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optimize your future · Humanity Working

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean literally you could swing a tiger in that thing.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was ridiculous.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then and uh which happens in Vegas sometimes.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: Just absolutely give a night.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, Paul, today we're talking about optimizing your future with everything moving so fast.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: How does anybody still do that?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was actually one of the more interesting things that's come out of the research that we've done as we formed Beling Minds.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we did over 300 interviews um as we were starting our company.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what we were really trying to understand was what common patterns there were in terms of what made people effective.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we did find that among the group of people that uh we scored as being most effective, there really was still quite an emphasis placed on optimizing their future.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, setting goals, um, tracking progress against goals, um, and having a clear definition of what it is that they were moving towards.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of that said, um, I think the way in which you do it does have to change um in this fast-moving world.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because pretty clearly um for many of us, um, the thing that we think we might be in five years' time or 10 years' time, if we're too specific, it's pretty unclear as to whether that thing is going to even exist.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you'll re recall on the the conversation that we had uh with Jennifer Byrne um just on the on the last podcast.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about um a whole number of jobs that will exist in, let's say, 10 years' time that that haven't even been invented yet.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we do know that the world is gonna be quite a different world um in uh in five years' time or 10 years' time.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to really define your goals um in such a way that they're flexible enough um to be realistic in a world where you don't really know how the world's gonna change over the course of the next five years or 10 years.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of that said, one of the things that I'll um that I'll throw out there is that the people that are being really effective in this, they're almost using the same approach that, say, an enterprise architect would use um in the world of IT.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So enterprise architects are basically people in uh technology environments whose job it is is to visualize a future state and then figure out how to get that future state.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they look across this very complicated system.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they figure out what the desired to be state is, as they tend to call it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: They figure out and get an accurate picture of what the as-is state is, and then they perform a gap analysis between those two things.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and all of this is designed, obviously, to increase your chances of getting to that to be state and create a set of activities that are likely to move you towards it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so those subset of people that really do have a high degree of um of personal effectiveness, they think about it in those terms.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: They form that that view, that vision as to what their future state is going to be.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: They form a clear-eyed picture of what they are right now, they look at the gaps between the two, and then they start to put plans in place to address those gaps.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, does that even uh have the same effect because we talked about kind of the speed that things are moving?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're doing it in that way, like you said, it's bound to slow it down.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that um the short answer to that is um it depends on whether you're you're being slow in the way in which you execute it, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what I mean by that is that um the future picture, the future state picture of yourself does not and certainly initially have to be deeply formed.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it can be approximate.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then over time, it can become something that is much more uh tightly defined.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And also as you're thinking about the work that you're doing in order to get you towards there, for most of it's not a straightforward path in order to get to where you're gonna get to, and your destination is gonna shift somewhat over that period of time as well.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're really talking about is not something that should take a large amount of time to do.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It may take you some time, however, to figure out um the who you are right now.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because for most of us, we don't really have a clear sense as to what our current state is, even and us and our strengths and weaknesses that we need to have in order to be able to get to where we need to get to.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's so so if you start with the to-be state, um, what are like what are some examples of how you would define these, you know, for your own lives, even?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I think the important thing is to uh take an inventory and and assess it against the things that are, like as Paul mentioned, well formed or partially formed or or fully formed.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'll I'll give you a couple of personal examples.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um training for a race.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I've got a half marathon that's coming up in the future.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: I have a training plan.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: I know exactly when the race is, I know exactly what I need to do week by week uh to train for the race.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: So that's a fairly well-formed to be state, that to be state being a person who's fit enough uh to run a half marathon at a certain pace.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um then on another on another uh another example would be let's take music.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I knew that when COVID started, um, I was gonna have a lot more time at home, a lot less travel, and I was gonna use some of that time at home to you know be in my studio and and work on music.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I didn't really know to what end.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I I knew I wanted to make more tracks, more songs.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I didn't necessarily say I want to make an album um or a set of singles, or I it was no real well-formed destination.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: I just knew that um in a year's time uh I wanted to have been able to look back and say, um, I really amplified my music during that period of time.
