Messy

That’s from the first chapter on “Creativity.”

The software I use to create these Notes doesn’t have the fonts Harford refers to so I can’t show you the absurdity of them, but know that they’re super hard to read. :)

We talked about a very similar study in Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath. In fact, the study he references was also conducted by Daniel Oppenheimer with, as it turns out, the author of Irresistible: Adam Alter.

Here’s how Gladwell puts it: “The CRT is really hard. But here’s the strange thing. Do you know the easiest way to raise people’s scores on the test? Make it just a little bit harder. The psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer tried this a few years ago with a group of undergraduates at Princeton University. First they gave the CRT the normal way, and the students averaged 1.9 correct answers out of three. That’s pretty good, though it is well short of the 2.18 that MIT students averaged. Then Alter and Oppenheimer printed out the test questions in a font that was really hard to read—a 10 percent gray, 10-point italics Myriad Pro font—so it looked like this:

1. A bat and ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The average score this time around? 2.45. Suddenly, the students were doing much better than their counterparts at MIT.

That’s strange, isn’t it? Normally we think that we are better at solving problems when they are presented clearly and simply. But here the opposite happened.”

Gladwell calls that sort of thing “desirable difficulties.”

One of Harford’s consistent themes in the book is the fact that the “tidy” approach to things can often lead to turning our brains off and running on autopilot in a sub-optimal way.

Research shows that it’s often better to embrace a little jarring “messy”-ness that grabs our attention and boosts our creative performance.

That’s from Chapter 2 on “Collaboration” in which we learn about the virtues of “messy” teams.

We talked about Brailsford and his epic reboot of English cycling in our Notes on Black Box Thinking and in our +1 on Marginal Gains. I love this little wrinkle to the story.

Another example of the power of messy teams comes from Brooke Harrington who studied the investment clubs that popped up in California in the 1990’s. The ones that consisted of friends underperformed those with looser social ties. Why? Because the friends didn’t want the “messiness” of stepping on each other’s toes and challenging each other’s perspectives. The other group didn’t have that issue. They were more interested in “goal harmony” (good investment returns) than “team harmony” (preserving relationships).

Ray Dalio, one of the greatest investors in history advocates a similar approach—focused on radical transparency and a commitment to the truth over feeling comfortable.

One more example: Imagine trying to solve a murder mystery. If you put four friends together they’ll have more fun and think they’re doing well put get outperformed by a group of three friends plus one stranger. That stranger forces everyone to think harder and come up with better results—even though it FEELS more awkward.

Tim tells us that we need to “constantly remind yourself of the benefits of tension, which can be easy to forget when all you want is a quiet life.”

P.S. Chapter 3 is on “Workplaces” in which Tim shares research on office design and productivity. The super-short story there? “People flourish when they control their own space.”

Research shows that you can drop people into a “lean” Spartan-like workplace or an “enriched” space with some plants and a little more going on. Then compare their productivity to those in an “empowered” space where the worker gets to decide what goes where vs. a “disempowered” space where they’re told they can do what they want but then have everything put back into a “tidy” setup they didn’t pick. What you’ll find is that the disempowered people want to hit their bosses (lol) and the empowered people produce at the highest levels while enjoying the process.

Moral of the story: If you’re a boss, let your team create a space that feels great: “From the vantage point of a nice corner office, someone else’s messy desk is an eyesore. The clutter is visible, but the resulting sense of empowerment is not. For the senior manager, the lesson is simple: Resist the urge to tidy up. Leave the mess—and your workers—alone.”

That’s from a chapter on “Improvisation” in which we learn when it’s wise to improvise and when it’s wise to stick to a script with an emphasis on the power of improvising.

Which, of course, reminds me of Improv Wisdom by one of the world’s leading improv teachers, former Stanford Professor Patricia Ryan Madson.

Patricia shares 13 maxims to Optimize your improv in her great book. Guess what rule #1 is…

Yep. “Say YES!”

Here’s how she puts it: “This is going to sound crazy. Say yes to everything. Accept all offers. Go along with the plan. Support someone else’s dream. Say ‘yes’; ‘right’; ‘sure’; ‘I will’; ‘okay’; ‘of course’; ‘YES!’ Cultivate all the ways you can imagine to express affirmation. When the answer to all questions is yes, you enter a new world, a world of action, possibility, and adventure.”

