? What if you could literally engineer breakthroughs. Well, it turns out. You actually can Once you understand many of the hidden dynamics that keep us stock in the first place and had a move through them and our guests, on our journey to getting unstuck is adam, alter a professor, Why use stern school a business near times? Bestselling, author end, the two expert in the realm of human behaviour. Adam was,

the professor of the year at, and why you stern school, a business and landed on the poets and clients. Forty best professors under forty list and his latest book is anatomy of a breakthrough. How to get unstuck when it matters most and today we explore the really transformative, insight and strategies that can help you break free from the thoughts and habits in circumstances that keep you feeling stuck in pretty much any part of life and prevent you from reaching their full potential, and this in just about pop psychology. Adam shares a range of incredible research on how to go from the stock to emotion, along with tools like the friction on it, strategies like jumping the mill in, to really get you to your next big breakthrough, so excited to share this conversation, I'm jonathan fields and this this guy life project. a lot.

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So the ten percent happier podcast has one guiding philosophy. Happiness is still that you can it's a! Why not embrace it! It's hosted by dan Harris a journalist who had a panic attack on national television and then send out on this journey of transformation and he's now on a quest to help. Others also achieve peace and happiness, and every week Dan talked you top scientists, meditation teachers. Even the odd celebrity in wide ranging conversations that explore topics like productivity, anxiety and lightness, psychedelic and relationships. The interviews cover everyone from bernay brown to cerebral ass to SAM Harrison more. I love learning from his questions and experiences and incredible guess think of listening to ten percent happier as a work out. For your mind, fine ten percent happier where every listen to pot casts. Adam. You I have been in conversation, I feel like every five years or so we touch down and, like you that's something new and big and interesting to offer the rob not that you don't have new, interesting

things and intervene. Ass, though, it's sort been in conversation over a really long time from the early days, and The recent focus is on inexperience, editing, Larry, that I dont know anyone that gets to opt out of this experience, which is the feeling of being stuck relationships, work, health, whatever it may be, and ideas around. What do we do in that moment? How do we into some sort of of breakthrough? We feel like we're not only unstuck, but actually like really we're, certainly barreling into the next big fun thing, and I want to dive into that with you and a lot of different ways, but I feel like we need to sort of like start out with understanding. What are we actually talking about when we're talking about the feeling of being stock or starkness yeah. So obviously there a lot of ways to define the term. I'm not talking about momentary frustration, I don't mean you know. I spent a couple of minutes just

we need to get through some issue or even a couple of hours. I'm talking about situations that frustrate people for its often months sometimes years, sometimes even decades, and I'm not talking about things that are outside of our control. So I you know the march of twenty twenty. We go, we're all stuck in place, and that was a government mandated situation and there was nothing if I wanted to be in australia with my parents, my brother. There wasn't an option, and so I was physically stuck, but that's not psychologically interesting. That's just frustrating and you have to kind of come to terms with that. What I'm more interested in is the situations and that they turn out to be the majority where you're frustrated you're stuck fixed in place, but there's something you can do. You can intervene on the situation and spent about twenty years. Thinking about it on and off, and that's that's what this book is it's a sort of road map for getting on stock near, and I would imagine doing that twenty or window you have found herself stuck even thinking about the notion of stubbornness. Many times that overtake you don't get to opt out.

The one asking the russians, rounded the feeling, one using the word stock and- and I think early probably a lot of people like hear that in their head and like yeah, I've been there what actually goes on One of us like what actually spinning like what is is there is a psychological is, is a neuroscience like what the fish article respond? What's actually happening inside us when we hit these sometimes seasons where it's just feels like nothing is budging yeah I'll, be running a survey on thousands of people now for many years asking them for their experiences of being stuck, and so I say to them. This is what it means to be stuck basically using the definition that I just gave you can you think of an instance or an area of your life in which you feel this way and everyone it's borderline universal within ten to fifteen seconds starts typing something, so you can measure how long it takes them to respond

You can follow up with questions like how do you feel about this? What are some emotions that you feel you can give them a check list of check, box emotions and it feels to them in general, as you might expect frustrating, they have a lot of anxiety. So anxiety is the biggest thing now like. How am I going to break free of this thing? That seems to be trapping me and a confused and little uncertain about what to do next. But I think one of the most pervasive things I hear is that it feels very lonely, and so they feel isolated and they feel, apart from the rest of the world, which is ironic right, because everyone says I feel stock that not all the same kinds of starkness. But

it's a universal experience, which is how you open this. You said exactly that and done that's where I find, and yet it's an experience that feels isolating him and makes people feel lonely. So it's this conch sort of cocktail of negative emotions. The other thing it does that's interesting is it it makes people kind of flail in alike. Imagine you're physically trapped, and I talk about this a little in the book. This idea that we confused physical, entrapment and mental entrapment for one Allah and so are actually very well designed to deal with physical entrapment. You get the rush of blood. You get the rush of adrenalin. You've cheat read these stories of hysterical strength where someone lifts a car of someone else. You know that that's obviously tremendously adaptive, but when you apply that same set of responses to a matter that requires strategy and a little bit of thought and slowing down and being a bit more mindful, we're still flailing, which is exactly the opposite of what we need. So a lot of of what the initial response needs to be is to kind of calm things down

the way you would an injury, and then you can start to be more thoughtful about the next steps. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. To me, I mean the notion that also that one of the common feelings associated with it is loneliness. I would imagine that was probably expressed in different language in different ways by different people, but like that sort of like a universal feeling and knowing that it's through one of those things that almost nobody gets to opt out of. It's really counterintuitive yeah and I wonder part of that law in this also engender a sense of shame like all like. I shouldn't be in this place, because everybody else around me seems to be moving forward like they're, not stuff, they don't have these issues like what's wrong with me here. I think that's right. Part of the issue is that we live in a universe now, where everyone shares the cream of the crop in a they share the best one per cent of their lives on social media platforms. You don't watch the thousands of ours that go into making art works and films and songs and albums and businesses what you see

the finished product, and so all of a headwinds that your facing constantly very apparent to you. But you don't He any of that and other people, that's hidden, just The way we live our lives, it's very, very hard to peer into people's lives and to see those headwinds. So what you end up seeing is what feels like this great asymmetry in in your experience of the world and there's that somehow they're lucky everyone else is getting by, and you are here stuck with all that sort of minor and often major frustrations that you're dealing with, and I think that's why it's such a lonely experience as a good a logical reason for it and it's part of what makes starkness so stubborn in the azure. Describing then also, I wonder if you have a look dad at all associations between trauma and starkness, yeah one of the one of the common feeling that when I am totally bessel Van der kolk, a number of others about trauma, and what they've shared with me is. Is that, like one of the really common signals of trauma, is

If a person feels like they're just really having trouble moving on from the moment of the experience, and it could be decades later. But if it's not processed in some way or integrated, it's almost like you've trapped in this moment in time, you're stuck there, when this outcome it yeah. Absolutely. It's really interesting one of the earliest pieces of research that they got me on to the subject and made me interested in it was. I was doing some cross cultural research into how people around the world experience and anticipate change, and what I found it the people in the west, so people in the? U S, Canada, Australia, britain, new zealand, tend to be blindsided by change. I anticipate that a trend will continue and in one of the studies we gave them whether patents, like five days of sun, said what's going to happen tomorrow and people in the west and to anticipate more sun and if his reign, they anticipate more rain. That kind of expect things to linger and when change happens, they're a bit blindsided by people in the east.

