I Got Mad Flows!!! The Happiness Formula

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I’ve heard it hundreds of times while listening to my favorite rap artists - a proclamation of the supremacy of their “flow.”  In that context, the artist extols his personal talent at using verbal skill to connect audience and idea in a way that is both entertaining and enlightening.  Lil Wayne, one of the current kings of flow, may not realize that the process of tapping into that “flow” may hold the key to a human’s happiness.

Allow me to take a step back from iTunes to discuss a different influence.  I’m working my way through “The Happiness Hypothesis,” by Jonathan Haidt, a very readable discussion of the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, spirituality and  an individual’s search for greater happiness.  Its ideas have equally fascinated and discomfited me.  While it is illuminating to understand patterns of seemingly irrational behavior I have observed in myself and others, it also disappointing to reduce once romantic notions of self-determination and relationship development to simple, biological terms.

Related to that notion of biological or hereditary destiny is the concept of the “happiness formula” outlined in Chapter 5.  In it Haidt quotes research by psychologists Martin Seligman, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ken Sheldon and David Schkade and their advancement of the simple formula which governs one’s ability to achieve happiness: H = S + C + V.  According to the research, “H”, or happiness, is a function of a pre-determined level of happiness (“S”).  This level, really more of a range, is inherited from your parents, and determines whether you see the world through an optimistic or pessimistic lens.  While most people fall somewhere in the middle of the optimist/pessimist continuum, where exactly one falls determines how great a level of happiness one can ultimately achieve.  “S” is beyond any individual’s control.

Now, before you lock yourself in a dark closet with a bucket of pint of Haagen Dazs because your inherent pessimism will relegate you to a life of sorrow, don’t forget about “C” and “V”: the two external factors over which individuals may exert control.  “C” represents the conditions of your daily existence, and evidence suggests that the removal of certain conditions can markedly increase your happiness.  According to the four scholars, removal of noise (especially noise that is variable or intermittent), commuting (especially in heavy traffic), perceived lack of control over your time and tasks, shame and negative relationships (to which one can never adapt in a way that makes them even stress-neutral) can vastly improve one’s happiness.

The final external factor, “V,” is the one I found most intriguing, and which harkens back to hip-hop luminaries.  “V” is the voluntary activities in which we engage, presumably to seek pleasure.  The best way to describe the optimal set of activities for any individual is through Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi’s “Flow State” concept. Czikszentmihalyi’s research draws a distinction between the pleasure people derive from the physical (from chocolate, sex, etc.) and the gratification derived from “total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.” Haidt further describes “flow” as the following: “There is a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step.  You get flash after flash of positive feeling with each turn negotiated, each high note correctly sung, or each brushstroke that falls into the right place.  In the flow state the elephant (automatic processes) and rider (conscious thought) are in perfect harmony.  The elephant (automatic processes) is doing most of the work, running smoothly through the forest, while the rider (conscious thought) is completely absorbed in looking out for problems and opportunities, wherever he can.” The benefit of pleasure is undeniable, but ephemeral.  The benefit of the “flow,” or “being in the zone,” compounds over time.

What’s particularly interesting is that flow is about engagement in the task, and not necessarily achievement of a particular outcome.  Unlike the old axiom that one’s journey is equally important to the ultimate destination, the suggestion is that in achieving happiness the destination is actually less important than whether or not the journey requires full concentration of one’s abilities.  Interestingly, Lil Wayne has been a misunderstood figure in music because of his preference to spend most waking moments in the studio recording extemporaneous “flows”(and for a few legal reasons too).    While he has become rich through the commercialization of his work, he has also been criticized for creating too much content and simply throwing it out into the market.   Perhaps the rhyming savant has figured out the “V,” and has simply chosen to achieve an almost constant “flow state” by finding his flows as often as possible.  If the point is to be engaged in the process, then perhaps the result of the process is truly less important?

The concept of flow, and the example of Lil Wayne, makes me wonder how often, either through vocation or avocation, I achieve that level of engagement.  An honest assessment tells me that I should spend more time dropping Mad Flows too.

