🥊 Change is Hard, Hard is Fun, 🛑 Stop Saying Stupid Things Out Loud, and 👥 Why You Shouldn’t Cancel Your 1:1s
PROGRESSION: June 2024
June has been an interesting month for me. On one hand, the launch of The Unconquerable Leader has gone exceptionally well and I’ve loved hearing from so many of you who’ve read it! (Side note: if you haven’t ordered your copy, what are you waiting for? And if you have, please leave an amazon review as it will get the book in front of people it can best help.)
But on the other hand, I’ve struggled to make progress on goals outside of work. Maybe my expectations are too high, or my timetable is unrealistic. I’m not sure.
There’s a scene at the end of Creed III where Adonis is fighting his best-friend-turned-enemy, Damian Anderson. Midway through the fight, Adonis yells at Dame, “What, you thought this was going to be easy?”
I’ve thought about this quote a lot. Sometimes our efforts lead to immediate results. Other times, we grind and grind before seeing any results.
My brother recently sent a video of his eight-year-old telling his younger sibling, “Hard is fun!” I’m trying to embrace that.
If we “thought this was going to be easy,” but it’s not, that’s okay. It’s time to reset expectations. Change is hard. Hard is fun.
Books, Articles, etc.
What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by Tim Urban (Book)
I just finished reading this book. While frustrating at times, I found it illuminating. As a good book should, it challenged my thinking on several topics. Here are my favorite passages:
The powerful social incentives of Echo Chamber culture keep everyone in line. The culture rewards the continual expression of narrative-confirming sentiment, and brands ideas that threaten the guiding narrative as taboo.
Criticism attacks ideas. Cancel culture punishes people. Criticism enriches discussion. Cancel culture shuts down discussion. Criticism helps lift up the best ideas. Cancel culture protects the ideas of the culturally powerful. Criticism is a staple of liberalism. Cancel culture is the epitome of illiberalism.
Think about your identity. The truth is, you’re not a progressive or a conservative or a moderate or radical or some other political noun. Those are words for ideas, not people. Your mind is way too weird and particular to be locked in a noun or adjective prison. Attaching a political category to your identity is a heavy piece of baggage to carry around, and putting it down makes learning and exploring much easier and less stressful.
This is a really well-written, thought-provoking book that I highly recommend.
Don’t Dwell on Perfection—Just Play One Point at a Time by Roger Federer (Video)
Tennis great Roger Federer recently gave the Dartmouth commencement speech. This passage stood out to me:
"In tennis, perfection is impossible. In the 1,526 signals matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for you. What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches?
Only 54%. In other words, even top ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.
When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, 'Okay, I double faulted. It's only a point.' 'Okay, I came to the net and I got passed again, it's only a point.' Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN's Top 10 playlist, that, too, is just a point."
Here's why I'm telling you this. When you're playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world. And it is. But when it's behind you, it's behind you.
This mindset is crucial—because it frees you to fully commit to the next point with intensity, clarity, and focus.
It Takes What It Takes: How to Think Neutrally and Gain Control of Your Life by Trevor Moawad (Book)
Trevor Moawad, who passed from cancer in 2021, was a mental conditioning coach who worked with college and pro athletes including Russell Wilson. In this book, he makes a strong case for neutral thinking over positive or negative thinking. In his words:
“Neutral thinking is a high-performance strategy that emphasizes judgment-free thinking, especially in crises and pressure situations. Neutral thinking acknowledges that the past is irrevocable and that it can’t be changed with mantras or platitudes.
“The next time life presents you with a challenge, don’t simply assume everything will work out. Don’t tell yourself you can’t do it. Just evaluate the situation. Figure out what you can accomplish right now.”
The way I see it, neutral thinking is seeing things as they are. It’s not saying something is good or bad, it just is. And until we recognize things as they are, we can’t take meaningful action.
Moawad argues vehemently that we should stop saying stupid things out loud. “Thinking negative thoughts increases the odds that what you don’t want to happen will happen by four to seven times, and saying your negative thoughts out loud multiplies those odds by ten. That means that just by saying negative things, we make them significantly more likely to happen.”
And here’s my favorite lesson from him, which I shared in an earlier email—The Illusion of Choice.
Observations
If You Are on the Right Path, It Will Always Be Uphill
When I accepted my offer to join DoorDash in 2016, several things didn’t make sense.
The cash comp was lower, the benefits weren’t as strong, and the commute was longer. A lot longer. But I had received a strong confirmation that joining DoorDash was the right move. I knew I had to accept.
As I share in this piece, after we commit to something hard, it’s only a matter of time until doubt creeps in. We must go back to that moment when we knew we were making the right decision. Then find strength to push through the obstacles.
Should You Cancel All One-On-Ones? Answer These 3 Questions First
Remember 10 years ago when Microsoft, Adobe, and everyone else started killing performance reviews?
We’re now having that moment with one-on-ones.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made headlines when he shared that he doesn’t has one-on-ones with his 60 direct reports. He said, “Almost everything that I say, I say to everybody all at the same time.”
Clearly this works for him. But before you follow in his footsteps and go cancel all your one-on-ones, take a moment to answer the 3 questions I pose in this piece.
Gratitudes
I’ve found power in regularly expressing gratitude so I’ll continue the habit. I'm grateful for the summer heat. It hits 100+ degrees almost every day in St George now. I love walking out first thing in the morning and being warm. I like taking a quick dip in the pool after a hot workout. I like sunshine. I feel weird saying this, but I’ve grown to appreciate the heat. Probably a good thing, because it’s not going anywhere until September. :)
If you've read anything worth sharing I'd love to hear about it. And do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.
Nathan
Read my book, The Unconquerable Leader | Learn about coaching
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Indeed, been thinking a lot lately about "it takes what it takes"