So we looked at these stations from china, japan, korea, south korea and die you given to the same thing. I like. Oh, no, no changes coming things, this balance, is the yin yang this taoism. You know you just sort of expect things to bounce between endpoints and extremes, and so when trauma happens, which it does which we'll talk a little bit about that in a second, we in the west have sort of blindsided by like the sort of glitch in what's going on edge, it's snob, it doesn't belong in. Our lives, doesn't make sense, even if it is universal people in the east that, like whoa yeah, I knew this was coming in here. It is now the steel within it. This sort of one step ahead of us. In that sense, we interesting research and I spoke to roost filer about this, who writes about these ideas in one unlifelike near life. Quakes phenomenon really interesting idea that he talks about the fact that roughly every eighteen months, we experienced a small shift in our lives that can entrench us that can make us feel stock, but roughly every decade, and sometimes more often- and sometimes there are two at once

you experience what he calls life quakes and these are major events, sometimes their positive. Sometimes you invite them in, but very often they're out of your control and very often a negative illnesses. Debts separations divorces, things like that so yeah. I think these traumas, these massive changes in our lives. These pivotal points are arab, a huge part of of why people feel stuck a lot of the time and they are universal and, as you just earlier in a part of what I imagine is going on is that we shift into serve a different mode of processing, were like our brain, that the parts of our brains on that come on board or different in then. when you're in a state of hyper vigilance or, like all sorts of things that come from this feeling, as you describe of anxiety, starts to drop in. You know that's counter to the state that you need to be in to get out of the very problem that you're trying to to grapple with. So it's almost like this and weird reinforcement of keeping you stuck

then the feelings at you layer onto it, make it harder and harder to actually move away from that moment or that season yeah. It's self perpetuating, that's part of the problem and that's why to to stop that cycle. The first thing you have to do is to deal with the emotional concert is it being stopped, whether its loneliness or anxiety, or that flailing doing anything to just get on stock. There are some really interesting examples of this sector that I came across. Why my fate to some miles Davis, the jazz giant, was very well known for being very hard on his musicians in there These amazing films, that some of them are on youtube. Where you, you see him on stage, and he doesn't like one of the stairs touring musicians is doing in the middle of it, on your basically pull them up and say even own front, this big audience what you just did there was a disaster. Don't do that again? Sometimes your story of the stage so

was notoriously hot on on his his musicians, his fellow musicians, but this is great story that herbie hancock they're just pianist talks about when he describes the way miles was when he knew that he had to turn things down a little, but he was a great leader in this respect that Hancock auditioned with miles back. was a three day long audition at myles house and hancock walks in and there are all these giants of jazz in the room, and you know he's overwhelmed by the talent in there and how many incredible people there are- and he starts jamming with them and in about five minutes miles- is there for the beginning of it. But he takes his trumpet and he throws it on the sofa and he goes upstairs and they don't see him for the remaining three days and hancock talks about how at first he was really upset because he figured he'd bombed the audition. But then he just kind of relaxed got into it enjoyed the fact that he had these three days with these amazing musicians and he just jammed out and he played and he started relaxing into it. At the end of the three days miles came down the stairs

and he said to Hancock. I want you to join the band and away you start touring with us beginning next week and a hacker tells a story again. This is all on youtube. You can find it easily. He tells us story of how he surprised he was, and he said to miles. I thought I'd bonded. He went upstairs like five minutes after we started mars basically said to him, I could tell my presence was not bringing good out of you. I was overwhelming to you as I am to a lot of people, and I wanted to give you some sites. Since I listened in on the intercom for those entire three days, I can hear you loosening up, and I could tell, as you loosened up that you are the right person for us and said it knowing went. the temperature down whether relate managing other people, whether you just do it for yourself, is such a critical skill in getting on stock. I mean it seems like so much of the process I feel like a lot of times when we're stuck in different parts of her life, like the first thing that we think about doing. Is we look externally like what's the tool? What's the strategy? What's the process like uh yeah like who do I need to hire?

and not to say that those things can all play a role in getting us to place, but a lot of what you need to sharing is there's an internal side to this. That is was like masses hierarchy right, it's hard to sir lake, if you just go to external, if we go to the top of metals hierarchy without dealing with the bottom, the core stuff, the internal stuff, it's really hard to build anything sound. He will surely get. If the place that you are in a meaningful way, without just boomerang back to it yeah hundred percent, I mean, I think, when you are in fixed in place, you don't want to be the first thing you said you would be properly express it. This way is: what can I do and do, even though, that action form of the word do, I think, skips the two essentials

Perhaps one of them is how do you feel right now? Let's first figure that out, let's be in this moment in a way that makes us productive moving forward with and also strategically don't just do, let's figure out why you should be doing what are some things you can? You can put in place before you start acting to maximize the likelihood that that action will get you unstuck. These are always the things that I end up: either writing books or articles about, and finding really interesting of these. These puzzles where humans are kind of badly engineered for them, and this is one case where being stuck as is hard for us. It's not a thing that we're particularly good at we're good at a lot of things, but this one, it's totally backward said. The first thing you want to do will only make it worse, and so that's that's where you need a roadmap that no, that makes a lot of sense.

