Ed Batista

This Year: A Look Back at My 2016

John Darnielle, who performs as The Mountain Goats, has a song that's become an anthem for me and Amy, titled This Year. It's a story of survival, of overcoming youthful foolishness and bad choices and unlucky breaks. We've moved on to middle-aged foolishness, but we still have our share of the rest, and since the song's release in 2005 we've often quoted its determined refrain: I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

The sentiment was particularly apt in 2016, which began with a serious health crisis for Amy--since resolved, but traumatic for both of us--and the excitement didn't stop there:

• I taught Interpersonal Dynamics (aka Touchy Feely) at Stanford for the first time. While it was rewarding to teach a course that I took as an MBA student in 1999 (and which ultimately led me to become a coach), it was also stressful. Students bring heightened expectations to this class--it's been taught at Stanford since 1968, and a great deal of lore (some accurate, some not) has accumulated around it over the years. In addition the life cycle of learning design mandates that the first time we teach anything we inevitably discover what's broken, and I surely did. I trust fully that my students had a meaningful learning experience--and I'm equally confident that their feedback will help me do an better job this coming year.
• I resigned from the role I'd held at Stanford for a decade in order to focus on my coaching practice and to make more time for writing. I wanted to continue teaching Touchy Feely and my own Art of Self-Coaching course, but I could only propose that arrangement to my dean and hope it was accepted. Happily it was, and I'm grateful for the opportunity I now have to craft such a meaningful professional life through a combination of coaching, teaching, and writing--and I'm aware that I feel some pressure to make the most of this opportunity, to do my best work on behalf of my clients, students, and readers. I've learned the hard way to set boundaries on the demands on my time in order to insure that my approach to work is sustainable--and I know that I still go right up to those limits and sometimes cross them.
• I finally shipped off a book manuscript to my editor, which was both a triumphant milestone and a source of regret. Both responses stem from the fact that I've been working on this project for nearly four years, and it's still not finished. I can point to some factors beyond my control, from a blown disc in my back that led to six months of pain to being rear-ended when I was stopped in traffic in San Francisco, an impact so jarring that it gave me a concussion. And even when I make allowances for these unexpected delays, I'm disappointed in my progress, and this past year has been a mixed bag where writing is concerned--one reason why I'm currently in the midst of a 30-day challenge to up my game.
• And I've been reflecting steadily on the recent U.S. election--as I wrote afterwards, I'm dismayed by the results, enraged by the subsequent surge in hate crimes, and concerned about the overall direction of the country. I'm not on the front lines of these struggles, and yet I feel involved in a number of ways, both because so many of my clients and students are on the front lines, in their leadership roles and in their personal lives, and because I believe that as an old, straight, white guy with an elite education I have an obligation to pay attention and contribute what I can, even if I'm just helping people keep it together so they can do the hard work that will be asked of them.

So I'm well aware--more than ever--of how much I have to be thankful for--starting with Amy's health and my own--and it's been a pretty tough year. Here's to 2017.

Monuments to Our Inadequacy

Perspective matters. Take the field full of manure above, for example. We could view it as an overwhelming amount of shit, or as a rich source of fertilizer.

A friend was bemoaning the state of her workspace, which was full of unorganized piles, both physical and digital. This happens to me as well--I'm not a natural organizer, I have to work to stay on top of the information streams in my life, and sometimes I simply have more important things to do. [1] So shit piles up. This isn't optimal, and I've learned that I need to find a balance between maintaining order and allowing myself some freedom, and if I let things go for too long the clutter becomes a source of distraction. But my friend was beating herself up for her disorderly space, and it occurred to me that she was viewing these piles not merely as a failure of organization, but as character flaws, as signs of some fundamental incapability. She had transformed them into monuments to her inadequacy.

We should view ourselves with clarity and hold ourselves accountable, and sometimes this requires a self-administered kick in the ass. But it's important to do this with care and compassion for ourselves, because when a kick in the ass turns into habitual self-criticism, when we view evidence of our shortcomings as monuments to our inadequacy, we tend not to respond well. [2] We either rebel against the critical voice, rejecting its prudent but poorly-delivered advice, or we feel defeated by it, losing hope in our ability to overcome the difficulty. In either case, the transformation of evidence into monuments is counter-productive.

Evidence is the starting point of an investigation and invites our curiosity. We may choose to accept the evidence and act upon it, but we retain our sense of agency. Monuments are finished products, indifferent to our inquiries and impassive in the face of our efforts. We cannot choose to accept or reject a monument--its existence is a fact that simply imposes itself upon us.

So when assessing our own effectiveness and exploring the possibility of change, we should by all means gather evidence and inspect it closely, while taking care to avoid constructing any monuments. [3] Those piles of shit just might be rich sources of fertilizer.

 

Thanks to Stowe Boyd, whose post on Erosion, Streams and Piles planted the seed for this one, which sprouted just seven years later.

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Footnotes

[1] Importance vs. Urgency

[2] Three More Horsemen (How We Self-Sabotage)

[3] Why Change Is Hard

Photo by NIOSH.