Related articles

• WATCH: The Surprising Science Of Happiness (psychworld.com)
• WATCH: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow (YouTube)
• Joe Robinson: The Hidden Key to Happiness: Participant Experiences (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Art of Work (FastCompany.com)

Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: Lessons from David vs. Goliath

I just read a fascinating article from the archives of “The New Yorker”, “How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules" by Malcolm Gladwell.  You may recognize Gladwell as the best-selling author of the books "Outliers," “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.”

Gladwell features the stories of victorious underdogs in many contexts, but spends the majority of his time chronicling the ascendance – in one season - of a basketball team of 12-year-old girls, from not knowing how to dribble or shoot, to runner-up national-champions.  (Hint: the success does not involve convincing a depressed basketball savant to join the team, as it did in the movie “Hoosiers.”) The key to success: insurgent strategy.  Before attacking the opponent, attack the “game” itself.  Through his stories of unlikely success, Gladwell offers a simple set of instructions for informing your competitive decisions when facing a “Goliath” opponent.

First, recognize that the “rules” of most competitions are established to reinforce the dominance of the incumbent order. For example, big armies attempt to draw opponents into head-to-head battle because big armies have an advantage in these conflicts.

Second, recognize we have the choice to play by conventional terms, or to redefine the competition in a way that suits our abilities - not those of the incumbent.  We often impose a set of “rules” upon ourselves, which are defined by convention rather than law. Before any competition, consider whether your strategy is based on what is expected, or what is to your advantage.

Finally, assuming you elect to compete in a way that defies convention, you must recognize what is required to achieve success under the new terms of engagement.  Changing the terms of the game will inspire the antipathy of an establishment that wishes to reinforce the old standard.  It may also require significantly greater effort than losing “honorably” under the standard terms of competition.  If the point is to do more than compete, then you must recognize the cost of success, and accept these costs.

Like most people, I love a good underdog story.   If you read the article for only that, you’ll come away happy.  More than this, it served as a reminder that we are complicit in establishing many of the impediments we perceive in our lives.  We choose what we strive for, we choose how we prosecute the campaign to achieve it, and we choose what is an acceptable price to pay for that achievement.

“Switch” Off Your Fundamental Attribution Errors

I’m not nearly as smart as I think I am.  I’ve been hearing that from people close to me for as long as I can remember, and a recent read of “Switch,” by Chip and Dan Heath, reminded me of that fact.  In particular, their focus on the human tendency to make Fundamental Attribution Errors reminded me to break my habit of drawing character conclusions without considering the context in which I’m observing the behavior that informs those conclusions.  In other words, I'm in the habit of making dumb decisions about people based on bad information.

We’ve probably all done it  - write someone off based on a limited set of unfortunate interactions.  I must admit that I’m one of the worst offenders.  Unfortunately, I’m known among my friends and family for the intensity with which I offer detailed descriptions of a perceived offense, and the extensive character indictments I raise against those who have transgressed.   There is no doubt that select members of our society are, in fact, reprehensible figures and deserve the full fury of my indignation; however, the Heath’s have reminded me to consider the broader context, or remember the bias inherent in small sample sizes.  After all, given what I just wrote, someone with limited exposure to me might conclude that I’m no sweetheart (a few ex-girlfriends would probably agree).  However, I’m confident that in the broader context of my life, I average out to a pretty decent guy.  I would hope when I act like a jackass, I’m given the benefit of the doubt; and I’m going to extend the world the same courtesy.

As for the rest of “Switch,” it offers some interesting insights into behavioral change, and our inherent nature for finding or sabotaging motivation.  The central theme of the book is that we can understand human willpower using the analogy of a trained elephant walking through the woods.  What determines the elephant’s course: the rider on the elephant’s back (rational thinking), the elephant itself (emotion) or the path the elephant walks (situation/context)?  The answer, according to the Heaths, is all three, and through understanding of how each interacts with the other one can elicit sustained personal or organizational behavioral change.  The book only scratches the surface of some deeper research from psychologists at Stanford and other schools, but it’s a quick and interesting read that offers practical advice for making change.

