Thin slice your skills, and your story

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend, we visited my daughter at college. She’s a first-year student, and is running on her school’s cross-country team. On Sunday, parents and siblings were invited to join the team for their long run (typically 10-15+ miles).

Clearly this is an invitation one should decline!  Which might explain why exactly three parents (myself included), plus two younger sisters (including my youngest daughter) showed up in the pitch black at a woodsy parking lot at 7:25am on a Sunday morning.

None of our group of five had illusions of keeping up with the XC team. But it appeared that I was the only one in our small group who had not been running regularly.

One of the parents, a regular marathoner, popped out of her car and announced, “We agreed we’re running 8 miles at an 8:30 pace.” I knew I was way out of my depth. The four of them (including the 13 and 14 year old) did, in fact, run 8 miles at an 8:20 pace. I, working very hard, managed half that distance at a slower pace.

As I finished the run, it was tough not to compare myself with everyone who ran further and faster than I did, and tougher still not to tell myself a story about my fitness.

“I’m just not in the kind of shape I used to be in.”

A few days later, I came across a video of a running coach giving a scientific explanation of the value of Zone 2 (comfortable pace) running.

The gist of it is: your heart, your circulatory system, and the energy transfer system that gets oxygen to the mitochondria in your cells all improve dramatically when you run at 60% pace. Specifically, the mitochondria, which convert oxygen to energy, get more efficient at that process; they even move closer to the surface of the cell (!!) if you’re running consistently.

Something about that explanation clicked for me. I’ve not been running, so I’ve not being doing the exact activity he said helps with oxygen transfer, so I don’t do that efficiently. That led to a much more specific, useful story:

“Having not run regularly over the last 10 months, my body is less used to converting oxygen to energy, and my mitochondria aren’t hovering around the surface of my cells to create maximum efficiency.”

That feels a lot less damning, and a lot less existential, than “I’m just not in the kind of shape I used to be in.”

The difference is important, because the “what kind of shape am I in?” story is personal, it’s big, and it might have some staying power in terms of how I see myself, the choices I make about health and fitness, etc.

Whereas the more specific analysis leads to very different conclusions about what is or isn’t going on with my mitochondria and the specific actions I could take to change that. This narrow story doesn’t ladder up to a mess of inaccurate meaning. It doesn’t entice me with a woeful tale of the long, declining path I’m on.

I just haven’t been running, and if I were to run more, I’d get better at running.

What I’m doing here is thin-slicing my story. Visualize it like this, with the highlighted part describing the story I’m telling myself.

I could just say “I’m just not in the kind of shape I used to be in.” That kind of story looks like this.

And this is a story at the level of identity, one that’s much bigger and much more personal than what actually happened.

Whereas a story that starts with “Having not run regularly over the last 10 months, my body is less used to converting oxygen to energy…” looks a lot more like this.

This story, focused on specific skills and aptitudes, stays at that level. I can decide that developing those skills is (or is not) something I want to invest in. But that whole conversation is very contained, and it runs little / no risk of taking on a life of its own.

You can apply this thinking in a million situations, as in:

I just got rejected on this sales call, again.

  • I’m a terrible salesperson OR
  • I’m not calling the right people / not identifying a need correctly / not asking the right questions

A teammate didn’t help me when I asked for help.

  • They don’t like me or care about my success OR
  • What’s going on in their day? / Did I make it super clear what needed to happen by when? / Did I express both the what and the why behind my request?

My boss is mad that there was a mistake in the materials we presented to the client.

  • I’m a total screw up, I’ll never succeed in this job OR
  • I need to create a system where I give myself a 24-hour break before doing a last review of client-ready materials

Thick-sliced stories about our identity keep us stuck. They are the antithesis of a growth mindset, because “I” (our ego) is always at the center of these stories.

