The Prepared Mind: Skills v States

To tackle the wicked problems of our present and future, we need to embrace a strange, counter-intuitive irony: as organizations across all sectors continue to create and adopt technologies like artificial intelligence, employees need to stay relevant by increasing their subjective intelligence.

My research on master craftsmen and how they gain mastery might be the place to seek initial solutions. One way to do that is to increase self-awareness with your inner experience. As you learn to manage your feelings, you clear the way to develop a greater feel for your work.

Credit: Alina Grubnyak

Living and working with Craft is about being confident in your vision, knowing how to get there, and what it will do for your life. Most of us focus on the how—those more tangible skills that map where we need to be.

Because the idea of mission and fulfillment are more ethereal—they require a bit of a leap of faith. In the space between hard skills and soft skills lies the unknown. In the unknown is where a whole spectrum of emotions from excitement to anxiety reside.

When we are confronted by emotions that trouble us we reach for the concrete. We focus on the result.

For example, constructive self-talk is the skill to mastering a state of confidence in any condition—but how many of us think of that while we are beating ourselves up for not being confident? Regulated breathing is the skill to mastering a state of being calm in any condition—but how often are we gaining awareness of our breathing when we feel under attack by a manager or peer?

When we get into environments that are stressful or have pressure and consequence, and we abandon our goals and skills only to survive, it’s because we lack the mental skills. Effective self-management comes through honed skills like constructive self-talk and regulated breathing while one is under pressure. We have to be tested over and over and over again to develop mastery of mental skills.

As you explore your inner world, your outer world will come more sharply into focus.

As you face your imagined barriers, you will encounter real ones, as well.

—Julia Cameron

PRACTICE: How do you apply this idea yourself?

Write in a journal. Write without stopping for 15 minutes every day. Increase that time if you can or want to. If you can be honest on paper, you can find out who you are.

For people new to journaling, there is a pressure to choose certain words to express. Sometimes you self-edit, sometimes you gain clarity. With clarity comes conviction.

Everyone has a voice. When it comes to being effective, it's critical to listen to its tone and content.

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If you find yourself blaming your (mental) tools, do something about it. Learn about mental models, learn from how Craftsmen talk about how they learn and get better at what they do and more importantly, take ownership. Moving forward requires change but change by itself does not mean that you are moving forward. As Socrates said, “The un-examined life is not worth living.”

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Christine Haskell, Ph.D. is a leadership consultant and adjunct faculty at Washington State University. She helps busy leaders take responsibility for their learning and development. She writes on the topic of “Craftsmanship and The Future of Work.” sharing lessons from master craftsmen and women on personal and professional mastery, is due out late 2019. Sign up for her (semi-regular) newsletter here.

Modern Craft Skills: Deliberate Practice

Photo by Marcel Schreiber

Deliberate Practice is made up of hard work and planning.

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HARD WORK

There is no substitute for the ability to deliberately showing up. Hard work is not always about working hard. Sometimes finding the easiest way to solve a problem can also be a sign of elegant, efficient thinking. Bill Gates has stated, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” In the long run, however, that engineer won’t fully develop their talents, wrestle with complexity, and innovate on the tough problems. That requires a more serious application of effort. 

There is a time in our careers when we think; I’m going to do what I do better than anyone else. As we mature our thinking shifts to; I’m going to do what I do to the best of my ability. Some people interpret that statement as accepting 3rd place. Competing against one’s self is a sign of maturity. We learn later in our lives that we only have control over ourselves. 

As we gain depth in our craft—whatever that is—we learn to critique and evaluate our work. We read up on the topic, take classes to advance our knowledge, and connect with others doing something similar. Sometimes we mentor and teach novices, seeing through their eyes, further deepening our understanding of the skill, context, and ability to improvise. We view our craft from multiple perspectives. 

PRACTICE

• Choose an aspect of your craft and study it thoroughly.

• Make a list of issues in your life that need some hard work.

• Choose one area and establish a plan to develop excellence.

• Who will you contact?

• What will you read?

• What will you do?

COMMIT

[ ] I commit to myself a lifestyle of hard work so that I can reach my fullest potential.

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PLANNING

Hard work, when unfocused, can lead us astray. Showing up to practice is one thing, but how much time to we invest in preparing for an effective practice? Planning is a key component of hard work.

