The Achievement Habit (6 page)

The column at the end showed the sum of the seven numbers in that row. The woman corresponding to the column with the highest total—the second woman in the table—would be the chosen bride. Very rational—just what I would have expected from a good engineer. However, the more he told me about his meetings with the women, the clearer it became that this was not as rational as he pretended.

There were two major departures from objectivity: first, of course, was the fact that the scores that he gave each woman were totally subjective. Second was that he was not completely honest with himself about his weighting factors. For example, he told me he gave “wealth” a low weighting factor of 1 because he did not care about his wife’s wealth. Yet he weighted “family” twice as high. When I asked what he looked for when he rated the family, his answer told me that he was looking for things that indicated that the family was wealthy.

The most confused of all seemed to be the ratings for “career.” Kumar told me he definitely wanted his wife to have a career and not stay at home, and he also wanted her to be available to take care of dinner if, at the last minute, he decided to invite some of his work colleagues to his house. So he gave this a low weighting of 0.9.

When all was said, it was clear that he had fudged the numbers in favor of the women he felt most connected to during their short meeting. So much for analytical thinking! (As it turned out, intuition worked just fine: Kumar and his wife have been happily married for over twenty-five years.)

Decision making has become a big business, and new tools are being developed all the time. All of them, however, rest on a belief and a value system that require logical systematic thought.
This approach appeals to people who are naturally judgmental and value so-called rational thought. If it could deliver good decisions at most of life’s crossroads, it would be terrific. Unfortunately, it often can’t.

In my experience, quantitative methods and feelings both have their places. I tend to be pragmatic, and I don’t discount my intuition. If a tool gives me good answers, I use it. In either case, when making decisions, it couldn’t hurt to keep in mind Captain Ahab’s realization about his pursuit of Moby Dick: “All my means are sane
, my motive and my object mad
.”

The best scientific methods for decision making won’t help if your question is one that can’t be answered rationally. Ahab was following a logical course of action, but he was doing that in pursuit of something irrational. Make sure that your motive is a good one before bothering to figure out how you’ll find an answer.

I had a PhD student from Bulgaria whose father was a well-known professor, and the student had led a fairly privileged life in his country. He was very bright and inquisitive.

After a while he started asking me questions about things in this country that confused him. For example, in Bulgaria there was one nationwide price for gasoline. He could not understand how some gas stations in the United States could charge more than the others and survive. He asked, “Wouldn’t everyone go to the least expensive station?”

At the time I didn’t really know the answer to that question. Of course, now that I have the d.school mentality, I would probably tell him to go ask the people buying gas at the expensive stations! Regardless, it was fascinating to see America through his questioning eyes.

Then one day he came to me with a serious problem. He had begun to realize that it was impossible to do lots of things without a credit card. He couldn’t rent videos or a car, and many places would ask for a second form of identification, which he didn’t have. The problem was that he couldn’t get a card unless he already had credit. I decided to let him apply for a joint card with me.

The deal was this: I would not use the card, and paying the bill would be his sole responsibility. We received two cards in the mail, and I destroyed mine. A few days later he came to me with a mailing he had received. As a bonus for applying for the card, we were eligible to buy a packet of tickets for the Canadian lottery in British Columbia. For only twenty dollars we had the chance to win valuable prizes. He asked me what I thought. I gave him my best New York streetwise explanation of what a sucker play it was. I told him to throw the offer in the garbage. Furthermore, even if it was an honest offer, he was certainly smart enough to figure how ridiculously poor the odds of his winning were. Certainly these were
goooood
reasons not to do it.

Close your eyes and imagine the end of this story.

Got it? Okay.

Here is what actually happened. He sent in his twenty dollars, and he won the grand prize: a luxury car or $80,000 Canadian. He took the money, which came tax-free because he was an alien. He and his fiancée used the money for their wedding and for a down payment on a house. They soon had children, and they are now living happily ever after in California.