Thin-sliced stories, fed by thin-sliced skills, are both more accurate and more useful. They highlight what’s really going on and where we can focus our energy. With a thin-sliced story, a shortfall, a misstep, or a slow run is just what it is, nothing more, nothing less…and certainly not a verdict about you as a person.

I Bought This Tesla Before I Knew…

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

At this point, you’ll have seen or heard about this bumper sticker.

This flavor of virtue-signaling is particularly ham-fisted, but it’s also an example of something that happens all the time.

What interests me about this is the ways in which our likelihood to act is impacted by our internal narrative.

“I bought this before Elon went crazy” communicates, presumably, some sort of solidarity along the lines of, “Just so you know, I’m not in favor of the authoritarian tendencies, the dehumanizing of people, the willingness to pull billions of dollars of life-saving spending on a whim. I’m a good person just like you.”

That last sentence is likely true, but the much more accurate sentence is, “While I’m sickened by what’s going on, that unease is less important to me than the inconvenience of selling my $80,000 car to buy another $80,000 car.”

And that’s really the rub: we plaster the sticker on the car, and it serves as a release valve, in the form of saving us from an uglier story about ourselves than the one we’d like to believe.

We repeat this pattern in hundreds of smaller ways. It shows up every time we talk about something being broken without putting ourselves on the hook to fix the broken thing.

“Coming into the office more doesn’t make sense because we just take our calls from the office instead of from home. No one takes advantage of the in-person time.”

“I would love to advance in this company, but I can’t because I never get any feedback.”

“People on my team don’t take responsibility for their actions. There’s no follow-through.”

“My kids are addicted to their phones; it’s impossible to get their attention.”

“The culture around here doesn’t make people feel valued for their unique contributions.”

“I just can’t get this build right because the user requirements aren’t clear.”

“Morale just isn’t what it used to be. People aren’t feeling a sense of connection.”

“We’re just not taking advantage of all that AI has to offer. Everyone is being so timid.”

When we articulate a concern about the current state of affairs, we might be doing one of a few overlapping things:

  1. Group creation: by signaling that I see the world the way you do, I create solidarity with you
  2. Narrative to self: by naming something I dislike, I maintain my self-image as someone who doesn’t support that negative thing
  3. Venting: getting something off our chest so we can get ourselves unstuck
  4. Persuasion: attempting to convince others that something is not the way it should be (ideally to enlist them to make change)
  5. Exploration: engaging in dialogue to figure out more clearly what’s going on that needs to be fixed
  6. Enlisting authority: we inform someone with greater ability than ours about a problem that we’d like them to address

And while it’s true that all of these actions can be done with more or less intention to act, typically the first three decrease pressure to act (because they are focused on internal / shared narrative) and the second three increase pressure to act.

For example, our favorite bumper sticker:

  • Group creation: identifies us (to ourselves, others) as anti-Musk
  • Narrative to self: “I’m a Tesla person with an anti-Musk bumper sticker. That’s a little less uncomfortable.”
  • Pressure to act: goes down, because I feel like less of a jerk

Because what’s at play is:

  • The amount of discomfort the “bad” thing creates for us (Musk = bad; Tesla = Musk; therefore Tesla = bad)
  • The amount of discomfort we think action would create for us

Anything that decreases our discomfort, by definition, decreases the likelihood that we’ll take action.

The subtlety we discussed last week is that good diagnosis can decrease discomfort (“I figured something out!”), so it runs the risk of decreasing pressure to act.

And, remember, powerlessness is not a viable excuse because we all have some agency. Our problem is that agency involves inconvenience, discomfort, or personal / professional risk, and none of those is particularly pleasant.

Here’s an easy way to see what’s going on: for every observation we make, let’s add an action in the form of an “I” statement. As in:

“Coming into the office more doesn’t make sense because all we do is take our calls from the office instead of from home…and I’m planning to take forward a proposal to create a scheduled lunch hour for everyone twice a week.”

“I would love to advance in this company, but I can’t because I never get any feedback. I’m terrified, but I’m going to ask my boss for detailed feedback in our next 1:1.”

