A player's mindset

Curiosity

When we’re kids, our days are filled with a sense of adventure. We explore every inch of the garden, we race through shopping malls, we climb trees, and we swing from branches. We’re not striving for goals or trying to boost our resume. We’re following our curiosity and enjoying activities without worrying about results.

But as we get older, this spirit of adventure gets slowly squeezed out of us. Link

✏️ Should I think about “reading a paper a week” as an opportunity to explore an interesting idea rather than a task/step stone to developing my career? Everything I do should be driven by curiosity instead of external motivation.

One Zen concept that came up time and again in Jackson’s coaching practices was the Japanese word shoshin, which roughly translates as ‘beginner’s mind’. Shoshin refers to a state of mind in which we approach every task and situation with the curiosity, openness and humility of a beginner. Link

Audacity (Confidence)

In WoW I’ve never been Ali Abdaal, the slightly nerdy schoolkid with zero sporting ability and confidence issues. I’ve always been Sepharoth, the tall, handsome Blood Elf Warlock with billowing purple robes and an army of demons at my command.

Play allows us to take on different roles or personas, whether we’re becoming a character in WoW or acting out an imaginary scene with friends in the playground. These characters allow us to express different aspects of ourselves and transform our experiences into something more enjoyable. When you take on a different persona, you start to find adventure. Link

My favourite method involves what I call ‘flipping the confidence switch’; in other words, challenging yourself to behave as if you’re confident in your task, even if you’re not. The method is even more simple than it sounds. The next time you’re not feeling good enough to take a chance, simply ask yourself, ‘What would it look like if I were really confident at this? What would it look like if I approached this task feeling confident that I could do it?’ Link

Imagine what your life would look like if you received five proverbial points for failing, rather than losing five like in the experiment. Imagine what would happen if people cheered you on for a little stumble rather than humiliated you. Imagine how you’d approach things if you treated them as experiments, where failure would be just as valuable as success.

Might you now see the game of life slightly differently? Suddenly, the stakes are lower. And suddenly, you can afford to play around a little. Link

✏️ Make this one of my goals - fail more often.

Make a start, even if it's a shaky one. You won’t need to get perfect for a long time yet. Link

Learning

In identical circumstances, with identical material, the people who had to teach others about a subject would learn the material better themselves. The researchers named this phenomenon the ‘protégé effect’. Link

✏️ Try to explain new concepts to other people

Relationships

These random acts of kindness offer the first way to integrate the helper’s high into our day-to-day lives. By stopping what you’re doing and offering help to people at random, you can boost your endorphin levels and help yourself work harder. Link

The helper’s high also shows us that asking for help from others can actually be a gift to them, rather than the burden we usually assume it will be. Link

How to overcome uncertainty

There are a handful of processes that reinforce the loop between uncertainty, anxiety and paralysis:

• We overestimate what’s at stake. Someone who’s already anxious will think that the uncertain event is going to be worse than it already is.
• We become hypervigilant. Sensing that something negative might happen, our safety antennae prick up to the sign of any potential danger. Link

✏️ 在自习室播客里听到过：看恐怖片最恐怖的时候就是不知道鬼是谁、鬼在什么时候出现，这种对未知的恐惧。一个可以参考的办法：想象最糟糕最恐怖的事情，做好最糟糕的心理准备，当你回头的时候就发现鬼也没有这么可怕了。

Technique: Commander's Intent Flesh out the following:

1. The purpose behind the operation
2. The end state that the commander was aiming for
3. The key tasks that the commander felt should be taken to accomplish the objective Link

Today, I apply this insight to my own life every day. Previously, when I embarked on a project my instinct was to immediately press ahead, planning every step – without ever really thinking about my desired end-state. But this level of obsessive planning can prove an obstacle. I would get so bogged down in ticking off specific tasks that I would lose track of what the ultimate point was. So now, before embarking on a new project, I ask myself the first commander’s intent question: ‘What is the purpose behind this?’ And I build my to-do list from there. Link

Goal setting

Prioritise

When you’ve got a large degree of choice in what you could be doing with your time, it makes it a lot harder to commit to something in a given time slot. Our brain is always thinking, ‘I’m working on X right now, but maybe I could be working on Y, or possibly even Z.’

This is risky; if you’re doing a house renovation while working on a huge project at work, while also trying to learn Japanese, while also trying to get your blog off the ground, while also trying to coach your kids’ football team, everything is going to feel a lot more stressful.

Sustainable productivity means recognising the limitations on our time. Link

✏️ Pick one thing and commit to it. Separate out the "planning" and the "doing" and clear my brain's RAM under the "doing" mode. 📚 Related: [[Mindset 20240727-1207#The waiting room will never be empty]]

The "Hell yeah or no" trick

When you find yourself weighing up whether to take on a new project or commitment, you’ve got two options – either ‘hell yeah’ or ‘no’. There’s no in between.

With this filter, you start finding that 95 per cent of commitments are ones you should reject. Rarely are things a ‘hell yeah’. They’re usually along the lines of ‘This could conceivably be useful or semi-interesting, so yeah, why not?’ These are justifications from your brain that you need to overrule. Think about how much you have on already. If it isn’t a ‘hell yeah’, it’s not worth doing. Link ^6a6a17

Setting NICE (not SMART) goals

My preferred method doesn’t involve fixating on an external outcome or destination, but instead emphasises the feel-good journey. It’s based on what I call NICE goals.

