The Difference Between Working Hard and Getting Better | Big Think

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1:14We've picked two areas of mastery to focus on. You want to move from your response being a default, and we're trying to move from default to decision. And I wondered whether this was more about going from good to great. What do you do when you respond in a way you don't want to? And they said that I didn't want to cry. And now I'm worried about what you're thinking about me because I'm crying. The failure almost just becomes a data point for your development. And then know that there will be these mini failures. And it's sort of what happens in those moments. I think then helps you with, will you get to the ultimate success?

1:51You can only truly master one thing. According to Epictetus, I think he was Socrates' friend, or maybe just of that group. I don't know how to say it. He's probably not listening, so it's probably fine. It's probably fine. Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance and turn that curiosity into useful action for you and your squiggly career. And today we are going to be borrowing brilliance from The Big Think. I know, it's exciting. I've not come across it before. Also, it's a very Sarah thing. I know. So I was looking at it thinking, how do I not know this?

2:28But that's exactly why we do the podcasts. Well, we do them for everyone, but for each other as well. I feel like I spend a lot of my time sort of listening to events you're going to or things you're reading and be like, oh, that's good. That's a good book. I'll get that. I'll do that. So it's always kind of novel when there's something I've found that I'm like, oh, maybe you would like this too. So the big thing is, I think mainly it's a website that will share really interesting articles, not always about careers, just about the world. Some of it's a bit sciencey, but I mainly engage with it via a newsletter.

2:58So I've created like a folder in my inbox where all of my newsletters go, which both saves my inbox and then means that on a Friday, I have a scroll through my newsletters. And then I'm like, well, that's interesting. Or that could be good for the podcast. Or what does that make me think? It's turned my inbox into like, I like, that's like a happy scroll for me going through all those newsletters. And the Big Think newsletter is always in there. And I was struck by a collection. So they pulled together a few articles that they'd produced previously and all around mastery, the topic of mastery.

3:33And I was like, oh, and I'm I think I mainly know the word or the idea mastery from Daniel Pink's work on drive because he has that equation and purpose, autonomy and mastery equals drive. But I don't think I've spent much time reflecting on mastery outside of Dan Pink's work. No, maybe a bit through. You've got Malcolm Gladwell's work. I feel like he, you know, the thing that's not true about the 10 ,000 hours. I think a lot of people would talk about mastery around oh you know you've got to do something for 10 ,000 hours albeit that applies to a very small subset of things that you need to do so I sometimes I go back to deliberate practice as well I think that's Anders Ericsson so that they're sort of that's in the territory of mastery isn't it you're right but I was reading through those articles because I was intrigued and I was thinking oh it's mastery at work is not a word that you hear very often I was like in a week I don't think I'd hear the word mastery so I was trying to be specific about well what what does it mean in our context in a squiggly career um and this this kind of quote stood out to me albeit I don't I still don't think this is a very everyday quote um it describes mastery as the timeless quest to go beyond competence and achieve excellence the timeless I know I feel like we're in like Lord of the Rings or something like at work yeah but I think the the point if we're now trying to make it feel more every day for us at work is I bet everybody listens to Squiggly Careers podcast is good at their job yeah you're already you're listening to a podcast about work and careers you yeah you are already good at your job and I wondered whether this was more about going from good to great to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins I thought we name checked lots of people now because I don't think mastery happens by accident.

5:27I think it's an intentional process. And I think when we get into some of the things we're going to talk about today, you realize it's a choice. It's something you've got to decide. What do I want to be particularly great at? Where do I want to invest effort to be a, whether you use the word master or to just go to be to be better than I would be from just doing my job? I think that was that was my conclusion. I like the sort of intentional improvement. What does it take for me to be at my best kind of language more than I do mastery? It doesn't quite resonate. But I do I do like the idea of it, like the idea of getting to excellence in an area.

