May 4, 2025 • 29 mins
What keeps you from doing the things you know you need to do, when you need to do them? The answers go deeper than you think.
Show notes:
- Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
- Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann
- Nonviolent Communication Marshall Rosenberg
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Harry (00:00):
I've discovered through interviewing lots of people on
the subject, and by exploring inmy own life, that by identifying
what I'm avoiding and then byaddressing that sooner, it has
created this type of virtuouscycle of energy for dealing with
(00:28):
things that are even morechallenging.
Narrator (00:37):
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.
Jorge (00:47):
Hey, Harry.
Harry (00:48):
Hey, Jorge, good to see you again.
Jorge (00:51):
It's good to see you as well.
How have things been?
Harry (00:55):
Man, things are on fire.
So much is happening.
Mostly good things.
And, then there's everythingelse in the world, which has got
a big giant question mark on itfor me.
But trying to stay responsiblyoptimistic.
Jorge (01:18):
It certainly seems like a time of change.
There's a lot of change goingon.
Harry (01:23):
Yeah, it makes it easy to find things to talk about,
that's for sure.
And the clock rate isincredible.
The rate of change, the tempo,is kind of astonishing.
Jorge (01:38):
The phrase"finding stuff to talk about" makes me think
that you've brought a reading.
Harry (01:43):
Funny, I do.
This is something I waslistening to.
It's a book that I was listeningto in audio.
And it is really well structuredfor audio, so definitely will
recommend it.
And I'm not gonna tell you whatit is quite yet, but let me go
ahead and read it and we'll seewhere it goes from there.
(02:07):
It starts with a quote.
It says,"We cannot changeanything unless we accept it."
That's Carl Jung.
And here's the reading:"It canbe alarming to realize just how
much of life gets shaped by whatwe're actively trying to avoid.
We talk about not getting aroundto things as if it were merely a
(02:30):
failure of organization or awill.
But often the truth is that weinvest plenty of energy in
making sure that we never getaround to them.
It's an old story.
Some task, or some entire domainof life makes you anxious
whenever you think about it, soyou just don't go there.
You're worried you might haveless money in the bank than
(02:52):
you've assumed, so you refrainfrom checking your balances at
all, or you're scared that apain in your abdomen might be a
sign of something more serious.
So you avoid seeing a doctor.
Or you're worried that raising asensitive subject with your
partner could lead to an ablazing row, so you never do.
Several times I've caught myselfavoiding checking my email for
(03:15):
fear of discovering a messagefrom someone.
Impatient.
I haven't replied to it yet.
"Rationally speaking, this kindof avoidance makes no sense at
all.
If you really do have analarming low bank balance or the
pain really is somethingserious, confronting the
situation is the only way youcan begin to do something about
(03:37):
it.
And there's no better strategythan avoiding your inbox to
ensure that someone willeventually lose patience with
your failure to reply.
"The more you organize your lifearound not addressing things
that make you anxious, the morelikely they are to develop into
serious problems.
And even if they don't, thelonger you fail to confront
(03:59):
them, the more unhappy time youspend being scared of what might
be lurking in the places youdon't want to go.
It's ironic that this is knownin self-help circles as
'remaining in your comfort zone'because there's nothing
comfortable about it.
In fact, it entails accepting aconstant background tug of
(04:19):
discomfort, an undertow of worrythat can sometimes feel useful
or virtuous, though it isn't, asthe price you pay to avoid a
more acute spike of anxiety."
Jorge (04:36):
I have to say that we're recording this on April 14th,
meaning the day before taxes aredue.
I suspect that there are a lotof folks around this time of
year for whom that mightresonate.
(04:57):
The word that came to mind inhearing you talk about this is
procrastination.
What book is this from?
Harry (05:06):
This is from Oliver Burkeman's most recent work
called Meditations for Mortals,and it's really good.
And part of what I really likedabout it was the structure he
used for presenting these ideaswas a once a day meditation.
So rather than a typicalstructure, topical structure and
(05:29):
an architecture of chapter book,so to speak, it's laid out as
one thought for one day.
And of course you can consumemore than that if you want.
But it allows a very differentflow of ideas.
And this one's really close tomy heart for so many different
reasons, but I wanted to shareit with you and I didn't even
(05:51):
think about tax day.
That's funny.
Jorge (05:54):
You said that this somehow resonated with you.
Why did you wanna bring thissubject to our conversation?
Harry (06:01):
I think there were a whole host of reasons, one of
which is I wrote my book onprioritization and I joke around
with people that I'm my own bestsubject, right?
I wrote the book I needed toread.
And I think we might have talkedabout the fact I was very
interested in a topic ofstupidity a number of years ago.
(06:24):
And like prioritization, I oftenthought of myself as my own best
subject for that.
How do I go about makingdecisions and actions that blow
up in my face?
And so I didn't have to look toofar to explore the topic.
And similarly, this notion ofavoidances of things you're
(06:47):
avoiding has come up repeatedlyover the last n number of years
as a way to look at theenvironment around me and look
at my interaction with thatenvironment as where are the
signals for what I should be orwhat I could be drilling into or
(07:16):
amplifying or addressing.