• 6:38
  unknown: Yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: So that's I I I had a destination in mind.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: I had an objective, a goal in mind, but I didn't exactly know what it was going to look like.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh and then another one might be uh uh I'd like to ride motorcycles.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in fact, I've I've ridden for a very long time and stopped riding.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: I had a motorcycle in my garage for the last 15 years that I didn't touch.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I made it, I gave myself a goal to um to ride more, to take on some some big riding challenge.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I I didn't have any idea.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: I did no definition of that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, it's just like a long-term objective of ride motorcycle more, you know.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, like not very well formed at all, no, no real destination, no path there.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but just in putting something really soft and not very well defined out there, at least gave me a daily reminder that I should be doing something related to that, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even need to necessarily know um how perfectly aligned it is to that longer term thing.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and for me, it was just hours.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_03: I need hours in the motorcycle.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: If I'm gonna be doing something, whether it's a cross-country trip or I mean something that's much less aggressive than that, I guess it's probably something I'll never do if I'm being honest.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but uh, but something it's gonna require endurance.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna require that um I've got a lot more experience.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so um hours, I knew that just hours.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so for me to be able to wake up in a day and just be reminded by the fact that that's important to me.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't need to know exactly why or to what end, but that it's important to me uh is extremely valuable.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you can kind of chip away almost in an agile way of adding detail along the way over the course of that year, where they start to come into focus then too.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's exactly right.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you you learn more as you go, uh, you know, as you get more involved.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we used to use this term, uh, Paul, in at Microsoft.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: It was uh analysis paralysis, which I'm sure it's fairly broadly outside of Microsoft, but that's where I learned it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and you can get into this state where you're spending so much time analyzing the thing, in this case, an objective or a long-term goal, um, that you never start.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because you're spending all that energy analyzing.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and what you don't realize is you're dealing with imperfect information because you're only dealing with the data that you have right now, uh, which to Paul's point that he made earlier is subject to change.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it actually is not subject to change, it's categorically going to change.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: So uh it's so the you'd be better served um getting involved in some particular way, even even in a minor capacity, because any learning is bringing you more data points, and those data points are helping to inform you on better decisions that you're making so that you can uh make those goals, those things more well formed.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I suppose it's worth talking about kind of what's what's like optional here and what's non-optional here in terms of what people um that do this well do and the things that they don't sweat the small stuff about.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's absolutely perfectly reasonable and normal to not be terribly specific about the objectives and goals that you have for yourself, particularly when you're in the first forms of first blushes of framing them.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And those things will come into focus um over time, particularly if they are of significant importance to you.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: What doesn't work is just ignoring the fact that they exist even because you don't have them well formed.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's very important, even if it's just like a word or two words or something like that about a goal that you have, to get that down and then to spend uh time when you're ready to do it, um, as to framing out exactly what you mean by that.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it in some cases, when you do start framing it out, you realize it's actually not as important to you as you thought it was, and you can uh you can wind up dropping it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing, which I think is actually very important is that as we're talking about our future state, we should think about our future state um in almost like independent of our job, independent of our day job, and then see where our day job fits into that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm in a very lucky spot right now where effectively the goals that I have, the work that I'm doing is very, very highly aligned to those goals.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not surprising.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've, you know, we've formed a startup and we're working in the startup on something that that we're deeply passionate about.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is a high level of alignment between the work that we're currently doing and the goals uh that I have for myself and for my family, et cetera.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: But in other cases, that's not going to be the case.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so just forming the set of goals that you have independent of your day job, seeing where your day job fits into those goals and evaluating whether the day job you currently do is helping advance you towards those goals, is doing something entirely independent of those goals, or indeed is off on a wild tangent from those goals, is something that is really instructive to do.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you're never going to get there if the only way you define your goal is be two levels above the level that I'm at in my current job, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's so narrow that it doesn't actually give you any indication as to whether it's aligned to something that you actually even want to do.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and marrying those up more and more.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think the awareness of them, because you're stating them, even if it's loose, helps psychologically to move you along towards them, you know, and and kind of kind of evaluate them in that broader context.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's really interesting to put a point in, you know.