That strikes a chord. As an example from another field, I was a very serious young trumpet player. My teacher, who played in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, had me pick random instructions from a hat: "You got stuck in traffic, so you have to warm up in 2 minutes," "You got the time wrong and you have to kill 90 minutes before you perform," etc. It was a great lesson for trumpet playing and many other things.
Wow! Lance, that is amazing, and sounds like a very interesting teacher. That's really cool...and I expect that having played those out makes you more flexible generally, and, should the need arise, you won't be thinking about adapting for the first time. Very cool frame, thanks for sharing that, and I'll definitely pass it on!
My job involves running experimental tests on production equipment, and things often go wrong that have nothing to do with the test itself. I really like this "pull a slip" technique - I may adopt it to help younger associates have a flexible mindset and be prepared to think on their feet.
Renee, very interesting, and I'd love to hear an example if you're willing and able to share. Also, just took a peak at your Substack, and looks great. Subscribed!
Sure! One that I had happen to me: "you are running a test at a plant, it's 1 pm and the site says they have to shut down at 3 because they had second shift workers call in sick and don't have enough people to keep running the line. How do you pivot?" A more funny version is "a man you've never seen before bursts into the lab, grabs the radio, and hollers into it, "the green monster has overheated!" What do you do?"
In my case, the green monster was what they called their trash compactor, and that was a problem because all the chips we were making were going into trash bins. Without that compactor, the plant would have been overrun with chips in about 20 minutes. So, they started shutting the line down while we ran out to the line with bags to collect whatever test product we could. We laughed and said, "welp, guess we're done for the day!"
Wow, this is just fascinating to hear about. I feel like it's impossible to predict the myriad ways that things can go wrong...all the more need for flexibility! Thanks so much for sharing this. I love getting tiny keyhole insights into other peoples' work worlds.
I think there's a optimistic slant to Sod's/Murphy's Law, which is that, if anything can and will go wrong, I can be prepared for it and have a plan in place. I think this would be a great way to frame classroom management to the new teachers at my school.
Agree! Hard to do always be ready, but worth the effort to cultivate that attitude. Reminds me of a related quote from Louis Pasteur: “chance favors the prepared mind.”
Kate, absolutely agree. Impossible to be ready for anything, but you made my point more eloquently than I did — it's worth it to cultivate that attitude. And I always love a historical science quote;)
I like this - and have thoughts. Like- where is the line between Sod’s law and pessimism or the ever-feared negative energy? Also - what mental training or mindset keeps us in flexiblity and not careening over the edge and right down the slippery slope to anxiety? It's good to think ahead and be prepared - but what's the difference between that and ruminating? I'm asking as someone who was bit by a (big) dog last week just as I tried to leave my parents house for an international flight home. I’m fine and healing well, but after reading this, I think it might have been Sod’s dog!
Oh geeze! I hadn't even thought of Sod's dog...but I guess it wouldn't be Sod's if I could have thought of it. Well, I'm glad to hear you're ok; international flights are stressful enough as it is. I think the work of the author who I'll talk to in the next newsletter may be of interest to you. His book is basically about developing a flexible mindset. I must say, though, I struggled with that line between preparation and rumination. To be honest, one of the reasons I started this newsletter was so that I could have a place to practice "satisficing" — sending something out when it's fine, and not trying to polish like a book or article. I actually think it has helped me quite a bit!
Great post. I appreciate how this applies to sports, work and life. Sometimes our best moments are hidden in the unexpected situations. Your writing is relatable to all.
That's such a wonderful compliment, Teresa, especially because I'm always a bit self-conscious about focusing a post on musing about my personal lessons. Thank you!
While this particular post isn't about a topic that piques my interest, your writing is amazingly personal intimate for someone who is a best selling author. Keep that. You are so human, and that's refreshing.
