The Psychology of Growth
Gene Hackman and the Drive to Prove Them Wrong: Perseverance, rejection and the emotional tension that makes people move.
Vision alone isn’t enough. You can nurture a vision for years and still go nowhere. Drive is what compels you to act on your vision. To transform your sense of purpose into something tangible and concrete.
Hackman didn’t just have a vision for himself. He was driven. His dream defined his path, but it was his drive that brought him to the destination. Without fuel, vision and purpose are inert.
You need something more to carry you through the struggle. Day after day, month after month—when it’s not working out and not moving fast enough—what keeps you going?
The Psychology of the Pivot: Blind Spots, Attachments, and the Discipline to Change Course
It's a familiar problem. What you've been doing—and doing well—is no longer working. You're stuck, realizing that you need to change course but unsure of the direction. Andy Grove and Gordon Moore have a moment of insight so simple that it shocks both of them: “We should just stop what we've been doing—it's no longer working.”
Prior to this revelation, they had been stuck in a box. They wanted a better outcome, yet they were hesitant to let go of their old ways and means. They hadn't allowed themselves the freedom to look outside of that box, despite its obvious limitations.
Lessons like this are often dismissed or glossed over. They're too simple. The most obvious choices are often hiding in plain sight, and this can be deceptive. In hindsight, their move was so obvious that we assume we would have done the same thing. Be careful with this assumption. The sunk cost fallacy is real. We tend to seek out data that confirms our past decisions—and downplay anything that suggests we might be wrong.
The Hidden Danger of Excessive Planning: How Fear Masquerades as Productivity
When Eric Ries published The Lean Startup in 2011, it quickly struck a chord. It’s been translated into over 30 languages and has sold over 1 million copies, in addition to landing on numerous bestseller lists. Why? Among other things, he managed to elucidate to a mass audience a concept that many leaders, executives and professionals know all too well from personal experience: that we all tend to engage in excessive planning with the aim of producing better outcomes, and that the same excessive planning often tends to result in poorer outcomes. Collectively, we seem to take great comfort in planning, organizing and forecasting, despite the obvious limitations of such methods in uncertain and rapidly changing environments.
From Micromanagement to Mindfulness: The Wisdom of Letting Go
How do we regard our thoughts? For most, the answer is that they’re taken for granted. Meaning, they’re not reflected upon enough. They’re not questioned or explored. Most of us reflexively take our thoughts at face value, as though they’re imbued with truth and meaning simply because their ours. We’re often so closely identified with our thoughts and inner narrative that we’ve never even considered the notion that ignoring them is a reasonable option.
It is a reasonable option—and an essential skill to cultivate if you wish to have more control over how you allocate your attention. Although there is some benefit in analyzing and attempting to work with difficult thoughts, diminishing returns set in quickly.