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starkness and we kind of all said okay. So we all like to reach business at some point, but that looking at it as saying ok, inevitable, part of my journey is ongoing move through this experience, probably many times over the course of my life, who which may Here is a why. Why is it actually so inevitable experience of so many people yeah. There are a few reasons. Many actually, but one of the big ones is a lot of the things that matter the most to us happen over a long period of time, whether they're big goals. I was writing a book. You might have a business you're, creating whatever you're doing there'll be an extended period of time where your strive for something some in point and is a lot of research to suggest that when we do that, there's a lull in the middle? So sometimes you start with ahead of steam.

as you can see the goal in sight, he tend to speed up you devote more energy and attention to to single mindedly, focusing on that end, but in the middle that's tough and we are often kind of unmoved floating. I use this metaphor of them have sort of sailing between northerners can and europe as a long period of time we're here in the middle of the ocean. Even if you're making progress, you don't have that sense and that's demotivating. It's not giving you the feedback you want. So that's one thing is that lull in the middle- and you see this with my sin in maize's, you see with humans. You see it with all sorts of other animals The other big thing is that some there's a very well known phenomenon across lots of areas of our lives, known as the plateau effect. It basically suggests that if you keep doing the same thing, even if it was at one time effective, it will become less effective over time for all sorts of debt.

reasons, and so he does amazing research. Looking at physical fitness showing that, if you take people who have never worked out at a gym who are essentially sedentary they're, not doing much at all, you give them a nice plan. That's well laid out for them, you let them do that and you track them for seven years. It's what you find is that for the first eighteen months or so most of them make tremendous gains. But then, from eighteen months to dip to about two and a half years, is that one year period where it depends on the person? It varies a bit, but they hit a plateau and it no longer benefits them even nearly as much and that's for all sorts of reasons. There are good physical reasons for that. You get your. Your body basically gets used to what you're doing and stops responding in the same way and that this is true about learning languages as well. It's true about all sorts of skill acquisition You have to change things, you have to mix things up, and so, when you put together this this law in the middle, the stock in the middle effect, you add in the fact that you ve got the plateau effect. That means you ve got to change strategies over time and in the future,

thing is: is a phenomenon known as tell yo anticipation, and the idea with this is that you forecast the end of when you'll need to stop putting in energy. People often say I was working and then I had a vacation in the day I went on vacation I got sick cycle was pouring everything into work just looking forward to the day when work ended, and then my body just gonna collapsed, and that's tell yo, anticipation and sort of apportioning your energy for a task and you'll see these marathon run is sometimes I'll be at the end of a marathon like they can see the finish line and they collapse completely exhausted because that's just a minor failure, intaglio anticipation, but it's enough to topple the marathon for them, and we are constantly trying to do that. And it's really hard to do. And you don't have an explicit in point four, when you don't exactly how much effort and energy to apportion to this moment versus the next moment versus the next. So there are a whole lot of reason

Why we get stuck and then, of course, there's the life quakes idea that things are constantly shifting under us, so that that this there's a lot going on to make it hard for us before yeah I mean the notion. It's interesting. The way you describe plateaus and I think, we've all experienced like hitting plateaus in all different parts of our lives at home, and am I hadn't We are made. The association with a like hitting a plateau is actually which is a natural part of what we're doing in the fitness world every eight months of sharm, I'm sure, there's probably, fairly measurable cycles in all different domains of life, where we could possibly say: ok, yet, where you're into this there's gonna be a natural plateau which, if we don't understand that this is an organic cycle that happens in all parts of life, and we should anticipate it and equip ourselves you'd, expect it and then equip ourselves to really navigate it Then we just get there not realizing that this is actually just. This is natural. This was always coming and, having

course beyond mere through. We just feel like I've had a wall unstuck, and I dont know where to go from here, you're absolutely That's right! I think about it. A lot like insurance insurance. is obviously something that you don't always need. You hope you don't need it, but there's a good chance at some point. You will, and so you buy insurance and what it does is. Essentially it it lightens your experience of today, because you don't have to focus so much on the worst case scenario tomorrow and I think of of anticipating these things that will happen that will make us feel stuck in the same way that once you've thought about them. You have at least not quite a plan in place, but you have some some idea of what you'll do. If a particular thing goes wrong, then you can live today, a little bit more freely, and so I find it very liberating to to even just that first step just to say you know, stuff's going to get hard at some point. Let's think a little bit about what that's going to mean. You don't need to dwell on it

just be ready to anticipated and to have at least that first step in place, and I think that makes living today a little bit easier, yeah. The whole notion of her anticipation, also, I think, is fascinating and there you know it reminds me to a certain ex and I, ve a years ago, indian gilbert killin stumbling happiness. Yearly, one of the first books in there was now a giant happiness cannon, and he talked about this phenomenon, effective forecasting, ill or ability to actually forecast how we think will feel at some future point. I beat nearly a decade from now and apparently as human beings, we are horrible at delica, absolutely terrible at it. Do you find that a similar thing with telia anticipation, or do you feel like we're? Actually it depends on the situation of the domain, sometimes were really good at estimating what will take to get through a certain point and sometimes returnable added, I think, we're horrible letter. I think the reason

also batted in this draws on Dan's work on stumbling on happiness in some of his other work. Is that there's a gap between where you are on our way, you'll be later on that's very hard to bridge psychologically? So, if I think about, if I am running som running ten miles, just a fairly long run the way I feel for the first mile, I'm on top of the world, I feel phenomenal, and so because I feel so good at the first mile. It's almost impossible to imagine how I'm going to feel in that final tenth mile, and so what I'm doing is I'm I'm relying quite heavily on what it feels like to be running that first mile, as a guide to how I'll feel later on, or at least I'm not quite deducting enough of my energy when anticipating what it'll be like in the final mile- and that means I'm expending too much now, and so when you watch people at the beginning of marathons, especially when it's their first or second marathon, they're exuberant a jubilant. They high five people

Inside of that the course you know they they're absolutely into it and they should be, but you know that's going to come back to bite them later on and they don't yet know that, but it will become apparent when, once you see people running the tenth or twentieth marathons they're, the ones who are single Finally, in the middle of the course not focusing on anything else, particularly in those early days cause, I know that's what you do in those first three miles makes or breaks the last three miles, and so I think it's it's extremely hard for us to go about their business and it's not just physical things, but you know I, if I'm fatigued on the path to a particular goal, but I start out feeling pretty fresh. I think it's really hard for me to imagine what that fatigues going to feel I can so my approach in too few of my resources to that last stage. There never make a lot of sense. I mean: do you combine that with a potential lack of awareness about the fact that plateaus you're gonna, be natural part of the and then, as you described Everything has a middle and we love focusing on the beginning and the end as I guess I'm out of it a mere do it then

You visualize, like most people, don't visualize the middle there visualize the end like. Let me just keep my mind there because, like that's what that, what I have to be doing in order to actually get in their place, but that whole middle, which sometimes gonna be ninety percent of the journey. That's where the demons external and internal really. Can you come to haunt you? Are we just don't pay as much attention to no, we don't there's a lot you can do about it, though one of my favorite techniques is to narrowly bracket a big goal. So if you think about say writing a book is one hundred thousand words. If you start on day one with the idea that your goal is to write one hundred thousand words, that's absolutely overwhelming. Now that it's really really difficult to get your head around the magnitude of that goal and it will overrun

me to the point of making it hard for you to move forward. But one thing you can do a lot of writers. Do this as you you'd narrowly bracket, the goal is to say a hundred sub goals of a thousand words each, and there are lots of ways to do this. It's an artificial process. It just how you think about it, but you can actually give it a little bit of concreteness as well. the one thing you could do is you could say every time I hit a new thousand word mark, as I write to one thousand two thousand three thousand, I'm going to give myself smaller awards and it could be different things for different people, just something that gives you a break from writing or whatever it is. And then, when I hit the ten thousand mark and the twenty thousand mark, I'm going to do a bigger reward and then they'll be a sort of culminating rewarded. Thousand words, an answer by doing that. You're you're, shrinking the goal and so essentially leave if eliminated the middle or made the middle very, very small, because the between zero and a hundred thousand is huge, but the middle between zero and a thousand or by the time, at the point of having written three hundred.