I've discovered throughinterviewing lots of people on
the subject, and by exploring inmy own life, that by identifying
what I'm avoiding and then byaddressing that sooner, it has
(07:38):
created this type of virtuouscycle of energy for dealing with
things that are even morechallenging.
I'm not sure I like it.
Because I'm building a muscle,which means I have to lift more
(07:58):
weight, right?
But I'm noticing that I can liftmore weight, and in so doing, I
feel stronger and more confidentin my ability to move through
the world with a greater senseof stability and I'm finding
that really helpful right now,given everything that's going on
(08:19):
in the world.
Jorge (08:20):
It's funny that you used the phrase"virtuous cycle"
because as you were talking, Iwas taking notes here, and I
have a note that says'viciouscycle.' I'll speak from personal
experience, when I've hadsituations like the ones you've
been describing there, where I'mavoiding doing something that
(08:41):
I'm going to find uncomfortable,painful, embarrassing, what have
you, the avoidance has theeffect of postponing whatever
negative outcomes might come myway.
But the outcomes come anyway.
(09:01):
And I feel terrible in theprocess.
Like I am not at my best byavoiding, and the feeling bad
about myself feeds theself-image that reinforces that
kind of behavior in some ways.
(09:22):
And then, that makes me want toavoid taking the next step even
more, because I feel like I'minadequate somehow.
So it's, almost like aself-perpetuating,
self-amplifying bias that you'recreating about your own
(09:42):
competency for dealing withpainful or difficult situations,
which makes things worse.
Harry (09:51):
Yeah, and increasingly, I'm learning that it's
unnecessary.
And I don't know that I everwould have gone here naturally,
except that I ran into this inthe interviews that I was doing
for the book that I wrote.
(10:12):
But to some extent, this ideastarted with a friend of mine,
Paul Henderson, who used to say,"Bad news doesn't get better
over time." And that was abookend on one side.
And then another friend of mine,Brent Johnson used to say that,
something his father said is, hegoes,"The facts are friendly."
He said,"The facts themselvesdon't actually have a valence."
(10:37):
That is, they're not charged.
It's our interpretation of thosefacts that leads us to having
some kind of emotional reaction.
And so, I've used those twoideas to navigate through the
world.
And then, over the last fewyears, having learned that some
(10:57):
of the more effective people inthe world prioritize what
they're avoiding, so that theycan make choices about having a
tough conversation or fillingout a tax form or making a
payment or taking theirattention and placing it on
something that they areexpending energy to avoid.
(11:21):
That, in itself, releases a lotof good energy, which allows
them to focus on other things.
So it's less about theavoidance, about the not getting
the thing done or about theprocrastination, and it's more
about releasing the energythat's being bollocked up by
that strategy so that you can godo and attend to other things.
(11:45):
And I think that's where myinterest in this is.
Jorge (11:50):
And hearing you talk about it, I'm gonna think out
loud here, but I'm wondering ifthere are different kinds of
situations in which you wouldlapse into this kind of
avoidance.
And one possible way oforganizing them, and there might
be others, these are just theones that come to mind, are
there are some situations whereyou are postponing dealing with
(12:14):
something because you are goingto be letting other people down,
and you're concerned with theirreaction.
Like, if you don't file yourtaxes in time because you've
been putting it off, you'reprobably not gonna be letting
anyone down directly.
It might blow up in your face itwill likely blow up in your face
(12:37):
but it's not like you arepostponing a difficult
conversation with your spouse.
Those feel like two differentorders of problems.
And I'm bringing this up becauseI'm trying to think about
situations that I've been in,and I've done this for both
kinds of situations.
(12:58):
And I feel like I've gottenpretty good at swallowing the
frogs in both cases.
But I'll speak to the lettingother people down piece, because
that's the one that is mostvivid in my mind and in my
experience.
I've found that whenever I havebeen in situations where I'm
(13:27):
putting off the difficultconversation, because I am
worried about letting the otherperson down or worried about
being seen as a"bad person" orwhat have you, oftentimes, when
I finally have the conversation,it's so much easier than I
(13:50):
thought it would be.
And the other, and it's oftenbeen much less of a big deal for
the other person than I thoughtit would be.
I've made a mountain out of amolehill, that kind of thing.
So it feels like it's been in mymind all along.
Harry (14:06):
I love that.
I love that you're categorizingthese, because I think that's
really helpful first.
Because I think there's anatural tendency to think about
things you're avoiding in termsof stuff you have to do that you
don't want to do, but placing itinto a category of perhaps
(14:32):
conversations you don't want tohave for fear of letting
somebody else down or hurtingsomebody else's feelings, of
course, then allows you toexplore the idea that maybe you
won't be letting them down orhurting their feelings, but they
might hurt yours or they mightlet you down.
And so now you've opened up thisthing of, maybe I'm avoiding
this thing because I don't wantto deal with it.
