The Art of Manliness - #418： How to Get Unstuck

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00:01:19.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you feel stuck

00:01:23.440 in moving forward with your plans and goals in life? If so, my guest today has some no-nonsense

00:01:27.540 advice on how to shift out of neutral and get going again. His name is Bernie Roth. He's the

00:01:31.580 co-founder of the Stanford Design School and the author of the book, The Achievement Habit,

00:01:35.060 Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life. Today on the show, Bernie explains to us

00:01:39.080 what design thinking is and how its principles can be used to create a flourishing life for ourselves.

00:01:43.100 We discuss how suspending the belief that everything has meaning can help you find new meaning,

00:01:46.820 why reasons are just excuses, how to really get at the root of our problems,

00:01:49.940 the difference between trying to do something and actually doing it, and how action is the best

00:01:53.680 form of learning. We end our conversation discussing how you build true confidence by

00:01:57.160 consistently taking small steps towards your goal and making the achievement habit a part of your life.

00:02:01.660 If you need help getting unstuck in your life, you're really going to enjoy this podcast.

00:02:04.420 After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash achievement habit.

00:02:19.940 Bernie Roth, welcome to the show.

00:02:23.940 Thank you.

00:02:24.540 So you just published a book, The Achievement Habit. You have a really interesting background

00:02:28.440 because you're a professor at the Hasso Planter Institute of Design at Stanford University. It's

00:02:33.120 the D School. For our listeners who aren't familiar with design theory and what do you teach students

00:02:40.320 at the D School and what do people who specialize in design go on to do later on?

00:02:45.180 Yeah. Well, it's a little deceiving, the name. So the thing to understand is we don't really teach

00:02:52.300 professional designers at all, although some professional designers do work here. What we're

00:02:58.100 doing is something called design thinking, which is a kind of broad problem-solving methodology

00:03:04.100 that evolves from people who originally did what you think designers do, which is they

00:03:10.560 worry about artifacts, they worry about different things in the world. We're interested not only

00:03:16.840 in things, but also in people and organizations and behavior. We're interested in all sorts of

00:03:24.600 problems. And we find that these methodologies, which are a little bit different than the normal

00:03:29.800 problem-solving methodologies, are very effective, especially the whole idea of being human-centered

00:03:35.880 and being concerned with the people you're working for, is a kind of new twist on an old thing,

00:03:43.040 which is getting stuff done in the world. So we give the students an experience that way.

00:03:47.780 My institute is not really a department, so we can't admit anyone to Stanford and we can't give

00:03:52.920 degrees, but we do give courses. And this year, for example, we're giving 70 courses and we have over

00:04:01.260 1,000 Stanford students taking them. And they're mainly graduate students, masters and PhD students

00:04:08.580 in all the departments of the university. And when they get done, they go back to doing what they

00:04:14.960 were doing. You know, before enlightenment, they used wood, and after enlightenment, they used wood also.

00:04:20.420 So it's mainly just giving them extra tools in their life. Now, some flip. A few become just so

00:04:27.220 enamored by what they've gotten in the new method that they become the professional so-called design

00:04:32.460 thinkers. But basically, think of it in terms of a learning by doing methodology that's useful in

00:04:38.880 almost any walk of life. Right. So it could be designing a product or designing a system that

00:04:43.960 humans use that makes it... Yeah, absolutely. It's not tied to a physical product, although it might

00:04:50.460 include that, but in general, it could be the way a hospital works. It could be the way your life works.

00:04:56.080 It could be the way your organization functions to accomplish something. It could be the way the

00:05:02.940 government hires people. It could be the way you give social security benefits to people. It's almost

00:05:09.160 any issue dealing with people that we're interested in. Well, so for a big picture overview, we don't

00:05:15.140 have to get into the details, but I mean, what is the process of design thinking? Like what goes on when

00:05:21.140 you're looking at a problem and how you solve that? Yeah, well, the process itself is not

00:05:25.820 that unique. It's more a set of mindsets that go with it. So first, the process, there's not a

00:05:31.920 process. There are many processes. And the thing is, it's not very linear. But for purposes of teaching

00:05:38.320 and explaining, we have a process that we advertise, although not everyone uses it, of course. And that

00:05:47.760 is, if you get an issue, first of all, get acquainted with what the problem is, which seems, of course you

00:05:56.160 have to do that. Get as much information as you can, and then define what the real problem is. We call that a

00:06:02.180 point of view. And then once you get that, you ideate and you test and you produce a solution. Well, almost everyone

00:06:09.820 does that one way or another, whether they call it design thinking or not, if you're problem solving. So really what the

00:06:15.940 difference is that we're much more human-centered than most problem solvers are. Most people, when they solve