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Ryan and I Ryan and I have examples of that, whereby we've spoken to to people that are highly effective and they all have their own methods for it.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we encountered uh one, for example, um, who will appear on this podcast who writes who writes these all down and reviews them every single day, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the advantage of um writing them down and reviewing them every single day is number one, it helps your brain understand the connection between what you're doing every day and those goals.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, it's a reminder if you're reading them every single day, that those are the things that are important to you.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And a trigger, by the way, if you're reading item three or item six or something, and it just feels like you're reading it and there's no joy to it, then maybe that uh maybe that isn't the goal that you thought it was, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, who knows, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan's goal of you know, related to his motorcycle was important, it may be important now, it may not be important in six months' time, for example.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you wouldn't really know that if you just sort of put it away in a silent place and never really review it.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: How do you know how to build good goals?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Any tips on how to form good goals that are useful in this context?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, as we kind of alluded to at the outset, um, it is probably more challenging than it's ever been.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's probably more challenging just because the world is changing so quickly.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the point that I made about like being two levels above where you were in your organization, you know, 30, 40 years ago, the job that you were thinking about probably did exist.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you were probably thinking about your life in the context of uh of your of your job.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you could almost like separate out your job goals from uh from your other goals because your job was separated out in the day, right?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: You did eight hours of the job and you did 16 hours of something else, and so you could keep all of these things uh fairly separate.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: But now with all of that changing and specifically the uh the pace of change uh or the rate of change changing itself and accelerating very dramatically, it's probably not the right way to go about thinking about it.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to have some kind of assessment of what you think the world will be like um in let's say five years from now, and the role that you want to play in it.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that gives you an understanding really of the um of what what goals are uh are realistic and what goals are not realistic.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, to give you a uh a kind of trivial example, I suppose, let's say that you uh that you had a goal to ride, well, we'll stick with the sort of uh motoring analogy, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you had a goal to ride your gas guzzling Ford Mustang across country in five years' time, but you believed that you wouldn't be able to get gas in five years' time, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then obviously that makes the goal significantly harder and you might want to look to reframe that goal.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But of the equivalents of that exist in our professional lives, in other parts of our lives as well.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So making your own personal assessment as to what you think the world is going to be like, and then how you're going to play or a small part in it becomes an important piece of it.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of that said, um, the goals themselves can be extremely personal.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: They can be very global in terms of the change that you want to make in the world, or they can be somewhere in between.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And people have different styles of thinking in terms of how they think about those things.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So some of us are very what I like to call inside out thinkers.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we start with, you know, how we think about how we feel about something ourselves, then we view it from the perspective of our family, then if we're at work, we might look at it from the perspective of our team and then our group, and then ultimately our organization, and then ultimately the world.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's other people whose style of thinking is much more outside in.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they tend to think about kind of global impact first, and then they draw in from that and draw in from that and draw in from that, and finally they end up with their family and their self and stuff like that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most of us just have that, have a preferred style of thinking like that.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I tend, for example, to be more outside in versus inside out.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so what we generally challenge people to do is to like use that preferred style of thinking that they have to take a view of their goals, but then also, even though the muscle won't be well used, to kind of flip it the other way around.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been able to do that and kind of view the goal from those two different angles, then you get a really good sense as to um, you know, the the stability of the goal and potentially your ability to be able to reach it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and and why you're doing it and really thinking about it and it is important too, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: So it's interesting that you mentioned why.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um one of one uh another technique that is very powerful uh and very simple, in fact, is the the five whys.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um and this is something that came out of Toyota.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, like so many great uh things came out of the Toyota production system, uh, and like lean manufacturing, for example.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um the five whys is essentially a very you know colloquial root cause analysis.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's just as you might expect, it's asking why five times in a row.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it's it's amazingly powerful when you start to assess why you're doing what you're doing.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um now, like I said, it it could be applied to and was originally applied to manufacturing.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: So trying to find out what the cause of a defect was, which is what I believe what its origins um are.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: But you can apply that to your own life too.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it's um it's something I don't think people use enough.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, I might overuse it.