Word, seventy seven hundred more and then when I'm at seven hundred, I only have three hundred more to go, so the goal becomes much more manageable. and I think what we can do them large areas of our lives shrink artificially. Very large calls into smaller ones. I love that because effectively saying let me take one giant metal and turn it into dozens or hundreds of tiny. Those were each one of those fields. Relet like I can do. I can deal with this year, which is similar to the way I when I wrote working on a large scale, if I'm working on the next book I'll usually set you know a thousand two thousand were today, writing goals run, and that's do about like that's. I can handle that it might be good writing, but it must have the words exactly is, also as you're describing this member years ago. Reading an interview with hemingway in the parish review- and they were talking about his writing process. and Hemingway also sort of like a famously wrote, standing up, often thumb, and they asked him like how do you not get stuck? That was the exact language but effectively that's what the question was, and he said

He always end every day nodded and have a thought or when he feels it is complete or at the end of a chapter. He starts the next thing. So he's like a couple of paragraphs or a couple of pages into the next chapter, and then he shuts down for the day and he said that simple shift made it so that he would show up the next day and he knew what he was already know. He had momentum. It really almost like remove the process of starkness or what so many describe. The writing space as writers block, is basically just he me a simple tweet fleetly reengineer that it's brilliant. I actually knows

light, but I've been using that techniques. Since I first heard about it, which was made me look and a half ago and die it's phenomenally effective because getting stuck is essentially, you could refrain it is. I can't get started because once you get started, the bull starts rolling down the hill, it's much easier, and so what what that does that little tweak? That will happen is that you don't begin the next day from scratch. You begin the next day with that wind. Behind your back already that you ve created the day before it's funny, I that is an analog to this. My last book was about screens and technology in hawaii. We can't stop watching netflix and using our phones and so on

one of the things I talked about, which was borrowed from this hemingway idea, is that we, when you give in to the structure of a show on netflix or an extended tv show, you have a cliffhanger at the end of an episode that makes you want to watch the next one. So what what's the the key? The key is to either stop five minutes before the end of each episode and then start the next day. You're watching from that point or to watch the first five minutes of the next one and then stop as soon as the cliffhanger is resolved and you sort of short circuit, the structuring that gets you to keep watching watching watching, which is the opposite of what we're talking about here his son introducing friction to prevent you from rolling down that he'll yeah and that as your describing them thinking how many other places in life could I use gradually lily, As soon as I heard that I read that in an interview, I switch Maria that has made writing lol form. So my excellent the easier a greater. So

one of the things that you talk about also is this notion of illegal we tend to when we have this feeling of being stuck. One of the responses is essentially paralysis like you. Just stop acting anything part of the fleet there is? I don't know what to do. What the appropriate next step is to get me out. Yes- and I don't even know if I take a step energy moving in the right direction. Or is it just digging me deeper into this, which then it's a spin cycle in our minds, because now we start like that becomes isabel, obsessive chatter, like what do I do, which leads you to just deepening paralysis, an you speak to the notion in very different ways getting out of your head like the importance of being in an action. Stands almost regardless of whether the next step is appropriate in the right direction or non yeah? Exactly no standards might be too high, especially in those

since those moments when, if you ever gonna lower your standards a little bit, those are the ones to do it. Jeff tweedy their front man of we'll call the ban. Will co, who writes music but also write books, has talked a lot about this idea that when he stuck sometimes you wake up in the morning and he's being created for decades, and so his his met. The way he measures his successes and my producing something usable as a song more as a part of a book, and he talks about how the best thing he has found if a moving forward is to lower the threshold of acceptable output down to the bicycle the floor, and so he'll do this thing where he says alright, so for the first hour of this morning, I'm going to pour out all my bad ideas as other kind of liquid or gunk that a prevent that it's have gone through, preventing the good stuff from coming out, and so he says to himself. What's the worst sentence, I could write right now when I try that or what's the worst bit of music I could compose, and so he knows that is a good chance.

it's not going to be usable, although sometimes it's better than he imagines, but by lowering the barrier faction all the way as low as it can be to the point where you license yourself to create bad things objectively, bad in the sense that they're not what you want, you do effectively. What hemingway was was doing by giving himself that next day's riding you get the ball rolling down the hill and suddenly you're acting you're, not stuck anymore, because you're making movement. Even if the movement is slightly sideways, it's not totally the direction you want to go. It gets you there eventually, because it's it's lubricated the path, yeah I mean I've always been a huge believer in just take any actual ec once you're in motion. You can correct course. There is no course to correct until your ocean dona. So they, even if your head in the exact opposite direction, if you're really paying you're going to figure it out pretty quickly. But if you just sit there and tried to think what is the right direction, you'll just sit there forever. It's it's like the action that gives you the data understood.

and what the answer to the problem is, and what the next step is. That's going can actually take you and into a place of progress rather than just stasis, and yet we love to think that we can just think our way out of stuff yeah exactly yeah. I think that's that's keys that you don't get any feedback from from noodling and strategizing and navel gazing. You don't know whether something's gonna work, you don't know whether it's actually the opposite of what you should be doing. The only way you ever discover that is by doing, and so to get continued feedback and tweaking we're finding. You can't do that by anything other than by acting so there's great value there. I think it's important to say, though, as well. You know we wish we mentioned the importance of of pausing, slowing down, taking down the pressure, taking down the temperature and and focusing on the emotions. I think these two ideas, although they they might seem contradictory, that you should just act it also slow down. I think it's important at the beginning of the process when your first stock and you recognise that to take that be a pause