00:06:23.060 problems, just talk to others, other professionals. They don't really talk to the people they're actually

00:06:29.540 doing the thing for. And I can give you some good examples of that later. We also have what's called

00:06:35.120 a bias towards action. We don't overthink and overplan. In fact, we tend to avoid planning. We just learn by

00:06:42.900 doing. So that's something which you're going to make mistakes. You know, if you just do something

00:06:48.440 without thinking about it, you're surely going to, at some point, make some mistakes. And our whole

00:06:54.540 mindset is to learn from your mistakes. And that may be a better and faster way to learn than just

00:07:00.380 sitting around thinking, hoping you're going to get it perfect the first time. So we have what's

00:07:05.580 called a bias towards action. We have the human-centeredness I mentioned. We have the notion

00:07:11.500 of radical collaboration, which is to involve many more voices than are usually involved in getting

00:07:17.320 a job done. So all our classes, which are project-based classes, are very interdisciplinary.

00:07:24.560 So it's not unusual for us to have a team of four where one person is in the graduate school of business,

00:07:30.000 one person may be in medicine or law, one person is in engineering, one person is in the humanities.

00:07:35.580 And those four people are working on the same issue. So we get different perspectives and it's

00:07:41.840 very enriching. So we have this whole idea of radical collaboration. We don't let any one

00:07:47.360 course be taught by just one person. So I myself, even though I'm, you know, one of the originators,

00:07:54.000 cannot go into a classroom just by myself. I have to have some other people in there

00:07:58.320 also helping lead the class. So we have this whole idea of multiple voices. And then there are a few

00:08:05.280 other things we do. But that's the whole idea is to just have an action-based approach to problem

00:08:11.260 solving where you learn by doing and you learn from what happens and you don't worry about making

00:08:16.740 a mistake because, you know, you can correct it and maybe it's the best thing that happens to you

00:08:21.020 during the process.

00:08:22.540 Okay. And so what you've done in the achievement habit is you've taken this design thinking and

00:08:27.640 apply it, help people apply it to the most human of activities is designing your life,

00:08:32.120 right? In a way that's...

00:08:33.780 Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny because when I started to do that, I thought I'd get a lot

00:08:38.580 of pushback from the people in the business because one of the, one of our mantras is design for someone

00:08:44.980 else, don't design for yourself. But actually it's been very well accepted by the people. And now

00:08:50.920 there are those who actually talk about designing your life. My book is not really a design your life

00:08:56.560 book. It's the design your everyday thing. People who more talk about design your life,

00:09:01.460 you're talking about future planning and things of that nature. My belief is you can't really plan

00:09:07.440 my, everything that happened in my life that's great happened sort of by happenstance. You know,

00:09:13.420 it was an accident, it was a phone call, it was meeting someone. It wasn't something I could have

00:09:17.820 planned out at all. So I'm a firm believer in sort of getting your act together day to day and having a

00:09:25.600 decent life as you go along. And the long run will take care of itself if the short term is moving

00:09:32.940 correctly.

00:09:33.580 I was going to say, so, you know, the book's called Achievement Habit. So with that,

00:09:37.600 with what you just said, what is it that you mean by achievement?

00:09:40.860 Well, I do not mean being queen or king of the universe. And I actually have a friend,

00:09:46.580 Sethi Burnett, I would never buy a book with achievement in the title. But really what I mean

00:09:51.840 about is to have a good life. And I say, you know, the ultimate achievement is when you die

00:09:59.400 and your friends eulogize you, they don't have to lie. And if they can tell the truth about you

00:10:05.040 and be proud of it, that's a good measure of it. But it's really the whole idea of being a decent

00:10:11.780 human being and feeling comfortable about your life, being comfortable about it being in your skin

00:10:17.440 and having the people around you feel good about you and being part of a functioning society.

00:10:24.140 So I think that's what achievement is. That's achieve your good life to me.

00:10:28.820 So as I was, you know, reading about what design thinkers do, in a lot of ways, you guys are

00:10:35.880 meaning makers. You're trying to create a system or a product that when a human interacts with it,

00:10:40.420 it makes sense to them, right? They know how, they intuitively know how to use it. It provides

00:10:44.500 some structure. But what's interesting, you talk about one of the things that design thinkers do

00:10:50.500 is they suspend all sense of meaning to create more meaning, right? So what's going on there?

00:10:58.220 Why is it important for designers to suspend all sense of meaning so they can create more effective

00:11:04.200 systems?