• Near-term: Near-term goals ensure that we’re concentrating on the immediate steps we need to take along our journey. They help us avoid being overwhelmed by the bigger picture. I find that a daily or weekly objective is the most helpful time horizon.
• Input-based: Input-based goals emphasise the process, rather than some distant, abstract end-goal. Whereas an output-based goal would home in on the end result: ‘Lose 5kg by the end of the year’, ‘Hit the bestseller list with my book’, an input-based goal would focus on what we can do in the here and now: ‘Go for a ten-minute walk everyday’, ‘Write 100 words each morning for my novel’.
• Controllable: We want to focus on goals that are within our control. ‘Spend eight hours a day on my novel’ probably isn’t something you can actually do, since many external factors would have to come together for such an input to be possible. Setting a more genuinely controllable goal (like allocating twenty minutes per day to the task) is far more realistic.
• Energising: We’ve already discussed plenty of principles and strategies for making our projects, tasks and chores more energising. Is there a way to integrate play, power and people into the goals you set yourself? Link

SMART goals can be used for long-term objectives and NICE goals tell you how to get there. Examples:

Crystal ball method

For tough goals that you may struggle to attain, use the crystal ball method:

• Imagine it’s one week later, and you haven’t actually started the task you intended to. What are the top three reasons why you didn’t get to it?
• What can you do to help mitigate the risk of those top three reasons derailing you?
• Who can you ask for help in sticking to this commitment?
• What action can you take right now that will help increase the odds that you’ll actually do the task? Link

By running through what could go wrong in your head, you dramatically reduce the likelihood that it actually will.

Get the momentum going

We’re not going to leave a conversation without you having at least one, two or three actions to take.’ ‘Is that it?’ I thought. Is coming up with ‘one, two or three actions’ really enough to turn around a business? And then I reflected on my own life. All too often, my difficulty making things happen is that I don’t have a set of clear, simple steps to follow right now. Hence inertia. And hence procrastination.

Mochary calls his principle the ‘bias to action’. Link

📚 Related: [[Wait But Why Year One#19. How to Beat Procrastination]]

Don't beat yourself up too hard

When we’re failing to maintain momentum on a task, we tend to beat ourselves up. But this helps nobody. If anything, it makes things worse. The inertia drives a sense of self-loathing. And that sense of self-loathing makes us even less likely to do anything fruitful.

Is there a way to break this doom-loop? As Wohl and his colleagues found, forgiving ourselves is the escape hatch. But how? Perhaps my favourite way is a method I call Find the Win. It involves celebrating something, however small, and however unrelated to your work. I like to use the format: ‘I didn’t do X, but I did do Y.’

Examples:

• I didn’t go for that early-morning workout session today. But I did get an extra hour in bed and I’m feeling more refreshed than usual.
• I didn’t finish the last part of that report. But it was for a good reason. I chatted with a colleague in the staff kitchen and we had a lovely catch-up.
• I didn’t finish that job application today. But I got to spend time with my grandma instead, so that’s a win for today. Link

📚 Related: [[Mindset 20240727-1207]]

‘I’ve spent five minutes on social media; I might as well continue to do so for the next three hours.’ ‘I missed my morning workout; I guess today is a write-off, and I’ll just binge-watch TV instead of getting anything done.’ ‘I skipped a day of my language learning app streak, so I might as well give up on learning the language altogether.’

Failing with abandon is a common reason we waste vast amounts of energy. The key thing is getting back on course. Link

Alignment Quests: Long-term goals/values in everyday behaviour/deicisons

[The] final ingredient in alignment involves a mindset shift: from thinking about our values at the level of lifetimes and years, to thinking about our values at the level of daily choices.

The question is how. We all make decisions every day that take us away from our values. The person who values freedom, but stays in a controlling job waiting for their shares to vest. The person who values close relationships, but spends most of their time working and neglects time with family and friends. These are instances where daily decisions don’t align with what we most desire.

But with the right tools, we can subtly shift ourselves back towards the things that matter the most, and in turn sustain our productivity (and enrich our lives) for longer.

[Every day, when you sit down to begin work, look at your vision board or 1 year goals. Then] under each of the areas (of health, work and relationships), choose one subcategory to focus on. Examples:

• H: Gym session 15.30–16:30
• W: Make progress in writing Chapter 9
• R: Call Nani (my grandma) Link

✏️ “仰望星空，脚踏实地”

How to overcome fear

A simple way to put cognitive reappraisal into practice is to remind yourself that the thing you’re feeling so bad about probably won’t matter that much in the future. You can do this by asking yourself the following three questions, which add up to what I call the 10/10/10 rule. Ask yourself:

• Will this matter in 10 minutes?
• Will this matter in 10 weeks?
• Will this matter in 10 years? Link

Example: Trigger: You don’t get hired for a job.

• Will this matter in 10 min? Probably. I might feel pretty low for the rest of the day.
• Will this matter in 10 weeks? Probably not, because I’m going to apply to a bunch of other jobs by then.
• Will this matter in 10 years? Definitely not. Few people become successful in their careers without any setbacks and I’ll learn to see this as one small hiccup. Link

Take rest/recovery

Every day, before starting work, I think about when I’ll be feeling most overexerted and I time-block fifteen minutes out at the slots when I think I’ll most need it. And whenever I’m tempted to push through it, I remember the science of self-regulation – and that the harder you work, the more overexerted you become. And I remind myself of the importance of rest – even when you don’t think you need it. Link

Try this simple experiment. Set a timer for five minutes and make two lists. The first is a list of things you tend to do when you’re feeling drained of energy. The second is a list of things that tend to actually recharge that energy. If you’re anything like me, you might find that the two lists look very different. Link

📚 Related: [[Recovery Routines]]