Lessons

Lesson Info

Your Body of Work

in this section. I want to talk about what I call your through line. Um, and as we mentioned earlier, why is very important for creative work? Not just what? Not just what do you expect me to do? But why do you expect me to do this? It's important to have an understanding of not just what you're being expected to, but why you're doing this is where a lot of organizations get off the rails. This is where they over time, they lose track of that. Why of the core driving principles that are contributed to their best work? And that gap that emerges creates a tremendous amount of dissonance. And so we have to be careful on an individual basis to bridge that gap. And that's largely the what the new book is about. Die empty. And so I want to share a lot of those principles than in this final section. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I always tell people your fate determines your fate. A f a t, your focus, your assets, your time and your energy. Those four things, your fate determines your fa...

te. You have a limited amount of each of those things. You may think you have unlimited focus. You don't right? And we all know that you may think you have unlimited energy. So you think? Well, if I have the time, I'll just throw myself into it. No, You have limited energy to give you, of course, have limited time. You have 100 and 68 hours a week. Everybody does. We all have 100 68 hours. We have yet to meet. A person doesn't swear they have less than the person next to them. Right. But we all have 168 hours a week in You have limited assets, these air things at your disposal. Me, except for maybe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. The rest of us, even they they have limited assets have a limited amount of capacity to effect change through their assets. So where you put your focus, which is your mental energy and where you devote that or the attention that you give where you put your assets, all of your resource is at your disposal that you can use to effect change your time, which is also limited, and where you choose to spend your time and your energy. Your emotional effort, where you put those things ultimately determines your fate. And more importantly, where you put those four things will ultimately determine the body of work that you built the delta that you create. Now the delta is the change that exists because you suck air on this earth. There's a guy at a round table I was at in Nashville last year, and he asked that that was a really profound questions. What gives you the right to suck the air? I should be breathing. Great. What are you contributing to the world in exchange for? All of the resource is you're consuming. I thought that was a really interesting question because none of us have just this right to exist and do what we please, right. We all have a responsibility that accompanies that right. Victor Frankel said the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be accompanied by the Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. Because with liberty comes responsibility with the freedom to express and to create in the make things comes and accompanying responsibility to use that freedom in the service of others and to create something that is valuable to the world and not just self serving. And so that is the Delta. That's the body of work that we built, the change that exists because we suck their on this earth we consume. Resource is now that body of work is not just your job. It's anyplace you add value. Eso It's your family relationships. It's how you treat the barista at Starbucks. It's obviously your job and the kinds of things that you create through that. But you are building that body of work right now, this very, instead of being here as students, Right? If you're watching this on the Web, you're building that body of work right now. Right now, you are spending focus assets, time energy, which means you are building your body of work. The question that all of us have to ask at some point is, does the body of work that I have built reflect What I really care about is the body of work that I have built to date, reflective of what I value not just what I say I value, but what I really value, because what we do matters more than what we say or what we think that's what shows are true priorities. So does the body of work that I have built to date. Is it reflective of what I really care about? You see, that body of work is built that Big Delta is comprised of a lot of little deltas, a lot of little changes. It's the stuff that we choose to spend our focus, our assets or time or energy on every single day of our life and scratching, Rubin said. What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while, the places we choose to spend our focus, assets, time, energy every day or what ultimately buildup to this body of work, that we can point to my goal. And I hope your goal as well is that on my dying day I can look back and I can say, Look at my body of work, all the places I've spent, my energy, my folks, my time by assets. I can look at that and I could say yes, that represents what I cared about. That's something I can point to with pride. That is something that represents the best of what of who I am and what I value. Unfortunately, so many people, they can't say that because over time they've compromised. They've