00:11:04.700 Well, I would say it a little bit differently. I think the first thing is to realize you give

00:11:09.840 everything in your life its meaning, basically. Nothing has an intrinsic meaning that you haven't

00:11:15.560 given it. And because of that, you're a sort of powerful person. You're a sort of godlike,

00:11:21.460 if I might say, because you're giving everything in your life its meaning. So that's both wonderful

00:11:27.160 and it's a little dangerous because you might give it a meaning which is sort of destructive in

00:11:32.440 terms of getting the problem solved or getting what you want to do handled. So at that point,

00:11:38.000 you can reframe it and give it a slightly different meaning. So the whole idea is to be flexible and

00:11:44.920 to realize that not everything means exactly what you think it means in your life. And you can use it

00:11:51.280 in different ways and you can do different things. And you can see the same situation for many different

00:11:56.560 viewpoints. And that's a very powerful thing because it gets you unstuck if you're just in a,

00:12:02.780 you know, if you're stuck in this pigeonhole. You know, it can get you into trouble. But I think

00:12:07.840 in general, I find that's a very powerful notion for me. You know, people think everything doesn't

00:12:15.400 have a set meaning. That's terrible. It's nihilistic. I actually see it as very powerful. I see it empowers

00:12:21.580 me because I can choose the meaning of all the stuff that happens in my life. So, you know,

00:12:27.400 this interview, I can make it the best thing in my life that ever happened or the worst thing in my

00:12:33.160 life that ever happened. And we might both come up with different meanings for it. I don't know. But,

00:12:39.040 you know, you get to play these things all out. And it's so interesting, you know. So if you,

00:12:44.740 as an example, if you make a mistake, if something terrible happens, you can become suicidal about it.

00:12:51.020 Or you can say, wow, I really learned. I'm never going to do that again. That was really exciting.

00:12:56.580 You know, that's such a valuable experience I got out of it. So, you know, as I say,

00:13:00.640 I don't want to be extreme about it, but it's really important to realize that. And in fact,

00:13:06.560 people who do great inventions and things, I mean, there's almost nothing new in the world.

00:13:13.440 So people who make great inventions, they just combine things in different ways. So in a way,

00:13:18.020 they're just seeing it. They're seeing the same thing in a different way that others haven't seen it.

00:13:23.120 And that leads to the magic of great accomplishments and getting things done that

00:13:29.480 you feel proud of. So that's what I mean by giving things its meaning. And I find it a very positive

00:13:37.020 aspect of life.

00:13:39.200 Right. I can see how they can increase creativity. Because I've read studies where they'll do those

00:13:43.300 things where they'll get a bunch of adults and then give them just random objects and they have

00:13:47.340 to solve a problem. So like they'll have a hammer, a knife, et cetera. And the adults,

00:13:52.200 they just tend to like think of a hammer, like, well, you just hammer a nail with it. That's what

00:13:55.700 you do with it. But when they do this to kids, kids don't have that. So they're like, oh, a hammer

00:14:00.620 could also be a weight. It could be. So yeah, by not having like, by not looking at this typical

00:14:05.700 pigeonholed meaning of something, it allows you to get more creative with things.

00:14:10.740 Exactly. Yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about. And it's not only for physical objects,

00:14:16.860 it's of course, behavioral and relationship with other people and our families. It's all

00:14:23.100 over the place to realize that.

00:14:25.240 Yeah. I mean, I can see that when you were describing applying it to your life, it seemed

00:14:28.720 like a very stoic approach, like the stoics were all about. It's not the thing itself that's

00:14:32.960 causing you harm. It's how you're thinking about the thing that's causing you harm.

00:14:36.700 Yes. Sure. Yes. Definitely.

00:14:37.900 So I've encountered whenever I'm designing something, whether it's a plan for vacation

00:14:44.280 or planning my day, or if it's some big project, there's a tendency that I typically fall into.

00:14:50.040 And I think a lot of people do too, is you focus on the things that prevent you from achieving

00:14:56.220 your end. I'm curious, you know, with your experience, why do you think it's our default

00:15:01.800 that humans go to? Like, why do you always think about the problems that prevent us from getting

00:15:05.460 to our end goal? I think humans are basically problem solvers. I mean, that's somewhere in our

00:15:10.020 DNA. And if you're not a problem solver, you wouldn't live long on the earth. So everyone solves

00:15:15.740 hundreds of problems each, every day, you know, just getting connected to make the call,

00:15:21.300 by getting into the office, by getting dressed, by eating, you know, and most of them we do kind

00:15:27.980 of automatically. We don't even think about them. We've learned how to do them. Although as a child,

00:15:32.180 you know, you don't eat so automatically, you have to learn how to eat, not get food all over

00:15:36.420 the floor and you have to learn how to get dressed. So we've learned all these things. And we've solved