Break on through to the other side of complexity (Amended)

What's the difference between complex and complicated?  Must they necessarily be related to each other?  According to Eric Berlow, an ecologist and network scientist based at Yosemite National Park, the answer is "no."  I recently stumbled upon this short video of Berlow's presentation at TED, during which he outlines his method for using visualization tools and isolation of first and second degrees of influence within complex systems to find solutions.  I'm not yet sure how this will help me bring order to the complexity in my life, but I found it interesting to watch him derive order and logic in even the messiest networks.

ADDENDUM: I received some feedback suggesting disappointment in the video based on expectation of an immediately applicable solution.  The following is some additional commentary that seems to have helped.  Feel free to push back if I'm still off base.

I guess if you were hoping for a "plug and play" solution, then the video came up short.  I found it interesting more as a metaphor for deriving order from apparent chaos.  As I understood it, what he said was that in complex problems, there may appear to be myriad moving parts which may influence your desired outcome.  If you just think about the apparent complicated nature of the mess, you'll get lost.  However, if you focus on understanding the 1st, 2nd and 3rd layers of influence on that desired outcome, and exclude anything that you cannot control or change, you'll be able to isolate the area likely to have greatest efficacy on the outcome you want.  I agree that not everyone has the tools to build a computer-aided visual model of a problem, but I think most problems are sufficiently less complex so as not to require one.  I think if you simply listed all of the potential points of influence in a complex set, and then highlighted the ones that touch your outcome - and that you can actually control or influence - you'd get pretty close to the same process, and an "actionable" solution set.


The video lasts approximately 3 minutes.

Related articles

• How complexity leads to simplicity: Eric Berlow on TED.com (ted.com)

Focusing on Winning Is for Losers!

As a San Francisco resident and stalwart football fan, the local media constantly reminds me of the San Francisco 49ers sorry state.  Once favored by the press to win their conference, the team has begun the season by losing each of its first five games.   The team’s coach, Mike Singletary, is one of my all-time favorite players.  He was the captain and inspirational leader of the Super Bowl-winning 1985 Chicago Bears, the first football team to capture my attention and the inspiration for my devotion to the sport.  Given the 49ers’ disappointing start, many are curious about what a leader in his position says to a group that has so spectacularly failed to meet expectations.  Just before kickoff for Sunday night’s game on NBC, sideline reporter Andrea Kremer asked Singletary, “What do you tell the team to focus on after an 0 and 4 start?”  His response, “Win. Win.”  The 49ers lost the game by 3 points.

I was struck by the brevity and severity of his response.  Not blocking, not tackling, not assignments.  Not focus on any part of the game, but rather the outcome of the game itself.  Something about the response seemed odd to me.   It reeked of a desperation that in this case was very public, but not unique among those whose backs are against the wall.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Focus on the outcome is pervasive in football.  The Oakland Raiders of the 1970’s espoused the “Just Win Baby!” philosophy, which dictated that as long as the Raiders were victorious, all means necessary to achieve the victory were warranted.

Reaching further into the annals of football lore, the most famous testament to the importance of winning is attributed to Vince Lombardi, the Hall of Fame coach of the Green Bay Packers in the 1950’s and 60’s.  In his famous speech (famous among football fans and players, anyway) “What It Takes to Be #1,” which, according to ESPN, was quoted just last week to the New York Jets by their running back LaDanian Tomlinson, Lombardi offers that, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing.  You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time.  Winning is a habit.  Unfortunately, so is losing.”  He continues, “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour – is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he’s exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”

I’m going to risk excommunication from the congregation of football by suggesting that the Lombardi scriptures are wrong, or at least the popular and selective interpretation of them is.  I believe the 49ers, and anyone else who hopes to do something great, should take a page from the Stoics’ philosophy, focusin on what one can control, not on the outcome.

By virtue of having been exposed to the ideas through William B. Irvine’s great book, “A Guide to The Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy,” I suggest there are two reasons for doing this – the second of which I think is the heart of Lombardi’s real message to football.  First, by focusing only on winning, you limit the level of performance you can attain through any one competition, and thus the maximum level of performance you will ultimately reach.  Second, winning is too abstract a goal to warrant focus.

