Little Bets

We’ll kick the party off by making it clear that, as we embrace the idea of small wins via little bets, we also hold the big, bold, audacious ambition of what’s possible.

It’s not “either/or.”

As (pretty much) always, it’s “Yes, and…”

We stretch our vision of what’s possible then pin that to the present moment—holding that dynamic tension as we take baby steps in the direction of our dreams while placing little bet after little bet as we experiment with what works and what doesn’t.

Navigating that much ambiguity takes a lot of courage and persistence. AND, most importantly, it takes a growth mindset—which is the subject of Chapter 2 and our next Big Idea! :)

If we want to optimize and actualize we MUST (!!!) cultivate a growth mindset. Period.

We’ve already covered Carol Dweck’s Mindset (see Notes) and have come back to the theme numerous times, but after reading Peter’s chapter I read Dweck’s Self-Theories—which is a collection of essays that basically serve as an in-between for her research articles and mainstream Mindset. (That’s the next Note I’m writing.)

In short: It’s IMPOSSIBLE to overstate the power of how we choose to see the world.

If we think our skills are kinda sorta fixed rather than very (!) malleable, we’re going to constantly try to look good, take very little risks and respond to failure with helplessness.

If, on the other hand, we wisely (!) know that—with effort and persistence over an extended period of time—we can dramatically improve our abilities, we’re free to experiment and learn. Failures no longer elicit shame. They just provide a little more data to help us dial it all in.

Back to this book. One way to build your growth mindset muscles? Little bets.

Deliberately experiment with everything in your life. Find the marginal gains and just try to get a little better every day rather than always trying to look good and prove you have it all figured out.

Remember: Focusing on progress rather than results is the fastest way to get the results we want.

When you imagine your favorite Pixar film (is it Toy Story? or WALL-E? or…), how do you think it was created?!

Probably some genius had the vision then scripted it out then sequentially storyboarded it and then they went to work bringing that vision to life with, of course, some little tweaks in the process but following a reasonably linear process to awesome.

Yah…. Riiiiight. And, most definitely: NO.

The team has a basic idea of a story line and then they go NUTS iterating and iterating and iterating. Testing ideas and frames and literally producing tens of thousands of storyboards to get it to its final product. (Get this: WALL-E had 98,173 (!!!) storyboards. <— WOW.)

From suck to unsuck.

How amazing would our lives be if we had the willingness to embrace the suck and have fun unsucking?

Exercise program suck now? Awesome. What’s a little bet you can place to see if that unsucks it a tad? Nutrition suck? Sweet. Same process. Sleep suck? Great. Let’s place some tiny little bets and run some experiments to see how we can dial it all in!

Suck to unsuck.

That’s the game. Let’s play it.

P.S. Let’s get practical.

Q1: What’s your most important self-care habit that could use some unsucking?

Q2: What’s a little bet you can place to see if you can unsuck?

Q3: Today a good day to run the experiment?

Smallifying.

Reminds me of the marginal gains concept we explored in Matthew Syed’s Black Box Thinking (see Notes) where he shares the story of Sir David Brailsford (British cycling genius) and tells us: “His answer was clear: ‘It is about marginal gains,’ he said. ‘The approach comes from the idea that if you break down a big goal into small parts, and then improve on each of them, you will deliver huge increase when you put them all together.’”

In my interview with Syed, he said the marginal gains approach is what transformed England’s weak Olympic performance in 1996 (one gold in Atlanta) to dominance in sports like cycling and a total medal count near the top.

They smallified everything. (Literally, EVERYTHING.)

Syed tells us: “The marginal gains mentality has pervaded the entire Team Sky mindset. They make sure that the cyclists sleep on the same mattress each night to deliver a marginal gain in sleep quality; that the rooms are vacuumed before they arrive at each new hotel, to deliver a marginal gain in reduced infections; that the clothes are washed with skin-friendly detergent, a marginal gain in comfort.”

That was about Britain’s dominance at the Tour de France—an event they had never (!) won before installing the marginal gains mindset. Since installing? They’ve won 3 of the last 4 races.