00:15:40.720 those problems. And then we as we move on, we get problems which we haven't solved before. And we

00:15:47.100 tend to get stuck sometimes in those things. And those are the things that sort of occupies it sort

00:15:53.380 of what you don't have is always more important than what you have. So people tend to look at the

00:15:59.180 things that aren't working rather than things that are working. So I think that's part of the human

00:16:03.840 condition. And I think it's not a bad one. It's just a matter of how you approach it and what you do with

00:16:09.820 the frustration of being thwarted for a moment. And you know, that is that's the opportunity. Usually, I

00:16:17.180 have a friend who he's an Olympic medal winner, he's done a lot of things. And he's he started many

00:16:23.820 companies. And he says to me all the time, you know, every time I've started a company in general,

00:16:30.540 I've had some big obstacle. And in getting around that obstacle, that was the magic. If I hadn't

00:16:37.400 encountered the obstacle, I would have done this prosaic thing. And then I just was so thwarted,

00:16:43.260 I just was blocked. And I found this magic way around it. And that made the thing really much better

00:16:48.660 than it would have been to begin with. So being blocked is not a bad thing. It's just a state of

00:16:53.940 part of the process of solving problems. And if not, you don't even notice it. I mean,

00:16:58.980 if it just goes automatically, which most of our life do, and most people who function pretty well,

00:17:05.360 their life just flows, they don't worry about problems during the day and night, they may lose

00:17:10.100 sleep over stuff. But during the day, they just have sort of mastery in what they're doing. So it's a

00:17:15.640 kind of complex question you're asking. But I would say, yeah, it's okay to get frustrated. And

00:17:21.820 the magic is to figure out ways around it and not let it beat you down and deter you from moving

00:17:29.860 forward. You also make the bold claim in the book that oftentimes we give reasons why something can't

00:17:35.860 be done. You know, they're basically excuses, right? There really aren't reasons. Those are just

00:17:40.740 excuses. There's always a solution there if you think creatively.

00:17:44.480 So what I claim is that there's no single reason for any human behavior. But if someone asks you

00:17:52.060 what the reason is, or your kind of person needs a reason, you'll of course do that. It's so funny.

00:17:57.940 I just had this thing with my wife. She has some cousins in France. And we don't have much contact

00:18:03.920 with them. But they were nice enough to send us an email inviting us to a daughter's wedding.

00:18:10.440 And we're not going to go. And my wife says, well, what should I say? I said, well, just say thanks

00:18:16.560 for the invitation. Sorry, we can't make it. She says, no, no, I got to give them a reason. Should

00:18:20.880 I tell them because you're working or because we're going to Corsica? I said, don't give them. Just say

00:18:27.320 what you're doing. And it's so funny. We're so different in that way. But it's really true.

00:18:32.300 Reasons are, I've come to the statement, the radical statement is reasons are bold, basically.

00:18:39.080 Because there's no one reason for anything. You know, you asked me to be on this podcast.

00:18:44.780 If you said to me, why did you say yes? I said, because you, why are you on the podcast? I said,

00:18:50.320 because you invited me. But it's not that simple. Because a lot of people invited me on podcasts.

00:18:56.180 It has to do with a lot of things in my life. And if I asked you, why did you invite?

00:19:02.300 And you say, well, I liked your book. But it's also not that simple, because you've liked a lot

00:19:06.300 of books in your life, I'm sure. We're very complicated people. And a lot of stuff goes on

00:19:12.520 that makes us do the behavior we do. Most of the time, we just act automatically. There have been

00:19:18.820 tests, or they put people in MRI machines, have them do a task, and ask them why they've done the task.

00:19:25.780 And what happens is the part of the brain that deals with the actual physical doing fires long

00:19:32.960 before the part of the brain that deals with the reason. So essentially, we're on automatic,

00:19:38.780 we do stuff, and then we make up reasons for doing it if someone asks us. And that's in order

00:19:43.540 to be a reasonable person. So if you ask me a reason, I don't give you a reason, I'm not a reasonable

00:19:47.900 person. So the only thing that reasons are good for is to seem to be a reasonable person.

00:19:52.500 The bad thing is, they're mainly excuses. They're often ways for us to not to live up to what we

00:19:59.100 want to do. So I mean, I don't care for reasons. What I do care about is that it prevents you from

00:20:06.840 doing what you want to do, because you're just relying on the reason. In the book, I give this

00:20:12.340 example, which is where I got the epiphany. I was on the board of directors of a company up in Berkeley,

00:20:17.780 which is normally about an hour away from Stanford. And I was invariably late. Every board of directors

00:20:24.560 meeting, I was late. And I'd come in there, and I blamed the traffic on the highway. And it is true

00:20:30.800 there was traffic on the highway. But in fact, I was being abusive to these people because I was

00:20:36.260 keeping them waiting. And I got this realization that I should either quit the board or give it more

00:20:43.040 surveillance of my life and get there on time. And what it meant was just leaving more time in the

00:20:49.080 trip. It's as simple as that. But before I did that, I always, you know, I did a few things extra

00:20:54.740 before I left. And I got to my car just in time that if there was no traffic, I would get there.