Hard work + Planning = Deliberate Practice

The University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari and Seattle Seahawks football coach Pete Carrol are accomplished and respected coaches that have achieved impressive results. Both cite former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden as a primary career mentor. Coach Wooden meticulously planned every aspect of his teams’ practice. He calculated drills to the minute. Every element of their sessions is choreographed, including where the practice balls were placed. Coaches do not want any time lost by players running to a misplaced equipment bin. 

Practices start and end on time. If practice does not end on time, players start to hold back a little effort and save their energy. Coaches want their players to try their best throughout practice, so they become sticklers for time management. If we carefully orchestrate our practice, we work harder and get more done in less time. 

If we are to rise in our Craft, we need to work hard, but we also need to be deliberate about the time we are putting in. Planning places effort where effort is most needed. People who combine these two ideas have a firm foundation of deliberate practice upon which they can move toward success.

• Make a list of the activities you do each week.

• Estimate the time spent on each activity.

• Does the time spent reflect the amount of time you’d like to spend?

• Do you start and end on time?

• What changes do you need to make to better manage your time and become more deliberate in your practice?

COMMIT

[ ] I commit to myself to establishing and maintaining a time of reflection.

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Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves successfully in their pursuit of mastery. Learn more about applying craft skills in the modern world.

GOOD HUMANING: Coming together and falling apart..on the road to repair.

“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ~ Pema Chödrön

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Important to consider when shooting for resolution or results. The tangible outcomes we favor are often more ethereal than we would like to admit. Sometimes a friendship lasts for a time, sometimes a lifetime. What resolves a situation today might only be a band-aid for what we need to reckon with tomorrow.

If change truly is the only constant, then any “resolution” is impermanent by definition.

Which brings me to this visual.

Photo Credit: unknown Wabi Sabi bowl.

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".

In essence, the process is the result.

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This post-series is about trying to anchor my experience by exploring within and reminding myself about what it means to practice "good humaning." It's about moving forward imperfectly. To follow this thread in my posts, look for these tags: #NotesFromMyYogaJournal

Christine Haskell, Ph.D. is a leadership consultant and adjunct faculty at Washington State University. She helps busy leaders take responsibility for their learning and development. She writes on the topic of “Craftsmanship and The Future of Work.” sharing lessons from master craftsmen and women on personal and professional mastery, is due out late 2019. Sign up for her (semi-regular) newsletter here.

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Emotions are a tool

[ from Neuroscience News ]

Summary: People have more control over how their emotions are influenced by others than previously thought. Researchers found people who wanted to stay calm when presented with upsetting stimuli remained unfazed by angry emotions expressed by others. However, when they wanted to feel angry, they were more highly influenced by others who were angry.

Source: Stanford

Photo Credit: Neuroscience News

In a new study, Stanford psychologists examined why some people respond differently to an upsetting situation and learned that people’s motivations play an important role in how they react.

Their study found that when a person wanted to stay calm, they remained relatively unfazed by angry people, but if they wanted to feel angry, then they were highly influenced by angry people. The researchers also discovered that people who wanted to feel angry also got more emotional when they learned that other people were just as upset as they were, according to the results from a series of laboratory experiments the researchers conducted.

Their findings, published June 13 in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, reveal that people have more control over how their emotions get influenced than previously realized, the researchers said.

“We have long known that people often try to regulate their emotions when they believe that they are unhelpful,” said James Gross, a professor of psychology at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “This set of studies extends this insight by showing that people can also regulate the way they are influenced by others’ emotions.”

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Researchers have largely assumed that people’s emotions get influenced automatically – in an unconscious, immediate response to other people’s emotions, said Goldenberg. His team’s new research challenges that perspective, he said.

“Our emotions are not passive nor automatic,” Goldenberg said. “They are a little bit of a tool. We have the ability to use our emotions to achieve certain goals. We express certain emotions to convince other people to join our collective cause. On social media, we use emotions to signal to other people that we care about the issues of a group to make sure people know we’re a part of it.”

Further research needs to be done in order to understand the relationship between people and their emotions. One of the next topics Goldenberg says he wants to examine further is whether the desire of people to want to see and experience certain emotions around them lies at the core of how they choose their network of friends and other people around them.

“It seems that the best way to regulate your emotions is to start with the selection of your environment,” Goldenberg said. “If you don’t want to be angry today, one way to do that is to avoid angry people. Do some people have an ingrained preference for stronger emotions than others? That’s one of my next questions.”

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Christine Haskell, PHD has built her practice on credible, published research and data. In the Research Series, you’ll find highlights, shareable statistics, and links to the full source material.