You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)

A recent conversation with a client reminded me of the power of language to shape our experience--and of the importance of taking responsibility for our experience. My client was describing a difficult conversation with an employee, one in which there were strong feelings on both sides. "He made me feel terrible," my client said. There's nothing unusual about that sentence--we say things like that all the time, at least in English:

He made me feel terrible.

She makes me so frustrated.

You're making me really unhappy.

Statements like this can serve a useful purpose--particularly when we're able to express them in the moment--because they clarify and reveal our emotional state. Anytime we can articulate our feelings toward another person rather than require them to make guesses based on our behavior, communication is more accurate and effective. [1,2]

But statements like this also contain a fatal flaw, one that often makes communication more difficult: Saying that someone else "makes us feel" an emotion suggests that they are responsible for our emotional state, and that's highly problematic. When another person's statements and behavior trigger an emotional response in us, it's inaccurate to presume that the other person is the responsible party and that we're an innocent bystander.

We're not passive recipients of the data through which we interpret and make sense of the world. We play an active role in every stage of the process as we gather, interpret, and respond to that data, which includes other people's statements and behavior. A useful model to illustrate this dynamic is the "Ladder of Inference," developed by Chris Argyris, a longtime professor at Harvard Business School, building on the work of linguist (and U.S. senator) S.I. Hayakawa and philosopher Alford Korzybski. [3]

Consider the four steps in this process:

1. From all observable data, we select specific data to focus upon.
2. We interpret this data and invest it with meaning.
3. We develop theories and beliefs that explain our interpretation.
4. We take action on the basis of our theories and beliefs.

Now apply this model to an interpersonal interaction that's triggering an emotional response in us, and consider the responsibility we bear at each stage:

1. We determine which of the other person's statements and behavior to focus on. Note that there's also a vast amount of data that we're simultaneously ignoring, and the choices we make (consciously and unconsciously) regarding what to pay attention to (and what to ignore) are profoundly influenced by our cognitive biases. [4]
2. We interpret the other person's statements and behavior in order to render it meaningful. There are always different possible interpretations, but the ones we assign to this data are derived from our mental models, the constructs that we've developed to make sense of and navigate the world. [5]
3. We develop theories and beliefs regarding the other person's motives and intentions to explain our interpretations. As with our interpretations, the belief structure that guides our actions is informed by our mental models and our (highly subjective) memories of our experiences with this person and others.
4. Finally, we act on the basis of this conceptual framework that we've created. Note that our emotional responses are actions even when we don't express them outwardly. Emotions are physiological events, starting with the release of neurotransmitters in our brain that trigger a cascading series of bodily reactions: changes in our heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, hearing, and vision, to name just a few. These internal responses contribute to our conscious awareness of an emotional state, which we may then express outwardly in ways large and small, from facial expressions and body language, to our manner of speaking, to the actual content of our statements.

Clearly we're responsible in any number of ways when we have an emotional response to another person, and when we say, "You make me feel..." we're shirking our responsibility and foisting it onto the other person. At that moment we're acting like a victim. The Trium Group's definitions of a "responsible mindset" and a "victim mindset" are highly applicable here:

Responsible Mindset
I view myself as an integral factor in all situations. Every situation occurs and unfolds as it does in some measure as a direct outcome of my actions, non-actions and interpretations. I believe there is always something I can do to affect the situation.

Victim Mindset
I view myself as separate and disconnected from situations as they occur. Circumstances and events happen to me. I believe there is nothing I can do to affect the situation. [6]

And Stanford professor Jeff Pfeffer has this to say about responsibility, in a paper that refers to work by Trium on the topic:

Responsibility entails feeling efficacious and believing one has some obligation to make the world, including the organizational world, in which one lives a better place... [The] responsibility mindset is simply seeing oneself as an actor affecting, or trying to affect, what goes on rather than being in a more passive role of having things happen to oneself. [7]

Which brings me back to the coaching client I mention above. My clients are senior leaders who are responsible for building a culture, and, to Pfeffer's point, they're committed to making their organizations better, a process in which their interactions with others are critical. And while they're realistic about the limits on their agency, they recognize that as leaders they have both an opportunity and an obligation to take responsibility for their role in effective (and ineffective) interactions. In all cases, no matter who we are, this starts with how we frame the experience.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Five Levels of Communication

[2] We're Leaky (Emotional Signals and Cognitive Dissonance)

[3] Racing Up the Ladder of Inference

[4] Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

[5] Corn Mazes and Mental Models

[6] The Trium Group on Responsibility

[7] "Changing mental models: HR's most important task" (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Human Resource Management, May 2005)

Photo by Jonty.

Importance vs. Urgency

The idea of contrasting Importance and Urgency is nothing new. Dwight Eisenhower supposedly came up with the concept [1], presumably in the mid-20^th century, although I haven’t yet found any compelling evidence, and Stephen Covey later popularized it in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. [2]

I was first exposed to the idea in 1999 in Joel Peterson’s classroom at Stanford, and I’ve been reflecting on it for the last decade because it’s a topic that comes up constantly in my work with coaching clients and MBA students. [3] Why is it so significant? First, let’s clarify what we mean:

Important activities are truly meaningful and fulfilling--to you, to the people who matter to you, to your organization, or to some cause that you believe in. They’re not necessarily time-dependent; they can be accomplished almost anytime, and if they go undone for a short stretch no one may even notice.