And that's the kind of avoidancein some ways that I was talking
(14:55):
about, but I don't think I wasclear about these categories and
what the implications of thesecategories are.
So back in, I don't know if itwas 2014, I went through a
workshop program weekend thing,it's called 21st Century
Leadership in Tacoma,Washington.
It was a thing that Rackspace...
(15:17):
I was a VP of Experience Designat a hosting company, and we
were working on building a cloudsolution at the time.
And when we got all done withthat, there was this leadership
opportunity for me to go do somedevelopment work.
And one of the things that theytaught us there is to ask our
ourself the question, what am Ipretending not to know?
(15:41):
What am I pretending not toknow?
And that was like thisbreakthrough question for me,
because that was the one where Iwas able to say, it's
categorically different in someways from things I know, but I
don't wanna deal with, becausenow I'm asking myself the
(16:02):
question, is there somethingthat I'm just pretending not to
know, that I'm fooling myself inthe process.
And if I can belly up to the barand accept the possibility that
I'm really fooling myself, whichis gonna make it easier for me
to fool everybody else, once I'mclear about that this is the
(16:22):
thing that I'm pretending not toknow, and now I can't avoid that
anymore, what are theimplications?
What does that mean in terms ofa difficult conversation I might
have to have with somebody elseor difficult conversation I'm
gonna perhaps have with myself,weirdly as that may sound.
Jorge (16:40):
When you say, what am I pretending not to know, does
that mean, what am I perhapssubconsciously choosing to
ignore?
Harry (16:52):
Yeah, kind of willful ignorance.
There's enough information toknow that I shouldn't be
ignoring it.
And that information may beemotional, it may not be in
words, but there's enoughinformation there to prompt me
to ask myself the question, isthere something that I should be
(17:12):
thinking about that I'm notthinking about?
Is there something that I shouldbe asking myself, questions I
should be asking myself?
And then like back to thatquestion of a pain in the
abdomen, is there something I'mpretending not to know?
A pain in the abdomen might bea...
it's just a thing.
And am I dismissing somethingthat I am then rationalizing
(17:34):
away?
And there's enough informationto add to, prompt you to say,
"Hmm, maybe something isn'tnormal." And what would be the
range of normal?
And given that range, what'sinside that bell shape curve and
what's outside that bell shapecurve?
And if something's outside ofthat, then"Oh, this is what I
(17:58):
was pretending not to know." Iwas pretending not to know that
this person is a pain in myside, right?
Or that I have a pain in myside.
Jorge (18:06):
A quote comes to mind; it's one of my favorite quotes
by Richard Feynman.
He said,"The first principle isthat you must not fool yourself,
and you are the easiest personto fool." Right?
And in this case, the fooling ishappening perhaps subconsciously
(18:27):
because you're trying to avoiddiscomfort.
Harry (18:32):
Do you know Luke Hohmann?
Jorge (18:34):
No.
Harry (18:35):
So, Luke is this amazing character in my life.
He's written a number of reallyinteresting books.
He was the author of a bookcalled Innovation Games, and
he's a SAFe Fellow, from SAFe,the SAFe agile world.
He's written books on softwarearchitecture.
A very accomplished guy in thesoftware design development
(18:58):
world.
And he and I are writing anarticle together right now on a
concept called CollapsingSliding Windows.
And it's the idea that there arethese events in the future that
are almost certainly going tohappen at some point, but it's a
little hard to know when they'regonna happen.
And moreover, there aresituations where those events
(19:22):
can happen much faster than youpredict.
And there are planningstrategies you can use for these
types of potential events.
And one of the ideas here isthere's often a predictable last
responsible moment.
And it's a concept that I reallyappreciate, because I've gotten
(19:45):
more rigorous about askingmyself the question, at what
point does it becomeirresponsible of me not to act
or not to do something or not toaddress a question, or so on and
so forth.
So that's maybe one of theantidotes to this, in my mind,
is to continually roll throughquestions like, what am I
(20:10):
pretending not to know?
When is the last responsiblemoment to fill in the blank?
And then, with these bookendquestions of, bad news doesn't
get better over time and thefacts are friendly, all of a
sudden I've got these pivotsthat I can use for navigating
(20:30):
through the world with a littlebit more agency.
Jorge (20:37):
That seems key.
The phrase"the facts arefriendly," I believe that it's
come up in our conversationsbefore, and that's starting to
feel to me like a central tenetsomehow, in that it implies
suspending judgment.
(21:00):
It implies clarity, right?
Like, what do you mean by thefacts?
Are you sure you're clear on thefacts?
So, that's starting to feel tome like a very important North
Star for people who are tryingto gain traction.
And part of what I'm hearing inthis passage that you've read
(21:24):
from this book, is that one ofthe things that might keep you
from having the impact you wantto have is maybe fear; your own
inability to look past theconcerns whether real or
(21:51):
imagined that might be turningthe facts unfriendly somehow.
