Step 3: Get experienced

You can’t make yourself smarter. You can only make yourself more experienced. 

What we generally describe as expertise doesn’t come from innate ability, it comes from the wisdom gathered by walking a road many times. That point where you can say, “I’ve seen this before…I know what to do next.”

But when you are making something new, there’s no way you can have seen it before. You won’t know with any certainty what the thing to do next is. You’ll just have to choose some thing that’s next. And a lot of times, you’ll find out what you chose was wrong.  And then you’ll choose something else.

The best way to find out which of your ideas are really good ideas is to tell everyone all your ideas and learn which ones are bad.

I’ve been trying to put myself in some new spaces lately. 

Going into them with the full knowledge that I’m going to look silly has been very helpful. As long as I remember that the best way to stop looking so lost is to keep walking the path until it becomes familiar, I can deal with the temporary embarrassment that comes with looking stupid. 

(The safer option, of course, is to just not walk the path at all. If that’s where you're leaning, see Step 1.)

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Step 2: Get Silly

As Amy Poehler says, “No one looks stupid when they’re having fun.” 

The key, I’m discovering lately, when stepping into the unknown, is to embrace the giddiness that comes with the inevitable experience of looking stupid.

When we take ownership of the stupidness it becomes silliness--and silly is a lot less scary.

Hopefully you’ve experienced the silly joy of watching a reckless three-legged race, or a campfire skit of middle-schoolers trying to tell a story with a mouth full of marshmallows, or the horrible singer who unselfconsciously and passionately belts out an AC/DC song at the karaoke party. 

Making something great will be scary, sure. And you’re going to look stupid along the way—there’s no avoiding that. But if you can also have fun along the way, you’ll find that most people—at least the ones that count—won’t ridicule your stupidity. They’ll celebrate it.

Pretending you know what you’re doing when you don’t is a form of lying. Apologizing for what you don’t know is unnecessary and turns people away. But celebrating what you don’t know draws people in.

We love to cheer on the underdogs, the folks who have no idea what they’re doing but joyfully trudge on anyway. 

It’s a significant part, I believe, of what brings in an audience in for an improv show. We love to watch people in way over their heads, battling on anyway, with a smile on their face.

It’s not the constant losses that drive diehard Cubs fans, it’s the hope of finally prevailing. 

Because we can see that their tolerance for failure will likely get them a win someday. 

p.s.--Here’s a great example of how doing it wrong with joy can sometimes make it better.

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This post is part 2 of a very short series on getting started when you don't know what you're doing. Here's Step 1, if you're interested. Or if you're Maria von Trapp and that's where you like to start.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Step 1: Get stupid.

“If everybody does it, nobody looks stupid.”

True. And not everybody is doing it.

That’s the reality of trying to do something new, something meaningful—something that hasn’t been tried before. When you’re the only one, you look and feel stupid.

But that’s certainly no reason not to do it.

I’ve never watched much of House on Fox, but I came across this line belonging to the lead character, Gregory House, the other day:

“If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you.”

The sentiment pairs well with Seth Godin’s recently released quasi audiobook, Leap First. It’s not a book, really—more of a collection of live essays he recorded this past year at a seminar in his office, but still well worth the listen.

Seth describes any work that matters, that makes a difference, that’s trying to do something new as art. I couldn’t agree more with him on this. He goes on to describe being an artist as a “serial form of incompetence.”

I think he’s right about that, too.

If you’re going to do something new, something that matters, you aren’t afforded the luxury of being an expert. If no one has done it before—or even just if you haven’t done it before—you’re going to be clumsy and inexperienced at the start and you will probably find yourself looking stupid along the way.

It’s unavoidable.

Best to just accept that as the admission price of entering the unexplored, of being one of the first. 

Steve Jobs encouraged us to be one of “the crazy ones.”

I'll second that and add to it:

Be one of the stupid ones.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

My interview on the This Moved Me podcast

As many of you know, my wife Sally Koering Zimney hosts a podcast called This Moved Me. She generously had me on as guest and the episode dropped this week.