This was yet another time I’m glad someone did not listen to my rational voice of experience and expertise. I guess when it comes to the accidents of real life, not even professors know much. The point of the story isn’t to ignore all advice. It’s that
you have to live with the consequences, good or bad. Do something or don’t do it. Follow advice or ignore it. In making your decisions, keep in mind that even when the odds are against you, you still might win. Life is a gamble, and ultimately you have to decide for yourself.

If there’s something you really want to do, often it’s as simple as just doing it. Remember, I am talking about the real stuff, not pipe dreams. In the end you don’t need tricks or gimmicks. It comes down to the difference between
trying
and
doing
, between
talking about it
and
acting
; and ultimately it depends on the double bottom line:
intention
and
attention
. Do you really intend to do it? Are you willing to give it the attention it requires?

If so, then you simply need to start. In design thinking parlance, it’s time to enact what we call the
bias toward action
and determine how you can move toward your goal.

Let’s say your goal is to write a book.

Checking Facebook five times a day is not getting your book written. Talking about writing is not getting your book written. Texting your friends . . . well, you get the idea. Even joining a writers’ group or going to a writers’ conference isn’t going to get you there. What gets you there is putting your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard for extended lengths of time. You need to commit to write, even if the first draft comes out terribly.

When I set out to write this book, I began by waking up earlier so that I could get in some writing time before my wife, Ruth, awoke. Even when that meant I got very little sleep, I did it anyway. I took a few days off here and there, but they were the exception. The rule was that I was there at my computer,
showing up each morning, until I had finished. I chose to make it my priority over anything that might distract me from it.

When people talk about who’s stopping them from achieving their goals, it’s often a critic. A family member might once have said something thoughtlessly insulting, a teacher might have given you a bad grade, a former boss might have thought you were a dunce. Yet none of these critics can actually stop you, nor do negative people deserve any spot in your path. Even if they have stolen your keyboard and broken all your pencils, they don’t have any actual power to stop you.

In reality, no one’s usually trying to prevent us from achieving our goals. The situation is most often one like that brilliantly portrayed in the British TV series
The Prisoner
. Throughout the series the hero, identified as Number Six, is trying to escape from evil people who are working for the villain, Number One. Finally, in the last episode he understands the answer to his question “Who is Number One?” When he first heard the answer in episode 1, it sounded like “You are Number Six.” Now he understands that the answer to “Who is Number One?” is “You are, Number Six.” He had metaphorically imprisoned himself. As Franz Kafka put it, “It was a barred cage that he was in. Calmly and insolently, as if at home, the din of the world streamed out and in through the bars, the prisoner was really free, he could take part in everything, nothing that went on outside escaped him, he could simply have left the cage, the bars were yards apart, he was not even a prisoner.”

Even when there is a real obstacle, it is possible to get around it. Years ago my wife, Ruth, and I were traveling in India, and we changed our departure date via telephone so that we were leaving one day earlier. When we arrived at the Delhi airport at about 2:00 a.m., the guard would not let us
enter the terminal because our paper ticket was for the following day. We explained that we had changed the flight date, but he wouldn’t budge.

I pointed out to him that the United Airlines desk was within view, and if he allowed me to go there, I could get the date changed on my ticket and come back to show him. He refused. I offered to leave my passport with him as a guarantee. He refused. I offered to leave my wife with him as a guarantee. He refused. I offered both my wife and passport. He still refused!

Then I made a bold choice. I had seen his rifle; it looked like it was old, possibly preindependence, and likely useless. I figured the chances of it blowing up in his hands were greater than the chances of the bullet actually reaching me. So I calmly took Ruth’s hand and just walked past him. He did not shoot, and I did not look back.

Most times there are no armed guards; we simply stop ourselves. We are Number One. You are responsible for deciding what you do or don’t do. Don’t blame others, and don’t use reasons to justify or rationalize your behaviors. Although excuses may seem to get you out of difficulty at the moment, in the long run they are often counterproductive.

One of the biggest excuses we have for not getting things done is a lack of time. We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day, and yet what Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished in their days is a lot more than what many others have.

