Josh Allred's Blog

Quite the paradox, really.

In order to start, you need to know where you are going. But if you have never been there before, how do you know if it even exists?

We can’t envision a world where we quit our job and start a non-profit, we can’t see the book we want to write beforehand…

It takes a leap of faith.

That the world you imagine does not yet exist. That takes guts to create without the use of a map.

May I suggest, all we need is enough to start. Enough to take the first step into the unknown and let the light follow.

We can’t see the destination but we can have the courage to step forward.

Some of us have put an enormous amount of faith into this idea that no matter what the problem we face, there’s a technology that could be invented to solve it.

And for a lot of things, that is totally true.

Once the car was in mass productions we needed roads, traffic lights, gas stations, parts for repairs, mechanics, laws, driver’s ed, highway patrol, driver’s licenses, DMVs, plow trucks…the list just keeps going on and on.

But this isn’t what technology wants. Technology doesn’t really want, well, anything. Technology doesn’t care if the world is heating up by two degrees. Technology doesn’t feel the same urgency to solve problems as humans do. It isn’t on the clock to change.

And ss fast as technology has evolved, problems evolve faster.

(Reckless driving, drunk driving, high emission vehicles, oil dependency, environmental hazards…)

Tech doesn’t exist to solve our problems. We do.

As great and wonderful as technology has been to us, it is now creating more problems than it is able to solve. At least at the moment.

Because technology doesn’t change behavior, it amplifies it.

No other people in human history have had the ability to search so quickly the failures of past societies.

We have more access to more information than ever before.

Which means we can learn from our mistakes rather quickly.

History is one of the ultimate teachers. If enough people will choose to care, we can overcome anything that comes our way.

Without Googling, can you name who finished first place in the 2016 Men’s 100 Meter Dash?

If you guessed, Usain Bolt, you would be correct.

But can you guess second place?

Answer: Justin Gaitlin

The gap between these two competitors was eight-tenths of a second. Eight-tenths!

All that training, all the years of sacrafice and hours spent just to lose by less than a second. It’s heartbreaking.

The fact is, when we are pushing limits, measurements come in millimeters, in tenths of a second. (Difficult to see improvement day in and day out because of this.)

It takes a lot of time to improve what we are already good at. Especially when we are talking about the best in the world.

On the areas where we struggle though? There is a lot of room available.

We get to choose what we want to improve but it is worth noting: Becoming well-rounded is easy. Becoming highly specialized is very difficult.

There aren’t many that choose to take difficult paths.

We need two things to learn from our experiences:

Practice

And

Immediate feedback

Yet, many of life’s problems don’t actually offer opportunities to practice over and over again or don’t give immediate feedback.

Because buying your first home, holding your child for the first time, deciding which school or what job to take…may not allow a lot of space for a do-over. The fact is, you won’t really ever know if you did a great job raising your kid (even if your child graduates at the top of her class). There is no immediate feedback.

Yet, learning takes practice which seems to show up in the small and inconsequential.

If you burn dinner, you can try again tomorrow. If you didn’t like the route you took to work, you can take a different one on the way home.

So, here is what we need to understand about decision making:

1) Your opportunity to practice is going to go down.

Without practice…

2) Your chance to receive feedback will go down.

And without practice or instant feedback…

3) Your decision making is going to go down too.

This is why so many of us struggle when the game is on the line. For most of us, we live comfortable lives, free of risks and unknowns. For that, we trade our ability to make crucial decisions when the stakes are high.

My advice? Find a way to raise the stakes. Failure is not as damaging as we think.

First, are those that seek pleasure. The majority of people fit in this.

And the second?

Performance. These are your super goal-oriented individuals.

What I’ve noticed though is that people that seek pleasure would do well with a bit more performance. And the opposite is true too.

But…

Pleasure is just so temporary. And really, it isn’t anything without having a really hard goal to achieve.

I have many friends that have great business ideas. Yet, many suffer from this idea that you need a fortified business plan in order to begin.

Here’s my advice: Throw away that business plan.

A great business plan doesn’t take months to put together. The best business plans take a couple minutes. And then, you begin.

Business plans are another form of hiding. As the saying goes, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Starting a business is all about improving and inventing. If you are not doing those two things than you are not spending your time in the right areas.

Talking about someday building a business is way sexier than actually making one. It’s hard work spent behind the scene.

The reason why businesses fail is that they invest their time, talent, money and other resources into immediate tangible evidence of achievement.

It turns out, that we do the same thing.

It’s difficult to see on a day-to-day basis if we are raising well-adjusted children. Difficult to see if the relationship you have with your spouse is continuing to grow.

Yet, it’s much easier to point to our careers and see a promotion or to look at the bank account and think we are doing something well if the numbers go up.

It is making us miserable.

We don’t have to measure our life on one axis but rather:

Did I help someone achieve something they never thought they could do?

Did I help someone see the world as it really is?

Do the lessons I teach, are they turned around and taught to other people?

Did I open a door for someone who turned around and opened a door for others?

Money, status, artifacts…they are all easy to measure which makes it so tantalizing to pursue.

HT Clay Christensen. Thank you for all the incredible work you have done…and now comes good sailing.

Here’s the thing, when we write about things we know; we are writing from a place of fear. We are hiding.

And that is pretty boring for anyone to read.

Sure, we are less likely to screw something up. But we are playing it safe.

The alternative is to write about the unknown. The fiction we can dream up or about a topic that is out of our comfort zone.

That’s what’s interesting to the reader. Even if we don’t agree with the writer’s opinion, we at least notice when she takes a stand or picks a side.

Of course, this isn’t just about writing. We are talking about a speech or your master thesis or your corporate proposal.

 

We imagine the worst and then assign those motives to someone who we are most frustrated with.

When, in fact, no rational person would act the sort of way we imagine.

The problem is we only get one set of lenses to see.

We see things from our perspective, we ignore everyone else’s.

That’s why we have a difficult time explaining irrational behavior really.

We are the only rational actors in the room.