6:05And what do you want that area to be and how could you do it? And so in the collection, which we will link to both in the show notes, we'll also put it on the pod sheet. You can get that on our website, amazingif.com. There are a range of articles. I don't think all of them are relevant to squiggly careers. They're all interesting. I have to say, I did read them and they were all interesting. Yeah, they're all interesting. But I think some are more obviously relevant to squiggly careers. So we've picked two areas of mastery to focus on for the conversation today. So we've got mastery of your response to a situation, which was sparked by one of the articles called You Can Only Truly Master One Thing, according to Epictetus.

6:41I think he was Socrates' friend or maybe just of that group. I don't know how to say it. He's probably not listening. so it's probably fine. Don't judge me on pronunciation everybody. And the second thing we're going to talk about is mastery of your ability to succeed which was sparked by an article in the collection called Mastering the Edge, How Success Raises the Stakes for Elite Adventurers. So we're going to make it a bit more like day-to-day unless any of you are elite adventurers but most of us are just trying to do our best at work so we'll try to make it relevant to that. So let's start with mastering your response to situations.

7:15What's that all about? So I think here it's reflecting on when do you respond in a way that you would like to change? So where you're not a master, essentially, where you're thinking either maybe I'm just not very good or maybe I'm good, good enough, but not as good as I would like to be. And so this is thinking about day to day at work. You know, those moments where you come away and think, I didn't I didn't show up in the way that I would have liked to. you're probably feeling a bit frustrated um and so when we were both thinking about this because we were trying to work out what would this mean in our world I was saying how sometimes I respond to like to our team and almost like to myself when I'm a bit frustrated that maybe we've not thought something through properly um or I don't know the answer so maybe there's just like messiness I think I respond to messiness with a phrase let's think about this some more and it's quite passive aggressive only because I know only because I know you because I'm like Sarah doesn't like it that means we're not making a decision on this now and so we'll talk about like what what to do differently but I think if we just stay with the response that's not helpful me saying let's just think about this some more almost to yourself to other people is not the way that I want to respond when things feel messy because I know it's not helping us to move forward.

8:43And like you said, it's it now when you say it out loud, it does feel quite passive aggressive. But an interesting nuance here is I'm often typing it. So I write those words all the time in Canva. So we use Canva for creating like presentations and proposals. And I'm in there going, let's think about this some more. And I now know it creates confusion. It's the opposite of creating clarity so I'm not responding there in a way that I want to so that's kind of my I want to apply what we're going to do today to that situation okay what about you um I think if I think about a situation where I respond in a way that I kind of don't want to respond in that way and this actually you know what this happens at work and at home because I've had feedback from my husband quite a lot on this is when things aren't moving quite quickly enough and that could be a deck isn't getting written quickly enough yeah or someone isn't being responded to on email quickly enough or at home something hasn't happened that I want to happen quickly enough everything from booking a holiday to doing something in the house just you know chickens chickens chickens everyone okay chickens all I talk about chickens chickens chickens but I just go well I'll just do it I'll just do it and I say that like don't worry I'll do it and basically what I mean is it's not moving fast enough so I can make it move faster but I just don't think that is helpful I think it annoys me for so many reasons like I get frustrated by that default because I think well maybe there was an opportunity for feedback in that which is like actually we had a deadline we haven't met it and I'm frustrated by that's why I'm doing it but I haven't given that feedback I've just said I'll do it or maybe I've disempowered somebody because they could have done it better or done it differently and I've just made an assumption that speed is the most useful thing in that situation and so I never I'm like oh but you didn't you didn't give a chance for any of that you didn't give a chance for the feedback you didn't give a chance for someone else to do it better you you just got frustrated and said I'll do it um and so I never feel I never feel good about that afterwards even though the thing gets done I never feel kind of good about how it got done um and Sarah and I were chatting and I can share this because the person said this openly last week I was in a as in a session um which was about confidence actually and somebody in front of the group was talking they asked me a question and they said oh like what what what do you do when you like respond in a way you don't want to and they said that the situation they were talking about was they might cry in a meeting and they said um I might be in a situation I don't want to cry but we're having a conversation and it is it's something they kind of feel quite a lot about maybe they're frustrated or maybe you know it matters to them what they're talking about and they said and i just cry and it's really annoying and i find it so distracting because i didn't i didn't want to cry it was not and now i'm worried about what you're thinking about me because i'm crying and they said it really affects their kind of what happens after that moment because of this response that they're not in control of which you know they mentioned crying but it could be that you've talked about blushing before as being like something you're not in control of.