Hey Paul, that means a lot to me! Earlier in my writing career I was a never-mention-yourself kind of guy. But as I've gotten older, I've realized that so much of my research is "mesearch," motivated by things that happened to me, or that I saw, or that just got me curious, and so I've found myself sharing more of the genesis of each interest. And I guess that naturally led to more personal sharing. Hopefully it doesn't fall into navel-gazing too often, but I've also found that thinking with my fingers in this newsletter is useful for me personally. It's definitely the most informal writing I've ever shared! ...And as far as being a best selling author, well, there's a lot of plain luck and timing in all that. I'm grateful, but I don't take it to heart as a sign that I've figured anything out. In fact, I'm starting on another book, and I'm pretty much convinced that I've forgotten how to write. Seriously, I was flipping through one of my books the other day saying to myself: "I know this happened, but I'm not sure how."
Hey great post David! Actually reminds me of Brad Stulberg's new book "Master of Change" about having Rugged Flexibility - being able to adapt in any situation, as like you said, because so much can always go wrong.
Me too! I plan to do a post on Brad's book soon, and perhaps a Q&A...so if you have any questions you want to pose to him, feel free to share them here!
Let me think on that - however, first one that comes to mind, since reading "Peak Performance" started my journey down the road of trying to oppose hustle culture, and trying to be rather grounded is this - what symmetry does he see through the multiple books that he has written? May add another question - once I finish Master of Change this weekend :)
Awesome! If I go with Q&A, I'll definitely pose that to him, but I'll check back here first to see if you come up with one after you finish Master of Change.
Matt! I already posed your initial question to him, and the Q&A is coming tomorrow. But I'll definitely ask him this too, and leave his response in the comments on tomorrow's post.
This text reminds me of a Nassim Taleb story that he wrote at "Antifragile"(or perhaps "Black Swan") of a casino that had a multi-million dollar top-notch security system. But they came into financial misfortune once not because of thieves but of an accountant who forgot for around ten years to declare some banknotes, and then they lost tens of millions. His point goes hand in hand with the Sod's law you mentioned.
I don’t need to translate this post to any related topic. This is exactly when I learned how unimportant a warmup routine actually is! Last minute start line arrival? It’s ok, you can PR anyhow. Thunderstorm delay and you spent the last 80 minutes on concrete under the grandstand waiting it out and are hungry and sleepy? Let your body show up, don’t stress the small stuff, and enjoy the drop in ten degrees to knock it out of the park (whatever that means for you). All great, great lessons to learn on the track -- that can then be applied to the rest of my life. Running surely can provide a metaphor for everything.
Love it. What events did you do?? ...I must say, before I adopted this mindset, I was always blaming those little things that go wrong before the race, which isn't so useful since I'm not sure I remember a single time when there wasn't at least something small that went wrong. ...To this day, though, I occasionally have a nightmare where I'm about to race and I realize I forgot to train. [Gulp]. Not much you can do about that one!
Oh yea, that one and the molasses legs with the finish in sight. I am far enough from a competitive mindset that these are no longer the things that haunt me. Things don’t go wrong, they go different -- and THAT is a very relevant mindset to this day. My preferred form of torture was the steeplechase.
I'm a lean, mean, healing machine and cannot wait to see what you'll be writing about next. I am also using my newsletter conscientiously now as a place to put some of the smaller ideas out in the world and to see what readers might like. It's a tough job to develop a writing career and I think that a lot of people have a hard time with the difference between "fine" and publishable. Fine is great for free content - but publishable is going to have to be a bit more in the direction of "mind-blown" or "can't put it down." Thanks for all you do!
Totally agree, and well said. ...I think I read a post of yours at some point that mentioned the dread of the "What are you working?" question. This newsletter helps me diffuse that dread somehow, while working on the looming thing elsewhere. Not totally sure why I connected those, but it just came to mind.
Sod’s Law is new to me but a great one to share with my engineering students. Building a robust design is about considering the edges cases and expecting things to go wrong.
Loved the story and your personal reflections too!
As usual, love your comment. I've been reading/interviewing a bunch about universal design, and that idea comes up a ton. In fact, some of it seems to look for very extreme users in order to illuminate the ways that things will probably go wrong even perhaps to less extreme degrees.
I love seeing the interplay between engineering systems and social systems. For sure they're very different and there aren't always easy mappings, but there are so many concepts that translate between the two domains.