Harry (22:00):
Yeah, and I think this idea of the facts are friendly
takes the teeth out of thenarrative, whatever you're
telling yourself is true, and itforces you to set these things
back into a more neutralcontext, which I think gives you
more choice in terms of how toreact because no longer are you
(22:24):
stuck in the frame of thenarrative fallacy, right?
Which is the story that you'retelling yourself is going to
frame a set of reasonable andunreasonable actions or
responses on a reasonable andunreasonable timeline.
And if you can take the factsout of the story and just look
(22:47):
at the facts on their own, itmakes it possible to tell
alternative stories, whichpotentially lead to alternative
strategies and actions.
And it's not always easy to dothis on your own.
Sometimes this is a buddy sport,or having a sensible person to
(23:08):
talk to who you trust theirjudgment and their discernment,
their ways of thinking aboutthings, makes it possible to
reimagine or reinterpret what'sactually happening to consider
perhaps a different emotionalresponse to it.
As you think about, if you backup from this and you look at
(23:29):
Marshall Rosenberg's work, whichI suspect you're familiar with
this, the NonviolentCommunication NVC work, right?
Where at the highest possiblelevel, there's this structure of
there's observation, the nextlevel down is interpretation,
the next level down is feeling,and the next level down is need.
(23:50):
So it's a way of looking atwhat's happening.
So.
If you were to do something,there's a set of observable
facts about it, there's aninterpretation that I'm
meaning-making what you'redoing, right?
And then, I'm having anemotional reaction to that;
that's my feeling.
And then, I have some kind ofunmet need, which then
(24:12):
translates into some kind ofaction on my part.
And the idea that I was drawingthis back to is, if you can
separate what you're actuallyobserving from how you're
interpreting it from how you'refeeling about it, you're
starting to peel apart the factsfrom the story, and that gives
you potentially more choice interms of how you're gonna
(24:34):
respond or react to what'shappening.
So, if you were to yell at meright now, I, could say,"Oh,
Jorge yelled at me." Or I couldsay,"Jorge raised his voice to
an unusual amplitude." Thesecond one would be the fact,
and the first one would be moreof an interpretation, because
(24:56):
yelling is my way ofunderstanding how a particular
volume is.
And then I might interpret thatas he's angry with me.
I might feel scared and then myunmet need might be to apologize
for something that I either didor didn't do.
But if I can go back and say,"Gosh, Jorge, just the amplitude
(25:19):
of his voice went up," and thenI can look at the possible
interpretations.
One possible interpretation isyou're angry.
Another possible interpretationis something hap...
you may have spilled your veryhot coffee over there and I
can't see it, but it's got youexcited about 210 degree liquid
(25:40):
dripping on your lap right now.
And so, your voice went up.
And that's gonna lead to a verydifferent emotional reaction on
my part.
And so, peeling these thingsapart start to become really
valuable when it comes tolooking at what's going on in
the world around us, consideringthe possibility that the facts
that we're seeing are notnecessarily tightly coupled or
(26:02):
bolted to what we think theymean and the story that we're
telling about them.
And if we can tease those aparta little bit, we end up in a
stronger position to consideralternative narratives and
consider how we might movethrough the space to make better
choices that are more in linewith our values and the goals
(26:22):
that we have and our needs.
Jorge (26:25):
That sounds like a really good way to encapsulate the
idea.
And just to try to wrap it up ina kind of concrete way, part of
what I'm hearing there is thatthat level of self-awareness is
easier done when you caninteract with someone else and
(26:54):
have them help you gain someperspective.
And I will just put this outthere, I haven't done this
myself for this particular usecase, but I suspect that this is
a good use for AI chatbots
Harry (27:12):
Oh, how cool is that?
Jorge (27:14):
And I'm saying that because on the one hand you can
write these ideas down and getsome feedback, even though
you're not dealing with asentient being, but just the
mere fact of putting the wordsout might make you more aware of
(27:38):
what is going on.
There's this...
people talk about rubberducking, this technique of
talking to the rubber duck andjust talking to the duck makes
you realize what is going on.
Like I said, I haven't done thisfor this particular use case,
but I have had similarinteractions with AI chatbots
where I know that I am nottalking with an entity that is
(28:01):
going to be passing judgment onme, and the responses, you can
take them at face value, but Ioften find that it helps me see
things from a slightly lessemotionally charged perspective
just because of the fact that Iknow that I'm talking with...
(28:21):
our friend Jesse James Garretttalks about the big ball of
numbers, right?
Like, I'm essentially talkingwith a big ball of numbers.
And just the fact that I can putit into words and getting some
reaction in words maybe could bea way to get a little bit of
perspective.
Harry (28:38):
I really like that idea a lot and I'm gonna have to play
with that a little bit.
Yeah.
Boy, that's clever.
Thank you for that suggestion.
That's really cool.
I never would've thought ofthat.
Jorge (28:50):
Alright, if the opportunity comes up, which I
hope it doesn't'cause I wanna beon top of things and I wanna be
very responsive and not getcaught up in these mental games,
but if it does, I'm gonna tryit.
Alright, Harry, as always atreat talking with you.
