#418： How to Get Unstuck
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Summary
Do you feel stuck in moving forward with your plans and goals in life? If so, my guest today has some no-nonsense advice on how to shift out of neutral and get going again. His name is Bernie Roth, and he s the co-founder of the Stanford Design School and the author of the book, The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life.
Transcript
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This episode of the Art of Manliness podcast is brought to you by the Art of Manliness store at
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This episode of the Art of Manliness podcast is brought to you by Slow Mag. Seven out of 10
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Do you feel stuck
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in moving forward with your plans and goals in life? If so, my guest today has some no-nonsense
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advice on how to shift out of neutral and get going again. His name is Bernie Roth. He's the
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co-founder of the Stanford Design School and the author of the book, The Achievement Habit,
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Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life. Today on the show, Bernie explains to us
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what design thinking is and how its principles can be used to create a flourishing life for ourselves.
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We discuss how suspending the belief that everything has meaning can help you find new meaning,
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why reasons are just excuses, how to really get at the root of our problems,
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the difference between trying to do something and actually doing it, and how action is the best
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form of learning. We end our conversation discussing how you build true confidence by
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consistently taking small steps towards your goal and making the achievement habit a part of your life.
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If you need help getting unstuck in your life, you're really going to enjoy this podcast.
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After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash achievement habit.
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So you just published a book, The Achievement Habit. You have a really interesting background
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because you're a professor at the Hasso Planter Institute of Design at Stanford University. It's
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the D School. For our listeners who aren't familiar with design theory and what do you teach students
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at the D School and what do people who specialize in design go on to do later on?
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Yeah. Well, it's a little deceiving, the name. So the thing to understand is we don't really teach
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professional designers at all, although some professional designers do work here. What we're
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doing is something called design thinking, which is a kind of broad problem-solving methodology
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that evolves from people who originally did what you think designers do, which is they
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worry about artifacts, they worry about different things in the world. We're interested not only
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in things, but also in people and organizations and behavior. We're interested in all sorts of
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problems. And we find that these methodologies, which are a little bit different than the normal
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problem-solving methodologies, are very effective, especially the whole idea of being human-centered
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and being concerned with the people you're working for, is a kind of new twist on an old thing,
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which is getting stuff done in the world. So we give the students an experience that way.
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My institute is not really a department, so we can't admit anyone to Stanford and we can't give
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degrees, but we do give courses. And this year, for example, we're giving 70 courses and we have over
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1,000 Stanford students taking them. And they're mainly graduate students, masters and PhD students
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in all the departments of the university. And when they get done, they go back to doing what they
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were doing. You know, before enlightenment, they used wood, and after enlightenment, they used wood also.
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So it's mainly just giving them extra tools in their life. Now, some flip. A few become just so
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enamored by what they've gotten in the new method that they become the professional so-called design
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thinkers. But basically, think of it in terms of a learning by doing methodology that's useful in
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almost any walk of life. Right. So it could be designing a product or designing a system that
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humans use that makes it... Yeah, absolutely. It's not tied to a physical product, although it might
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include that, but in general, it could be the way a hospital works. It could be the way your life works.
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It could be the way your organization functions to accomplish something. It could be the way the
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government hires people. It could be the way you give social security benefits to people. It's almost
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any issue dealing with people that we're interested in. Well, so for a big picture overview, we don't
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have to get into the details, but I mean, what is the process of design thinking? Like what goes on when
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you're looking at a problem and how you solve that? Yeah, well, the process itself is not
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that unique. It's more a set of mindsets that go with it. So first, the process, there's not a
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process. There are many processes. And the thing is, it's not very linear. But for purposes of teaching
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and explaining, we have a process that we advertise, although not everyone uses it, of course. And that
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is, if you get an issue, first of all, get acquainted with what the problem is, which seems, of course you
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have to do that. Get as much information as you can, and then define what the real problem is. We call that a
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point of view. And then once you get that, you ideate and you test and you produce a solution. Well, almost everyone
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does that one way or another, whether they call it design thinking or not, if you're problem solving. So really what the
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difference is that we're much more human-centered than most problem solvers are. Most people, when they solve
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problems, just talk to others, other professionals. They don't really talk to the people they're actually
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doing the thing for. And I can give you some good examples of that later. We also have what's called
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a bias towards action. We don't overthink and overplan. In fact, we tend to avoid planning. We just learn by
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doing. So that's something which you're going to make mistakes. You know, if you just do something
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without thinking about it, you're surely going to, at some point, make some mistakes. And our whole
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mindset is to learn from your mistakes. And that may be a better and faster way to learn than just
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sitting around thinking, hoping you're going to get it perfect the first time. So we have what's
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called a bias towards action. We have the human-centeredness I mentioned. We have the notion
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of radical collaboration, which is to involve many more voices than are usually involved in getting
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a job done. So all our classes, which are project-based classes, are very interdisciplinary.