Urgent activities have a deadline attached to them that matters to someone—although not necessarily to you. They are time-dependent, at least in someone’s mind, and if they go undone that someone is going to be unhappy. They’re not necessarily meaningful or fulfilling, and accomplishing them may not actually make a significant difference.

When we appreciate the difference between importance and urgency, we can categorize our activities and items on our to-do lists (and items that other people want to put on our to-list) according to this 2x2 matrix, which illustrates some simple but powerful distinctions.

Important But Not Urgent activities are like brushing our teeth (or exercise or meditation): There are no real consequences if we skip a day, but if that becomes a trend we’ll miss out on significant benefits and may run into serious problems. These activities tend to matter much more to us than to others.

As a result we need to take particular care to protect them on our calendars—without strong boundaries to preserve the necessary time, they’ll get pushed off and left behind. We also need to cultivate consistent habits around these activities in order to build sustainable commitments—if we have to stop and think each time we contemplate pursuing them, we’ll follow through much less often. But we’ll inevitably falter, and the key is getting back on track as soon as possible.

Unimportant & Not Urgent activities are mindless exercises in watching our time and attention run down the drain. They have a role to play when we’re stressed or depleted, and it’s unhelpful to try to banish them from our lives, but we need to put limits on them and be sure to avoid engaging in them as a form of "pseudo-work."

This is when we imagine we’re doing meaningful work, but we’re really just fooling ourselves and play-acting at being productive. Far better to engage in some actual, honest mindless recreation, because at least then we’re enjoying and replenishing ourselves. The key is to insure that we don’t get stuck in these activities—they’re often intentionally designed to captivate us when we’re susceptible to their appeal, and it can be difficult to break away when we’ve exhausted their benefits.

Unimportant But Urgent activities matter to someone else, but not to us. We feel pressure to complete them (not only from others, but also from ourselves), and yet doing so will make a minimal difference in our efforts to achieve our goals. We can’t neglect them entirely, but we must be ruthless about triaging and prioritizing.

There are multiple issues to navigate here: Dismissing these activities entirely runs the risk of offending the people to whom they matter—and yet if we strive to never give offense we allow others to dictate where we should direct our attention and spend our time. We live immersed in a sea of devices and systems that are designed to interrupt us constantly—and yet if we turn our back on these tools entirely we may miss out on their benefits. And perhaps most importantly, even though we know intellectually that these issues are unimportant, we’re highly sensitive to the anxiety and other feelings generated by a sense of urgency—and yet being keenly attuned to our emotions is a critical skill in professional life.

Important & Urgent activities are like fire alarms: They capture our attention automatically, and we mobilize to address them immediately. The problem is that other people want all the items on their agenda to be treated this way. The key is recognizing that very few items on our agenda actually fall into this category.

There’s little risk of failing to respond to fire alarms and dealing with the blaze that triggered them—but particularly in competitive environments or high-profile roles where the cost of failure is real, there’s a significant risk of treating everything like a fire drill, and this is a certain path to eventual underperformance and burnout.

Embedded in this framework is an inherent tension that results in a constant battle: The time and attention we would otherwise devote to Important But Not Urgent activities is often sacrificed to address Unimportant But Urgent matters. One challenge is that we’re the only ones who care about the former, while the latter have many advocates. Further, research on a dynamic known as the "mere urgency effect" can lead us to prioritize urgent tasks even when it's irrational to do so, in part because a sense of urgency captures our attention:

People’s tendency to procrastinate on what is important to finish what is urgent goes beyond rational inferences, reflecting a basic psychological preference. In particular, we find that the limited time frame embedded in urgent tasks...elicits attention, diverting focus away from the magnitudes of task outcomes. [4]

So what can we do? There’s no simple answer to the dilemmas posed here, but there are several practices that can help:

Make Time for Reflection

If we don’t stop on a regular basis to consider what’s truly meaningful and fulfilling to us—and to identify the important activities that allow us to realize that meaning and feel a sense of fulfillment—our calendars and our to-do lists will reflect the priorities of others, not our own. More specifically, research suggests that pro-actively reserving time for important-but-not-urgent work yields significant improvements in time management, productivity, greater focus, and diminished stress. [5]

Engage in Consistent Self-Care

The ability to grasp the distinctions above, to determine where activities truly belong, and to gracefully communicate these decisions to others rests on a solid foundation of self-care. Engaging in meditation (or other forms of mindfulness), regular exercise, and good sleep hygiene, while minimizing unnecessary stress all contribute to our ability to do this work more effectively.

