Your Brain is Good Enough
We use 10% of our brains. That’s not enough. Well, it’s enough to survive but is it enough to thrive?
I don’t have a clear answer to that. However, I do know for certain that our brains don’t need to be better. WE do.
In my research for this entry I did find a dissenting opinion that I must acknowledge. See Wonderopolis’, “How Much of Our Brains Do We Use?”
Either way, the point is that more and more things are not what we need. We just need work on quality of work and not quantity.
I know. This is another one of those, “Bob, what are you talking about?”, type of moments. I admit that there are some E-Impact entries in which I pose questions as opposed to leaving comments (hopefully each with encouragement). This one is different though. I am of the firm belief that we spend too much time trying to improve our mind and finding “hacks”. What we really need to do is get better at using what we have.
Learning from the Professionals
Two of my favorite things to do are to listen to podcasts and watch football. In fact, I often do them simultaneously. I respect play-by-play announcers and color analysts (especially since that was originally a career desire of mine) but I prefer to watch games without commentary. I also don’t like silence. Check out Awful Announcing for some good announcing humor.
The combination of podcasting for education and watching sports for entertainment (maybe education also if you’re into fantasy sports) works well. Interestingly, I learned an ancillary lesson. When you watch a sporting event (team sports specifically) without the sound, you get an unbiased perspective (unless you’re biased) and if you’re into the strategy behind the game it’s a much different experience.
What I do enjoy is hearing the honest feedback (which can be hard to come by given the importance of secrecy for a team) of coaches and other analyst after having time to review the game film. It takes the emotion out of it and it also avoids some of the need to hide information (because the game is over already).
I’ve never heard a coach say that they wish they would have had a better training system in the off season and a good analyst will tell you why or why not a play was executed well. You can learn a lot if you pay close attention to these points. The lesson is that you can only prepare so much and if you don’t execute the plan with what you have you’ll never be successful.
Researching a Book
Last week, I submitted the manuscript for my book, “Personal Finance in a Public World”, to proofreading. The people who helped me throughout the process told me on numerous occasions that you eventually have to accept what you have and release it to the world. As much as I was reminded of the limit to research and tweaking, it was still challenging to let it go.
I can’t make anymore changes to the text. I had to “swallow my pride” and let it go. It really was an exercise in humility. On the day I submitted, I was tempted with great desire to research some more finer points. Believe me, I looked up enough things over the past seven months. You’ll see the appendix when the book publishes. I didn’t need anymore information. It was just about making what I had effective. I was assured by many people (formally and informally) that it was effective but my ego was getting in the way.
If you think about the amount of time I spent looking up, listening to, and reading things for the book, you’d come up with at least 500 hours worth of time. I definitely didn’t need more.
What was essential to my success (as defined by making it to the point of publishing, not a sales goal) was the process that my publisher has laid out. That process included a lot of fine tuning and not many additions. Actually, I was encouraged to cut a lot of what I wrote from an early point in the process.
Your Life is an Open Book
Researching a book seems to be a great metaphor for a lot of the things we are trying to do to motivate impactmakers, business, people, and even parents for those of you who have children.
There is so much information available at the swipe of a finger these days that we could easily get bogged down in improving.
I realize that I should be careful so as to not give you a false sense of comfort in impact work. The fact is that it’s hard and it takes a lot of effort. My encouragement to accept what we have comes at the point in which you have already done the necessary work to prepare for something. You’ve put a lot of effort in.
I repeat - this is not about being lazy or resting on laurels. It’s about taking action, succeeding immediately at times, but some times failing. When you fail (remember, it’s just a hurdle of success) you learn and you get better at the process. E-Impact 45 had some other metaphors and an example of overcoming a hurdle.
When you jump over a hurdle (metaphorically or literally), you are getting better at the actual work. You’re not executing a training exercise to simulate hurdling (or in a worse case scenario, taking performance-enhancing drugs, PEDs, for illegal accelerated growth). Your body is good enough to make the leap and your brain is good enough to do the work.
I see it in repeated examples in my life and in others’ that show it is most beneficial to take action on the things you have studied over studying more. Our lives are an open book that we just need to start writing in.
Overconfidence
You could argue that over preparation and paralysis by analysis is due to underconfidence, worry, or even fear. Those are a facade. It’s actually overconfidence and an unrealistic desire that you can manipulate, control, and “out learn” everyone else.
I like to think that no matter how much I know about something there is always someone who will know more than me about that subject. And even if I knew more than anyone, it’s likely that I really just spent too much time on it. I wouldn’t have a very healthy, balanced life.
The best way to combat this kind of overconfidence is to do something hard. In some cases, I think it may even be best to fail. Do that hard thing and if you do it well, great! It shows that you definitely didn’t need anymore research. If not, you know that you need to work on executing.
The Plateau of Not-so-Latent Confidence
A plateau is beautiful, when you can see it.
In most fields or disciplines there is some kind of minimum viable proficiency. I have talked about James Clear’s book, “Atomic Habits” and the plateau of latent potential many times. I’ve also mentioned my drum playing skills (see the November 24, 2020 E-Impact Blog entry).
I occasionally play the drums in church and on Spoke Folk (see E-Impact 62). This is not to feed the narrative of humility but I’m not that good. It took some courage to dive in. I practice daily on a not so great electronic set. I feel like I’m great at following along with the beats that it plays but you can only practice so much. Eventually, I had to just face some fear and play with a real band. That’s where I actually learned how to use the skills I was practicing.
Once I reached the plateau of latent potential, I was able to start using what I had. Practice is still important but nothing replaces live music in a band setting.
Don’t get the plateau of not-so-latent confidence and believe you can practice and prepare your way to the top. When you get to that point you know it’s time to put your efforts to work.
The Humble Champion
Nothing is more powerful than the team or individual who works hard to get to the top of their industry but keeps the rookie’s mindset.
These type of people know that improvement is always possible and they believe that there are always other people who are also working very hard for success.
It takes one event to be a winner but an entire career to be a champion. Consistency is essential. Listen to Mark Glicini talk about consistency on Speaking of Impact episode 58. Mark loves to breakdown high performance and in the game of life, high performance has to last a long time-not forever, but life expectancy is about seventy-three years these days.
Don’t win a few “games” of life by sacrificing a lifelong championship. I guarantee that with the proper perseverance, you’ll have plenty of wins along the way.
Brain Food
Healthy fats like Omega-3s are biomechanically good for your mind. See “Your ‘FAT’ Brain” from Fit Minds. But once you nail down the right dietary intake (not PEDs), you need to feed your brain for performance.
Glicini would tell us to work on training our mind for sustained greatness. A couple ways to do this are:
Set aside specific time for undistracted prayer and meditation
Find a simple note taking system (pen and paper, excel or word doc., Notion app)
Develop a review and accountability process for things you’ve learned
Don’t read-controversial I know-reach instead, practice executing what you already know
Ask questions to or interview people you know who are executing consistently
These items are all things that will feed the brain for performance. Ultimately, you will find yourself better and more efficient at things with practice. This will help scale your impact project or business.
The world wants you to keep learning the basics to a bunch of new things while those who know the advanced stuff get ahead. Learning something new is falling behind somewhere else.
Your impact is needed and you’re completely capable of growing it-incrementally, over time.
Feed it; the healthy stuff.