Attitude

Posted on June 13, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Attitudes are infectious.

It’s why the happy, gregarious guy is always the life of the party and the center of attention.  Everyone wants some of that happiness.  It’s also why everyone avoids the depressed, quiet guy.  It’s actually easier to get bummed out by someone that it is to get inspired or uplifted.

This isn’t important just because we want to be happy or avoid sadness: attitude really is everything.  It affects every part of your life.  The happy, gregarious guy isn’t just the life of the party.  He’s the guy who everybody likes all the time.  He’s the one who gets hired.  He gets the prettier, smarter, funnier girl.  He gets the promotion.  A great attitude cultivates friendship, and friendship cultivates success.  And of course, success breeds more success.

It’s like celebrities that present at the Oscars: the last people on the planet who need $60,000 worth of free shit are the ones that get it.  The winners get to keep accumulating easy wins.

People want to be around other people who are fun, happy, and successful.  You have the ability to change the first two at any time.  Doing so usually produces the third.

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Being Smarter Doesn’t Mean You Make Better Decisions

Posted on June 12, 2012 by AJ Kessler

In fact, being smarter might actually lead you to make worse decisions.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his scientists measured students on four different points of “cognitive sophistication”.  All four of those measurements were positively correlated with intelligence, meaning that the “more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.”  In other words, smarter people are more prone to act without thinking:

In 2 studies, we found replicable bias blind spots with respect to many of the classic cognitive biases studied in the heuristics and biases literature (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Further, we found that none of these bias blind spots were attenuated by measures of cognitive sophistication such as cognitive ability or thinking dispositions related to bias. If anything, a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability.

Something to think about…

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There Is No Speed Limit

Posted on June 11, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Most of the world is designed for the lowest common denominator.  Schools are designed to impart a set amount of knowledge to a diverse group of kids each year.  It doesn’t much matter how smart you are, how interested you are, or how hard you want to work, the schedule is only designed to teach you so much each year.  Most jobs work this way too.  You show up, do the work someone tells you to do, and go home.  These systems have been spectacularly effective for the vast majority of people who need their hand held through life.

But there’s no requirement that you hold the hand that’s offered to you all the way through life.  It seems like there is, since almost everyone around you will probably say things can’t be done.  “You can’t take that many units” or “You can’t take that class if you haven’t had the prerequisites” or “You need 5 years of experience to apply for that job” or “You need X amount of capital to start that business” or, or, or.  Probably 99% of the limitations people think exist really don’t.

In fact, insisting that you grab the hand that isn’t offered to you is the best way to go.  This is the reason most “prodigies” are considered prodigies.  They get passionate about something, they get a little bit ahead of their peers, they demand access to those ahead of them, and they hang on while they get dragged along for a bit.  Once they catch up to that person (which means they’re now well ahead of their peers), they repeat this process.  After two or three rounds of this, they’re now far ahead of their peers, and their access is basically unlimited.  The people at the top of their field want to mentor these kids because (1) the kids actually care (which is unusual) and (2) because the kids remind those people of themselves when they were kids.

This works whether you’re a kid or an old man.

There is no speed limit.

 

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Spin

Posted on June 10, 2012 by AJ Kessler

[Tom Sawyer] had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

– Mark Twain

Few people have learned to spin better than politicians.  It’s not exactly a recent trend, either.  Dan Ariely recounts a story about FDR’s campaign for governor of New York:

So when Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for governor of New York in 1928, his campaign manager had thousands of posters printed with Roosevelt looking at the viewer with serene confidence. There was just one problem. The campaign manager realized they didn’t have the rights to the photo from the small studio where it had been taken.

Using the posters could have gotten the campaign sued, which would have meant bad publicity and monetary loss. Not using the posters would have guaranteed equally bad results—no publicity and monetary loss. The race was extremely close, so what was he to do? He decided to reframe the issue. He called the owner of the studio (and the photograph) and told him that Roosevelt’s campaign was choosing a portrait from those taken by a number of fledgling artists and studios. “How much would you be willing to pay to see your work hung up all over New York?” he asked the owner. The owner thought for a minute and responded that he would be willing to pay $120 for the privilege of providing Roosevelt’s photo. He happily informed him that he accepted the offer and gave him the address to which he could send the check. With this small rearrangement of the facts, the crafty campaign manager was able to turn lose-lose into win-win.

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Story Basics, According to Pixar

Posted on June 9, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Pixar story artist Emma Coats tweeted a series of “story basics” she had picked up during her tenure at Pixar.  These were generously compiled by The Pixar Touch:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

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Filling In The White Spaces

Posted on June 8, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Advice from Peter Thiel’s final CS 183 lecture:

There is something importantly singular about each new thing. There is a mini singularity whenever you start a company or make a key life decision. In a very real sense, the life of every person is a singularity.

The obvious question is what you should do with your singularity. The obvious answer, unfortunately, has been to follow the well-trodden path. You are constantly encouraged to play it safe and be conventional. The future, we are told, is just probabilities and statistics. You are a statistic.

