Humans are so good at generalising
It appears in phrases like “You always do that” or “It’s always like this”.
If they really did always do the thing you’re talking about, they wouldn’t have time to eat or sleep. So no, they’re not ‘always’ doing that.
It can seem harmless, right? Yes, we all know we don’t mean they literally always do it- it’s just a figure of speech.
The problem with that is figures of speech tend to pop up in other places and they affect how we think about things and so what we do.
A powerful habit is to be able to destroy generalisations and vagueness. When we aren’t clear on the details of something, we have little hope of effectively dealing with it.
If you have a ‘mountain’ of paperwork you’re in a less powerful position than having 78 documents to read and sign.
Give yourself the best shot and remove the generalisations from your speech.
In theory
Most things are comfortable in theory.
We can follow through, we can be vulnerable, we can take rejection, we can weather failure easily….
… in theory.
It’s why they say talk is cheap.
It’s really easy to talk about the hard stuff in the abstract. “Someday if things are hard…” or “if this ever did happen…”
When it comes to the moment, how can you be sure we can still make good on your talk?
Specific vs Broad
There’s a time for details and there’s a time for broad strokes.
I find this balance really difficult, but when people get it right things really take off.
So when is the time for each one? Well, there’s no hard and fast rule sadly, that’s my difficulty. But there are some guidelines to help…
A mass of work.
If you have a monumental amount to get through, that is definitely a time for broad strokes. Writers say you shouldn’t edit as you go. Potato farmers say you shouldn’t count the potatoes as you’re throwing them in the truck (do they say this..? Potato farmers, let me know). When we have a lot to do, we should err on the side of broad strokes. There’s simply too much to be fussy.
Preparing.
This requires detail I think. Sometimes we’re encouraged to launch in fearlessly to a project and this might make us think broad strokes, but I think that’s wrong headed. We can launch ourselves in fearlessly and still do so with detail at the forefront. Fearless launching doesn’t have to be synonymous with ham fisted action. We can be bold in our attention to detail.
The best approach of course is to be awake to our tendency to be broad when we must be specific and be specific when we must be broad.
I think finding this balance unlocks some exciting stuff.
Trust that you’ll look up soon and see it.
This week has felt unproductive. I’ve felt scattered across 4 different areas, task switching (I know) and seemingly making no progress on any.
The tasks were all meaty enough to require multiple sittings so I didn’t have the satisfaction on any to get a clean completion.
Yet…
I look up from my whirlwind week and I see a little garden of jobs that are nearly done I’m not condoning task switching or multitasking… BUT I think we’d do well to remember the long (ish) game when coming to these multi-sit tasks.
They won’t feel satisfying.
They won’t be done in one sitting.
You’ll get confused.
You’ll be tired.
And you’ll probably have to go on a few side quests within the tasks.
But keep plugging away, because soon enough you will look up and you’ll see…
“Okay, good. I did move the needle”
Becoming the phone
Opportunity is attracted to movement.
Ever notice how job offers, new clients and requests come flying in the moment you decide to focus on your own creation?
This seems to be true in the acting world. It’s like a Murphy’s law of sorts; you wait for the phone to ring and it never does. Then you decide to go build a sand castle and it’s ringing off the hook.
We have to be careful though…
We mustn’t make the sand castle to try and coax the opportunity; it doesn’t work that way.
We also mustn’t create movement for movement’s sake; creating more busy-ness doesn’t help.
The real secret is building a sand castle so grand and so exciting, that when the phone rings you genuinely consider not answering it.
That’s where the real juice is. When your sand castle is more compelling than someone else’s (and it will be, because you made it the way you like) you end up leaving them to do their thing and guess what?
You’ll be picking up the phone to call in some talented people looking to apply their skills.
Don’t wait for the phone.
Become the phone.
Take time to make time
There’s a super persistent myth I fight with every day.
It says that I’m better off to push through on the work I’m doing than to take a break or a walk.