as Herbert Simon, but they've satisfy iced right. It's a phrase that researcher Herbert Simon used back in the mid 20th century. The combined the words status, satisfaction or satisfy and suffice. They've gotten close enough, and they've satisfies along the way they've settled Medias. Oh, Chris is we talked about earlier mediocrity Media Zokora's halfway up the rugged mountain halfway to their objective. And the truth is, the mediocrity doesn't just happen. Mediocrity in life and work has chosen over time. Mediocrity is a is not something anybody would choose. And yet it is a destination of choice. It's just chosen in very small ways. Over time, nobody wakes up in the morning, it says. I can't wait to crank out a steaming pile. A crafted Nobody does that right. And yet all of the little choices that we make throughout our day, how we spend our time, our energy or focus or assets ultimately determine whether we're living a contribute of life or a life that is eventually bending itself toward mediocrity. So the countermanding principle, then All of that is, if mediocrity is a choice of how we spend our focus, our assets of time or energy, then the countermanding principle is that brilliance demands discipline, to do brilliant work and to do brilliant work consistently over the long arc demands effort and disciplined and consistent and continual realignment. We talked about this. We talk about the checkpoints. We talked about the importance of building checkpoints in her life to make sure we're not getting off course. And that's really important when it comes to generating ideas to make sure that our practices air supporting our creative process. But that doesn't necessarily address the bigger issues of where is my life going, where is my work going? And by building a body of work that I could be proud of. Is it reflective of who I am and what I care about? And so I would ask the, uh, the folks on the Internet right now I would be interested to know the answer to the question. We won't put our studio students on the spot, But, um is the body of work that you are currently building the places you're spending your focus, your assets your time, Your energy? Is it reflective of what you value? Or do you feel like Maybe in some way it's not really reflective of you? And I'm I'm curious and know your answer to that. And I'm also curious to know maybe why you think that is the case would be really interesting to hear. This will give you a couple of minutes to two on that, and then we'll come back for your answers. Does anyone here want to offer up? It's interesting. I somebody last week. Let's talk to me about the word discipline. Yeah, and it has a different connotation for me now because this brilliance I think about my body work in my life. My young life so far in all my years and decades of Yeah, yeah, yeah, but he was saying how this point is really important. But discipline itself is not sustainable. It's the emotion of wanting to be disciplined, that sustainable. Yeah, and so I'm finding that the more, um I'm getting in tune to what I'm about, and I'm doing work that reflects me as opposed to doing work that I think, um, I want people to see me as um that my disciplines getting stronger. Yeah, um And so and that has only recently happened. So yeah, I feel like my body work is kind of, uh but I'm but you're trending up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're kind of three, Um, three things that this some extent motivate all of us, right? And it's a kind of common, by the way, you're gonna figure out that I like deliberations. I like words that start with the same letter. You're gonna figure that out, right? And the research, it doesn't always come out that way, but we try to make it is memorable as possible. The 1st 1 of course, is pay. It's the cash, Ola. It's the It's the It's what you get paid to do your job. It's a motivating factor. To some extent, pay is motivating, right? It's very rare that you will find somebody who will just go the work for 40 hours a week without being compensated something for their time, you know, I mean, we have to do that. I have to support ourselves when it so pay is a motivating factor. No question about it. Um, a second motivating factor is prestige. and this is our job title. This is how other people in our industry look at us, how they respect us, the kinds of things that they say about us. It could be the corner office, you know, it's all of those things. It's maybe getting the you having a nice car and the whole deal and portraying the image right. So paying prestige are definitely two elements. Even if you're the most humble purist in the world, to some extent, you're gonna be motivated by pay because you have to pay your bills unless you're a monk or something. And then unemployment is very high for monks, right? Just go in your, um, prestige. Some everybody to some extent wrestles with, Well, I want to be recognized for my work. You know, I want people to see what I do is valuable, but there's 1/3 thing that also motivates us, and this is the one that you're talking about. I think Brian and it's the one. I think that we want to gravitate more and more toward over time we will be affected. This process would be motivated by the work. We will be motivated by the thing that we do by achieving the goal that we've set for ourselves. And over time, if