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, if you're gonna use it, um, make sure you're letting the person know that you're using it, because it can come up as being very annoying when you're doing it with your wife.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, so just just one caution, note of caution there.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um but but yeah, I mean it it's a it's amazing um uh how how powerful it is in terms of um you know the why that you think is you're just so certain that's what it is.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: But then when you ask yourself why that's important, and you ask yourself why that's important, you usually will get to something that is very different um than what you expected, some kind of emotional um outcome that you're trying to achieve.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I I'm just making this up on the fly here, but you know, so what Paul, you were mentioning, and I want to be uh uh I want to be two levels higher in my company in a couple years, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, why?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um because you could go now to you see where it goes a bunch of different directions.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I want to make more money.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you want to make more money?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um because my uh I want to drive a fast car.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you want to drive a fast car?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because it'll make me feel like I'm successful.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you want to feel like you're successful?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, because it makes it sets me apart from um my neighbors, you know, and and it makes me feel like a sense of of accomplishment.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so there's these these scenarios um that when you when you rehearse this, is you know, you get to something that's very different than what you expected.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so why you wanted to get, you know, promotion comes down to some kind of emotional relationship that you associate with that, some kind of feeling you want.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then you start to think about could you acquire that feeling in another way?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then a lot of times the answer is yes.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there's other things that you could do to achieve that thing that maybe aren't as complicated, maybe don't take as long.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so by getting to that root cause or getting to that thing that you're trying to accomplish using five Ys, a lot of times it can reveal a different path to get you to what you really actually desire.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and what we've also seen related to that, which is quite interesting, is that once you end up at the end of that path, let's use the exact example that Ron was talking about, about how you, you know, how you feel about yourself and and the esteem that you have about yourself, right?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: In a sense, that can lead you as to whether to re-requestion whether you even want the thing in the first place, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because let's say, for example, that when it comes down to it, it's related to a deep-seated feeling of lack of accomplishment.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if it's related to a deep-seated feeling of lack of accomplishment or insecurity around other people, then you might want to go directly after that, right?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And resolve that.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that might be as simple as having a conversation with yourself and saying, okay, is this really as important as I is it this really as important as I thought it was?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe I need a different goal that would actually be more fulfilling.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes what we found with folks that we've interviewed on this, sometimes that five wise process led to a strengthening of a goal or a reframing of a goal.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it leads to a disintegrate, literal disintegration of a goal.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: When you go, why am I spending all of my time trying to do X to reach this goal that when it comes down to it, I don't need to do, I just need to spend more time, you know, looking good in the morning or whatever, or whatever it whatever else it happens to be that deals with the underlying insecurity that I have.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes like poorly formed goals can come out of insecurities, and well-formed goals come out of things when even after you've gone through that process of why, why, why, why, why, you're still confident that, yeah, actually this is something that I do want, I do want, that I do want to achieve.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And even still, then new new revelations, then well, you know, I I would think these goals will change over time.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they would change a lot over time if you figure out new things as you approach them, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So these these these goals have to change too, if you want, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and the process of actually like regularly repeating them is one of the is one of the processes that help you understand if they are still relevant and if they are things um that are going to change over time.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So just by revisiting them regularly, you are gonna figure out whether number one, you're doing things that are advancing you towards your goal, or number two, that your goals are no longer the right goals.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is why people keep them in front of themselves at all times.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not um it does more than you would think it would do.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it does actually help you understand the motivation behind the work that you're doing and increase your chances of actually reaching a destination, which presumably you want.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Employees from five different countries around the world are using Billion Minds to help them start each day with a purpose and end it with accomplishment.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you or your team wants to discover how Billion Minds can help employees optimize their work in the context of their broader life, go to billionminds.com slash learnmore today.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's billionminds.com slash L E A R N M O R E.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember I had a mentor once who who told me he spent, you know, about an hour a week, sometimes more, thinking about his career and what he was doing.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time I was kind of a low-level operator, and and you're kind of like, how do you have time to think about your career?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: You must not be busy enough.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and when you think about it and you reframe it, it becomes almost more important than anything else you're doing is actually thinking about am I doing something that's contributing to ultimately where I want to be?