“People on my team just don’t take responsibility for their actions.  There’s no follow-through. I’m going to start a shared accountability chart and put my name and weekly To Do’s at the top of the list, and ask others to also fill it out each week.”

“My kids are addicted to their phones; it’s impossible to get their attention. We’re banning phones at mealtime and starting a ‘all phones in the kitchen drawer starting at 9pm’ house rule. These rules also apply to grown-ups.”

“The culture around here doesn’t make people feel valued for their unique contributions. I’m initiating a 10 minute ‘amazingness hack-a-thon’ each Friday where our team shares at least 1 amazing thing each team member did this week in or outside of work.”

“I just can’t get this build right because the user requirements aren’t clear. I’m locking the Product Manager, the subject matter expert, and my engineering lead in a room for 2 hours and we’re going to leave with 100% clarity on the spec.”

“Morale just isn’t what it used to be. People aren’t feeling a sense of connection. I’m going to schedule one 15 minute virtual coffee a week with a colleague, and I’ll come in with three questions that ensure I have a chance to learn more about them and their work.”

“We’re just not taking advantage of all that AI has to offer. Everyone is being so timid. I’m going to invite 10 people to a 2 hour after-work AI hackathon where we come up with 10 ideas that could move the needle, and we will start working on them.”

We can chuckle at the guy with the bumper sticker, but we’re all wearing bumper stickers of one kind or another.

The most dangerous one is the one that says, “I’m so good at figuring out what needs to be fixed that I’m able to stay completely in my comfort zone.”

All meaningful change involves some degree of discomfort and risk. How much is up to you.

What to Wear in the Rain

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

If it’s pouring rain out, and you’re heading for a walk, you have two good options.

A completely waterproof boot, one that will keep your foot totally dry.

OR

A flip flop, one that will allow your foot to get soaking wet, but you don’t care, because it’s your foot and it’s a flip flop.

Meaning, when your external environment changes radically, there are only two smart ways to react: you either decide you use the tools you have to fight it head on and win, or you choose to fully embrace the new reality.

Unfortunately, all too often we opt instead for a soggy shoe, soggy sock strategy, one that leaves us squishy and uncomfortable because we planned poorly and didn’t fully acknowledge that our world has shifted.

(and, no, this post isn’t only about AI).

Use AI to Turn Meetings into Action

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

My friend Irwin reminded me today of two things:

  1. How good it feels to figure something out
  2. How dangerous that good feeling can be

Meaning, if you’re a thoughtful, analytical, caring person, there’s a significant psychological payoff in diagnosing something correctly.

Imagine this:

  • There’s something not quite right going on in your company / organization (someone is unhappy, some process isn’t working, some results are off)
  • You and a colleague or two get together to figure out what’s what
  • You have a great conversation and unearth important things
  • Voila! You come up with real clarity on what’s wrong and what needs to happen

That’s all great, but be careful about how good that “Voila!” feels.

What happens next, for many of us, is that we jump to the next thing: another meeting, another task.

And the risk isn’t simply that we’ll lose some of the texture or nuance of the clarity we had in the meeting, though that often happens.

The risk is the fact that the meeting feels like success. We got to the answer!

At the extreme, a great conversation that leads to no action is literally worthless.

Even if you don’t fall into this trap, is it possible that the psychological reward of experiencing that insight and clarity lead you to do 70%, or 60%, or 50% of what you need to do? Could it be less?

If so, I have a proposal for you.