Actually, this was her very first recording from when she was launching the podcast this summer. She wanted me as a test subject to practice her questions, pacing, recording equipment, etc.

As it turns out, we had an interesting enough conversation about the art of public speaking, presenting, and being present with your audience that she apparently found it air-worthy! (This despite the references to Nat King Cole and alien cows.)

Of course, I'm biased, but I think This Moved Me is a pretty great podcast all around. If you're interested in conversations about how we use our work and our voices to move the world towards something better, you should definitely subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or wherever else you connect your podcast wires.

Otherwise you can listen to the 17 minute interview on the This Moved Me website.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Being "Busy" Might Be a Big Warning Sign

A firefighter would never claim to be too busy to haul out the hose.

A surgeon doesn't skip sewing up an incision because she's behind schedule.

Pilots always find time to extend the landing gear.

For the past 20 years, I've had lots of roles and responsibilities as a business owner, manager, and executive leader that demanded I make choices about how I spend my time.

I've also spent about the same amount of time on stage as an improviser where I collaborate with other improvisers to create and perform stories on the fly for all sorts of audiences.

Over two decades of improvising, I’ve never heard any performer claim that they were too busy to make a great choice on stage:

“I was going to tell a better story, but life is just crazy right now.” 

Certainly, every improviser has gotten off stage many many times knowing that they could have done better, but lack of time is not an acceptable scapegoat.

When we know what is important, lack of time doesn't rate on our list of excuses.

Building a great story has plenty of challenges. Improvisers may be too distracted or too scared to make better choices—but never too busy.

In life, however, we all claim to be too busy to build better stories for ourselves on a fairly regular basis.

The truth is, whenever you say, “I’m too busy,” or “I don’t have enough time,” you don’t really mean either one. What you’re actually saying is one of 3 things:

Truth 1: "I’m deciding to use my time for other things that are more important to me.”

What it means: You’re on track and making choices in line with your values, goals, and priorities. You know the story you want to build and you're creating it in the best way you know how. 

Next questions: How, if anything, can I be more efficient so that I can do more of what’s important to me? Are there even bolder choices that would get me closer to the story I’m trying to build?

Truth 2: “I’m deciding to use my time for other things that are less important to me.”

What it means: Your goals and your actions are out of whack—you’re not doing what’s really important. It’s time to make some adjustments. Often this happens because you are more concerned about the reactions of your audience (your boss, your clients, your neighbors) than the greatness of the story. 

Next questions: What do I need to sacrifice for the sake of something more important to the story I’m trying to build? Am I choosing less important actions because they are safer and more comfortable? These questions require courage and brutal honesty. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Truth 2 is about efficiency. Getting efficient at things that aren’t important to you just makes you ineffective faster and more often.

Truth 3: “I’m not sure what’s really important to me right now.”

What it means: It’s time to call a timeout and reflect. If you’re not sure what’s most important, it’s going to be hard to be very good at anything that matters. 

Next question: Why am I working so hard? What’s the story I most want to write for my life? These are purpose questions. (Doing a life audit is a great way to get clearer on these values.) If you believe you’re too busy to ask “Why?”, when will you have the time? Once you finish wrapping up all the distractions that don’t serve a purpose? Rambling stories that don’t drive to an intended conclusion often aren’t very satisfying—on stage or off.

What makes great improvisers so impressive is that they are always asking about the Why behind their characters and their stories. When they don’t know the purpose of the story that they are telling, they keep asking themselves questions and playing with their scene partners to figure it out.

When we as improvisers, entrepreneurs, employees, managers, spouses, leaders, and citizens are clear about our Why, we become great choice-making machines.

The great harm of telling ourselves we’re too busy is that implies that we have no choice. That’s hardly ever true. On stage or off. What makes it feel that way is not that we don’t know what we are choosing. It’s that we don’t know why we are choosing.

photo credit: Alan O'Rourke via photopin cc

Deadline + Audience = Progress

When I’m on stage at the theater with a bunch of improvisers, we make a promise to the audience:  We are going to create an entertaining story.  And we give it a deadline: It’ll be complete 5 minutes from now. And we deliver.