11:55You know, for the people could be the handshaking, but it's this response that you think, oh, I didn't want to respond like that. And then it almost becomes distracting in your head. So the key here is when you're in these situations to try and master them, you want to move from your response being a default. So I'm not being really thoughtful when I write, let's think about this more. It's just, it's my, it's my default. And we're trying to move from default to decision and it's this space that you have we both did a leadership program years ago and it's always so interesting isn't it the learning that sticks and stays with you because as soon as we said this to each other we both knew straight away what we meant which we were sort of taught this idea of the thing that you are always in control of the thing that you always have a choice about is sort of how you respond like you've got the space to choose how you respond and I think often here where you're not a master you're sort of forgetting that you forget that you've got a choice either because you're annoyed or busy or kind of think things are full on um and it's this uh some of you will have come across this before from victor frankel where um the psychiatrist who talks about the space between stimulus and response so you've got some sort of stimulus things are not moving fast enough i don't think we've thought something through properly and then you have got this space to choose to make a decision about what you then do.

13:17So we both found it helpful having gone through this to think, what is the situation? What is your response when you're not mastering it, which is what we've described? And then what's a reflection that can then help you to make a different decision? Because I think you've then got to create clarity for yourself about, well, what does behaving differently look like? What's an alternative action to what I do today? So when I was thinking about this, I was like, oh, actually, I think I need to change the channel. So actually, I always write this. I don't really actually say it out loud very often.

13:53It's always where I've read something, and I'm thinking, that's not right. That's obviously what's going on in my head. And so, yeah, you get these passive aggressive comments from me, which are, we need to think about this more, or let's think about this more, where there's no accountability, there's no who's actually thinking about this. And I think my change the channel decision is if I am feeling like that, I need to pick up the phone, which again is not what I would think to do now. But I think if I pick up the phone and call somebody and talk something through, I'm quite good at thinking out loud.