  1. Start by scheduling differently. For any problem-solving meeting, keep the hour after the meeting free / scheduled for just you.
  2. In addition (optional), record the meeting with an AI tool. (You decide your comfort level with this; I’ve found it very helpful.) In addition, take whatever notes you’d normally take during the meeting.
  3. At the start of your scheduled hour after the meeting, go to your paid AI tool of choice. While everything is still 100% fresh in your mind, speak (not type) freely to the tool. What’s the problem you were trying to solve? What were the specific issues you worked through? What solutions did you come up with? Talk as you would talk to a colleague who would want to understand all the ins and outs. Lots of detail. All the little juicy bits. Everything.
  4. Finally, take that text and ask the AI to summarize what you’ve told it. Ask it to give you a well-defined structure: headline problem statement; detailed issues that were discussed; proposed solutions.

(Here’s a starter prompt: What I just described is the output of a 90 minute problem-solving meeting. Take that detail and write a structured summary of the headline problem, sub-issues, and all proposed solutions. Be as detailed as possible. Before you start, make sure to ask me for any additional context you need and/or any clarifying questions. I want you to be confident you understand everything I’m saying and my proposed solution.)

These steps—from your input to the first AI output—shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes: you talk for ~5 minutes, write a prompt, respond to questions from the AI tool, get the first summary. Now the fun begins.

Read the output the tool has given you and start working with and through the AI.

You might say/write things like “this point you made wasn’t quite right: [quote the point]. Here’s why:” and explain it in more detail. Do this both for things the AI didn’t explain well and for areas where reading the summary helps you see gaps you didn’t see before. Keep at it until you have a document you’re satisfied with. This step can easily take 30 minutes or more.

Once you’re mostly satisfied with the content, structure, tone, and detail, you’re ready to put the finishing touches on the document.

I find myself consistently asking the AI to be a more specific with its points / language / descriptions, and I inevitably go into the document and edit some parts myself. I also always ask for specific next steps, a timeline/workplan for all parties involved, and a 1-2 page executive summary.

Voila! again, but now your best thinking is turned into a detailed action plan. With this approach, you’re:

  1. Capturing, and acting on, that beautiful moment of insight you have at the end of a great meeting
  2. Seeing what a professional summary of those insights looks like, so you can make it better
  3. Forcing yourself to engage in further brainstorming to refine your idea
  4. Creating clear next steps and a timeline
  5. Documenting it all in ways that makes it easier for everyone to act

If before you were acting on 50% of your best thinking from the meeting, this approach gives you 150% or more.

A loose grip

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Novices hold on tight, experts have a loose grip.

That’s because when we’re novices, we grasp for control. New motions are unfamiliar, our minds and bodies are not confident, so we clutch tightly, knuckles white, straining, in an effort to get it right.

Experts, on the other hand, holds their tools—a paintbrush, a pencil, a baton, a racquet, a guitar pick, their breath—loosely. With mastery comes relaxation, ease, and effort expended only where it is needed most.

If you’ve ever gone scuba diving, you know this. When you finish a dive, compare how much air you’ve used to that of the dive master. In my experience, the dive master uses half, or even one third, of the air I’ve used in a single dive.

Think about that: two to three times the oxygen, because it was new to me, because I was tense, because of unnecessary effort.

What’s interesting is that some people get stuck in the white-knuckled phase and some move past it.

I don’t know the skeleton key to get from there to here, but some of the ingredients are an intention to give up control, the comfort with being “not great” for a while, finding places not to grip—in your mind, your body, your breath—and breaking the skill down to smaller, slower pieces so you have time and space to get those pieces right.

The 90 Percent Expert

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Think about your experience reading the newspaper: on most topics, the quality of the journalism, the insights and the perspective hit the bar for you. That’s why you read, after all.

Except in the rare cases when there’s an article about your area of expertise. Then the Emperor has no clothes. You can see where all the shortcuts and generalizations are, all the misses that the journalist made, the questionable choices on expert sources.

But does that stop you from reading the newspaper? Of course it doesn’t.

In a discussion group that I’m part of, one member suggested that this is how we should think about AI: it’s not perfect, but it is so good so often, that we shouldn’t let that 10% of time where we can see the flaws keep us from using the tool (read: keep us from reading the newspaper).