The difference comes back to intention and attention. It’s not that they had extra time; it’s that they
made
time. When something is a priority in your life, you have to be willing to
walk away from anything that’s standing in its way. If there’s something useless that’s stealing your time, why are you letting it? Understanding that extra hours are not going to appear on your clock, how can you make the time to accomplish what you need to?

It may be helpful to write in a journal for a few days, noting (truthfully) what you’re doing all day long and how long you spend on each task. Are you spending more time than you realized getting showered and ready in the morning, texting, e-mailing, surfing the Web, gaming? Even positive things like reading or cooking can take up too much time when you’re trying to get something done. When you need to finish a report or you still haven’t turned in a long application, instead of procrastinating and sitting around thinking about it, invoke your bias toward action by putting your normal activities aside. Get the job done. Instead of cooking, open a can. Instead of reading the newspapers, save them for later or simply toss them.

In the modern world we have an endless supply of time sinkholes. Don’t fall into them. Steal back your time to support your intentions.

CHAPTER 3

If it’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing well.

—Anonymous

A drunk man is walking along the street and collides with a lamppost. He bounces backward, and after regaining his composure again makes his way forward, only to again collide with the same lamppost and experience a similar backward bounce. Again he regains composure, and then suffers another backward bounce. These actions are all repeated several more times. Finally, in frustration, he sits down on the ground and says, “I give up. They have me surrounded.”

If we’re not drunk, once we see an obstacle in our path, or experience our first bounce or two, we walk around that obstacle. Unfortunately we sometimes still have difficulty. We often think we are surrounded, and respond in the same way as the drunken guy.

So, assuming you are sober, how do you walk around obstacles?

The answer lies in changing the way you think about the problem. As an assignment in one of my design courses I asked each
student to find something in his life that bothered him and fix it. One student, Krishna, volunteered that his bed was broken, and he could not seem to get a good night’s sleep. His assignment was to solve the problem. This started a saga that lasted several weeks.

The first week Krishna reported not being able to find the correct wire to fix the frame. The second week he reported not being able to find the correct tools. The third week he was unable to find some small springs. Finally I lost patience and told him that if he did not solve the problem by the following week, he would fail. He came in the next week with a big smile on his face; I knew the drama had ended. When I called on him to report on his project, he simply said: “I bought a new bed.”

It is a wonderful example of the mistake we make by working on an answer as though it were a question. Design thinking emphasizes that you always make sure you are working on the real problem. His mistake was that he originally tried to solve the wrong problem. He started by working on the question “How can I fix the bed?” The real question, of course, was “How do I get a good night’s sleep?” This opened the solution space considerably and allowed a move away from the difficulties encountered in fixing the bed. Once Krishna started working on the right problem, the solution became easy: Get a new bed. This enabled him to walk around the self-imposed lamppost called “fixing the bed.”

Have you ever had a problem you couldn’t seem to solve? You probably pondered solutions over and over, maybe losing sleep. I bet you were trying to solve the wrong problem. When you can’t find the answer, it is often because you are not asking the correct question.

To illustrate this, let’s take the question “How might I find a spouse?”

Just because it ends with a question mark, that doesn’t mean it’s a question. Drop “how might I” and you get a declarative statement: “Find a spouse.” This could be regarded as an answer. So we see that finding a spouse can be regarded as either an answer or a question.

What question is “Find a spouse” the answer to? There could be many. Some possibilities are:

How might I get companionship?

How might I get taken care of?

How might I stop working?

How might I have (more) sex?

How might I get my parents to stop nagging me?

How might I move to a better economic situation?

How might I improve my social life?

How might I keep up with my friends?

Each of these questions, regarded as a problem, has many possible solutions. Finding a spouse is just one possible solution to each of these. In actuality, it may not be a very good solution to any of these problems.

Experience has shown me that one of the main causes of losing sleep over a problem is that we think we are dealing with a question when in fact we are dealing with an answer (a solution) that turns out not to be a good fit to our actual problem.

A way around this dilemma is to ask, “What would it do for me if I solved this problem?” The answer to this can then be converted into a new, more generative question.