Adding my voice to the chorus of people supporting these posts. Keep the variety coming, and I especially like when the personal lessons tie into sports. Speaking of which, since your Ryan Holiday Q&A, I picked up Discipline is Destiny and read it through. Thanks for the rec. I'm so impressed with how much wisdom (quotes, anecdotes, etc) he compresses into such a quick read. I love writing down good quotes on sticky notes and putting them on my wall, and I've already added half a dozen from his book. Thinking of experimenting with your newsletter, how'd you get inspired to do a Q&A with 4 photos? How did it feel compared to your usual Q&A format? Did you like it enough to try again? I thought it was both fun and creative. After reading the book, it just wouldn't have occurred to me to do a Q&A that way. Thanks again!
My favorite thing about Ryan's work is that it usually gets me to Google some person or moment in history I wasn't familiar with. I can't recall if we've discussed this before, but have you ever read about his organization system for information with the file cards? ....As far as the format, partly I knew that he was really busy so I was wary of aiming for too long an interview, even though we're friends. I also wanted to just share some of my thoughts, not only ask questions, and (as will be no surprise to you) I wanted to talk history a bit because I figured he'd come up with some cool quotes. I also wanted to jump around without much transition. So that format just came to mind as a solution that would allow me to muse a bit, not involve too many questions, and make the quick jumps feel more natural. And that image of Putin and Merkel I found so interesting, and it jumped to mind when I was reading about her in his book. So, yeah, it just emerged as a practical solution once I defined my constraints;) Very design-thinking!
That makes a lot of sense! I think in teach we'd call that backwards planning, so that is very well done. It was funny to read having just read the book because I imagine you both could make an argument that doing that interview was an example of not keeping the main thing the main thing, and yet it still happened anyway. The Merkel picture is a great one. His ability to recall and reference what he has read is so impressive, and he goes so far beyond surface level in so many arenas. I'm not sure if we've talked about the fiile cards either, but I love that system. I tried my own version of it for my senior thesis, and it made me both more organized and happier because I got to imagine I was doing a Ryan Holiday and Doris Kearns Goodwin impression. (DKG has a similar system.)
Regarding keeping the main thing the main thing...you're right, and notice how long after the book this happened;) It actually took us a long time after we agreed to do something to actually make this happen.
Haha...there are a few things, like this newsletter and some speaking, that are things I deliberately do even though they aren't the main thing. They do, though, often feed the main thing, sometimes in unexpected ways. So I think of the main thing as sort of like the star at the center of my solar system, and I want some other things orbiting, but I don't want too much in the far outer orbits. Although, even there, I like a random space rock now and then.
Hey David, nice of you to share this internal thought process with us! It's a good insight into how you 'carry a big basket' like your good friend advised. And very impressive for a young athlete like Dina Asher-Smith to pass on that advice to newbies. Adaptability is so important in all aspects of life! Things never go in straight lines.. it made me think of sports teams with pre game tactics and how they can often go out the window very quickly if unanticipated events happen or if the opposition change something up that throws the cat amongst the pigeons. I like these insights into how you take lessons from other people and relate them to your own experiences. Thanks, William.
William, you reminded me of a quote I enjoy (which I've heard attributed to Mike Tyson, but I have no idea if he originated it): "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
That strikes a chord. As an example from another field, I was a very serious young trumpet player. My teacher, who played in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, had me pick random instructions from a hat: "You got stuck in traffic, so you have to warm up in 2 minutes," "You got the time wrong and you have to kill 90 minutes before you perform," etc. It was a great lesson for trumpet playing and many other things.
Wow! Lance, that is amazing, and sounds like a very interesting teacher. That's really cool...and I expect that having played those out makes you more flexible generally, and, should the need arise, you won't be thinking about adapting for the first time. Very cool frame, thanks for sharing that, and I'll definitely pass it on!
My job involves running experimental tests on production equipment, and things often go wrong that have nothing to do with the test itself. I really like this "pull a slip" technique - I may adopt it to help younger associates have a flexible mindset and be prepared to think on their feet.