Harry (29:06):
Thank you so much, Jorge.
I really like theseconversations.
Narrator (29:15):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.
I've discovered through interviewing lots of people on
the subject, and by exploring inmy own life, that by identifying
what I'm avoiding and then byaddressing that sooner, it has
created this type of virtuouscycle of energy for dealing with
(00:28):
things that are even morechallenging.
Narrator (00:37):
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.
Jorge (00:47):
Hey, Harry.
Harry (00:48):
Hey, Jorge, good to see you again.
Jorge (00:51):
It's good to see you as well.
How have things been?
Harry (00:55):
Man, things are on fire.
So much is happening.
Mostly good things.
And, then there's everythingelse in the world, which has got
a big giant question mark on itfor me.
But trying to stay responsiblyoptimistic.
Jorge (01:18):
It certainly seems like a time of change.
There's a lot of change goingon.
Harry (01:23):
Yeah, it makes it easy to find things to talk about,
that's for sure.
And the clock rate isincredible.
The rate of change, the tempo,is kind of astonishing.
Jorge (01:38):
The phrase"finding stuff to talk about" makes me think
that you've brought a reading.
Harry (01:43):
Funny, I do.
This is something I waslistening to.
It's a book that I was listeningto in audio.
And it is really well structuredfor audio, so definitely will
recommend it.
And I'm not gonna tell you whatit is quite yet, but let me go
ahead and read it and we'll seewhere it goes from there.
(02:07):
It starts with a quote.
It says,"We cannot changeanything unless we accept it."
That's Carl Jung.
And here's the reading:"It canbe alarming to realize just how
much of life gets shaped by whatwe're actively trying to avoid.
We talk about not getting aroundto things as if it were merely a
(02:30):
failure of organization or awill.
But often the truth is that weinvest plenty of energy in
making sure that we never getaround to them.
It's an old story.
Some task, or some entire domainof life makes you anxious
whenever you think about it, soyou just don't go there.
You're worried you might haveless money in the bank than
(02:52):
you've assumed, so you refrainfrom checking your balances at
all, or you're scared that apain in your abdomen might be a
sign of something more serious.
So you avoid seeing a doctor.
Or you're worried that raising asensitive subject with your
partner could lead to an ablazing row, so you never do.
Several times I've caught myselfavoiding checking my email for
(03:15):
fear of discovering a messagefrom someone.
Impatient.
I haven't replied to it yet.
"Rationally speaking, this kindof avoidance makes no sense at
all.
If you really do have analarming low bank balance or the
pain really is somethingserious, confronting the
situation is the only way youcan begin to do something about
(03:37):
it.
And there's no better strategythan avoiding your inbox to
ensure that someone willeventually lose patience with
your failure to reply.
"The more you organize your lifearound not addressing things
that make you anxious, the morelikely they are to develop into
serious problems.
And even if they don't, thelonger you fail to confront
(03:59):
them, the more unhappy time youspend being scared of what might
be lurking in the places youdon't want to go.
It's ironic that this is knownin self-help circles as
'remaining in your comfort zone'because there's nothing
comfortable about it.
In fact, it entails accepting aconstant background tug of
(04:19):
discomfort, an undertow of worrythat can sometimes feel useful
or virtuous, though it isn't, asthe price you pay to avoid a
more acute spike of anxiety."
Jorge (04:36):
I have to say that we're recording this on April 14th,
meaning the day before taxes aredue.
I suspect that there are a lotof folks around this time of
year for whom that mightresonate.
(04:57):
The word that came to mind inhearing you talk about this is
procrastination.
What book is this from?
Harry (05:06):
This is from Oliver Burkeman's most recent work
called Meditations for Mortals,and it's really good.
And part of what I really likedabout it was the structure he
used for presenting these ideaswas a once a day meditation.
So rather than a typicalstructure, topical structure and
(05:29):
an architecture of chapter book,so to speak, it's laid out as
one thought for one day.
And of course you can consumemore than that if you want.
But it allows a very differentflow of ideas.
And this one's really close tomy heart for so many different
reasons, but I wanted to shareit with you and I didn't even
(05:51):
think about tax day.
That's funny.
Jorge (05:54):
You said that this somehow resonated with you.
Why did you wanna bring thissubject to our conversation?
Harry (06:01):
I think there were a whole host of reasons, one of
which is I wrote my book onprioritization and I joke around
with people that I'm my own bestsubject, right?
I wrote the book I needed toread.
And I think we might have talkedabout the fact I was very
interested in a topic ofstupidity a number of years ago.
(06:24):
And like prioritization, I oftenthought of myself as my own best
subject for that.
How do I go about makingdecisions and actions that blow
up in my face?
And so I didn't have to look toofar to explore the topic.
And similarly, this notion ofavoidances of things you're
(06:47):
avoiding has come up repeatedlyover the last n number of years
as a way to look at theenvironment around me and look
at my interaction with thatenvironment as where are the
signals for what I should be orwhat I could be drilling into or
(07:16):
amplifying or addressing.