Which reminds me of this Joseph Campbell gem: “‘Since all is brahmin, since all is the divine radiance, how can we say no to anything? How can we say no to ignorance? How can we say no to brutality? How can we say no to anything?’ To this he said, ‘For you and me, we say yes.’”

And… It reminds me of a recent coaching session with Phil Stutz. He describes a similar perspective as “Radical Acceptance.” It’s one thing to “accept” something in life. It’s an entirely different thing to RADICALLY Accept it. To TRULY LOVE IT.

Phil told me to think of it like a surfer. Not just any surfer but a master surfer who paddles out and waits for a wave then, when one presents itself goes at it with EVERYTHING she’s got as if it’s the *perfect* wave. Zero internal conflict. All in. One big “YES!”

Eckhart Tolle expresses the same basic idea in a similar way. He says that no matter what happens, act as if you scripted it. “YES!!”

So… What’s stressing you out these days?

What would happen if you said “Yes!” to it and acted like you scripted that thing to occur so you can use it not as a threat to your well-being but as a challenge to most powerfully Optimize and actualize?

Get clear. Then act like that with the next little oops that occurs today. (Repeat.)

That’s from a chapter on “Winning” in which we explore some case studies on how to win messy.

Tim describes Jeff Bezos’s CRAZY audacious and equally MESSY process of creating Amazon.

This is fantastic: “Bezos combined a grandiose vision with the sketchiest understanding of how that vision would be achieved. The name ‘Amazon’ is inspired by the fact that the River Amazon ‘blows all the other rivers away.’”

I literally laughed out loud imagining Bezos dreaming of creating the “everything store” and then going through a list of potential names to capture the spirit of that vision and then stumbling upon Amazon.

I imagine it went something like: “AHA!! YES!! That’s it. The Amazon blows all the other rivers away. That’s our brand.” (Hah!)

One more thing to consider the next time you use the super tidy and efficient 1-Click™ checkout with your Amazon Prime next-day delivery: Amazon got to that level of awesome after “squandering” BILLIONS of dollars.

The process of winning is messy. Let’s embrace it.

btw: In the intro I mentioned Scott Barry Kaufman’s wisdom on the messiness of the creative process. Here’s how he puts it in Wired to Create: “Psychologist Dean Simonton, who has extensively studied the career trajectories of creative geniuses across the arts, sciences, humanities and leadership, came to a strikingly similar conclusion. Based on a detailed case study of Thomas Edison’s creative career, Simonton suggested that even at the level of genius, creativity is a ‘messy business.’”

That’s another Big Idea from that chapter on “Winning.”

First, rewind back to 1997.

Amazon is still just a tiny little company. Bezos visits Harvard Business School.

And gets THAT feedback from a young Harvard MBA student. “I mean, you seem like a really nice guy but… SELL!!! NOW!! You’re screwed!!” (Hah.)

Bezos is a wonderful exemplar of the Ralph Waldo Emerson wisdom we covered in our last Note on Self-Reliance where he told us: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what your duty is better than you know it.”

Some people will ALWAYS think they have a better sense of what’s good for you than you do. And, of course, being open to feedback is great. AND…

“Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

Spotlight on you: Got anything on which you need to dial up the self-trust?

P.S. As an undergrad at UCLA I studied Psychology with a minor in Business. I was a Teacher’s Assistant for an accounting professor who taught at the business school. Learned a ton. Super supportive, helpful mentor with a big heart. And… I vividly remember him shorting the bliss out of Amazon. He was pretty much absolutely convinced there was no possible way they could make their business work and justify their high valuation.

And… He lost a lot of money. (D’oh!)

That’s from the final chapter on “Life” in which Tim walks us through Ben Franklin’s commitment to mastering himself via his virtues journal and tells us that Franklin is unquestionably in the Hall of Fame of most successful (and disciplined) people of all time.

Yet, Tim points out that Ben could NEVER figure out how to master his third virtue: “Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”

Apparently he was CRAZY messy. And guess what? That didn’t seem to impair his ability to absolutely crush it. So… You have a permission slip to join Franklin in the Hall of Messiness. :)

btw: Researchers at Xerox PARC have found that around 10% of all email time is spent organizing email. And guess what? That’s pretty much a waste of time. (Hah.) All that tidying up and you’ll find that email you’re looking for fastest with a simple search of your archive.