we're primarily motivated, motivated by pay and prestige, we're going to settle, we're going to satisfy. So we're gonna get to a point where we're like, Hey, I'm gonna take whatever job I'm gonna be a mercenary. Mercy got Bob lock in. Who's an entrepreneur? Told me. I think I think he was going to be in research for the new book. He said the mercenary mindset attracts mercenaries, right? So if you want you want a bunch of mercenaries working for your group, just pay top dollar. But you're not gonna get people who are motivated by process people who are really just deeply entrenched in trying to make the thing happen. You know, same with prestige. We work to some extent. We all want to be recognized or whatever, but we have to trend toward being motivated by process, which means we have to understand ourselves, understand what really motivates us and avoid some of the places people get stuck. You know, if we want to build a body of work that we could be proud of over the long term s o p p p. But pay prestige process. But there are places that we get stuck there, places that we end up in a place of stagnancy and mediocrity, and I call them the seven Deadly sins. Okay, so, you know, in Catholicism's there are the seven deadly sins, which are like what? Greed and lust and gluttony. And there's air like all that. But you know, the seven deadly sins there, seven deadly sins that also lead to mediocrity and stagnancy. And I see these individuals and creatives and organizations. And again, just like with the assassins, they become endemic. And we have to have countermanding practices to help us stay on the course of contributed contributed dress. Someone has been the bulk of our time talking about these seven deadly sins and how we're going to build practices to countermand them. The first is aimlessness on. We talked a little bit earlier about the importance of defining your work and how important it is to define your work. But aimless. This is actually a little bit more sinister than just a lack of focus. If you were to, uh, put me out in the field and put a blindfold on me and tell me somewhere in the midst of this two acre field is a target. And you, with your blindfold on, are going to walk out into the field and you're going to take a bow and arrow and I want you to try to hit the target. How long you think it's gonna take me to hit the target? Probably a while, right? Yeah. I mean, just sure. Mathematics say it's going take a long time for me to hit the target and so I could pull the boat many times I could shoot a lot of arrows and finally I might hit the target. We'll how gratifying do you think it's gonna be to me when I finally hit the target? Probably not that gratifying, because there's little gratification that comes from purposeless, aimless work. I mean, yeah, I hit the target, but I did it accidentally. I wasn't trying because I couldn't even see what I was doing. Like I could maybe develop a process over time to figure out which areas it's less likely to be in but blindfolded. I'm probably not gonna have much luck doing. Similarly, you could tell me Hey, there's a target out here in the field. We're gonna give you a bow and arrow. We just give you a bunch of arrows. We're gonna pay you every time you pull the bow and shoot an arrow. We don't care if you hit the target and I just pulled a vote as many times you want, right? That's pay. We're gonna pay you just for, you know, again, my work. So I could be very gratifying because there's not an overall objective. There's nothing productive that I'm doing my job. It's a kind of aimlessness. It's be I'm being carried along by the task itself. But there's not a through line. There's nothing that's connecting my activities, helping me understand how are making progress on my work right? But the kind of blind effort. And again there's little gratification for just pulling the boat the most times in getting a lot of money, like at the end of the day, what did I make? What did I build? So we have to be good at defining our through line, and what this means is figuring out water. What's the connective tissue between all of the projects that we're doing what are the things that tie them all together? What's the baseline that that connects our work together? That is really what drives us to your point. Brian earlier. What is it about the process that drives us? Um, you guys have occurred. Smartness Christmas. Chris Martin was NFL running back its National Football League. As in American football. For those watching internationally, not soccer or football, you know what I mean? But American football and eso Curtis Martin running back. Brilliant running backs. In fact, this past year he was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, a za running back. So one of the greatest running backs in recent memory in the NFL. And he gets up to give Hiss NFL induction speech. And he says, You know, many of you, many of my friends are probably surprised to see me up here today because I've never really been a football fan. As a matter of fact, I could probably count on one hand the number of football games I've watched my entire life that I wasn't playing in. As a matter of fact, not only that, I hate to run. I box for exercise now because I hate the run. I never wanna have to run again in my life. Now here's a guy who not only played professional football was