Renee, very interesting, and I'd love to hear an example if you're willing and able to share. Also, just took a peak at your Substack, and looks great. Subscribed!
Sure! One that I had happen to me: "you are running a test at a plant, it's 1 pm and the site says they have to shut down at 3 because they had second shift workers call in sick and don't have enough people to keep running the line. How do you pivot?" A more funny version is "a man you've never seen before bursts into the lab, grabs the radio, and hollers into it, "the green monster has overheated!" What do you do?"
In my case, the green monster was what they called their trash compactor, and that was a problem because all the chips we were making were going into trash bins. Without that compactor, the plant would have been overrun with chips in about 20 minutes. So, they started shutting the line down while we ran out to the line with bags to collect whatever test product we could. We laughed and said, "welp, guess we're done for the day!"
Wow, this is just fascinating to hear about. I feel like it's impossible to predict the myriad ways that things can go wrong...all the more need for flexibility! Thanks so much for sharing this. I love getting tiny keyhole insights into other peoples' work worlds.
And thank you for your kind words! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on future recommendations.
I think there's a optimistic slant to Sod's/Murphy's Law, which is that, if anything can and will go wrong, I can be prepared for it and have a plan in place. I think this would be a great way to frame classroom management to the new teachers at my school.
Jeff, I think that's a great frame, and I would've loved if someone helped me see things that way earlier in my career.
Agree! Hard to do always be ready, but worth the effort to cultivate that attitude. Reminds me of a related quote from Louis Pasteur: “chance favors the prepared mind.”
Kate, absolutely agree. Impossible to be ready for anything, but you made my point more eloquently than I did — it's worth it to cultivate that attitude. And I always love a historical science quote;)
Very insightful and the learning and lessons were executed brilliantly. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words, Peter! I'm never sure if I should go with the thinking-out-loud-personal-lesson posts, so I appreciate the encouragement.
I like this - and have thoughts. Like- where is the line between Sod’s law and pessimism or the ever-feared negative energy? Also - what mental training or mindset keeps us in flexiblity and not careening over the edge and right down the slippery slope to anxiety? It's good to think ahead and be prepared - but what's the difference between that and ruminating? I'm asking as someone who was bit by a (big) dog last week just as I tried to leave my parents house for an international flight home. I’m fine and healing well, but after reading this, I think it might have been Sod’s dog!
Oh geeze! I hadn't even thought of Sod's dog...but I guess it wouldn't be Sod's if I could have thought of it. Well, I'm glad to hear you're ok; international flights are stressful enough as it is. I think the work of the author who I'll talk to in the next newsletter may be of interest to you. His book is basically about developing a flexible mindset. I must say, though, I struggled with that line between preparation and rumination. To be honest, one of the reasons I started this newsletter was so that I could have a place to practice "satisficing" — sending something out when it's fine, and not trying to polish like a book or article. I actually think it has helped me quite a bit!
Great post. I appreciate how this applies to sports, work and life. Sometimes our best moments are hidden in the unexpected situations. Your writing is relatable to all.
Thank you
That's such a wonderful compliment, Teresa, especially because I'm always a bit self-conscious about focusing a post on musing about my personal lessons. Thank you!
While this particular post isn't about a topic that piques my interest, your writing is amazingly personal intimate for someone who is a best selling author. Keep that. You are so human, and that's refreshing.
Hey Paul, that means a lot to me! Earlier in my writing career I was a never-mention-yourself kind of guy. But as I've gotten older, I've realized that so much of my research is "mesearch," motivated by things that happened to me, or that I saw, or that just got me curious, and so I've found myself sharing more of the genesis of each interest. And I guess that naturally led to more personal sharing. Hopefully it doesn't fall into navel-gazing too often, but I've also found that thinking with my fingers in this newsletter is useful for me personally. It's definitely the most informal writing I've ever shared! ...And as far as being a best selling author, well, there's a lot of plain luck and timing in all that. I'm grateful, but I don't take it to heart as a sign that I've figured anything out. In fact, I'm starting on another book, and I'm pretty much convinced that I've forgotten how to write. Seriously, I was flipping through one of my books the other day saying to myself: "I know this happened, but I'm not sure how."