I've discovered throughinterviewing lots of people on
the subject, and by exploring inmy own life, that by identifying
what I'm avoiding and then byaddressing that sooner, it has
(07:38):
created this type of virtuouscycle of energy for dealing with
things that are even morechallenging.
I'm not sure I like it.
Because I'm building a muscle,which means I have to lift more
(07:58):
weight, right?
But I'm noticing that I can liftmore weight, and in so doing, I
feel stronger and more confidentin my ability to move through
the world with a greater senseof stability and I'm finding
that really helpful right now,given everything that's going on
(08:19):
in the world.
Jorge (08:20):
It's funny that you used the phrase"virtuous cycle"
because as you were talking, Iwas taking notes here, and I
have a note that says'viciouscycle.' I'll speak from personal
experience, when I've hadsituations like the ones you've
been describing there, where I'mavoiding doing something that
(08:41):
I'm going to find uncomfortable,painful, embarrassing, what have
you, the avoidance has theeffect of postponing whatever
negative outcomes might come myway.
But the outcomes come anyway.
(09:01):
And I feel terrible in theprocess.
Like I am not at my best byavoiding, and the feeling bad
about myself feeds theself-image that reinforces that
kind of behavior in some ways.
(09:22):
And then, that makes me want toavoid taking the next step even
more, because I feel like I'minadequate somehow.
So it's, almost like aself-perpetuating,
self-amplifying bias that you'recreating about your own
(09:42):
competency for dealing withpainful or difficult situations,
which makes things worse.
Harry (09:51):
Yeah, and increasingly, I'm learning that it's
unnecessary.
And I don't know that I everwould have gone here naturally,
except that I ran into this inthe interviews that I was doing
for the book that I wrote.
(10:12):
But to some extent, this ideastarted with a friend of mine,
Paul Henderson, who used to say,"Bad news doesn't get better
over time." And that was abookend on one side.
And then another friend of mine,Brent Johnson used to say that,
something his father said is, hegoes,"The facts are friendly."
He said,"The facts themselvesdon't actually have a valence."
(10:37):
That is, they're not charged.
It's our interpretation of thosefacts that leads us to having
some kind of emotional reaction.
And so, I've used those twoideas to navigate through the
world.
And then, over the last fewyears, having learned that some
(10:57):
of the more effective people inthe world prioritize what
they're avoiding, so that theycan make choices about having a
tough conversation or fillingout a tax form or making a
payment or taking theirattention and placing it on
something that they areexpending energy to avoid.
(11:21):
That, in itself, releases a lotof good energy, which allows
them to focus on other things.
So it's less about theavoidance, about the not getting
the thing done or about theprocrastination, and it's more
about releasing the energythat's being bollocked up by
that strategy so that you can godo and attend to other things.
(11:45):
And I think that's where myinterest in this is.
Jorge (11:50):
And hearing you talk about it, I'm gonna think out
loud here, but I'm wondering ifthere are different kinds of
situations in which you wouldlapse into this kind of
avoidance.
And one possible way oforganizing them, and there might
be others, these are just theones that come to mind, are
there are some situations whereyou are postponing dealing with
(12:14):
something because you are goingto be letting other people down,
and you're concerned with theirreaction.
Like, if you don't file yourtaxes in time because you've
been putting it off, you'reprobably not gonna be letting
anyone down directly.
It might blow up in your face itwill likely blow up in your face
(12:37):
but it's not like you arepostponing a difficult
conversation with your spouse.
Those feel like two differentorders of problems.
And I'm bringing this up becauseI'm trying to think about
situations that I've been in,and I've done this for both
kinds of situations.
(12:58):
And I feel like I've gottenpretty good at swallowing the
frogs in both cases.
But I'll speak to the lettingother people down piece, because
that's the one that is mostvivid in my mind and in my
experience.
I've found that whenever I havebeen in situations where I'm
(13:27):
putting off the difficultconversation, because I am
worried about letting the otherperson down or worried about
being seen as a"bad person" orwhat have you, oftentimes, when
I finally have the conversation,it's so much easier than I
(13:50):
thought it would be.
And the other, and it's oftenbeen much less of a big deal for
the other person than I thoughtit would be.
I've made a mountain out of amolehill, that kind of thing.
So it feels like it's been in mymind all along.
Harry (14:06):
I love that.
I love that you're categorizingthese, because I think that's
really helpful first.
Because I think there's anatural tendency to think about
things you're avoiding in termsof stuff you have to do that you
don't want to do, but placing itinto a category of perhaps
(14:32):
conversations you don't want tohave for fear of letting
somebody else down or hurtingsomebody else's feelings, of
course, then allows you toexplore the idea that maybe you
won't be letting them down orhurting their feelings, but they
might hurt yours or they mightlet you down.
And so now you've opened up thisthing of, maybe I'm avoiding
this thing because I don't wantto deal with it.
And that's the kind of avoidancein some ways that I was talking
(14:55):
about, but I don't think I wasclear about these categories and
what the implications of thesecategories are.