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So it's not unusual for us to have a team of four where one person is in the graduate school of business,
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one person may be in medicine or law, one person is in engineering, one person is in the humanities.
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And those four people are working on the same issue. So we get different perspectives and it's
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very enriching. So we have this whole idea of radical collaboration. We don't let any one
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course be taught by just one person. So I myself, even though I'm, you know, one of the originators,
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cannot go into a classroom just by myself. I have to have some other people in there
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also helping lead the class. So we have this whole idea of multiple voices. And then there are a few
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other things we do. But that's the whole idea is to just have an action-based approach to problem
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solving where you learn by doing and you learn from what happens and you don't worry about making
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a mistake because, you know, you can correct it and maybe it's the best thing that happens to you
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Okay. And so what you've done in the achievement habit is you've taken this design thinking and
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apply it, help people apply it to the most human of activities is designing your life,
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Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny because when I started to do that, I thought I'd get a lot
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of pushback from the people in the business because one of the, one of our mantras is design for someone
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else, don't design for yourself. But actually it's been very well accepted by the people. And now
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there are those who actually talk about designing your life. My book is not really a design your life
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book. It's the design your everyday thing. People who more talk about design your life,
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you're talking about future planning and things of that nature. My belief is you can't really plan
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my, everything that happened in my life that's great happened sort of by happenstance. You know,
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it was an accident, it was a phone call, it was meeting someone. It wasn't something I could have
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planned out at all. So I'm a firm believer in sort of getting your act together day to day and having a
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decent life as you go along. And the long run will take care of itself if the short term is moving
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I was going to say, so, you know, the book's called Achievement Habit. So with that,
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with what you just said, what is it that you mean by achievement?
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Well, I do not mean being queen or king of the universe. And I actually have a friend,
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Sethi Burnett, I would never buy a book with achievement in the title. But really what I mean
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about is to have a good life. And I say, you know, the ultimate achievement is when you die
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and your friends eulogize you, they don't have to lie. And if they can tell the truth about you
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and be proud of it, that's a good measure of it. But it's really the whole idea of being a decent
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human being and feeling comfortable about your life, being comfortable about it being in your skin
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and having the people around you feel good about you and being part of a functioning society.
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So I think that's what achievement is. That's achieve your good life to me.
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So as I was, you know, reading about what design thinkers do, in a lot of ways, you guys are
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meaning makers. You're trying to create a system or a product that when a human interacts with it,
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it makes sense to them, right? They know how, they intuitively know how to use it. It provides
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some structure. But what's interesting, you talk about one of the things that design thinkers do
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is they suspend all sense of meaning to create more meaning, right? So what's going on there?
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Why is it important for designers to suspend all sense of meaning so they can create more effective
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Well, I would say it a little bit differently. I think the first thing is to realize you give
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everything in your life its meaning, basically. Nothing has an intrinsic meaning that you haven't
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given it. And because of that, you're a sort of powerful person. You're a sort of godlike,
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if I might say, because you're giving everything in your life its meaning. So that's both wonderful
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and it's a little dangerous because you might give it a meaning which is sort of destructive in
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terms of getting the problem solved or getting what you want to do handled. So at that point,
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you can reframe it and give it a slightly different meaning. So the whole idea is to be flexible and
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to realize that not everything means exactly what you think it means in your life. And you can use it
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in different ways and you can do different things. And you can see the same situation for many different
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viewpoints. And that's a very powerful thing because it gets you unstuck if you're just in a,
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you know, if you're stuck in this pigeonhole. You know, it can get you into trouble. But I think
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in general, I find that's a very powerful notion for me. You know, people think everything doesn't
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have a set meaning. That's terrible. It's nihilistic. I actually see it as very powerful. I see it empowers
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me because I can choose the meaning of all the stuff that happens in my life. So, you know,
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this interview, I can make it the best thing in my life that ever happened or the worst thing in my
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life that ever happened. And we might both come up with different meanings for it. I don't know. But,
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you know, you get to play these things all out. And it's so interesting, you know. So if you,
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as an example, if you make a mistake, if something terrible happens, you can become suicidal about it.