Limiting Your Performance Through Winning
I’ll use an overly simplified example to illustrate the point.  Let’s say I want to be the best swimmer I can be.  I go down to the local “Y” to work out, and I’ll find many swimmers against whom I can race.  If I focus only on beating them, I’ll focus on swimming just fast enough to achieve a win against what I can see.  Maybe the fastest guy at the pool, the one with the sweet body suit and custom kickboard, will beat me at first, but after some diligent work (and maybe an equipment purchase) I’ll eventually win.  Great.  Now I’m a winner, but that doesn’t make me the best that I can be… I’m just the best in the pool.  I have no idea how good I could be if I achieved perfection, and perhaps more important, I’m not well prepared for the inevitable contest against someone who’s better...  I’m just good enough for now.  Let’s consider the converse of this: Michael Phelps.  He is already the best in the world.  There is no one he can train with who is his equivalent.  What does he focus on?  It can’t be just winning because, for the most part, that’s a forgone conclusion.  He continues to set records because he and his coach focus on what he can do to achieve the best performance of which he alone is capable.  Because of his effort and execution of technical mastery (two things he controls 100%) and his physical talent (which he does not control and is ephemoral), this usually results in win, and almost always a sublime performance.

Winning Is An Abstraction
No matter how much you prepare, no matter how smart you are, no matter how hard you work, you cannot control the outcome of a “fair” competitive encounter.  Consider two perfectly evenly matched competitors.  They are equal in talent, intelligence and preparation: equal in every way.  In a contest with no ties, chance or fate (things beyond the control of the participants) will decide the winner.  Even in contests between unevenly matched opponents, chance can create unlikely outcomes.  Accordingly, if you have no control over winning, there is really no sense in naming it as your goal.  Are you really a failure if something outside of your influence creates an outcome?

I’m not suggesting that winning is meaningless.  After all, coaches and players are measured on wins and losses.  Perhaps that’s not a fair standard against which to measure them, but that’s a subject for a different piece.  I suggest that in order to maximize the odds of winning, which is not something they can control, people should focus on achieving what they can control.   I also suggest that this is consistent with the heart of Lombardi’s forgotten message.

The second half of the second sentence of Lombardi’s speech starts, “you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time.  Winning is a habit.”  For the moment, let’s reframe “winning” as achieving a personal best performance, which I have argued is the best one can hope for.  If you assume that performance improves marginally with each repetition, then each time you do something correctly, you do it faster, stronger… better.  In other words, achieving your best performance in any one instance is a product of the habit of achieving your best performance each time.  You cannot control winning, but you can control the habits that allow you to achieve your best performance, and continuing to achieve that is the best to which a team or individual can aspire.

What does this mean for the 49ers and the rest of us? Perfection in what you can control will, at best, put you in a position to win, then the chips will fall where they may.  If you are not focusing on and optimizing the things you can control, and you lose, then you have no one to blame but yourself; you are, in fact, a loser.   If, however, you execute perfectly on what you can control, only things outside of your influence will dictate the outcome. If you win, it’s only because of chance or because the opponent was over-matched – an outcome hardly worthy of praise.  If you lose because of chance or your opponent was somehow advantaged, you cannot rightfully be blamed for the loss.

If not winning and losing, from what can I derive satisfaction?  I believe that when Lombardi said, “Any man’s finest hour – is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he’s exhausted on the field of battle – victorious,” he did not suggest we define victory merely in terms of a scoreboard.  Rather, it was victory in the battle for any individual to achieve self-mastery, the battle against the temptation to take a shortcut, to curb ones effort, to shirk a responsibility.  It is from this victory, which affords the best possible opportunity to achieve a win, that a competitor should derive satisfaction.

Coach Singletary – instruct your team to focus on preparation and execution, not winning.  Focusing on winning is for losers.

If You Aren’t Getting Rejected On A Daily Basis, Your Goals Aren’t Ambitious Enough

This blog post from Business Insider - by technology entrepreneur and angel investor Chris Dixon - reminded me of a friend I used to visit the bars with when I first lived New York.  He was seemingly fearless in his willingness to approach perspective female acquaintances.  Before going out, my roommate and I would watch clips from "Glengarry Glen Ross" to psych ourselves up for the evening, usually only to sit in a booth, sipping from a bottle of vodka and watching our buddy chat away with someone lovely.  Why did we just sit there?  Like many of us in the bar scene, and in many other situations, we feared rejection, and that fear led to inaction.