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's really, really interesting, you know, to put it in front of you on a regular basis.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you're, you know, kind of that what gets measured gets managed idea.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think it also helps um when you can put not just your own in front of you, uh, but those that are the closest to you.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because then you start to put into context everybody in your life, and that helps reveal um, well, it's a couple things actually.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um it it helps you understand how you can be more impactful to other people, and maybe some of your goals can uh abet somebody else's goals.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe there's some way that you can help that you didn't realize before, and you simply you didn't realize it simply because that wasn't salient to you, it wasn't obvious to you, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and then the other thing is you can help to influence those other people.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think about uh I I can't ever lose this example of the kids.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, kids are constantly wanting to experience new things, it's it's their nature, it's a beautiful thing.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um then, but getting to root cause doing the five whys with kids is actually really fun because you really get to understand more about why they want to do things and things change.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know, things change over time.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it's amazing at how much of a small thing will change uh a child's perspective on that particular goal.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I want to be a pro soccer player.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's all I want to do.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's all I want to be.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: So you invest heavily in coaches and trainings and all kinds of other stuff.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then what could be revealed to you ultimately is that the reason why they were holding on to that is because their best friend played on their soccer team and they want to have more play dates with their best friend.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: And by being on a competitive team, they get to see them more.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: All right, well, you don't need soccer for that.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: Not really.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: You can achieve that in another way.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's so, for example, something that could potentially change that player moves.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: His family moves to a different place, and so he's not on the team anymore.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now that's something that changed that influences that that goal.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: So now you've got to adjust, and now you've got to get to that root cause.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: You've got to get to why is soccer not interesting to you anymore?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, right.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's because this change has occurred.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so you have to be flexible enough uh to understand how to how to deal with the dynamic nature of things.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it does help when you're at the root objective.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: It helps you to shift.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really good.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Makes a lot of sense.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: So so let's shift a little bit to you know, we're talking about setting these goals and trying to figure this out for yourself.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: You would think your as-is state, like like here I am, here's what I want to do, here's what I think I want to do.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Since it's just you, you're the only one in this conversation, it should be pretty easy to pull this out, right?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but that's, I mean, almost certainly not the case for the vast majority of us.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a there's a few reasons for that.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually, some of the stuff we spoke about on the on the podcast that we just recently have with Jennifer.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jennifer spoke about this concept of of curiosity, right?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And how important curiosity is as a uh as a value, how important it is to understand the world around you.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, self-curiosity is incredibly important as well.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have to understand yourself and know yourself well to understand um what it is that you want to, what you want to be in and to do that gap analysis uh that we were talking about earlier on.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so what Jennifer talks about, which I'll just you know paraphrase here, is that um we tell stories about ourselves a lot.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and she refers to it as the conventional wisdom um that we have about ourselves.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that conventional wisdom could have been formed from a whole bunch of different sources.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: It could have been, you know, uh the way you were an experience that you had when you were back at school, the way a teacher spoke to you, for example, and told you that you were no good at something, or you had a bad day and you failed a test, or a boss said something mean to you, or whatever it happened to be.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it can happen in the reverse direction as well, right?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: As in um, you can have worked in an environment that was very supportive and you could have got good results doing something, and it allows you to gain the impression that you're really good at something when in reality you're not as good as uh uh at it as you think.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So these things get kind of collected together and they become part of the story that we tell about ourselves.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: But if we're gonna do this gap analysis thing properly, um if we're going to actually understand where we sit, what we're capable of, um, and look at where we are compared to where we want to be, we really have to go back um and challenge the assumptions that we have about ourselves and give ourselves an honest appraisal um of what it is that we're uh that we do.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we look into things like, for example, the strengths and weaknesses thing, um, we'd encourage people not to be too literal in that uh in that description.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're an accountant, don't say you're good at accounts, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's that's your as they once said in the British version of the office, that's your job, right?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's not a strength, it's what you, it's a job.