Address Our Emotions

The practices above will also help us manage our emotions, and we can take this a step further by addressing our emotions directly. Much of our counterproductive behavior, from wasting time in "pseudo-work" to neglecting important tasks in favor of urgent ones, has its roots in an emotional response. This isn’t to suggest that feelings are "bad" and logic is "good"—our emotions are essential inputs into our reasoning process, not an opposing force. But we’re better able to make use of our emotions when we’re aware of them and able to assess their validity. This entails feeling them within ourselves (literally—most emotions are physiological events before they register in consciousness), labeling them with accurate terminology, and articulating them to others in safe, trusting relationships.

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Eisenhower Matrix

[2] The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, page 160 (Stephen Covey, 1989/2013)

[3] Joel Peterson on What's Important

[4] The Mere Urgency Effect (Meng Zhu, Yang Yang and Christopher Hsee, Journal of Consumer Research, February 2018)

[5] Pro-Time Pilot Study [PDF] (Charlotte Blank and Laurel Newman, Maritz, March 2019)

Updated February 2021. Thanks to Ethan Mollick for references to the research in footnotes 4 and 5.

Photos:

• Toothbrush by Tamaki Sono.
• Sink by Dean Hochman.
• Email by Steve Boese.
• Alarm by David Mulder.

Three More Horsemen (How We Self-Sabotage)

University of Washington social psychologist John Gottman has described a set of behaviors as "the Four Horsemen," referring to a symbol of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelation. These four interpersonal dynamics have a predictable and powerful negative impact on a relationship and are often indicators of worse problems to come:

• Criticism: Presenting a problem as though it were the result of the other person's defective personality.
• Contempt: The suggestion that you're superior in some way to the other person.
• Stonewalling: A refusal to engage and provide feedback.
• Defensiveness: Denial of responsibility for any part of a problem. [1,2]

Gottman notes that although these dynamics are counter-productive over the long term, we tend to fall back upon them during stressful experiences because we find them soothing. They often lower the heart rate, particularly in men, but this doesn't make them effective conflict-management strategies--the key is finding better ways to soothe ourselves when under stress.

In my work as a coach and teacher I see these dynamics not only in interpersonal relationships with others, but also in our relationship with ourselves, where they show up as three forms of self-sabotage:

Self-Criticism: Viewing a problem as the result of our defective personality.

This is a version of the "fixed mindset" in Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's framework, which Maria Popova describes as the belief that "our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can’t change in any meaningful way." [3] When we make a mistake or suffer a setback, we see it as an inevitable function of the limitations of our intellectual or emotional capabilities.

The key here is adopting the alternative view in Dweck's model, a "growth mindset," which, Popova continues, "sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities." Dweck's research indicates that simply being aware of these two perspectives can help us begin to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. This doesn't mean that we blithely ignore our failures or that we fail to hold ourselves accountable. But we can take a different approach and be less self-critical by recognizing that our brains are malleable and capable of change throughout our lives, by focusing on what can be learned from any mistake or setback, and by emphasizing the importance of persistence and grit in the process.

Self-Contempt: The belief that we're inferior in some way to others.

This is a deeper, more profound form of self-criticism. Rather than simply viewing ourselves as inept or incapable in some way, we feel that we're less deserving of support, happiness, fulfillment or love. In this state we're alienated from ourselves, and when others express appreciation or affection toward us, we feel uncomfortable and may go to great lengths to avoid hearing them or prevent others from sharing them with us.

The key here is accepting ourselves [4] and feeling compassion for ourselves. [5] One starting point is addressing the often ineffective means by which we're pursuing fulfillment and meaning in our lives. As I've written before, "When we feel that we're not 'good enough'--not successful enough, not accomplished enough, not rich enough, not attractive enough, simply not enough--our efforts to break out of that state of mind by 'getting better' are doomed to fail." [6] A psychological dynamic known as hedonic adaptation insures that we quickly take for granted almost all significant improvements or accomplishments; ambitious goals can spur us to action, but they can also leave us demotivated and overwhelmed; and we naturally compare ourselves to others to assess our progress, which can often cause us to feel worse about ourselves. While large-scale life changes may be necessary, small-scale habitual activities may have an even bigger impact on our sense of well-being. [7,8]

Denial: A refusal to engage ourselves and take responsibility.

The interpersonal version of stonewalling and defensiveness involves a refusal to discuss difficult issues or to take responsibility for our contribution to the problem. Behaviorally this can range from slippery evasiveness to a full-blown, door-slamming, angry retreat. The intrapersonal version of these dynamics is denial--we refuse to acknowledge a difficult issue to ourselves, and we avoid thinking about it or dealing with it, which insures that we need not face up to our responsibility for it. This begins with mild procrastination and harmless diversions, but it can escalate to much more serious levels of unhealthy behavior.

The key here is coming to terms with the underlying emotions that we're in flight from. Typically there's some embarrassment, guilt, or shame triggering our denial, which is really an attempt to avoid having to confront those unpleasant feelings. This is an understandable but futile response--denial rarely succeeds indefinitely, and it usually makes things worse when a reckoning becomes unavoidable. A starting point is engaging ourselves in various forms of dialogue--reflecting, journaling, talking with people we trust [9]--which will help us better manage those unpleasant feelings and begin to take responsibility for the situation. [10]

 

Thanks to Scott Bristol, who first introduced me to Gottman's research at Stanford in his sections of Interpersonal Dynamics, aka Touchy Feely, many years ago.