It's just that once you ready to start acting, I think what often happens is we ve done all this strategizing we ve dealt with the emotional consequences and then would like will now is for us to do something, but my bar is up here. It's gotta be perfect, like I need something, that's just a phenomenal solution and that's where the mistake is in that way should lower the threshold down to the ground doesn't mean you bypass strategy is I said at that point you can move forward without without having to do something. This perfect yeah- and this is one of the things that you invite people to explore, like the notion of measuring what you're doing through a standard of excellence and not perfection but alma, feeling. What you're saying here is the first at his name and excellence, its adequacy yeah or even in a minute we see, is ok to wear Jeff tweedie example that some, if you think of inadequacy as blocking the path to adequacy, but you you ve, got to get it out of the way, then that that's kind of

useful because it allows you had licenses you at least briefly, to just get the bad stuff out and to act, even if that action is not just not perfect, but it's not actually adequate, and that's that's the the insight that I love about. That example from tweety. Is that essentially, what you do? Is you don't measure any action by standards at that point? When you're in that really desperate place, you are non judgmental about every single thing you create for a period of time. Now that doesn't mean you do that forever, because you'll never get anywhere, but it's a good good. First, thirty minutes. The day or something like that when you feel really entrenched, that's a good way to go. There is so much I mean what you keep reverting to a certain extent here also is The notion of how he said expectations and I was flash back to a conversation I had years ago with bob Taylor who's, the founder of telling the tarzan, like one of the biggest handy guitar, build in the world were sitting in his office They are the conversation recording sunday. I turned the mike off hand. I revealed

suddenly secret vanity had had for years as I bobby and only four years, I want to just make a guitar but ill. I can't find the right luther and the time limit in this bad and what's the course I should take- and he looks at me, justice is like. he's shaking his head. What am I getting wrong here? His like make one bad guitar a year ago. The cheap kit from the mail follow the directions he'll. Basically, no, it's gonna be awful. I just do it. You know you

is the only way you can learn to make one last bag guitar after it, and then one less bat and then one day, maybe one average one he's like you can't buy your way out of that process and no one ever regrets those those bad ones right. You never move past and then looked back and saw wish. I haven't bought that mail order. You talk, it is part of the narrative, it's part of the provenance, of where everything that you ultimately landed on came from its like a kind of an important part of the process and hunting is really enriching and it brings a lot of meaning to your life to have had the process that began with the less than perfect initial output. I think there's some kind of it deflating about landing on perfection. The first time you try anything, it very rarely happens, but the

the idea that you have to even try to do that. I think, is part of the problem it's out of where the paralysis comes from. So I think that such great advice, and, and also this sort of implicit in that that is not ideal in some sense but you're going to settle in I'm going to settle for the mail order kit, but actually think it's it's exactly where you should be in that moment. I think it's the best right thing to be doing in that moment. It's not just that bike. While you can't make a perfect guitar now so we'll just have to settle for this. I think that's like the first right step on that and he used to do exactly what what taylor suggested to their endangering. Also because you used the word narrative which brought me because he is, which of our life, is like a year where we're constantly telling stories about every experience in our life to try and make meaning of it, and, as you described the things we try it wants and somehow magically were just like boom done perfectly. That was amazing. This, worry that we tell ourselves about like how meaningful is actually to us when that happens verses.

is a thing where, like I was working towards it like on two years in I get stuff, it's brutally hard. Somehow figure out a way out of this chasm of darkness and again, motion and momentum again and that young, your booking existing I really want, and then I get like stuck again and then five times over Ten years later, you finally arrive at this. space or you create this thing or whatever it may be. That truly does feel magical. The closing the gap between like what relieved you want to make an what you actually were more making its the fact that which is we'd love to say, like I just want to avoid all the obstacles. It is those moments along the way were brought to its knees. I mean we figure out a way through that in doubt, the entire journey, with meaning at the end of the day like and gives us it's a different story to tell ya absolutely imagine if

I, like all those movies, karate kid type movies and rocky in all. These movies have of progress of some one to a point where they were world champions, or they were champions of whatever little area was important to them. No one's going to watch the movie where there's just Instant perfection were the first thing they do is success. There is no. There are no roadblocks along the way. It's because there's no meaning in there is no meaning and stumbling on perfection. You know, especially when it's hard to replicate, then it's just deflating. So I think it's it's a mistake time for that at least initially, and obviously you refine your talents across time and there's plenty of value to doing that, but I yeah I'd. I totally agree. That's where the meaning comes from and at that that idea of the self, as kind of a series of narratives is really compelling to swan

the most powerful social psychological theories. I've read is that the theory of the narrative self had actually changed how I live my life in a really big way. So I read this probably fifteen years ago. This idea that essentially, when people talk about the self, you know that it's a very philosophical idea like what am I versus other people, and who am I and how do I proceed, myself there's a lot of research into that. But the narrative self idea is that essentially other some of the stories you tell about who you are some of the members you have. I bought this little book. That's now has now for books there actually just next to me over there, it's

and every day at the end of the day, I'll write three or four lines about what the day was, and so at the end of every year, I go back and reread three hundred and sixty five or three hundred and sixty six entries, but then from time to time when I feel really lost I'll look at the book from eight years ago and I'll go to a random page and I'll say: where was I that like who was I to try to get a sense of whether this development and it transports you instantly now that I could never remember what I did on march? Third, twenty twelve, but it's there in that book, and so it gives you a thickness to that. Self narrative and gives you that sense of continuity, and I find it actually very good on sticking agent their plus. It lets you time travel little bit out its own fun here

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also here without actually like naming it is, is failure or the experience that we have failed and that we we have not? the thing or achieve the goal that we set before us. Yet sometimes we just feeling No yet there that sentence that were They struggling along the way, and that is part of the feeling of starkness, is a feeling of like I'm failing at this thing. That really like. I really want to make happen in some meaningful way, and that could be relationship. It could be a business whenever this cultural baggage around failure, but what have also seen I'm curious about this in special there's research that your wherever round it is that our cultural baggage, around failure is very domain. Specifically in the start up world, there is very little baggage around failure. If you haven't actually bombed out of times with ideas. Some busies investors won't even give you money because they want you to have been through that cycle, because

know that you learned through that cycle, but in other parts of life it feels like failure, is just failure and there's a stigma and judgement for it and adjust it sends us into this place of being like this is Not just this thing is a failure, but on the failure- and I'm I'm going to be stuck in this place wherever there is a moral sort of aspect of failure- and I think you're right that its domain specific so certain kinds of failure I would almost say are lifted on a pedestal has as rights of passage, and I think that's true in the b c and investing and generally the entrepreneurial world, it's probably true of athletic pursuits as well we had sort of seen as as necessarily true that almost all athletes eventually will will fail and often it'll be early on, and then they get better and they learn how to train better, but you're right. There are domains where you're not allowed to file away when you do fail, culturally, that seen as as a moral blemish and that's very damaging, obviously, for all sorts of reasons and cause failure does happen. It's inevitable.

and dumb. If filing is, is it such a moral standing that domain it me we're going to try less often you're going to take fewer risks, you're going to grow more slowly, if at all, you are going to stagnate and you'll be stuck in the comfort of not ever having to try anything. That requires that you potentially expose yourself to failure, and so it's just a different flavor of stuckness, but it still being stuck, I think, of always succeeding as a kind of a kind of stuckness too. I had this really interesting conversation with a guy it wouldn't tell me who it was? But he told me his friend was an actor and I was one of the famous actors of the day. This is about ten years ago and I said, who's the actor. He said. I can't tell you but he's a friend of mine and he's often in new york city and will sometimes we'll go out together.