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what you need to think about as you're thinking as you're taking an evaluation of yourself is what underlies that in terms of soft skills, in terms of wants, desires, needs, experience.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are the underlying things that that that sit beneath what uh what you would start with?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that that's important is because it gives you the tools to potentially reinvent yourself, right?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at yourself through one lens, through one angle, namely what you do as a job today, for example, then your mindset in terms of what's cap what's possible out there for you is severely diminished.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us have this when we come out of college, right?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, or indeed when we go into college, right?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: You come out of college with a math degree, and are you gonna be a mathematician?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's very few professional mathematicians out there.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are you gonna do with that math degree, right?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about all of the skills that you got with that degree.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that applies throughout our lives.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: We are developing a tableau of skills that can be applied to potentially almost anything.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing that really limits us is our imagination in terms of what that tableau of skills can be applied to.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if you're doing it, if you're analyzing it that way and thinking about it that way and switching your mindset, obviously that's gonna go back and impact your future state if you're doing it right, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, it's it it certainly should.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it should be a perpetual uh evaluation.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we're we're living beings that are constantly evolving.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you uh when you consider um uh if you're out of the analysis paralysis I mentioned before and you're actually being active, um, you're continuing to learn.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: And as you continue to learn, you continue to evolve.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I I really like what Paul said.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, I think it's one of the more impactful um messages is about um an objective appraisal, I don't remember exactly how you put it, but you know, an objective appraisal of yourself.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, how how many people uh can be objective about that?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's difficult.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's easier for people to evaluate other people um and and kind of get to themselves last.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um but when you really truly focus on you know getting that objective appraisal, what you'll figure out is that you've you've made progress.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: So your appraisal of yourself today is gonna be different than your appraisal of yourself next week.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and and if you've if you've been successful in putting something even even loosely defined out there in the distance and you've started making progress towards it, well then you've you've developed a skill in that in that week.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: That might be a small amount, but you've developed a skill.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and with that skill, um you've got an aptitude to um to to uh bet your experience and what that thing could possibly look like.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: And in many ways, you're better qualified this week than you were last week in better defining that outcome.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so in many ways, if you had defined it uh, you know, too specifically, um, then you wouldn't have given yourself the freedom to to learn and to grow.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and by defining it more loosely and putting it out there, you're giving yourself the ability to create an aptitude around that, even if it's just you know minuscule, but you create an aptitude that abets your ability to plan it better.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan, you made an interesting point there about um it almost being easier to look at other people's lives versus your own.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think one of the things we should mention here is that people around you can help as well.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we shouldn't be afraid to do that.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, inside corporate, inside the corporate world, many of us will have gone through an exercise whereby we're asked to kind of like evaluate ourselves and then other teammates are asked to evaluate us.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's not just a uh an exercise that can be useful in corporate America.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I bet, for example, if I asked you, Matt, what you think I'm good at and what I'm not so good at, it would be a slightly different angle as to what I personally think I'm good at and what I'm not so good at.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um, what's intriguing about that is that your own thoughts on it are shaped by that conventional wisdom stuff that we were talking about before, but other people's thoughts on it are not shaped by that.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're still shaped by something that might bias them.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you might only have an interaction with them in a single context, so they may only see part of you.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're the uh everything, of course, in terms of when it's external, gets um um, if you like, biased by communication style.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if you're not a terribly good communicator, it might disguise the fact that you're a really good written communicator, for example.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there are other things that make it it's not the truth in any way more than your internal story is the truth either, but it does give you a different angle and it does give you a different perspective that you can then draw upon, particularly if you get, you know, half a dozen different perspectives from people and they all combine on one or two things, it gives you an area as to where to look at as you're trying to figure out the objective truth about your own as is state.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's a lot too around what you said around people's perspective or perception of you in a context can be very misleading, could be very uh different than your own interpretation, and also uh I've found sometimes like a surprise.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh people will be like, yeah, you don't you're really quiet.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, not really, you know, but in some contexts, yeah.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: But but it's like when when there's that gap between your own perception of yourself versus how you have to behave in a setting, you know, a business setting or something like that, it becomes really interesting.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in in the conversation with Jennifer, you you you know, uh there was a lot of things around like um understanding the person gives you a new perspective into that person in the context where you currently are with them, right?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So um it just it just adds a layer that that's really intriguing.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and sometimes you get that out of the the 360 type of reviews that go on in the corporate world and stuff like that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: So so so now you know, you know, let's say you know where you are, you're you're you've decently you've done a decent job of evaluating yourself, you think you've written some good goals, and you think you've identified the gap between the two.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now what?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you now what do you do?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, a lot's gonna depend on how well formed both of those things are.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as we've described, as you're defining your your 2B state, as it were, there are gonna be elements of it that are probably well formed and areas that are less well formed, and that's okay.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: You should, with enough work, be able to get to a pretty honest assessment of what your as-is state.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that piece of it, obviously, it will change over time, but it uh but at any point in time it will be relatively static.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that should give you a good sense of how far away you are from where you need to be.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the important thing about this is that as you're evaluating that gap in terms of where you are to where you want to be, you it's going to be situational as to whether you can just stick with that one specific goal or whether you need to define some interim goals to get you from where you are to where you need to be.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, let's say that my goal was to be president of the United States.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I wasn't born in the United States, so they'd have to change an amendment.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be that would make it a particularly difficult goal for me.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh, but let's say it was that, uh let's say it was that goal, then probably just sticking with that goal and working towards that goal would probably not be the way to do it.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: First off, you'd want to focus on, I don't know, having a leadership role in your local council and then moving from there to the next thing and moving from there to the next thing.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so this splitting up of long-term goals into shorter goals, people know that theoretically they're supposed to do it, but you'd be amazed at the number of times that people don't.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, let's say you want to lose 60 pounds.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't focus on losing 60 pounds, you focus on losing the first five or the first 10.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you've reached that goal, you focus on losing the next five or the next 10.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's just not something that people often do in their day-to-day life, and they just don't uh spend enough time defining the interim goal in a way that will excite them.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the other aspect of it as well, right?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you define um the goal, for example, of let's say being CEO of your company, and you know that in order to be able to get there, you've got to go through these five interim steps.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you've defined those five interim steps and you hate every single one of them, you're not getting there, right?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to find a way to be able to define interim goals that themselves seem attractive and seem something like uh seem something like you want to do.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Are you looking to hone the skills you need to thrive as work and the rest of our lives merge?
• 41:18
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• 41:20
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• 41:40
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• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's funny.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: You you reminded me of uh before I started doing stand-up comedy, uh I was at at lunch with my my uncle, who's just the he's just the greatest guy, and he's so level-headed and and always has a something to to really just set you right.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was talking about like, you know, I don't know if I should do this because, you know, I can't possibly tour.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: I can't go on the road and and tour.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have my responsibilities.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, You're getting a little ahead of yourself there, aren't you, buddy?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't done an open mic.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like, that's true.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's get the let's get the five minutes first and then we'll then we'll worry about being on tour.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's it's it is uh interesting how you can throw flags in front of yourself if you don't do this right, uh, but also those interim goals get you to the get you to the place you want to be sometimes.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's funny.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but feasibility is important, and and the only way that you can really assess feasibility is by by connecting the the near-term, more tactical stuff to the the longer term.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: As we mentioned before, it's very important to get started because of all the lessons that you learned and making progress has its own benefits psychologically as well.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but uh being able to pull backwards what it's gonna take to achieve an objective is also very important.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so so five hows, like how are you gonna get there?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it it's just as powerful, and whether that's it's five or a hundred or whatever, but the difference between those two things is that you can do the five hows on a on a timeline.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: So you you you think about that that that big um objective that you're trying to achieve, and how am I gonna get there?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you come up with three things, and then you dive in each one of those three things.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, how am I gonna get there?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: How am I gonna get there?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: And how am I gonna get there?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: Then you can start putting those things in a timeline because there is a kind of synchronous order to it.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: You have to do this to achieve this.