Luckily for my social life, my perception of new encounters and the meaning of any "rejection" experienced therein changed.  Accordingly, my tolerance for risk expanded - this was certainly fueled by the knowledge that almost nothing was remotely as unpleasant as fear made it seem it would be.  Well, now I'm a married man, and aside from the occasional attempt to inspire a single friend, this "wisdom" might seem of limited purpose.  Not so, says Chris Dixon.

Sure, his post is self-aggrandizing.  It details his success in securing a great position at a noteworthy VC firm after braving myriad rejections on a daily basis.  However, I was reminded of some worthy takeaways from the post.

First, there is no point in setting a goal that you know you can achieve.  That behavior is better characterized as making a to-do list.  Setting goals is about charting a path to attain something you're not 100% certain you can make happen.  There is personal, ego-related risk that you might fail, but the benefit gained from succeeding - or learning along the way - is usually much greater than any ego risk associated with failing.

Second, if you aren't taking risks, getting your hands slapped occasionally (figuratively, or course), or finding yourself in a situation that causes you to ask yourself, "wow, what do I do now?" then you aren't stretching, you're probably not learning anything new or doing things that will give you memoir-worthy stories.

Third, hearing "no" is really no big deal.  The more you hear it, the less painful it becomes.  I just finished "Just Listen" by Mark Goulston, who suggests that a "no" is really the best opportunity you can have to learn more about someone - assuming you're willing to hear the hard truth about what inspired the no.  In that sense being told "no" can actually help much more than it hurts.

Putting yourself in a position to be rejected is like going to the gym after a hard day.  Once you start the process even the worst outcome is no big deal, you often find it turns about to be a very positive experience, and either way there is some benefit derived from the exercise.

I have included the afore-mentioned scene from Glengarry Glen Ross.  It's 7 minutes long, and I hope you find it amusing.  Beware that it features some questionable language.

F*&king Management Lessons from Rex Ryan, Head Coach of The New York Jets

Rex Ryan has been earning a good deal of heat due to his vocabulary during the taping of HBO's series "Hard Knocks," which documents the New York Jets pre-season training camp. The language won’t surprise anyone who has spent time around football coaches or training camps; however, many members of the football community have called Ryan's Head Coach position into question because of his use of profanity. While his method of expression might not be worthy of emulation, a recent profile in the New York Times Magazine indicates that this football lifer and graduate of the vaunted Southwest Oklahoma University can teach executives some valuable points about leadership.

Points of note derived from the article:

1. "How great is this!" Ryan is known as the most enthusiastic member of the coaching staff.  He offers constant encouragement and positivity.  His belief in the team's ability to achieve is infectious.
2. "We call him Marino."  Ryan is intimately involved in the day-to-day existence of his reports.  He doesn't sit behind a desk and scheme; rather, he walks among his players and throws passes during drills.  He knows what's going on with the team, because he's constantly exposed to the team.
3. "We expect to win the damn Super Bowl."  Ryan sets huge, visceral goals that everyone can get behind.  The team has a mission that everyone can articulate, and everyone, from the grounds crew to the Quarterback knows how their task influences the achievement of the collective goal.
4. "I'll always tell you."  Ryan is willing to have the difficult conversations.  He doesn't believe in personal attacks - unless you're an opponent; rather, he believes in telling people what he expects of them and how they measure up to those expectations.
5. "Rex loves to isolate particular players so just for a moment they’re a star."  Ryan seeks to find the unique talents offered by each of his players, and surprising ways to feature and exploit those unique talents.  Each player feels that Ryan will always place them in the best situation to ensure personal success.
6. “Guy worked hard, got thrown around, but he showed up every day, and Rex played him."  This relates to a story from Ryan's days coaching at the University of Oklahoma.  He respected a former equipment manager who turned into a practice squad player.  Playing that kid rewarded behavior that Ryan wanted to see in the scholarship athletes - commitment, relentless effort, and courage.  It set the example that on his team there are rewards for exhibition of these traits, even for the equipment manager.