inducted as one of the greatest running backs in history. He's in the Hall of Fame as a great running back who hated to run. Who disliked the game of football, who to this day boxes for exercise so he doesn't have to do the thing that he has been recognized as being really great at right and he's getting up is being inducted in the NFL Hall of Fame. There's more to this story, so Curtis Martin goes on. He says now, Football, for me was always the last refuge I grew up in a single parent. Home is a really rough neighborhood, and I was pushed into football is a way to keep me off the streets, get me out of trouble. Give me something to do, right? And he found he was actually really good at it. I mean, he didn't really like it, but he was really good. It was just kind of his last refuge, and he got so good that he actually at the end of his amateur playing days, on draft day actually got that fateful call from the New England Patriots from Coach Parcells. So Curtis Martin is standing there on draft day in this living room, and the phone rings he picks up the phone and its coach, Parcells, in the other end. He says, Curtis, we would like for you to come be a New England patriot. This is Curtis Martin retelling the story Curtis would like for you to be a New England patriot. Would you like that? Curtis Martin says. Yes, Coach. Yeah, I would like that very much. Thank you. Coach Parcells hangs up the phone, turns around, looks in this family and says, Oh my gosh, I do not want to play football. True story on draft day. Oh, my gosh, I do not want to play football. One of the other people in the room that day, it was, Ah, family friend named Leroy Joseph and Leora Joseph said, Hold on, Curtis, Hold on a minute. You know all those kids from broken homes, single parent families, all those kids. You've always said that someday you would like to help in the same way that you were helped by other people who took you under their way. What if football is your platform to be able to help those people that you've always said you wanted to help and current Smart went on to say that became his connection with the game he worked. He showed up before everybody else. He left after everybody else. He worked harder than anybody else in practice. He played with everything he had. But the reason he did it was because he knew that football was his platform and the money he made was his platform to be able to do this other thing that he was deeply passionate about, which is help families. That he devoted a significant portion of his resource is to doing that, he said. I had to do that. I needed something like that in my life because the love of the game just wasn't in my heart. Now here's somebody who is one of the greatest running backs, you know, in recent memory, who is confessing? He doesn't like the sport he plays. He would honestly prefer never to play it again. He doesn't watch it on a regular basis, but there was something else a deeper river that was driving his work. There was a through line that was driving his work. He had identified what I call productive passion. Now when we talk about this word passion, I think we use it. We misuse it significantly in our culture, the word passion at the heart of it, the root word for passions or patty, which means to suffer so we tend to use passion is, Oh, I'm passionate about ice cream and I'm passionate about my wife and I'm passionate about NFL football. I'm passionate about breaking bad or whatever, right, which just ended last night. But I'm passive. All of these things, that's fine. But we tend to use it to describe something or interested in something. It gives us a thrill or an excitement. But really, if you're using its original context, it means to suffer. We have to ask ourselves what, working by, willing to suffer on behalf off what is the work that is so important to me? What is my through line? That the process itself is so valuable to me? I'm willing to suffer on behalf of something else. It's an outcome. It's a value that exists that I'm creating and I'm willing to suffer. It's my passion area. Doesn't mean I'm always interested in it, but I'm passionate up to suffer on behalf of it. We want to identify productive passion. What problem and I'm really trying to solve here? It may or may not be related to our specific work, right, the tasks that were doing, maybe something else that's waiting on the other side again. It's identifying this productive passion and productive passion means work that you're willing to suffer, suffer on behalf of. By the way, when I say suffer, I don't just mean Oh, this is drudgery. This is terrible. I mean, it's work that keeps you at the office late, right? It's work like I will suffer on behalf of my family. I will do things for my family. I will not do for any other human being on the planet. Why? Because I'm passionate about my family. I'm willing to go the extra mile for my family, and I will do it for some other human beings, you know. But I'm saying there are always gonna be things that will do for my family that may not do for other people because there's a kind of productive passion there. So what is that in your work? What is your through line? What is the productive passion for you? Okay, so that's aimlessness. Um, the second deadly sin is boredom, boredom, people. Have you heard the saying Only boring people get bored. Use that with