4 months ago, I knew I wanted to build a workshop/lab experience blending improv, productivity, and neuroscience. I had about 10% of what I wanted to say during the experience articulated at the time. But I gave it a deadline. On January 14, 2015—the deadline date—I delivered a 2 hour workshop to 15 people I had invited to test it out. 

Several years ago, ice dams resulted in some roof leaks and subsequent damage to our living room ceiling. I’ve got the tools and the know-how to fix it, so I put it on my list of to-dos. But I never gave it a deadline. Years later, you can still see the rusty extra-large-pizza-sized water stain.

If you’re serious about a project, it needs a deadline and audience.

The deadline gives you focus.  The audience gives you accountability.

The absence of either gives you rusty water stains.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Care about it, but not that much.

Ernie Banks, one of America’s favorite winner-losers, died last week.  The Chicago Cub hall-of-famer was a fan favorite who never won the World Series and played for a team that most seasons lost more games than it won.  Among many records and distinctions, Bank’s holds perhaps the most dubious: no player has played more games without ever making it to a championship game.

In a 2009 interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Banks described how he approached the game with so many failures facing him and his team:

“Every year, I always looked at spring training as a brand new year and I didn't think about what happened in the past. I was thinking about new ways for new days, and I couldn't wait to get to spring training.”

Have no doubt, Ernie cared about winning.  Decades later, he still got excited talking about the his 500th home run hit in 1970.

But win or lose, Ernie was especially good at keeping himself in the present.

“I care about it, but not that much. You know, we play a game, we lose, I care about it, but not that much.”

I tell people exactly the same thing about getting on stage for an improv show—it’s this funny duality of caring and not caring at the same time. 

On one hand, when the scene fails it is apparent and very public and everyone in that theater knows you had a part in it. On the other hand, the only way to make your failure worse is to infect your next scene with the failure of the previous.

You’ve got to care enough that you’ll throw yourself at the next scene, the next choice, the next swing with every hope and belief that you’ll knock it out of the park while also holding full knowledge that it could be a heart-wrenching strike.

Care enough to swing hard, but not so much it scares you off from the next pitch.

Often we hold individual projects with too much preciousness—so terrified of their failure that we put more into not missing than into going for the fences.

Even during the worst Cubs' seasons, Bank’s was famous for his optimism and focus on what was next. "It's a beautiful day for a ballgame. Let's play two today!"

We all get new at bats, new games, new scenes, new days. 

Ernie was one of souls who understood that even losing was a privilege and exactly the reason why you should stay in the game.

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photo credit: notmargaret via photopin cc

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

What gets us stuck? The right answer.

Decision-making is creativity at the atomic level.  We don’t often get stuck on a project, we get stuck on a decision.  

There’s a reason we say that decisions are made.  They don’t just emerge on their own.

Decisions are little acts of creativity and they go through the same 4 stages any other great creative work goes through:  

1. Preparation: The study, the practice, the planning. Imagine the work of chopping vegetables, herbs, and meats for a great stew.

2. Incubation: What happens when you’re not consciously working on the project—the time simmering in the crockpot on the stove.

3. Illumination:  The Aha! moment you have in the shower or sitting on the train on your way to the office—similar to the timer dinging after several long hours of cooking.

4. Verification: You’ve cooked the meal, now you need to serve it up to someone else to find out if you’ve created anything worth while. On your project, you may have the insight, but until you’ve put it into form—written the piece, built the prototype, painted the picture—and verified that others see the same sort of value that you do, you haven’t created anything.

What gets us stuck in any of these stages is an impatient desire to find out what works—what’s right—much earlier than we deserve.  

That sort of understanding only comes at the end of the creative cycle of decision-making—and expecting it earlier is slowing you down and making you less productive.