If you’re still stuck on this side of the fence, it might help to personify your AI a bit—meaning, move from “I’m going to use ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity etc.” for this task to “I have access to a 90% expert across any topic I can think of.”

I’ve already shared my ongoing use of ChatGPT as a physical therapist, which is still my favorite use case.

This weekend, I used ChatGPT as an Apple Genius Bar Employee—because making an appointment at, and going to, the Apple Genius Bar is a hassle.

I had an old, powerful Mac that my son had used, and I wanted to wipe it clean. It was not playing along.

First, my son had partitioned the hard drive, so that created a series of problems. Then the Operating System refused to update—it took 6 different attempts at that problem to get it solved. Then, with a new OS installed, iCloud login wasn’t working (because the laptop is for my daughter, and age restrictions with Family Sharing didn’t allow her to log out). Etc, etc, etc. until I solved the problem a few hours later. All of this with ChatGPT calmly troubleshooting with me, providing a series of options, being endlessly patient when I asked new questions or corrected it. I’m positive I would have failed at this task a year ago with just Google search.

The laptop is beside the point (especially because, once I’d solved the problem, we discovered that the battery life was terrible….argh). The point is to think about what it means to have access to this kind of expertise: the best gardener, the best physical therapist, the best coding instructor, the best brainstorming partner.

Better yet, that expertise doesn’t have to be generic (though the generic is pretty amazing). Seth Godin has created a series of personas on Claude, each of which has been taught to respond like some of the greatest thinkers and doers of all time.

So if you have a question for Charles Darwin, Fredrick Douglas, Stephen Pressfield, Seth Godin, Zig Ziglar, Annie Duke, Carol Dweck, Clayton Christensen, David Allen, Mahatma Gandhi, Kevin Kelly, Marcus Aurelius, Simone Biles, Tim Ferris, Sun Tzu, Pema Chodron, or 36 other world-shakers, the answers are at your fingertips.

Try spending a week carrying around the idea, “I have access to a 90% expert on any topic in the world.”

Choose to act on that idea by consulting that expert on a real problem you’re facing.

I promise you you’ll get great (but not perfect) answers fast, in ways that might just blow your mind.

Signs of Love

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

This felt like the perfect reminder of what really matters—especially in the waning days of summer, as we all take a deep breath before plunging into the fall (and, for some of us, as our kids disperse back to college).

It’s from Beauty in the Stillness by Karin Hadaden.

Signs of Love

This reminded me of you

I’m going to the grocery store, need anything?

Open your door, I sent you a little gift

Did you get home safe?

I am so proud of you

Let’s go somewhere together

I’ll be here for you

I’ll cook this time

How are you, really?

I think you’ll like this song

I have an extra ticket

Good luck today

How can I help?

Wanna watch it together?

I can pick you up

Tell me about your day

Remember when we…

Be ready at eight, I have a surprise

Let’s work through this together

I can’t imagine life without you

Time to Heal

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Consider a small cut on your hand or leg.

Maybe you nicked yourself with a knife, or got caught on a sharp branch while walking in the woods.

The bleeding stops immediately, and the wound closes up in a day or two.

After that, there’s a mark—not something that’s causing active discomfort, but it’s still there.

Not for a day or two, but for a matter of weeks, sometimes a month or more.

The time from the initial bump or scrape to a mark completely disappearing always seems to last longer than I expect it to.

The healing, that is.

It happens, but not right away.

It happens, but slowly.

It happens, but not on my timeline.

The miracle is, it always happens.

The wounds, inside and out, they always heal.

Willing to be Bad

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

It’s easy to think that learning new skills is about determination and willpower. Some people have it, and some people don’t.

While that is true, it is also incomplete.

Learning a new skill is a commitment to consistently spend time doing something poorly, and to refuse to give up despite how hard that feels.

In this way, it is as much about being willing to spend time in discomfort—physical or psychological—with little to show for your efforts, potentially for long periods of time.