00:21:00.160 And of course, there was always traffic. So I blamed the traffic. But of course, the real many different

00:21:05.380 things. And one was how I held that, my membership, my sense of belonging, my sense of obligation,

00:21:13.160 and it totally changed my life to someone who's now totally on time for everything. Because if I

00:21:19.720 make an obligation, I honor it. And it's just a matter of giving it enough priority to your life. So,

00:21:26.220 you know, people who late all the time, it's just they're not giving a thing that they're supposed

00:21:30.600 to be at any priority. It's insulting to the people they're going to. So it's that kind of a

00:21:36.260 thing. If you realize that the reasons are not helpful at all, and they're often destructive.

00:21:41.780 Another example I love is I get requests from around the world to come to Stanford to do a PhD

00:21:47.040 from China, Pakistan, Iran. And some of these requests are quite lengthy, and they've researched

00:21:53.920 me and all that. And I feel bad, bad not answering. So I would give them excuses. You know, I'm sorry,

00:21:59.940 I can't take you because I don't have any money. I'm sorry, I can't take you because I'm going on

00:22:04.460 sabbatical. And whenever I gave them a reason, they push back with, well, if you don't have money,

00:22:09.380 I have a rich uncle. If you're going on sabbatical, I can wait a year. And the conversation go back and

00:22:14.980 forth until I just truncated because of frustration. Nowadays that I have this enlightenment, I just say,

00:22:21.580 sorry, I can't help you. Good luck. And what happens is about 90% of the time, I get back an email,

00:22:27.740 thank you professor for answering my email. That's the end of the story. If I don't give

00:22:32.400 them a reason, they have nothing to push back against. It's as simple as that. Just say what

00:22:37.520 you do, say what you don't do. Don't worry about the reasons. No one needs the reasons and they're

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00:24:38.080 hair tomorrow. And now back to the show. So one of the things you talk about, you know,

00:24:42.200 we were talking about getting stuck in a problem. And I love this one, this, this one solution you gave

00:24:47.220 because it's changed the way I'm looking at things, is that oftentimes the problem we think

00:24:52.020 is the problem isn't really the problem. And there's, we can often go to a higher level to

00:24:57.980 really find out what the problem is. Can you walk us through what that get to a higher level method

00:25:01.780 is and how that can help people get unstuck? Sure. Well, the way to get to what I call a higher

00:25:06.920 level, which is just a name for reframing the problem to something more functional, is ask yourself

00:25:12.780 what it would do if you solve the problem. So you're stuck with something, and you think you

00:25:17.020 have to do something, and then ask yourself what it would do for you if you solved it. And when you

00:25:24.000 do that, that gives you a new problem. And I'll give you an example. The one I love, the funniest one,

00:25:29.800 is I was working with a group of Stanford alumni, and this woman's problem was that her boyfriend 1.00

00:25:36.060 snored at night, and they'd gone to all sorts of medical specialists, and they can't cure or

00:25:42.480 eliminate his snoring. So I asked her, what would it do for you if your boyfriend stopped snoring?

00:25:49.760 She said, I would be able to get a good night's sleep. So now I say, well, the new problem is how

00:25:55.080 do you get a good night's sleep? Well, when you're getting a good night's sleep, you're opening up the

00:25:59.680 solution space tremendously. One solution might be to get the boyfriend to stop snoring, but there are

00:26:04.640 many others, including change the boyfriend, right? Or put on earplugs, or sleep in a different room.

00:26:11.380 So what happens is by reframing it, she's opened up the solution space. And before she would just

00:26:17.280 fixate on this one thing, getting this poor guy to stop snoring. And it's a really interesting example

00:26:23.120 of the kind of thing we do all the time. We so fixate on what we think the right answer is,

00:26:29.220 we don't see the big picture as to what it is we want to really accomplish. And even if he stopped

00:26:34.240 snoring, maybe she wouldn't get as much sleep as she thought. So it's that kind of idea. But that

00:26:40.460 happens in technical problems all the time. It happens in my life many times. It's sort of

00:26:46.600 magic. When you reframe it, you realize, aha, that real problem is not the one I've been working on.