The first stage of Preparation is critical, but in and of itself, it’s not creating much of anything.  It is, however, safe—so we can be drawn into it.  “I’ll keep researching, keep planning, keep exploring all the things I could do without actually doing any of them.”  

We imagine that preparation itself will tell us what’s right and we get stuck because it won’t.  It helps flush out the questions—but it doesn’t tell us the answers.  That comes later.

Just as harmful, we often don’t give ourselves permission for the second stage,  Incubation.

Neuroscientists have shown that when we stop working on a project, a separate part of our brain kicks in and starts working in the background like the elves that come out at night in the shoemaker’s shop from that old nursery tale.  While the shoemaker sleeps, the elves work diligently away sewing all the pieces together.

Our brains do the same thing, building neural pathways, connecting ideas, and establishing greater knowing and understanding even though we ourselves are oblivious to the work that’s being done.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is to stop looking for what’s right.

There’s truth to the inverted adage, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”  Sometimes, we’re better off just standing there. Or better yet—going for a walk, taking a nap, sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee (or other favorite beverage).  

Unfortunately, many in our society regard rest as a luxury for the unmotivated, rich, or just plain lazy. In truth, it may be some of the most productive work we do.

But even when stage 3—Illumination— does dawn, we still won’t know what’s right, yet.

Illumination is too often misunderstood:  We expect the lightning bolt ‘Aha!” moment to have certainty baked in.  If only that were the case.  Illumination is rarely a eureka moment like Doc Brown hitting his head in the bath and waking up with the idea of the Flux Capacitor fully formed.  Much more often, Illumination comes in the form of a hunch or a suspicion—a small tweak or adjustment in perspective.  “Maybe we should try….” or “What if…”  

If we’re looking for certainty—for new understanding and knowing, than we must push into the 4th stage of Verification.  

Verification is when we find out if the idea is right or not.  Only with Verification—the act of putting our ideas, our projects, our stew—out there for public consumption do we get the reward of finding out if we were right.  (It’s also when we find out if we were wrong, which is why so many avoid it.)

So, stop looking for the right decision, and start making the next decision.

The key to finding what’s right is in trusting the process and having the courage to find out what’s wrong.

Right or wrong, you’ll find yourself with more knowing and understanding.  With one decision made, you can move on to the next.  If you want to get unstuck on the project, keep making the decisions.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Stop Remembering and Start Thinking!

As David Allen wisely quips, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”

We’ve all experienced that drive to the grocery store with the repeating verse in our head, “Bread, eggs, milk, and butter. Bread, eggs, milk, and butter. Bread, eggs, milk, and butter. Bread, eggs, milk, and butter…”

Cognitive psychologists call it a rehearsal loop--and while your brain is engaged in one--it literally can’t do much of anything else.  Certainly not any higher level critical thinking, planning, or imagining.

But most of us have even more lists in our heads than just a simple grocery list: a list of other errands for the day, a list of things that need to get done at home, a list of worries at work, a list of trips you’d like to take someday...

Ironically, every one of those lists bouncing around your head impairs your ability to get anything done about any of them.  Instead of thinking intelligently about what you could or should be doing about them, your brain is putting a disproportionate amount of its mental horsepower into simply keeping track of them.

Here are 5 simple ways to get those things out of your head and free up some space for new and creative conversation with yourself—not rehashing the same old repeating tracks:

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1. Always have something with you for capturing new ideas or things that are causing you anxiety.  A simple stack of index cards, a binder clip, and pen are often better than the smartest of phones.

photo credit: Teo via photopin cc

2. Add a carabiner to your keys. This one even doubles as bottle opener. Next time you’re worried about leaving the house without a critical piece of equipment or a bag, clip your keys to the critical item the night before.  You literally won’t be able to leave without it. My keys have spent a number of evenings clipped to frozen steaks in my dad’s freezer.  (He loves to give away good meat.)

3. In a pinch, call yourself at the office and leave yourself a voicemail.  If you set up a Google Voice number for yourself, google will even transcribe the message and email it to you for free!