So back in, I don't know if itwas 2014, I went through a
workshop program weekend thing,it's called 21st Century
Leadership in Tacoma,Washington.
It was a thing that Rackspace...
(15:17):
I was a VP of Experience Designat a hosting company, and we
were working on building a cloudsolution at the time.
And when we got all done withthat, there was this leadership
opportunity for me to go do somedevelopment work.
And one of the things that theytaught us there is to ask our
ourself the question, what am Ipretending not to know?
(15:41):
What am I pretending not toknow?
And that was like thisbreakthrough question for me,
because that was the one where Iwas able to say, it's
categorically different in someways from things I know, but I
don't wanna deal with, becausenow I'm asking myself the
(16:02):
question, is there somethingthat I'm just pretending not to
know, that I'm fooling myself inthe process.
And if I can belly up to the barand accept the possibility that
I'm really fooling myself, whichis gonna make it easier for me
to fool everybody else, once I'mclear about that this is the
(16:22):
thing that I'm pretending not toknow, and now I can't avoid that
anymore, what are theimplications?
What does that mean in terms ofa difficult conversation I might
have to have with somebody elseor difficult conversation I'm
gonna perhaps have with myself,weirdly as that may sound.
Jorge (16:40):
When you say, what am I pretending not to know, does
that mean, what am I perhapssubconsciously choosing to
ignore?
Harry (16:52):
Yeah, kind of willful ignorance.
There's enough information toknow that I shouldn't be
ignoring it.
And that information may beemotional, it may not be in
words, but there's enoughinformation there to prompt me
to ask myself the question, isthere something that I should be
(17:12):
thinking about that I'm notthinking about?
Is there something that I shouldbe asking myself, questions I
should be asking myself?
And then like back to thatquestion of a pain in the
abdomen, is there something I'mpretending not to know?
A pain in the abdomen might bea...
it's just a thing.
And am I dismissing somethingthat I am then rationalizing
(17:34):
away?
And there's enough informationto add to, prompt you to say,
"Hmm, maybe something isn'tnormal." And what would be the
range of normal?
And given that range, what'sinside that bell shape curve and
what's outside that bell shapecurve?
And if something's outside ofthat, then"Oh, this is what I
(17:58):
was pretending not to know." Iwas pretending not to know that
this person is a pain in myside, right?
Or that I have a pain in myside.
Jorge (18:06):
A quote comes to mind; it's one of my favorite quotes
by Richard Feynman.
He said,"The first principle isthat you must not fool yourself,
and you are the easiest personto fool." Right?
And in this case, the fooling ishappening perhaps subconsciously
(18:27):
because you're trying to avoiddiscomfort.
Harry (18:32):
Do you know Luke Hohmann?
Jorge (18:34):
No.
Harry (18:35):
So, Luke is this amazing character in my life.
He's written a number of reallyinteresting books.
He was the author of a bookcalled Innovation Games, and
he's a SAFe Fellow, from SAFe,the SAFe agile world.
He's written books on softwarearchitecture.
A very accomplished guy in thesoftware design development
(18:58):
world.
And he and I are writing anarticle together right now on a
concept called CollapsingSliding Windows.
And it's the idea that there arethese events in the future that
are almost certainly going tohappen at some point, but it's a
little hard to know when they'regonna happen.
And moreover, there aresituations where those events
(19:22):
can happen much faster than youpredict.
And there are planningstrategies you can use for these
types of potential events.
And one of the ideas here isthere's often a predictable last
responsible moment.
And it's a concept that I reallyappreciate, because I've gotten
(19:45):
more rigorous about askingmyself the question, at what
point does it becomeirresponsible of me not to act
or not to do something or not toaddress a question, or so on and
so forth.
So that's maybe one of theantidotes to this, in my mind,
is to continually roll throughquestions like, what am I
(20:10):
pretending not to know?
When is the last responsiblemoment to fill in the blank?
And then, with these bookendquestions of, bad news doesn't
get better over time and thefacts are friendly, all of a
sudden I've got these pivotsthat I can use for navigating
(20:30):
through the world with a littlebit more agency.
Jorge (20:37):
That seems key.
The phrase"the facts arefriendly," I believe that it's
come up in our conversationsbefore, and that's starting to
feel to me like a central tenetsomehow, in that it implies
suspending judgment.
(21:00):
It implies clarity, right?
Like, what do you mean by thefacts?
Are you sure you're clear on thefacts?
So, that's starting to feel tome like a very important North
Star for people who are tryingto gain traction.
And part of what I'm hearing inthis passage that you've read
(21:24):
from this book, is that one ofthe things that might keep you
from having the impact you wantto have is maybe fear; your own
inability to look past theconcerns whether real or
(21:51):
imagined that might be turningthe facts unfriendly somehow.
Harry (22:00):
Yeah, and I think this idea of the facts are friendly
takes the teeth out of thenarrative, whatever you're
telling yourself is true, and itforces you to set these things
back into a more neutralcontext, which I think gives you
more choice in terms of how toreact because no longer are you
(22:24):
stuck in the frame of thenarrative fallacy, right?