The thing I’m currently bad at is the guitar.

I’ve been bad at it for about a year and a half now. Before being bad at it, I was nothing at it, and so bad is a big improvement.

In the beginning, my fingertips constantly hurt from pressing on steel strings—so in addition to not being able to play much of anything, I was in pain. Plus, nearly every note I played buzzed. That alone was a good reason to stop.

Then I learned a few chords, and quickly discovered that many of the most “basic” ones, including the F chord, were bar chords, requiring pressing down HARD on multiple strings with one finger. That was nearly impossible for me, a true beginner, and I couldn’t do it properly until about two months ago. So, 15 months of not being able to play a C-F-G-C sequence, which is about as basic a chord progression as exists. That was another good reason to stop.

Now I can play some songs, but playing a chord shift with a bar chord—G-major to B-flat minor, for example—is a 50/50 proposition at best. So, I’m practicing it. How? By repeating G-major—B-flat-minor hundreds of times. On a given night, I might play that 100 times terribly, and another 100 times less terribly. I’m not playing most of the song I’m working on (Summer of 69, randomly), I’m just playing those two chords for the better part of a practice session. By the end, it’s a little better, and I’m a little bit encouraged. And then the next day, it feels like I’m back where I started. And that’s frustrating too, and another good reason to stop.

The temptation to stop, you see, that is really the hard bit.

You have this idea in your head about what “good” will look like, and you’re so clearly far away from that ideal, that it can seem hopeless, and you can think, “Maybe this isn’t a good plan after all. Maybe I’ll never get there. Maybe I should stick to the things I already do well.”

The thing I notice, when I get back to the G-major to B-flat, is that it takes me fewer tries today to get to decent than it took me yesterday. I also notice that, after working on that transition, my (formerly) dreaded F-chord feels almost easy. Noticing the progress I’ve made, however small, is much more motivating than dwelling on the gap between me and everyone who plays the guitar so effortlessly.

So I dive in again.

Going towards the frustration.

Feeling that vulnerability.

Progressing much more slowly than I’d like.

But smiling at the voice saying “this isn’t all that fun, and it doesn’t sound that good. Maybe I’ll never get there” and just doing it again.

I’m talking about guitar but you can see that the discomfort is the same across disciplines: G-to B-flat could be learning how to integrate AI into your work, or keeping at running every day even though it’s never easy, or eating differently, or learning a new language, or deciding to take on virtually anything at all that you’re not great at today.

It’s not all that bad to be bad at something.

At least you’re doing the something.

And whatever you do, with intention and effort, for a long time, you improve at.

No matter what.

Once

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

The other day, I was waiting for my dogs to finish their Very Important Search for Squirrels in the woods by our elementary school. I was passing the time by watching two kids being pushed on the swing by two dads.

For those of you not familiar with this activity, swing-pushing is a relentless job. Any kid under the age of 6 will happily be pushed on a swing 60 minutes or more, rain or shine, without any need to stop.

If you’re the parent, and if it’s cold or windy or sunny or hot, or if you just find 60 minutes of pushing to be a long time, it can be easy to get impatient, or even frustrated.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck doing this [repetitive, boring, whatever] thing again!”

It helps to remember that nearly everything only happens once.

Once in this context.

Once at this stage of my life.

Once with this set of people.

And so it goes outside the playground as well.

Having a hard time at work? Once.

Having challenges in a relationship? Once.

Having some great things happening in your life mixed in with things that are stressful, or distracting? Once.

One day, you stop going to the swings and never look back.

One day, a decade has passed—for you, for them—and you can hardly imagine what it would be like to be a dad who spent most of his free time pushing swings (or solving this particular problem, or working with this group of people on this hard but interesting thing…).

It’s so easy to forget that the here and now whips by us, that we can never step in the same river twice.

The reminder is to shift our perception from “I have to do this thing [seemingly] forever” to “I get to do this thing with these people in this way once and only once.”