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Footnotes

[1] The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Chapter 2: How I Predict Divorce (John Gottman and Nan Silver, 2000)

[2] The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling, The Gottman Institute (Ellie Lisitsa, 2013)

[3] Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our LIves (Maria Popova, 2014)

[4] I Love Myself (Self-Coaching and Acceptance)

[5] Self-Compassion, the work of University of Texas psychologist Kristin Neff.

[6] Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better"

[7] Lyubomirsky's Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic

[8] Understanding the "Pie Chart" in The How of Happiness

[9] Conversations with Ourselves (Self-Coaching and Self-Engagement)

[10] The Trium Group on Responsibility

Revised October 2019.

Photo by Paulo Brandão.

Technology and Unhappiness

I've always had a general interest in technology, and a few key events stand out in my memory:

• In 1984 my parents bought a Macintosh 128K for the family's use, and I saw the power of desktop publishing as a tool for personal expression.
• In 1994-95 I planned a lengthy, logistically complex motorcycle trip with a friend who lived on the East Coast via email, and I saw the ability of the net to facilitate long-distance, asychronous relationships and communities.
• In 2001 I learned HTML (just enough to be dangerous), and I realized that desktop publishing on the net would be a transformative combination.
• And in 2004 I started using Typepad--still my platform of choice--and the following year I helped two national nonprofits and a web consulting firm launch their very first blogs.

I trot out these old-man stories to demonstrate my appreciation for technology's many contributions, not only to my life but to our shared communal aspirations. I'm no Luddite.

That said, much of my work today as a coach and teacher involves helping people reflect on their happiness and fulfillment, and it's clear that technology can have a pernicious impact on those qualities unless we're mindful about the role we allow it to play in our lives. What's happening here?

Technology Accelerates Hedonic Adaptation

As I wrote recently, hedonic adaptation (aka the hedonic treadmill) is "the psychological process by which we readily adapt to improved conditions--and promptly take those improvements for granted." UC professor Sonja Lyubomirsky has noted, "The more we attain, the happier we become. But, at the same time, the more we attain, the more we want, which negates the increased happiness." This is true with regard to any aspect of our material conditions, and it's amplified in the case of technology because of the factors that relentlessly increase the pace of change in the industry. The tools and services that delight us today will seem woefully out of date and inadequate in a remarkably short period of time--perhaps even weeks. I'm not suggesting this is always a bad thing--but we often ignore this downside of "progress."

Technology Facilitates Unhealthy Social Comparison

In the post I link to above, I also wrote about the inevitable process of social comparison:

As we habitually look around us to understand what others are doing--and how they're doing--we inevitably use this data to assess ourselves. Lyubomirsky adds that, "social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly [and have] a profound effect not only on our evaluations of ourselves, but [also] on our moods and our emotional well-being." The issue, she continues, is that "comparisons to other people...are primarily responsible for our feelings of inadequacy and discontent."

The problem is that the online networks that mediate most of our social comparisons today present grossly inaccurate portrayals of our lives. Even if we're not exaggerating or misrepresenting our successes and joyful moments, that's the information we tend to share--we leave out the setbacks, the failures, the dark stuff. So when we compare the messy reality of our own lives with the carefully manicured and curated versions of others' lives that we see online, we tend to feel worse about ourselves. It's no surprise that numerous studies suggest a link between social media usage and depression--here are just a few examples from September 2016, January 2016, June 2014, and August 2013.

Technology Erodes Boundaries

Many of my coaching clients and MBA students don't lead balanced lives--they're "happy workaholics," and they don't want "life-work balance," even if it were possible to achieve it. But as I've written before, happy workaholics need boundaries: "While balance requires an unsteady equilibrium among the various demands on our time and energy, boundaries offer a sustainable means of keeping things in their proper place... " But one of technology's primary functions today is to erode and even eliminate boundaries. We're always wired, always available, always on. In many circumstances this is a great benefit--and in some situations it's a disaster. Deep reflection, full engagement with a challenging problem or a creative endeavor, and basic human intimacy are impossible when we allow ourselves to be constantly interrupted by our devices and distracted by our insatiable need for novelty and stimulation.

So What Can We Do?

There's no simple solution. Hedonic adaptation and social comparison are deeply-rooted psychological processes that we may be able to slow down, but we can't turn off. Our difficulty in setting boundaries is a function of our anxiety and our curiosity, powerful forces we're often unable to resist.

But we can begin to make an effort simply by heightening our awareness of the impact of technology on our happiness and fulfillment, and by experimenting with behaviors that ameliorate the downside:

• Remind ourselves that we apparently managed just fine a few months, years, and decades ago without the latest crop of tools and services, even if we can't imagine how.
• Pause and appreciate what can be done with the current versions, even though we'll inevitably take them for granted.
• Carefully regulate our social media consumption--and note that these environments have been designed to make it difficult for you to do just that.
• Bear in mind that the unrelenting cheerfulness that permeates social media is a fictional representation of reality.
• Turn off every unnecessary alert on our phones. Then turn off the "necessary" ones.
• Remember that every day is a marshmallow test for grownups.