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Or you can say, wow, I really learned. I'm never going to do that again. That was really exciting.
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You know, that's such a valuable experience I got out of it. So, you know, as I say,
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I don't want to be extreme about it, but it's really important to realize that. And in fact,
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people who do great inventions and things, I mean, there's almost nothing new in the world.
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So people who make great inventions, they just combine things in different ways. So in a way,
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they're just seeing it. They're seeing the same thing in a different way that others haven't seen it.
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And that leads to the magic of great accomplishments and getting things done that
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you feel proud of. So that's what I mean by giving things its meaning. And I find it a very positive
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Right. I can see how they can increase creativity. Because I've read studies where they'll do those
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things where they'll get a bunch of adults and then give them just random objects and they have
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to solve a problem. So like they'll have a hammer, a knife, et cetera. And the adults,
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they just tend to like think of a hammer, like, well, you just hammer a nail with it. That's what
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you do with it. But when they do this to kids, kids don't have that. So they're like, oh, a hammer
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could also be a weight. It could be. So yeah, by not having like, by not looking at this typical
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pigeonholed meaning of something, it allows you to get more creative with things.
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Exactly. Yes. That's exactly what I'm talking about. And it's not only for physical objects,
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it's of course, behavioral and relationship with other people and our families. It's all
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Yeah. I mean, I can see that when you were describing applying it to your life, it seemed
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like a very stoic approach, like the stoics were all about. It's not the thing itself that's
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causing you harm. It's how you're thinking about the thing that's causing you harm.
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So I've encountered whenever I'm designing something, whether it's a plan for vacation
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or planning my day, or if it's some big project, there's a tendency that I typically fall into.
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And I think a lot of people do too, is you focus on the things that prevent you from achieving
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your end. I'm curious, you know, with your experience, why do you think it's our default
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that humans go to? Like, why do you always think about the problems that prevent us from getting
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to our end goal? I think humans are basically problem solvers. I mean, that's somewhere in our
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DNA. And if you're not a problem solver, you wouldn't live long on the earth. So everyone solves
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hundreds of problems each, every day, you know, just getting connected to make the call,
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by getting into the office, by getting dressed, by eating, you know, and most of them we do kind
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of automatically. We don't even think about them. We've learned how to do them. Although as a child,
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you know, you don't eat so automatically, you have to learn how to eat, not get food all over
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the floor and you have to learn how to get dressed. So we've learned all these things. And we've solved
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those problems. And then we as we move on, we get problems which we haven't solved before. And we
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tend to get stuck sometimes in those things. And those are the things that sort of occupies it sort
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of what you don't have is always more important than what you have. So people tend to look at the
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things that aren't working rather than things that are working. So I think that's part of the human
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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
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the frustration of being thwarted for a moment. And you know, that is that's the opportunity. Usually, I
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have a friend who he's an Olympic medal winner, he's done a lot of things. And he's he started many
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companies. And he says to me all the time, you know, every time I've started a company in general,
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I've had some big obstacle. And in getting around that obstacle, that was the magic. If I hadn't
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encountered the obstacle, I would have done this prosaic thing. And then I just was so thwarted,
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I just was blocked. And I found this magic way around it. And that made the thing really much better
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than it would have been to begin with. So being blocked is not a bad thing. It's just a state of
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part of the process of solving problems. And if not, you don't even notice it. I mean,
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if it just goes automatically, which most of our life do, and most people who function pretty well,
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their life just flows, they don't worry about problems during the day and night, they may lose
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sleep over stuff. But during the day, they just have sort of mastery in what they're doing. So it's a
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kind of complex question you're asking. But I would say, yeah, it's okay to get frustrated. And
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the magic is to figure out ways around it and not let it beat you down and deter you from moving
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forward. You also make the bold claim in the book that oftentimes we give reasons why something can't
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be done. You know, they're basically excuses, right? There really aren't reasons. Those are just
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excuses. There's always a solution there if you think creatively.