00:26:52.880 No, yeah, it's been super powerful. Whenever I get frustrated or at a sticking point, I'm asking,

00:26:56.460 what am I trying to solve here? And as you said, sometimes the answer is,

00:27:00.760 it means I don't do this thing. I don't need to do this thing. Because you think you do,

00:27:05.520 but you really don't. And then you just delete it or delegate it.

00:27:08.980 And often, even if you solve the wrong problem, it won't help you. Another example, some woman I

00:27:15.540 worked with, she was worried about getting her daughter into a good college. And she was losing 0.96

00:27:22.580 sleep over the issue. And the question is, well, what would it do for you if you got your daughter

00:27:27.160 into a good college? Oh, I could stop worrying about her daughter. Well, the whole idea is to stop

00:27:33.220 worrying about it. Because even if the daughter got into a good college, she'd worry about who

00:27:36.760 her daughter's sleeping with, or what her daughter's majoring in, or what she can do when she 0.83

00:27:40.360 graduated. You know, the problem is not the daughter of the good college. The problem is the 0.98

00:27:45.080 mother's neuroses, and not being able to handle uncertainty in life, and things like that.

00:27:50.580 So even if you solve the thing, if it's not the right thing, it doesn't help you at all. It

00:27:56.080 doesn't handle it. I call it, if you solve the right thing, it basically disappears the problem.

00:28:01.520 And that's a much higher state to be in than the one that is just solving it, because it can come

00:28:09.060 back and get you, especially if it's the wrong problem, it'll still be in your life. So you want

00:28:14.200 to do something which just makes it no longer an issue in your life, because you've handled it so

00:28:18.880 well, that it's kind of disappears. So as you said earlier, with design thinking, there's a bias

00:28:24.840 towards action. Like I think most people when they think design, they think some guy, you know,

00:28:29.100 over, you know, some blueprints, drawing something out, but you guys are learning by doing.

00:28:34.060 But you make the point that oftentimes people, when they think they're doing and taking action,

00:28:39.260 they really aren't. They're just merely trying. What is, how do you differentiate between trying

00:28:43.800 and doing? Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, whenever I get to this, I get nervous that Yoda's

00:28:49.360 going to strike me dead. But, you know, because of that famous line in Star Wars, there is no try,

00:28:56.120 I just do. But basically, there is a try. In real life, try is fine. And I think trying is just as

00:29:02.120 good as doing. I think the problem is that people conflate the two, they think they're the same

00:29:07.320 thing, and they're not. And they're just two different states. So if you're trying to do

00:29:12.680 something, it might or might not happen. And if you get an obstacle in the way, it will probably stop

00:29:19.040 you. And you won't let get it to happen. If you're doing something, nothing is going to stop

00:29:25.040 you. The obstacle, if you get it, you're going to figure out a way around it. And you're going to

00:29:30.280 actually handle it. And that's the difference. And it's, it's okay to try. It could be a lot of fun

00:29:36.640 to try. But it's totally different if you do. I have an incident in my book, which is kind of

00:29:42.520 says it all. My wife and I were driving home from San Francisco, I noticed the movie theater that's

00:29:49.240 sort of plays very special movies, and it had a huge line around it. And I passed it many times,

00:29:55.960 I never saw a line that large around it. And it turns out the movie was about a music group. And the

00:30:01.400 group was going to be there. And it was obviously very popular because of this big line. So I said to

00:30:06.740 my wife, let's go see a movie. And she said, No, no, I'm tired. I want to go home. Let's go home.

00:30:11.980 We talked back and forth. Eventually, she relented. And I said, Okay, jump out in front

00:30:17.260 of the theater, you buy the tickets, I'll go find a parking place. I came back 10 minutes later.

00:30:22.480 She's not online. She's just standing in front of the ticket booth. And I said, What happened?

00:30:27.040 She said, they were sold out. I couldn't get I said, Well, why aren't you online? She said,

00:30:30.600 I couldn't get tickets. Did you hear me? They were sold out. And I said, Joe, just wait here.

00:30:36.560 And I worked my way down the line, I ended up with two tickets. And we went and

00:30:41.440 it was a great example of several things. One is that my wife is always right, because it was a

00:30:47.100 terrible show. But the real thing is, she was trying. She was trying to accommodate me. And as

00:30:53.900 soon as she got an obstacle, they were sold out. She was frustrated. That was the end that she's not

00:30:59.380 doing. I was going to do whatever it took, I was going to get two tickets to get us in there.

00:31:03.740 And that's the difference. The fact that they were sold out was irrelevant to me.