our kids used to use over there Continues name working. I don't believe it. I don't think it's true. I think boredom is actually maybe even sometimes a good thing. Boredom could be a sign that your mind is ready to move on to something else. Your mind is ready to latch on to a new topic, but a lot of times we talk about boredom. You know, we think that if we're bored, there's something wrong. No, sometimes that's your mind saying Okay, it's time to move on. It's time to do something else. The problem is that we tend to fill our boredom, hurling birth pigs or playing games, which are awesome, by the way. I'm not discounting that. I'm just saying right, but But we tend to look for entertainments when we get bored rather than saying maybe my mind is looking for a new problem to solve now, sometimes disconnecting playing games, doing things like that's a great way to get yourself away from the problem and then reengage, Absolutely. But it can also provide a distraction. Sometimes it's a convenient way to fill our time when we want to avoid the work that we should be doing to counter man board. And we have to be fiercely, fiercely curious, which means we have to identify the questions in our world, the problems that we're really trying to solve, the areas that were naturally gravitating toward we have to identify our areas of curiosity and then funnel into our world resource is to help us pursue that. So I mentioned earlier Joseph Campbell and the Bliss Station. Okay, this idea that he had everybody in the world needs this place called their blessed station. And the Bliss station is a time and a place where you do nothing but pursue your own curiosity. You feed yourself with things that that failure well, that feed your soul where nobody is judging you, right, um, where you're able to feel totally yourself. It's the place where you can feel totally yourself. Everyone needs that kind of space in their life, and then they're working. I would be curious to know from the Internet. How would you define that for you? What is your bliss station? What is the place that you go to feed your soul to fill your well? And I would also be curious. Is there anything for you guys that were kind of, uh, you know, this That would be descriptive up in your world. Is there? Is there a place or a time or a thing you do that allows you to feel more like yourself than when you're doing other things in your life? Yeah. Are you able to tell us what that is? Um, tour. Um, a couple of years ago, I switched court. I switched kind of life course. Yeah. And I lived in Central America for two years and work down there. And it was the first time my life I really felt like it was who I really was. And I wasn't playing life anybody else, and, um, So there's a big network of people, uh, work down there around here. And so when I am kind of just want to go do my thing, I go to one of those events and, like, I feel like completely like myself. And it's this group of people who really relate to the experience. So it's pretty cool. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Good. Do you have any? Do you have anything or any place or any Anything that you do when you feel like Okay. I'm just disconnected right now from everything. And this is kind of the place where I myself. Sure, Yeah, I think actually alone time crazy. That is especially being out in, like, nature specifically by the ocean. Something like to dio great stand up Paddleboarding or something like that. Feeling like the immensity of and a lot of the ocean and stuff. Yeah. Same thing. I'm very much a notion person when I want to have a sense of just whatever problem, Whatever it is, it's just a very small cog in this huge world. There's nothing like standing on the beach of feeling that Absolutely Yeah, I'm sure we'll get some comments from the champion as well. We actually have some good ones if you want to hear. Yeah, great. Okay, we have a and e m says running Jeff's secular his Bliss Station I love that is walking in nature with headphones on, listening to music, and there's a lot of listening to music and then design, Diva says. Definitely meditation for me on Been walking, Listening to Music Nature. It's a running theme, Yeah, actually, Well, I think the common thing and all of those is a disconnectedness from the work right and just a sense of presence and being and not to get again to ineffable and touchy feely. But this is probably, as that is. We're going to get ready, but it's breaking away and saying I'm going to disconnect from the expectations of the world and the pressures of the world. And I'm just gonna be with myself and allow myself to listen to that inner voice and ask, What is it right now? That's inspiring me. What is it that's motivating me and getting to know yourself becoming more aware of yourself? I think that's that's really important. A critical part of being fiercely curious is breaking away and asking those deeper questions. You don't often have the freedom to ask in the course of your day today work day to day pressure. The other thing, the other practice that we can do to help us be curious is creating what I call the list. So there's a story about Rosanne Cash, the daughter of Johnny Cash in the brilliant musician and artist in her own right when she was younger. She tells the story about how her father came to her and was a little bit disappointed