But the obvious answer is wrong. That is selling yourself short. There are still many large white spaces on the map of human knowledge. You can go discover them. So do it. Get out there and fill in the blank spaces. Every single moment is a possibility to go to these new places and explore them.

There is perhaps no specific time that is necessarily right to start your company or start your life. But some times and some moments seem more auspicious than others. Now is such a moment. If we don’t take charge and usher in the future—if you don’t take charge of your life—there is the sense that no one else will.

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Be Criticized or Be Ignored

Posted on June 7, 2012 by AJ Kessler

If you do anything, you’re going to get criticized.  There is no perfect solution to any real problem that maximizes everyone’s happiness.  There’s no decision that you can make that won’t be second-guessed by someone who is forced to deal with the consequences.

The only way to avoid criticism is to do something that anyone else can do.  Be a cog in a machine, do exactly as you’re told, and never have the need to take responsibility for anything.  Of course this also means you’ll never really accomplish anything either.

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Why Drama

Posted on June 6, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Derek Sivers recounts the time Kurt Vonnegut explained why people concoct drama:

People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories.

Let’s look at a very common story arc. The story of Cinderella.

It starts with her awful life with evil stepsisters, scrubbing the fireplace. Then she get an invitation to the ball! Things look up. Then the fairy godmother makes her a dress and a coach. Even better! Then she goes to the ball, and dances with the prince! This is great! But then it’s midnight. She has to go. Oh no. Sadness. Back to her humdrum life scrubbing the fireplace. But it’s not as bad as before, because she’s had this encouraging experience. Then, the prince finds her, and the happiness factor is off the chart! Happily ever after.

People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.

Now let’s look at another popular story arc: the disaster.

It’s an ordinary day in an ordinary town. But something horrible happens! A child falls down a well! The whole town gathers to save her. Old grudges surface, but are belittled in the light of this tragedy. Rifts are bonded as people work together. The child is saved, and all is well. But notice it’s a little better than it was before, now that this incident has brought them all closer together.

People LOVE that story! This story arc has been written a thousand times in a thousand tales. And because of it, people think their lives are supposed to be like this.

The problem is that real life isn’t like either of these fairy tales.  Real life is relatively boring.  For most people, nothing tremendously exciting or traumatically devastating happens to them.

But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.

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Eggs

Posted on June 5, 2012 by AJ Kessler

How you eat your eggs is a good barometer for how you live your life.

There are people who do nothing but grab a plain hard boiled egg as they run out of the house in the morning.  Their eggs are nourishment, and not much more.

Then there’s people who take five minutes to make themselves an omelette or some nice scrambled eggs, and five minutes to enjoy them.  Those ten minutes are a pleasure to enjoy in the morning, and they set the tone for the rest of the day.

Whether you eat eggs or not, the point is that much of your quality of life isn’t dependent on money.  Hard boiled eggs are no cheaper than a nice omelette.  The only cost is modicum of thought and effort.  Quality of life is largely a choice.

For those of you who do eat eggs, here’s Gordon Ramsey showing how to make fantastic scrambled eggs in less than five minutes:

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Making Past Experiences Meaningful

Posted on June 4, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Really great advice from Ben Casnocha:

By the time the pizza boxes were emptied out, the pool party earlier in the afternoon seemed positively epic. I felt closer to the people with whom I had shared the experience. And those feelings persist today.

Happiness research is clear: buy experiences, not things. Experiences make us happy in part because experiences often generate vivid memories, and memories we can recall over and over with pleasure, whereas we quickly adapt to purchased goods like a new car or house.

At the birthday party I was reminded that buying experiences is a start, but we want those experiences to be meaningful. Humans crave meaning. And we will do what it takes — which includes deluding ourselves slightly — to assign meaning to the events in our lives.

One way to do this is through a social process of collective remembering. You can backdate meaning to experienced events by doing postmortems, debriefings, retellings, memory sharing.

Reliving, and backdating, your experiences is a great way to get more out of them.  The only thing to watch out for here is to not upgrade your mediocre memories so much that you end up repeating them.  It’s no fun going back to a 2-star restaurant that you remember being a 5-star restaurant.  Not only do you have to eat 2-star food, you get the disappointment of thinking you were going to be eating 5-star food.

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Old People

Posted on June 3, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Building relationships with your peers is important.  But when you’re younger, or just starting out in a field, it’s more important for your immediate future to build relationships with people that are five, ten, and twenty years ahead of you.  Not only do young people not have the experience to guide or mentor you effectively, they usually don’t have the ability or authority to help you in major ways.  Your buddy in the mail room might be able to get you a job in the mail room.  Your mentor in the Vice President’s office can get you just about any job you can handle.

This habit of cultivating relationships with people older, and in different life stages than you, won’t just benefit your career.  As much as we like to think we’re each little snowflakes with perfectly individual lives and goals and problems, we’re not.  Older people have gone through the same things you’re going through now.  They had the same dreams and fears, the same obstacles and triumphs that you do.  All of the little things that most people only learn by going through them?  They learned them by going through them.  Just ask them.  If you’re 25, ask a 35 year old what he wished he had done when he was 25.  (He’ll probably say travel more, and save more money for a house/engagement ring/wedding/kid.)  If you’re 35, ask a 45 year old what he wished he had done when he was 35. (He’ll probably say travel more, and save more money for kids’ college and retirement.)