Which is the story that you'retelling yourself is going to
frame a set of reasonable andunreasonable actions or
responses on a reasonable andunreasonable timeline.
And if you can take the factsout of the story and just look
(22:47):
at the facts on their own, itmakes it possible to tell
alternative stories, whichpotentially lead to alternative
strategies and actions.
And it's not always easy to dothis on your own.
Sometimes this is a buddy sport,or having a sensible person to
(23:08):
talk to who you trust theirjudgment and their discernment,
their ways of thinking aboutthings, makes it possible to
reimagine or reinterpret what'sactually happening to consider
perhaps a different emotionalresponse to it.
As you think about, if you backup from this and you look at
(23:29):
Marshall Rosenberg's work, whichI suspect you're familiar with
this, the NonviolentCommunication NVC work, right?
Where at the highest possiblelevel, there's this structure of
there's observation, the nextlevel down is interpretation,
the next level down is feeling,and the next level down is need.
(23:50):
So it's a way of looking atwhat's happening.
So.
If you were to do something,there's a set of observable
facts about it, there's aninterpretation that I'm
meaning-making what you'redoing, right?
And then, I'm having anemotional reaction to that;
that's my feeling.
And then, I have some kind ofunmet need, which then
(24:12):
translates into some kind ofaction on my part.
And the idea that I was drawingthis back to is, if you can
separate what you're actuallyobserving from how you're
interpreting it from how you'refeeling about it, you're
starting to peel apart the factsfrom the story, and that gives
you potentially more choice interms of how you're gonna
(24:34):
respond or react to what'shappening.
So, if you were to yell at meright now, I, could say,"Oh,
Jorge yelled at me." Or I couldsay,"Jorge raised his voice to
an unusual amplitude." Thesecond one would be the fact,
and the first one would be moreof an interpretation, because
(24:56):
yelling is my way ofunderstanding how a particular
volume is.
And then I might interpret thatas he's angry with me.
I might feel scared and then myunmet need might be to apologize
for something that I either didor didn't do.
But if I can go back and say,"Gosh, Jorge, just the amplitude
(25:19):
of his voice went up," and thenI can look at the possible
interpretations.
One possible interpretation isyou're angry.
Another possible interpretationis something hap...
you may have spilled your veryhot coffee over there and I
can't see it, but it's got youexcited about 210 degree liquid
(25:40):
dripping on your lap right now.
And so, your voice went up.
And that's gonna lead to a verydifferent emotional reaction on
my part.
And so, peeling these thingsapart start to become really
valuable when it comes tolooking at what's going on in
the world around us, consideringthe possibility that the facts
that we're seeing are notnecessarily tightly coupled or
(26:02):
bolted to what we think theymean and the story that we're
telling about them.
And if we can tease those aparta little bit, we end up in a
stronger position to consideralternative narratives and
consider how we might movethrough the space to make better
choices that are more in linewith our values and the goals
(26:22):
that we have and our needs.
Jorge (26:25):
That sounds like a really good way to encapsulate the
idea.
And just to try to wrap it up ina kind of concrete way, part of
what I'm hearing there is thatthat level of self-awareness is
easier done when you caninteract with someone else and
(26:54):
have them help you gain someperspective.
And I will just put this outthere, I haven't done this
myself for this particular usecase, but I suspect that this is
a good use for AI chatbots
Harry (27:12):
Oh, how cool is that?
Jorge (27:14):
And I'm saying that because on the one hand you can
write these ideas down and getsome feedback, even though
you're not dealing with asentient being, but just the
mere fact of putting the wordsout might make you more aware of
(27:38):
what is going on.
There's this...
people talk about rubberducking, this technique of
talking to the rubber duck andjust talking to the duck makes
you realize what is going on.
Like I said, I haven't done thisfor this particular use case,
but I have had similarinteractions with AI chatbots
where I know that I am nottalking with an entity that is
(28:01):
going to be passing judgment onme, and the responses, you can
take them at face value, but Ioften find that it helps me see
things from a slightly lessemotionally charged perspective
just because of the fact that Iknow that I'm talking with...
(28:21):
our friend Jesse James Garretttalks about the big ball of
numbers, right?
Like, I'm essentially talkingwith a big ball of numbers.
And just the fact that I can putit into words and getting some
reaction in words maybe could bea way to get a little bit of
perspective.
Harry (28:38):
I really like that idea a lot and I'm gonna have to play
with that a little bit.
Yeah.
Boy, that's clever.
Thank you for that suggestion.
That's really cool.
I never would've thought ofthat.
Jorge (28:50):
Alright, if the opportunity comes up, which I
hope it doesn't'cause I wanna beon top of things and I wanna be
very responsive and not getcaught up in these mental games,
but if it does, I'm gonna tryit.
Alright, Harry, as always atreat talking with you.
Harry (29:06):
Thank you so much, Jorge.
I really like theseconversations.
Narrator (29:15):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com