Upping My Game: Halftime

Photo by Debbie Galant

Merry Christmas!, if that's your thing. I'm a little ambivalent about it--up until a few years ago the warmth and charity that the holidays inspired in me were often overshadowed by the stress and disappointment that accompanied them. But in 2012 I gave myself a kick in the ass, and ever since I've been more sanguine about the season and better able to simply relax and appreciate it.

Something I'm appreciating at the moment is that I'm halfway through a 30-day challenge to up my game, which includes the four daily goals below. So how's it going?

Meditate for 30 minutes. I thought this would be the hardest goal, and it's actually been the easiest. When I began taking meditation seriously in 2008 or so, I found it extraordinarily difficult to do for even a few minutes. I felt "mentally itchy," and the constant distraction was intolerable. I realized that I needed to learn to be still. What's helped most has been recognizing that the discomfort of resisting distraction is actually the whole point of the process--it's a workout, not a break. Even so, up until now I've typically meditated for 10-20 minutes, and half an hour seemed like it might be a challenge. It hasn't been. I look forward to it, to the point where I'm now careful to structure my day to insure that my 30-minute window for meditation is protected.

Publish one post. One of my struggles as a writer is finishing--I often get started on a piece and make meaningful progress, but eventually lose momentum and stall. I have well over 100 unpublished posts in some state of completion--so I've been combing through my draft files to see what should be discarded, what's still a work-in-progress, and what needs to be finished. I've been pleasantly surprised by the results over the last two weeks:

• Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better"
• You're Not Multi-Tasking, You're Half-Assing
• Pasta Shapes (Stupid Fights and How to Stop Them)
• Get Moving! (Exercise for Busy People)
• Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)
• The Map Is Not the Territory
• The Ideal Bar
• Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?
• What Is Winning?
• The Danger of Playing It Safe
• The Value of a Good Fight
• The Spirit of the Stairway
• The Life Cycle of Learning Design
• Amy, California and Highway 1

A conclusion I've reached is that I tend to write every day or very infrequently. I don't really have a middle gear. I've known for a long time that writing is important to my identity and my state of mind, but I haven't always acted upon this knowledge. Just as I've been diligent about protecting time for meditation during this experiment, I feel the same sense of protectiveness around my time for writing. It's helped that I've been pursuing this project in between the end of one class at Stanford and the beginning of the next--teaching is just a small part of my overall work these days, but it's very time-consuming. That's precisely why I wanted to make use of this 30-day window--and it's more clear than ever that if I want to be able to maintain my momentum as a writer I need to say no to other requests for my time and be more focused on getting things done rather than perfecting them.

Read, read, read, read, read. I read constantly, but in recent years I've focused on professional literature--books and articles related to coaching and to my classes at Stanford--and magazines like The New Yorker and Outside for entertainment. I dove back into meaningful fiction in 2015, and it was deeply rewarding, but I've struggled to maintain that focus. This has been the hardest goal to sustain during my challenge--I feel like I've lived up to the letter, but failed to fulfill the spirit. Let's start with the positive: I've largely eliminated the bullshit--I do very little online browsing, and I read just enough news to feel informed and not so much that it's an obsessive waste of time. What I haven't done is get back to truly meaningful fiction, but that will happen today--I'll finish a lethargic middlebrow mystery that's been moldering on my bedside shelf, and next up is Phineas Finn, my first Trollope. So progress, but certainly room for improvement.

Lift more weights. I'm slowly recovering from a painful elbow injury that I incurred over Labor Day. It was bad enough that I had to stop lifting weights entirely, which has been an increasingly important aspect of my physical activity over the years. But it's finally healed enough that I feel able to test it again. This has also gone well over the last two weeks, and what I feel best about is my patience--I'm taking it slowly, befitting my advanced years, and not rushing to get back to where I was before the injury. This is a challenge for me--I like pushing myself. But even as I joke about my age, I do truly realize that my body's changing, and I can't allow myself to get hurt anymore.

Bonus: Combing through my unfinished drafts has turned up a few gems, and a few baffling mysteries, and a few gems that are baffling mysteries, like the photo below by Toshimasa Ishibashi. Apparently I had an idea for a post and was planning to use this image as the header--but I didn't make any notes and today I have no idea what I was thinking. Your guess is as good as mine.

Amy, California and Highway 1

You can see all three above, in a shot Amy took in 2014 while we were driving home from a particularly special trip to the Mendocino coast. At the time I noted, "This year has been hard on us, as individuals and as a couple, and it's reminded me (yet again) that 1) a good marriage takes work, and 2) there's no one I'd rather do that work with. The trip to Mendocino and our visits to Big Sur and Stinson Beach renewed my love for the great state of California, and even after 24 years I feel so lucky to live here."