This guy will start conversations with people and being out, and about and meeting girls was a thing for him at the time or having conversations with people in bars. It came so easily to the sky and the friends set. That must be amazing. You can go out. Everyone wants to talk to you. Girls are throwing themselves at you. That sounds like exactly what I would want from my life and the actor this guy, who had never got the identity of said to him. It's kind of my definition of hell is tipped to be so consistently and challenged in that domain and toys have exactly what you think you want. It's not the way to live a life. It's the way to live a moment. It's nice I succeed in the moment, but a string of unbroken successes that involve no change, no pushing against boundaries. The sky- and I have heard this from other people too. It's not a good way to live. It's not a good way to build meaning, and I mean if, if we are, if we exist,

at least in part yeah, because we want to grow. We want to experience growth, it. It really cuts off the opportunity to grow yeah if you're sort of near like the the expert in the room every time it whatever the thing is: it's like this is kind of like it's too easy and, like you said, counter intuitive yeah. That would be like not the thing that everybody wants, but in fact it's not and probably relates back to how he showed me highs like research right, whereas looking at all these people and the least happy time of it. It was when their lily, just amazing. Around doing nothing when they would have thought or told you yeah, that's the best part of the day there were just now wired for that. That is not how we flourish as human beings yeah it's very much about flow states and about finding the optimal rate of failure in one of the things that I talked about in the book is. This is optimal rate of failure across lots of domains. People have said it's somewhere between one in six and one in four attempts. So that means, if you're learning a language acquiring a new skill trying anything doesn't matter what it is.

but the optimal right will vary a little bit depending on who you are how sensitive you are a failure of the domain erin, but the the key takeaway from that is that it's not zero. It is that roughly sixteen to twenty five percent of the time you should be failing. Otherwise, that's that's not the sweet spot, and I think that dovetails really nicely with chicks at me eyes: ideas about faq flow and optimal difficulty and and not coasting along exactly that near We've talked a lot just about the experience of being stuck in some of the the components of it, and also a lot of the mindset that we wrap around it in some of the mindset, things and tools that we can do to sort of get unstuck. One of the things that so tat, whereas the notion of this feeling, also under the feeling of friction like I'm stuck in the mud, I just can't move and you introduce this notion of sunday. You collar friction idea, which I thought was really interesting yeah. started doing this in a business consulting context working with, in particular, with charities and non profit

but also now with some some larger companies as well, and the basic inside is that there are two ways to to interact with people and to improve those interactions, whether it means that you are sending them a product or you want them to donate money to a cause. One thing you can do is Sweden the deal, so you make the carrot more attractive and you sort of lure them in that could be making a better product could be advertising the product in a more effective way there all sorts of ways of doing that, or you can say. I think the issue isn't the product its great it's. The way should be- or at least it's good enough. The problem is that this too much stuff too much nonsense between the starting point and the point weapon actually commit to this thing, whether its donating money or buying the product and saw a friction order, basically says that the

the return on any investment you can get, and I found this is to remove friction to systematically locate them and then sand them down. So it's a three step process. You go through a journey whatever it is. If it's a customer relationship journey or whatever it might be, you find the friction points. First, you explore, then you intervene. So you say: okay, we're here, we've got this list of friction points. How can we intervene on them? How can we shave them down or eliminate them altogether and in the last part of that is confirmation is confirming that you've done a good job so having some metrics that can show you that, yes, this is improved things for you and it works very well in the business world, but it works really well as well as just that, an auditing tool for our own lives for figuring out. Where is this stuff? That is either the hottest, the least appealing the the stuff the

It's me the most avoidant so for a lot of people. I know, for example, the thing that they find most difficult is I travel in work in or the fact that their work requires that they have to travel a lot away from their families. Is there a way to take that particular friction point and make it less filled with friction, and there are certainly ways to do that either. You travel a little bit less if you can, but if you can't, how do you make the experience of travel feel less, disconnecting and and less disk distancing so that those are the kinds of things that I think are really valuable. Outcomes of this friction ordered process. curious about the timing of friction. Audit is in theory, you do this when you start because you you have made the greatest immediate access to the things are actually causing the friction, but am reflecting on the work Gabriel gin, incirlik, her whoop protocol here, like a really working towards a dollar and I'll, come yet wish outcome, obstacle, plan and so part of her methodology.

Thirdly, building what you're, describing as a friction order into the planning process before you even started sake. Let me anticipated all the potential friction points out will come up and then pre plan how I might move through them. Some wonder if you have to take on the appropriate timing, for their sake, is it more real and tangible and actual if you actually do it when it happens in the moment, or is there a new meaning, value to even just trying to imagine anticipate or brainstorm all the potential friction points it might come up and pre planned, hey might move through those. Yes, I love that work that you refer to, that our work by earth again and what she basically fines, Is that if you imagined success on the path to a goal, you're more likely to fail than if you imagined failing, because the act of imagining failure now means that you are better prepared to avoid it along the way, rather than just basking in all. It's going to be so wonderful. When it all happens. The way I plan- and that also works really well with a lot of the ideas about how you should get unstuck and I think you're right about

If the friction order that it can be very valuable as an acute tool for for treating immediate stuckness. But one of the things that I suggest- and I have I have the site- paid sheep that I give every organization that I work with for every person. I work with its like a cheap, because the things I stay at say at the end of the interaction is depending on their mind your own? You should be doing this every six to twelve months and sometimes it's every two years, and so some of the big companies that I've worked with now have a two yearly friction order where every yes, it's a cyclical thing, they'll come in and they'll say horizon. two years ago. We did this. You have now gone through a couple around with companies that I started working with before the pandemic, and so they have now had a few rounds in the midst of the pandemic. Summers we're cup starting to come out of it and and their face very different, friction points before during and after and it's a very valuable thing to keep doing, because you're more likely to

of starkness before it arrives and when it does arrive, you ve got some structures in place that make it shallower and mobile the I love that it's you're, describing that you like the notion of just on a personal level and thinking to myself kind of a cool experiment to run like what, if I just commit to a seasonal friction in all like. Let's like look at relationships, let's look at health and well being, let's look at world level the domains of life, that really matter most to me and then just on it on a quarterly basis. He likes the first day of like the fur whatever it, is at the next quarter, just doing this on a cross those major domains. I wonder if even doing that, ought it will prevent identify potential areas of starkness.