Hey great post David! Actually reminds me of Brad Stulberg's new book "Master of Change" about having Rugged Flexibility - being able to adapt in any situation, as like you said, because so much can always go wrong.
Me too! I plan to do a post on Brad's book soon, and perhaps a Q&A...so if you have any questions you want to pose to him, feel free to share them here!
Let me think on that - however, first one that comes to mind, since reading "Peak Performance" started my journey down the road of trying to oppose hustle culture, and trying to be rather grounded is this - what symmetry does he see through the multiple books that he has written? May add another question - once I finish Master of Change this weekend :)
Awesome! If I go with Q&A, I'll definitely pose that to him, but I'll check back here first to see if you come up with one after you finish Master of Change.
Sounds great! I'll make a reminder for myself at the end of the book.
So, my favourite example from the book is the story of Nils Van Der Poel. I wanted to know from Brad, that along with Nils, who are some of his favourite athletes to have exhibited rugged flexibility over the course of their careers? Like Chelsea Sodaro: https://www.instagram.com/p/CxEXigOv0yz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Also, I'd love to add my piece that I wrote on the book too, if you want to give it a read : ) https://hudsonavenue.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-master-of-change-by-brad?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Matt! I already posed your initial question to him, and the Q&A is coming tomorrow. But I'll definitely ask him this too, and leave his response in the comments on tomorrow's post.
Great piece — reminiscent of Brad Stulberg's new book (which I saw you blurbed!). :)
Planning to post on it soon!
Funny, I just wrote this!
Haha...I'm planning a post or Q&A on his new book very soon!
Ha! I'm reading Master of Change right now and loving it.
Likewise! Brad, David, Alex Hutchinson... that whole crew of evidence-based wellness writers are my favourite reads.
This text reminds me of a Nassim Taleb story that he wrote at "Antifragile"(or perhaps "Black Swan") of a casino that had a multi-million dollar top-notch security system. But they came into financial misfortune once not because of thieves but of an accountant who forgot for around ten years to declare some banknotes, and then they lost tens of millions. His point goes hand in hand with the Sod's law you mentioned.
Thanks for indirectly reminding me of that story.
Wow, that sounds like an amazing story! I definitely want to hunt for it to read the details now.
(runs around the house telling everyone that David Epstein thinks he remember reading something I wrote...)
But seriously.... yeah, it's somehow better than talking about my piles of journals - which just sit there and stare at me like, "now what?!"
I don’t need to translate this post to any related topic. This is exactly when I learned how unimportant a warmup routine actually is! Last minute start line arrival? It’s ok, you can PR anyhow. Thunderstorm delay and you spent the last 80 minutes on concrete under the grandstand waiting it out and are hungry and sleepy? Let your body show up, don’t stress the small stuff, and enjoy the drop in ten degrees to knock it out of the park (whatever that means for you). All great, great lessons to learn on the track -- that can then be applied to the rest of my life. Running surely can provide a metaphor for everything.
Love it. What events did you do?? ...I must say, before I adopted this mindset, I was always blaming those little things that go wrong before the race, which isn't so useful since I'm not sure I remember a single time when there wasn't at least something small that went wrong. ...To this day, though, I occasionally have a nightmare where I'm about to race and I realize I forgot to train. [Gulp]. Not much you can do about that one!
Oh yea, that one and the molasses legs with the finish in sight. I am far enough from a competitive mindset that these are no longer the things that haunt me. Things don’t go wrong, they go different -- and THAT is a very relevant mindset to this day. My preferred form of torture was the steeplechase.
I'm a lean, mean, healing machine and cannot wait to see what you'll be writing about next. I am also using my newsletter conscientiously now as a place to put some of the smaller ideas out in the world and to see what readers might like. It's a tough job to develop a writing career and I think that a lot of people have a hard time with the difference between "fine" and publishable. Fine is great for free content - but publishable is going to have to be a bit more in the direction of "mind-blown" or "can't put it down." Thanks for all you do!