00:31:08.260 It in no way slowed me down for a minute. I was going to get these tickets, whatever it took to

00:31:13.980 get them. So it's an example of the difference between trying and doing. Now, it doesn't make

00:31:19.680 my wife wrong. And it doesn't make me right. It just shows the different kind of actions that you

00:31:25.020 have. Another example I had, where I was glad to try, I had gotten some money for some research.

00:31:31.780 And part of the obligation was to go to Houston for a meeting, or to Dallas for a meeting. And I

00:31:39.960 went to San Francisco Airport reluctantly to take the flight. And when I got there, it was a miracle.

00:31:47.260 There was a sign up, Dallas-Forthworth Airport is closed because of a snowstorm. All flights are

00:31:53.860 canceled. So I called the people up, said, I'm sorry, I can't make it. It's a snowstorm. And they

00:31:59.060 said, it's okay. And I went home very happily. Now, I was trying to get there. And I was glad

00:32:05.020 not to do it. If my life depended on getting to Dallas-Forthworth, even if the airport was closed

00:32:11.440 with a snowstorm, I would have gotten there. See? And that's the difference between trying

00:32:16.580 and doing. Now, if I have to kill someone to do, I might change. You know, I don't have 0.79

00:32:21.380 to be so fixated that no matter what, I'm going to lose my morality or things like that. I can

00:32:27.420 switch from one to the other. But it's important to realize which state you're in and not be

00:32:32.900 frustrated in the trying state and stop doing it. It's as simple as that. You know, there's

00:32:38.240 a funny story. We do a lot of exec ed trainings at the D School. And these three guys from some

00:32:46.440 company took it together. And I have a little exercise where I have the participant try to

00:32:53.320 take something away from me. And then they actually take something away from me. And they

00:32:57.620 went back, they got an idea. And they went to the manager and they said they'd like to

00:33:01.120 do this little project. And he said, I'm sorry, we don't have any room. We don't have any physical

00:33:05.920 room. You guys can't do that. So they huddled and they said, let's take it away from Bernie.

00:33:11.160 And they actually set up a little office in the hallway. And they actually worked the project and

00:33:17.620 eventually the manager relented and gave them space and they were very successful. But this

00:33:22.460 whole idea, just because the manager said no, they weren't going to stop doing it is this whole idea 0.92

00:33:27.740 of doing and not using bullshit reasons. Well, the manager said we can't do it. Therefore, we can't 0.68

00:33:32.880 do it. So it all ties in with reasons and whether you're trying and doing. And they're just good to

00:33:39.420 know that you have control of all that. Yeah. No, yeah. I like, as I was listening to that,

00:33:43.640 sounds like the trying people have the mindset of, they're fixed on like the meaning that's

00:33:48.460 presented to them. Whereas the doers, they don't just see that, they see other options as well.

00:33:53.620 Yeah. They make it if they, you know, they want to do it as easily as the trying people do,

00:33:58.160 but they're not stopped. They don't have a reason not to do it. The reasons are both. They're going to

00:34:04.300 do it no matter what. And they're going to transcend the obvious things that come in the way of doing

00:34:10.080 it. And it's so magically, it's so empowering if you do it. But as I say, sometimes it's great to

00:34:15.680 try. Sometimes, you know, it's better not to succeed. You might get killed if you succeed.

00:34:21.520 It's a complicated thing. So I want to do two things. I want to rehabilitate trying, in spite of

00:34:27.260 what Yoda said, trying is okay. But I think it's really important to realize trying is not the same

00:34:33.900 as doing. And you get to choose. And you can switch from one to the other. Just don't kid

00:34:38.840 yourself which state you're in. And you have this great section in the book that I found really

00:34:43.560 beneficial was this idea of how we talk to ourselves can influence whether we're doers and

00:34:48.440 tryers. I mean, how do doers talk to themselves? Like that internal monologue we all have going on in

00:34:53.720 our head. Well, I think it's a kind of how we call it personal efficacy. This whole idea of having

00:35:01.560 confidence in yourself. And the way you get it is by lots of little successes. You know, the people

00:35:08.160 who want to train people to get rid of phobias, they give you little guided exposures that are safe.