Before they even arrive, is and have you taking action to move past them answer like just keep the gears moving with fewer of those moments that bring you down yeah. Absolutely, I think, there's huge value in doing that, and it's a little bit like preventive maintenance for engineering problems like aeroplanes. You don't want to take the plane out of the sky and ground it for weeks at a time. So you only do that for major major major maintenance. Every few years, that's known as type d maintenance, but before you get anywhere near to id this type, a and b and c and type a maintenance is like the daily maintenance you are doing with the plane were just between flights as a tech, or a couple of engineers checking it out and as everything in between that type I and type d, and so you could think of the friction ordered as having these these different components that a lay it on top of each other. Where maybe once a week, you do a little type, a maintenance check and you're like is there anything. That's like really shouting out to me fix me immediately

and if not, then maybe every corner, you could do a type b or type c, where you say, or this folks something bigger things, maybe once a year its, whether its on your birthday or whether its some random day of the year labor day, you can pick any day you like to do a full. You devote that full day if you can and plan ahead this way to a full type de maintenance check where you really really getting into the full friction ordered of everything. When I take the ten thousand foot view, or the thirty thousand foot view, am I happy with where things are going? Is the trajectory on the right one and I think, you're right you could you could really eliminate some kinds of stock miss altogether others he some? You won't be able to do that, but you probably be better placed to deal with them when they arrive. one of the things that you sort explore along the way to it, especially in the context of his I'm doing my friction. I did I'm starting to identify the stop points now when you start to move from their into an action since ok, let's see if we can certainly started, do or way out of this move

Mindset tools were surely doing the referendums. It's the notion of simplification. It's the notion I'm saying you like, rather than making this big complex thing or like a big giant plan with a massive spreadsheet and is rather different actions like what is the simplest possible thing, and you speak to the importance of simplicity in getting out of this place in a way which It's almost counter intuitive, but also at the same time, a little counterintuitive yeah the term. We often think of complex processes as being necessarily complex and that they have all these moving parts and you can't grapple with them. Unless you accept all those parts integrate them, and that takes a huge amount of energy and time- and it's not easy to do and very often the best thing you can do is to strip away what's extraneous or what doesn't account for much of what's causing the trouble and to really focus all your time and attention on the one or two things that are most present most prominent when sorry, if you're doing a friction order. Yes, that you'll probably identify fifteen different things that, on some level, you'd like to

age, but you ve gotta, be single minded. You ve got a really focus on the thing. That's gonna make the most difference now and I think, being sequential about it saying once this is out the way I get to the next thing is a really good way to go, and I think we ve been harmed in general by the the myth of multitasking and that idea that we can buy for cattle we split ourselves into two, and sometimes even more than two two selves and constantly be dealing and juggling with different things. I just don't think that's true, there's not a lot of good evidence for that, and so you've got to be a little bit more mindful about the order in which you tackle things, and that is a simplifying agent, because it means that you're not splintered into lots of different pieces, when you're, trying to manage some big sticking point yeah and I have been so guilty of doing the exact opposite as much as one of my mantras for life is fewer things better yeah and I struggle so much with actually living that mantra, and I think sometimes, when we're kind of cruising when you like a lot of different parts of life, are to do.

It's kind of like you, the rolling along we feel like well, and you know, if we're doing a little bit of this a little bit this little bit less and things seemed to be okay. There No, you don't realize actually how how hard and damaging that early like multitasking across every domain of life process can be until one or two grind to a halt, and then the way to get out of that place is not to say. Let me keep doing five different things. It's the basically just say like this is the thing on aid to really narrow and simplify my energy into this one domain right now, or else everything is going grind to a halt, because everything's gonna be like suffering from fragmentation and flexibly. It makes a lot of sense. I think, sir, and I think it is partly about the number of things you doing with, and so you can simplify by dealing with fewer, but it also partly about how you interpret each thing and we are. We were an intelligent species. Is a species go, and so we tend to complex. If I things, if that's even though,

I would like will instead of saying how do I make this simpler? Our instinct is to to bolt things onto it and to make it a little bit more baroque and complex than it needs to be. There's this great book by lady clots called subtract and it's about this idea. He had this amazing realisation where he gave people these lego structures that will involve, but on balance, and he would cited imagine you're an engineer and you have to fix these lego structures and dump each piece costs a certain amount. So really it's better to use fewer pieces, and he said right now fix this structure. That's a little unbalanced. What he found they would tend to do was to add more pieces. Their instinct was to add pieces to make it more stable, but there was a much simpler solution, which was just removing a couple of pieces that had unbalanced structure and he he wrote this whole book about the

idea that humans tend to make things more complex rather than simplifying, and we get a we get a tremendous amount of mileage from changing out frame and saying right. So what's what's the colonel here? What's the simple, the key thing that will account for eighty percent of what what's making this hard and it's it's true about so many things like. If you look at it, the narrative you look at films. The structural of there are one there's, a finite number of different structures that are lay it over on films on the narrative, the films or stories, and once you know that, if you're trying to craft your own story, that's tremendously helpful, because you can deviate a little bit from one of those and make it your own, but even recognizing. there's. A finite set is a tremendously liberating idea, and I think that's true about a lot of creativity that we think of it. As this mystical complex thing, when often squat algorithmic and in many ways most of what goes on is quite simple yeah. I think we like to think of it. As Mr Collins lex,

I don't really it gives in the domain of magic, and we want to think of it. That way, we move into this action stance. You also speak to the the critical role of experimentation in exploring and exploiting in doing this dance of action taking a holding, Things loosely as you go you reference, upright says tat. I had never heard of in with the acronym ooda and ooda the loop comes out of a guess military strategy. And the letters allodial represent, observe orient decided at tell me the about this method. Because thought was really fascinating and at super inclined to certainly certainly try this knowledge of different domains of life right now. Yes, this comes from some literature on how to be a good fight, a pilot in the air force and its about

it'd, be quicker to make decisions and how to react to this. The changes around you which can be entrenching. They can get you stuck. So this is written by one of the the giants of a fighter pilot strategy and he basically explained his process for being quicker to react to the situations around himself as he as things shifted, and it was basically his way of of experimenting with ways of reacting and of taking in the information that had come in so observe and orient was about taking in this information and then making a really rapid decision and acting on the basis of that, and so one of the things I love about the hooda loop is first of all that there are two things. I guess that I love about a one is that it's an iterative process. You keep going round and round red you're doing the same thing over Again, they are constantly reappraisal of the world around you and us once you get good at this, and once it becomes a default few you're doing it constantly really rapidly. It's like the loop is really tie. The other thing I like about