14:30So that will be useful for me. I can get that other person's perspective and we can almost do that thinking like live in that moment to then figure out then, okay, what do we need to change? yeah and I think I have I can think of some examples of when I've done that and it is always better because of it and that's the that's the different decision that I need to make rather than almost getting a bit frustrated and actually what I sometimes do and you'll know this is I'll complain like you know I'll just be like to you oh we don't know what we're doing on this whereas you're like well you could just pick up the phone yeah and try and talk it through with somebody and then you're not writing i don't think writing that in a canva document is ever useful yeah so it's sort of reminding myself you've got a that's the default i need to make a decision to do something different i do see you i've seen of late your i think you should pick up the phone but also like signaling that to other people as well so i can i think you're already yeah you're already doing this and i think you're signaling it to other people too is actually this is a good response rather than as like going around in circles on something yes pick up the phone yeah what about you well i have reflected too and i think so my statement at the moment is i'll do it and i think i should move from a statement to a question or questions i think there are two questions that i would benefit from asking as a decision rather than the i'll do it default and the questions i think are when does this actually need to be done by yeah because i create a deadline yes i just create some deadline and then who is the best person to do it and i think if i could move from the because if like say when does it need to be done by tonight or who's the best person to do it well Helen you know there's lots of people that might be working part-time the team yeah so perhaps I might be the best person but that is a choice and a decision rather than an assumption and a default and I think if I could start asking those questions I think it would be much more helpful and even if I am the best person to do it that would have been a decision that wasn't just made by me yeah maybe get rid of the actually when does this actually need to be done as soon as you said that i was like you sounded quite aggressive i was like oh god i mean this is obviously late and it's really annoying me so when does it actually need to be done by maybe just go with what's the deadline or when when do we need to deliver this by i've just got i've got images and you said to me what was that so sarah when does this actually but really when what about the person who cries at the moment at work because i think even if you don't cry at work probably that sense of responding in a way that feels very out of your control will feel familiar to lots of people and i'm thinking the action there in some ways the decision in some ways is a bit different because we've talked about um actions that feel quite in our control but responses that almost are physical like crying like me like when I think about blushing I think it is quite you make a different decision the thing that really helped me when I used to blush I used to blush more than I do now which is interesting like you can yeah I do feel like I have made a bit of decision around blushing is somebody did say to me well two things happen when you like blush or you kind of go red um one people don't notice as much as you think that they do obviously you really feel it but most people don't notice that much and if they do it just sort of shows that you care um and then everyone sort of moves on and so I think my decision with blushing was if it happens and it still would some of the time and it's an involuntary thing my decision is to think that's because I really care about this it's maybe because I'm a bit nervous and I care and I make a decision to slow down okay so my decision now is if that does happen I'll take I'll have a sip of water I'll just slow down and I basically give myself time to recover and then I feel less red yeah you know whether I am or not I actually don't know because you can't always see yourself but I I think just by kind of taking a sip of water saying oh it's because you're nervous like telling myself it's sort of what goes on in my head yeah and then like a very small action I take that's that's been really useful for me well I think your advice on that is more useful for the mind because I don't have that yeah and so I was thinking or what would because I think part of the default at the moment is the the reaction happens the tears come and then it's sort of reaction and distraction because then in that person's head they're then thinking about well how am I coming across and that stops them in the conversation so over time maybe the reaction is managed to your point maybe stop blushing but I think the decision is not to be distracted by it for that person so almost to sort of acknowledge oh clearly this is something I care about because I can feel my eyes welling up and then almost just to accept it yeah and that's okay and that's okay like I don't need to worry I mean you could go and ask for feedback and all that kind of stuff but I wonder whether in the immediate situation it's kind of going oh I can feel my eyes tearing and that's okay just yeah just like i'm gonna i think some of your like almost like tactics to manage that are really useful um but yeah that's what i would do so that's how we're going to master our responses yes um what about mastering our ability to succeed which is the other one that you picked out yeah so this is the elite athletes article yeah very you very on brand um and they talk about again just i'm trying to take the bits that are really relevant to the majority of people are going to listen to this podcast and they talked about the thing that helps elite athletes to master their success is they have the ability to appreciate the risk of a situation so it's not success is just i'm going to win a gold medal for example like what's what's what's the risk the risk is well you know i might not win i could injure myself something on the race could go wrong so they the success becomes a very thought through thing not just like i want to write a best-selling book you know they really think about well what's what's the risk involved in that maybe no one reads the book maybe you get bad reviews maybe you get bad reviews obviously not in our case theoretically all reviews welcome on our latest book all good reviews welcome so yeah they they appreciate the risk but they also have a very constructive way of framing failure so i think there is an inevitability that if you are trying to do something you've not done before anything that has an element of risk that will hopefully lead to success might also result in some failure or some mistakes because it's hard or you'd already be doing it and what the article says is these people that they have the edge they kind of master their success see the risks but they also frame failure in a really effective way so they don't go oh i'm a loser because i lost they go oh i could have taken that turn better or actually there's an there's an opportunity to improve in that specific area of my race and so the the failure almost just becomes a data point for your development rather than an a kind of an issue with your identity so it's not i failed i'm a failure it's i failed in that area and i can i've now got some more data about what to do differently and these people that have the edge in terms of their master of success can do those two things and i've been watching almost like a bit surprising it wouldn't wouldn't have been the thing that i normally would have clicked on i've been watching the gordon ramsay documentary food documentary i do like food yeah i do like food documentary that's always one of your recommendations but that's very different so the gordon ramsay one though is more about like him so i wouldn't usually watch a documentary about like reality it's closed much closer to reality tv um and i can't even remember why what oh i think my sister recommended it which surprised me So I thought, oh, I'll give it a go.