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So what I claim is that there's no single reason for any human behavior. But if someone asks you
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what the reason is, or your kind of person needs a reason, you'll of course do that. It's so funny.
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I just had this thing with my wife. She has some cousins in France. And we don't have much contact
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with them. But they were nice enough to send us an email inviting us to a daughter's wedding.
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And we're not going to go. And my wife says, well, what should I say? I said, well, just say thanks
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for the invitation. Sorry, we can't make it. She says, no, no, I got to give them a reason. Should
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I tell them because you're working or because we're going to Corsica? I said, don't give them. Just say
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what you're doing. And it's so funny. We're so different in that way. But it's really true.
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Reasons are, I've come to the statement, the radical statement is reasons are bold, basically.
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Because there's no one reason for anything. You know, you asked me to be on this podcast.
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If you said to me, why did you say yes? I said, because you, why are you on the podcast? I said,
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because you invited me. But it's not that simple. Because a lot of people invited me on podcasts.
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It has to do with a lot of things in my life. And if I asked you, why did you invite?
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And you say, well, I liked your book. But it's also not that simple, because you've liked a lot
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of books in your life, I'm sure. We're very complicated people. And a lot of stuff goes on
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that makes us do the behavior we do. Most of the time, we just act automatically. There have been
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tests, or they put people in MRI machines, have them do a task, and ask them why they've done the task.
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And what happens is the part of the brain that deals with the actual physical doing fires long
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before the part of the brain that deals with the reason. So essentially, we're on automatic,
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we do stuff, and then we make up reasons for doing it if someone asks us. And that's in order
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to be a reasonable person. So if you ask me a reason, I don't give you a reason, I'm not a reasonable
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person. So the only thing that reasons are good for is to seem to be a reasonable person.
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The bad thing is, they're mainly excuses. They're often ways for us to not to live up to what we
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want to do. So I mean, I don't care for reasons. What I do care about is that it prevents you from
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doing what you want to do, because you're just relying on the reason. In the book, I give this
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example, which is where I got the epiphany. I was on the board of directors of a company up in Berkeley,
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which is normally about an hour away from Stanford. And I was invariably late. Every board of directors
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meeting, I was late. And I'd come in there, and I blamed the traffic on the highway. And it is true
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there was traffic on the highway. But in fact, I was being abusive to these people because I was
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keeping them waiting. And I got this realization that I should either quit the board or give it more
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surveillance of my life and get there on time. And what it meant was just leaving more time in the
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trip. It's as simple as that. But before I did that, I always, you know, I did a few things extra
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before I left. And I got to my car just in time that if there was no traffic, I would get there.
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And of course, there was always traffic. So I blamed the traffic. But of course, the real many different
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things. And one was how I held that, my membership, my sense of belonging, my sense of obligation,
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and it totally changed my life to someone who's now totally on time for everything. Because if I
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make an obligation, I honor it. And it's just a matter of giving it enough priority to your life. So,
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you know, people who late all the time, it's just they're not giving a thing that they're supposed
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to be at any priority. It's insulting to the people they're going to. So it's that kind of a
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thing. If you realize that the reasons are not helpful at all, and they're often destructive.
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Another example I love is I get requests from around the world to come to Stanford to do a PhD
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from China, Pakistan, Iran. And some of these requests are quite lengthy, and they've researched
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me and all that. And I feel bad, bad not answering. So I would give them excuses. You know, I'm sorry,
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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
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sabbatical. And whenever I gave them a reason, they push back with, well, if you don't have money,
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I have a rich uncle. If you're going on sabbatical, I can wait a year. And the conversation go back and
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forth until I just truncated because of frustration. Nowadays that I have this enlightenment, I just say,
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sorry, I can't help you. Good luck. And what happens is about 90% of the time, I get back an email,
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thank you professor for answering my email. That's the end of the story. If I don't give
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them a reason, they have nothing to push back against. It's as simple as that. Just say what
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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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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
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
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
00:27:40.360
graduated. You know, the problem is not the daughter of the good college. The problem is the
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
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
00:33:27.740
of doing and not using bullshit reasons. Well, the manager said we can't do it. Therefore, we can't
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
00:39:15.840
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.
00:39:49.280
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
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guys have signed up, developed new habits in fitness. They're learning new skills. It's really
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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
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00:40:50.600
thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay