Bruce Lee

How to read the signs.

How to read the signs.

Making a decision isn’t always easy.  There are times we can take too long because we want to be sure that we have analyzed everything. Albert Einstein pointed out the fallacy in thinking we can be so sure, “Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts.” So, what’s the answer?  How do you know what matters? How do you make quick decisions? How do you read the signs?

A heuristic is a general assumption based on practical experience and not based on observed scientific evidence at the moment.  The word heuristic comes from the Greek word heuriskein which means “to discover.”  Heuristics are useful in situations where detailed measurements and research are either unavailable or not practical given the time constraints, or when less precision is acceptable.  Reading the signs is how experts quickly decide. Realizing that heuristics won’t always give the right answer, sometimes the decision will be to do more research, but even that decision can be made quickly with heuristics.

The game of baseball is an area where heuristics come into play. Major league batters have just about 100 milliseconds to analyze the pitcher and the pitch to decide if they should swing. What can a batter actually see in 100 milliseconds?  The seams, spin, and trajectory can be signs of what pitch is coming.  There may also be signs from the pitcher directly like the height of the hands or the speed of the release that indicate a certain pitch.  From years of experience batters can read these signs.  What isn’t happening in the first 100 milliseconds is a physics calculation to determine where and when the ball will come across the plate.

Another example of this would be the phrase “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.” From experience, weather observers understand that these signs are generally reliable indicators of weather patterns.  Getting one step closer to the detailed weather predictions is the fact that a red sky at night indicates a sky filled with dust which means a high-pressure zone is in the atmosphere and good weather should follow.  A red sky in the morning means that water is in the air and rain will be coming. This heuristic is just an educated assumption and more sophisticated weather models can predict this with much more accuracy, but it’s a fair, quick gauge.

Heuristics can be used for that quick review and analysis of the limited facts in a limited timeframe to make an informed decision.  There is a balance between knowing everything and knowing enough to make a decision.  Your ability to quickly decide comes from reading the signs; and that comes from study, experience, and asking the right questions. 

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

Here’s what you can do to develop your ability to read the signs:

Study – Michelangelo, the artist who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; the sculptor who brought the statue of David to life; and the architect who designed the dome of St. Peters Basilica. When speaking of the creation of his works of art said, “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”  He studied his craft that allowed him to read the signs described as his ability to, “See the angel in the marble and carve until I set him free.”  

If you want to develop your ability to read the signs, seek out all opportunities to learn. Read books, participate in mentoring relationships, attend seminars. Fill your mind with examples of success.

Experience – William Osler, one of the founding doctors of John Hopkins who created the first residency program and instituted bedside clinical training with classroom studies, said of experience, “The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.”  Osler agreed that the study of medicine was an important part of learning, but added the need to experience medicine to be able to read the signs, “He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.”

If you want to develop your ability to read the signs, seek out all opportunities to practice. Volunteer for new projects, try out what you have learned, review the outcomes and try again.

Ask – Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, best-selling author and sought-after speaker.  He discussed the importance of being able to ask good questions in this quote, “My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus the other.” Asking the right questions will help you read the signs.

If you want to develop your ability to read the signs, seek out all opportunities to ask questions.

A few questions you should ask to narrow in on the decision are: What do I have to believe for this to be true?  What options have been considered? What is the downside of not getting this right?  

Check your priorities

You may have done everything right and be very successful right where you are.  But getting to where you want to go may take something else entirely.  It is not possible to keep doing all that brought success in one area, while taking on what brings success in another.  We all operate in the limits of time and talent.  While you can add to your talents, you cannot add to time. Time can’t be managed, but what you do with the time can. Check your priorities.

Stop if it doesn’t add value to the next step.  Before you take one step forward towards your next goal, take inventory of your priorities.  Eliminate everything that no longer needs to be done to achieve what’s next. Give it up completely. 

“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” ― Bruce Lee

Delegate if it has to keep being done for the next step.  If something absolutely has to be done but it doesn’t have to be done by you in order for you to achieve success, then find someone else to do it. Give it away and adjust your priorities.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Adjust expectations of delivery of the next step.  For those tasks that have to be done and have to be done by you, take account of the time it will take and set reasonable goals for completion.  Give in on your timeline and keep your priorities.

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”
― Stephen R. Covey

Time to Think

I have a method for learning I call the think principle: think about what you are being taught and understand how to do it right, think and then do it right, do it right without thinking. I use these three steps as a guide for my learning process.

There are a variety of learning styles – visual (images), auditory (listening and speaking), read & write (reading and note taking), and kinesthetic (hands on) but they all follow this simple pattern of thinking. The difference is in how any one person receives the information they are learning and makes it part of their thinking pattern. I myself am a reading and note taking learner.

Ancient Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius placed great importance on thinking and said, “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

 

Here are the three steps to learning unpacked and explained:

You start out not knowing. If you aren’t confused at first, then you don’t understand how complex learning is. You must remain open to the fact that every time you learn something new, you will need to take time to think about what you are learning. If you aren’t willing to have this level of discomfort than you won’t learn new things.

In 1913 Niels Bohr built the first model of electron orbitals on the hydrogen atom based on quantum theory. Bohr is quoted saying, “If you aren’t confused by quantum mechanics, you haven’t really understood it.”

Then you start to know. Think about how you are going to accomplish the challenge, not why you can’t. Once you understand how something should be done, you must think through the process while you repeat what you learned again and again until it becomes second nature. Failing at this point is just one step away from success.

“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”– Zig Ziglar

Now that you know, you should go. Don’t overthink that which is simple, and don’t underthink that which is complex. The level of thinking involved in learning anything new is dependent upon the complexity of the task. At some point you have to trust that you can do it, and then just do it.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” – Bruce Lee

 

 

 

The road to success is paved with mistakes

mistakes - Thomos edisonHave you ever see a toddler become a success learning how to use a spoon to feed themselves? It all starts with mistakes: Miss their mouth -> Spill, Closer to their mouth -> Spill, Spoon in the mouth -> Spill, Spoon in the mouth -> Success -> Success -> Success…Once the toddler perfects the method of using the spoon, they continue the same process with all current and new food. They forget the mistakes, and remember only how to be a success.

This is the same process we should follow in every new opportunity: Allow yourself to do it wrong before you learn how to do it right, then keep doing it right.

You have to try things that don’t work to find what does work. Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

This works for individuals and it works for teams. Leaders make the environment where their team can try new ways to find what works.   When they do find what works, leaders focus on the success, not the mistakes that led them there. A large part of success comes from what you focus on. Since the leader sets the vision for achieving the purpose of the team, they also determine where the team will be focused. Bruce Lee once said, “What you habitually think largely determines what you ultimately become.”

The first company that launched the combo gas and convenience stores found that in their first year of operation more than half of the stores exceeded expectations while the rest fell short. The company assigned a team to analyze the results. They produced a list of all the reasons that the underperforming stores didn’t succeed. For the next year, the company focused on not making the mistakes on the underperforming store list. At the end of the second year, more than half of the stores fell short of expectations.

What happened? Why didn’t they improve?

They didn’t improve because the focus of the company was to avoid mistakes instead of achieving success. There were no celebrations of what did work, only reprimands for what didn’t. They didn’t know that the road to success is paved with mistakes.

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