22:18And it's essentially about him. It's kind of his life, but it's more about him opening five restaurants in the city in one building. I think it's 22 Bishop's Gate, I think. And it kind of follows his journey to trying to kind of open these restaurants. And it is definitely a mix of what you've just described. Like watching him is really interesting because there is loads of risk, financial risk. And he talks about it very openly. yet reputational risk and he you know the judgment of people being like is he a real chef anymore you know but actually he really cares about food or it certainly came across that he did um and also some of it does fail along the way so a couple of the restaurants i think at least one of them was massively delayed so just didn't actually just didn't open during the program and so you see and it's interesting like how he kind of talks about that and then he did this one night It's one of the restaurants is called Lucky Cat and they do like a kind of pretend opening.

23:17We meet real people there and he sort of does this speech where he says to them, I want you to make all of the mistakes. I was quite tough on them when they do make mistakes. So I watched it and I was like, brilliant. He's encouraging mistake moments and he wants them to do it. But then when things do start to go wrong. But not that mistake. You're like, oh, OK. But, you know, it's quite a high pressure environment, I guess. but when things do fail it's really interesting it is all about as you described they're like well let's just get better yeah if this fryer can't take the capacity like that's literally one of the things like the fryers haven't been used as much as suddenly they get used when there's like loads and loads of people and they sort of just stop working and then they have like a massive backup of orders and like watching it is really it's really stressful i mean it didn't make me want to work in a restaurant decision to have that filmed in the first place yes is an interesting choice yeah yeah and so that that's also a risk in its own right you know like suddenly i mean it's great on one hand it's great pr yeah for that restaurant um or those restaurants and his brand generally but on the other hand you know you're giving people a window into your world and like the things the things that he does like is like some of his family actually at work that every you were just people were invited into every one of your meetings every one of your mistakes is visible like in you know in your new job like that would be this but what he's doing And I just thought, oh, he doesn't have to do this.

24:38Yeah. Probably doesn't have to open those restaurants. He's already clearly really successful. But he's really ambitious. You can just see he's really ambitious. He really wants to succeed. And he has this kind of sense of risk. And he's sort of learned how to cope with failure. And I think you have to in restaurants because you have Mitch and Starr's. They get taken away. You get bad reviews. You get brilliant reviews. he's really embracing actually the bit like one of the bits i really admired was he he really like welcomes influencers and like social media so rather than being a bit sniffy about them and being like oh they're not like a proper critic or whatever he actually has fun with them and it's like a really nice way of being like well actually of course that's risky because then you're maybe on tiktok or you're mad i don't know yeah who knows what's going to get produced from that content but you also see that actually then his fans love it and love him because of it um it actually is a really actually is a really good well I mean aside from mastery that's on my weekend watch list I will take that recommendation but I guess to make that really relevant and relatable to people I think our reflections were first of all you kind of have to know what you want to succeed in so you do need to like name what does success mean to you and you might you might want to put some parameters around that like what does success mean to you this week at work what does success mean to you by the end of the year at work like I think you need to name your success and then based on this insight it's very useful to think about well what are the risks like being aware of what are the risks involved in going after that goal and if I fail along the way like what might those failures look like and how would I frame them because you just don't want the default to be if I fail I'm a failure I think you kind of want to go so to make this real for us let's take take let's take the book for example so uh we wanted our ambition success was the book becoming a sunday times bestseller like that was definitely part of what success meant to us not the only thing because that's just part of what one thing you want people to actually like it um but that was definitely part of it the risk was it didn't it didn't it didn't do that and we could have said our our kind of sense of failure if we were being negative about that could be oh oh, well, you know, we shouldn't write any more books.