It makes me smile to read that today, for a number of reasons: If I thought 2014 was hard, I'm not sure how I survived 2016, but somehow I did--yay me. Good marriages absolutely take work, and Amy and I did some of the best work of our lives this year--yay us. And I continue to feel lucky to be here--on this planet, and in the great state of California, more so now than ever--yay all of us.

The Life Cycle of Learning Design

I've been designing learning experiences for nearly two decades, from planning conferences during my years in the nonprofit technology world, to conducting workshops for coaching clients and their exec teams, to teaching The Art of Self-Coaching and Interpersonal Dynamics at Stanford.

I've found that the process of developing these experiences and repeating them over time follows a predictable evolutionary path:

1. Discover what's broken.

We clarify our message and our goals, curate a curriculum, create our materials, fuss over the logistics, practice until we feel ready, and then finally go live--which is when we finally discover what's broken. The problem is that we can't see what's broken in advance because it's in our blind spot--there's always something we simply fail to grasp about our message or materials, our learners, or ourselves until we're live. Sometimes we realize what's broken afterwards, but often we see it in real time, as we're standing at the front of the room facing a sea of confused or unhappy faces. The key is to acknowledge the problem, avoid getting rattled or defensive, and move on with grace. This requires comfort with imperfection and failure, a response I've developed after lots of practice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. Fix what's broken.

After the first iteration we go back to the workshop, determined to fix things. Maybe our message was wrong, or our goals weren't aligned with those of our learners. Maybe our materials were flawed, or the logistics were just too complex to pull off. Maybe we didn't practice enough and were unprepared--or we practiced too much and were stiff and robotic. The key is not to blame anyone else (especially the learners), because that will only prevent us from fixing the problem. We have to look in the mirror and tell ourselves, compassionately but firmly, "You screwed up. Take responsibility, learn from your mistake, and make it better."

3. Fix what's working.

We roll out our new and improved design for another group of learners, and nothing breaks--hallelujah! Our message is on point, our learners achieve their goals, the materials and logistics are just fine, and we're sufficiently well-prepared without being overly rehearsed. Everything works--but in the absence of glaring problems to fix, it dawns on us that all the things that work could stand further improvement. Simply working feels like a rather low bar. The problem now isn't our willingness to exert the extra effort--it's our willingness to let go of ideas and practices that we're attached to and fond of. They may work, but that's not good enough anymore, and we have to cast them aside. The key is finding the strength to murder our darlings, the strength to let them go. This will be painful, but as Pema Chödrön has noted:

The thought of letting go is usually very frightening. You may feel that you're going to die, or that something is going to die. And you will be right. If you let go, something will die. But it's something that needs to die and you will benefit greatly from its death.

4. Fix ourselves.

Having fixed what's broken and fixed what's working, we're doing better than ever. Everything's dialed in. Our message is carefully crafted, our learners are fully satisfied, our materials spark delight, and the logistics are smoothly oiled. And now that all the surrounding noise has died down, in the quiet that follows we can finally hear an inner voice that's been calling for our attention. Teaching is an act of service, but there are no entirely selfless acts--we teach out of some inner need, some personal yearning. We can only fulfill this need (or even be aware of it) after our learners' needs have been met, and once that occurs we must take care of ourselves. The key is recognizing that teaching is both noble work and a tough job, and we have skin in the game. To do this sustainably our own needs must be met, and often that requires making some changes in our approach to the process--and in ourselves. I believe that every coach should have a coach, and that goes for anyone who teaches in any capacity.

5. Enjoy it.

At last--teaching nirvana. Our design is perfected, we're at the top of our game, life is good, and everybody's happy. We can't stay here indefinitely, but there's no need to rush. The key is to be present in the moment and grateful for the experience--because like all moments, it must end. This realization inevitably triggers some sadness, but it can be helpful to acknowledge the importance of endings: "The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either."

6. Get bored and break stuff.

One reason why teaching nirvana is an impermanent state is because perfection is boring. It's actually worse than boring--it's stagnation. If we want to do good work, we'll find a winning formula and stick with it. But if we want to do great work, we'll pay close attention to our own level of engagement, because it's impossible to be truly great when we're bored. The key is to recognize the cyclical nature of our own learning and notice when we're in a flow state and when we're not. It's also helpful to acknowledge that when we think we're an Expert, we may still be a Hazard.

 

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For Further Reading

How to Start a Workshop or Talk

20 Tools for Coaching and Teaching

Neuroscience, Joyful Learning and the SCARF Model

Planting a Flag (Thoughts on Teaching Leadership at Stanford)

Teach Concepts, Not Features (Jakob Nielsen on Lifelong Skills)

Committing a Microaggression While Teaching a Class on Microaggressions

Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change (Lisa Kay Solomon and Chris Ertel, 2014)

Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (Lynda Barry, 2014)

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My Teachers

I've had the good fortune to be a student of some of the most dedicated, caring, and demanding teachers in the world. I learned this craft by watching them practice it, and I strive to live up to the standards that they set for me. Thank you...