00:35:14.100 And eventually you get to pick up the snake or whatever you're afraid of. But the point simply is

00:35:19.660 by learning little steps at a time, you build this strength of doing. And that's kind of what

00:35:27.300 on the magic of what we do in the d school with people are learning by doing. They're not learning

00:35:32.940 by memorizing and passing tests. And if you learn by doing, it's really empowering. If you do something

00:35:39.100 for someone, we do a lot of stuff and people earn less than $2 a day all over the world. If you go and

00:35:45.500 you're in a hut of some farmers in Myanmar, and you can help these people have task lighting or

00:35:53.200 something like that, it's so inspiring. It's so powering for the rest of your life that you've

00:35:58.540 done these things. It gives you confidence to go on. And that's what life is about, having confidence

00:36:05.180 to do more and more things and having successes in it and learning from your failures. And so it's a

00:36:11.780 kind of doing existence that we have. And if you just lay in bed all day and you think about your

00:36:17.740 problems, nothing's going to happen. Most of us have like, I don't know, 80,000 or 60,000 thoughts

00:36:22.940 a day. And 80% of them are repeated thoughts. If you haven't figured it out by the third day,

00:36:30.800 get out of bed, it's not going to happen. You got to go and do something. So that's really the point

00:36:35.980 of it is to start to do. And that leads to more doing. And I know in my life, you know, when I was

00:36:42.140 a teenager, I was, you know, I was not capable of doing many things. I lived a kind of not directed

00:36:48.620 life. And as I got more involved and had some successes academically, they built on it, built on

00:36:54.980 it. And, you know, before I knew it, I was the world's expert in something. But I didn't get there by

00:37:00.640 being born with it. I got there by doing lots of things and putting them all together. So it's

00:37:06.680 really just this learning by doing is a very powerful tool. And that's, that's the achievement

00:37:12.460 habit. Like you do this so often that it becomes just second nature to you. Yeah. Yeah. You just,

00:37:17.240 it just becomes who you are. You change, you know, nobody's brain is fixed for life. Your brain is a

00:37:24.340 very malleable thing. And by doing stuff, you make different connections and you switch your

00:37:31.520 synapses and stuff. And you remodel your brain. We've done tests where we put people into little

00:37:36.860 simple kind of creativity problem workshop, just very short for an hour or two. And we do that for

00:37:43.320 a couple of weeks. And we put them in an MRI machine before we put on an MRI machine afterward. And we find

00:37:49.660 the part of your brain, which does the creativity has changed because it is simple exercises. I mean,

00:37:55.340 it's really, it's so hard to imagine, but it is a change more stays for a long time. So anything

00:38:03.280 you do changes who you are. So it's this whole idea of changing the way you want to go. And you can

00:38:09.460 change in a billion. There's addiction, people that's really hard to get rid of if once your brain has

00:38:14.860 changed that way. But there's other ways of you can get addicted to good things. Also,

00:38:20.440 you don't have to get addicted to bad things. Although addiction is not great, no matter how

00:38:25.240 you have it. But basically, it's a matter of using the experience. So there are manual things of

00:38:31.220 learning. And, you know, it's even funny if you take people who are the world's greatest musician and

00:38:37.860 something, these people are practicing all the time, you know, Heifetz is practicing all these people who

00:38:43.640 are world-renowned. They're not sitting around dawdling all day long. They're practicing,

00:38:49.640 they're practicing, they're practicing. Athletes, the same way, you know, they're practicing. So it's

00:38:55.080 the same thing in anything in life. If you want to have good skills and you want to go on, you have

00:38:59.660 to keep doing it. And as you keep doing it, you reinforce that part of your brain or your musculature

00:39:06.460 that lets you do it. And so you build on your successes.

00:39:10.440 I love it. Well, Bernie, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:39:14.380 about your work in the book?

00:39:15.840 Well, the book is available all over the place in libraries, and you can buy it if you want to.

00:39:22.880 It's called The Achievement Habit. It's published by HarperCollins. And I have a website, though,

00:39:28.060 where you can see various lectures I've given at different companies. And it's the name of the book,

00:39:35.140 except without the the. So it's AchievementHabit.com. And you can get more of me than you

00:39:41.480 ever would want there and learn more about the book.

00:39:45.460 Well, Bernie Roth, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:39:47.540 Thank you. It's been my pleasure, too.

00:39:49.280 My guest today was Bernie Roth. He's the author of the book, The Achievement Habit. It's available

00:39:52.580 on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is

00:39:56.580 slash Achievement Habit, where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:39:59.780 topic. And if you're looking to develop The Achievement Habit and get unstuck out of a rut,

00:40:03.220 check out our online platform, The Strenuous Life at strenuouslife.co. Basically, it's a

00:40:07.320 scouting program for grown men. I know it might sound kind of silly, but it's worked. Over 3,000

00:40:11.440 guys have signed up, developed new habits in fitness. They're learning new skills. It's really

00:40:15.260 been a kick in the pants for a lot of guys. So for more information, check out strenuouslife.co.

00:40:19.460 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:40:36.740 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy

00:40:40.160 the show, you've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or

00:40:43.260 Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:40:46.940 podcast with a friend or family member who you think gets something out of it. As always,

00:40:50.600 thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:40:53.980 manly.

The Art of Manliness - June 28, 2018

#418： How to Get Unstuck

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