4. Next time you make a packing list for a trip, don’t throw it away when you’re done.  Leave it in your suitcase and you’ll have a prepared packing list already to go for your next trip.

photo credit: marcia.furman via photopin cc

5. Finally—and you can feel free to mock me for this one—set a bowl full of safety pins on your dresser or in your bathroom, wherever you take off your socks at the end of the day.  Next time you take off your socks at the end of the day, pin them together before throwing them in the laundry.  Imagine never having to waste mental energy on searching for matching socks AGAIN EVER?!  (I can tell you, it’s a life-changer.)

photo credit: Dee West (Formerly deedoucette) via photopin cc

Changing how you use your brain--from a storage room for storing and managing mundane information into a laboratory used for playing with and combining new ideas is the surest path to do your greatest, most creative, and most productive work.

title photo credit: domi-san via photopin cc

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Baseball Is Going to Lose If It Doesn't Throw Itself a Curve

Major league baseball needs to choose: does it want to retain its fans or its current business model.  It can’t keep both.

Baseball has always been a leader in innovation and forwardness.  Base-stealing, the curve ball, the bunt—none of these were baked into baseball’s original form, but instead came from creative players trying to improvise their way towards greater success.  At its dawn, many decried the curveballer as a cheat—contrary to how the game is supposed to be played.  Today we all agree the game is better for it.

Baseball, and most things we are most proud of in this country, came out of forward thinking, innovation, and experimentation set on a goal, not a set of rules.

But baseball is quickly losing its place as America’s game--if it even still holds it at all--and I think it’s time that changed.

I like watching baseball. All the reasons why can best be summed up in a mere 25 hours of explanation from Ken Burns in his outstanding documentary. But I’m much less of a fan than I used to be.  Not because of any deterioration in the game or the league, but because of something much more basic: I can’t watch the games.

Like an increasing number of people, I cut the cable TV ties, many years ago.  While I have an HDTV antennae that receives all my local channels, my local team—the Minnesota Twins—disappeared from local broadcasts several years ago.

I don’t want cable.  If I go down the block to the burger joint to order a hamburger, I don’t expect to be obliged to order every appetizer on the menu as well.  I’m more than willing to pay for a dedicated online viewing subscription and Major League Baseball offers one: MLB.tv.  But ridiculously, home team games are blacked out on MLB.tv, meaning I can only watch my home team game when I'm away from home.  I’m in my hometown almost all of the time, that’s why I call it home.  It’s a backwards and shortsighted approach that is much too focussed on how things have been rather than how they should be.

In the land of freedom and opportunity, Iowa is the most oppressed—at least when it comes to its internet-based baseball fans.  Iowa has no MLB franchise of its own, so you’d assume that an Iowa baseball fan might be free to watch any MLB.tv game they’d like given its clear lack of a home team to blackout.  Instead, Iowa is considered home territory—and therefore blackout territory—for the Cubs, White Sox, Cardinals, Brewers, Twins, and Royals—making Iowa a virtual wasteland for the famished midwestern baseball fan.

Blackouts don’t retain fans, they slowly starve them away.  

My kids are unlikely to become fans because they rarely see a game and my interest in the sport wanes a bit more with every passing season I get only rare glimpses of a game.

Young consumers are especially unlikely to have a TV and cable subscription in their home.  In 2013, the number of young adults 18-24 with paid TV subscriptions dropped by 6% and that pace is sure to increase. MLB is missing millions of eyeballs with every game they pull from local and online channels. 

The MLB is making the same mistake as the big movie and music studios before them.  Rather than focussing on their customer, they are clinging to their business model.  The future is apparent.  One has only to look at the growing success of services like iTunes, Spotify, and Netflix to see that consumers want choice, mobility, and access. Baseball is offering none of those.

Leaders in any business need to pay attention to which they are selling—their product or their business model. 

As soon as you find yourself spending more time enforcing the rules rather than playing the game, it’s clear you’ve missed the point.

It’s time for baseball to invent a new pitch of its own and reclaim its rightful position as America’s game.

photo credit: mariaguimarães via photopin cc

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