with her lack of awareness of the history of country music and some of the greats songs that defined the genre in the early days of country music. And so he took a piece of paper, a napkin. He went aside. He wrote out a list of songs and he came back. He said, Here's your education, Okay? Go and learn these songs. This is your education about country music. And I started thinking after I heard that story, what would that be for me in my life? And in my work? What is the list of 20 or items or resource is, or things that anybody who does what I do absolutely has to be intimately familiar with. So what is the list? And then how do I start structuring time into my life to begin experiencing in reading that list because you know, if we want to be the best at what we do, you want your best work out of us. We have to be intimately aware of not just where we want to go, but also the history like the history that our work and our genre is rooted in. So what is that for you? One of those resource is on. How can you cultivate the list and then begin to systematically work through it? Now we also have to get better at asking questions. This is another thing. We have to be pierced, the curious, and there are four kinds of questions or four areas at home. The forays again with the peas and the A's and the EMS and the fresh, you know, whatever it, but it's just it's easier to remember. So the four A's therefore areas we can look to help us ask better questions in our work. The 1st 1 is assumptions. We talked about this at the very beginning, in the feet fuzzy and the fireworks right. The assumptions that we hold on to can sometimes be inhibited in doing great works. We're not looking invaluable places for ideas and there a couple of kinds of assumptions that we can make that prevent us from coming up with great ideas. The first is what I call causal assumptions. This is when I assume this, therefore that so I have experience, why I do something. I have success and this is the outcome. And so therefore, I assume that this then therefore that every single time and this happens a lot in organizations, people come in and they work themselves into an organization and things are done a certain way. And they start asking questions like Why? Why do you do that? What is the deal with this thing? And then, like I don't know, It's just always been none that way. And apparently this is the way it has to be done in order to get this other thing done. Well, no, it's just that nobody has changed that system thin since 1973 right? It's just that so we have to be good at determining those causal assumptions that we may have. Are there any places where we need to be examining those? And then there's a deeper kind of assumption, which is a narrative assumption, and the narrative assumption is a deeper story that we live in. It's an assumption that we're making about the state of the world, of the state, of our organization in the state of the work. And the narrative assumption sometimes is more difficult to identify because, you know, was it Pascal or somebody was asked who discovered water And he said, Well, it certainly wasn't fish right, because they're just swimming in it. The same thing with these narrative assumptions. Sometimes we hold onto narrative assumptions that we've been handed since the time we were born, and it makes it difficult for us to break outside. At the time, we were in an organization called The Break Outside. So here's how we begin to bust those assumptions. We have to ask the question, What are we assuming to be true? So in my work, what am I assuming to be true right now, Right, and is it really true or isn't it? And sometimes it will prove to be true, but we have to get good at asking those questions following our curiosity, what am I assume to be true? And of course, what am I assuming to be false, right? So where am I not looking right now? I mean, right up until what? 2010. Everybody still thought they were in the personal computer business, right? That was a narrative assumption people were making. Now, people are realizing we're not in the personal computing business were actually in the outcome. Business tablets have kind of taken over ruling the day, you know, a lot of ways in terms of portable computing, but right up until very recently, you have people making these really tiny little laptops. You know, thinking we just need to make everything smaller, right? It was a kind of narrative assumption that existed in the marketplace that's now been busted. Well, maybe it's not about that. Maybe it's about something else. So what are we assuming to be false? And the question we ask when we're trying to bust assumptions is what if What if this wasn't true? What if this wasn't false? What would we do then? You know what, And taking the time to actually explore that. Okay, so Well, I'm making this assumption about the way things have to be. What if that wasn't true? What would I do? then, and playing around with those ideas and experimenting and venturing into those uncomfortable places were really valuable. Ideas like aspirations is the second a. This is all about what you're really ultimately trying to dio. It's about the end goal. What do you aspire to with this work with this project? Um, so what is the ideal in state again? It's astounding to me how many people have not stopped. Ask themselves, What are we