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you can pull those things back, I I'm using hand signals that obviously our listeners can't see, but um, as you pull those things back in a timeline, it starts to connect to what you're doing right now.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then you can start to visualize once that connection becomes closer, once you can start to visualize the stuff you're doing right now and visualize.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: The interim results that you need to achieve to get to those longer term things, then you've got an assessment of, oh, well, that just revealed to me that only three of the 10 things I'm doing now actually achieve these interim objectives.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm off.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm off outcome, if you like.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and so then you can course correct, you can make those adjustments.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so that's a really helpful uh trick in how to do those things.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the other thing it allows you to do, now that you have an appraisal of what it's going to take, in a lot of cases, if not most cases, uh, when you have a big objective, you need help.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: You you discover through that process that you cannot do it alone.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's absolutely impossible.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Physics will prevent it from happening.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: There's not enough hours in a day.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so now, having done that exercise, now you can start to think about what you need, what you need from other people, other resources that are required, and start to build those relationships, make progress towards building those relationships, make progress towards uh obtaining those resources.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, instead of just keeping on, you know, pedaling along until you realize later that you missed an opportunity or you missed a threshold along that journey.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think you could I'm I'm sure some would argue, you know, these things are changing so fast, you know, setting goals doesn't do anything anyway.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just gonna change.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, why bother?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it feels it could feel like that sometimes.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I actually have a lot of sympathy for that point of view.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it comes uh it comes from many different places, but the world's a pretty like terrifying place these days in terms of how quickly it is changing and how uncertain many of us feel in this world, particularly, particularly um given the fact that technology is driving is driving so much of this change, and and you know, most of us are not deeply immersed in the in the technology industry.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, when anything is possible, then your role in a future world that you can't envision can be scary, right?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that completely it's completely rational and normal that you know folks would um would look at that and go, you know, I'm just gonna try and ride the wave, right?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: And not get drowned, get through my day, and then I'll get up the next morning and do the same thing, and I'll get up the the next morning and do the same thing.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if I do it well enough and often enough, then hopefully good things will happen.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's nothing ostensibly wrong with that.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what I will say is that um one of the motivating factors for some people can be centered around things like fear of failure.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I set this goal, I don't accomplish it, how will I feel?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um how will I feel about myself?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: How will I let other, you know, will I let other people down?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I've said, you know, that I want to I want to accomplish this and and I fail, will I will, you know, I will my family think less of me?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Will my friends think less of me?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: All of those kind of things.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, all of those things may very well be true.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: To reach any goal, you need luck.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, circumstances often intervene.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you may have good luck that accelerates you towards the goal.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: You may have bad luck that just makes the goal impossible.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there is always, there's always a good chance that you're that you're not gonna reach the goal that you strive for.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: But what we do know is that um if you don't set the goal in the first place, obviously your chances of reaching it are are minimized because it's not even defined.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you do set it, then you're improving your chance of reaching it.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you work towards it actively, you're improving your chance again.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you align yourself with others that are helping you work towards that goal, you improve your chances again.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: In a sense, it's a little bit like um the quote from I think it was Gary Player the harder I practice, the luckier I get.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in this sense, it's a little bit like that.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: The preparation is really what we're talking about.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're preparing yourself for an outcome that you want to occur, and you're directing your work, not necessarily doing more work, but simply directing your work towards that outcome that you would prefer.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that gives you a chance.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in that sense, if you start to think about goals as almost like I think we used the lottery analogy previously, but if you start to think about your goals as your tickets to the lottery, then if you set those goals, you bought your tickets and you have a chance.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you don't set your goals, you've not bought your ticket.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if people think about it in that, in that way, then when they if they don't reach the goal, then they've had an adventure getting there.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that is uh uh probably a more useful way for most of us to think about it and it can start to remove some of the fear of failure and other things that that prevent us from wanting to define what we think our lives should look like.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: The way too busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at Billion Minds dot com.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.