Totally agree, and well said. ...I think I read a post of yours at some point that mentioned the dread of the "What are you working?" question. This newsletter helps me diffuse that dread somehow, while working on the looming thing elsewhere. Not totally sure why I connected those, but it just came to mind.
Sod’s Law is new to me but a great one to share with my engineering students. Building a robust design is about considering the edges cases and expecting things to go wrong.
Loved the story and your personal reflections too!
As usual, love your comment. I've been reading/interviewing a bunch about universal design, and that idea comes up a ton. In fact, some of it seems to look for very extreme users in order to illuminate the ways that things will probably go wrong even perhaps to less extreme degrees.
I love seeing the interplay between engineering systems and social systems. For sure they're very different and there aren't always easy mappings, but there are so many concepts that translate between the two domains.
Adding my voice to the chorus of people supporting these posts. Keep the variety coming, and I especially like when the personal lessons tie into sports. Speaking of which, since your Ryan Holiday Q&A, I picked up Discipline is Destiny and read it through. Thanks for the rec. I'm so impressed with how much wisdom (quotes, anecdotes, etc) he compresses into such a quick read. I love writing down good quotes on sticky notes and putting them on my wall, and I've already added half a dozen from his book. Thinking of experimenting with your newsletter, how'd you get inspired to do a Q&A with 4 photos? How did it feel compared to your usual Q&A format? Did you like it enough to try again? I thought it was both fun and creative. After reading the book, it just wouldn't have occurred to me to do a Q&A that way. Thanks again!
My favorite thing about Ryan's work is that it usually gets me to Google some person or moment in history I wasn't familiar with. I can't recall if we've discussed this before, but have you ever read about his organization system for information with the file cards? ....As far as the format, partly I knew that he was really busy so I was wary of aiming for too long an interview, even though we're friends. I also wanted to just share some of my thoughts, not only ask questions, and (as will be no surprise to you) I wanted to talk history a bit because I figured he'd come up with some cool quotes. I also wanted to jump around without much transition. So that format just came to mind as a solution that would allow me to muse a bit, not involve too many questions, and make the quick jumps feel more natural. And that image of Putin and Merkel I found so interesting, and it jumped to mind when I was reading about her in his book. So, yeah, it just emerged as a practical solution once I defined my constraints;) Very design-thinking!
That makes a lot of sense! I think in teach we'd call that backwards planning, so that is very well done. It was funny to read having just read the book because I imagine you both could make an argument that doing that interview was an example of not keeping the main thing the main thing, and yet it still happened anyway. The Merkel picture is a great one. His ability to recall and reference what he has read is so impressive, and he goes so far beyond surface level in so many arenas. I'm not sure if we've talked about the fiile cards either, but I love that system. I tried my own version of it for my senior thesis, and it made me both more organized and happier because I got to imagine I was doing a Ryan Holiday and Doris Kearns Goodwin impression. (DKG has a similar system.)
Regarding keeping the main thing the main thing...you're right, and notice how long after the book this happened;) It actually took us a long time after we agreed to do something to actually make this happen.
Ha! Good point, and I admire that. Writing this comment also might not be keeping the main thing the main thing, but it's too much fun not to do.
Haha...there are a few things, like this newsletter and some speaking, that are things I deliberately do even though they aren't the main thing. They do, though, often feed the main thing, sometimes in unexpected ways. So I think of the main thing as sort of like the star at the center of my solar system, and I want some other things orbiting, but I don't want too much in the far outer orbits. Although, even there, I like a random space rock now and then.
Haha now there's a space analogy that would make Kepler smile
Hey David, nice of you to share this internal thought process with us! It's a good insight into how you 'carry a big basket' like your good friend advised. And very impressive for a young athlete like Dina Asher-Smith to pass on that advice to newbies. Adaptability is so important in all aspects of life! Things never go in straight lines.. it made me think of sports teams with pre game tactics and how they can often go out the window very quickly if unanticipated events happen or if the opposition change something up that throws the cat amongst the pigeons. I like these insights into how you take lessons from other people and relate them to your own experiences. Thanks, William.
William, you reminded me of a quote I enjoy (which I've heard attributed to Mike Tyson, but I have no idea if he originated it): "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."