really trying to do here? What is what will we account? What if having accomplished this? Would we say OK, it's time to close up shop. We're done. We've accomplished our mission. That's it. So many people and organizations exist just to exist. So what is the ideal in ST how we define success for our work for organization? And then what has to be true in order for us to get there? Because once you've identified the ideal in state for a project or for organization, whatever it ISS for your life, you can begin to ask the question. What, then has to be true? How can I back my way through this to determine the sequence of events that have to happen for me to get there, and then you could begin attacking those things one at a time. So the question you're asking with aspirations is why not? Why not do this? Why not aspire to that, right? Why not try this? What are the things that they're standing in? The way the third a is affinities, affinities. And by the way, I sometimes will spend two days working through these. You know where the organization's We're gonna do it. About three minutes. We might actually time travel. Okay, Um affinities offended these air parallel problems parallel problems to the one that you're trying to solve. Their similarities. There there, affinities there. Close. Similar There things have been done in other industries that you might be able to apply to the work that you're doing. So the question that you asked with affinities or one of them is What is this like? Where have I seen this before? What is another problem somebody has sold that's similar to this again? It's about intentional curiosity asking questions. Intentionally, The venture into those uncomfortable places were real value lies. And then what's inspiring you right now? What is inspiring you personally and how Can you apply that to the work that you're doing? And then a great question to ask, uh, with affinities is Who could? So let's say we're trying to figure out how do we make Commercial Air Travel Fund? This is a problem we're trying to solve. Who could make Commercial Air Travel Fund? Well, Richard Simmons, I guess, could make commercial. It might be a little weird, but you could write. What you're doing is you're trying to figure out, like, who could do this? How would they do? And how do I apply those insights, then two. So not Richard Simmons. But maybe How could we borrow some of those characteristics and apply them to the problem at hand again? Mental play, right. Pursuing your curiosity, peaking your curiosity. The final A is attributes, and this is all about the specifics of the problem. You're trying this soul. I'm really actually, by the way, I'm really scared to know what that Richard Simmons comment Teoh is going to generate in the chat room. That's okay, Attributes. So what is at the core of the problem? What are the core attributes and then how can we use those a za jumping off point to begin generating ideas, asking questions. So what are the core elements of the problem itself? The core attributes. Can we build a model? Is there a way, the prototype, an idea? And if we do prototype an idea, what would it look like? And how would we do it? So the question you're asking with attributes is, How can how can we do this? How come we begin to build something that will help us to explore some of those uncomfortable places adjacent to as Steven Johnson and called it pursuing adjacent possible explore? This place is adjacent to the problem we're trying to solve. So those the forays we can use to ask better questions and follow our curiosity, assumptions, aspirations, affinities and attributes I think that's the last of the four letter or three letter things that were going to do today. Um, all right, so aimlessness, boredom, comfort. The third deadly sin is comfort. I mentioned earlier that the love of comfort is, I believe, frequently the enemy of greatness. Now that doesn't mean you can't be comfortable. Doesn't mean you can't experience comfort in your pursuit of great work. It just means that you cannot make comfort and great work, simultaneous objectives because at some point, if you want to do great work, you're going to have to do the right thing. Even when it's the uncomfortable thing. It's just that you're shaking your head. Are you disagreeing? Are no. I completely agree. It's just like that. That truth you just don't want. Except sometimes when it's so true. Yeah, yeah, well, it is. And that's the thing. It's we don't Nobody wins when we delude ourselves. No, no organization wins when it deludes itself. It wins in the short term, but it loses in the long term. You know, I can get through the day by telling a lot telling myself lies, But eventually those are going to catch up with me if I really want to be contributed and create value and build a body of work I could be proud of. I have to understand who I am, and I have to be willing to do the things necessary to get me. That doesn't always mean being uncomfortable, right, Like I like having shelter. I like having a car to drive around like being comfortable. I like that there's nothing wrong with it. But I can't make comfort my objective because if I do, at some point I will settle in. And so many people, I mean, honestly, so many people have done that Over time I've encountered something people. He said, I mean small compromises along the way for the sake