• Lloyd Schaefer, English, Cumberland Valley High School
• Millicent Rinehart, English, Cumberland Valley High School
• Naomi Duprat, English, Cumberland Valley High School
• Selby Doughty, Art, Cumberland Valley High School
• Tim Dayton, English, Duke
• Richard Lerman, Performance Art, School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Boston
• Dagmar Herzog, History, Brown
• Tom Simons, History, Brown
• Mary Gluck, History, Brown
• Chris Mauriello, History, Brown
• Roberto Fernandez, Organizational Behavior, Stanford
• James Van Horne, Finance, Stanford
• Joel Peterson, Real Estate, Stanford
• Mary Ann Huckabay, Interpersonal Dynamics, Stanford

Over the past decade I've also had the privilege of collaborating with Carole Robin, Evelyn Williams, Gary Dexter, Lara Tiedens, Richard Francisco, and Scott Bristol at Stanford, and their influence has made me an immeasurably better teacher.

I'm particularly indebted to Mary Ann Huckabay, Carole Robin, and Roberto Fernandez (now at MIT)--I wouldn't be here without them.

Photo by Kevin Dooley.

The Spirit of the Stairway

I don't speak French, but an idiomatic expression often comes to mind in my work as a coach: l'esprit d'escalier. The literal translation is "the spirit of the stairway," referring to that moment when we think of the perfect response to a comment in an earlier discussion. Sadly, this realization often occurs as we're descending the stairs on our way out, too late to be of actual use. But the problem isn't just the missed opportunity--we can also become consumed with regret over our failure to speak up. Journalist Jared Sandberg has noted that we often experience this dynamic in our professional lives:

At work there are countless things you should and could and would have said. But the tormenting fact is, you didn't. So, hemmed in by forces such as the fragility of reputations, your dependence on a paycheck, or even just slow-footedness, you re-enact one of the countless little workplace defeats in the confines of your head. [1]

Sandberg suggested that potential antidotes to this corrosive process include meditation and other forms of mental training to decrease second-guessing, and cognitive tasks such as puzzles to serve as healthy distractions. These strategies are consistent with the work of psychologist Daniel Wegner on the difficult process of directing our attention and avoiding rumination and anxiety. [2] But they're also reactive and not as helpful in avoiding such situations in the future. So what proactive steps can we take?

Take some risks.

In some circumstances speaking up will be risky, of course, but as I've noted before, if it feels risky to say, saying it will carry a short-term cost, and NOT saying it will carry a long-term cost:

Censoring ourselves is stressful and generates negative feelings, [and we] inevitably blame those negative feelings on those who "made us" censor ourselves. [We also] know that censoring leads to distant and superficial relationships, that we crave intimacy and meaning, and if we can't find those qualities here we'll go elsewhere to find them. We tend to have a high tolerance for these long-term costs until we cross some undefined threshold, beyond which our capacity to bear them is rapidly exhausted. [3]

Know your triggers.

Executive coach David Rock has developed what he calls the SCARF model to describe the conditions under which we're likely to experience a threat response, often referred to as a "fight, flight or freeze response"--and it's the freezing that's relevant here. SCARF is an acronym standing for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness (i.e. the extent to which we perceive others as members of our social group), and Fairness. [4]

Rock's study of recent neuroscience research indicates that we're likely to be threatened--and potentially freeze--when we encounter triggers in these domains: When interacting with someone of higher status, when faced with uncertainty, when we experience diminished autonomy, when interacting with others from outside our social group, and when our sense of fairness is violated. Being mindful of the potential triggers that exist in a given situation won't necessarily prevent us from failing to find the right words when in the grip of a threat response--but it can help.

Consider the culture.

The ability to speak up in a difficult situation is never merely a function of our individual skill or courage. It's also subject to the influence of the surrounding culture at the interpersonal, organizational, and even national levels. When we find ourselves unable to speak up, we have to take some personal responsibility and look for opportunities to exert agency. But the culture also plays a role, and these issues often involve emotions that we feel uncomfortable expressing in that culture. For example, here are some communication dilemmas often experienced at work:

• How to express irritation without seeming too prickly.
• How to express anger without seeming too explosive.
• How to express hurt without seeming too fragile.
• How to express something positive without creating awkwardness.

While personal feelings about these issues affect our ability to address them, it's important to consider the impact of the culture as well. Is it OK to express irritation, anger, or hurt, or do these feelings automatically get a person labeled as prickly, explosive, or fragile? Is it OK be positive, or is appreciation automatically rebuffed and discounted? These are culturally-determined behaviors, not merely individual choices.

So when we find ourselves experiencing difficulty communicating, we need to look for ways to influence the culture through feedback as we simultaneously seek to change our own behavior. [5,6] And a great place to start is understanding the norms that govern the awareness and expression of emotion in this particular culture. [7]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Jared Sandberg, "Cubicle Culture," The Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2007. This column is no longer available online.

[2] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[3] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[4] Neuroscience, Leadership and David Rock's SCARF Model

[5] Building a Feedback Rich Culture

[6] Conform to the Culture Just Enough

[7] Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups (Vanessa Urch Druskat and Stephen Wolfe, Harvard Business Review, 2001)

Updated April 2021.

Photo by Georgie Pauwels.