You’re not going to find a better resource than the people who have been in your shoes.  Not utilizing them is one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make.

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The Death Zone

Posted on June 2, 2012 by AJ Kessler

In When I Die, Philip Gould talks about the freedom that his impending death from esophageal cancer allowed him to enjoy:

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Get Used To Hearing No

Posted on June 1, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Before you ever get into a field or a career, you’re probably going to hear someone say “no”.  No, that’s too hard.  No, you don’t have the credentials.  No, you don’t qualify.  No, it’s never going to work out.  No, people like us don’t do that.  No, that’s just not how it works.

Once you get into a field, you’ll continue to hear “no”.  No, that’s too advanced.  No, you need to learn this before you can try that.  No, you don’t have the credentials.  No, you don’t have the expertise.  No, you don’t have the experience.  No, that’s never going to work out.  No, that’s just not how it works.

Even once you’re a respected member of your field, you’ll continue to hear “no”.  No, you can’t do that!  No, don’t jeopardize your career with something like that! No, people like us don’t do that!  No, that’s not how it works!

Eventually, you’ll become skilled enough that people around you will start saying “yes”.  Yes, you can handle this project.  Yes, we can try that.  Yes, see if you can make that work.  It’s nice to hear “yes”, but it’s also a sign of trouble.

At first, a majority of people insisted that what you wanted couldn’t be done, even if you could show them you’d done it before.  After a while, some started to admit that maybe you could do it, but you were special.  After a while, you will change the landscape. People will catch up and realize that if you can do it, so can they, and so can others.  After Bannister broke 4 minutes, it wasn’t so special anymore.

And there’s your problem.  If, once you get use to hearing “yes”, you stop pressing, you will eventually get left behind.  If you don’t continue to do things that make people say “no, that can’t be done!”, then you’re not going to be successful for long.

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Why We Lie

Posted on May 31, 2012 by AJ Kessler

Nearly everybody lies and cheats.  For most of us, we lie and cheat about the small things, the stuff that we convince ourselves doesn’t really matter.  But, because everyone does this, the toll adds up quickly.  Whether it’s glancing at a neighbor’s paper on a pop quiz in elementary school, or illegally downloading movies, eating a coworker’s lunch out of the fridge, or surreptitiously raising your customers’ interest rates, millions of daily transgressions have a corrosive effect on society.

So, what makes us cheat more or less?  According to Ariely:

One thing that increased cheating in our experiments was making the prospect of a monetary payoff more “distant,” in psychological terms. In one variation of the matrix task, we tempted students to cheat for tokens (which would immediately be traded in for cash). Subjects in this token condition cheated twice as much as those lying directly for money.

Another thing that boosted cheating: Having another student in the room who was clearly cheating. In this version of the matrix task, we had an acting student named David get up about a minute into the experiment (the participants in the study didn’t know he was an actor) and implausibly claim that he had solved all the matrices. Watching this mini-Madoff clearly cheat—and waltz away with a wad of cash—the remaining students claimed they had solved double the number of matrices as the control group. Cheating, it seems, is infectious.

Other factors that increased the dishonesty of our test subjects included knowingly wearing knockoff fashions, being drained from the demands of a mentally difficult task and thinking that “teammates” would benefit from one’s cheating in a group version of the matrix task. These factors have little to do with cost-benefit analysis and everything to do with the balancing act that we are constantly performing in our heads. If I am already wearing fake Gucci sunglasses, then maybe I am more comfortable pushing some other ethical limits (we call this the “What the hell” effect). If I am mentally depleted from sticking to a tough diet, how can you expect me to be scrupulously honest? (It’s a lot of effort!) If it is my teammates who benefit from my fudging the numbers, surely that makes me a virtuous person!

But the best solution, Ariely concludes, is simply reminding people to act honorably:

While ethics lectures and training seem to have little to no effect on people, reminders of morality—right at the point where people are making a decision—appear to have an outsize effect on behavior.

You can read the full article over at the Wall Street Journal.

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If You Wouldn’t Wake Up Early For It, Don’t Stay Up Late For It

Posted on May 30, 2012 by AJ Kessler

One of the reasons Reddit is great is that you can find genuinely wise, pithy, and applicable advice from someone named SmellsLikeUpfoo.

In this case, the advice is simple: if you wouldn’t set your alarm one hour early to do something, don’t stay up one hour later to do it the night before.

Whether you lose it on the front end or the back end of the night, you’re losing the same hour of sleep. The only reason we allow ourselves to fall into this trap is because staying up late doesn’t feel bad.  Once you’re awake, staying awake an extra hour is pretty easy, even if you’re relatively tired.  But the thought of waking up at 4:30 instead of 5:30 is miserable.  Once you’re asleep, giving up an extra hour of sleep feels really bad, even if you’re relatively well rested.

So, force yourself to think about whether it’s worth getting up an hour earlier to do whatever it is you’d normally be doing late at night.  I’ll bet your evaluation of your nighttime activities changes pretty quickly.

 

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