of my comfort. And now I want to get here. But I'm just stuck. I'm stuck, right, Because I haven't been doing the little things along the way to move me up the curve. Good news is, no matter where you are, you can establish a new vector. No matter, no matter where you are right now, you could always begin to do things to move you up the curve countermanding comfort is about growth and personal innovation, meaning disinter Mediating your own life, it means disrupting your own life, disrupting your own comfort. Now, again, that doesn't mean you can't be comfortable. It means you can't settle for comfort at the expense of great work. This is happy, Happy joy. Joy time, right? Yeah, but the truth is, we all want to do great work. We all want to be, you know, great. At what we do, so we have to commit to growth and innovation. So this is a new artistic rendering of a sigmoid curve, which is what we call a growth curve. This is indicative of things like product, life cycles, population growth. Right. So you have slow growth at first, and then you have kind of exponential growth, and then you have a slow stagnancy that emerges over time. So this slow growth is when, say, a population moves into an area, for example, and then all of a sudden they figure out, Hey, here's where the resource is our Hey, here's where the water is. Hey, here's how we make more of us. You know, we know kind of what that's all about, right? And, uh, and then over time what happens? Competition is introduced, so another tribe moves into the area or another population of animals moves in. Now there's competition for the source of water or food or whatever, and so growth slows over time. So the same thing happens with products. You introduce a product slow growth, the first massive adoption, and then competitive products come in. And what happens? The growth of the product slows their distinct phases in personal growth is also descriptive of creative growth and personal growth. Their distinct phases that we go through along this curve, the first is discovery. So let's say that somebody wants to learn something. Want to learn how to play guitar, right? What's the first thing they do? Well, they go down to Guitar Center and they buy a $3000 guitar and it sits in the closet for three months. That's probably the first thing that happens. But at some point, if they want to actually get good at guitar or photography or whatever it is, they're actually gonna have to take the guitar out. And they're gonna have to start Chunka chunka chunka on the guitar and figuring out how to develop their chops. Well, they do that by imitation. That's the second phase you learn. You build a platform by imitating or emulating other people. That's why when you walk past Guitar Center, you hear that, Uh uh uh, Donna, right. That's like the Onley thing. They know how to play, but, man, they can just nail smoke on the water. They're imitating other people. That's what they're doing. They're learning their chops they're building a platform to developing their skills. Okay, that will get you a good chunk of the way up the growth curve, just imitating other people. But if you really want to begin to contribute in a valuable way, you have to move on to the next phase, which is what I call divergence. This is sailing perpendicular to the shoreline. This is using all of the skills you developed during emulation phase and applying your own voice your own unique perspective. You're playing around with those skills. You're trying new things. You're experimenting, your sailing perpendicular to the shoreline. This is the area of really valuable contribution for most people in their life. And in their career is when they take these this platform that they've built the skills they've developed and they begin to experiment and try new things with it. Okay, that's divergence phase. Now a lot of people end up stuck in imitation and emulation phase. They never actually take the little risks necessary to find their voice in to try new things. And it's unfortunate because they missed the valuable contribution they have to make. They don't this intermediate their own process. So as a result, they get stuck halfway up the curve. There's also 1/4 phase, and it's what I call crisis phase. And this is when you get to a point where the skills that you developed yesterday are no longer sufficient to meet today's expectations or today's projects. And so you start to see a diminishing return on your effort. You're starting to slow. The results aren't quite there the way that where you're doing all the same stuff. Maybe even your client is pleased. Your managers, please. Everybody is happy with the work you're doing. But personally, you feel like I'm just not. I'm not doing it anymore. This isn't working anymore, and you have a point of crisis now. The people who continue to contribute valuably over time are those who are willing to go back to the beginning and start a new curve. They're willing to say All right, I need to learn some new skills. I need to go back to Discovery phase and learn some new skills that I can build on this platform. I can build on to continue up the curve and continue to grow. I'm going to disinter mediate my own process I'm not going to settle for what I've already got. I love trade of live, but it's a great way to build new skills. Toe, learn new things to try new things.