Again, back to YOU: How can you smallify challenges in your life and find those marginal gains?

P.S. If the British cycling team is so committed to winning the Tour de France and values sleep so much in pursuit of that goal that they BRING A MATTRESS FOR EACH RIDER AND MOVE IT FROM HOTEL TO HOTEL (!!!), maybe we can go to bed at a regular time? (Hah!)

P.P.S. As we get our smallification on, let’s remember our telephone poles from Spartan Up!: “The way to get through anything mentally painful is to take it a little at a time. The mind can’t handle dealing with a massive iceberg of pain in front of it, but it can deal with short nuggets that will come to an end. So instead of thinking, Ugh, I’ve got twenty-four miles to go, focus on making it to the next telephone pole in the distance. Whether you’re running twenty or one hundred and twenty miles at a time, the distance has to be tackled mentally and physically one mile at a time. The ability to compartmentalize pain into these small bite sizes is key.”

Little bets. Smallifying. Small wins.

Let’s talk about the importance of progress. In Shane Snow’s Smartcuts (see Notes), we looked at research done by Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile who studied what affects people’s relationship to their work the most.

As Snow tells us: “The answer, it turns out, is simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless how small. And that’s the interesting part. Amabile found that minor victories at work were nearly as psychologically powerful as major breakthroughs.”

Progress is huge.

Getting there via small wins reminds me of Stephen Guise’s Mini Habits (see Notes). Recall that a mini habit is a habit that’s so small it can’t fail. Rather than 50 pushups a day, for example, you commit to doing 1. Rather than 20 minutes of meditation, you do 1.

Guise tells us by going “stupid small” we give ourselves the opportunity to create a little momentum. He says: “Chances are that you will do extra sometimes. And the reason relates to basic physics. Newton’s first law states that…

1. An object at rest will stay at rest unless an external force acts upon it.

2. An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an external force acts upon it.

Can you see how this relates? Once you take the first step, you are officially in motion. You will find as I have, that once you get started it is almost as hard to stop as it is to keep going. Add to this that nothing is more motivating and inspiring than seeing yourself take action. Put it together and we get a new equation: One small step + desired behavior = high probability of further steps.”

Small wins —> Progress —> Momentum = What we’re looking for!

This is a REALLY important distinction. NOTHING evolves in a perfect, straight line.

As Daniel Amen shares in Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: “When people come to see me they are usually not doing very well. Over time, if they work the plan we develop, they get better. But no one gets better in a straight line. They get better, then there is a setback, then they get better still, then there may be a setback, then they continue to improve. Over time, they reach a new steady state where they are consistently better. The setbacks are critically important, because if we pay attention to them, they can be our best teachers.

Do you learn from your failures or ignore them? New brain-imaging research suggests that when some people fail their motivation centers become more active, making it more likely they will be able to learn from their experience. When others fail the brain’s pain centers become more active—it literally hurts—making it more likely they will do whatever they can to avoid thinking about the episode, which means they are more likely to repeat the mistake. Learn from your mistakes and use them as stepping stones to success.”

Here’s to allowing small wins to aggregate in unforeseeable ways! :)

Doing things to discover what to do. <— That’s the essence of the book.

Reminds me of Gregg Krech in The Art of Taking Action (see Notes) where he tells us: “So when we are confronted by indecision, we need to take action despite our doubts or confusion. We need to move forward, even if we’re only taking small steps. Those steps, regardless of which direction they go in, are likely to give us new information and experience. Our actions send ripples into the world. The situation may change or reveal itself in a new way once we have moved to a new vantage point.

Think of your life as a movie you are watching. You are midway through the movie and you don’t know what is going to happen. But you’re not supposed to know what is going to happen. The movie is not over yet. This is the challenge posed by the demon of indecision: Can you move forward in the face of uncertainty? Can you co-exist with confusion and not-knowing and take the next step?”

All this leads us to our most important question (ever!): What must you do next?