If I believe that I want a spouse to satisfy my need for companionship, the real problem (question) is “How might I find companionship?”

Finding a spouse now becomes simply one of many possible ways to find companionship. By changing the question I have altered my point of view and dramatically expanded the number of possible solutions.

The situation can be illustrated diagrammatically as:

Because I haven’t been able to find a spouse thus far, I can take a different tack: I can ask what finding a spouse would do for me.

I believe it would give me companionship. So the new question is “How might I get companionship?” The diagram below shows possible answers.

I am no longer stuck with trying to find a spouse. It’s that simple.

Identifying what you expect from the solution to the problem you’re stuck on brings you to a higher level and, ultimately, a better question.

Changing the question is often enough to lead to a satisfactory resolution and to make the original difficulty disappear. In this example, if I figure out how to get companionship without getting married, the issue of finding a spouse becomes moot.

This procedure can be repeated starting at the higher level. If the question of how I might find companionship becomes difficult to solve, I would ask, “What would it do for me if I found companionship?”

Possible answers might be:

I would feel less bored.

I would get social stimulation.

I would get intellectual stimulation.

I would feel less lonely.

I would feel more secure.

By choosing the one that seems most resonant (I would feel less lonely) and converting it into a question, I get a new question. “How might I feel less lonely?” is a long way from the original question: “How do I find a spouse?”

Many married people feel lonely within their marriages, so clearly even solving the original problem (finding a spouse) might not solve my actual problem of being lonely.

Now the situation looks like this:

Use this procedure whenever you find yourself stuck and losing sleep over an issue. Often it can open up a wide range of new solutions. The original problem disappears, and the way to proceed is immediately obvious.

For this to work you need to be honest enough not to hang on to the original question, no matter how comfortable you have become with hitting the lamppost. You need to be aware that there is a tendency to rationalize our dysfunctional behavior with excuses. Remember, we shy away from labeling them as excuses; instead we call them reasons. Of course, they are
goooood
reasons, right?

There isn’t always a single answer to the question “How would I benefit if I had a solution to my problem?” It is simply a matter of using a different how-might-I question and repeating this procedure until you feel the
Aha!
that comes from recognizing your actual issue.

I’ve had students say that they felt that this method does not actually solve the original problem; it simply replaces it with one you can solve. What they do not realize is that letting go of a problem
is
often the best solution. This is especially true when you’re addressing the wrong problem.

Blocks to success with this exercise happen when we can’t let go of the original question. For example, in one of my workshops a woman asked, “How do I make sure my daughter gets into a good college?” She had to struggle to admit that the main payoff for her in solving this problem would be to reduce her level of anxiety. Once she made that leap, the question one level higher became “How do I become less anxious?” The new problem, at heart, was a long way from her daughter getting into a good college. In fact, it had very little to do with that. In all probability, once the daughter got into college, the mother would quickly find another issue to be anxious about. So if the mother were honest enough, she would start to work on the real problem: her anxiety.

To experience the process of walking around the lamppost, think of a problem you have been losing sleep over. This should be something that keeps bothering you and is directly related to your life, your relationships, or your job, not something abstract or global such as how to achieve world peace.

Write this item down as a short, simple how-do-I question. Then ask yourself what it would do for you if this problem were solved. In other words, if it were something that you no longer lost sleep over, what would it do for you? Write down the answer to this above your original question. Now change the answer into a question and take a few minutes to consider possible solutions to this new question.

If you are open-minded, chances are you have just walked around the lamppost.

Alternatively, let’s assume you are still stuck and do not see how to solve your new problem. Now we go up one more level. Take your new question and ask yourself what it would do for you if you solved that question, and write down the answer above the new question. We now have a new question. Consider possible solutions to the newer question. You should soon realize that you just walked around another lamppost. Now, if after all this, the original problem has not disappeared or you still do not see your way clear to the solution, there is a very good chance that you are not telling yourself the truth about what the real problem is and what it would do for you if you solved it. Go back and start again!