Does it's kind of its a smaller narrow version of what this book is about, which is about exactly that? You first taken information, get yourself to a place where you're comfortable with it. You ve accepted it. and then you thinking about strategy which is the observing part of it, and then they, the action at the end. This is actually doing ma am side. It makes a lot of sense to me as a general approach. Would you mentioned experimentation and exploitation and exploration this framework, as has been one of them, the guiding frameworks and how I leave my own life and its this idea that there are. There are two very different ways to approach any situation where you you're trying to make progress, and you can only do one at a time you can either explore or you can exploit and those terms come from evolutionary biology and from evolution. Relieve you think about our evolutionary past we were say: hunting and gathering you're. Looking at going to look for berries and play.

or something like that. When you're exploring you look at the whole territory in front of you, the wholesome savannah or the planes and you're you're very shallowly. Looking at all of it and saying I dunno, which area to focus my attention on, so I'm just going to kind of roam far and wide, but not go very deep. But at some point you should identify there's that little posture over there. That looks really fruitful, I'm going to go over there, and then you spend all your time and attention exploiting that a tree, and it turns out the when you do that in that order. You explore you go broad. You say yes to everything, you try everything you meet new people and then for a while you kind of hunger down. He said well now that I've done that I've got a bit of direction. I'm gonna really go deep on this thing. That's when a hot periods, hot streaks inquiry has come about, That's when we make a lot of progress personally. So this is a lot of research. Looking at careers and personal growth showing that, if you first explore than you exploit that's the way forward,

yeah we sort of parallels there was a lot of people describe s early to phase of a creator process. Here the divergent and convergent here first wide and at a certain point, you need to actually sir, like narrow in and really refine what you're exploring ugly and it sort of similar thing in terms of the process of getting on stock in theirs. It probably strong argument. You say that a big part of the creative process is going from a place of being stuck to being unstuck and like opening to new innovation to creativity to new ideas was actually brings Another thing I want to ask you about: is this notion of azure and when you're in this place, you're doing all the work you do? The mindset ass, like you're, doing your friction. Audit you're, really thinking about as an error process and jumping things down. tim, small fry the net on simplify and at the end of the day, there's some time something else plays into this, which is luck or serendipity new. It's hard to not only break out of stoutness, but actually break through like have an immense is.

yeah, your language. This is all about how to go to a place of late breakneck is breaking out, but getting to a breakthrough place some of this week control. Some of this, we can do all that we ve been talking about. What's the role of just fortune in the process, its big Sarah. It is a big factor. I saw this amazing talk by Michael louis years ago. He was speaking to the princeton undergrad. This was when I was a grad student. He got up in front of this audience of of students, your graduating in appearance and basically said euro here. Because of luck, and- and I want to make that that strong case- and he himself had been a bit. an underground graduated in nineteen. Eighty seven. So this was like now don't my thirty light almost thirty years later and dumb, this basically trying to say that some we we systematically underestimate the role that luck plays in almost every outcome, in our lives from where and when you happen to people. To korea, decisions and small blessings and smoke curses and in a youtube. Funny live one.

If you don't know what the other sliding two options might have been, but he talked about luck and I found a very, very compelling, but one thing it become interested in was the idea that so serendipity stumbling on a good outcome, but it turns out that a lot of the strategies in the book, or about doing something, immediate and concrete right now, but in a very abstract, broader sense. This particular thing is is about how do you make yourself lucky? in general, like over time. How do you minimize, across the lifespan, the likelihood of getting stuck in ways that are kind of bad fortune related, and how do you increase the chances of of stumbling on good things? How do you make serendipity happen, and so I I have a a section in my one of my chapters about experimentation and being and generally an exploratory person and doing things the way kids do

Kids have serendipitous moments all the time, it's partly because they know less because they younger and haven't had as much experience but its party. That kid's will ask a million questions about everything they constantly exploring and we lose out somewhere between children in adulthood, but the people who have what seems like good luck from the outside. They are doing the kid like thing of always pushing back and saying what on this is the orthodoxy. This is what the herd is doing. Is there a good reason why? And if there is that's right, but if the reason but think of alternatives, and then that's where serendipity often comes from now, I think making pays for that is just so poor and also acknowledging it's part of the process. You can do all the planning and all the acting or anticipate everything you can possibly do and still sometimes you just. You always have to hold yourself open to these moments of serendipity or time. Is it just a certain amount of stuff that is outside of your control? But I am a firm believer in the fact that the

likelihood of us stumbling into a space of serendipity goes up when we're actually in motion, rather than just sitting and thinking, and because at least we're out in the world where korea eating moments for the world to react to an that's like the sound if it is about an interaction like that, if there's no in between there's, no luck, there's no fortune, yeah that no serendipity yeah. I once did this exercise that I found really helpful. Actually, I went back and looked at it come emails that I had received over a period of about ten years and I could find for emails in particular that had changed my life in a good way that, I remember being at a crossroads with all of them saying I dunno I dunno. If I'm going to move forward with this one of them inspired my first book, which changed my career, one of them was innovate invitation to to do it a different kind of kind of consulting engagement that I'd never thought of before. But at the time I was quite busy, and I thought I don't want to do that if I had said no to

there are those I been a completely different place. Korea, wise- and there are some other one- some personal and somewhere professional, but that excess as just showed me that you know that the number of times you say yes, the the more dots you throw at the board, the longer you play the game for, rather than just withdrawing the more chance you'll have of the serendipity is happening, and I think you're totally right. That's it such a critical part of what we think of it as kind of the the sprinkling the dust on top the magic dust on top, but Actually, when you look back at your life, I think a lot of the major things that happen, and this is what Michael Lewis's point was in part. A lot of those b, really important major life outcomes that really shape your life, often for the better, are the result of what seemed like a trivial interaction, or should I say yes to this invitation? Well, you know, if I'm in this exploratory phase, the answer should almost always be yes and so

I think that's true, it's I you gotta make space for it there and, at the end of the day system, I'd much more fun with a little life have dinner with creating that space and good place for us to come full circle as well. I think so in this container good life project. If I offer up the phrase, deliver your life. What comes up, I think, with one thing we didn't talk about- that. I love is the idea of surrounding yourself with three kinds of people: people who are a lot like you and make you feel good and reflect you think, there's a lot of value in that people who are totally different from you and non redundant. They have non overlapping experiences of the world and in the third kind, as people who actively push back, you probably want most of the first kind. Some of the second kind may be a few of the third kind, and I think that

best. The best way to live life is to have that three types of different people around you think you have before you leave. If you let this episode, save that you'll also love my january episode on the power of what I call a success. Scaffolding to achieve incredible visions, you'll find a link to their episode in the shoulders and, of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow through life prodded in your favorite listening and if you,

and this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable and chances are. You did since you're still listening here. Would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favorite and share it, maybe on social or by text or by email, just with one person just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know those you love those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better, so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered, because when podcast come conversations and conversations become action. That's how we, all come alive together until next On Jonathan feels signing off for good life, the.