26:50We shouldn't write any more books. But I think actually what we're saying is, well, we'll learn from what people like. We'll read reviews. You know, if we fail, we'll kind of work out why and what's behind that. And we will, I think we always look for the learning. That would probably be how we would frame failure, look for the learning. I think this idea of sort of the risk and the failure together is most useful if you think about a medium term success that you've got in mind. So I want to be promoted. I want to be a manager for the first time. I want to move teams. I want to do projects with bigger influence and impact.

27:25And so it's something that does feel sort of borderline scary. I think it's got to feel stretching, definitely in your courage zone, not in your comfort zone, because that is ambitious. And that's the risk. And whatever that looks like for you, I think that could be, you know, if I think back to working in Sainsbury's, it felt ambitious when I wanted to work a four-day week so I could spend a day on Amazing If. And that had a sense of risk because well does that mean people in Sainsbury's will think I'm not committed I was but they know that's a risk there am I going to get overlooked for opportunities to progress because I'm now working part-time yeah um am I not going to get involved in like the most interesting conversation so there is quite a lot of risk and there's potential failure right you're like oh okay I might that one day I might fail to do anything meaningful in that day it might then mean uh I fail in my job because I've got less less time to do it does that mean that I'm not as good at my job as I kind of was before and I think to your point I mean you said if you fail I was thinking actually it's probably like just a when because everything we've ever done and I think individually as well where I've had that sort of ambition there are always like mini failures yeah there are many failures like with our book we could name loads of mini failures right of things where there are things that have gone well but there are also things where we would have loved to make certain things happen that haven't happened or things that have felt harder you know we tried our best to get on the chris evans radio show let's take that as an example and that was really ambitious right they'd already said no to us i think twice and then you turned up at the office with a lobster basket i persuaded a man to take it up there and then i watched the live stream to see whether it went in and it did go in but we still didn't get on we didn't get mini failure it's a mini is and And also it's quite a public failure because you've then wrote about it.

29:12You've literally told everyone a podcast. But you told everyone on LinkedIn, right? I know, I'm joking. But I think generally sometimes with those big ambitions, you do have mini public failures along the way. And when I say mini public failures, that's like within your team, like within your company being like, okay, actually that didn't work. And I think it's really easy in those moments, either for it to kind of dint your confidence or to think well I'll give up because I tried and failed so it's sort of not it's not worth it and so I think this is where it becomes most useful so if you're listening I'd be thinking for yourself what is something you want to succeed in in the next six to twelve months so it's sort of medium term what are the risks that go alongside that to make almost like to stress test am I being ambitious enough yeah because you know we sometimes hold back our own potential and then know that there will be these mini failures and it's sort of what happens in those moments because I think then helps you with will you get to the ultimate ultimate success because like I think knowing it's going to happen I think we knew with the book this time around there would be mini failures probably because we've done it before but also probably just life you just get you just get that there will be mini failures but we didn't let that sort of stop us yeah and also we didn't let that mean that we didn't try Sometimes I think we were like, right.

30:34So say we like that Chris Evans thing. We tried everything we could and we still failed. And you're like, okay. And that's okay. And that's okay. Because maybe that's part of the framing of the failure, which is like, but we tried everything we could. Yeah. And that's okay. Yeah. Aw, I love that. I feel okay. Are we going to master success? Yeah, we're going to master success and accept some mini failures along the way. So we will summarize some of those things we talked about, you know, particularly the practical things about mastering irresponsible situations and mastering your ability to succeed.

31:01or put all that in the pod sheet as well as the links to the collection because I think, you know, if you are just curious, there is quite a lot of good stuff in that general collection and the big think is definitely something that I'd recommend having a look at to borrow Brilliance from more broadly. That's everything for this week. Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon. Bye for now. Thanks everyone. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up.

31:31Springs calling. Ross, work your magic.