In my head, the walk is lost time. Time I would be much better off investing that time in my work.
The trouble is sometimes pushing through leads to diminishing returns.
While it seems obvious that continuing to work gives you more time on the work, taking the walk gives you more quality on the work.
I fight myself every day and when I do end up taking the walk, I’m inevitably hit with new ideas, distinctions and ways forward that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen.
To get time we have to give time.
Take the walk, Justin!
The actor in rehearsal
The actor in rehearsal is simultaneously like a kid on a playground and a bomb squad member cutting the red wire… or was it the green one?
Nowhere else have I experienced the utter joy of play and the deepest danger of humiliation.
Actors are uniquely bred to weather both of these.
Play too much and it dies for the audience (you can’t have all the fun, you have to let them it!)
Don’t risk anything and we might as well give the show a miss.
Great actors toe the line.
Andrew Scott said the job of rehearsal is for the actor to try everything they can possibly think of. He often feels humiliated, small, silly or dumb in rehearsal. And the fact that he is willing to do that, over and over again means he gets to deliver ‘Andrew Scott’ performances.
What can we learn from the actors rehearsal room orientation in other aspects o work?
One shot vs Infinity
How likely are you to get a ball in a hoop if you had one shot?
How about if you had ten shots?
What about one hundred? It seems obvious, when you have more shots to take you have more chances to get the ball in.
Turns out this goes for more than just basketball.
We have to give ourselves as many chances as possible to strike gold on the thing that matters to us.
Writers have to write as many stories as possible,
Actors need to audition as much as possible
and potters need to make many pots.
And in case you’re wondering, the point isn’t for the hope that one will be a ‘big break’. Sure that might happen…
But what you’re really looking for wears many clothes. With hundreds of chances we can ask ourselves:
Is it alive?
Do I love this?
What does it remind me of?
Do other people enjoy this?
How about this one?
Or maybe this one?
Or this one?
What’s it like when I change this part?
Does it still work like this?
Or this?
The person who takes the most turns gets the most chances and gets to ask the most questions and so they also get the most answers.
Would you place your bet on the player who has one shot to get the ball in or the player who has infinite shots to try?
Its obvious. And with those numbers it’s no longer interesting whether or not she gets the shot in. The player with infinite shots will get it in the basket, but she might also reinvent basketball.
Don’t cheat yourself and just take the one shot.
You have infinity, my friend.
Planning when you don’t know
Here’s an uncomfortable truth for my fellow planners:
You can’t know the specific tasks a project requires until you are in it.
The planning protocol I use weekly requires me to set outcomes and break down the tasks that will take me there.
Recently I set about creating an outcome but was at a complete loss to know where to start- how can I list what I don’t know? How can I allot time for tasks I haven’t named?
I blocked out a sizable chunk of time to tackle the outcome to see what emerged. It wasn’t until a good 40 minutes into that time chunk that I had a lay of the land and could start to see the sequence of tasks required of me.
The old me would have dived into that outcome during the week planning phase in a desperate attempt to understand and quantify the tasks- but I’m glad I didn’t.
Alternatively, had I attempted to name tasks before I really knew, I’d have risked wasting time and working on the wrong thing.
It was enough to guess an amount of time and jump in head first when the time came.
It’s more than okay for thing to remain unknown for a bit. Or a while.
Indirect Paths
Some of the most sought after things have indirect paths. I’ve heard it described like a cat- the more you chase it, the further away it runs.
Its difficult to relax by pushing or forcing it- an action directed toward that outcome is counter to it’s realisation.
The same goes for money. If you chase money you will rarely find it.
If you want to be liked by others, you won’t get there by focussing on being liked by others.
If an actor wants a scene to land as sad, they don’t go for the emotion.
Great results come from indirect paths.
To relax we have to let go. To gain financial abundance we must create value. To be liked by others we must care for them in a way that speaks to them. To play the sad scene, the actor must fight tooth and nail to hold on.
What are you going for directly that actually requires an alternate route?