Peak Performance Newsletter #3 | On the Limitations of Thinking, 2 types of Games, and Human Development
Hey All,
I didn't have a coherent theme that felt right this week. In lieu of that, I'm sharing a smattering of interesting things that arose over the course of my week:
"I don't think it's the kind of thing you can figure out by thinking..."
A good friend said this during a bookclub discussion of principles in Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning. It immediately prompted me to break out into hysterical laughter proclaiming, "I'm beginning to realize that might be most things."
This is a concept that has been rocking my world lately: the class of things which cannot be figured out by thinking absolutely dwarfs the class of things that can. A non-exhaustive list:
Anything that arises from relationship. Relationship issues cannot be solved in the individual. They must be solved through relationship. Thinking is a useless tool here. Vulnerability, communication, and compassion are the tools of choice.
Problems with a meaningful degree of uncertainty. Thinking is great for identifying cause and effect. But the relationship between cause and effect is almost always identified after the effect has been caused. ****When people explain the meteoric rise of their business, they had no clue it would go that way. They could identify cause and effect in retrospect (likely incorrectly), but the actual they did it was through action and experimentation. From this perspective, a saying has been emerging in coaching sessions lately: Clarity is a post-hoc invention.
I think this is one of the core reasons to embrace a process-orientation: you cannot figure things out ahead of time. The true way forward is to optimize for units of learning. In other words: Try, Fail, Learn.
I'd like to keep expanding this list: what other class of issues is thinking incapable of solving?
Finite vs. Infinite Games
This obscure title somehow made its way into my life twice this week. The high level idea: there are two kinds of games:
Finite, which are played to an end in order to be won
Infinite, which are played to continue playing
Life is an infinite game. There's no winning condition, you play in order to keep on playing.
A potential heuristic for if you're on a path that is right for you: are you playing for an endgame or are you playing to continue play? In other words - are you playing the real game of your life or a smaller, subgame?
For years I was playing a finite game—working in technology in order to get enough money to leave technology (or full-time employment, perhaps). Now I've left and and naturally find myself embracing a much more "infinite" mindset—there is no end goal other than continuing play of this game.
Predicting vs. Positioning
Some of my favorite thoughts arise from the fallacy of prediction. Almost no one can accurately predict anything substantial about the future. Even fewer can do so in a useful enough way that you can benefit.
In short, prediction is bullshit.
What to do instead? Focus on positioning: building your life in such a way that you can benefit from opportunity.
Common examples of good positioning generally involve having slack in system:
Surplus cash to take advantage of investment opportunities as they arise
Surplus time to hop on exciting projects as they present themselves
Surplus goodwill in relationships to call in favors as you need them
This correlates very closely with Nassim Taleb's notion of Antifragility: The best positioning is that which allows you to benefit from the inevitable change, disorder, and chaos in the world.
Which reminds me of another Taleb quote from The Bed of Procrustes:
"The ancients knew very well that the only way to understand events was to cause them."
Every marketing prediction you've ever heard is this exactly: they are "predictions" aimed at bring things into existence.
On Human Development
Robert Kegan is one of the foremost scholars on Human Development. I stumbled upon a clip this week in which he described one of the fundamental prerequisites to development:
"You need forms of challenge, you need experiences that run you into the limitations of your current way of making sense. You need good problems that you don't seek to solve too quickly, because when you solve a problem quickly you're the same person coming out of it that you were going into it, you need problems that you can build a relationship to so that you are using these problems to solve you more than you trying to solve these problems."
Reminded me of a quote by a friend when describing painful relationship challenges he was experiencing with someone dear to him: "I'm treating it like my own little yoga."
Hope you all are well and enjoying the Labor day holiday!
Best,
Justin